Outlaw. Part 8

"If they've condemned you, then yes. Although you could try."

"How?"

"You could get into a canoe and hope for the best. Maybe an Asmat party finds you and helps you to the coast. Or they might just take your head."

"That's it? That's your solution?"

"Or you could make an effort to change the council's mind. Why did they condemn you? You're too ugly?"

The events of the trial spun through my mind. "Apparently. But Kirutu, the prince from one of the tribes-"

"The Warik. He's the one who condemned you?"

"No. He made a bid for me. Two clamsh.e.l.ls."

Michael looked astonished. "Kirutu did? Then you're saved!"

"No. I think I offended him."

"You what?"

"He wanted me to bear him a child."

"But of course! Do you have any idea how valuable children are in this valley? Can you bear children?"

"I have a..."

I caught myself and turned away, doing my best to suppress the horror of my loss. But I could not stem the emotion easily and this wasn't lost on Michael.

"It's OK, my dear," he said in a soft voice that sounded as if it might belong to an angel. "We all have our crosses to bear."

The last comment sparked anger in me, but I knew he meant well.

"Better not to resist it," he said.

This proved too much for me.

"How can you be so insensitive?" I snapped. "My son drowned out there!"

"I feel your loss. And I also know that you've arrived at exactly at the right place at exactly the right time. As have I. Resisting that truth will only cause you to suffer."

"I already am suffering!"

"Then you will suffer more."

He was suddenly sounding far too lucid and I wanted none of his stoic philosophy.

"This isn't the right place at any time!" I said, shoving my hand at the jungle. "I'm nothing but an animal here! One of their wam. That may be fine for you, a man who made the choice to investigate these people, but I don't belong here."

"And yet you are here. We both are."

I dismissed his childish view outright but held my tongue. How cruel that my only hope for freedom was in the hands of a man who couldn't value my right to it. For a brief moment I think I despised him.

"Well, then," he finally said. "If you can't see the world through their eyes, you will die." His tone had turned matter-of-fact.

"Then why did you agree to help me?" I demanded.

"I am helping you. And at great risk, I might add."

"By telling me that my only hope is to accept my fate here? They're going to kill me tomorrow!"

"By helping you understand what we have here. Someone freed you, am I correct? You're in a world bound by laws and beliefs that haven't changed for centuries. There's conflict brewing among the tribes that you could use to your advantage. A power struggle could blow this place wide open, and, like it or not, you have some of that power."

"Not if I'm dead."

"Are you? Dead, that is? No. You can worry about being dead when you're dead," he said. "Until then, use the power you have."

"What power? Having a child?"

I meant it as a preposterous suggestion. Michael did not.

"Naturally." He stood and walked a few steps to the right, then back again. "But you can't see it that way, can you? No. And frankly, I'm afraid it might be too late. Changing the council's mind would be impossible. Maybe a month ago, but things are too hot between Wilam and Kirutu. The chief is practically on his deathbed, and one of the princes will take power when he dies. Kirutu has something up his sleeve. He's a very powerful man."

"Now you're throwing in the towel, after setting me straight?"

"You don't seem to want to be set straight," he said.

"I want to live!"

"Then live!" he stormed. "Bring life!" The volume of his voice stood me back. Then softer: "Bring life, not death, my dear."

Bring life. His conviction was so great I almost believed him.

The memory of Wilam staring at me with his look of amus.e.m.e.nt filled my mind.

"It wasn't Kirutu who condemned me," I said. "I think the other prince, Wilam, was behind it."

"The prince of the Impirum," Michael said. "It makes perfect sense that Wilam wouldn't want his greatest rival, Kirutu, to come into possession of another slave who could bear him children. It's quite a status symbol."

"Having a pregnant slave?"

"Fathering children. The women in the Tulim valley are plagued with infertility, something that is either hereditary or perhaps results from their diet, but without testing there's no way to know. Suffice it to say only one out of three women ever becomes pregnant. Fertile women are highly valued, as you can imagine. I would say it's a wam's only leverage."

The whole thing bothered me to my deepest core. It went against my convictions as much as my desire.

I set my elbows on my knees and lowered my head into my hands.

"You are no longer bound by the laws of a foreign culture, my dear. Bring life into this valley. Love them. After all, I'm sure G.o.d does."

"I don't even know who G.o.d is anymore."

He sat back down on the boulder and stared at the jungle ahead of us. "Then perhaps you will learn."

