HIDEAWAY ISLE
By: She Wolf
Part One-Arrival
A
few hundred years ago the island was populated with contented isle folk, thriving with tourists, friendly and neighbourly. It was a famous island and the name made anybody who heard it float into a contented world of partial joy.
Those who had not been to the island could never image its beauty, its climate, forestry, jungle land…. And those who had been, even the writers of thesauruses and dictionaries, couldn’t find the right words to describe it.
Since the 1600’s, it has been the most beloved residential area (let alone island) in the world. Through to 1800, a square foot of the island hadn’t been visited, and twenty square feet wasn’t populated with the minimal amount of two people. Crowded but beautiful, the island lived on in this popular fashion through to 1850 when not a person in the world hadn’t flown, walked, ran, jogged, ran horseback, bicycle, anything to get a glimpse at the legendary place.
For 2050 years (a long time might I add) this island has been the most popular in the world. In 1852 the population doubled, and every 10 feet was populated with two people.
Amazing, that after 2050 years, it took only a week to be completely destroyed, abandoned, to fall, to be genuinely forgotten.
The only habitants were left in a reconstructed village. There were six men, eight women (including a new arrival), and sixteen children, all of whom were forced against will to eat the thriving fruit from countless orchards instead of their craving-human.
When Mark and the others that had come with him on his boat arrived on the south coast of the Hideaway Isle, they didn’t realize that they were in serious danger.
And the cannibals did. Hungrily, they waited for the beings to discover their presence…
The boat rocked against the seas vicious waves and Mark braced the muscles in his powerful legs to keep himself from overbalancing. His canvas pants and shirt were sodden with water that smelt strongly and putridly of salt.
The year was 1905 and father was seeking out an island barely anybody remembered but would never be forgotten. Though it had been only 55 years since its downfall, father supposed that the island was collapsed and overgrown.
In the crow’s nest, atop the towering mast, the distant wind-whipped voice of lookout Jacques called the distinct words-“Land, Ho!”
Mark wrung out his shirt rapidly, spraying the deck with sea water. He leapt easily to the boy of the massive ship and indeed saw the greenery of Hideaway isle not more than a mile away, floating like a cloud on the sunlight horizon. Captain Oar, Mark’s large and burly father, struggled with a wooden steering wheel so the boat was angled towards one of Hideaways beaches.
Mark couldn’t remember, in his sixteen years, ever being more excited. He leaned over the railing on the bow to take in the air, coughed at the saltiness, and breathed through his mouth as he tried to get closer and closer to Hideaway…
He collapsed as a sudden strain in the rudder sent a tremor through the boat. Staggering to his feet, he saw what had caused it-the destroyed bits of ruined homes and structures had all been washed away, littered into the sea, blocking their present course.
Captain Oar gripped the ship’s rail, but Mark knew that he wouldn’t fall over. The SeaHaven, the boat, twitched as the rudder tried to shift and push them onward. After a moment of thought, Mark’s father suggested that they lower the rowboat into the ocean. After anchoring the ship, the crew clambered in. Mark grabbed both paddles and leaned back, the arch in his spine pointing directly to the center of the beach.
Straining his muscles, Mark pushed against the rubbish in the water. More than once he felt the paddle slip out of his hand under some decayed wood and he was forced to paddle back with his hand to retrieve it. It seemed like hours before the boat made a painful contact with the beach. The crew all contentedly tumbled onto the lush, sandy beach; Lady White, Clever Jeremy, Cook Jerryl, Lookout Jacques, Captain Oar, Second Mate John…They all were doing something to rid their clothes of the water. White was shaking it out of a waterlogged shoe, Jeremy emptying it out of his hat.
There were 17 packs on the ground. Mark felt his eyes burn. One belonged to his recently dead sister. He grabbed a pack. Mark lifted himself onto a boulder to rest and marveled that such a popular place could be so…
“Remote,” Mumbled lookout John.
Jeremy, White, Oar, Mark, Jacques, John and Kyle; after sharing a boat together for three months of trekking, they had grown quite close. Jerryl was Jeremy’s little brother and a wonderful cook, though only 12 years old. They all knew that Oar was adventurous during daylight, but as soon as the sunset he could barely speak, barely move his back slouched and his large belly relaxed and laid outwards. That’s why it was a surprise to hear the liveliness in his voice as he cheerfully finished Jeremy’s words.
