Second Heart: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  As Tango began to drum, the Elikai made themselves scarce at the back of the cave, watching on with less fear than last time. In the cave, the beating throbbed, buzzing in Charlie’s ears and echoing back from somewhere deeper in the mountain.

  There was a sad little cry of despair rising over the drumming, and Charlie quickly looked around. It was India, with blood on her fingertips. Another moon passed, and Tare’s seed still had not taken. Charlie was sad for her. She and Tare had been trying their hardest. Sometimes several times a day. It wasn’t really fair, when India had been the one to work it all out in the first place.

  Whiskey, smug and pain-free, took up a drum and began to wail, her keening cry much more musical than her usual grunts of pain. The other Varekai joined in, and Charlie took up a drum of her own, joining the rhythm, letting her body move in time with her eyes closed. Still she could see the flames through her eyelids and sensed the movement of her sisters around her.

  Without the paste, Charlie felt disconnected from the ritual. She could still sense the spirits, moving among them, dancing like smoke and flames, but they were unreal and ethereal. More of an idea than a reality.

  Sometimes her eyes would flicker open and she would catch glimpses: shadows that took form and swirled around the dancers, painting with the blood that streaked their thighs. But they were only half things, like tricks of the light. They came and went before Charlie could really focus on them. With the mushroom paste, they would have been tangible, as real as the other Varekai.

  “You’re not bleeding.”

  “What?” Charlie opened her eyes to find Tango beside her. She could smell the blood on her sister without seeing it. It reminded her of a hunt, and her stomach growled.

  “You’re not bleeding,” Tango repeated.

  Charlie looked down and saw no red stain. She touched her shell, and her fingers came away dry. “It’s still early.”

  “It’s almost dawn,” Tango corrected.

  “We haven’t had a lot of food.”

  Tango stared at her, and slowly Charlie started to consider the possibilities. It was something she had hoped for, absently, in the back of her mind, but she had not lied to Sugar when she said it was him she wanted. She had expected to bleed. She had taken it as a given that she would not be pregnant.

  “I don’t...” Charlie trailed off, not knowing what to say.

  “I won’t say anything,” Tango promised. “Maybe you are late. Maybe it will start tomorrow.”

  “Has anyone else...?”

  “Bravo, but she hasn’t been near the Elikai. And Whiskey, of course. Everyone has been trying to put on weight since India announced her theory. Damn lucky, too. We’ll need every spare ounce of fat to make it through the summer.”

  Charlie’s heart fluttered. Of all the Varekai she had the most fat, and she seemed predisposed to larger breasts and fuller hips. She should be bleeding. Maybe she was pregnant. If she kept feeding a tribe of Elikai, there would not be enough to go around. The little lives she was growing inside her might be snuffed out. Starved to death before they even had a chance to grow.

  And Whiskey’s too.

  Two litters lost. Charlie put her hands on her belly. The horror rose in her so fast she went numb. It was no longer a choice between her sisters and Sugar. It was her babies or Sugar.

  “Find out if Romeo bled,” she told Tango. Something inside her was crying out, but she squashed it, letting the cold, empty, reptile part of her make all the choices.

  Tango frowned a moment, then nodded, rising to her feet and padding away. Charlie followed her passage across the room, to where William was sitting on a rocky outcropping. There was a brief exchange, and Tango made her way back through the dancing, singing cacophony of her sisters to crouch before Charlie again.

  “Yes. She’s bleeding.”

  Charlie nodded slowly. “Pass word to Mike, Yankee, Sierra and X-Ray. Tomorrow morning the Elikai are leaving. Romeo too.”

  “Tare?”

  “He can stay.”

  Tango frowned. “You don’t want me to tell Whiskey? Or India?”

  “No.”

