by Toombs, Jane
Romell remembered a painting she had seen of molten rock running down the rocky sides of a mountain. Would that happen here?
"You can lean on me," she said. "We'll go on."
As she helped the exhausted Pieter deeper into the jungle, Romell realized she'd forgotten the noisy strangeness of traveling beneath this live canopy that shut out the sun. Giant ferns as big as trees towered over them, and it seemed that every insect and beast in the jungle was clamoring at once. She wondered if the animals protested the volcano's eruption.
"Must find a safe place to spend the night," Pieter warned.
"Soon," Romell responded, wondering how long they could keep moving. The stifling heat of the jungle oppressed her--she'd enjoyed the cooler air on the mountainside. Pieter's weight on her shoulder tired her, and she knew by his dragging footsteps that he was near the end of his strength.
A troop of monkeys swung by on lianas as thick as her wrist, chattering and peering curiously down at them. Staring up at the monkeys, Romell walked into a gigantic spiderweb that settled over her face. She cried out, frantically tearing at sticky strands.
“God!" Pieter intoned, yanking her backward.
A black and hairy spider as large as a man's hand waited on a fern frond just ahead.
"Ugh! I hate this jungle," Romell exclaimed as they detoured around the spider.
"I'll take care of you," Pieter assured her. She said nothing.
What good would it do to tell him it was the other way around now that she took care of him?
"We'll find another mountain," he went on. "I’ll build a house for you. We'll be happy together."
"Pieter," she said softly, "we must go back to Batavia."
"Never!" He pushed free of her and limped along on his own. "I won't share you with others."
Romell trailed after him. "What if something should happen to you?" she asked. "How could I find my way back alone?"
"If I must die, we'll die together," he said grimly. "No one else shall have you."
She didn't argue, watching as his steps faltered and he began staggering, finally falling to one knee. She helped him up.
"Put your arm around my shoulders," she said wearily.
Though the ground still trembled underfoot occasionally and they'd twice heard the now-muted roar of the volcano, no rocks fell here and the ash was shut away by the jungle roof or else had ceased falling. The stench of sulphur blended with the odor of rot and decay but, as far as Romell could tell, nothing was aflame.
"Torrentius tells of dancing girls and wine," Pieter said after a time, his voice thin and reedy, like a boy's. Romell knew he had drifted from the present again.
"Under God's heaven," he continued, in the same voice, "free and unfettered, where a man may do as he pleases. No wrong—there's no wrong in that world—all is right. Women to love as often as can be, soft breasts, warm loins."
Tears ran from his single eye. "Torrentius," he called, his voice rising. "Torrentius, where are you? Why have you forsaken me?" The last words he shrieked so loudly that the nearby jungle voices quieted momentarily.
"Hush," Romell murmured, trying not to think of the obscene painting Pieter had given her so long ago. What he spoke of now seemed a boy's desire, a boy yearning for the forbidden fruits of manhood.
"He's gone," Pieter said in a choked voice. "He's left me. I am lost." He broke into sobs.
"Hush," Romell repeated. "Torrentius is dead and gone. You don't need him."
"Not Torrentius," Pieter said. "God. God is gone from me." He could no longer walk, and Romell put both her arms around him to hold him upright. He wept on her shoulder.
Unwilling pity rose in Romell’s breast. She thought of words from a sonnet by John Donne:
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?
Pieter had committed grievous sins in the eyes of God and of man, done evil for which there could be no redress. And yet--God was all merciful.
God, Oh! of thine only worthy blood
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sins black memory;
That Thou remember them, some claim as debt,
I think it mercy, if Thou wilt forget.
Perhaps God could forgive where she could not. John Donne had thought so.
"We must go on," she said to Pieter.
But he couldn't go far. Soon Romell was forced to ease him to the ground, where he slumped against a tree trunk. She crouched beside him, sitting on her heels as she'd been taught by the Southland natives. Had God intended their torture of Pieter as a purging to save his soul?
