Adrift on St. John (32 page)

Having caught her breath, the Princess resumed her hike, continuing across the hilltop until she reached a fork in the trail. Brow furrowed, the Princess stared at a brown metal post with white markings planted next to the path. The post’s block letters were similar to the ones she had encountered a couple days earlier on the sign near the donkeys at Turtle Point.

Her eyes honed in on a white-painted arrow pointed east.

Temptation tugged at her for only a moment before she made her decision. She licked her upper lip resolutely and began her descent on the Brown Bay Trail.

The Princess skipped lightly down the hill, instantly disappearing into the swampy forest. The sun did its best to infiltrate the netting of leaves and vegetation above her head, but she soon found herself immersed in the jungle’s dark shadows.

As the path sank to sea level, its route curved along a bog of mangroves grown up in a brackish salt pond. The Princess left the trail, veering off into a thick patch of grasses. She pushed her way deep into the marsh and stood there in silence, her body moving in perfect time with the swaying reeds, as she absorbed every detail of her surroundings.

Once she was satisfied that she had not been followed, she waded closer to the shore, her progress as indiscernible as that of the island’s tiny biting insects.

The roaring punch of the ocean greeted her at Brown Bay’s pebbly beach. The sky glowed with a full morning’s heat, flushing her cheeks as it warmed her skin.

The Princess walked along the rocky shoreline, using her spear to navigate over several slick boulders, until she happened upon the rough remains of a low rock wall tumbling out of the woods. Curiously, she peered into the dense
brush, searching for a larger structure that might explain the wall’s existence.

The tree limbs spread low, hugging the ground, impeding her progress. Her body bent into a crawling position, trying to find an opening through the network of roping vines that barricaded every ingress.

After fighting about twenty yards inland through the overgrowth, she came across the ruins of a small settlement, hidden in the trees.

Holding her multipronged spear at the ready, the Princess carefully circled the ruins. The buildings were ancient, abandoned, and looked as if they had been built by a people who had inhabited the island long ago. In the middle of the settlement, a small courtyard formed a pen that likely had been used to hold livestock. Off to one side, the stone ring of a drinking well encircled a dark gaping hole.

A rickety two-story structure in the center of the area appeared to have been the main living quarters. The building had long since been taken over by the forest’s jungling arms; moss covered most of the stone surfaces. One of the structure’s disintegrating side walls provided a precarious staircase to its upper level, with pseudo-steps formed out of loose stones that had not yet fallen away from the wall.

The Princess’s tennis shoes wobbled on the shaky steps as she climbed to the top floor. Brushing aside the spiderwebs that crisscrossed the doorless entry, she peered inside.

There on the leaf-strewn floor, nestled in a corner, lay a small wooden box.

With her spear, the Princess cleared a path through the leaves, testing the floor with its pronged end before trusting it with her weight. Her heart beat heavily within her chest as she drew close enough to the box to unhook the rusting metal clasp that held the lid shut.

Carefully, she lifted the cover, generating a loud
creak
that echoed through the stone-filled room.

Inching nearer, she peeked over the rim to look inside. In the bottom of the box lay a blue nylon satchel.

The Princess stretched her hand out to touch the fabric. The material was slick and shiny, yet seemingly durable. She unsnapped the satchel and looked inside.

A large sheaf of papers filled up much of the space, but there at the bottom of the pouch was an item that immediately caught her attention.

The Princess blinked in disbelief.

She couldn’t imagine how it had followed her all these many miles across the ocean, but she knew
this
was the reason she had set out on the easterly path that morning.

There, inside the blue nylon satchel, lay her precious medallion.

42

Slowly, the Princess extended her hand into the satchel. Her trembling fingers hovered over the amulet, afraid it might disappear if she tried to touch it. Every ridge and contour of the medallion was just as she remembered—a blazing circle of the sun, a halo of rays streaming out from its burning center.

Sucking in her breath, she willed herself to capture the last inch of space separating her from the trinket. As the familiar cool metal surface pressed against her skin, she felt the transfer of its power course into her fingers and up through her arm.

Just then, the Princess heard a commotion at the beach. Pulling the medallion toward her chest, she scurried back to the top of the rickety steps. Crouching behind the corner of the second-story wall, she spied two figures stumbling through the underbrush toward the ruins.

The first to emerge from the thicket was a small bony man with thinning brown hair tied in a limp ponytail at the back of his neck.

