Watcher's Web (12 page)

Hello,
where are you guys going?

We’re
taking this weird creature back to where she belongs.

Something like
that.

But as soon as
the current carried the boat out of the river mouth, Dora steered
the boat into the reeds, into the harsh clattering noise and the
overwhelming scent of mint.

“Hey, I want
to go that way.” Jessica pointed at the island, which poked out of
the mist on the horizon.

Ikay pushed
down her outstretched arm. “Poh-poh-poh-poh.”

The boat moved
swiftly parallel to the escarpment, away from the island.

Jessica
balled her fists in her lap, burning with frustration.
Tonight when there is
another party, I’ll sneak out, find some way of distracting the
guards, steal a boat. I’ve got to get out of here.

For a long
time, she stared at the bottom of the canoe, thinking of ways to
get past the sentries at the entrance to the settlement, how she
would retrieve her backpack, and climb back up the cliff to look
for Brian.

Light turned
grey and then blue. The air cooled and softened. A blue haze, heavy
with mint, settled over the water. The clattering noise in the
reeds faltered and then stopped. After the monotonous racket,
silence was painful.

Dora’s stick
splashed in a slow rhythm. Maire and Alla spoke in soft voices. The
boat rocked; reeds brushed against the sides.

Jessica rested
her head on her knees.

*     *     *

Water splashed
in Jessica’s face. With a jerk, she lifted her head off her
knees.

And stared
into a landscape cloaked in darkness. A small, red-tinged moon hung
almost directly overhead, casting eerie golden light over the
water. Beds of reeds showed up like patches of black.

Moonlight hit
the beach barely a hundred metres ahead. Behind it, the cliff
towered into the night sky, a wall of sheer rock turned dark brown
in the reddish light. Bushes clung to the cliff face like bits of
black cotton wool. To the right, a white cloud hung over a copse of
trees, moving and billowing like a ghost. Thumps and hisses coming
from that direction suggested there was a geyser behind the trees.
Behind the boat, the marshland vanished in the darkness. Pinpricks
of light shone on the island, now even further than it had been
when they left the tribe’s settlement.

They were
moving towards the shore. Ikay pointed and spoke a few words.
Moonlight edged her white hair in a reddish glow. Jessica couldn’t
see her face, but her eyes glinted with alertness.

Dora’s back
bobbed up and down with each push of the stick. They were going
through a thick patch of reeds, which made for hard going. The
stems scraped the bottom and sides of the boat. Maire pulled
handfuls of stems to help the boat along.

They were very
close to the beach now. Directly ahead, a cleft in the rock face of
the escarpment showed up like a black stripe, the mouth hardly
wider than one metre. In that place, there was no beach and the
reed field led right up to it, although Alla and Maire had to get
out of the boat to push it across.

The boat slid
into the gorge, dark and silent, past rock walls close enough to
touch. Every breath sounded a hundred times magnified. The passage
opened out into a small lagoon surrounded by sheer rock walls.
Moonlight slanted onto the rock to their left and the water just at
its base. The rest of the lagoon bathed in ink-black shade. A group
of insect-like animals, about the size of a thumb, detached
themselves from the surface of the water. With startled splashing,
they flew up into the sky, their wings glittering in the moonlight,
and transparent, like a dragonfly’s. When their flapping had died
away, only the sound of rippling water past the bow of the canoe
disturbed the silence.

A shiver crept
up Jessica’s back.

What the hell
were they doing here in the middle of the night?

The canoe
bumped into a beach of large smooth boulders. Alla jumped out and
pulled the stern up with a dull scraping. Jessica stepped out of
the boat, straightening her stiff legs.

Maire and Dora
carried the basket up the steep incline and set it down in the
moonlight, at what looked like the mouth of a cave. Heaving a sigh,
Dora sank down on a rock and leaned against the cliff face, the
pushing stick still in her hand.

Sure, it was
rude to stare, but Jessica had never seen anyone pregnant up close,
let alone naked and pregnant. She had dispensed even with her belt.
Grey skin stretched over the bulge in her belly, a flat bellybutton
just under the widest point.

