The Island (6 page)

Nipper flicked his ears forward at the sound of Nandy’s name. He sniffed the air again and seemed to recognize Rachel’s scent. When he moved toward the front of the cage she tensed a bit; she remembered how fierce Nipper was with almost everyone but Nandy. The man with the stick raised it, ready to stab it at the Woolly through the bars. But Nipper approached her slowly, and when he was close enough to her that she could feel the breath from his nostrils, he bowed his head and rubbed it against her fingers.

“It’s going to be okay.” Rachel ruffled the kinky fur on his head. The feline creature snuffled her hand and growled low in his throat. “I promise, Nipper.”

“He was eating a sand mole when we came upon him.” The man with the pointy stick, whose name turned out to be Ronald, sat at a table near the cage with Rachel and Hannah, his stick leaning on the bench next to him. Tom was standing next to the cage, watching Nipper groom himself. There was dried blood on his coat; Rachel had thought it was Nipper’s at first. But according to Ronald all the blood belonged to a now-deceased sand mole. The blood Rachel and Pathik had found on the stone path had been from Nipper’s prey, too. “I think that’s the only reason we were able to get close. He was so hungry he didn’t notice us until too late. We dozed him and brought him back here. Good thing we got him in the cage before he woke.” There was a certain admiration in Ronald’s tone.

“You people seem to do a lot of that.” Rachel was worried. They wouldn’t open the cage, no matter how much she insisted that Nipper wouldn’t harm them. She didn’t like him trapped like that—he’d have no chance against their pointed sticks if they decided he was too much of a risk.

“Look, at least they didn’t kill him, and you know dozing doesn’t harm you . . .” Hannah looked a bit embarrassed; she must have been remembering that Rachel knew from personal experience.

“He’s so big!” Tom didn’t take his eyes off Nipper. “He’s all muscle, too.”

“Let him go.” Rachel turned to Ronald. “Just let him go and you can keep me here for as long as you want.” Rachel didn’t mean a word of it.

“We can
already
do that.” Sarah strode up to the table. “I thought you were taking care of that.” She nodded at the Woolly and gave Ronald a look. He shrugged, abashedly.

“He started making a fuss the minute we got near the cage. I was waiting on a dozer—so he wouldn’t suffer—but nobody was available. I decided to go ahead and just get it over with because he was so wild.” Ronald ran a hand over his beard nervously. “But this one ran over and—”

“So I hear.” Sarah didn’t look pleased. “Well, we’ve got other things to tend to right now.” She took hold of Rachel’s arm, hauling her up from the table. “You’ll be coming with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you let Nipper out of that cage.” Rachel wrenched her arm free from Sarah’s grip.

“You don’t have much choice.” Sarah grabbed Rachel’s arm again, her voice low and hard.

“Sarah.” A woman glided up to the group, smiling. She was slight, with gray hair down to her waist. Her expression was serene but there was something in her eyes; embers awaiting tinder, ready to flame. “We need to escort our visitor to her people, but not in that manner, surely.” The woman turned to Rachel, her gaze oddly intent. “I haven’t heard what your name is yet, friend.”

Rachel realized it was true. Not a single person had asked her what her name was, not even Hannah. “My name is Rachel.” The rest of the woman’s words sunk in then. “Are my friends here?” 

“I am Filina.” The woman held out her hand. Her gaze sharpened even more.

Rachel didn’t take the woman’s hand. “Are my friends here or not?”

Filina smiled again, though it seemed strained. “They are. I sent Sarah to fetch you but you seem reluctant to leave this creature alone.”

“This
creature
is named Nipper, and your people were about to kill him.” Rachel wanted nothing more than to go to wherever Pathik and the others were, but she didn’t trust this woman. “Bring them here, to me.” She waited, but Filina didn’t respond to her demand. “Bring my friends
here
.”

Filina stared at Rachel’s face, but she didn’t seem to be seeing it. After a moment she turned to Sarah. “We’ll join you in the office shortly.”

Sarah looked from Filina to Rachel and back again. She seemed surprised about something, though Rachel was so angry about Nipper that she barely noticed. Filina raised an eyebrow. “Sarah, I
said
we’ll be along shortly. Now go.”

Sarah stalked off, but she looked back twice, a speculative expression on her face.