“It’s in here, Eddie,” he called back to his companion, a tall skinny fellow with a bald head and a full beard who was still struggling through the overgrowth of shrubs and low-hanging branches.

“Conrad, you crazy hippie,” Alden Edwards muttered under his breath as a curtain of ropelike vines smacked him across the face.

His eyes widened as he noticed a bustling wasp nest attached to a dangling vine about a foot to his right. Nervously, he ran a hand over his bald—and exposed—crown as he counted close to a hundred stingers in the pulsating mass of insects.

“What have you dragged me into?”

Gripping the handle of her spear, the Princess watched as the two men approached her hiding spot. The shorter of the pair paused at the bottom of the steps leading to the second floor of her building, and she backed farther into the stone recess to avoid being seen.

“Come on, Fast Eddie,” Conrad encouraged. “Hurry up, or I’ll have to find you another nickname.”

Eyes rolling, Alden staggered forward, his back bent almost horizontal to duck beneath the hanging vines. His feet slipped on the wet ground, narrowly missing the edge of the well. He paused to poke his head into the deep hole, trying to determine its depth, but he could see nothing but a dark seeping pit.

“I’ll be lucky if I make it out of here alive,” he groaned as Conrad began climbing up the side of a crumbling brick wall, using the exposed rocks as footholds.

The nimble New Yorker quickly reached a landing on the second floor of the ruin. He turned and waived enthusiastically down at the eco-resort manager.

“Tell me again,” Alden groused, “why we couldn’t have
done this back at the campground?” With a wide yawn, he added, “And a couple of hours later?”

Conrad propped his hands on his slim hips. He stood mere inches away from the Princess, who had crouched behind the nearest wall to stay out of Alden’s line of sight.

“I have to keep it hidden—to protect it. You’ll see.” Conrad jerked his head toward his left shoulder. “Get on up here, and I’ll show you.”

The Princess wrapped both hands tightly around her spear’s wooden handle. Her eyes focused in on the skinny ponytail tied at the back of the man’s neck as she prepared to strike.

Grumbling uneasily, Alden placed a first foot on the bottom rock.

Conrad smoothed a hand over the top of his head and straightened his ponytail. “When I read about the Maho Bay sale in the papers, I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t let anything happen to my teepee tent,” he said as Alden took a second tentative step onto the shaky stones.

“I began searching through the Rockefeller archives at one of the New York libraries. They had stuff going all the way back to before the island’s transfer—from the Danes to the Americans. It took some digging, but I finally got to what I was looking for. This little sheet of paper is going to make a big difference around here.”

He poked his narrow chest out boastfully. “You can start unpacking your boxes, Eddie, and book my reservation for next year, and the year after that, and the year after…”

Conrad’s elflike body suddenly jerked sideways as he disappeared behind the wall into the second floor of the ruins.

Alden heard a strange rustling sound.

“Conrad, are you okay?” he called out with concern.

He took another wobbly step up the rock wall of stairs.

“Conrad?”

Alden bent to his knees, trying to gain enough balance to climb the rest of the way up the wall. But before he could scramble the remaining five feet in height, a wild figure exploded from the second floor landing.

Brandishing the spear above her head, a blood-curdling scream trilling from her throat, the Amina Princess leapt from the top of the steps to the forest below.

As Alden dove for cover, he caught only a glimpse of a curly-haired woman in a beaded vest and sarong flying through the air.

A silver medallion hung from her neck on a leather cord. The handle of a blue nylon satchel was wrapped around one wrist; in the opposite hand she held a rake that looked as if it been stolen from one of the resorts.

43

Throughout the entire drive over Centerline Road to Coral Bay, Vivian continued to mutter about both the decrepit state of the Jeep and my abysmal driving skills—each instance of which Hamilton found enormously amusing. By the time we turned into the parking lot outside the Moravian church, he had nearly worn himself out from giggling.

Despite being at the epicenter of St. John’s original colonization, nowadays Coral Bay was associated with the less-populated side of the island. To modern eyes, this was an “up and coming” area, ripe for future development.

Coral Bay’s loosely defined boundaries included a small handful of restaurants, a gas station (which had changed hands countless times and was only sporadically open for service), several less-expensive villa rentals, and numerous lots touting their suitability as building sites. It was home to a roaming herd of stubborn goats, many of whom had no intention of yielding to vehicular traffic. A flock of Richard’s feathered cousins also frequented the area, monitoring
the leftovers at the tables outside one of the harbor-front restaurants.