by Freda, Paula
Before entering the forest on her way to their lodgings on the other side of the woods and close to a sandy beach, she glanced over her shoulder. He was not far behind her. She recalled his appearance on the ship — smooth shaven and clean-cut, his tall broad frame elegantly suited in a muted mint-green colored jacket and white pants — he owned several pastel colored sports suits, each one soothing to the eye. Smitten with her from their first meeting aboard the luxury liner, Thorvald Sands politely opened doors for her to pass through or pulled out chairs for her to sit, and dined and danced her across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
She had not minded the attention. After saving up for several years from the measly salary and tips she earned as a waitress in a decaying hole the proprietor called a diner, she was ready for all the diversion at hand. As for seriously considering the endearments Val lavished upon her each evening while they strolled the decks and gazed at the foam crested waves, she accepted his smooth words with a grain of salt. A shipboard romance. Once the ship docked in New York, reality would set in and she would never want to see him again. When it came to men, Harriet Henderson leaned towards misandry. Men were an odious lot, all of them after one objective — to lure some poor unsuspecting female under their bedcovers. She classified Thorvald Sands under that category and he would now be simply a memory if the windstorm had not intercepted their ship.
She had decided to forego the pleasure of Val’s company one evening for a visit with the placid sea gone insane. Against the Captain’s orders that all passengers remain in their cabins until the storm passed, she crept on deck. Bracing herself against the rail she inhaled the wet, tangy smell of the sea, and reveled in the blustery, watery wind spraying her face. Excitement filled her veins and she laughed as the ship rocked and listed perilously.
"For heaven’s sake, woman!”
Startled, she turned, letting go of the rail. Val was coming toward her. It was the first time she had seen him lose his composure. An explosive wave hit the ship broadside and the vessel tilted dangerously. Harriet’s feet left the deck and she fell headfirst into the raging sea. Never would she forget the cold clutch of the waves as she crashed through the water. Foolish of her, but she had never learned to swim. Seawater filled her mouth and her nostrils and she spluttered and choked, as she thrashed wildly seeking a solid base, but finding only a liquid void. Her thoughts as she sank downward and a crushing darkness descended upon her, were that she was about to die ...
Air pushed into her lungs. She opened her eyes, but her vision was blurred and her head tipped back at a painful angle. Her nostrils were pinched together and something ironlike was clamped about her chin. She struck out at the unbearable pressures and was immediately released, but the effort left her weak and nauseous. She managed to raise her head high enough to make out the man kneeling in front of her. His light blue shirt and white slacks were soaked and clinging to him. His blond hair was wet, the ends plastered to his brow and the sides of his worried face. It was Thorvald Sands.
Some of the seawater she had swallowed clogged her air passage again and she gagged. Val quickly lifted her on to her stomach and applied pressure to the space between her shoulder blades. More seawater filled her mouth, but this time the water trickled through her lips onto the dank surface she realized was wet sand. As her breathing stabilized, Val took her into his arms. She had begun to shiver. "You’ll be all right,” he reassured her, holding her closer, imparting warmth and comfort.
"What ... happened?” she rasped.
Val replied, "A massive wave hit the ship causing it to almost capsize and you fell overboard.” He paused, studying her, and then remarked, "You can’t swim, can you?” And when she lowered her eyes, "What in the name of heaven were you doing out on deck in the middle of a storm?”
"It was so beautiful.”
"Beautiful, she says!” He shook his head exasperated.
"You jumped in after me?”
"I threw you a life buoy, but you didn’t grab it. I doubt you even saw it. There wasn’t time to go for help. Even those few seconds it took me to remove my jacket and pull off my shoes, I was afraid I’d lost you.” He shuddered at the memory. "I plunged in after you. The sea and sky were charcoal grey and storm-blasted, although beneath the waves, the water was amazingly calm. With no light coming from overhead, I groped rather than saw. By some heavenly intervention I found you and clamped my arm around your waist from behind, and surfaced, latching on to the life buoy. You were almost unconscious. The wind and the waves tossed us about mercilessly. The storm may have thrown the ship off course and brought it close to the island. That’s what really saved us.”
