by Maya Wood
“Yes, of course Alexis. I’m happy to do it.” Lewis injected his tone with more enthusiasm than he meant, but watching the limp, defeated frame of his new partner, he shrugged at its concession. She leaned the weight of her small body on one elbow to take the water, but it trembled with weakness. Her skin, which had tanned nicely over the weeks, now seemed sallow, almost purple, coated in sheen of sickly sweat. “Are you sure you’re okay, Alexis? You look very ill to me.”
She needed air. With shaking limbs she lifted herself up.
“Alexis,” Lewis protested, his grey eyes darkening with worry. “Where are you going?”
The room began to spin and she shook her head. She felt a cool sweat burst through every pore, and her chest expanded in heaves as she tried to catch her breath. “I need to get out of here,” she finally managed to produce in a panicked whisper. “Air.”
Now Lewis stood beside her as she clambered toward the entrance of the hut. She felt his hand grasp her elbow. She heard the shape of his words turn to soft amorphous pattering against her ear. Then she was gone.
She crumpled in his arms, and just before her head smacked the floor, Lewis swept her up. His heart seized in his chest. Her eyes were rolling back in their sockets. He’d never felt so totally hopeless. He cried out to Mulmulum, and in an instant she was gone to alert the chief. Lewis put his ear to her chest and heard the faint thump of her heart. He pulled back and watched her, found himself stroking her cheek. “Please, Alexis,” he called, hoping his voice could reach her.
In the black, Alexis stirred fitfully. She thought she was dreaming the soft humming, a sound which whistled low like a brittle reed. It stretched and caught itself, pulled her along into its rhythm. It cradled her. “Trevor,” she called feebly.
The humming did not stop, but she saw a shadow grow larger and turn black. “I’m here, Red,” he whispered. Alexis was too weak to lift her head and she felt hot tears trail down her temples. Her shoulders shook with desperate relief.
“You came back,” she cried. He leaned down, his face nuzzling her ear.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her, his arms scooping her up in a pile against him.
“How could you leave me like that?” She sounded like a child, but she was in too deep now to conceal her vulnerability.
He was silent for a moment, and she could feel the muscles in his body stiffen. He cradled her head against his chest. “I’ll never do that again,” he said.
She was smiling now. She was burrowing into him, into the softness of the humming. An irresistible, shameless happiness lit up her eyes and she opened them wide to take him in. All she saw was blackness. She shook her head in confusion. And then she felt hands on her legs. They were warm, calloused, and thin, but they pressed her, kneaded her with a youthful firmness. She let out a soft moan into thick wet air. She opened her eyes, expecting to find the fragments of her subconscious dissipate. Instead she saw the source of humming and the calloused hands crouched limberly above her.
It was an old woman with a knot of silver hair bursting above the loose, sagging lines of an old face. She was the oldest woman Alexis had seen in the village, and she remembered meeting her when she and Lewis had asked about medicinal customs. She was the tribe’s healer, just shy of five feet. She stooped when she walked, and Alexis’ eyes widened in surprise to see such nimble movements as she massaged Alexis’ legs. If she noticed that Alexis had awakened, she did not acknowledge it. Her eyes, clouded milky white with glaucoma, were fixed absently on the dark space around them.
Alexis’ heart broke at the discovery that Trevor had not come back for her, and it took her a moment to absorb the strangeness of the situation. She was quite certain she was no longer dreaming, yet the reality seemed farfetched. Alexis rolled her head from side to side, hoping to spot some evidence of reality. “Lewis?” she whispered hoarsely, only to find that it sent blades of razor-sharp pain splintering through her brain. She saw a figure rise from beside the fire.
“Alexis,” Lewis cooed gently.
“What’s going on?” Alexis managed, her voice pinched with the uncertainty of a child waking in pitch black from a bad dream.
“You have a very bad fever,” he said, his tone clipped. Alexis was grateful that she could not see Lewis’ face. She could hear the concern in his voice, but for now, in her semi-delirium, she could imagine that she was bedridden with nothing more than an aggressive fever.
“So…why…” Alexis could barely speak without her skull splitting with excruciating pain. She lifted a hand and gestured toward the medicine woman.