Dora met
Jessica’s eyes. She reached out and laid Jessica’s hand, palm flat,
on the top of the bulge. Her skin was warm and slick with oil.
Something moved inside. A knee or a heel or an elbow. It felt quite
big.

There was a
memory, unbidden: a sweaty-faced woman reclined on pillows in a
white bed, the camera directed ungraciously between her pulled-up
legs. A gush of fluid squirted from between masses of dark curly
hair. A pink rim of skin stretched to show this massive black
slippery thing, then the squashed face and grey skin of the baby
emerging from her body. Jessica shivered. Why had their biology
teacher thought the girls would benefit from seeing that? The
memory of the woman’s howls still gave her the creeps.

Dora spoke a
few soft words and placed her hand in the same spot on Jessica’s
stomach. Goosebumps spread all over her body. She also remembered
the woman’s tears of happiness at holding her newborn son, and the
reporter’s question: would you do it again? To which she answered,
without hesitation: yes.

She withdrew
her hand from Dora’s skin and turned away. Did she have to come
here to be reminded that she was infertile? Doctors had told her so
many times. No boobs, no periods, not even a real woman. A
freak.

Ikay dug in
the basket, producing a parcel wrapped in leaves and a curious
contraption that looked, for all Jessica could think, like some
kind of egg-whisk, except the metal bars at the top encased a pearl
the size of a billiard ball. Ikay laid it on the rocks before
unwrapping the parcel. It was far too dark for Jessica to see what
was inside, but a rich smell of spiced meat drifted in the
breeze-less night.

OK, picnic
time.

Nobody spoke
while they ate. There was something about this place that made talk
seem trivial.

When Ikay had
finished eating, she heaved herself to her feet, picked up the
egg-whisk thing and plodded towards the cave entrance. The white
patterns on her back only just stood out in the dark. Jessica
hesitated.

“I hate
caves!” Her voice sounded unnaturally loud.

Then she
hated herself for allowing her emotion to show.
Never show your
fear.
Her father’s
words. He talked a lot about dealing with criminal men. She wasn’t
scared of raging bulls or bucking horses. She’d catch a koala with
an attitude problem, or shoo a brown snake out of the hay shed.
Leeches, she wasn’t so keen on, but one thing really gave her the
willies: dark enclosed spaces.

Ikay returned,
put a gentle hand on Jessica’s arm, but tugged her further into
that maw. Jessica strained her muscles, ready to yank herself free,
run back into the lagoon, outside, where the air was fresh, where
she could breathe.

Ikay breathed
threads of glittering mist; she was using Jessica’s own tricks
against her.

But she
couldn’t fight it, or maybe she could, but she wasn’t sure it would
be a good idea.
Click.

Bright light
flooded the cavern, from the pearl in the egg-whisk thing in Ikay’s
hand, which she now held aloft. Sheesh—it was a torch.

The cave was a
few metres wide, high ceilinged and strewn with rounded boulders.
Further into the rock, the passage narrowed and turned a
corner.

Now that the
light allowed her to see, her fear seemed silly. It was only a
cave. Rocks and sand, nothing else.

Ikay led
further into the cave. The ground was very wet here, and the
boulders that lay scattered over the ground sank into the mud when
Jessica stepped on them. Her feet were disgusting in no time.

When they had
turned the corner, they came to a large cavern with a huge pool. A
muddy beach sloped down into water so black it absorbed the light
of the torch. To the left and right of the beach, rock formations
lined the water, their surface glittering with tiny crystals.
Across the pool, a sheer rock wall rose into the darkness of the
cavern roof, beyond the reach of the light.

Deep grooves
marked the surface of the rock and through the blackened covering
of algae, Jessica recognised a five-pointed star. Like the one on
the floor of the tribe’s hall.

She’d been
right that this place held some sort of tribal significance.

Ikay planted
the torch in the ground and walked into the water, gesturing for
Jessica to follow.

What? In
there? You have to be kidding.

But Ikay
gestured again, this time with her tail.

Jessica stuck
her foot in the black water. The mud of the bottom was slimy and
squishy on her feet. Her skin crawling with goosebumps, she let
herself sink into the water. Cold closed around her chest like a
vice.