“And abandoned.”
Mark nodded while lying on the sunbaked rock and letting the warmth seep through his canvas clothes and dry them. He relaxed his tense muscled, head balanced on his arm so that he could watch the other crew members prepare the campsite. Oar let out a groan as something shuttered beneath his bottom. A soft-shelled crab clacked its claws and scuttled away.
“What caused this downfall?” asked Lady White, running a finger through her raggedy hair.
“You can’t see it here,” replied Jeremy, logically rearranging his face into a puppy-dog look that he reserved for Lady White. He acted as if she understood nothing and it genuinely annoyed her. Ignoring it, she listened attentively, as Jerryl managed to get a fire to burst up under a pile of driftwood. “But in the distance,” vaguely nodding towards it, Jeremy cleared a strip of blonde hair from his eye. “There is a volcano. A woman went up to explore it, never came back. They were frightened so a search party went up to look for her. Only one of twenty came back alive and all his limbs were cut to stumps. He painfully rolled down the sloping mountain until he hit a tree. After telling his story the habitants of the island were educated in two new subjects-a strange tribe of about thirty people were making sacrifices, and that they were cannibals.”
White shuddered, but Jeremy continued without haste.
“Why didn’t the cannibals eat the sacrificial victims?” Kyle asked. Jacques nodded, agreeing with the question.
“Word has it,” Jeremy replied, working it out as he went, “they did. The police came and killed off the tribe, of course,”
“How terrible,” a clearly startled Lady White screeched.
“Yes,” Jeremy muttered nodding away her comment. “But then the volcano exploded. The man,” Jeremy looked around and nearly smiled at the intensity of the attention around him “who had no limbs said that it was because the cannibals had been killed.”
“That’s just a story,” shaken, Mark muttered quickly.
There was a pause in which Jeremy folded his arms over his chest. “Is it? I heard from an unknown source that the cannibals ripped open your chest and ate your heart then threw your limp body into the volcano, to their gods.”
“Liar,” snapped Jerryl, “There were no cannibals. Never! The volcano exploded, that’s it!”
There was a relieved sigh, but Jeremy didn’t accept it. He groaned outwardly earning a reproving glance from Captain Oar.
White nodded happily. “I knew it. I never believed you.”
Everybody else muttered agreements, but in the marrow of his bones, though he mumbled with the others, he didn’t believe his own words.
The night passed slowly dusk lasted for at least an hour before it was actually, truly night. Snoring filled the air. The red coals on the dying fire smoked gray clouds. Mark massaged his arm. He felt the groove in his shoulder that was a token from the death of his sister. Sadly, respectfully however, he thought back…
They had been on sea for less than a two-week when the worst storm Mark had ever experienced floated atop the SeaHaven. Thunder rumbled and blinded Mark in his ears and lighting gave partial and temporary starbursts of light in the sky. A wind-ridden voice, Captain Oars followed by Jerryl’s, shouted out for Merian and Mark to come into the cabin. Mark ducked into the doorway and cleared his eyes. He didn’t do it for this reason, but they made the horrid scene ever-implanted in Mark’s memory sharper, more memorable. Merian’s whip-like blonde hair blinded. There was a rumble, close, of thunder followed nearly immediately by lightening. Rain pelted through Mark’s bare arms and he shouted out. By the way Merian shuddered with the lightening and shaded her eyes with a reddened hand, Mark knew she saw and heard exactly what he did. The thunder gave way to a doubling of intensity with the rain.
Mark thought they had been struck. He heard a terrible crackle of wood from the mast. There was a flash of lightening that allowed him to properly see. Within seconds, the crow’s nest would break completely from the mast. Splintered wood crackled even more intensely.
It was too cruel. Why, why was he forced to witness this? He tried to stop her, of course. She overbalanced as a vicious wave smashed forcefully against the starboard-or the port, Mark couldn’t tell with all the wind and water-and crashed to the deck. She instinctively covered her head with her arms, legged splayed right near the mast. Mark leapt forward, knowing she was unaware of the danger. He tried to push her out of the way, but she was barely able to scream as the Crow’s nest crashed downward. She tried to claw out of the way with her fingers-she did a fair job but, alas, a rocking in the boat sent her straight under the plummeting object. She died immediately, leaving Mark with only a bleeding dent where a piece of wood had hit him.