You’ll come to no good if you don’t tame your wild inclinations, her mother had often told her. And all the while her prim mother admonished, her tall, thin father looked on quietly, a hint of sadness in his dark eyes. But Harriet was never able to conform. Restless, she left home after graduating high school. She thought the waitress job she landed was a gold find. She soon became disillusioned. It had taken her almost six years to overcome her pride and stubbornness, and the deterrent thought of the embarrassment she would suffer when she returned home to face her parents. At the moment her future looked bleak.
"I was looking for you,” Val explained. "The Captain had given instructions that all passengers put on their life jackets. I went to your cabin and when I was sure you weren’t there, I searched for you. I finally gave in to the wild suspicion you had gone on deck.”
"I’m sorry,” she said, realizing her apology didn’t help their situation much. She’d acted foolishly, put both their lives in peril. "What do we do now?” she asked. "Rest,” Val replied. "Find shelter and food.”
They found shelter in an alcove nature had carved into the base of the cliff that lined the side of the island nearest to where they had washed ashore. Val stripped to his shorts, but Harriet adamantly refused to undress. "I’m not cold anymore, the weather is warm enough. My blouse and slacks are almost dry.” Despite her insistence to the contrary, her shoulders twitched with a shiver.
"Just let me hold you, nothing more,” Val said.
She shivered again and he quickly placed his arms around her. They felt so comforting she could not resist the logic of lying quietly in their warmth. Sleep overtook her sooner than she expected. When she woke the day was gloriously bright and warm. Val was nowhere in sight. She assumed he had gone to look for help. She yawned and stretched. A brisk whistle brought her up and about. Val was returning from the wooded area. She rose and scuffled through the sand, hurrying to meet him halfway. "Did you get to a phone?”
His answer was grim. "My girl, there aren’t any phones, nor sign of a human or of civilization anywhere on the island. We’re stranded.”
Harriet blanched. "B-But I’m sure they’ll send out search parties.”
"By the time they discover us missing, the ship will be miles from here.”
"There are bound to be other ships or planes along.”
Val nodded. "And we’ll do our best to attract their attention. But at the moment food and shelter are our main problems. We won’t starve or lack for comfort. If we had to be stranded, then we’ve picked ourselves a Garden of Eden.” He cupped her elbow. "Come on, I’ve found a good spot to set up house.”
Val’s "spot” turned out to be a small clearing in the Mediterranean forest, grassy and bounded by evergreens and oak and chestnut trees shading a sweet meandering stream.
"It’s so peaceful,” Harriet sighed as they breakfasted on raw chestnuts and cool water. "Very much like my parent’s home on the Hudson.” The home she referred to was not truly her parent’s, but part of another more elaborate house. "The servants’ quarters,” she had coldly termed the angled three-room wing that the colonial mansion’s owners had built for her parents at the start of their employment twenty years ago. She felt ashamed of her criticism after spending the past six years living inside a furnished room with a cracked ceiling and thin, chipped and peeling grey-st
ained walls, three security locks on the door and two safety locks on the only window.
Perhaps she should emulate Val’s apparent exhilaration because when her adventure was over, it was that same dingy room and empty life that awaited her unless she stuck to her resolution and humbly returned to her parent’s home. "Well, what now?” she inquired, breakfast over.
Again that enthusiastic tone. "You clear up. I’ll be back shortly. I have an errand to attend to.”
When he reappeared, his pockets were bulging and he carried a dark, glossy rock in his hands. At the center of the clearing he knelt, and placing the rock on the ground, he emptied his pockets of four palm-sized stones.
Harriet squinted with curiosity as Val sat back on his bare heels — his socks had been lost at sea, the same as her sandals. Picking up the rock, holding it firmly in place on the ground with one hand, he chose one of the four stones and commenced striking the rock. The first stone cracked and grazed his hand. After two more failures, he paused to regard the rock quietly. He tried again, tilting his hand slightly. The rock chipped. He smiled. Slowly, painstakingly, he continued the percussion process, chipping and flaking the rock until only a purplish blue core remained.