  Usually they were the first sisters Charlie went to for advice and help, but they were both too invested in their Elikai. India, in particular, seemed to consider the Elikai as much her tribe as the Varekai. Charlie couldn’t risk either of them telling Sugar or the others what would happen in the morning. The Elikai were still larger and stronger than the Varekai, and if they decided to overpower them and take the food, it would be an ugly, bloody fight. She didn’t want to think that Sugar would do something like that.

  She thought of the way he’d kissed her forehead, how his hands had trembled when he touched her for the first time. He trusted her now. She’d never been able to tell him he shouldn’t, that the cruel necessity of survival brought out the worst in everyone. Her, most of all.

  Chapter Six

  It was a long night of drumming, dancing and wailing, and Sugar woke bleary-eyed sometime after dawn. He rarely woke this late, and the blinding morning sun disorientated him. It took him much too long to realize there were spears pointed at him.

  “What’s this?” he asked, more confused than concerned.

  Beside him, Fox’s teeth were bared and Maria’s fists were clenched, eyes narrow with rage. All of the Elikai were surrounded, and their weapons were gone. There were some Varekai who looked equally confused, watching their sisters with quiet alarm, but most of the women were armed.

  “I’m sorry about this.” Charlie looked sorry, unwilling to look him in the eye. However she, too, was armed. Her spear tip was pointing at the floor, but there was no doubt in his mind she would be willing to raise it if someone challenged her.

  “Your weapons are all outside,” she continued. “We’re not taking anything of yours. It’s all there. You just...can’t stay here anymore.”

  “Charlie...” he started, still struggling to understand what was happening. Around this time yesterday they had been alone together, and he’d slid inside her and she’d kissed him until her body arched in pleasure. He still recalled the taste of her on his lips, the smell of her skin against his. It had been that way every chance they could sneak away together. Surely she couldn’t be sending him away now?

  “They’re kicking us out,” Fox said coldly, perhaps in response to the baffled look on Sugar’s face.

  “Until tonight?” Sugar tried not to sound desperate.

  “Until we starve,” Maria growled.

  He looked up at Charlie. “You don’t have to do that.”

  She looked away. “There isn’t enough food. You know there isn’t enough food. If the Varekai are to have any chance of surviving, I have to do this. You know I don’t want to. I’ve sheltered you for as long as I can.”

  India, who was not armed and who looked just as confused as Sugar felt, stepped forward. “Charlie, we need them. We are one people. We can’t just abandon them.”

  It was Whiskey who raised her spear, motioning for India to take a seat again. The vicious huntress said nothing, but it was clear whose side she was on. Sugar glanced at Fox, who looked almost serene now. Accepting of their fate.

  “Charlie.” Sugar said her name again, but she still would not look at him.

  “No. Go. All of you. Pick up your pelts and gather your weapons from outside and go back to your own caves. Tare can stay, but he is the only one.”

  “I know you’re scared, but we can find a way,” Sugar said. “Together.”

  She refused to react, but Whiskey took a step forward, threatening him with the spear tip.

  Slowly, Sugar rose to his feet and motioned for his brothers to follow. They picked their way through the cave, past the Varekai’s spears and out into the blinding morning sun. Their weapons were there, as Charlie had promised, nea
tly laid out in piles.

  Tare trotted after them and stood in their midst, looking lost.

  “You should stay,” Fox told him.

  He looked stunned. “I’m still an Elikai.”

  “You might be the only Elikai who doesn’t starve,” Zebra muttered. He was limping badly, and his bruises were still fading. His ribs were brown with scabs, even a month after the cave-in.

  “Maybe I can convince them to let you stay,” Tare said to Zebra.

  Fox shook his head. “They’ll only want someone who can hunt.”

  Sugar wondered briefly if he had an opinion on the matter, but found he didn’t. He was still struggling to believe what was happening, that she had abandoned him.

  He had been imagining a world where the two tribes lived together and that after the storm they would rebuild one grand village. The Varekai would all be pregnant, and the Elikai would hunt for them and protect them. He had hoped they would soon be overrun with offspring and that life on the archipelago would once again be bountiful. Now he could feel that all crumbling, turning to ash in his mind and being swept away by the wind.