Mark, who had been watching the fire, as he thought and noticed that most of the coals, had darkened. He was warm, however.
And safe, right?
Right.
With this almost comfortable thought, Mark pulled his legs up to his chest and slept.
In his sleep Mark dreamed of being a sacrificial victim. His face was painted with something putrid smelling and oily. He scrambled against whatever held him-he later discovered it was a hand made out of smoke. He awoke several times during the night, gladly knowing that the dream would therefore end. It never did-the dream kept coming back in frightening detail. Nearing dusk (though Mark wouldn’t know this) he saw Merian standing on the lava in the pit. She opened her mouth, and spoke, thought the voice wasn’t hers.
Come down, she mouthed.
Mark felt a tremor of fear that jolted him back to reality. It was morning. Jerryl had the fire going again was placing a large stone slab in it. Mark rolled off his rock and collided with comfortingly soft sand. Lying unnoticed, he looked around. White was braiding sea kelp, and Jacques and John were playing cards. Oar was sleepily speaking to Jeremy. Jerryl now impatiently pulled the slab out of the fire with nimble hands and thrust a skinned fish onto it. White gave him a piece of seaweed, then another, and another and he decoratively wrapped the fish in them as it sizzled.
“Why are we here, Oar? You told your son for an adventure, but I’m unsure.” Jeremy was whispering, but Mark heard distinctly.
“You know Marisa?” Oar said, and Mark had to force himself against jolting upright. Five years ago his mother had left, a historian, to study Hideaway Isle for historical significance. After three months she still hadn’t returned home and Merian had insisted that she would come home. When she never did, it was surely a shock, but it was accepted slowly over time.
“Of course, god rest her…”
Oar snapped; “No, she’s not dead.”
“What?”
“She’s alive, Jeremy…I know it! She’s here! She’s lost or something…”
Mark had heard enough. So, he was here on an impossible task to seek out his mother? So be it. He’d pretend he didn’t know. Mark locked the thought and made a gesture with his hand, throwing an invisible object over his shoulder.
The key.
Mark’s day steadily improved. Jerryl showed him how to break a coconut using another coconut. Jeremy suggested a rest around noon and he told an amazingly interesting story about a man named Jeremy winning the lotto. Mark laughed heartily at it, of course. Oar was surprisingly laid back. White had dared herself to climb up on a tree. Kyle had doubled the bet and gone up too. She had to return to rescue him.
They hit a dense, vine covered forest at four and Kyle stopped the crew with an outstretched hand.
“We’ll never get by,” enthused Jeremy with an excited grin. He was smart, sure, but he wasn’t athletic.
“Yes we will,” snapped Jerryl, Jacques and John.
“How?” Kyle asked. Mark stopped saying the same thing in mid-word.
Kyle stared at the vines. He shifted so that only his back was visible. There was a sudden clang of metal and the vines coiled away from Kyle’s sword.
“That’s how,” Oar boomed, clapping Kyle on the back happily. The trekked through the forest for nearly an hour-Kyle in the lead for fifteen minutes, Jerryl next, Oar for the rest. A crude path was fashioned. Mark tried to keep his mind away from the foul fumes that intensified in force every moment by counting trees-he had lost count at fourteen hundred. The expanse of jungle was so immense that by six, when the crew finally found a clearing, they could only tell which way was south by the chopped away vines.
Mark pushed some red sand into a pile and lay his blanket over it. The day was over, they all knew, because Oar had collapsed against at tree and began to breathe more deeply. White was clearly bored. Mark had indeed hoped for an adventure of some sort-that had barely been worth the effort. He pulled a bluebottle from his shoulder and trailed spider webs.
“I’m going to catch a monkey or something,” Jacques said over a sudden hungry hubbub from the crew.
“I’ll come,” offered Mark, desperate for stimulation. John flicked matchbox open and struck a wooden stick. A brilliant light flickered behind Mark’s back.
There was a creaking and Mark jumped, nearly out of his skin. He turned on tail.
“Where are you going?” asked Jacques, stopping.
