Prophecy (17 page)

M’rai extended his hand toward Maggie, and she came forward.

“A soft woman,” he said as he felt her hand.

“Too soft,” Maggie replied.

“Just right.”

“Your home is very beautiful,” Rob said.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mistake these tents for his home,” Hawks interjected. “His home is this whole forest.”

“You know,” Rob mused as he turned to Hawks, “I visited a place just one week ago where eleven people were living in a single room.”

“Yes?”

Rob sensed Hawks’s defensive tone. “I just wanted you to know-”

“That we’re asking too much?”

“That some people are fighting for a single inch of living space-”

“Because they fought too late!” Hawks declared. Then he grabbed up the archer’s bow, glaring into the forest.

“This camp is all as the old people did it,” Romona said, trying to restore calm. “M’rai is teaching us so someone here will remember. There are underground tunnels beneath the frost line to store perishables … one can move from one tent to the other without showing himself.”

Hawks threaded an arrow into the archer’s bow and angrily released it; it hit with a resounding thud into the bark of a tree. “He taught me this as well.”

Romona was becoming visibly uneasy. She again tried to distract Hawks’s anger. “When he had his eyesight, M’rai was a great archer,” she said. “They say he could hit a hummingbird by the light of the moon.”

137

“Is that right?” Rob replied.

“We have big hummingbirds,” the old man said.

Rob laughed, but then realized that M’rai hadn’t intended it to be funny.

“It’s true,” M’rai said. “Here, everything grows big. Very big. Bigger than you can imagine.”

“Well,” Rob replied, “I did see a salmon that took my breath away.”

“It is the Garden of Eden,” M’rai said. “Would you like to see?”

“Yes.”

“Come, then.”

“Where?” Romona asked.

“The pond.”

Romona reacted with disbelief. “You’d take them to the pond?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the pond?” Rob asked.

“No one is allowed at the pond,” Romona replied. “Not even other Indians. It’s the private sanctuary of the oldest man in the tribe.”

“I can do as I wish,” M’rai said.

“Don’t expect them to see what you see, old man,” Hawks cautioned M’rai.

To this, M’rai smiled. “I expect nothing. That’s why I see everything.”

He moved into the forest and they all followed, traveling another narrow foot trail, this one well-worn, which led to the secret lagoon. In all the years that Romona had been with the old man, she had never walked this trail. And she felt that it was wrong to do so now. She sensed they were trespassing and knew that if M’rai was not losing control of his faculties, he would never have allowed it to happen.

“No one has come here before,” M’rai said as they walked. “No one who has seen this is alive. Except me.”

Hawks smiled to himself, recalling the time, as a boy, when he had sneaked in here. He still remem-

138

bered his disappointment on finding that there was nothing unusual about it.

“One time some hippies came,” the old man said, “to grow bad seeds.”

“Marijuana,” Hawks explained.

“But they were chased away before they saw anything,” M’rai added.

“What is there to see?” Maggie asked.

The old man pointed into a clearing. They all stopped, absorbing the wonder of what they saw there.

Nestled in the midst of towering trees was a still pond, a shimmering circle of pale blue water, surrounded by lush foliage and twisting vines. The trees were bent forward, as though paying homage, and the leaves of the bushes were larger and greener here than anywhere else in the forest. It was an though in this single spot it were midsummer instead of spring. And the differences did not end there. As Rob walked slowly forward, he noticed a profusion of fungus; every tree trunk was covered with it, tendrils reaching out at odd angles into the air. And there were mushroomlike growths attached to the bark of the trees; some of them were the size of an elephant’s ear.

Rob approached the water’s edge and saw, through the shimmering pale blue surface, images that were difficult to discern. They looked like thick packages of logs that had been tied together and then apparently sunk into the pond.

Hawks, too, was carefully assessing the environment. The pond was different than when he had seen it as a boy. It did indeed have a mystical feeling now. A near physical sensation that made him uneasy. He walked to the water’s edge and stood beside Rob, and saw that Rob’s eyes were troubled, as though searching for some kind of answer.

“It is like the Garden of Eden,” Maggie whispered behind them. “It’s magical.”