  He gathered his weapons and the few tools he called his own and started back along the goat track that would take the Elikai to their own caves. His brothers fell in behind him, and when Sugar glanced back he saw Tare standing there, watching them go with a forlorn look on his face.

  As Sugar watched, India slipped up beside Tare, touching his arm and speaking softly. Tare sighed and let the witchdoctor lead him back into the cave.

  * * *

  The dog pack had been going out with Whiskey and Griffon every day. Since the Elikai had joined the Varekai, the two packs had come together, and after a few fights and scraps they had settled in well.

  The Elikai dogs were half the weight of Whiskey’s, not because they’d had less food, but simply because they were built differently—lean and short, nothing like her solid, broad-chested pig dogs. And while her dogs were all tan and brindle, the entire Elikai pack was onyx black, some with white patches on their chests or white paws.

  She had thought, at first, that they would be useless, but their extraordinary noses were able to track down rotting meat from a mile away. It was their keen senses that kept the pack alive, as the dogs were willing to eat all manner of things the Elikai couldn’t stomach.

  Whiskey had hoped this would be enough, but as the carcasses started to vanish, eaten away by maggots and rot, feeding the pack became more and more difficult.

  It was not a surprise, but it still broke her heart.

  It was one of her own dogs that turned on Tango, lunging and snarling at her when she caught it trying to get into the food stores. Charlie had told her it was time. They had no food for the animals, and hunger would only make them more vicious.

  Whiskey did not know if the pack would come back. Some of the pups were too young to run with the others, and Whiskey had left them with India. It was a horrible thing, a sad thing, but it was better the Varekai kill them than the pack cannibalize them. The Varekai would not waste the meat. They couldn’t afford to.

  Charlie had agreed they would keep one bitch puppy and one dog puppy alive, just in case the pack could not be tamed again. Whiskey was not sure how long the little animals would last when her sisters got truly hungry.

  The dogs milled around her, digging for spoiled meat. She could feel their eyes on her, see the prick of their ears as they waited for her leadership. To them she was not a Varekai, she was another dog. Their alpha dog. She could snarl at them in their own tongue, read their body language, speak back to them in kind.

  The idea that she might lose that, that they might look at her and react as if she were a stranger, hurt. The pack had always been her second tribe.

  She took a deep breath, then charged at the lead bitch, swatting at her and driving her away. The bitch snarled, confused and defensive, then darted out of reach. Whiskey chased her a few more yards until she was a dozen feet from the pack, bristling and sullen.

  The rest of the pack was confused and watching. Whiskey ran at the next one, brandishing her spear and yelling. She drove two more of them toward the lead bitch, scattering others as she waved and yelled and threatened.

  They slunk around her, snarling miserably and uncertain. She hit one with the butt of her spear, drove them toward the trees. Whenever they tried to return to her, she forced them further away.

  It took nearly fifteen minutes of chasing and threatening, but finally they gave up on her. The lead bitch loped away, vanishing into the trees, and the rest of the pack followed. Some looked back, waiting for Whiskey to follow them, but she held her ground, wiping the tears out of her eyes.

  She walked back to the cave alone, but could not bring herself to go inside.

  * * *

  Fox scrambled across the debris-strewn beach, avoiding rusty tangles of razor wire, jagged toothlike spears of fiberglass, broken bottles, branches and wide shelves of coral dying and helpless on the sand.

  The latest tidal surge had not been as big as the two previous ones, and the rain was still lashing down in sheets, but the Elikai were getting desperate. Stranded sea life that ventured too close to shore was now a blessing.

  The sea turtle was tangled in a nylon rope, brilliant orange, marred by clusters of barnacles. It had been at sea for a long time, and judging by her wounds, she had been tangled in it for a few weeks. Long enough that she was weak and the storm had tossed her onto the beach. Weak or not, she was dragging herself through the debris toward the ocean. Somehow, she seemed to be moving faster than Fox, who was hopping and leaping, half scrambling on hands and feet when he needed to, trying to avoid a serious wound.