From nearby came the three-note eerie moaning cry that Pieter said a tiger made. A hunting tiger. She got to her feet, peering this way and that in the dim light. Unseen birds called, hidden frogs shrilled. Tense with fear, she waited for the tiger's next cry.
A brilliantly colored bird with a curved beak flew from the greenery above and lit on a fern. It cocked its head and peered one-eyed at her. Would a parrot come so close with a tiger near? A coughing bark somewhere behind her made her jump and whirl around. The parrot squawked and flapped away.
It's a deer, she told herself firmly. One of those little barking deer. A swishing began, grew louder, and Romell crouched by Pieter again. The barking call was repeated, closer to them, reverberating in Romell's ears. No deer could make that noise. The swishing stopped and a large black bird with a gigantic beak glided from the foliage. As it passed, it began to flap its wings, and Romell heard the same loud swish begin again.
She took a deep, relieved breath, then tugged at Pieter's arm. "Wake up," she urged. "We can't spend the night in the open like this. Pieter!"
He groaned and blinked his eyes, but didn't move. She tugged at his arm again, but wasn't able to budge him.
Although he looked at her, his gaze was un-focused. He shivered despite the burning heat of his skin, and Romell knew his fever had returned. I must find shelter for us, she told herself. Rising, she looked about and reluctantly decided there was no possible shelter in sight. She took a few steps away from Pieter, glancing back to be certain she could still see him.
Fearfully, she scanned the growing darkness for a hollow tree trunk, for any depression big enough to hide in. To her left, a parasite tree had set its dozens of aerial roots into the ground about its host. Sometimes these roots branched close enough together to form a partial shelter. Romell parted fern fronds twice her height to make her way toward the roots. A snarl froze her in her tracks.
Tawny eyes looked up at her from a whiskered striped face, the lip drawn up in a snarl that showed sharp white teeth. Romell, startled, stared down at the animal, hardly believing what she saw. She laughed in hysterical relief—the tiger club wasn't much bigger than a dog!
As Romell watched, the cub snarled again and began to back away. Belatedly, she realized that a cub that small wouldn't be on its own. She took her hands from the fern fronds and began edging away. She'd gone no more than a few steps when a heart-stopping roar echoed through the jungle.
Romell turned and raced for a root shaped like a bent knee, which she'd noticed in passing, and scrambled up onto it, reaching for a higher root and pulling herself up to a fork where she turned to look down, clutching at her perch to keep from falling.
A huge tiger bounded from the ferns, crossed to the aerial root she'd first climbed to and leaped on to the lowest bend. Romell screamed as the beast raised itself on its hind legs. The tiger's head came almost to the fork where Romell clung. She felt its hot breath on her legs as it snarled angrily.
She could go no higher, and she drew up her legs and screamed, again and again, expecting to feel the animal's cruel claws rip into her at any moment. The tiger roared and the terrible sound, so close to her, almost made Romell lose her grip on the root.
To her surprise, the beast dropped to all fours, growling, then jumped to the ground. Romell peered down, trying to see in the near darkne
ss what the tiger would do next. She drew in her breath as she caught sight of Pieter, kris in hand.
"Pieter!" she cried.
The tiger roared and leaped. Beast and man tumbled to the ground, Pieter's shouts and curses mixed with the tiger's snarls. Together they thrashed and fought, and Romell saw the blade of the kris rise and fall.
Pieter screamed, a high-pitched bubbling yell, and then Romell heard him no more. The tiger's growling went on and on, gradually fading into a silence unbroken by jungle noises.
Romell found herself unable to move. Finally, she forced her fingers to loosen their desperate grip on the root and dropped down onto the bent knee of the lower root. She cautiously let herself down to the ground.
The tiger lay motionless, the kris embedded in its side, blood welling onto the striped coat. Pieter's legs were visible, but the rest of his body was hidden by the tiger's bulk.
Romell grabbed the tiger's tail but couldn't move the heavy carcass. She grasped Pieter's feet. With the last of her strength, she managed to pull his body from under the dead tiger. Romell knelt beside him, feeling rather than seeing the deep gashes in his chest.
