“Do you think that’s really wise?” I asked. “Given the looks Carrie was giving me last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if she poisoned my soup.”
“If you’re that worried about it,” said Liv, tip-toeing ahead of me in sandals, “I’ll taste the soup first to make sure it’s safe.”
“But then what if you die?” I replied. “I’ll have to continue the expedition with a very dead Olivia.”
“Poor baby.”
I waved a hand in front of my face. “Can you imagine the smell?”
“There are worse things. Besides, what’s the joy of life without a little risk?”
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Let’s eat at Maude’s. I owe you a meal anyway.”
Liv disputed this, and we were both playfully exchanging unflattering names when it began raining.
Hard rain drops pounded our heads and hands like tiny stones. My vision clouded. To our left the trees were waving their branches in fury, as though about to rise up. Rain was forming huge puddles on the dirt trails ahead of us. Small animals were scurrying for shelter. A brown worm that had had the misfortune to get caught out in the deluge struggled towards a hole, failed to find it, and died.
“There’s no use trying to outrun it,” I said. “Whatever we do, by the time we make it back to the ferry we’ll be completely soaked.”
“In that case, we should head for the nearest available shelter,” said Liv.
“The cave,” I said. “It’s less than half a mile from here.” Abruptly she turned off the path and I followed, my blood racing, kicking up water and mud as I went.
Chapter 7—Olivia
For just a moment, when Henry was shaking me, I was 17 years old again.
It was the night of the fall dance and I had been asked out by two different guys. Lenny was sweet but awkward. His hair stood straight up and his letter jacket was two sizes too small. He asked me through a friend, who asked another friend, who finally asked me, because he was too shy to ask me in person. I felt so bad, I almost said yes out of pity.
But then there was Louis.
Louis was the coolest kid in our senior class. He drove to school each morning in a convertible with doors that didn’t open, so he had to leap out of it. With his slicked-back, jet-black hair, warm-colored button-down shirts, and impeccably polished black dancing shoes, he was the star of the school swing club. He had dated three girls but broke up with each of them because he felt they were keeping him from his studies. As a first-generation son of immigrants, he was determined to get into Harvard and couldn’t let romance get in the way of that. Each of the girls still adored him.
But not my mom.
“I don’t want you going out with that man,” she had warned me one night over spaghetti in our tiny, cluttered kitchen. “I don’t like the way he looks at you. He’s too hungry. He’d do anything.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” I asked, dousing my salad in raspberry vinaigrette.
“Someone like that,” she said, “he’ll be whatever he has to be, to get you to go out with him. Then, once he’s won you over, he’ll change. Mark my words, you don’t want to see the kind of man he’ll become.”
“Ellie, all men are like that,” said my dad. “I think she should give him a chance.”
“Yeah, Mom,” I said, “I’m a grown woman.”
She threw me a withering look. “Grown and almost grown are two completely different things. Why don’t you give this Lenny guy a chance? He seems to like you.”
I didn’t really have a good answer to that question, except that I didn’t want to. I sent a message through my friend, who told another friend, who told Lenny that I wouldn’t be able to go to the dance because I already had plans that night. But the more I thought about this, the guiltier I felt. It was unlikely he would be able to find another date, and I thought I could make it work if I spent part of the night with Louis and part of it with Lenny.
Unfortunately I didn’t schedule my night as well as I had planned. Lenny and I never made it to the dance, but we did go to Sonic, where we sat in my car drinking milkshakes and generally not speaking. I kept checking my watch, watching the hour tick by until the date was over and I could meet up with Louis, who had agreed to meet me there.
But he showed up 10 minutes earlier than I had expected.
“Lenny, could you please leave?” I asked, feeling my heart sink.
As Lenny walked away, Louis turned to me coldly and said, “What were y’all doing?”
“Nothing,” I lied. “He just came up to the car and started talking to me.”
Lenny turned at that moment and looked at me, an expression on his face that I will never forget.
I continued to argue with Louis the whole way to the dance. He wasn’t paying attention to the road and careened into another car. We were both lucky we weren’t killed. But that wasn’t the worst part. When the driver of the other car got out to inspect the damage, he and Louis exchanged words. Then before I knew what was happening, before I could stop him, Louis had him pinned against the car. He was beating every square inch of his body. He was pummeling his face. He was smashing his ribs. If I hadn’t intervened, screaming, if I hadn’t thrown myself in front of him (getting a nasty blow across my face in the process), Louis might have killed him.
I listened to my mom after that.
And as Henry stood over me, glowering and half-mad, as he shook my bones till they rattled, it occurred to me: I should have listened to Carrie.
