Second Heart: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  “As long as it doesn’t cost me my children, I don’t care.”

  * * *

  Dog knew it was a bad idea. The sort of crazy idea Zebra would have. Zebra’s ideas had always been Dog’s insanity gauge. Whenever something seemed foolish, he would stop and ask himself if it was the sort of thing Zebra would suggest. If it was, he made a point of coming up with a better plan.

  Today, hunger was overcoming common sense, perhaps doubly so, as it was Maria he had asked to come with him and not Vaca or Nab, who at least pretended to have a shred of sensibility.

  In truth, that was why he had gone to Maria. He was one of the biggest, second only to Xícara, and at least five times as vicious. He lacked the patience for hunting, but there were precious few things he lacked the strength for, and right now Dog thought perhaps strength might prove more useful than the ability to think things through.

  “The dogs will bark,” Maria said, as if this had only just occurred to him.

  Dog shook his head, picking his way carefully over the rocky ground. They had brought no light, and the moon was making only periodic appearances. Once, when it had passed behind a particularly thick cloud, they had been forced to sit and wait, lest they break their legs falling in a hole.

  “Whiskey chased them all away. They’re sticking to the beaches and mangroves, eating anything that washes up.”

  “They’ll have someone keeping watch, then.”

  “Will they? We don’t.”

  “We don’t have anything to steal.”

  “Nothing for the Varekai to steal. I can think of a few things I have a lioness might want.” He grabbed his balls to illustrate, but realized it was too dark for Maria to see him.

  “If I see that goddamn lioness, I’m going to do my best to spit him over a fire and find out what he tastes like,” Maria muttered.

  “He’s thinking the same thing, Maria. If we can’t find anything to eat, he must be starving.”

  The thought made him feel vulnerable, blind and so far from the rest of the tribe. The tawny feline could be a few yards away from them, couched and ready to leap. They would not know until it was too late.

  He was relieved when they spotted the light from the Varekai cave, faint and deeply orange. They both fell silent, picking their way around to the far side of the entrance where it was less sheltered and the floor would not be packed with sleeping bodies.

  Tango was seated near the opening, propped up against the stone as if she had been keeping watch, but she was now very much asleep. The rest of the tribe were wrapped in their furs and were nothing more than shapes, unrecognizable in the dim light.

  Curled up beside the chicken cages were two puppies—the last of the pack—and behind them, in the natural cramped pantry created by the stone, was all the food.

  Dog motioned for Maria to be silent and began to tiptoe across the sandy floor of the cave. The fires were all low, little more than red embers, but it was much warmer than it had been outside. Dog might not have been in love with any of the Varekai, but he had liked it here. He had liked their stories and companionship.

  He understood why Charlie had thrown them out, but he was still bitter about it. Bitter enough that it overwhelmed any guilt he might have felt about what he was going to do.

  Still, there was part of him that wished he could just lie down and join them, comfortable and with the promise of breakfast.

  Stepping carefully over a sleeping Varekai, Dog slipped into their larder. Silently, he hefted a basket of dried eel and offered it to Maria. He took it gingerly, making his way back to the cave entrance and stashing it by the door before coming back.

  Dog offered him two sides of ham next, eyes scanning the sleeping forms for any sign of movement. Maria leaned over, trying to juggle the awkward lump of meat without dropping it on the sleeping Varekai between them.

  He shifted, almost dropped it, and then there was a high-pitched squeal of pain. They both let go of the side of ham and there was a second, much more muffled squawk. All around them the Varekai were sitting up and grabbing weapons.

  The puppy Maria had stepped on bolted across the cave whimpering, tail between its legs. For a moment, Dog was too terrified to move—then he jumped over the form struggling with the ham, crashed into Maria and started to drag him toward the cave opening.

  They could still grab the basket of eels. They could flee out into the night, and the Varekai would not be able to find them in the darkness.

  A hard shaft of wood caught Dog in the back of the knees, and he stumbled, bouncing off Maria’s hip and colliding with the floor.

  He let out a loud “ooph” as he hit, but it was largely drowned out by the outraged cries of the Varekai as they realized what was happening.

  He heard Maria try to run, but there was a scuffle near the door. He glanced up as someone landed on his shoulders, pinning him to the stone floor, and saw the flash of red hair as Whiskey lashed out, pinning Maria to the wall.

  “Stealing?” Charlie spat in Dog’s ear.

  “It wasn’t so long ago you were avid kidnappers,” he snarled back, and she cuffed him on the back of the head.

  Whiskey and Maria were still grappling, but she seemed unwilling to run him through with her spear, so he was able to fight her off and flee into the darkness. Dog sighed. He’d fled without the basket of eels, which was overturned in the cave mouth.

  “We took you in for as long as we could,” Charlie hissed. “And this is how you repay us?”

  “Did you really think we would just...die? Without even trying?” Dog demanded.

  She fell silent, and her weight shifted off his back. He rolled into a sitting position and saw the regret in her eyes and an unwillingness to believe what he was saying.

  “There is food,” she said.