What happened next is still rather foggy to me. My mind was split between my loss of Stephen and the last words spoken by Michael. A soft crack sounded in my right ear and I jerked up, startled. Michael slumped over and toppled off the rock.

A bag was slipped over my head from behind; a muzzle over my mouth and nose smothered my cries. In mere moments they jerked my arms back and bound them. Powerful hands plucked me from the rock and threw me over a shoulder. And then they were running.

But not a sound. Not from Michael, who I a.s.sumed was either unconscious or dead. And not from the men who had found us on the knoll.

I hadn't been recovered, I thought. If they'd only meant to recover me, they would hardly be running or keeping so silent. Why would they see any need for stealth?

My abductors ran on bare feet that slapped lightly on the muddy earth, perhaps a dozen of them, a small army of men. I had been cut free in my pit. My clothes had been returned to me.

Maybe Michael had been right. Perhaps I was meant to live.

I clung to the thought as their feet pounded through the screaming jungle.

Chapter Nine.

The warriors who had collected me carried me on their backs for an hour at a steady pace before slowing, ducking into a house, and setting me gently on a seat. Since being taken from the sea, I had been treated as so much cargo, being traded back and forth between houses and pits and trials, and once again I was bound up and dumped into a holding place.

But the differences in my new environment were not lost on me. The jungle had grown quieter as we'd traveled, if only slightly. I thought it might be because there were fewer insects farther from the swamps, a.s.suming we were headed north, toward the mountains that Michael had pointed out. In addition, the room in which they'd dumped me had a crackling fire and a wooden floor. I could make out very soft whispering from my left, but after a while this abated.

I was alive. I hoped Michael was as well. His words whispered through my mind, urging me to live. To live because I was still alive.

I spent most of that night, my fourth in captivity, in a fitful doze with pain in my joints due to my awkward position. When I finally crawled from sleep the sound of children playing outside was the first to reach me.

The faint giggles of three or four children overrunning each other with exuberant discussion were incongruous with the dark savagery that had characterized the past few days.

My mind filled with Stephen and my eyes with tears. I was surprised at the severity of my pain as I lay there thinking of my poor child lost at sea. There is no picture so perfect as a sleeping baby after a bottle of warm milk, and I had Stephen's image indelibly etched into my memory. His tiny pouting lips, his long lashes, his soft cheeks and miniature nose. That fine dark hair, floating with the slightest breeze.

The sound of giggling children outside brought it all back, and I began to cry softly. Gone was the hope of life Michael had instilled in me the night before. I found myself both desperate for G.o.d and cursing him. For my loss, my predicament, the undoing of all that I had held sacred. Hadn't the very G.o.d I'd given my life to, in heart and deed, turned his back on me?

A sympathetic female voice called my thoughts back to the hut. "Aye, at eeniki andi, oh. Aye, aye."

The floor creaked as she walked in. She tsked and repeated her expression, which I took as one of consolation.

The bag was lifted off my head and I saw that I was in a round hut perhaps twenty feet across. Like the one in which I'd first met Kirutu, this too had a bark floor, timber walls bound together with vines, a central fire, and a blackened ceiling. But instead of skulls, there hung from the wall carved wooden masks and tall painted s.h.i.+elds etched with intricate patterns. They were s.p.a.ced evenly, one every few feet all the way around.

Three women had entered the hut. The one who'd muttered her sympathy knelt beside me and repeated herself. Then she wiped the tears from my face, helped me sit up, and quickly untied my bonds, now grumbling on and on about something. Perhaps the way I had been treated, though that might have been wishful thinking on my part.

The other two women stood by the fire, watching with fascination. Like some of the women I'd met earlier, they were young and covered only by woven skirts and woven armbands. Their hair was trimmed short and a yellow band perhaps one inch wide hugged each of their necks.

Their skin was black, not merely chocolate brown, and their teeth were white like their eyes. If they were older than twenty, I was judging them wrong. They held themselves upright with that same unabashed stance that I'd come to a.s.sociate with the warriors who'd taken me. But they seemed nonthreatening. Even amused.

"Amok. Amok." The woman behind me helped me to my feet. She stepped back and shook her head, tsking as if to say, No, no, this just will not do. She reached out and pulled at my blouse, asking me something. She plucked at my capris and the other two women giggled.

The sight of those women laughing, eyes sparkling as they studied me, struck me as altogether absurd, and suddenly, without warning, I saw some humor in it.

"Koneh pok!"