“She is rubbing an herbal mixture into your skin. It’s what they do when they fall ill.” Lewis seemed to hold his breath, as though any sound might betray the gravity of her situation.
“Are you concerned?” Alexis managed to squeak, bracing herself for the worst.
“No,” Lewis said after a long silence. “Not with Minata here. I can tell she is an experienced medicine woman.”
If Minata heard her name, she made no indication of it, nor did she pay any attention to their conversation as she worked over her patient’s body. Alexis looked down and realized with sudden, though unwarranted horror that she had been stripped of her clothing. All that remained as a gesture of modesty was a thin cotton slip which clung damply to her torso. Minata smiled when she saw the peculiar wideness of Alexis’ eyes as she took her in her body. A low, good-natured hiss issued from the cracks and holes of her ancient, decaying mouth.
The old woman continued humming into the night, grinding the dark, viscous substance into Alexis’ skin until the whole of her body was covered. In this bizarre blanket of cake Alexis felt her skin tingle with life, and every breath that passed through the hut seemed to engulf her in a soothing coolness. Mint, Lewis would later tell her.
***
“It’s been days since I moved, Lewis. I need to stretch my legs, and I need to see some natural light. I’m starting to feel crazy.” Alexis looked pleadingly into the dark shadow of Lewis’ face, his eyes were unblinking, his jaw set. His brow slowly lifted, and she could see he was testing her.
“I promise,” she reassured him grumpily. “I’m feeling quite strong.” She elbowed him, a playful demonstration that she had recovered her strength.
Lewis nodded his head with a skeptical smirk and let his hand fall against her forearm. He closed his fingers around its smallness. “You’re too thin, Alexis,” he chastised her softly. His hand lingered, and Alexis felt heat inflame her cheeks.
She cleared her throat and shifted. “When can we leave?” she asked him, injecting as much strength and vitality into her voice as she could muster.
Lewis lifted himself onto his haunches and rubbed his chin. “Not until I see you’re ready.”
Alexis groaned plaintively, letting her head sag pathetically against her stack of tough, leathery pillows. “When’s that going to be?” she whined with a dramatic sigh.
Lewis laughed through his nose. “You are improving quickly…” When he saw the desperate eyes batting hopefully at him, his mouth split into a wide, white grin. “No promises, but I think a few days, okay?”
Alexis rewarded him with a toothy smile of her own, and clutched onto his arm. Lewis helped her slowly to her feet. The movement sent shards of razor pain through her legs and she struggled to stifle the automatic winces so as not to give Lewis more cause to baby her. They hobbled through the hut to the door, and Alexis looked down at what once seemed a miniscule slip. She was too tired to think of it now, too used to her sick, clammy body exposed to all the world. As she passed through the door, her mind flashed with the memory of the last time she crossed its threshold, the image of Trevor packing up and bidding the chief farewell.
“What is it?” she heard Lewis ask her. She brought her eyes to his, saw the knowing, heavy gaze, and she shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said, squeezing his arm with reassurance.
***
“Another?”
Trev
or raised his sluggish gaze beneath the brim of his hat toward the gruff voice behind the counter. A man, red and fat, his face covered in a thick patina of sweat and oil, nodded his head at the empty shot glass in front of him. Trevor grunted, jerking his head curtly. He watched the corpulent fingers squeeze the bottle’s slender body, a pungent amber liquid plummeting violently toward the pit of his glass. Trevor ran his finger over the rim, as though considering whether to take it. With a single movement, he brought it to his lips and felt the harsh, acidic moonshine gush fire down his throat. He closed his eyes. He saw her.
“Goddamn it!” He bellowed. Trevor felt the room, which had been colorless, lifeless, without context in his liquored trance, draw into a palpable hush. He saw the heads of the few ragged men turn his direction. He gave no explanation. He was just another drunk as far as they were concerned, here for gold, women or services to the British army stationed on the eastern coast. This was the hideaway for true pariahs, a battered shack with the minimum wood and nails required to make a brothel and bar. He knew that just a mile away was the saloon frequented by British officers looking for drink and a romp in the bed, where the sofas and wallpaper were fine and imported. He preferred the raw bowels of this sorry hole.
