Darkest Love

by Melody Tweedy

  When the horn bleated again Rain knew something was up. The sound was getting louder—too close for comfort—and the person blowing in that horn was too insistent, too passionate.

  Too war-like.

  “Ann, pack your bags” he said, still staring out at the horizon, waiting for the head of the first warrior to appear, rising over the sand like a vastly premature and dangerously fiery sunset. “We’ll make a run for it.”

  Annie switched off the burner and poured the noodle water into the basin with a sloppy glack. Soon the two of them were filling their suitcases, grabbing socks that had been looped over the windowsill to dry and the toiletries stashed under the rusted mirror. Everything was stuffed into a suitcase and the soiled clothes, which Annie had been preparing to take to the river to wash, were packed hurriedly with plant specimens and sketches in Rain’s carry bag.

  “I’m sorry,” Rain told her, seeing Annie frowning at her sketch of a Sivu bird, crammed too close to Rain’s dirty underpants for comfort. “We need to move, Ann.”

  Another closer blast sounded, as if on cue.

  They were ready to evacuate. Rain grabbed Annie around the waist, seeing the tears forming suddenly in her eyes, and gave his fiancé a squeeze. She had been through so much–first jerked around by him, then planted on Sivu for an impromptu threesome. Granted, it had been her idea, but he should have seen why and nixed it. Not to mention his long-awaited proposal. Now she would have to move quickly to make a hasty escape.

  He only hoped it didn’t end in bloodshed. “Let’s move!”

  * * * *

  Annie’s breath wheezed down her throat and into her lungs. She felt sure that her lungs must be raw. The shock of the influx of dusty Sivu air, blown around by a breeze that was cool for once, was reaching her core.

  “Rain, please. I need to rest.” She wrenched her hand from his and let her backpack drop to the ground. “The helicopter will be here for another half-hour.”

  Rain did not drop any of his cases but stood like a pack mule, with the leather and burlap bags jutting out around his body at all angles, like the arms of Vishnu. All around his neck the straps were cutting red welts into his flesh. Each of them looked like a harsh, fabric choker, vicious as the ones Annie had worn when he pulled her leash and dealt her those kicks in the bum.

  He glared at her. “Annie, something is up. That horn, I’m sure it was the Kaamo war horn. And the way Sola looked at us…” Annie saw his Adam’s apple jump in his throat. “…I’ve never seen her that angry, and I really don’t know what she’s capable of doing about it if she can have innocent babies tossed to their deaths.”

  Annie was still gasping, but with all her might, she grabbed her abandoned bags from the dirt and pulled the straps over her aching shoulders. They pressed on.

  As she watched Rain’s calves moving in front of her, running towards the helicopter landing strip, Annie felt both fearful for her life and guilty about what they had said. Sola would be humiliated to have been badmouthed like that after their threesome. How awful that is for a woman. She knew that better than most, and therefore should have been more thoughtful of Sola’s feelings, even though neither she nor Rain had meant the girl to hear those hateful words.

  Annie couldn’t say if it was universal, but she knew the Kaamo had a keen sense of a woman’s pride, and her vulnerability after sex. In the hours after intercourse a Kaamo man was expected to stand away, to let his lover preen herself, and to bring her gifts like a boar’s horn or a sprig of a budding plant.

  Rain is right. We have really demeaned her.

  The helicopter was in view. Annie could see it over a heathland hill. For a moment she relaxed, and the scientist within came back long enough for her to note some dieback-infestation in the valley.

  Is that fynbos heath? Or bolster heath?

  She was just rolling that thought over in her head when a cry—more sinister and war-like than any she had heard in her life—filled the air. In its raw fury it sounded like the wail of an infant, but unlike an infant’s cry it had a focus: a dangerous sense of purpose.

  “They’ve seen us!” Rain called from ahead of her, still lugging that Vishnu-arm crescent of bags. His calves tensed as he gained speed. “It’s the tribesmen. For God’s sake, Annie… Run!”

  The next few seconds were the most fraught and exhilarating of Annie’s life. The helicopter was ahead, dust whirling around in the currents created by its propeller. Annie tried to focus on the chopper and the jump she would have to do to reach the open door, but she couldn’t resist a final look back.