“We were once a magical people,” M’rai said.

“It’s true,” Romona added on a hushed breath. “And this was the most magical place of all.” She

139

walked slowly forward, overawed that she was actually standing here. She turned to Maggie, wondering if she could possibly understand her feeling. “This lagoon is the setting for many Indian legends.”

“We heard about one of them,” Maggie replied with a smile.

“Yes?”

“Katydid … dadin … or something?”

“Katahdin,” Romona corrected.

“Katahdin is no legend,” the old man interjected.

M’rai’s words caught Rob’s attention. He glanced his way with troubled eyes.

“My grandfather is the oldest person in our tribe,” Romona said with embarrassment. “It is his duty to foster these beliefs.”

“I’ve seen him,” the old man protested. “Here on these very shores.”

Hawks stepped forward to silence him. “This is what makes people think the Indians are drunk, old man. Our legends are best kept to ourselves.”

“He’s real,” M’rai implored.

“What does he look like?” Maggie asked.

“Are you humoring him?” Hawks snapped.

Maggie was taken aback. “No.”

The old man turned to Maggie, calming her with his smile. “He is a part of everything created,” he said quietly. “From clay to man. And he bears the mark of each of God’s creatures.” He spoke slowly and distinctly, as though teaching a child. “When he sleeps he looks like a mountain. When he stands, he is the size of a tree.”

“You say that with affection,” Maggie answered softly.

“He has awakened to protect us.”

“Nothing will protect us,” Hawks sneered. “They say we killed those people. That will be their excuse for killing us.”

“Mr. M’rai?” Rob called from the shoreline. “Are those logs in there?”

140

M’rai walked to the edge of the pond, his eyes straining to see where Rob was pointing.

“There, toward the middle. Under the surface..”

“They come twice each year,” the old man replied. “By magic. Then they move into the lake.”

“This pond leads into the lake?”

“Beyond the trees there. Water comes from the river and leads into the lake.”

Following the old man’s gesture, Rob could make out a shimmering avenue of water snaking through the distant trees. The pond was not self-contained, as it appeared; it was a small pocket formed by an offshoot of the river.

“Does the water have the same color over there?” Rob asked. “The same light blue?”

“Coming in, it does not. Going out, it does.”

“So this color begins here in the pond and then goes out into the lake.”

“It disappears in the lake. It returns to dark blue. The color is from the magic in the water. It is only here, in this secret place.”

Rob exchanged a glance with Hawks. Hawks was beginning to get the message.

“Look!” Maggie called out. They all turned toward the water and saw a V-shaped ripple, created by something swimming just beneath the surface.

“What is it?” Rob asked.

The old man turned to Hawks, gesturing as he spoke. “A’han’tka’Prodai th’ay’andan’tah.” He picked up a small hand net made of twigs that was resting beside a tree. “N’hoan’thaiy’do’e,” M’rai instructed.

“He says he will show you why he calls this place the Garden of Eden,” Romona explained.

Hawks took the hand net and waded into the water, making a swipe at the swimming creature, missing it.

“Stay there,” M’rai said. “He must come up again.”

At that moment Rob caught sight of an exposed root system at the base of a tree. The roots had literally risen out of the ground, as though seeking sustenance from the sky.

141

Maggie noticed his expression change. “What’s wrong?”

“Those are feeder roots. They’re supposed to be under the ground.”

There was a splash from beside them; Hawks grunted with satisfaction, wading to shore with a large object flapping in his net. He approached them and dumped it out onto the ground. All stared down with revulsion and shock.

“Is it a fish?” Maggie gasped.

“No.”

Wriggling at their feet was the outsized form of a polywog. Its head was lumpy and misshapen, and it was fully ten inches long. And there was more wrong with it still. One of its eyes protruded bul-bously from the socket, as though forced out by some pressure from behind, and one of its partially developed legs was much longer than the other, almost as long as the tail.

The old man surveyed their faces and smiled. “I told you, things grow big here,” he said.

Rob quickly looked up and riveted into Hawks’s eyes. “You’ve seen this before?” he asked.