  “If you’ve got the energy to look for it. If you’re lucid enough to hunt. My brothers are too exhausted and hungry for that now,” Dog said, all the bitterness coming back into his voice.

  “It’s not the choice I wanted to make,” Charlie said. “It was the one I had to make. To keep my sisters alive.”

  “Is it the choice Sugar would have made?” he retorted.

  “If he didn’t, he would have been in the wrong.” Charlie sounded like she believed it.

  “So what are you going to do with me now?” He scanned the faces around him, most lit stark orange and black by the coals. He spotted Tare, who looked stricken.

  “Take you back. Tell Sugar it’s the last time you’ll be coming back unharmed.”

  Dog wanted to say something else, something that would hurt her feelings, maybe something that would make her feel so bad she left them with some food. He was too tired and too hungry to think straight.

  If Maria had just watched where he was stepping...

  He let the Varekai frog-march him out of the cave, pausing long enough for them to light torches. He was slightly relieved he wasn’t going to be forced to feel his way home in the dark.

  Still, it felt like a very long trek.

  Somehow, despite the darkness, Maria made it back to the Elikai before them, so they were greeted by more burning torches and a cluster of tired, hungry brothers.

  Sugar looked particularly bad, his dark honey skin looking almost bone-pale in the orange light.

  “I hope you’ve come to give him back,” Sugar called to Charlie as they approached.

  “Are you sure you want him?” Whiskey retorted. “Another mouth?”

  “We don’t abandon our own,” Sugar snapped back, and Dog saw Charlie flinch.

  “You can have him,” Charlie said. “But I’m warning you, Sugar. This can’t happen again. We can’t survive this kind of treachery. If I catch someone else stealing, I’ll...” She fell silent a moment, thinking about it. “I’ll have to cut off a finger. A
finger for every theft, do you understand?”

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Sugar’s voice was like ice. “I don’t understand how you can possibly mean it.”

  She gave a helpless shrug, sagging for a moment, as if she was unable to support her own weight. Then she gave Dog a hard shove forward.

  “Go. I don’t want to see you again.”

  “Well,” he said, “you probably won’t. Not still breathing, anyway.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tango had been waiting for two days—claiming she was hunting, sneaking out too early for the others to see her, then hiding in the rocks, waiting for the Elikai to venture close. Several Elikai had already come near, but she had stayed hidden, letting them pass her by.

  She told herself she just did not trust those Elikai—Maria and Nab, Fox and later Dog and Vaca—only because she did not want to closely scrutinize her own motives. What she really wanted was one particular Elikai. The one who had thrown himself into danger to protect her from the megalania matriarch. The one with kelp-green eyes and broad, tanned shoulders that always seemed calm, regardless of the crisis.

  She knew Xícara would be out hunting unless he was wounded, and she was beginning to worry about him. Was he hunting on the southwest side of the mountain? Or was he too sick to leave the Elikai caves?

  She was giving serious consideration to sneaking to the Elikai caves in the morning to see if he left and which way he went, but she was spared the risk when, finally, she spotted his tanned, mud-streaked back as he made his way down through the debris at the foot of the mountain.

  She scrambled from her hiding place, throwing the backpack that Sugar had made Charlie across her shoulder. Charlie had yet to notice it was missing, but Tango doubted she would get to keep borrowing it for long.

  Xícara vanished between sodden, shredded greenery, and Tango had a sudden, illogical fear he was going to disappear completely and she would not be able to find him again. She dashed into the trees too quickly and almost slashed her own neck on his outthrust spear.

  They both startled.

  “Tango.” He lowered the weapon, peering up the hillside behind her. “What are you running from? I thought you were a boar.”

  She flushed. It was unlike her to be careless and loud. “I wasn’t running, I...slipped,” she lied.

  “All the way down the hill?” He looked concerned. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I...” She held out the backpack. “I brought this for you.”

  He took it carefully, opening it as if it might be full of angry snakes. His eyes widened, and he glanced at her, eyebrows inching their way toward his hairline. “Food?”

  He reached in and held up a ham hock so well smoked it was as black as stone. There was salted fish in there too, and wide strips of dried mango.

  Tango looked at his feet, feeling faintly ashamed of herself. When she risked another glance, Xícara was studying her with something akin to curiosity.

  “Please don’t tell anyone,” she said softly.

  “I’m going to have a hard time telling Sugar I caught this. The rare triple-smoked ham, which spends its days hanging quietly in dry caves, leaving only at night to feed on yams.”

  “Maybe you could just lie about who you got it from?”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “If anyone finds out, I won’t be able to bring you more.”

  “More...” He shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand why you’re doing this.”

  Tango’s cheeks grew warm. “I don’t want you to starve.”

  “Collective me, or singular me?”

  She didn’t answer, and after a moment, he began carefully transferring the food from Charlie’s backpack to the wicker basket on his hip.

  “When the animals come back, I will return this,” he said. “Tenfold. My brothers might not know which Varekai you are, but they will owe you a debt. They’ll all remember it.”

  She wished she was brave enough to touch him, to do anything more than stand there awkwardly. “I can’t come every day.”

