Third Wave: Bones of Eden

by Zaide Bishop

  Xícara looked down at her, gaze raw with relief.

  “Tango.”

  She spat salt water and sat up enough to see Sugar and Charlie in the other boat, equally relieved.

  “Are you okay?” Charlie called.

  Tango grinned. “If you are, I am.”

  * * *

  Whiskey had been in pain since the day before. All through the night the contractions came, and her yowls of pain had kept everyone awake. Tare and Bravo had paddled west to the Elikai village to tell them the babies were coming, and the entire Elikai tribe had followed them back. For the first time since the summer storms, the two tribes sat together and ate together, waiting.

  India did her best. She had learned a little about birthing over the years, watching the dogs and chickens. When the dogs whelped, it only took one night. Those dogs who strained for hours without producing any pups tended to lose the litter and sometimes die themselves. It didn’t help that Whiskey knew that better than anyone. India’s comforting words held little weight. But she tried, over and over, to tell her sister she and the babies would be well.

  Fox was nearly hysterical, pacing back and forth outside the tent. Tare tried to distract him, but it was no good. He was terrified, and his fear was making him aggressive.

  Whiskey was propped up on piles of furs, naked and sweating. India mopped her face with cloth and offered her sips of water and coconut milk.

  “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “No.” India tried and failed to sound confident.

  She gave a groan that sounded more irritated than afraid. “It’s been too long. I’m so tired. Death won’t be so bad if I can sleep.”

  “Don’t say that. We need you. We need your babies to survive. If you die, no one else will try.”

  “Trust me, they don’t want to. Is Charlie—” She grimaced in pain, trying to keep it in, but then gave another howl of pain despite herself.

  “No sign of them, but they will be back soon.”

  Whiskey screamed again, sweat beading on her skin, muscles trembling. India checked between her thighs again and saw a mass, a distortion of the flesh.

  “I think a pup is coming.” She tried to control her excitement. “I think I see one.”

  She spoke a little too loud, and her words were taken up outside the tent, the voices spreading and people rousing.

  “India?” Tare asked from outside.

  “Keep everyone back, please.”

  Whiskey strained again. There was definitely something there, webbed with blood and membranes. A bluish dome was pressing its way into the world.

  “Almost, Whiskey, almost,” India said, but she was drowned out by Whiskey’s roaring cry.

  The dome had a face. It was a head! India caught it and then a shriveled purple body followed in a rush of blood and fluid. A thick cord was attached to its belly button.

  “It’s purple,” India told Whiskey.

  With a grimace of pain, Whiskey sat up further, eyeing her offspring with a frown. She held out her hands, and India placed the baby in her hands. Whiskey pulled it closer, picking off the bloody remnants of its cocoon.

  “It’s a Varekai,” she said. India had not even thought to check. Whiskey leaned over and bit through the rubbery cord, which splattered blood on her lips and cheek. She spat, then tucked the infant against her chest.

  It was gasping, eyes closed, breathing more like a fish. India wasn’t sure if that was right.

  “Tare?” she asked.

  “Yes?” He was right outside.

  “Is Fox there?”

  “Right here.”

  “Let him in.”

  The flap parted, and Fox slithered in on all fours. For a moment, the sunlight outside was blinding, and Fox had to blink a few times to adjust to the dim interior of the tent. His first expression was one of horror, but then his focus fell on the baby.

  “Just one?” he asked, confused. “It’s big.”

  “She’s big,” Whiskey corrected absently.

  “I don’t think it’s breathing right,” India admitted quietly.

  Fox shuffled up to Whiskey’s side to look closer. He seemed hesitant to touch her or the baby. It was starting to look a little gray. Fox studied her, then leaned over and blew on his daughter’s face.

  She hiccupped, coughed and began to scream.

  “Well, she’s breathing now,” India said over the rising siren.

  Inside her mouth, the little Varekai’s skin was pink. Her gums were bare, but she had a tiny tongue, like a proper person. She seemed to have most of the right parts, actually. Eight fingers, two thumbs, ten toes. They were all stubby and in miniature, and her head was enormous, but perhaps she would grow into more natural proportions.

  A baby. Just one, but much bigger than a puppy.

  “Now how do you make her stop?” Whiskey demanded over the screaming, outright crankily now.

  “Feed her?” Fox suggested. “Pups always suckle right away.”

  “Can’t you do it? I’m exhausted.”

  Fox looked down at his own chest. “I have my doubts, Whiskey.”

  “You can’t sleep anyway,” India said. “You still have to pass the placenta.”

  “This is terrible,” Whiskey muttered, trying to convince her squalling and now red offspring to take the teat. “I’m never doing this again.”

  * * *

  The returning explorers paddled out into the channel, angling across it as best they could, aiming for the shallow places between the distant islands where they could escape the current. Home. Soon they would be home.

  Charlie paddled with Sugar, not nearly as useless as they all expected her to be. For a long time, it was just sun, the birds, the sea and the salt. Xícara and Tango had pulled ahead, and their voices carried over the water, affectionate murmurs and laughter. For them, the fear had passed. Charlie still felt the weight of unhappiness. She was coming back with more pain than she left with.