At the order the women immediately swallowed their amus.e.m.e.nt. A warrior stood at the door, scowling. He motioned at me, barked another order, and ducked back out. The woman who'd untied me shrugged and offered me a sheepish smile.

They guided me out of the hut into the morning sunlight, and it was there that I first laid eyes on a Tulim village. The sight made me stop. I say village, but it was really more of a small town with hundreds of homes that spread out far beyond my line of sight. The whole community was built under the jungle canopy far above us, which allowed streams of light past its leaves which dissipated the tendrils of smoke rising from the roofs. Ahead and to my right lay a large meadow, but there were no structures in the clearing that I could see.

Most of the thatched dwellings were square, not round like the hut I'd been held in overnight, and they were elevated off the forest floor several feet. The ground around each home was built up and flat, forming a kind of gra.s.sless yard.

Long wooden pathways built several feet off the forest floor ran between the homes. This, I a.s.sumed, was to keep the mud out of the houses. The large s.p.a.ces between the boardwalks were cultivated. Gardens. I saw that sunlight fell on the leafy vegetables in the gardens but not on the adjacent homes, and I realized that the branches above had been pruned to allow light in only where it was desired.

"Naouk."

I was nudged from behind and moved forward, still taken by the sight.

So then, this was how the natives lived. It was all muddy and dirty on one level, without the benefit of concrete and green lawns, but surprisingly clean and orderly at the same time. Thatched palm leaves covered each dwelling, and painted carvings were affixed to the outer walls near most doorways, which were covered by rough planks fitted into slots, rather than hinged doors.

We pa.s.sed several naked children who were squatting just outside a hut in a patch of bright sunlight. Between them sat a black beetle the size of my thumb with a thin string cinched around its body. These were the children I'd heard laughing, now staring up at me with big round eyes.

As I watched, the beetle took flight, circled them at the end of its tether, then settled on one of their heads. The young boy holding the other end of the string did not break his stare. Snot ran from his nose but he seemed not to be bothered by such trivialities.

Everywhere I looked my gaze was returned with curious fixed stares. The people were outfitted with woven bands and sometimes body paint, some with feathers in their hair or tucked into the armbands. The women wore either gra.s.s or woven skirts that left their thighs bare all the way up to a rolled cord around their waists. All the men were naked.

The children with the beetle pattered along the wooden path behind us, whispering and arguing. They were soon joined by a few others, then a dozen, all hurrying along, jostling for a better view of me. When I looked at them they fell silent and grinned from ear to ear.

But I was too entrenched in my own predicament to appreciate the children's obvious wonder.

The walkway rose and fell with occasional steps that followed the change in the forest floor's elevation, but coming to a steep rock cliff, it rose up a flight of stairs made from seventy or eighty steps. We left the children behind and I made it halfway up before stopping to rest my burning lungs and aching legs. Once again I was the subject of amus.e.m.e.nt for the women who escorted me. I guessed they couldn't comprehend how anyone could tire with such little effort.

The moment we stepped onto the upper landing, I thought that we had left one plane and entered another, this one built for royalty.

The manicured cleanliness of this large section of forest reminded me of a botanical garden I'd once visited. The canopy was thinner here, allowing more light to reach the ground than in the village below. A fence of perhaps fifty meters per side surrounded a large round structure in the midst of seven or eight smaller ones. Later I would learn that this was their Kabalan-the lords' royal courts. I a.s.sumed the central structure to be their palace, although the Tulim's version of a palace, which they called the Muhanim, was like none I had seen or imagined.

We pa.s.sed under a tall archway to which were affixed twenty or thirty human skulls. My escort motioned me through but withdrew as I stepped between two tall men who studied me without expression. It took my eyes only a moment to adjust to the dim light, most of it from a large fire at the center, which revealed a floor covered by thatched mats and walls lined with s.h.i.+elds, spears, and bark paintings. Tall round timbers, at least a dozen of them, rose from the floor to beams that supported a pitched roof.

Warriors stood or squatted on either side of the fire, watching me as if interrupted by an unremarkable distraction. I don't know how I had such little effect on the Tulim men in comparison to the women's and children's interest, but not once had they seemed either interested or put off by me.

"Amok."

My eyes darted to the end of the room. There, on a platform holding a large stump surrounded by drums, s.h.i.+elds, and hides, sat the man who'd spoken. I recognized him immediately.

This was the prince named Wilam. So I was among the Impirum tribe at the north end of the valley.