Outlaw

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, assuming 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 God and cursing him. For my loss, my predicament, the undoing of all that I had held sacred. Hadn’t the very God 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 shields etched with intricate patterns. They were spaced 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 associate 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 amusement. 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 grassless yard.

Long wooden pathways built several feet off the forest floor ran between the homes. This, I assumed, was to keep the mud out of the houses. The large spaces 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 passed 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 grass 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 amusement 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 assumed 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 passed 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 shields, 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, shields, 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.

Two women sat near him, outwardly unimpressed but unable to hide the curiosity in their eyes. Another knelt in front of the prince with her back to me. I saw the prince’s eyes watching me and I felt chilled by his stare. The quiet in the room stretched out. He’d commanded something but no one was moving.

“You must come, miss.”

My heart jumped at the sound of Lela’s voice as she turned her head. She was the one kneeling.

I hurried forward, pulled by the comforting sound of her voice. All the men and women here were well appointed with golden bands and all of the women wore dyed skirts. The feathers they used were more colorful and the bones on their necklaces whiter than what the villagers wore. But Lela, the young girl from Indonesia, was dressed simply in a grass skirt without any appointments. I could only guess it spoke of her status. As she’d said, she too was wam.

Reaching her side, I didn’t know what to do, so I knelt.

Wilam mumbled something, which was returned by soft chuckling from the men behind me. I kept my gaze directed at the woven floor mats.

“You must stand before this prince,” Lela said quietly.

“Stand?”

“Yes, miss.”

I pushed myself up in front of the platform, which I now saw was made of planks covered in the hides of small foxes. Wilam sat on the large stump, which was topped by the same hides.

He spoke again and Lela quickly stood.

“You must look at this lord,” she whispered, looking up.

I lifted my eyes. He was darker than I remembered. Perhaps his color was accentuated by the bright bands on his biceps, forearms, and thighs. The men in the village below were all fit and healthy enough, but the warriors here, led by their prince, looked supremely healthy. But if Wilam was royalty among these savages, he likely had better food.

He leaned forward and rested an elbow on his right knee, studying me with that look of mild amusement. Then he shifted his eyes off of me and lowered them to Lela, who stood still under his long, firm gaze. Long enough to make me wonder whether she was here only to translate.

He demanded something of her. She answered.

Another question. Another answer.

They went back and forth for several minutes, he demanding answers, she humbly offering them, until my curiosity could bear it no longer. My fate was at stake, and I was lost in the dark.

“What?” I asked during a pause.

Lela kept her eyes on the prince. But then he nodded and she looked up at me.

“This prince say I must now die with you.”

I was aghast. “Why would you have to die?”

“He say it was I who set you free, miss.”

“Was it?”

“It is good to take another slave if they escape. This too will give this prince power.”

“But did you free me?”

She didn’t respond, and I knew she had.

“And what about the man? Michael.”

“This Impirum no want that man. He not good for work or for fight.”

So Lela had told the warriors from the Impirum that I had broken free and they’d retrieved me, which was evidently allowed under the tribal code.

“Why would Impirum men want me?” I asked.

Her eyes shifted. “To make this babies, miss.”

The prince cut in, and they spoke for another minute before Lela turned back to me.

“This prince say I make you free and Kirutu will want blood. But I say you escape and I tell to his fighting man to get you. I say he now has new wam with power to make this babies, and this people will see Kirutu not as strong as this prince.”

About the making babies I wasn’t sure in the least, but she seemed to have talked some sense into the man and for that I was relieved.

“So then it’s good,” I said.

“No, miss. He not believe me. This prince say I lie and now I too must die.”

Contemptuous. That’s what my father sometimes called me as I was growing up. I knew even as heat burned my face that I wasn’t in a position to assert myself, but good sense did not redirect me as I turned to the prince.

“It’s not her fault,” I snapped.

His brow arched. I at least had the satisfaction of gaining his full attention. And I wasn’t done.

“She’s just trying to save me and give you a good thing. Because of her you look strong, you should be thanking her.”

“Koneh.”

But I wasn’t ready to koneh, which I assumed meant “shut up.”

“You want babies? I can give you babies.”

Lela translated without waiting to be told.

The prince studied me for a few seconds, then began to chuckle. Lela smiled and returned a tentative laugh as I watched. Seeing Wilam so close, I saw that it was muscle, not fat, that covered the sharp edges of his bones. Kirutu was tall and as wiry as a vine tree, but Wilam was as tall and perhaps the stronger man.

He said something and Lela’s smile faded.

“What did he say?”

“He say that I am very clever and you are wild cassowary.”

“Is that good?”

“Yes, miss. But it does not change his mind. He say because I have tricked him, and you have tried to tempt him, he will give us to Kirutu when this man come.”

“Then he is an idiot,” I said.

She repeated the word slowly, with an odd pronunciation. “Idi-out?”

“He’s a fool.”

Her round eyes questioned me. “I will not say this. I tell him what this Kirutu cannot hold, Wilam can master. This people will see he is very strong chief.”

“And?”

“He say he cannot master cassowary who will peck out his eyes when he is sleeping.”

“So he will just turn us over?”

“I think he is afraid of you, miss,” she whispered.

I wanted to ask if Wilam knew of Michael’s condition, but the situation didn’t warrant the question.

The prince demanded something of her and she answered quickly.

Wilam stood up and spat to one side. Amusement was gone from his face. He issued a verdict that sounded ugly, spat once more, then strode from the house.

“What did he say?”

Lela stared up at me and for the first time I saw real fear in her eyes. “I tell him you must be so happy to make many nice babies with him. But he will not make this babies with you. Now this Kirutu will come with many fighting man and he will take us.”