The sun had risen midway when, satisfied, Val stood up. "All-right!” he fairly sang triumphantly. "We have ourselves a hand axe.” He had wide cheekbones and an exuberant smile that, once turned on, brightened every inch of his face.
She drew near to have a look and he gazed at her, smiling in just that way so that she had to fight the impulse to return his smile and utter a word of praise in his behalf.
"It’s very crude,” she said instead. "What do you hope to accomplish with it?” His smile flickered and shut at her dry skepticism. Close to frowning he told her, "I’m going to fashion a wood handle, drive the core through it and wedge the two securely. Reference books commonly refer to it as a ‘celt’.”
"So?” Harriet shrugged.
"The celt was prehistoric man’s equivalent of the modern-day axe,” he went on, and when this data elicited another shrug, "You’re being deliberately indifferent.”
He was right. Yet she couldn’t help herself.
"You weren’t like this on the ship,” he said. "What have I done to deserve this treatment?”
Harriet glanced away. Nothing, she thought, except feed your ego. Val tilted her chin up and gently drew her gaze to his. The sincerity in his questioning eyes would melt the winter snow on the hilltops back home, but dare she believe in it?
CHAPTER TWO
With Val gone again, this time to gather brushwood for a fire, the stream by the clearing invited. For a little while it might be pleasant to forget her problems and revel in the clean sweet water. In her underclothes, in case Val should return undetected, she stepped into the stream. The small rocks and pebbles prodded her feet and she toed them aside, creating tiny swirls of sand and gravel in the knee-high water. She bathed, sifting the sand at the bottom of the stream between her fingers, and catching her own wavering reflection.
She was attractive, tawny-skinned, with pale yellow hair, long and very straight, and eyes the color of midnight. Her mother had mentioned once that her great grandfather wandered to the Orient in his youth and returned with an exotic beauty to grace his home and bed. Harriet had inherited her great grandmother’s eyes.
After cleansing her hair in the sweet water and finger-combing it, parting it in the middle, as was her custom, her bath was complete. She followed by rinsing her slacks and blouse and wringing them tightly, then hanging them to dry on the low branches of a chestnut sapling nearby.
By the time Val reappeared, his arms filled with brushwood, her clothes were damp dry. Hiding behind some bushes she quickly dressed. He may have seen her clothes hanging on the sapling as he re-entered the clearing, or simply guessed from her renewed appearance that she had bathed, because he remarked, "A wonderful idea,” and deposited his load of brushwood on the grass, then began to undress. Harriet decided it was time for her to vanish. She headed upstream, examining the flora growing free and untamed. There were wild irises – whites, pale blues and blue grays, on tall thick stems; and narcissi – yellows and whites, with upright, rush-like leaves. Further up, lavender and thyme spread their fragrance uninhibited. But she had not moved far enough up the stream to avoid hearing Val splashing in the water and singing, more like bellowing.
Further on, the stream fed into a wide basin that was in turn fed by a waterfall at least five storeys high. All around the basin’s perimeter, bushes of wild berries grew in profusion. Harriet gathered as many as would fit into the pockets of her slacks. Circling the bank she came to a point where she could stretch out her hand and feel the fall’s downpour. She scanned the sides of the fall to see if there was a way to climb the rocks and reach the top.
Reminiscent of her tomboyish youth spent in the hills and woodlands of her home State, she began to climb, grabbing on to protruding rocks that felt sturdy enough to support her weight. It was slow progress, risky as she gained altitude, but that very risk intoxicated her. Val had used the term "a Garden of Eden,” to describe the island. When she reached the top, she decided the term was appropriate. In her opinion, Adam and Eve could have had no better. Here nature reigned majestically, her colors and exotic works of art untouched by human progress.
Harriet continued to follow the stream upland, now wider and deeper, until she came to the head of a lush sunken valley. A herd of wild goats grazed on a hillside. A large bird, with a hooked beak and a wingspread the size of a yardstick, soared overhead, circling the spot where Harriet stood. The yellow sun heightened the tawny-gold highlights on its brown plumage. The bird’s black eyes, keen and piercing, detailed the human figure below. Finally, it flew into the clouds that dappled the light blue sky and disappeared.