“I’m going to go help out,” Mark worked out the words slowly. It was a lie. He was frightened. He dashed back to the clearing.
“What is that?” he asked. The intoxicating fumes had returned. He could see their misty presence lifting above the fire. They caught in his sinuses and caused him to choke, cough against them.
“I know,” Jerryl said, voice thick with phlegm.
“You know what that smells like?” White asked, starting a game.
“Rotting flesh!” suggested Mark immediately.
“Blood and marrow,” added Jerryl.
“Reminds me of vultures,” commented John with a surprising amount of thought.
“I don’t get it,” chirped Jacques, and then added “Reminds me of Cap’n.”
Forgetting their foul moods together they chuckled. Oar scoffed loudly for them to pipe down, and they fell into a sulking mood again.
After a few minutes Jacques returned. He held something putrid-smelling and slimy in his hands. It was coated with oily liquid and duckweed was scattered across its length. It was long and reptilian. White hic-coughed and opened her pack, pulling out a package of packed provisions. Oar stole a piece of dried meat from White’s pack, also refusing the snake. Kyle and John made polite gestures and Mark made his own. Jerryl and Jeremy both accepted a portion. Jacques looked hurt, surprisingly hurt, and Mark sunk, and also said he wanted a piece.
Jacques cooked it, adding spices from his provision bag. He poured oil along its length on the skin and waited a few minutes for the oil to sink in before heaping the meat onto three separate platters. He cut some off the belly for himself.
Mark took a bite. The meat was raw-tasting and stringy. He strained the juices out through his teeth and identified one as the oil. It tasted terrible, like burning oil that tasted like the fumes around. Mark swallowed it all in one gulp, not eager for more but because he wanted to get it out of his body.
Then the poison kicked in. First Mark’s eyesight dulled flat, so that the world was more clear when Mark squinted so deeply it looked like his eyes were closed. Next, he felt a rush, a tingling sensation of bubbling and sickening pain, rise up from his stomach. He pulled his legs to his chest and weakly overbalanced, twitching compulsively. His chest then hollowed, as he was unable to take in the air in large doses-he choked before getting used to this, still twitching. He took in too much air and was sent into a coughing fit that dulled his feeling to numbness. Eyes streaming, body twitching, feeling sick, Mark yelled out. He heard a bang within his own head as the temporary deafness began; however, before he was completely blind in his ears, Mark heard Jacques terrible laugh-the trust worthy packratic lookout found on a dingy street back home in Oxford… His laughter rang cold through the night-like air, more terrible than the fumes. It was filled with happiness, vengeance, and worst of all, triumph. Mark was suddenly plunged in a dead world of darkness where no sounds were made; nothing felt like anything, there were no smells or tastes.
“I didn’t even feel poisoned,” shaken, Jeremy nodded in agreement to his brother’s comment.
“He poisoned just the skin,” Kyle said quickly. It was so thick, nothing could get through. Mark ate right of the top.”
Oar stayed in a shocked upright position, staring at the horizon. It was flashing with dawn light.
“Is he…?” White asked, shifting a layer of her dress to bend down. She quickly placed a hand on Mark’s neck, where his prime artery was located, hoping, praying that she would feel a throbbing pulse. She waited a whole tense second, felt nothing, and withdrew her hand sadly. She got to her feet.
It would have been easier for the crew had Oar burst into tears-his shocked silence left the crew dumbfounded for a moment until White threw her arms around him. Engulfed by arms, their owners whispering how sorry, so sorry they were, Mark’s father didn’t even make a move, it was as if he were paralyzed.
Mark awoke in the reddish hued sand, face down. He inhaled it foolishly and coughed. He felt terribly helpless, like newborn child-defenseless in a new, alien world. Choking, he rolled onto his back. The blurry world slowly came into focus as Mark cleared his eyes with a weary hand. He whispered out a call, directed to anybody? Anybody! He waited four seconds before the tears came with ragged calls, savagely coming out in rasps from his dry and half-dead throat.
He fell asleep in exhaust from the tears, and dreamt of his mother. She was climbing up a tree and living with the monkeys. Her eyes flashed every time he tried to get near her, and he called out her name, Mom, Mom, but she stared at him with those strange eyes as if she didn’t remember at all who he was.