Filina returned her gaze to Rachel. She stared at her for another long moment. “I give you my word nothing will be done to . . . Nipper, while you’re gone. Now, let’s go, shall we?” She extended her hand again, keeping her eyes on Rachel’s.

This time, Rachel took Filina’s hand. She felt like there was some sort of fog in her mind, a gray fuzziness that impeded her thoughts. She followed meekly behind Filina without a single glance back at Nipper.

“Rachel!” Vivian rushed forward and wrapped her arms around the girl, burying her face in Rachel’s hair.

“Mom.” Rachel felt strange, as though she had just snapped back to reality from a hazy dream. She looked around the room Filina had led her to—it was wooden structure built against one wall of the larger cavern. There was a door set into a wooden frame, closed now so that none of the noise in the main cave was audible in the room. In the center of the room was a long table, with chairs on either side. Daniel, Malgam and Nandy stood near the table, and Pathik, too. There were three others in the room; Jim, the man who had dozed Pathik and her, was seated at the table. David, the other man who had been in the group that took her, sat next to him. Across from them sat Sarah, a sour look on her face.

Pathik waited while Daniel held his daughter, waited while Vivian hugged her again, while Malgam and Nandy greeted her. He stood back, watching, searching her face. Finally, when everyone else had had their turn, he approached. “Did they hurt you?” Pathik looked straight into Rachel’s eyes.

“I’m fine.” Rachel felt her cheeks flush. She wanted to touch Pathik. She wanted to feel that he was real. “I was worried about
you
.”

Pathik smiled then, just a slight upturn of his lips. He stepped close, put his arms around her and held her. Rachel let herself relax into his arms.

“We’re having a meal brought in—I’m sure you all must be hungry.” Filina gestured to the table. “Now that you can see your girl is unharmed, shall we sit? We have a lot to talk about.” Everyone began to take their places at the long table.

“They have Nipper!” Rachel blurted it out. It felt like something she’d just remembered. As soon as she said the words, she felt the strange, foggy feeling in her mind again. She shook her head, fighting to clear it away. 

Nandy froze, half-seated. “Where?”

Filina stared at Nandy. “Nipper is fine. We can see to him after we talk.”

Nandy sat down.

Rachel couldn’t believe it.
Nandy sat down
. After hearing that Nipper, her beloved Woolly, was here, she just sat down.

Something here was very wrong. Rachel frowned. “But don’t you want—” The fogginess reappeared, and for a moment she couldn’t remember what she had been about to say.

There was a knock on the door.

“Ah, here they are.” Filina sounded pleased. “Some lunch for our guests.”

A young woman entered, followed by two boys, all laden with trays of food. They placed the trays on the table along with dishes and a pitcher of water, then left as silently as they’d come. Filina poured water for everyone. “Come now, eat. After what I’m told you’ve been through you must welcome the sight of a hearty meal.”

The food did look good. There was bread and a soft cheese, along with a plump, round fruit Rachel had never seen before, but she was still full from the stew Tom had brought her. She sat next to Pathik and watched the others fill their plates. They all ate with gusto, silent until their stomachs were full. Rachel noticed Sarah watching her a few times, but she always looked away when Rachel met her gaze.

“Now then.” Filina sat back in her chair. “We need to apologize, first, for the way we introduced ourselves to you.” She laughed lightly, as though abducting Rachel was a simple matter of a misunderstanding. “But you have to understand, we can’t take chances. We’ve sacrificed much to make this island a safe place and we had no idea who you were.” She looked around the table at Rachel and the others.

“We were told . . .” Daniel hesitated. “That is, we were under the impression that this might be a safe place for us, too. It appears we may have been wrong about that.”

“You weren’t wrong. It’s just . . . there have been people in the past, people who aren’t like us. They didn’t mean us any good.” Filina looked troubled. “We just had to be certain you weren’t like them.”

“Do you mean Regs?” Malgam crossed his arms. “Well, I mean, some of us here are Regs.” He looked at Vivian and Daniel, then at Rachel.

“Regs.” Filina tried the term out. “Is that what you call those with no talent?”

Malgam shook his head. “That’s what we call the ones who stayed safe from the bombs, the ones on the U.S. side of things. At least, the ones we still don’t like.” He smiled at Rachel. “By talent I assume you mean our gifts. Plenty of us where I’m from have no gift.”