  Oh, God. She wished she hadn’t done it. Behind them the Kaamo were marching, a whole line of tribesmen oiled to the max and wielding curved weapons constructed from bones and wood. Their chests glittered like a line of rain-drenched, brilliant-brown granite boulders. Their faces were mad–all Annie could make out were the slits of hard mouths and eyes that caught the sun in a dozen different stunning shades of anger. Brown, gold, red, black and amber-flecked irises lined up. Each set of eyes glared: ready to attack; ready to avenge; ready to kill.

  “Annie. Hurry!”

  A small mercy was that the helicopter drone was now drowning out the sound of the terrible horns. Annie focused on the aircraft through the swirling dust.

  Rain jumped through the door first, yelling to the pilot to alight. “Take off! We are in danger.”

  Annie did not see the scuttle of the pilot to his cockpit or the flicker of his fingers on his panels, but she knew it must have happened because the helicopter started to ascend.

  “Annie, jump!”

  Rain was in the doorway, reaching for her, his hair blowing like a mad flag in the wind. The landing bars of the helicopter were a good inch off the ground and Annie still had not thrown her first bag on board.

  “Forget the bags!”

  She heaved a foot in through the door and gasped at the sense of the helicopter’s upward force. She had gotten in just in time to make firm contact.

  The chopper was unsteady. Annie squeaked in fear as she nearly lost her foothold, remembering in her terror Rain’s own near-death experience, when a lost foothold nearly cost him his life.

  She was almost blind from dust, and deafened by the roar of the wind and the departing chopper.

  “Drop your bag!”

  Barely conscious of what she was doing, Annie obeyed. They would joke much later that it was her submissive sex adventure—when she was trained to obey Rain at all costs—that saved her life in that moment. Annie threw her shoulders back and let her bag drop soundlessly to the ground under the roar of the engine.

  A scream ripped from her throat as that move, the throw of her bag off her shoulder, almost cost her tenuous foothold in the doorway. Suddenly and brutally, with a grip she thought would rip her arm from its socket, he grabbed Annie’s arm and pulled his fiancé on board.

  Only through the power of that grab was her life saved.

  As Rain dragged her onto the helicopter floor to fall in his lap on the floor, she howled at the pain searing through the muscle, skin and bone of her arm. Holding her shoulder—it may be dislocated, but she was alive— she ginned up at Rain. “My hero,” she said as the churning blades of the chopper pulled them into the air. Annie started laughing with glee. “We did it, Rain! We made it!”

  “Yeah, Annie. We made it.” His heart still pounding, he grinned down at her, grateful he hadn’t lost her.

  As if in protest of their arrogance, a spear shot through the open door and lodged itself in the back of the front passenger seat in front of them. Annie screamed so loudly her raw throat felt like it was shooting fire. Whether it was the vibrations of the engine or her scream in conjunction with gravity, the spear lost its grip and fell noiselessly to the floor and then slid out the door, leaving decorative feather-like lint in its wake.

  Rain leaped forward and grabbed hold of the steel sliding door. As he pulled it closed with a single heave, he shut off her view of the glorious tropical foliage flyi
ng by beneath the belly of the helicopter, but Annie didn’t mind. She had every muscle in her man’s gym-ripped body to watch as the door whoosh shut with a locking click.

  It was all over.

  And then Annie realized she was crying. Rain sat down again on the floor and gathered her back into his arms. “Shh. Annie, it’s okay,” he crooned, setting a hand at the back of her head and stroking.

  She buried her face in his chest. His heart was like a synth beat, beating fast and furiously in his tensed body.

  “Ann...I saw Sola.”

  Annie sobbed into his shirt. She did not want to think about that woman.

  “I saw her, in her seat behind the warriors. She was ordering everything—pointing and chanting and hollering some kind of incantation. Her face was streaked with red. My God, she look pissed. Oh, babe. We’ve really made ourselves a royal bitch of an enemy.”

  Annie did not want to hear it. She wailed.

  Why was it the moment she had any power, some kind of disaster befell her? Rain had just started to consider Annie’s feelings, to honor her jealousy–and it brought the fury of the Kaamo down on their heads!