  The turtle hit the ocean before he did and bashed into the surf, trying to dive deeper and escape the roaring brown waves. The white crest of the surf rolled her over, and Fox charged in after her. His hands slipped uselessly over her shell, but then he felt the orange rope and pulled. Barnacles cut into his palm, and he yelped in pain as the turtle struggled, almost yanking free. Teeth gritted, he braced himself and pulled, the water slicing off her as she was dragged back up onto the sand.

  Her shell was a good three feet long, and even with her injuries, she was powerful enough to knock Fox over. He pressed her into the ground, one knee on her shell, and reached under her to cut her throat. She continued to flail, knocking him onto his side in the debris, but her movements were spastic now—unthinking and blind. Black blood gushed onto the sand, and a mud-colored wave swept it away.

  Wincing, Fox rolled to his feet and turned the body over. He cut off the twist of nylon rope, tossing it aside. The wounds underneath were raw and deep, the flesh starting to rot away so it looked like pockets of it had been scooped out. It was all white and dead from the salt water. She was thin and red; angry-looking tumors had started to grow around her neck. She would not have lived much longer. A few weeks, at the most.

  Despite her poor condition, it was one of the best kills he’d made since they had left the Varekai cave. Everything else had been mean scraps. Two big crows too wet to fly. An albatross with a broken wing and an odd little metal ring around its leg with numbers. A little crocodile, no bigger than a goanna.

  Things were so dire, Zebra had taken to going out at night and bringing home baskets of frogs, but they tasted revolting no matter how they tried to prepare them.

  Fox tied rope, his own rope, onto the turtle’s flippers and began dragging her up the beach. It was a long and arduous hike, made worse by his hunger. Fatigue made him clumsy, and, more often than he should, he stumbled or stepped on sharp and brittle things. It was hard to focus, and he wished he was full and sleeping somewhere dry. Tonight his brothers would strip every trace of flesh off the carcass, and they would all eat; hopefully this meat would be coupled with some other harvest. Root vegetables, mushrooms or even fish. Fox wo
uld have been happy to see just about anything in the cooking pot, but he didn’t like his chances.

  That was still a long way off, though. Before then, he had to meet someone.

  Whiskey was sitting in the alcove under the stony overhang, damp from the rain and weaving a basket. Fox paused a moment in the remains of the trees, watching her work. Nimble fingers and a regal profile, too perfect to be real sometimes. It was so unlike her to do something so domestic, the scene was somewhat of a novelty. He didn’t delay too long. The rain was getting heavier.

  He joined her, settling against the stone, the turtle on its back in the rain.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  “Better than you.”

  He glanced at her belly. “Are they?”

  “I feel sick a lot. Nauseous. But no bleeding. No reason to think they’re not healthy.”

  On her lean frame the swelling on her abdomen was getting obvious. It looked, perhaps, as if she had just eaten a large meal, though it had been more than six weeks since any of them had eaten well.

  Just seeing it made him ache with a deeply instinctual need. Not lust—it was hard to think about sex when you were starving—but something close. It was a want that resonated in his very core, a raw instinct, screaming at him from some primal part of his brain. His offspring were growing in there. Lives that he had helped create. He would do anything, anything at all, to protect them and keep them safe.

  Without another word, he leaned over and sliced off all four fins of the turtle. He put them in Whiskey’s almost finished basket.

  “Is that enough?” His hollow belly begged her to say yes, but if she’d asked for it, he’d have given her the whole kill.

  She looked concerned. “Maybe it would be better if you kept it.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I want you to eat it. All of it. We had an agreement, and I am upholding my end.”

  She nodded. “I will, then.”

  “You have to keep it a secret, though.”

  “I will. I know what this could cost you if Sugar knew.”