"I don't think so," my mother replied. "She’s been turning her head and making sounds here and there, but she hasn't opened her eyes yet. Oh Carlito, what if she never... what if she..."
"She’s going to get better," he replied, reassuringly. "She has you to look after her. She’s lucky."
"Lucky!" Maria repeated in disbelief. "Look at her! How would she look if she were not lucky??"
There was a long silence. I could hear the singing birds and the chattering monkeys in the distance, and feel the warmth of the sun on the soles of my feet. It must be a beautiful day outside, I supposed. How I wished I were out there now, laying out on the riverbank and letting my cares drift away on a fresh breeze. Presently I fell back to sleep, and when I awoke again the room was cool and dark, and the voices were gone. I began to slip away once more, but then a sharp creaking sound caused my eyes to snap open.
I couldn't turn my head without pain, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the bedroom door swing shut, and then a shadow fell over me. I pretended to be asleep, but it was no good. A strong hand covered my mouth, and I stared involuntarily up into the black eyes of my would-be murderer. It would be no use to struggle, I knew. Even fit and healthy I was powerless against him. I had been foolish to ever believe otherwise.
The rough blanket slid across my legs, and I felt a hand upon my knee, gripping my flesh firmly as a butcher massaging a choice piece of meat. I laid perfectly still. Let him do whatever it was he has come to do, I thought bitterly. He would eventually anyway, one way or another.
"What's going on here?" Maria's stern face was illuminated in the doorway by a candle in her hand.
"She had a nightmare," my father replied, his hand slipping quickly from my leg. "I heard her calling out on my way to the bathroom and came in to calm her down."
"She seems fine now," said my mother, shortly. I felt the mattress beneath me rise as my father stood up, and Maria stood aside to let him pass without another word. "Go back to sleep now," she said quietly as she closed the door behind her. I tried to whisper, "thank you," but she had already gone.
Days passed before I was able to leave my bed. I could barely talk, or chew, so Maria brought me soup and fed me, while my brothers and sisters stopped in from time to time to see how I was. Evidently Moises had told them all that I had fallen from a galloping horse, and that was why I was covered in bruises, but they all knew better. Even the ones who wouldn't say so, I could tell from their expressions that they knew the truth, but anyone who suggested otherwise would get the same treatment I had.
On the third day, I managed to haul myself out of bed and half walk, half stagger, to the bedroom door. Something was different, I thought, but it wasn't until the door swung closed behind me that I realised what it was. There was no creak. My bedroom door always creaked. I touched the hinge with a fingertip and sniffed it, then touched it to my tongue. Oil. My father had oiled the door so that he wouldn't be heard creeping in there during the night. A chill ran down
my spine, almost causing me to topple over.
Using the wall for support every step of the way, I managed to make my way along to the kitchen. My mother wasn't there, but the wood stove was burning away, so I supposed that she couldn't have gone far. I lowered myself gingerly into a seat at the table and dragged my legs around underneath it. My foot touched something cold, and I felt it with my toe.
"Ow!" I exclaimed with a sharp, painful intake of breath as whatever it was pricked my skin. I looked under the table to find a rusted, slightly bent nail lying there innocently. A thought occurred to me, and with some effort I leaned down to pick it up. Rolling the shiny object contemplatively between thumb and forefinger, my eyes drifted to the pile of wood near the stove, then to the drawer where my mother kept her kitchen knives, and the slightest of smiles crinkled the corners of my mouth.
"Oil my door will you?" I muttered, peering again at the nail as though I had been searching for just such a thing. "We'll just see who's smartest."
The night was still as I waited for my enemy to come again, as I knew he would. I daren't look directly at the door as it made me feel tense and sick, so I stared up at the ceiling even as the padding of heavy feet in the hall alerted me that the time had come. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the door move, but it did not swing open. Instead there was a soft click of wood on wood, and a gentle vibration that shivered through the doorframe to the floor and back up through my bed. Then it came again, a little louder this time. I chanced a look, and saw the pointed little piece of wood I had crudely nailed to the doorframe holding fast; a shabby little soldier standing guard just as he had been instructed to do. If my father wanted to get in, he would have to make more noise than he wanted.
The door rattled a third time, and I thought I heard muttering on the other side of it. Then the heavy footsteps moved away again, and all was quiet.
As I lay there, bruised and broken, I did feel lucky. Because I had hope, and no matter how often, or how hard he tried, he could never beat that out of me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pirates
"I HAVE SOMETHING to tell you," I whispered, with a gleeful look on my face.
"You always have something to tell," Laura replied, amused. "You're so full of things and none of them are true."
"This one is true," I assured her, "I saw it with my own eyes." I skipped over to the largest tree in sight and settled myself beneath it, like a storyteller about to relate some epic tale. "Your eyes look a little cloudy to me," said Laura, but she sat down in front of me anyway, always ready to provide an audience. She teased me for my tall tales, but she loved hearing them really. Days lived in the forest had a tendency to blend into one another and nothing much ever changed, so my flights of fancy were a welcome distraction.
