NIGHT CRUISING (38 page)

She never spoke of it
again, but then she had almost stopped speaking to him at all.

Out of fear or
revulsion, Mujai did not know which, he kept his distance and went
about his normal routines without dealing with the girl very often.
She was sullen and withdrawn. She might get over it, she might change
and be nice to him if he left her alone enough.

He set food before her,
but after the first time watching her eat, he made sure to go into
the jungle after serving her. No human being ate the way she did. It
was like the panther, only worse because it was a child devouring
food like a beast who has lost its mind. She shredded the meat he
made in the fire without even dusting off the soot first. She broke
the bones and sucked the marrow, licking her fingers of the grease.
She put her whole face into a mango, until her nose disappeared as
she feasted. If he did not bring her food at least three times a day,
she would rummage in his gift pile the people brought for him, and
ate whatever she found there in its raw state. A bird, feathers and
all. A muskrat, tail and head and all. An entire melon, skin, seeds,
and all. Nothing she ate seemed to bother her stomach or make her
sick.

If it had just been the
insane way she ate, her sulky silence, her utter lack of respect for
him, Mujai thought he could come to accept it. But there were other
things and these he could not countenance.

She rarely slept. It
was as if death had given her all the sleep she would ever require.
She sat up during the dark hours, watching over him in the hut. He
turned his back to her, trying to cleanse his mind of those black
eyes staring at him, but often he failed and lay awake himself,
praying for the gods to make her right.
Make her right
, he
prayed.
Make her as she was before
.

She took no direction
whatsoever. If he asked her to do something for him, she pretended
not to understand. “No entiendo,” she’d reply. I do
not know what you mean, she said. What do you mean?

After patiently
explaining the most rudimentary elements of gathering firewood or
climbing a tree to gather honey, her reply was always the same. “No
entiendo.”

He suspected she was
being deliberately obtuse, the claims of not understanding his orders
more examples of a lack of respect. He thought she knew exactly what
he wanted, but she wasn’t going to do it. She had from the
first refused his rule over her. This was her way of letting him know
he did not own her.

He once thought of
beating her. He lost his temper early on and after a week of feeding
the girl, bringing clean drinking water, and doing all the chores, he
asked for her to bring over his spear that stood against the giant
umbrella tree near his camp.

“No entiendo.”

He asked her again.

“No entiendo.”

He asked her six times,
raising his voice higher in anger each time, and six times she
pretended not to understand.

He stood and raised his
hand to slap her into submission, but when she lifted her face to him
and looked him in the eyes, his hand was stayed as if paralyzed.

I will kill you if
you lay a hand on me,
her look said
. You will die if you ever
touch me
, her look said, mocking his impotency.

From that time forward
when she wouldn’t do as he said, he let it go. Finally he
stopped asking anything of her and realized instead of gaining a
queen, he had inherited a master. He was the child’s slave.

She was useless to him.
She was truly a burden. He knew when she was old enough to mate she
would never let him come near her. At wit’s end, he went to the
girl’s mother and questioned her.

“Before she died,
was your daughter obedient? Did she help you out with the chores?”

“Certainly. Very
obedient. She is a good girl.”

“And respect? She
showed you respect?”

“Yes!”

“Before she died,
did she ever…did she ever scare you in any way? In how she
acted or how she looked at you?”

“Never! My baby
was full of love, a gentle, loving child. What do all these questions
mean?’

“She is not
right,” he said simply, and left it at that. He thought of
sending the girl back to her mother, but had a feeling Angelique
would not go. She cared no more for her mother than she did for him.
That was evident in the way she’d left her and how, when the
mother visited, she backed away without letting her mother touch her.
When called by her name she said, “Call me Angelique!”
Then screaming like a wild thing, “I am Angelique!”

As his absolute last
resort, and after much inner turmoil and argument with himself about
the morality of it, Mujai decided he would have to kill her. He would
never be free if he didn’t. He’d tell the villagers she
had died of the fever. So many did and no one questioned it. When she
asked, as he knew she would, he would tell the girl’s mother he
would not raise her again. And then all this would be over. What he
had done was so against the law of nature that it had created a
creature he did not want around him. He had to fix his mistake. He
certainly would never make it again. He was forever through with the
raising of the dead.

The day he meant to
murder the child, he broke a large shale rock from a sea cliff wall
and slipped it beneath his woven sleeping mat in the hut. The rock
had a sharp cutting edge and fit his hand perfectly. It would slice
into her face like parting water. He would cleave her ruined brain in
two.

Though she did not
sleep and kept watch over him, she would never expect him to rise up
with the rock in his hand to bludgeon her. He had never, after the
first time when he raised his hand to her, indicated that he was
dangerous or violent. The opposite, in fact, seemed to be his beaten
demeanor around the girl—even subservient.

All day he was excited
about his plan. He sneaked looks at her as he worked around the camp
site, thinking of her dead and buried and out of his life. Then it
came to him. He would not bury her! She might in some way be a
magical creature after her tryst with Death. She might know how to
rise up on her own and had been asking after his secret potion as a
ruse. In order to be safe he would throw her into the sea and let the
fish nibble her pale little body down to the bones.

If he had to watch her
tear into a slab of meat one more time he thought he would go mad.
Living with her was like living with the undead monster panther. As
far as he could tell there was little difference between them.

That night he went to
bed not long after darkfall, as was his custom. He had said few words
to the girl all day and had looked into her eyes not once. He feared
she might know of his murderous plan if she could see what lay behind
his eyes.

After a few minutes she
slipped inside the hut with him and sat cross-legged at his back. He
could feel her there, her dark eyes staring. But this night he was
not unnerved and sleepless.

