Only now, it appeared as if he were the sacrifice. Sophie gaped at the sight of him. His skin bubbled and his clothes and hair were aflame. Where his mouth should be there was now only a giant hole, growing larger by the second as the surface of his face seemed to melt and run. Then, with a loud popping noise, both of his eyes burst.
Sophie screamed. As the formerly robust figure of the Chief collapsed before her in a pile of burning and stinking flesh, Kai began to tumble to the earth. Before she was even aware of acting, she flung herself forward and grabbed him just before he struck the ground. But she couldn’t look upon him, not his face. She was too terrified of what she might witness. He burned hot, but strangely, not enough to burn her. It was the same with the lantern, still clenched tightly in her left hand.
A loud shriek filled the air and before her, the frail form of Noni burst across her vision. Her robes were nearly gone, hanging from her body in singed tatters. Sophie looked on in dread fascination as the woman, who earlier that morning had been her savior, now collapsed in the sand only feet in front of her. The old woman’s shriek died out in a soft whistle. Her skin blackened and shriveled until the skin of her stomach yawned open to reveal the red and purple of her organs, which bubbled and boiled in a grotesque stew.
Screams of terror carried out over the rushing wind and penetrated Sophie’s dulled mind. As she pulled her attention from the burning witch to the village beyond, she witnessed utter chaos. The bonfire had exploded. Flaming arms snaked around from the lantern in every direction, whipping out at the fleeing forms of the villagers. Everywhere she looked she saw people running and slapping frantically at hair and clothes that were alive with fire.
Strong arms grabbed her from behind and instinctively she jerked forward to shield Kai from an attack, but it was only Thomas, who seemed to be trying to shield her instead.
It’s OK, she wanted to yell at him. We’re safe. We’re family.
But she couldn’t get the words out. The air was scorching hot and the breath seemed to be sucked from her lungs the moment her mouth opened.
Then she was being lifted, her and Kai both, and she felt as if she were floating across the ground. Staring up at the sky, she watched the clouds drift by and the green, stretching limbs of the palm trees pass overhead.
So beautiful, she thought, before closing her eyes and letting oblivion take her.
6
Sophie looked up from the scratchings on her notebook to check on Kai, who was amid a group of eight other children off to the side of the playground. He was easy to see; his head stood out clearly over the others. For a moment, an irrational fear clouded her mind and she envisioned the kids as bullies, surrounding her son like a posse out for blood. Then the moment passed, and she realized that they weren’t so much surrounding him as they were gathered around him. Kai was talking animatedly, gesturing with both hands, while the others all stood in rapt attention.
It’s like he’s preaching to his congregation, she thought with a shake of her head. Then she returned to her writing.
Before she even picked back up on her previous train of thought, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out to see a text from her brother, Thomas.
“Stopped by the house for a visit,” he wrote. “Where are you? Want company?”
She smiled. Thomas never wrote in text shorthand like everybody else seemed to do, including herself. He thought it was lazy. He was convinced that when Kai had kids, everybody would be permanent couch potatoes, plugged into their computers, and never leaving the house. One step up the evolutionary ladder from slugs, as he put it.
“Gleneden Park by moose cold bring java.” She typed out the quick reply and hit send. Then smiled again a moment later at his response.
“Me understand me do see soon.”
Smartass.
Thomas was the best brother a girl could hope for. He’d always been there for her, both as a girl growing up, and later, as a woman, when he’d nearly lost his life for her by fighting the God that had stolen her baby boy.
Then, when she’d packed up and moved to the other side of Washington to be closer to where Jacob had lived, he’d sold his home and followed along, without question. He didn’t have a job to give up, not having worked since selling their construction company, but it was still a sacrifice. He’d never let her be on her own, he’d said, and she’d been pleased by the sentiment and the fact that he didn’t demand an explanation. In truth, she was sure he understood. Jacob was dead, his bones left behind on Vaqava in some dark cave. This was the closest connection she could have with him now, being in his hometown.
She blew a hot breath into her cupped hands and pulled her jacket just a little bit tighter around her neck. Relocating to the east side of the state was an adjustment. The sun made its presence known more often than it had near Vancouver, and there wasn’t the constant grey and drizzle, but the cold could be cruel, and the winters were long. Even now, in early May, the winter season seemed to bite at her. The temperature could be pleasantly warm during the peak of day, but the mornings were crisp, and the evenings cooled off fast.
Kai didn’t seem to mind, though. Once again, he’d left his coat behind. He never seemed to need it. She thought briefly about calling out to him, telling him in front of all his friends to come put the thing on, that surely he’d catch his death if he didn’t, but she knew it would only embarrass him and he wouldn’t keep it on anyway.
Giving her hands one more hot breath to thaw the stiffness in her fingers, she set about her writing again. It went well, and she had a whole two pages scribbled out before Thomas startled her by plopping down at her side, as if from nowhere.
“Still at it, huh sis? That’s good. Here’s your coffee, one of those caramel and chocolate things that you like so much.” Thomas liked his coffee black. Black coffee tended to wrinkle Sophie’s nose. He looked out over the playground and located his nephew. “I didn’t realize how big he is until I see him with the other kids. You really feel the need to watch over him? He’s a monster, and he’s ten. We were out on our own doing stuff before then.”