  “When then?”

  “Maybe every second day. Will you meet me here?”

  “Yes. I’ll be here.”

  “But,” she said firmly, “only you. If I see someone else, I’ll hide.”

  “Only me,” he agreed. “Right here.”

  She looked back up the hillside, worried that Whiskey or Mike would be out hunting and see them. She wasn’t entirely sure what her sisters would do if she was caught stealing. The consequences would be dire. They may chase her out of the cave altogether, though the thought of being alone was not as bad as the thought of their disappointment. She never wanted to betray her sisters.

  “I have to go,” she said quickly, taking the empty backpack off him.

  He seemed a little confused. “Right now?”

  “Yes. I will see you the day after tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you...” He hesitated. “Tango, I—”

  She cut him off with a shake of her head, putting the backpack on and turning away from him. She refused to look back as she made her way up the mountain.

  * * *

  Dog was helping Nab scrape every trace of meat and fat off the back of a fresh goatskin, dumping the trimmings into a clay pot half filled with water and strips of palm heart. Meager foods; the rest of the carcass was already cleaned and no trace of meat had gone to waste. It was all finely diced and spread between clay pots. The Elikai were stretching the protein as far as they could with water and the cores of palm trees salvaged from the gutted forest. Even the bones had been cracked and boiled to leach out the marrow.

  The goat had been small, though, almost newborn, and it was already dead when they found it. One of its legs had been badly broken, probably during the storm, and eventually it had collapsed, perhaps because it could not keep up with its mother, perhaps because she had died too.

  In good times, it would have been large enough to feed four, perhaps five Elikai in one meal. Now it was being shared between eighteen.

  The palm heart they packed in the pots with the meat was tasteless, fibrous and not very nutritious. However, with so many trees ripped up or bent in half, it was the only readily available food source and it filled empty bellies better than water.

  If the hunters didn’t start making kills, they were going to have to venture into the risky, churning waters, or out into the mangroves, looking for fish and crocodiles.

  Dog spotted Xícara first and brightened when he saw his brother was carrying something heavy.

  “Hey!” He waved, and Xícara waved back. “Did you find something?”

  Xícara grinned. “Something found me.”

  He joined the cluster of Elikai gathered around the fire pits and began emptying his basket. Dog’s eyes widened as he recognized dried eels and smoked ham hocks stacking up beside brittle plates of dried mango.

  “Did you steal this?” Sugar asked, eyes wide with shock.

  “No, Sugar. I promise it was given to me freely.”

  “By who... By Charlie?” Dog could hear the hope in Sugar’s voice.

  Xícara frowned. “No, but... I can’t say who. He made me promise. He doesn’t want his sisters finding out.”

  Fox scoffed. “I’m not surprised. If Whiskey got hold of them...”

  Xícara nodded. “So please don’t ask me. He—I mean she, has promised to bring me more. But if this gets back to the Varekai, it will be over. I don’t even know how long she can keep it up without them realizing, but...”

  “But it may be enough to save lives,” Sugar said.

  Dog nodded in absent agreement. It was all well and good telling the hunters to bring back food, but hungry and weak, their ability to track and run down prey was severely limited.
Even if Dog had cornered a boar right now, he might not have had the strength or energy to kill it. It would just as likely kill him. Even if he did bring down large prey, how would he muster the energy to bring it home?

  This gift of preserved goods might give the hunters the energy they needed to feed the tribe and get back on their feet.

  “We owe them. Whoever this mystery Varekai is.” Dog wondered if he was the only one making an educated guess.

  Sugar sorted the food, storing most of it and handing out packets of dried fruit and eel to the hunters. Dog stood to receive his, counting the slices of pineapple and smiling a little when he saw the palm-sized wedge of ham.

  “I’ll go now and eat on the move,” he told Sugar. “I’ve been dizzy, but this should keep me going.”

  “Be careful.” Sugar patted him on the shoulder.

  Dog gathered his spear and a basket. On a whim, he took a clay cup and filled it with some of the precious few beeswax candles.

  He headed southwest. Usually the Elikai avoided that side of the island, but now he saw recent tracks of his brothers as he walked. As he rounded a sheer face of rocks, he could see the ocean, stretching away from the archipelago in an endless flat nothing. He thought the view was what kept the Elikai and Varekai away. On the north side of the islands, there was always the mainland, green and lush. It was dangerous there, but they knew the mainland had food and resources, shelter and freshwater.

  To the south was the open sea. There was nothing for Kai there. Below the waves, perhaps, there would be sharks and crocodiles, fish, corals and kelp. A whole world the Kai only rarely glimpsed from their canoes or blurrily while they dived. Looking across its surface, the ocean was a vast, barren nothing. A terrifying, undulating wasteland.

  It scared him to see how far the world went. To see it curving away in the far distance. Maybe if you paddled all the way to the horizon, there was simply more ocean? It made him feel faint trying to imagine it.

  He kept his eyes on the rocks and brush around him, trying to look up at the horizon as little as possible. He looked for fresh scat, but the near constant rain was probably washing it away as quickly as it was produced.