A jolt of pain in the spine shook Mark awake and he coughed twice before being able to sit up, run a hand through sand-filled hair, and clear his eyes. His throat was dry, and he was unable to produce saliva. Dehydration, he remembered from the voyage to Hideaway. This is dehydration.
He stood, took a step, and collapsed to hands and knees. He scanned the clearing and it was brought back to memory, the last one being himself putting a piece of reptile into his mouth. And Jacques, laughing, laughing.
He rolled onto his side and coughed, then lifted to his hands, curled his knees under him. He looked around the clearing and saw two places where the trees were chopped away…One was to the east, where the sun was now rising, and one down south. The western path would lead to the place where Jacques found the snake. Maybe there would be water? There were duckweed all over the snake’s body…Mark took his pack that was left forgotten under his blanket, stuffed his blanket brusquely into it and shouldered the provision sack. He took a swig from his water bottle but discovered to his dismay it was empty.
Mark ate a bit-a piece of dried beef and a bit of seaweed from the dinner they had made on their first night at Hideaway. He stood again, walked for whole seconds, and then began to stumble. He grabbed onto a tree and put a finger to his neck. He felt a throb of his pulse…He waited almost a second before feeling the second. No wonder, Mark thought as if he had made a wonderful discovery, I feel so weak…My pulse has slowed!
He began to put pride in his steps. He discovered the pathway to the bog with the snake was only a fifteen-minute walk. He gratefully collapsed onto the ground and groped towards the water. He filled his canteen firstly, then drank his fill. The water was coated with a thin layer of green. Mark withdrew his lips, leaned back, and smiled. He drew his sword from its sheath and waited for something edible to come along. He faced the water and his smell returned. He nearly fainted because of the horrible smells-they came back to memory quickly and Mark felt a wave of sickness. He pulled his blanket from his pack and wrapped it around his face. Stale, used air was better than that.
Something thudded to the ground nearby and began to agitate towards Mark. He flipped around and was immediately covered with three brilliant coils, thick, shiny, squeezing…Instinctively, Mark flailed his arms and tried to pry the coils off. The squeezing was so tight Mark was sure one of his ribs had cracked. His numbing hand twitched and he remembered: The SWORD! It took a moment for Mark to position himself. He was choking against the snake and still trying to push it off. He grabbed the sword into his other hand. A life-saving clang echoed through the clearing, rattling Mark’s bones. Two halves of a constrictor snake fell, bleeding, to the ground. Mark massaged his chest, coughing and laughing at the same time. He collapsed onto the ground, took a swig from his now-full canteen, and sprayed it over his stained shirt. The blood ran off slowly, leaving a red-hued trail over Mark’s clothes.
The 16-year old then checked his rations-he had a packet of various dried meats, a container of vegetables, some leftover fish and seaweed. He cut some branches off a jungle tree with his sword, and started a fire. After eating some of the snake (it was tender, juicy and not all bad) he smoked the rest of the raw meat. He shaved off the skin and packed most of it with the dried meat. He took the rest and lay it out by the water where the sun shone the hottest, drying out the meat.
Mark was surprised that he had been able to react so calmly. Now nighttime, the comforting heat of a roaring fire flowing like blood through is veins, Mark felt scared and alone. Why had Oar, his father, abandoned him in the clearing? Given him up for dead, probably, that’s what he did for Mother.
But then he set out to find her.
Mark’s head whirred with thoughts and accusations. If mother hadn’t been a historian, she wouldn’t have set off, she wouldn’t have disappeared, Merian wouldn’t have died, Oar wouldn’t have left Mark in this (Mark was now throwing the head of the snake into the fire with such for the fire crackled and seemingly growled) stupid mess.
So it was mother’s fault.
It always had been. Mother had been weak and foolhardy. She was always cowering behind Oar when a situation, good or bad, arose. Once, when Mark had been celebrating a young birthday, five or six, she hadn’t showed up at all. She was working late, and Mark was heartbroken. He hadn’t thanked anybody for gifts and made quite a few enemies. He hadn’t had many friends to begin with, but the few he had had thus disappeared.
Mom’s fault.
Mark spat on the ground. He wasn’t a thinker. He wasn’t even a doer. He lay back, tense and glowering. He had a strong body, but he never used it to his advantage. He slipped away into his dream world, thinking-now you have a use for it.