Sophie shrugged. “I like to sit out and write,” she said simply. What she didn’t say was how paranoid she was of something bad happening.
“How much of that book do you have written?”
She held the hot coffee in both hands, relishing the heat that spread from it. “Guess I got about two hundred pages, so far.”
“Damn, Sophie. That’s like an actual book.” He seemed genuinely surprised, but she wasn’t insulted. She never imagined that the journal of her ordeal would turn into so much more. “I see Kai is with his flock again.”
She looked back over to her son, who was still surrounded by kids, only now there were ten that she could count. He wasn’t speaking to the ‘flock’, though. His attention was directed toward another boy, who seemed to prefer playing on his own instead of joining the group. The rest just stood and watched the interaction.
“Just wants everybody to be included, I guess.”
“Huh.” Thomas stared out at the kids, watching with his brow furrowed like he was trying to solve a calculus problem. Then he relaxed and shrugged his shoulders and took a drink of his coffee.
“You’ve still got your winter fur, I see. I thought you might clean yourself up with the spring. You’re going to start looking like a real mountain man if you don’t do something about it soon.”
Thomas ran a hand through his black beard, peppered with grey, and rubbed at his jaw. The sound of the coarse hair scratching along his rough palm made a whispery sound that Sophie somehow found calming.
“It covers the scar,” he said simply.
The scar. She should have known and been thankful for the beard. Every time she’d seen that scar she felt herself plunged into a deep ocean of guilt. He’d nearly died from the wound that had left it, and he’d received the wound fighting for her.
She bit at her lip and looked away quickly before he could register the gliste
ning of her eyes. It must have been a moment too late.
“Aw, sis. Don’t do that. It’s not so bad, I’m just being vain. Honestly, it goes with the look, anyway. I’m a biker outlaw now. Gotta keep up appearances.”
True to his word, Thomas had purchased a Harley Davidson motorcycle not long after they’d returned stateside from Fiji. Sophie thought it was beautiful, if a bit obnoxious, with the guttural roar it made that always made her look around in embarrassment.
“Well, your appearances seem to be working. There’s been a few girls on the back of that thing. None that seem to have stuck around though.”
Her eyebrows were raised in an all-knowing expression that reminded Thomas of their mother.
“A bike’s gotta have an old lady on the back. That’s just the way it works. Keeping them around doesn’t seem to work for me, though. Maybe I’ll get myself a kutte and put Lone Wolf on the back, right over the picture of a wolf carrying a bloody badge in its fangs. What do you think? Badass?”
Sophie turned her raised eyebrows toward him again. “Jackass is more like it! Uncle Tommy needs to be setting a good example for his young nephew. Don’t you forget that.”
“Oh, I’ll teach the kid to enjoy himself, alright. Just wait until . . .”
“JUST GET AWAY FROM ME!!”
The yell was shrill and came from the playground. Sophie and Thomas were immediately up and running over to see what was happening. As she ran, Sophie noticed the boy from earlier, the outsider whom Kai had been speaking to, trotting away through the swings and monkey bars and across the street. The look on his face as he kept shooting glances back over his shoulder was of a frightened child.
“Kai, what happened? Were you fighting with that boy?”
“Aw, geez mom, not everything is so dramatic. I was just inviting him to join the rest of us. Must be something wrong with that kid, like a mental deformity or something. Hey uncle Tommy.”
“Hey kiddo. Sure everything’s OK?”
“You bet. I’m sure we’ll be seeing him again. Maybe he’ll change his mind next time.
Behind him, Sophie could see the other ten children all bobbing their heads up and down in agreement. In her head, she couldn’t help but picture them as a line of ducklings trailing along after their mother.
“Well,” she said, “I think that’s enough excitement for one day. Say goodbye to your crew and let’s go get cleaned up and figure out some dinner.”
Kai looked back at his friends and gave a single nod in farewell. The ducklings all mimicked his gesture, ten small heads moving up and down, just once, in perfect unison.
Creepy little weirdos, she thought.
7
Over the next few days, Sophie tried her best to keep to her writing and routine. She woke at her normal time of 6:30am, no alarm clock necessary. This would be followed by a vigorous kettlebell routine that would leave her feeling thoroughly exhausted but satisfied and able to relax. Then it would be a hot shower, followed by breakfast and French-pressed coffee, at which point Kai would join her. He never failed to be drawn to the kitchen when the smell of food wafted through the house. The boy had a voracious appetite. Once the food was gone and the dishes cleaned up, she would move to the writing desk she had placed in the study that was attached to her large master suite and Kai would be off to school.
This morning had gone no differently, only today the writing wouldn’t come to her. She kept finding herself staring blankly out the window and losing track of time. Normally, the scenes of her time on the island with Jacob, and the resulting conflict with the dark God, Daucina, would play incessantly through her head, and getting it all out on paper, in agonizing detail, came easily. But now she sat in frustrated silence, pencil hovering uselessly over a blank, white sheet of paper.