"Romellje." His voice was faint and she started, so certain had she been that he was dead. She leaned closer.
"This time I will die," he whispered.
She touched his cheek, feeling blood on her fingers.
"I love you, my Romellje."
Tears filled her eyes. She had never loved Pieter. Until these past few days she had hated him. She bent until her lips were by his ear.
"I forgive you," she said, "for all you’ve done. Go absolved to God." She touched her lips to his, the first and only time she’d willingly kissed him.
Chapter 22
Romell woke to find rain drenching her. It poured through the green canopy of the forest and thrummed on the ground below. She eased herself from the fork of the aerial root where she'd wedged herself the night before and dropped down to the knee. Gathering her courage, she peered at what was on the ground below. A night scavenger had ripped open the tiger's body, but there was no sign of Pieter's.
She slipped to the ground and grasped the hilt of the kris, pulling it from the tiger. Pushing her wet hair from her face, she looked all about and saw one of Pieter's feet protruding from the ferns.
Romell knew he'd been dead when she climbed up the root last night to save herself from scavenging beasts. One of them must have dragged his body into the ferns. She breathed a prayer of thankfulness that she'd been spared the horror of seeing his mangled remains.
Carrying the kris, she bowed her head against the rain and started off, moving slowly until the stiffness in her legs eased. She had no idea which way to go, but she couldn't stay here. If she kept moving in one direction, she'd have to come out of the jungle sometime. Fleetingly, she wondered what had become of the tiger cub.
The forest floor was littered with debris left by the rain. She gathered several yellow scaly-skinned fruits and, wiping the bloody kris against her sodden sarong, used the tip to open one. The large dark seeds inside were surrounded by lemon-yellow pulp. Romell sniffed at the fruit, then took one cautious taste. It was delicious, tart and rich at the same time. She quickly finished the first, cut open the second and ate that.
Yesterday's frightfulness waited in the back of her mind, but on the castaway island Romell had learned to keep terror from overwhelming her. If she kept moving she'd come out of the jungle; she'd find natives who'd help her. If she let herself brood on her predicament, she'd be paralyzed into helplessness.
Raising her face, she let water run into her mouth. The rain muted the shrieks and croaks of the jungle, but the sounds were still audible, providing an accompaniment to the steady drum of the raindrops on the canopy of leaves and vines. Lianas thick as a man's thigh draped across her path, and she pushed them aside to sidle past. Was this the start of the rainy season, the monsoons? What had Elysabet told her?
"We count on hot and dry from June to October and hot and wet from November to March."
Surely three months hadn't gone by since August? Romell shook her head. It couldn't be November yet. Christoffel had said the monsoons came out of the China Sea from the northwest in November. Romell wiped rain from her face. What she'd give to be talking to Elysabet and Christoffel right now!
She reached to push another liana aside and it writhed away from her. Just as she began to realize it was alive, its head whipped around, and she stared at the monstrous snake. The slitted pupils of two yellow eyes stared back at her.
Romell choked on a scream and turned to run. Her foot slipped on the slick debris and she fell onto her back. Quickly she rolled over, scrambled to her feet and fled.
Later, out of breath, she leaned against a tree trunk, thinking her fall might have saved her, for the serpent had coiled to enfold and crush her. On the other hand, she'd lost the kris when she fell and now was defenseless. Even had she dared try to retrieve the weapon, she had no notion which way she had come.
Everything in the jungle looked the same--tree ferns, gigantic pillars of tree trunks, trees that didn't branch until they'd risen nearly a hundred feet into the air; giant leaved plants that climbed those trunks; thick vines; parasitic flowers.
For all she knew she could be traveling in a circle, and soon would be back with the dead tiger and--
No! She couldn't bear to think of last night's horror. But it was too late. Romell leaned her forehead against a tree trunk and sobbed, adding her tears to the rain. She cried for Pieter's terrible death and for her own danger, she wept until a loud grunting penetrated her misery.