Her movements
stirred up wells of even colder water from the depths, bringing
with them smells—stale, oily, unnatural, with a scent of
plastic.

Ikay waited,
treading water, on the other side of the pool, where the
algae-covered rock wall loomed over them.

Without
warning, Ikay’s head disappeared.

Large ripples
and rising bubbles disturbed the water. Panic rose in Jessica’s
chest. “Ikay.” Her voice sounded small. “Ikay, please.”

Ikay’s head
bobbed up again, muddy water running from her hair. Before Jessica
could protest, Ikay’s hand grabbed hers and dragged her under. She
just managed to suck a lung full of air. She struggled, she kicked,
but Ikay was surprisingly strong and pulled her deeper and deeper
into darkness. Jessica’s lungs ached to bursting. Patches of colour
grew before her eyes. Up she pushed, kicking off a rocky bottom,
swimming in desperate strokes. Ikay’s hand slipped from hers. Her
head broke the surface of the water. Gulping the air, she looked
around.

Nothing.

She held a
hand above the water, but couldn’t see it, nor could she see the
surface of the water, or the shore.

Jessica
stretched out her hands, feeling nothing but water surrounding
her—water everywhere.

“Ikay—help.
Where are you?”

From quite
close by came the sound of splashing of water and Ikay’s voice, and
then the slap of wet footsteps on rock.

Then a small
pinprick of light winked on, floating above Ikay’s forehead. It
showed another cave, smaller, and filled with water. Slicks of an
oily substance floated on the surface.

Jessica swam
to the side and clambered onto the rocks. Had Ikay brought her here
just to play tricks with lights again?

But no, as
soon as Jessica had joined her, Ikay turned and led the way out of
the cave. The tunnel climbed steeply and grew ever more narrow.
Fortunately, the ground was even, or Jessica would have stumbled
and fallen many times. Still they climbed, up, up, up. The air
changed, became drier, stale, dead.

After what
seemed hours, but was probably no more than fifteen minutes, Ikay
stopped so abruptly that Jessica almost crashed into her.

An archway
reached across the passage. Ikay’s light cast long shadows over the
pillars that supported it, so straight they could only have been
made by a stonemason.

The pillar to
the right of the path bore three carved signs. Topmost, an arrow;
below it, two suns; and below that three people. Ikay stepped
aside, gave a short bow and gestured for Jessica to walk under the
arch, like a butler bows to his master.

Unease made
Jessica’s skin crawl. She shuffled forward into the pitch darkness
of the room. The floor here felt smooth under her feet. Her
breathing echoed unnaturally loud in the chamber, as if all sound
inside it bounced endlessly from wall to wall. The air was heavy
with the smell of dry stone, like an Egyptian tomb. God, how old
was this?

Ikay entered
the room and came to stand next to her, still carrying the torch.
Ancient reliefs covered every bit of wall space. Life-sized figures
carved in yellow stone.

The panel
facing the door showed a landscape of reeds and a few trees that
Jessica was sure depicted the marshland outside. A streamlined
futuristic shape sat in the middle of the reedy field. Not an
aeroplane, but a vehicle with a sleek triangular delta shape. Two
pointed flanges at the back were tails. Bulges in the rear of the
delta wing looked like engines. A large window wrapped around the
front of the cabin. Three lines of rectangular portholes ran over
the craft’s side.

The craft
didn’t fit in the landscape, the treeless plains of reeds. It
didn’t even fit the ancient feel of the frieze. It was too modern,
too futuristic. Yet, it was there, carved in perfect smoothness, in
the reeds like an enormous beached whale.

To the left of
it lay a makeshift camp, sheets strung over sticks.

Around the
tents, people sat on the ground and stood talking. They had stern
and proud faces, straight noses, high
cheekbones. . . .  Human, very human, no tails,
no striped bodies.

At the
foreground of the picture stood a woman with a gauze shawl draped
over long hair. Both hands reached out to a much smaller figure
with large eyes and a tail: a Pengali male carrying a knife and
wearing a cloak. He held a bowl out to the woman. Other Pengali
people stood behind him, life-sized figures coming up to Jessica’s
chest.