He bided his time. He
wanted to make his move when he had his wrath worked up to killing
pitch. He wanted nothing to go wrong. If he missed on the first
strike, she might skitter away into the jungle. He would never get a
second chance, he understood that implicitly. This was an
intelligent, conniving child. A manipulative child. An evil child.

After an hour he had
his mind ready. What he was about to do was not a sin. Besides, she
was
supposed
to be dead. He was going to do her a favor and
send her back into the dark where she belonged.

He grasped the rock,
feeling the rough hardness of it, the cold heaviness of its weight.
He must move fast and not falter. He must strike like a snake,
without remorse, without a moment’s hesitation. He could not
dare look into her eyes.

He flexed the muscle of
his right arm that held the rock. He drew in one breath and then he
made his move. He sat up and swiveled around in the same motion,
raising the rock high above his head. Though he didn’t know it,
he was screaming one long, sustained furious scream.

He felt a sudden
horrible pain strike him in his midsection, but nothing was going to
stop the downward motion of the killing blow.

He swung. But where she
sat, she no longer existed. The rock struck the ground so hard he
broke two of his fingers and cut his palm. He dropped the rock,
looking around in the near darkness for where she had moved. Panic
caused him to lose his breath. He had missed! He had failed! But she
had been right there a second ago, right there below his raised arm.

A shadow fell over him
from the doorway, blocking the moon. He turned and saw her, so
beautiful, so small, so perfect. The island child beauty with the
long dark hair, the perfect features. The little dead ten-year-old.

“You will die a
slow death, my master. Look to your belly for your future.” As
were all her words, these were said without emotion or inflection.

He glanced to his lap
and saw the long spear sticking from his stomach. Blood poured from
the wound, soaking his naked legs.

“What have you
done?” he asked plaintively. The unfairness of this situation
was so great, greater even than the pain that was now like fire
burning him inside out, that tears sprang into his eyes.

“Only what you
would have done to me.”

“Death invaded
you. You have a soul from a god of the deep down under.” He
took hold of the spear, but he could not dislodge it without fainting
outright. He knew he was doomed, but his mind railed against the
injustice. Hadn’t he given her life? Hadn’t he raised her
up?

“Demon,” he
hissed. “Monster.”

“I am what you
made. You snatched me from the dark and now you ask why the dark has
come to fetch you. Goodbye, Master.”

She turned then and
walked out of the clearing, leaving him alone. He had no talismans to
save himself. He had no potion to bring him to life. He was going to
die in her stead. He had cheated death of her presence and replaced
it with his own.

He lay his head back
and stared at the palmed ceiling that rustled in a breeze from the
sea. At the very least he would be rid of her. Let the living be
party to her baneful corruption.

He, the greatest
witchdoctor who had ever lived, was now through with it all.

His body sagged to the
side. His last fleeting thought was that he hoped no one ever chanced
on his secret potion ever again. A world populated by the living dead
would be no world for the living.

What had he done? What
had he done?

CHAPTER 4

RULING THE TRIBE

First she had to find
the panther. She hadn’t gotten Mujai to tell her how his magic
brought her back from the dark but he had spoken—bragged
really--of the three animal experiments before her.

It was the panther she
felt closest to, more than to any human. She knew she was not the
person she had been when alive. She was all new. And all different.
If she managed to escape accident (and enemies who meant to murder
her) by using her new-found powers, she thought she might live
forever.

It was a pity she had
to take Mujai’s life, but he had tried to destroy her. She had
known he would come to that. He feared her as he would fear the green
venomous viper that trailed in the island’s tree limbs.

She knew she could
outwit and out live him. He was just a man. A normal unchanged man.
He could not move from one place to another in an instant. He could
not tell what a person was thinking by looking into his eyes. He
could not hear the whisper of padded feet in the forest a mile
distant. And, of course, he could not see and hear and interact with
the People from the Dark, who gave her all sorts of secret knowledge
useful against living men. He had none of the gifts she’d been
graced with after her awakening.

She moved stealthily
through the jungle, unafraid, but alert, her mind on a quest. If she
could get to the panther and make it her friend, she could demand
great power over the people on the island. They might not, at first,
fear her, but they would immediately fear a panther, especially one
that walked at her side as if her guardian. And most of them knew the
rumor of a panther brought back to life by the witch doctor, a
panther that was now supernatural and so fierce it was like a new
beast walking the earth.

It took some time, and
much concentrated thought, but finally Angelique came down a narrow
ravine, following the thin ribbon of water washed silver in the
moonlight and there she saw the panther.

He stood majestic, a
large cat with rippling muscles and a great smooth head with widely
spaced yellow eyes. He was sipping at the water when she approached.
He raised his imperious head and his lips rolled back from long,
sharp teeth. Water and saliva dripped down his massive chest. He
growled deep in his throat.

“Don’t fear
me,” she said calmly, moving ever closer to him. “I am
like you. Come. Smell me and you will know. Let us be friends.”

She walked toward him,
down the narrow bank path, her bare feet making no noise in the soft
undergrowth. The cat did not move, but watched carefully. She could
hear his breathing mingle with the gentle trickling of the waters
sliding over rocks.

She got within two feet
of him, holding him still and calm with her magnetic gaze. “Do
you understand? I am like you. I am your brethren.”

The cat’s lips
lowered over his teeth. He moved forward until he was breathing hotly
on her bare skin. He lay his head against her arm where she lifted a
hand and stroked him softly.

“There will be no
love for us from anyone or anything else. We will be a team and help
one another.” She wasn’t sure that he understood the
individual words of her language, but he appeared to understand she
was no threat to him, nor was she food.