It was no use. Something was bothering her, blocking her progress, and keeping her mind in a constant state of unease. Focus wasn’t going to come to her until she addressed it.
With a sigh of frustration, she stood from her desk and dropped the pencil. Walking down the hallway from her bedroom, she slipped quietly into the large kitchen area and watched Kai, who seemed to be hard at work. For a moment, she hesitated at approaching him, feeling guilty at the idea of interrupting during his study time, but this needed to be done. Her mind wouldn’t rest until it was.
“You’re hovering, mom.”
“Aren’t you the perceptive one. Did you hear me?”
“I can feel you back there, is all.”
She paused, caught herself chewing on her bottom lip, and stopped before grabbing a chair from the dining table and sliding it up beside him.
“Listen Kai, it’s probably nothing, but mothers worry. It’s our job and I’ve been doing my job a lot this morning.” He was still staring at his computer screen, but seemed to be listening, so she pushed forward. “I want to know what happened the other day at the park. I want to know what you talk to those other kids about, and what happened with the other boy. The one who got upset and ran home.”
Kai’s attention remained on the computer screen, his expression unchanged, and she waited patiently for his response. After a few moments, he looked at her, those black eyes holding her captive in that magical way that they so often did. Sometimes she wished those eyes had remained the cobalt blue of a newborn. The thought was always succeeded by a twinge of guilt, yet the wish remained.
“You want to know what we talk about? You want the details of our conversations? That’s silly, mom. We could be talking about overthrowing the grown-ups and taking control, but all I would have to say is that it’s just stuff about video games and music and you wouldn’t know any different.” He watched as her face tightened up as he spoke until it looked as though she were going to have a brain aneurysm, then added, “Sorry mom, just seemed like a weird question, that’s all.”
“It’s not weird, or paranoid, or pointless, Kai. It’s only pointless if I don’t trust you to be honest with me. Are you saying I have to worry about whether you’re telling the truth?”
“There’s no reason for you to worry about anything, mom. And I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. All we talk about is video games, mostly.”
He gave her a smile that she couldn’t read into. It could have been sarcastic, or it could have been a harmless joke. Despite their ten years together, with a close relationship, she was still challenged to really understand her son. In many ways, he was near perfect, but there were times he could be just a bit unsettling.
“And what of the boy? The one that didn’t want to be part of your group?” For just a moment, Sophie could see a darkness flit across his face, as if a storm cloud had passed over, but it was gone as quickly as it came.
“I was nice to him. I smiled and everything. I told him he should join us, that it was better to be with us then to be an outsider. He should have listened. It would have been better that way.”
“An outsider, Kai? Why would you call him that?”
“Well,” he said, taking on a slightly condescending tone, “if he wasn’t going to be part of the group, then he’d be outside the group.” He shrugged and faced his computer again, as if that settled things, but then added something that she could have done without. “It’s like those nature shows teach us. The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.”
“Kai, next time you see that boy, I expect you to go to him and apologize. Just you. Not your friends. I don’t want none of this “with us or against us” attitude, do you understand?”
He turned those black eyes to her again and stared, just long enough to make her feel slightly uncomfortable.
“Sure thing, mom. Whatever you need. I’ll apologize. If I see him again.” With that, his attention went back to his studies and the conversation was over.
Sophie drifted back toward her study to see if the talk would help and allow her to concentrate on her work. Her mind was so engrossed in trying to decipher some of Kai’s odd responses that she was at her desk without even realizing
it.
There wouldn’t be any progress today, that much was obvious. Instead, she stared out over the long asphalt driveway winding through the parklike setting of her front yard and watched the squirrels playing in the tall pines.
“Did you see the news?” Thomas’s baritone voice lost none of its resonance coming through the cellular phone.
“I hate watching the news, you know that. It’s not reporting these days, it’s all sensationalist crap designed to generate viewership and ratings.”
“Can’t argue that, sis. It got my viewership this morning, though. Have you and Kai been back to the park in the last couple of days?”
“No. I figured we’d give the park a rest and Kai hasn’t asked to go. Why?”
“Actually, hold off on the why, for now. It’s an interesting story and I’d like to go over it with both of you together. What’s cooking tonight?”
“Fish stew in coconut cream. Kai’s favorite. There’ll be plenty if you’re here by six-thirty.”
Thomas agreed and hung up. Sophie looked at the clock. She had an hour before dinner and decided she’d get started. Luckily, she’d got her hands on some good marlin, also Kai’s favorite, and busied herself with food preparation. She allowed herself one glass of Pinot Noir while she worked and sang as she did it. Before she knew it, the sonorous rumble of her brother’s motorcycle impaled her senses and was soon followed by a brief knock at the door. He let himself in and strode into the kitchen, taking in a deep inhalation and giving her a quick hug.
“Smells great! Where’s the little prince at?”
“He’s been outside for the last couple of hours, roaming the property.”
“That kid likes to walk, it’s unnatural. Most kids stick to video games.”
“He likes those too, sometimes. But he loves nature and being outside. It’s a blessing. So, what’s this news you’re being so mysterious about?”
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