  Oh, it’s not my fault. It was he that took it too far: comparing Sola to a pig. I didn’t ask him to grind Sola into the dirt with his boot. That was his decision…but I didn’t have to agree with him at every turn of the phrase!

  Annie wailed. When would her stubborn, extremist fiancé learn? And when would she learn to have a voice of her own, instead of mimicking Rain’s every word.

  Annie would have slapped him for starting this whole thing if he wasn’t tenderly stroking her hair and shushing her into a cozy blob. She gripped him for dear life, finally safe in the arms of her man, with both of them cocooned in the safety of the helicopter taking them away from Sivu forever. With that swoosh of the door everything had transformed. All the noise and the fearful visuals had been banished.

  It was just the two of them–safe and quiet. And then Annie remembered… “My bag!” She looked up at Rain as if she’d left behind something as necessary to her as her next breath.

  “Honey, it’s just clothes and toiletries. Unlike you, all those things can be replaced.

  “Rain. My bag had my grandmother’s necklace in it.”

  The thought seemed so urgent she pulled away, making grim eye contact.

  Rain stared back, eyes so alive they pulled Annie into the depths of their irises. She had never seen their blue look like this before. Rain’s eyes shimmered. Hundreds of different thoughts and emotions burned in there.

  “Your grandmother’s necklace? The one we lost to the Kaamo once before?”

  “Yes.” Annie bit her lip.

  “The one you needed because it’s a symbol of your protector?”

  “Yes!” Annie didn’t really know where this question-and-answer thing was going.

  Rain made a move to grab onto her arms, but a flicker of thought passed over his face, and he took hold of her around the waist instead. And then he stared into her eyes. With a tenderness that almost choked her, he lowered his head and brushed his lips over her shoulder. Annie almost keeled over, the gesture was so sweet and tender.

  She had almost forgotten about her shoulder. In fact, now that she thought about it, the pain had lessened, meaning it probably wasn’t dislocated but a mere strain. And here was Rain—insensitive jerk Rain Mistern—cared enough not to grab her there, where it hurt.

  “You don’t need that necklace anymore, Annie. No more symbols. Symbols are for people who don’t have the real thing.”

  He wrapped her in his arms, holding her head to his chest so she could hear his beating heart. Annie broke out in more tears, but these…these were different. Engulfed in his warm, hard, sweetly-sweaty body, she had never felt so cared for, had never felt so wrapped and engulfed in something that was so real.

  It was not abstract. Not psychoanalytical, or culturally relative. And it was definitely not up for peer review.

  It was totally real.

  Chapter 24

  “To the happy couple.” Rain’s mother raised her glass and smiled her tight smile as the here, here went up all around the wedding table.

  Annie’s eyes were full of tears. All eyes were on her. She had never felt so gorgeous or so gazed upon; it seemed like every postgraduate member of every anthropology faculty in the country had shown up for the wedding of Annie Childs and Rain Mistern.

  Not even the curt speech of Rain’s very stiff mother could ruin it for Annie: this was her day. The two-hundred tables at Guastavino’s were covered with flowers in soft cream, coral and pastel orange–colors she had chosen because they were miles from the garish green of her tattoo.

  Annie’s wedding dress was her dream design: a satin skirt arranged in folds, like the spread wings of a dozen swans. Her seamstress was a magician; she had done it with just a few nips of the fabric in the right places. The bodice above Annie’s corseted waist was covered in smatterings of lace, beginning at the bust and growing denser on the Grace Kelly-style high-neck and long sleeves. The sleeves had a few purposes: not only did they evoke the screen goddesses of old—Grace was my inspiration—Annie had asserted to Lily. Not Kate Middleton. They covered both the dreadful tattoo and the bruise still healing on Annie’s shoulder and arm.

  Chandeliers hung from the ceilling, vines with new spring buds twirled around the iconic pillars, and the faces of all her colleagues and former haters were beaming like a hundred extra mirrors and bulbs. If there was any vestigial scorn behind those eyes it was well-hidden and in some cases, was probably drowned under pure green envy.