“No.”

“No one has seen them,” M’rai said proudly. “They are only in this pond.”

Rob was shaken. It had all come together. The sunken logs, the coloration of the water, the profusion of fungus …

“This pond feeds into the lake?”

“Yes.”

“And it comes from the Espee River?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s where the paper mill is?”

“Yes.”

Rob’s fists clenched. He paced quickly, then stopped, addressing the old man.

“Don’t eat anything from this water. Don’t eat anything from this ground.” His voice was trembling. “Don’t eat anything from here.”

142

“Why?” the old man asked.

“This ground is poisoned. This water is poisoned.”

The old man was shocked. Then he suddenly laughed. It was beyond his understanding.

“How far is the paper mill?” Rob demanded.

“Three miles upriver,” Hawks answered. “It’s best to go by boat.”

“Wait here for us,” Rob ordered.

“What about the village?” Romona asked.

“I’m going to the paper mill first,” Rob seethed. He turned on his heel, heading for the trail.

“Mr. Vern,” Hawks called after him. “I’m in danger in this forest tonight. I can’t stay here.”

“Where can I find you?”

“Your cabin at sunup.”

The point where the Espee River entered Mary’s Lake was easy to find. It was a wide avenue of churning water, lined with salmon nets that were strung across the mouth of it on poles.

As Rob sat at the motor of their outboard boat, he glared straight ahead, too angry to speak. He knew from the massive amount of reading he had done that there were certain life forms that were extremely susceptible to chemical change. The most susceptible were those that went through two or more stages before they reached the adult form, such as salamanders and frogs. He remembered specifically of reading about a pond in New Jersey that had produced six-legged frogs after the trees around it had been sprayed with a chemical pesticide called Deldrin. There were no pesticides being used here in the Manatee forest; it was all too obvious that toxic chemicals were being used by the lumber company. The aberrated color of the foliation around M’rai’s pond, the exposed root system, and the deformed polywog were all clear barometers of a dangerously toxic environment.

As their small boat cut through the churning water,

143

the roar of industry began to fill the air. The river separated into two channels; Rob followed the narrower of the two, guided by the growing sound. It led to a bend where the landscape suddenly changed. The surface of the water became oil-slicked and pockmarked with Pepsi cans and the belly-up bodies of dead fish; the huge edifice of the Pitney Paper Mill loomed like a giant, its smokestack spouting brown fumes that muted the sun. The shoreline was littered with tree stumps; huge tractors hauled logs across ground that had been mulched to mud. And there was an overwhelming stench in the air.

Rob and Maggie found each other’s eyes, their disgust expressed in silence. The outboard motor began to groan and Rob realized that the water had suddenly become shallow. The waterway had narrowed to a single avenue directly down the middle of the river, flanked by mountains of sludge that had accumulated on either side. In fact, there was no way to get the boat to shore.

“Over there!” a voice called from the shoreline. Rob looked up and saw a group of lumberjacks waving him in a direction upriver toward the far side of the factory. But it was too late. The stern of his boat hit a silt drift and the motor quit on him. He was stuck a good fifteen feet from the shore.

“Got a rope?” a lumberjack shouted.

Rob had a docking rope, but it was too short.

“Won’t reach!” he called back.

“Hang on!” Rob and Maggie waited as the man ran to a truck and returned with a long coil of rope, which he threw out to them. Rob tied it to the bow; four men on the shore pulled the boat across the silt until they could pull it no farther.

“I’m looking for Mr. Isely,” Rob said.

“His office is upstairs.”

“Can you get me any closer here?”

“You’ll have to wade. But watch it; you can really sink into this stuff.”

Rob took Maggie’s hand and they eased over the

144

side, sinking almost knee-deep into the mud. Two of the lumberjacks waded in to help them, one of them lifting Maggie onto the shore.

“You want Mr. Isely?”

“Yes,” Rob replied as he climbed to the shore.

“This way.”

Rob and Maggie followed the men toward the factory, the noise growing louder as they approached. Just outside the doors, they were stopped by a uniformed guard who phoned upstairs to get permission for them to proceed.