  “I should have listened to you,” Sugar said softly. “About the pigs.”

  She paused, surprised. “Yes.”

  “I should have come and talked to you sooner.”

  “You came to the mainland. I think that counts for something. You came to protect your child.” She wondered if she should apologize again. Beg him to understand why she had done it.

  “I came to protect you.”

  She twisted to stare at him. He looked sad and sort of angry, his gaze on the islands as if he still couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  Her. Not the baby. “I appreciate it. Sort of. I mean, you’re kind of an ass.”

  That drew his gaze. He arched an eyebrow. “I didn’t leave you to starve to death.”

  “Neither did I, in the end.”

  They studied one another, and she held out her hand. Hesitantly, he offered her his, and she pressed it to her belly. His eyes widened as he felt the movement. Their child. The life they had made.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I don’t have any regrets, but I am sorry. I had to make a choice, and I chose the babies. I have to admit, if I had known we would only have one each, I might have acted differently. But when there was going to be a litter of them, ten, twenty... It made more sense.”

  He flinched, pulling his hand away. “How can the Varekai be so pragmatic? How can you sacrifice your hearts for logic?”

  “Maybe you have to be like that. To give birth. Maybe you have to be able to make the hard sacrifices. Maybe it’s an Elikai’s job to protect his family and it’s hard-coded into you.”

  “I would die for you,” he insisted.

  “And I you. But not at the cost of my children. Not at the cost of the future of tribes. Maybe when the baby is born, you’ll understand. But I can feel h
er inside me. Her life. Her movement. I know she is waiting to breathe. Waiting to run.”

  He scowled and touched her belly again. “I’m trying to forgive you.”

  She leaned forward, toward him. All she wanted was to be closer to him. “Try harder. It’s time for the tribes to come together. It’s time to be one people.”

  “I can’t forgive you that easily.”

  “Then don’t. We don’t have to be together, you and I, but we have to lead together. You have to do that much. For your brothers and my sisters. Anything else is selfish.”

  He sighed, tilting his head back. “Yes. I know. Okay, one tribe, two leaders.”

  She nodded. “And when you are ready, I’ll be waiting for you.”

  * * *

  The Kai had reacted to the return of the canoes with raw joy, and Charlie, Sugar, Tango and Xícara had looked on the squalling pink monstrosity Whiskey had birthed with a kind of awe. They had not returned with the books; those had been lost in the pig attack, and they took turns telling the story from start to finish. Every sad, painful detail.

  Charlie announced the tribes were now one, and they gathered together and sang, danced, mourned and bonded. Tare was relieved. It had taken over a year, a year since he had stolen the canoes. He had not always been sure they would reach this point, and sometimes the path had seemed too perilous for them to continue. Yet finally, here they were. Where he’d wanted to be since the day he realized he couldn’t live without seeing India again.

  As darkness stole in, India had taken Tare’s hand, and they slipped away from the campfires and the smell of cooking. On the beach the world was silver and black. The fat moon illuminated the waves and sand, sparkling away across the water. They walked along the damp sand, the retreating tide slipping farther and farther away.

  “One tribe,” she said softly. In the near dark, she was glittering eyes and chips of bone and shell. “This is what you started, Tare.”

  He gave a rueful grin. “I think it was more you than me. With the eggs, the ideas. But now we have that tiny little red Varekai and another one on the way. I suspect Sugar will probably make his way back to the mainland soon. To recover the books. I’ll go with him, if I can. If a dozen of us go, we’ll have no problems with pigs. Smart or not.”

  “We’ll need somewhere safe and dry we can store them first,” India said. “Houses. A new village.”

  He nodded. “Everything’s going to be okay now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, finally we—” She stopped dead.

  He frowned as her hand tugged him to a standstill. “What is it?”

  She crouched down, shuffling a few feet forward on the damp sand. “Look.”

  He crouched down too, and there in front of him on the sand were Kai footprints. He looked back at his and India’s prints, trailing them up the beach. They were the only ones, side by side through the freshly exposed sand.

  These unfamiliar footprints were smaller than his, and a little larger than India’s.

  They were coming straight out of the surf, leading away from the ocean into the black line of the trees.

  Someone had emerged from the sea. A stranger had arrived on the islands.

  PART SIX:

  THE OTHERS

  Chapter One

  “Footprints. Are you sure they were Varekai?” Charlie asked. She stood with India, Tare and Sugar on the easternmost beach, looking down at...nothing.

  It was shortly after dawn, and Charlie was too sleep-deprived to deal with this. She had spent the entire night before on the mainland, reading in the libraries of Eden, and on her first night back home, the joy of discovering Whiskey had given birth to a healthy baby girl had quickly turned sour when the little monstrosity screamed all night. Now, instead of curling up in the sun to sleep, she was investigating a rumor of footprints.

  More than anything, she wanted to believe Tare and India were hallucinating these mysterious tracks, but they were adamant, and it was hard to dismiss two eyewitness accounts. But now the tide had washed away the evidence, and the four of them stood on the wet sand, salt water rushing around their ankles, leaving seaweed tangled around their toes.