On impulse she headed west. The ground rose and the vegetation thinned. Eventually there was only gravel and stone. The edge of a cliff loomed near. "Magnificent!” she gasped, contemplating the sheer drop and the sea and the waves churning white foam as they slammed against the cliff’s base.
For a long time she sat on the cliff’s edge in a reflective mood before retracing her steps. She had almost reached the fall when she stopped cold. No one was about, only the wind and the trees and the sun’s light filtering through the branches, and yet.... Harriet shrugged off the sensation of being watched and resumed walking, then stopped again. This time she was certain. She heard its voice, not human, a snarl, high-pitched, jugular and terrifying.
She did not look back, but began to walk again at a steady pace until she reached the top of the waterfall. To whatever was following her, she wished to present a cool, unconcerned exterior, although her heart beat wildly. She descended as quickly as caution would permit. There, she had almost reached the bottom—
"It’s a wonder you’ve survived til now,” a deep voice scolded. Harriet screamed. Her foot slipped and she lost her balance, and fell straight into Val’s outstretched arms. He held her safely longer than necessary, while she fumed and glared at him.
"What am I to do with you?” he asked, his shoulders shaking with laughter.
"You can put me down for a starter,” she said
"I have a better idea,” and he kissed her.
It was precisely at that moment that a menacing snarl sounded above them, riveting their attention.
"My God!” Harriet gasped.
On the western crest of the waterfall a grayish, stout bodied lynx glowered down at them. Val lowered Harriet to her feet slowly. "Go back to the clearing. And for heaven’s sake, don’t run.”
"This is no time for heroics!” Harriet pleaded. Realizing the present danger filled her with concern for Val’s safety. Once again she had placed their lives in jeopardy. Val reassured her, "Believe me, I’ve no intention of confronting that cat. I just want you safely out of here.
Picking up the sound of their voices, the lynx pricked its ears and snarled again, scratching at the ground with heavy paws, t
rying to fathom a way down. Its hind legs by heredity higher than its front ones resulted in the forward incline of the cat’s muscular body giving the impression that it was ready to pounce. Panic registered on Harriet’s upturned face. Val tried to reassure her again. "The rocks and the water, and the excessive height, I don’t think she’ll attempt a jump. I doubt she’s ever seen a human before. Probably wondering whether we are prey or predators.” He prodded her gently, "Go.”
"You’ll be right behind me?”
Val nodded. "Your concern is flattering.” For an instant the cat was forgotten as he sent Harriet a winsome smile. Haltingly, she smiled back, and then turning slowly, she headed for the clearing, keeping her gait unhurried, as though the lynx had no more meaning for her than a bird flying overhead.
Val waited until a bend in the stream hid her from sight, and then quietly, feigning a similar air of indifference, he followed.
Not until evening did Harriet allow herself to relax, while Val busied himself building a fire with the brushwood he’d gathered earlier, and using the method of rubbing two stones together. He talked while he worked, feigning a carefree attitude to the danger, for Harriet’s benefit and his own.
"I suspected all along there had to be some kind of predator living here,” Val chattered. "The amount of small wildlife I observed was controlled. Nature usually accomplishes this control by providing a predator to feed on the excess life; otherwise that life would eventually eat the island into a wasteland and then starve itself into extinction.”
The continued friction between the two stones set off sparks and the brushwood caught fire. Val went on, "In high school and later in college, I did papers on the ecological interrelation of plants, animals and people. They required extensive research, but the insight I gained into nature was well worth the effort.” During their conversations on board the ship, Harriet had learned that Val was twenty-nine. She had thought him older. His voice, his strong features, his intense, speculative eyes gave an impression of added years. She found him broad-minded, down to earth, and interesting, the son of a construction worker who now operated a successful architectural company of his own. She did not know Val well enough to enumerate his faults, other than an average amount of male vanity and stubbornness. "I do hope help comes soon,” she commented anxiously. Val agreed, adding, "This morning I spread branches on the beach in the form of an S.O.S., wide enough to be seen from the air. And I intend building a pyre that we can light in case we sight a ship.”