Second Heart: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  Time was running out for the Elikai. Soon they would be too unwell to recover. Maybe some of them already were. Her sisters had told her illness was sweeping through their camp.

  Maybe Sugar would die. It would be all her fault, and she didn’t know how she could live with herself knowing that. She hadn’t bled yet, but then many of the Varekai had missed their last cycle. Not because they were pregnant, but because they weren’t getting enough to eat. If she had sacrificed Sugar’s life for nothing, hers wouldn’t be worth living. But that was why she was here, clambering around the crown of the mountain. She needed something to save all of them.

  There were few flat places up this high, and as Charlie forged a path into the tangle of greenery, she was forced to navigate steep gullies and channels cut into the stone and vegetation by rain.

  Occasionally, overhead, rats would look down at her with beady eyes, then scramble away across the branches. Panicked birds took to wing, darting away through the cover of the canopy. Both were too nimble for her to catch, but she came across the vast golden webs of orb weavers and harvested them from their cradles. They were not aggressive and tried only to scramble away from her, so she pinned their thoraxes between her thumb and forefinger, pulling off their legs and eating their bloated, thumb-sized abdomens packed with protein and silk.

  It was good food, and for a while she forgot why she was really there, intent on harvesting the webs and gorging herself.

  She was reaching for another spider when the ground under her gave way suddenly; a cluster of rotting branches and leaves that she had mistaken for solid ground cracked and sent her plummeting down a muddy chute. She flailed wildly, grasping at roots, trying to plant her feet and slow her decent. Her efforts only sent her tumbling, and she rolled, side over side, then head over feet, coated liberally now in thick, red mud.

  She landed hard, the breath knocked out of her, eyebrow stinging where it had connected with a rock. She was on her back, and she opened her eyes, bracing herself to sit.

  Someone was looking down at her. Huge golden eyes set in a tawny face, twice as large as her own. Tiny round ears, whiskers and flaring black nostrils.

  Charlie had never seen a lioness up close before. She had seen jaguars at a distance, fleeting shapes that vanished into the brush. And she had seen their footprints, and once a kill, disemboweled and ripped in half, like a mango torn open with bare hands.

  The creature before her smelled terrible, reeking of feline piss so strongly that it was only raw adrenaline that stopped Charlie from gagging.

  It licked its lips with a tongue as long as Charlie’s forearm, and a whole new wave of rank odor rolled over her, rotting and rancid. Its teeth, only a foot away, seemed too big to be real.

  For a long moment, they simply stared at one another, perhaps equally surprised. Charlie expected an attack. She expected those teeth to crunch down on her face, shattering her skull. She braced herself for a moment of blinding pain, but was relieved by the notion that it would not last long. A creature of this size would kill her quickly. In a few minutes, she would know nothing—no hunger, no stinging from the bash over her eye, no sorrow or guilt for what she had done to Sugar and the Elikai.

  But that moment never came.

  Slowly, Charlie wriggled backward. She tried to imagine she was a snail’s rippling foot, sliding through the mud as if it was slime. She kept her eyes focused on the lioness’s chin, not meeting her gaze, not wanting to challenge her.

  She moved hair by hair, so it felt as if she were not truly moving at all. It took nearly forty minutes for her to reach the slope, and in that time the lioness did not move. At the bottom of the rise Charlie realized it was too steep for her to continue, particularly feet first, so she sat up.

  She glanced at the lioness and saw it licking its paws, paws that could wrap all the way around her head.

  Too scared to run, certain the animal would chase her, Charlie stayed where she was. Mosquitoes began to gather, buzzing around her eyes and cheeks, as the rest of her was too caked in mud for them to feed. She made no move to swat them.

  A small charm of finches darted into the clearing, pipping loudly to one another. They fed on bushes around the lioness and Charlie, alighting on their heads and pecking through their hair. The lioness tossed her head, but they were not afraid.

  The serenity was shattered by the harsh cawing of a raven, and the lioness pinned her ears, looking up with a low growl that almost caused Charlie’s bowels to release.

  The lioness’s tail was flicking with irritability, and the little finches scattered, vanishing through the brush. The raven cawed again, and the lioness yawned, showing every one of her teeth.

  “I...” Charlie breathed.

  The lioness looked at her, eyes gleaming.

  “I am of the Varekai,” she said softly. “We gave birth to the world, and... I can give you back the moon.”

  The lioness licked her paws, then looked to Charlie again.

  She took a deep breath. “My people are starving. There is no food at the foot of the mountain. You are fat and sleek. Share your food with me, and I will give you back what the raven stole.”

  An hour rolled on. The lioness said nothing, and Charlie still didn’t dare move. The mosquitoes fed on them both, and the mountain began to go dark as the sun set to the west. Through the canopy, the sky was brilliant bloodred. More rain was coming.

  In one swift movement, the lioness rose to her feet. She turned her back on Charlie and vanished down a thin muddy path.

  On hands and knees, Charlie slithered after her.

  There was a naked hole in the mountain, a shelf of stone covered in vines where no trees could grow. Boiling out of it was a thick black cloud. Hundreds of small black bodies, thousands, hundreds of thousands; they streamed through a tiny gap, bursting into the sky and spiraling up into the night.