Jacques pack was still slung over his shoulder. He had disappeared west from the clearing where he had killed Mark-after tranquilizing Oar, White, Kyle and John with a well placed hand on temple, shoulder and neck, he had stolen three packs, as well as Oar’s coat, heavy with coins and sodden memories.
Jacques had predicted the lightning storm a three-day before it happened, had drugged Merian into wanting to stay out in the rain and being incapable to enter a hut, and loosened the crow’s nest so it would crush her. His timing was precise, proudly he thought. He was skilled with potions and timing. And while Oar and the crew trekked farther away from their campsite towards where Marisa supposedly was, Jacques stole off towards their mighty ship. He would return to Oxford, inform everybody that all left of Captain Oar was his jacket, sell the boat, marry a beautiful lady, and retire into Oar’s manor. Before he did, of course, he would have to forge Oar’s will, leaving everything out to his beloved Lookout.
The plan was fool proof. Jacques pressed on, but was stopped dead by a wall of intertwining vines, thickly covered with red. Jacques looked around quickly, and realized in shock he had lost his pathway and now was lost. He didn’t have a sword and was forced to pull the vines apart with nimble hands. They were stained with red from the branches, and Jacques wiped them on his clothes.
“Hey!” shouted a deep, rumbling voice. A chorus of stampeding footsteps and a ragged war cry followed it.
Jacques didn’t know what had hit him. A group of perhaps twenty people, painted with blood and oily leaves, dressed in the most minimal amount of clothing possible, had crowded around him. He shouted out as a male and his right hand woman, tanned from the sun with a wave of bloodstained blonde hair and freckles, grabbed his shoulders. His last word, uttered as a rasped cry for help, was “OAR!”
Then the spear was plunged deep into the small of his back. He toppled over and the tribe closed in on him, ready to finally devour.
Mark let out a snort and woke up. He heard the cry, but didn’t know from where it came. He unsheathed his sword, but the cry had already died away. A flying fox above, with a wingspan taller than Mark himself, let out a mournful high-pitched call and reared up in midair. The bat bared its fangs but continued away, and Mark shuddered. He had shared his cabin on the boat with a little brown bat, but had released it to sea nearly a month ago. He had liked that bat, but these had six-foot wingspans. They didn’t look vicious, but, then again, neither had Jacques. Mark stood, and walked a circle around the clearing. The water rippled as he threw a piece of dried snake meat in, and pocketed the rest in a pouch on his pant leg.
Mark was bored beyond anything in his recognition. He tossed a stone into the water, and was surprised when he heard a clang off metal near the bottom. He ran over to the side of the water and threw another stone. This time there was a second clang followed by a bubbling of water. A miniature geyser shot from the surface of the deep source of water, emptying I half way, mostly over Mark. He had triggered something that had done that, Mark knew. He thrust a third rock and there was a submerged groan. The rest of the water poured out of the top exposing a deep ditch, completely man-made, with a slender hole at its base.
Mark yelled, and fell back. His eyes opened wide at his discovery. Without even thinking, he leapt strait down the ditch-any way it went would lead him somewhere-to his father, to his ship, to his mother, or to Merian.
<
Part Two-Cannibals
W
hite lay back on a decayed tree stump, rubbing sleep from her eyes. After a large creature with terrible teeth had torn her older dress, Kyle had sewed a new one from the hyde of a jaguar they had caught. It was light, with canvas layers underneath, quite comfy and elegant. She had asked shyly for a large pouch to be sewed, a canvas pouch may it be noted, on the front of her skirt. She kept leaves and roots that she found that may create good flavouring for meat in it, as well as the map she was drawing. It was crude, but it gave an idea of how their pathway was. She marked off where they had camped and had written where Mark had been left behind.
She sighed and finished a loop that created their current campsite. For three hours they had traveled north, and then for over five they had gone east, east, east to a beach. The churning of water reminded White that she was trapped.
Oar gave a half snort half snore. His eyes flickered and White fed the fire with a log. Kyle was crouched, back turned, on the other side, chewing on a stale piece of bread.
White wiped invisible dust off her hair and looked out to sea. Why had she come on this voyage? She was a skilled mapmaker, perhaps. More athletic than most women. But the rest of the crew was composed of people who had spent their entire lives as marines.