Romell turned her head. Through the blur of tears and the rain, she saw the head of an alarmingly strange animal thrust through the ferns no more than fifteen feet away. The head was grey-white and huge, with little pig eyes and a horn set not atop the head, where it should have been, but above the nostrils. The head swung this way and that as though the animal were trying to locate her.
Flattening herself against the tree, Romell slid around to the other side, putting the trunk between her and the beast. Cautiously, she edged her head out far enough to see what the creature intended to do.
The animal stepped from the foliage. Romell bit back a gasp as she saw the enormous bulk of its body. It grunted and tossed its horned head about for awhile, then, apparently satisfied, trotted off in the direction Romell had come from until, finally, the rain hid it from sight.
The rain slackened, then ceased, although the leafy jungle roof continued to drip. Romell leaned against the tree trunk until she could force herself to move on again. At her feet, a gigantic gold and green beetle crawled over a decaying branch. Romell watched numbly while it probed with its head into crevices in the wood, finally pulling out and devouring a white grub. When the beetle crawled off the limb and approached her feet, Romell edged around the tree trunk, her shoulder brushing against the still-leafy tip of another fallen branch.
She cried out and jumped away, slapping at her shoulder where fiery pain stabbed and burned. On her hand was the crushed body of an inch-long red ant. Twisting her head, she saw another ant on her shoulder, its legs moving feebly although the body was smashed. A burning pain radiated down her arm. She tried to brush off the dying ant, but its head was embedded in her flesh and she had to dig it out with her fingernail.
Fire ants! She recalled Elysabet warning her about them nesting in Batavia gardens. On the fallen branch next to her, an ant's nest as large as a round bread loaf swarmed with the long-legged red ants. Holding her throbbing shoulder, Romell hurried away.
She walked faster and faster until she was running, running and sobbing, alone and beleaguered on all sides in this alien jungle where every living creature threatened her.
Suddenly she was yanked to a halt, her clothes caught and her skin pierced by sharp points. She turned fearfully and saw that she was hooked on the leaves of a plant. She tried to pull free, but the barbed leaves thrust deeper, and she screamed with pain.
When she finally calmed herself enough to reason, Romell backed away. Taking each leaf separately in her fingers, she unhooked them from her skin and sarong. Blood trickled down her arms and legs from tiny wounds and her clothes were in tatters. In her flight, she'd lost one of her sandals and now she realized the bare foot was cut and bruised.
If I don't get hold of myself, the jungle will certainly kill me, Romell thought. I must walk carefully and watch for danger. Every plant, every animal may be an enemy, waiting for a careless move.
She looked about, listening. Raindrops still pattered down from the jungle canopy in an irregular rhythm although the rain had stopped. Insects and frogs croaked and whistled and shrilled. She heard a flock of birds chattering somewhere in the distance. The dimness seemed a bit brighter. Orchids grew in profusion here—purple, lavender, salmon pink, and pale blue— thrusting from tree boles or sprouting on the decaying branches littering the ground.
From nearby rose a hideous stench, the stink of spoiled meat. As Romell walked slowly on, the smell grew stronger until Romell grimaced with distaste. When she spotted a bizarre plant in her path, she didn't at first associate it with the smell, but when she came closer, she saw the plant was actually a monstrous flower and the carrion stink its perfume.
What kind of horrid insects would such a flower attract? Holding her nose, Romell managed to come close enough to peer into its depths, a massive cavity at least four feet across. From this well, a huge pallid spike rose some seven or eight feet tall. The entire flower swarmed with beetles. Romell backed away and went on.
The scolding calls of a troop of monkeys sounded to her left. Romell hesitated. Monkeys usually gathered in fruit trees and she was hungry. Monkeys, at least, were harmless. She turned toward the sound. A few minutes later she saw them feeding in a clump of palms, brown and tan monkeys with a white rim around black faces.
As she neared, she saw the trees were banana palms, with bunches of brilliant yellow fruit hanging higher than she could reach. There was no possible way for her to climb a banana tree. The palms had flowers, green fruit and ripe, all growing at once.