"Well," I began, savouring the attention, "my father went off on one of his trips again yesterday--"
"Off to hunt a dinosaur, I expect," Laura interrupted.
"No," I said.
"Or have tea with the Queen."
"Don't be silly," I frowned.
"Oh I'm the silly one?" asked Laura, sarcastically.
"You are silly because I'm trying to tell you an important secret and you're not listening!" I snapped, exasperated.
"I am listening!" Laura protested. I peered at her for a moment to make sure that she was before continuing.
"Well as I said," I began again, "my father's away, and yesterday mama and I were cleaning the bedroom, and we found a treasure chest under the bed!" I sat back with a satisfied smile as though confident that this must be the most exciting thing Laura had ever heard.
"And?" said Laura, unimpressed.
"What do you mean 'and'?" I asked, hurt that my story had not been greeted with at least a shocked look. Surely it deserved that much. "I just told you my father has a treasure chest!" I repeated. "Like a pirate from the book!" We had learned about pirates at school a few weeks
earlier.
"So he's a pirate now?" asked Laura, without a flicker of surprise. "Does he have a parrot as well?"
"You're being silly again," I said sulkily.
"Maybe he'll come back from his next trip with a wooden leg," Laura suggested, the flicker of a smirk playing around her lips.
"If you're going to be like this, I won't tell you the rest," I warned her, folding my arms.
"Well," Laura grinned, "go on, what's the rest?"
"Um," I shifted awkwardly, "I guess that's it actually."
"That's it?!" Laura laughed. "You didn't open the treasure chest?"
"It was locked!" I said, defensively.
"Then how do you know there's treasure inside, if it's locked?" asked Laura, reasonably. "It could be shoes, or clothes, or--"
"I know what's in there!" I insisted.
"Oh I see," said Laura, nodding her head indulgently. "Tell me then." I opened my mouth to reply, but I couldn't think of anything. "It might be something horrible," Laura suggested, "like pieces he cut from dead bodies!"
"Ew," I made a face.
"Fingers and ears of people he's killed," Laura nodded sagely. "He's probably saving them to make a monster, then he'll bring it to life with one of his magic spells, right?"
"Stop it!" I shut my eyes and covered my ears. I already knew what kind of horrors my father was capable of and they were bad enough without Laura introducing a whole bunch of new ones. Besides, I had an awful feeling that my friend might have struck closer to the truth than she imagined.
"What did your mother say?" asked Laura, when I finally removed my hands from the sides of my head.
"That we should leave it alone and forget about it," I shrugged.
"Your mama's a smart lady," said Laura seriously. "Maybe you should listen to her." I didn't reply, but looked shiftily around at the trees as though trying to ignore the statement. "Hey," Laura added, peering at me curiously, "why are you dressed like that?"
"Like what?" I looked back at her.
"You look like a boy," Laura waved a hand at the oversized white t-shirt and baggy trousers that I was wearing, as though seeing them clearly for the first time. "Are those your brother's clothes?"
"They don't fit him anymore," I shrugged. "Besides, they're comfortable." This was a lie. I had helped myself to the clothes from the laundry basket, hoping that if I looked less like a girl, my father would stop staring at me the way that he did and coming in to my room at night. The lock had worked quite well, but every day he tore it from the door frame and every day I had to make it anew. The wooden frame was becoming so full of holes that soon I wouldn't be able to fix it up there at all. I needed a more permanent solution to the problem of my father's unwanted attention, and this was it.
"You could never be a boy with that hair," said Laura, flicking my red curls with her finger. They were tied back loosely today, but still so big and so striking that I would stand out wherever I went. "You need a hat or something. Oh, hey!" I added, her eyes lighting up with mischief, "maybe there's a pirate hat in the treasure chest!"
"Maybe..." I crouched like a coiled spring, pretending to consider the suggestion, "maybe the last one to the river is a rotten egg!" I tapped Laura on the shoulder and ran away as fast as I could towards the river.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Newcomers
I LOST TRACK of time playing games with Laura in the forest that afternoon, and my tummy was rumbling loudly as I made my way back to the house. As I cleared the trees, however, I thought for a moment that I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and ended up on a different farm. The house looked the same, the yard, the animals, everything was in its place, but the family standing by the front door definitely wasn't mine.
A woman, three boys I took to be her sons, and a little girl about my age, all turned their heads to look as I approached. They were blacker than any human beings I had ever seen, like the African slaves I had read about in my schoolbooks.
"Hello," I said to the nearest boy. His large, sullen eyes looked me up and down without a word.
"Don't speak to them." My father appeared in the doorway and I instinctively flinched and took a step backwards. As I did so, I noticed that the other girl had reacted the same way. She knows, I thought. She knows what he is. "They're not here to be your friends," Moises growled, glaring at me. "They're here to work. Come on." He started walking in the direction of the river, and all five newcomers followed obediently as if they were tethered by invisible ropes both to him and to each other.
I watched them go, my shoulders slumped, then trudged into the kitchen where my mother was preparing dinner with somewhat more aggression than usual.
"Mama?" said I cautiously as she swung a heavy iron pot down from the shelf and slammed it down on the counter top. "Who were those people outside?" My mother began to fill the pot with water from another, sloshing it over the side in her anger.