The floorboards creaked behind him and he felt a soft arm snake over his shoulder, a velvet hand grasped the back of his neck. “Hello, stranger,” her throaty voice cooed in his ear. She was young and beautiful, her skin dewy and supple, the color of molasses. Her bright, amber eyes radiated over high, full cheek bones and a seductive ample mouth. Trevor felt a ball form in his throat. Though he had never slept with a prostitute, he tried to summon the wherewithal to take this one to bed, to extinguish the unrelenting flame of Alexis in his mind. He turned to her, her lips parting as she neared his face. His guts seized and twisted, and he recoiled, the shoddy barstool clattering to the ground.
The woman jerked back, thrusting her arms high in the air. From her mouth came a string of foreign words pinched with anger. Trevor shrugged at her, stumbling toward the darkest corner of the shack. He was sweating now, profusely, and he felt every contraction of his heart against his chest. Pull yourself together, man, he howled at himself, his brow creased in brute anger. But she was there with him. She had been there ever since he left her on the forest floor. He had tried to outrun her. He had tried to drink her away. But Alexis was as stubborn and unyielding in spirit as she was in body.
He flung his hat on the uneven surface of the wooden table and ran his fingers through his hair. He must look like a mad man. But he was in good company, he remarked dizzily through his intensifying stupor. He closed his eyes into the palms of his hands, and he fell into a soulless obscurity. And then, he saw her again. Small and curled against him. He could smell her, the spot where he pulled her hair from her neck, the soft patch of fine hair that curled. He remembered the perfume of her body, how he had buried his nose against her as she slept that morning in the forest.
In an instant he felt the sorrow of a man who can never forgive himself, and his fists curled, his jaw clenched with fury. He knew that his anger, his spite would never triumph over the pure tragedy of his loss. But the whisky had satiated his rage and buoyed it close to his heart where he could reach it more easily, and it came to him in the image of her letter to Philip. He sneered at no one, and pounded an iron-clenched fist hard against the wood of the dilapidated table. He heard a plaintive voice ring from another corner, but he did not pay it notice.
Again he saw her words, a burning script now seared in his brain: I cling to the memory of the night before I left for this place. How nothing made more sense than to feel your arms around me, and to pledge our lives together. I am ever yours, and I hope that when I return, I will still hold a place in your heart.
Trevor seethed fire from his nose, and he felt his stomach coil with the sickness of loss. He couldn’t believe he had allowed a woman to worm her way into his heart, an unlikely one at that, only to find that he was nothing more than a tramp to her, the butt of a joke between two lovers. And worst, that he had dared to give himself to her, to believe for a moment that she had given herself to him.
Before his mind could follow the movements of his body, Trevor found himself springing upward, his hands hurling the table over with maniacal force. It flew across the room, barely missing a table where a burly pink man with a salt-and-pepper mustache sat, his lady resting on a massive thigh. A chorus of squawking erupted but Trevor heard nothing. He felt only the welcomed sting of electric pain course through his fist as it met the splintered wall of the shack.
“That does it,” a baritone voice barked matter-of-factly. The ominous sound of a chair scraping backward against the floor made every face in the bar snap to watch the imminent brawl. The man whom Trevor nearly injured with the table lifted his woman to her feet. He stood, and the room took in his height with a small gasp of sudden sympathy for Trevor. The man watched Trevor who was still unaware of the commotion, and he rolled up his sleeves with a calm and purpose that made the nervous room erupt into titters of speculation.
“Boy,” growled the man when he had finally made his way to where Trevor sagged against the wall, lost underneath the depths of moonshine. He lifted his brow, took the man in. He thought of Alexis. Then he looked at the man, saw sweet escape in the meaty, red fists coiled at his sides, and curled his lips into a happy smile.
“What the hell do you want, you ugly son of a bitch?” he asked.
Chapter Twenty-One
“How are we doing on supplies?” Alexis said through a mouthful of rice, a few sticky grains catching on her lips, which had regained their color over the last days. Lewis tittered, his face pulling back in an amused grin. Since recovering, conversation between the two had turned playful, and she eyed her handsome companion with growing appreciation. Lewis had not strayed from her side more than a few feet since she fell ill, and the softness of his voice had become a balm for her soul. His history and friendship to Trevor reassured her all the more, and she nestled in the secret optimism that her connection to Lewis would keep close a man who’d ridden away with her heart.