“Really?” David spoke for the first time. “None at all? We
all
have something, here. I thought maybe these four didn’t because they weren’t from the bombed areas.”

Malgam studied David. “Which four?” He got no answer. “How do you know how many of us have a gift and how many don’t?” He leaned forward across the table.

There was silence around the table. David exchanged a look with Filina, who gave him a slight nod.

“That’s
my
talent.” David spoke the words like a challenge. “I can tell whether a person has anything and I can tell how much. You, for instance,” he narrowed his eyes at Malgam, “have some talent, but it’s not very strong. In fact, neither you nor the boy are very heavy hitters.” He smirked then, as though he’d dealt Malgam some sort of satisfying blow. “The rest of you—” David looked curiously at Nandy. “I don’t get anything solid from the rest.”

“They don’t have amps though, and probably never had honers work with them either. You said yourself the whole colony seemed crude at best, in terms of talent.” Sarah’s eyes widened when she realized Filina was looking at her, a displeased expression on her face.

“What’s a honer?” Pathik was about to ask more, but Daniel interrupted him.

“Colony? Do you mean our people Away?” Daniel frowned at Filina. “How long have you known about us? Why didn’t you make any attempt to contact us?”

Filina raised an eyebrow. “I think we all have a lot to talk about.” She turned to Pathik. “A honer is someone who can help you get better at your tal—at your
gift
, Pathik. We can probably assign you one, help you improve, once we’ve got you all settled in here.” She turned back to Daniel. “That is, if you plan to stay here with us? I’m assuming you do, since you came all this way.”

Nandy spoke, as if she’d just roused herself from a trance. “I want to see Nipper.”

W
hen Nandy saw the cage, she went straight for the lock. Before she could hack at it more than once with her knife, Ronald ran over and waved a rusty key at her.

“I’ll unlock it! That’s one of our last locks, woman! Stop cutting at it.”

Nandy stopped mid-swing and stepped back. “Get to it then.”

“Wait.” Filina held up a hand. “How do we know this thing—Nipper—won’t tear someone apart? We have children here.”

Nandy knelt next to the cage and called to Nipper. The Woolly came directly to her, purring loudly. He nuzzled her hand through the cage bars. “He’s not going to hurt anyone.”

Filina looked doubtful, but she gave Ronald a signal to go ahead. He approached the cage door with key in hand, trying not to look nervous. Nipper growled, as though he was an exonerated king admonishing an errant jailer. Ronald fumbled with the lock and finally clicked it open. He did not open the door to the cage. Instead, he stepped back, picked up his pointed stick and nodded to Nandy.

The minute the cage door opened, Nipper leapt out and wrapped his front legs around Nandy’s neck. She almost toppled from his enthusiasm. Ronald, misunderstanding the display, raised his stick, and immediately Nipper was facing him, claws out and roaring. Nandy jumped up and put herself between Ronald and Nipper, doing her best to calm the Woolly.

Pathik joined Nandy in front of Nipper. “Put your spear down!”

“I thought he was attacking the woman.” Ronald lowered his weapon very slowly.

“Like I said, he won’t hurt anyone—as long as they don’t try to hurt him. Or anyone he thinks of as his family.” Nandy spoke the words loudly, so that the rest of the crowd that had gathered could hear them. She turned and stroked Nipper’s head, making soothing noises.

One of the people in the crowd, a woman, stepped forward. “They’ll be staying, then?” Rachel recognized her as the second woman of the group that had kidnapped her. She could see the woman in her mind, just as she had been at that moment on the path—her eyes closed, her face focused. Rachel thought the woman had had something to do with her not being able to make any noise when she tried to scream.

“They will.” Filina pasted a smile on a millisecond too late. “They’ve come to live in peace, as we do.”

“Will they be taking part in Celebration?” The woman didn’t look happy.

“Not this one, surely, Liza. It’s too soon. They need time to settle in.”

Liza said nothing.

“Well then.” Filina turned to look at the people who had gathered around the cage. “All of you have preparations to make, don’t you? As Liza has reminded us, Celebration is in less than two days. I’d suggest we all get back to work.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment.

People began to wander away, back to whatever they had been doing, some in groups, some alone. There were some whispers, some backward glances, but for the most part they all did as Filina asked.