* * *
So while we were holed up together in a cave trying to escape the rain, I put on my best smile. He didn’t have to know how scared I was. He didn’t have to know I had measured the number of feet from the fire to the opening in case I had to make a quick exit. He didn’t have to know I had insisted on clutching the torch in case I had to use it.
The light of the torch flickered on the walls above and around us. Grey gusts of daylight were still filtering in from outside, lending the whole cave the appearance of an undersea grotto. Henry’s scarred and rugged face took on a sinister appearance in the semi-darkness.
With a swift motion Henry again pulled off his shirt and placed it at his feet, just far enough away from the fire that it could dry off without getting burned. I could see him quietly eyeing my own soaked shirt out of the corner of his eye, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. He was obviously wondering whether I was going to follow his lead, but for the moment I played coy and resolved to dry by other means.
Internally I was chiding myself. I should have run away ages ago, yet I was still here. I was afraid, but not just afraid. I feared him, in part because of my bad experiences in the past and in part because of Carrie’s warnings. Yet at the same time I was intoxicated by the danger he represented, the danger he carried with him in every cool glance of his eyes, in every sweeping motion of his broad and muscular arms. I remembered reading stories of gods who came to earth and walked among men, and here was one come to life. Those stories never ended well for the people involved, but for a shining moment they were happy beyond the dreams of mortals.
In the light now, as he sat beside me, I had a better opportunity of examining the tattoo that I had glimpsed from a distance that morning as he stood in the cave’s entrance tantalizingly brushing his teeth. Instinctively resisting the urge to run my hand over his chest, I noted (with what I hoped and half-believed was mere professional interest) that it was composed of the same markings that were on the green amulet.
Wanting to compare the symbols, I let out a long sigh and reluctantly asked him to come closer. His eyes never left my face as I painstakingly copied each one down into my notebook, a process that took all of about 15 minutes to complete.
“Curious,” I murmured. “Where did you get this?”
“What does it say?” he asked, eagerness and concern in his voice.
“I’m not quite finished yet,” I said, “but this line” (and I pointed to a line of writing on the stone that corresponded to a line on his tattoo) “says that the owner of this stone poses no danger to others, as long as he keeps it in his possession.” A flicker of awareness flashed into his eyes. “That seems odd, though,” I went on. “If this was a band of warriors, it seems like they would be trying to get rid of a stone like that, not keep it.”
Henry lowered his eyes. “It makes sense to me,” was all he said.
“Where did you find these markings anyway,” I asked, “if you only recently came into possession of the stone?”
“In all my grandfather’s research on the island,” he said, “these symbols turned up again and again. They were like a musical pattern weaving in and out of my life. According to him, the symbols had belonged to a bear tribe.” He bit his lip, as though afraid to say anything more. “They represented the tribe’s strength and steadfastness in the face of oppression, the way they had protected each other.”
“I think he may have been onto something,” I said, setting down my pen. “The second and third lines here, when translated, say, ‘We will not be defeated. We will stand together. Love unites us. Hate protects us. War saves us. The First Nation bear tribe.’ Not sure what that last part means,” I added.
Henry’s eyes, however, grew wider. “The First Nation was a bear clan that disappeared some years ago. The last place they were seen was on this island.”
I remembered Henry using similar language a few nights ago to describe his grandfather’s quest to find the last of his kin. For a moment a suspicion awoke in my brain, but I quickly brushed it aside again.
“No one knows what became of this missing bear clan,” Henry said, choosing his words carefully. His vulnerability was so touching, it was easy to forget how worried I had been just a few minutes ago. He seemed desperate to retain my good opinion, and was certain that if he said the wrong thing at this moment, he might lose it forever. “Allegedly they had fallen out with a rival tribe, and the rival tribe was stronger.”
I said nothing; by now all my attention was wholly absorbed in translating and deciphering the final lines on the stone and tattoo.
“Follow light’s trail,” I said, after a silence of about ten minutes’ duration. “Follow light’s trail and seek the ciphering stone.”
“What does that—?” Henry began, but never got to finish his question, for at that moment there came a sudden, horrendous growl from the back of the cave. I jumped, nearly shoving my foot into the fire in the process, and instinctively ran for the entrance. A tall shadow loomed overhead.
“I thought you had searched this cave!” I shouted in an accusing voice.
“Not completely,” said Henry, throwing his arms in front of me. “I stayed near the front.”
“What were you thinking?”
“Get behind me!” he yelled, as the shadowy figure drew closer and closer.