She would never guess that behind the warmth of Lewis’ dusky gaze resided an ever-growing attachment. “You’ve got some rice on your lip,” he murmured impassively. He lifted his hand to her mouth, hiding his smile. She felt his fingers press a glob of rice into her cheek.
Lewis erupted in laughter and Alexis flung the clump back at him. “Ha, ha. Very funny,” she giggled in mock contempt. “At least you have a better sense of humor than Trevor.” She said it without even realizing it, and the words caught in the air like an unpleasant aroma. Lewis lowered his eyes and fingered another handful of rice.
“So?” Alexis asked, poking her finger at Lewis’ side, desperate to restore some levity. “Supplies?”
Lewis let his head fall back, and his brows folded soberly. “We’ve got quite a ways ahead of us, Alexis. We’ve enough to last us another three weeks, but since we don’t know the precise route, or how long we will be at the site, I suggest we take a detour to the east and pick up supplies near the British camp. It’ll take us a few days off our path.” Lewis scooped a ball of rice in his glazed fingers and it disappeared in a single gulp.
“A few days?” Alexis’ eyes bulged, and she coughed as the rice caught in her throat. Her gaze fell despondently, her chest rising in a dramatic sigh. Her thoughts turned to Trevor once more and a hateful wind blew through her heart.
Lewis shifted uncomfortably as he observed Alexis’ sapphire eyes darken. “We would have had to do this anyway…with or without Trevor.” Clearing his throat, he rolled another ball of rice expertly in the palm of his hand.
Her cheeks erupted into a furious pink. “Oh,” she said, inhaling deeply to steady her voice and affect total nonchalance. “I suppose it’s best to be cautious. This trip is turning into an open-ended adventure.” Eager to expel Trevor from her brain, she continued. “I’ve learned so much here, Lewis. My father would
be so encouraged. But to think of how far we’ve come, and how much more we’ve to go. It feels like we’ve only just gotten started.”
Lewis chuckled, but his voice tapered with typical pragmatism. “It is promising. But don’t get ahead of yourself. I know these parts very well, Alexis, but I’ve never heard of the tribe we’re looking for. We don’t even know if they still inhabit those lands.”
“Yes, yes, Lewis. Ever the prudent,” she teased. She examined her fingers, all coated in a thick, gooey film. Behind her she felt the swift movements of a newcomer and Mulmulum lowered herself to the ground. Her soft eyes lingered on Alexis. She pressed the firmness of her palm against Alexis’ bare shoulder and murmured to Lewis.
“She says she will miss you,” Lewis said. Mulmulum cut him off, her face shadowed with concern. When she finished, she stared expectantly at Lewis.
“What did she say? That sounded important,” Alexis asked, leaning forward.
He hesitated. “She says she is worried for you. She says that the jungle is not safe, and that women should not travel the paths.”
Alexis patted Mulmulum appreciatively, but shook her head as though to dismiss her friend’s troubling thoughts. “Tell Mulmulum that her concern means a lot to me. But I made it here safely, after all. And besides, I won’t be alone. I’ll have you.” Lewis nodded. As Lewis’ voice trailed off, Mulmulum fixed her gaze to Alexis, her full coffee-colored lips pulled into a frown. Alexis squeezed her hand. “It’s okay,” she whispered, injecting laughter into her voice.
Mulmulum gave a solemn nod and braced herself to rise from the floor. “O-kay,” she said, her mouth awkwardly adjusting to form the roundness of unfamiliar words.
***
Alexis couldn’t help the involuntary movement of her hips in rhythm with the trance-like thunder. Strong hands beat violently against the kundu drums. Electric-colored feathers pitted deep in the hair of drummers and dancers snapped in waves. Alexis’ eyes swept over her own body. At the behest of her hosts, Alexis had shed her clothing for the momentous farewell party. She had stood naked in the hut, residually bashful at the exposure, where Mulmulum had dressed her in a traditional grass skirt that parted scandalously over her shapely thighs. When no other offer of clothing was made to complement the sarong, Alexis had motioned theatrically at her breasts. Mulmulum shook her head stubbornly.