"Oh I don't know child," she muttered. For a moment it seemed like she would leave it at that, but as she reached for a bag of rice she pressed on. "He says he found them. What does that mean?" she asked. I hesitated, unsure whether I was expected to answer the question. Maria dumped the rice on the counter and a few grains leapt out from the force of the impact, as though fleeing for their lives.
I was so curious to know more, but my mother clearly wasn't in a good mood and it was hard enough living with one enemy in the house without making another, so I held my tongue. Fortunately I wasn't the only one who was curious, and over dinner that evening Moises was bombarded with questions from the rest of his children once they learned about the new arrivals.
"What will they do?" asked Lorin.
"Whatever I want them to do," Moises replied gruffly, shovelling a forkful of pork and beans into his mouth.
"Clear the crops?" asked Jose. Jose was the scrawniest of the boys. His skin was dark yet somehow pale at the same time. He always looked ill and tired easily, but our father made him work all day, every day regardless just like the rest of us. Moises nodded without looking at him. "Does that mean we don't have to do it anymore?" asked Jose, hopefully. Moises stopped chewing and glared at him.
"Of course not," replied Jonisio in place of his father, "don't be soft. More hands means we can do more, not less." Moises appeared to agree, returning his attention to his meal as though that were all that needed to be said on the matter. I was reminded, as I often was, how like my father Jonisio was. He wasn't the eldest, Belizar was the eldest, but Belizar was strong and silent, rarely opening his mouth where Jonisio was always talking to his father, sometimes looking more like a brother than a son. I wondered if my older brothers would grow up to treat their children the same way Moises did. After all, this was the only life they had ever known.
"It'll be nice to have some company," said my sister Marina offhandedly, but she knew at once that she had made a mistake.
"No," Moises snapped, staring at her now. "You don't speak to those boys. Don't even go near them."
"Okay," replied Marina, staring down at her plate meekly, her pretty face half-hidden behind cascading, curly brown hair, "sorry."
Moises was protective of all of his children, not out of love but rather because he counted them amongst his possessions and wasn't inclined to share with anyone else. Marina was the prettiest of the older girls, and therefore in Moises’ mind the most likely to attract unwanted attention.
"If I see you speaking to one of them, I'll beat you and then kill them, do you understand?”
"Yes father," she whispered.
"You three will keep an eye on them," he continued, looking from one son to the next, but ignoring Lorin. Each nodded his agreement.
"Where will they live?” asked Lorin's twin sister Julia.
"In our old house," my father replied, "but you're not to go down there." He looked his daughter up and down appraisingly. "They probably wouldn't want you anyway, but better safe than sorry." He laughed at his own joke, but nobody else did. Julia looked like she might cry.
"Right," said Moises once his amusement had faded, "we go hunting tomorrow. Help me prepare." He pushed himself up from the table and all of the boys followed. As he passed Marina, he stared hard at her and, though her head was still bowed, she shifted uncomfortably as though she could feel his eyes upon her.
"We'll go and see them tomorrow," Maria whispered to me as the boys left the kitchen.
"But he said--" I began, surprised.
"Never mind what he says," she interrupted. "He won't look after them, so we will have to." I blinked. An hour ago my mother had seemed furious about the new arrivals, now she was going to put her neck on the line to help them?
"What if he finds out?" I asked.
"We'll go while they're out hunting," Maria replied, "they'll be gone for hours, no-one will know."
I beamed at her. Doing exactly the opposite of what my father wanted was one of my very favourite pastimes, and I was delighted that my mother seemed to be taking it up now as well. Plus I was very keen to find out more about the little girl. Th
ere weren't many children around these parts and it would be nice to have another friend.
"Do you think she’ll go to school?" I asked, thoughtfully.
"Who?" Maria replied, confused.
"The girl," I said.
"I expect so," said Maria, "unless she can read and write already."
I felt a swooping sensation in my stomach. I knew that my father pulled all of his children out of school as soon as they could read and write. Any more learning was pointless in his mind, given the kind of work they would be doing. But I never liked to think about the day when I would have to stop going. How often would I see Laura then? And Paul, and the others? I might even miss Joabe. The thought surprised me and made me sad. Life was lonely enough on the farm already, I didn't know if I could bear to become like my older brothers and sisters; waking up, doing chores all day, dinner then bed. That wasn't what I wanted.
That night after all of the lamps were extinguished, I sat for a long time at my window, staring up at the stars. The moon was full and bright tonight, and I thought of my grandmother, miles away, looking up into the same sky. She sometimes spoke of the moon and its power, and now I began to understand why. It was a bright light in the darkness, a symbol of defiance, of hope for everyone who saw it. I wondered if the new family would be looking up to the sky tonight as well and finding it to be a familiar comfort in their new home. They're probably afraid, I thought. Well I wasn't afraid. I would help them.
Warmed by this new sense of purpose, I slid from the window ledge, padded softly over to my bed, lay down, and fell asleep almost at once.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Clues
Daughter of the Forest: Diary of an Assassin Page 6