She remembered. She was better at noticing stuff. At sea, she had seen a mist-covered island, perfect as a docking bay, swirling on the horizon so during a storm the crew had cover. She had noticed the rocks, deeply submerged under the sea’s churning waves, and had commanded Oar to steer clear or the boat would become wrecked. But since they had arrived, she hadn’t noticed anything important. She was still staring at the horizon. The clouds dragged over the sky-in the distance, it was raining. Haze rose from the ocean around a distant, barely noticeable silhouette. White nearly leapt to her feet-she had finally discovered something, and it was another island.
Mark rubbed his head, sat up, and smelt used air. The darkness around made him remember that he had fallen down that strange hole. He lifted himself to his feet, nicked the rock ceiling with his skull, and ducked lower. His pupils grew slowly larger and he was able to notice that the low cavern was chiseled crudely out of shale. The ground was coated with stones and water of course. In the distance to the east there was darkness, but in the other direction there was a dead end, a sheer steep wall covered with stones.
Mark whistled and his voice came back to him several times, fading on every wall it hit. Just a whisper the sixth time, the whistle was lost forever in all eternity. Mark chuckled to himself, got onto his hands and knees. He was proud of himself, and his hands. Though raw, red and shiny the palms had toughened so that he could easily crawl across the ground without feeling too much pain.
He crawled strait into a wall, groped around, turned northward. He was going in a zigzagged position for at least twenty minutes when he felt his knees drag on something metal and raised on the cavern floor. The ceiling gave a shudder and a mechanical groan. Mark retreated instinctively to the wall away from the trip wire as a rush of water erupted from the ceiling. Dirt flew over the walls, brushing them off. Mark screamed and grabbed onto a plant root, thick and scaled, legs being thrown out against will over the current. Mark groped to get a tighter hold on the thing. The water however seemed to be moving faster, faster and he slipped right off. Carried with the current Mark reached out, met only water, flailed his arms but couldn’t push forward. His head harshly hit the wall and he fell, face first in the disappearing water, unconscious.
In his dream Merian was skipping over the deck of the boat. Jacques in the crow’s nest had a large hacksaw and was sawing the bottom of the crow’s nest away. He hovered in air magically as the wood fell towards Merian…He laughed his terrible laugh and Mark’s nostrils where filled with water as he shouted out for Merian to MOVE!
Mark sputtered; choked, wondered how many times he’d lost conciseness during this trip. He decided against counting and crawled towards the place from where the water had come. He discovered it was a huge lake, twenty feet deep at least with a rough staircase chiseled in the wall. Mark looked back, and realized that the underground passage had brought him almost clear across the island-at the top of the stairs he climbed a hill and could see the ship he had left behind three nights ago sitting like a giant beast on the water. Mark looked onto the ground and saw as if for the first time how charred it was. The grass was peaking out of a flame-smothered ground in a few places, in small portions. Fell to the ground, looked at the clouds. Oar and the crew were south of this place, he knew, because the jungle wasn’t hacked away anywhere.
Mark rolled down the hill and stopped himself before rolling down the lake. He laughed out loud, staring at the staircase. Cannibals made it; he joked with himself, to get to their prey faster. But where’d the metal come from, then? His smile faded away. The technology of the tunnel was newly discovered-four, three years ago when it was perfected. Was their a source bringing metal to somebody on this island? Or did the habitants discover how to make these traps by themselves?
He made a fire. It crackled low and burnt out, as joyless as Mark now was. He fed it solemnly, baking the smoked snake on a round stone.
The wind whistled through the trees, Marrrrrrrrrrk, it mumbled, curving around tree branches and making them eerily move as if waving to Mark, telling him to come, MMMARRRRRRRK!
Mark clutched his pack to his stomach, felt the bulk inside press against his chest, and he looked in all directions before lying down on his back.
Kyle sniffed the air. He was colourblind but he didn’t want to admit it-he would be shunned and pushed away, more than he already was. What was his job? Deck sweep? He didn’t remember. The black and white world was less scary at night, he thought, when only the wildcats and bats were awake. In daytime he could feel a strange, almost mystical presence, one that disturbed him and made adrenaline rush through his body, telling him to fly, not to stick around and fight.
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