  Bats. An endless seething storm of bats.

  The lioness sat and watched, occasionally batting a tiny, wiggling body out of the air. Often broken, the little creatures struggled feebly on the ground, unable to get airborne with broken wings. If they came too close, the lioness swallowed them whole.

  The sky was almost black when the stream of little black bodies ended, and the lioness stepped forward, wriggling into the gap and vanishing from view. Slowly, Charlie ventured after her, feeling her way down into the cave.

  It smelled. Perhaps worse than the lioness herself. The ceiling was low, and Charlie had to crawl on her belly through a foot-thick layer of bat shit until the tunnel opened up.

  She could barely see, and in the darkness the lioness brushed against her, bumping her against the wall. Where there should have been hard stone was a sheet of soft and squirming shapes. She bit her tongue to stop from shrieking and ran her hands tentatively over the moving mass.

  Baby bats. The walls were alive with them. They fell on her head from above, struggling through the muck on the floor to clamber back up the walls. The cave, judging by the echoes, went deep and far. A near endless larder of fresh, accessible meat.

  She could hear the lioness chewing, licking the infant creatures off the wall in big mouthfuls, crunching their tiny bones and swallowing them down.

  There was enough food here for all of them: the lioness, the Elikai, the Varekai. They were all saved.

  “Thank you,” she said, voice just a whisper. “I will be back. With the moon. I promise.”

  She heard a guttural growl from deeper in the cave and quickly slithered back out the way she had come.

  Chapter Ten

  “Sugar!” Charlie had not been able to come back down off the mountain during the darkness and had slept in a tree, buffeted by wind and rain. At dawn, she had made her way to the clearing and found her basket. It needed some mending, but she had found her way back to the cave and filled it with live, wr
iggling bats.

  They did not all survive the trip down. It was rough going, and they were delicate, but she delivered half of them to her sisters before taking Whiskey and Tango and making her way around the mountain to the Elikai caves.

  When Sugar and his brothers appeared, Charlie almost didn’t recognize him. The weight he’d lost, the dark hollows around his eyes—he was like a new creature. A dying creature. She held the basket of baby bats aloft.

  “Here. I have food. It’s for you, and there is plenty more. Enough to see all of us through the rest of the season... It comes at a cost, though.”

  He gave her a bitter look, hobbling, almost unable to walk. “With you, everything comes at a cost.”

  His words stung, but she hurried to him anyway. She wanted him to eat, suddenly afraid he was going to die right in front of her if he didn’t.

  “Please. I had to make a trade for this. I need Dog’s solar-powered torch.”

  “A...trade?” He stared at her like she’d gone mad. “Who is there to trade with but us?”

  “A...lioness. It’s a long story. The torch for the bats and the location of the rest.”

  Sugar looked to Dog, who had emerged from the caves with the others. They exchanged looks, and Dog nodded.

  “Yes, I’ll give it to you.”

  He went back in, and Charlie handed the basket of bats to Xícara. The Elikai were gathering around like starved dogs, ready to eat the wriggling creatures whole and alive like the lioness had.

  “I’m sorry,” she told Sugar. “I’m sorry I had to make the choice I did. If I could have fed both our people, I would have. That’s why I’m here now. I’ve barely slept. I’ve come down from the mountain, straight to you.”

  He shook his head slowly, not looking at her. “You don’t get it.”

  Her throat was tight and painful. “What don’t I get?”

  “It’s not supposed to be both our people, Charlie. It’s just ‘our people.’ Singular. We’re supposed to be the Kai. Your brothers should have been as important as your sisters.”

  She put her hand on her belly, wanting to tell him, but not yet one hundred percent sure it was true. How could any of them be, until they had their babies in their arms? It was still a theory. Still unproven.

  Maybe she was just too starved to bleed, maybe she had never been pregnant at all, or maybe she had lost them, as the bitches sometimes did when food was too scarce.

  Sugar turned away from her and limped slowly back into a cave, and Charlie just stood, aching as if her chest was being crushed in the coils of a giant python.

  Zebra sidled up to her. “Thank you.”

  “What?”

  “Thank you for coming. Thank you for not leaving us to die. Your sisters cared for me after the cave-in, you fed us for as long as you could and now you’ve saved us from starving. Thank you. Sugar may be mad, but I am grateful.”

  “Me too.” Dog offered her the solar-powered torch. “We’re not going to forget what you did for us.”

  Charlie nodded sadly, relieved they did not all hate her. What Sugar had said was true. Even if she had pulled through for them in the end, her actions had divided the tribes again. She had destroyed Sugar’s daydreams of unity. One tribe was once again two.

  Eden—Before the World was Born

  Beside Romeo, Charlie crumbled to the floor, a red, feathered dart embedded just below her collarbone. Her eyes were glazed and rolled back in her head, her breathing faint. Romeo stared at her a moment, then her attention snapped back to the masked attackers. They all had black water pistols pointed at her, but she knew they didn’t contain water now.

  “Jesus Christ...” One of them was staring at Teacher Steve through the open door, or what was left of her. “Is the air contaminated? Oh god...”