  India nodded. “They led out of the surf and into the trees. Someone walked out of the ocean. A Varekai.”

  Sugar yawned and ran his fingers back through his hair. “Unless they’re deaf and an anosmic, they know where we are. They chose to avoid us.”

  India frowned. “Or they’re watching us. If Whiskey still had her dogs...”

  “Dog and Zebra almost got killed trying to catch those monsters,” Tare said. “If they won’t respond to Whiskey anymore, the rest of us have no hope. Besides, Whiskey’s rather busy.”

  As if on cue, a distant air-raid siren wail came from the Varekai village. Charlie groaned, putting her hand on her swelling belly.

  “Having two of those things is not going to make life easier.”

  “What do you want to do about the footprints?” Sugar asked her. At least he was talking to her now. Though Charlie had hoped he would come to her during the long, sleepless night. She had intentionally remained alone, so that if he came to find her they could be together in privacy. It seemed she had been much too optimistic about how far his forgiveness extended. Not that her crime had been an easy one to forgive. To protect her sisters and her unborn child, she had been willing to let Sugar and his brothers starve. Her decision had been a hard blow to the two tribes’ tentative alliance, and almost all the residual feelings of hostility had landed on Charlie.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. We warn everyone to keep an eye out. I’m not going to waste time and energy looking for a stranger when we’re short on food. There are gardens to plant, and you want to plan an entire village halfway up a mountain.”

  “Not to mention,” Tare added, “everyone is really irritable and tired.”

  “I’ll tell them not to go anywhere alone and to be extra alert,” India said. She started to stroll away up the beach, the bones and shells woven into her thick black hair rattling as she walked, back toward the path that would take her to the Varekai village. She stopped, turning toward the ocean. Her dark eyes narrowed.

  “What is it?” Tare asked, stepping quickly, protectively, to her side.

  “I heard something.”

  Charlie turned to follow India’s gaze. The ocean was calm. Nearly a half a mile from the shore, the reef took the brunt of the ocean’s surge. It was invisible below the surface, but it was clearly marked with the shells of ships and smaller craft that had drifted aimlessly across the ocean, abandoned and dead.

  There was a new one, only partly visible behind a longer vessel. The new ship seemed dwarfed by the rusting shipping freighter it had crashed into, and Charlie could only see the prow. It was about forty feet long, and she could even see tattered white sails snapping in the morning breeze.

  A bright red light spiraled into the sky, followed by a distant pop. Charlie watched it to its apex, then glanced at her three companions, baffled.

  “What was that?”

  “A flare,” Sugar said. “Someone is on that boat.”

  “What’s a flare?” Tare asked.

  “It’s like a gun, but it shoots up a light, like that one. It’s supposed to be a signal if you’re in distress.”

  Tare snorted. “Well, considering how many crocodiles there are on the reef, I’d be pretty distressed too.”

  “They must not have any canoes,” India said. “Now their boat is stuck. What do you want to do, Charlie?”

  Charlie met Sugar’s gaze, and he nodded slightly.

  “I guess we better go and rescue them,” Charlie said.

  * * *

  Whiskey listened as Charlie and Sugar explained what Tare and India had found and seen. The footprints, the flare, the supposed survivors on
the boat. At her breast, her pink daughter suckled. She was tired and faintly underwhelmed by her offspring. All that pain, all that bleeding, all those months of staggering around like she had a fatal tumor, and this was all she had produced? She had expected to repopulate the islands. It was going to take a long time to make enough babies to save the tribe.

  Fox sat beside her, and she could see it was not a sentiment he shared. He looked at their infant with such overwhelming wonder and devotion; he hardly seemed like the same pragmatic Elikai she had fallen in love with.

  “So we’ll take out some canoes,” Charlie finished. “See if there is someone out there who needs help.”

  “No,” Whiskey said.

  Varekai and Elikai alike turned to stare at her.

  “Why not?” Charlie asked.

  “Both of our tribes were made to resist disease. When we created the world, we were all exposed to the virus—the many forms of it—which killed most of the teachers. We did not go through decontamination. I thought maybe the babies, the baby, would die when it was born because we might all still be contagious. But she seems resistant. Whoever is on that boat won’t be. They’ll die. Whoever managed to swim ashore probably did try and come to us for help. Only they got too close and started bleeding out their eyes. We’ll find them when they start to smell, I’d guess.”

  “So you think we should just leave them to die?” Sugar demanded. “We could at least take them water.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll kill them.”

  Sugar’s eyes narrowed. “I’d rather die quickly from the virus than slowly from dehydration or starvation.”

  Whiskey scoffed. “And you want to make that choice for them? Do what you like. Don’t be shocked when their eyes explode and their brains run out their ears.”

  Charlie exchanged a look with Sugar. “We’ll take the canoes out and stop a safe distance away. Yelling distance. Maybe they are resistant too. Or maybe they’re dead already and they will have useful tools on the boat. We’re not going to ignore this.”

  Fox nudged Whiskey. “You’re not the only calculating one, it seems.”