  Eat your words, haters. The phrase did pop into Annie’s head but she was too giddy and blissed out to dwell on it. At her side, Rain was beaming just as brightly. He had never looked more handsome than right now, with his hair cut into a floppy new crop and his suit snug around his fit body. Annie had watched his look take shape as he ducked out to the tailor on relaxed breakfast mornings; they’d enjoyed many of those in the lead-up to the wedding.

  Annie liked the new self-employed, independent-academic Rain Mistern very much. Sex in the morning, naked breakfasts, peace and quiet when he retired to the study to work on a new bestseller: what more could a girl really ask for?

  Rain’s rock-hard bicep, ripped harder than ever after all those adventures in Sivu, bulged under his sleeve when he raised his own glass. “To my wife, who always had her head together and who stood by me…” He choked up. “…while I got myself together.”

  Oh, God. A big fat tear gathered like an ocean swell in Annie’s eyes, blinding her.

  “Awww.” A great coo rose up from the crowd, and then a laugh that Annie had to join in with, there was so much warmth in the sound. Boy, how differently your colleagues treated you when you were no longer seen as a lapdog for a man. Annie smiled down at the tear that had fallen onto her wedding dress, silently thanking her makeup artist for insisting she wear waterproof mascara.

  “Thank you, too, everyone,” she said into the microphone. “I have always stood by Rain. But what people don’t know…” She tossed her head. “…is that he has always stood by me. It was hard keeping our love secret for all those years, but we thought it was better to keep people guessing…” She grinned at her new husband. “…than to confirm we were having an office romance.”

  A titter went up all around. Rain squeezed her hand. They had agreed on that line before the wedding, and Annie hoped it hadn’t come out sounding uppity, or like they had something to hide.

  Annie left the microphone podium and let Lily adjust her train. “Well done, Ann,” the other woman whispered, looking pretty in her coral-colored bridesmaid dress. “You deserve this.”

  The women hugged, and then Lily stepped away, letting the bride chatter and smile with all the people shooting comments from around the table. She struggled to remember names. Rain had insisted on inviting a Titanic-load of mutual acquaintances, even people Annie could swear she had never met.

  The
only person not there was Mandy Paulson, who had reportedly scoffed when she heard about the wedding. She refused to believe it could possibly be happening, and when an invitation showed up in the mail, she politely declined. Then, by all accounts, she had retired to her bedroom for a solid weekend of Netflix, wine and crying.

  Annie felt twice as queenly as Sola ever would. A line formed at the wedding party table and Rain and Annie took turns receiving congratulations, pecking the cheeks of great aunts and research students and professors and school friends alike. Anne didn’t bother to keep an eye on Rain’s body language. He was still permitted to flirt with women in their open arrangement but Annie trusted he would have enough class not to do so at the nuptials.

  It appeared to be so. Every time she glanced over, Rain’s kisses looked discreet and his hands were on the recipient’s arms, not hovering near a waist or a hip or a bust. There were grips, not caresses. Words, not nightclub-style one-liners. Embraces, not gropes. And short little bursts of non-leering eye contact.

  The only uncomfortable moment came late, as Kathy Mistern gave her new daughter-in-law a peck on the cheek.

  “I can’t believe Rain fit into his suit in the end. Those tropical adventures put a new milk-crate of muscle on my boy. He probably had some scuffles with those tribesmen while he was dilly-dallying with that princess.”

  Annie closed her eyes, trying to force a laugh. How like Mrs. Mistern to mention the princess sex rumors at Annie’s wedding. “I agree he’s put on some kilos, Mrs. Mistern. And I wouldn’t say the fit is too tight. A snug fit is fashionable now.”

  She kept it short. Rain had warned Annie about his mother.

  Kathy Mistern regarded Annie with a cold eye. Her icy gaze shot up and down Annie’s dress with zero wedding warmth. It was more like she was searching her daughter-in-law’s outfit and bearing, looking for mistakes. Annie felt a chill in her blood.

  In time–hopefully–Kathy would warm up to her.

  Annie tried to grin, but her heart sank at the sight of the woman’s skeptical, almost sneering face. She knew what was behind that: Rain had probably told his mother some of the details of their time together. About all the years when Annie had chased him, the years when he wasn’t interested.