  “Lockdown, lockdown,” another said into her wrist.

  “Put your hands up.” Two of them were pointing dart pistols at Romeo, taking aim, preparing to shoot her down like they had Charlie.

  Romeo put her hands up, holding them out in front of her like they were wet. She backed up a step, bare feet sliding slowly across the floor until her back touched the countertop. The open container with its vials of mystery fluid sat behind her.

  A voice came through the radio on one of the women’s chests. “What’s the situation?”

  “We have two subjects in observation room B. One has been sedated, the other is bruised and covered in blood we believe belongs to Dr. Steve Hawthorn. Dr. Hawthorn is dead and may have been killed by a contaminant in testing room B. It is unclear if correct decontamination procedures have been followed.”

  “East Wing is now in lockdown, proceeded with—”

  With lightning speed, Romeo spun, grabbing the box of vials and dropping under the countertop with it. There was a sudden hail of darts, but they bounced harmlessly off the wall.

  “...the fuck?”

  “What did it have?”

  “Sedate her!”

  They were talking over one another. Romeo scrambled along under the countertop, grabbing a handful of the vials and tossing them under their feet. Some shattered on impact, others when their heavy boots crushed the glass. The contents dribbled out like they were just colored water, but the effects were near instantaneous.

  The few patches of bare skin on the armored strangers were turning red and began to blister with alarming speed. There were screams, shouts of alarm and pain. One of them ran headfirst into a wall, one was yelling orders, demanding obedience until one of the others accidentally fired a dart into her belly, sending her slumping to the floor like Charlie. Most ran heedlessly into the corridors, trying to flee and leaving slick streaks of blood and melting skin in their wake.

  Romeo was choking, blood spluttering out of her nose and mouth. Her skin was fine. She swallowed mouthfuls of blood and scrambled to her feet, tucking the box under her arm and jogging into the corridor, looking for a stretcher.

  She couldn’t leave Charlie behind, not after what Whiskey had done.

  There were no stretchers, or even wheelchairs, but Romeo did find a black office chair. She pulled it back down the corridor, carefully rolling bodies to the side so she could wheel it past.

  She used a clipboard to sweep the glass and colored fluids out of the doorway, then carefully dragged Charlie out, hauling her into the seat and setting off toward Eden with her sister still slumped and unconscious.

  Everywhere sirens were screaming and lights were flashing. Twice teachers ran past her in the corridor wearing bulky orange suits. They didn’t slow or even seem to notice Romeo and Charlie, so she let them pass, moving at a steady jog until she reached the door to Eden.

  The office chair was not going to travel well over the grass and mud, so Romeo dragged Charlie into Eden, pulled her under the screening branches of a large mulberry tree and left her there.

  She ran down the path, past the animal pens, through the orchard and down the fields to the Varekai village. Her sisters were all gathered there, armed with shovels and pitchforks. Alpha had them rallied and was positioning them in a defensive perimeter.

  “Alpha!” Romeo skidded to a stop in front of her. “They did something to Charlie. I need help.”

  Alpha looked at her, expression slack with horror. “Your throat... Where did all that blood come from? Who did this? Someone get our sister a shirt.”

  Around them the other Varekai expressed equal shock and outrage.

  “Teacher Steve, but she’s dead. Charlie killed her with these.”

  Romeo held the little crate of vials aloft. Some had shattered in her flight across the dome. Alpha sniffed, then wiped a streak of blood from the corner of her eye.

  “What are they?”

  “Poison. To the teachers.”

  Alpha looked around grimly at the Varekai. “
We don’t need the teachers. They killed November. They take our blood, tell us when to eat and sleep and work. They offer us nothing in return. I say we take Eden. Show them we don’t answer to them anymore.”

  There was a ragged cheer and many bloody noses beginning to drip.

  “X-Ray, Foxtrot, go with Romeo and get Charlie. Everyone else, take the doors. Break through into the corridors, herd the teachers into one place.”

  Romeo nodded and handed her the box, sprinting back the way she had come with X-Ray and Foxtrot on her heels. They reached the mulberry in time to see three teachers spilling out of the doors into the dome.

  They had masks on, but already they were wheezing, blood trickling from their ears. Two continued to flee, following the line of the wall down through the trees and past the pig shed. The third simply collapsed by the door, hand extended after her comrades, as if silently begging them to come back.

  “Are they dying?” X-Ray asked.

  Romeo nodded.

  “No one did anything to them, though.”

  “I think it’s in the air,” Romeo said. “It’s spreading everywhere, through all the vents, right?”

  The other Varekai shrugged, and they walked past the gasping teacher and into the trees to retrieve Charlie. She was still unconscious, but she had been clawing at the ground; her fingers were now muddy and there were grooves in the soil.

  “Is she going to die too?” X-ray asked.

  Romeo shrugged.

  “Not Charlie,” Foxtrot said, as if that was impossible. “Not Charlie.”

  They lifted her by her legs and chest and arms and struggled back down the path.

  “We need to take her to her house and guard her until she wakes up,” X-Ray said.

  The other two grunted in agreement, and they made their way through the fields to the houses, pushing open the door to Charlie’s little house and laying her down inside.