Authors: Jane Toombs
Chapter 22
Romell woke to find rain drenching her. It poured through the green canopy of the forest and thrummed on the ground below. She eased herself from the fork of the aerial root where she'd wedged herself the night before and dropped down to the knee. Gathering her courage, she peered at what was on the ground below. A night scavenger had ripped open the tiger's body, but there was no sign of Pieter's.
She slipped to the ground and grasped the hilt of the kris, pulling it from the tiger. Pushing her wet hair from her face, she looked all about and saw one of Pieter's feet protruding from the ferns.
Romell knew he'd been dead when she climbed up the root last night to save herself from scavenging beasts. One of them must have dragged his body into the ferns. She breathed a prayer of thankfulness that she'd been spared the horror of seeing his mangled remains.
Carrying the kris, she bowed her head against the rain and started off, moving slowly until the stiffness in her legs eased. She had no idea which way to go, but she couldn't stay here. If she kept moving in one direction, she'd have to come out of the jungle sometime. Fleetingly, she wondered what had become of the tiger cub.
The forest floor was littered with debris left by the rain. She gathered several yellow scaly-skinned fruits and, wiping the bloody kris against her sodden sarong, used the tip to open one. The large dark seeds inside were surrounded by lemon-yellow pulp. Romell sniffed at the fruit, then took one cautious taste. It was delicious, tart and rich at the same time. She quickly finished the first, cut open the second and ate that.
Yesterday's frightfulness waited in the back of her mind, but on the castaway island Romell had learned to keep terror from overwhelming her. If she kept moving she'd come out of the jungle; she'd find natives who'd help her. If she let herself brood on her predicament, she'd be paralyzed into helplessness.
Raising her face, she let water run into her mouth. The rain muted the shrieks and croaks of the jungle, but the sounds were still audible, providing an accompaniment to the steady drum of the raindrops on the canopy of leaves and vines. Lianas thick as a man's thigh draped across her path, and she pushed them aside to sidle past. Was this the start of the rainy season, the monsoons? What had Elysabet told her?
"We count on hot and dry from June to October and hot and wet from November to March."
Surely three months hadn't gone by since August? Romell shook her head. It couldn't be November yet. Christoffel had said the monsoons came out of the China Sea from the northwest in November. Romell wiped rain from her face. What she'd give to be talking to Elysabet and Christoffel right now!
She reached to push another liana aside and it writhed away from her. Just as she began to realize it was alive, its head whipped around, and she stared at the monstrous snake. The slitted pupils of two yellow eyes stared back at her.
Romell choked on a scream and turned to run. Her foot slipped on the slick debris and she fell onto her back. Quickly she rolled over, scrambled to her feet and fled.
Later, out of breath, she leaned against a tree trunk, thinking her fall might have saved her, for the serpent had coiled to enfold and crush her. On the other hand, she'd lost the kris when she fell and now was defenseless. Even had she dared try to retrieve the weapon, she had no notion which way she had come.
Everything in the jungle looked the same--tree ferns, gigantic pillars of tree trunks, trees that didn't branch until they'd risen nearly a hundred feet into the air; giant leaved plants that climbed those trunks; thick vines; parasitic flowers.
For all she knew she could be traveling in a circle, and soon would be back with the dead tiger and--
No! She couldn't bear to think of last night's horror. But it was too late. Romell leaned her forehead against a tree trunk and sobbed, adding her tears to the rain. She cried for Pieter's terrible death and for her own danger, she wept until a loud grunting penetrated her misery.
Romell turned her head. Through the blur of tears and the rain, she saw the head of an alarmingly strange animal thrust through the ferns no more than fifteen feet away. The head was grey-white and huge, with little pig eyes and a horn set not atop the head, where it should have been, but above the nostrils. The head swung this way and that as though the animal were trying to locate her.
Flattening herself against the tree, Romell slid around to the other side, putting the trunk between her and the beast. Cautiously, she edged her head out far enough to see what the creature intended to do.
The animal stepped from the foliage. Romell bit back a gasp as she saw the enormous bulk of its body. It grunted and tossed its horned head about for awhile, then, apparently satisfied, trotted off in the direction Romell had come from until, finally, the rain hid it from sight.
The rain slackened, then ceased, although the leafy jungle roof continued to drip. Romell leaned against the tree trunk until she could force herself to move on again. At her feet, a gigantic gold and green beetle crawled over a decaying branch. Romell watched numbly while it probed with its head into crevices in the wood, finally pulling out and devouring a white grub. When the beetle crawled off the limb and approached her feet, Romell edged around the tree trunk, her shoulder brushing against the still-leafy tip of another fallen branch.
She cried out and jumped away, slapping at her shoulder where fiery pain stabbed and burned. On her hand was the crushed body of an inch-long red ant. Twisting her head, she saw another ant on her shoulder, its legs moving feebly although the body was smashed. A burning pain radiated down her arm. She tried to brush off the dying ant, but its head was embedded in her flesh and she had to dig it out with her fingernail.
Fire ants! She recalled Elysabet warning her about them nesting in Batavia gardens. On the fallen branch next to her, an ant's nest as large as a round bread loaf swarmed with the long-legged red ants. Holding her throbbing shoulder, Romell hurried away.
She walked faster and faster until she was running, running and sobbing, alone and beleaguered on all sides in this alien jungle where every living creature threatened her.
Suddenly she was yanked to a halt, her clothes caught and her skin pierced by sharp points. She turned fearfully and saw that she was hooked on the leaves of a plant. She tried to pull free, but the barbed leaves thrust deeper, and she screamed with pain.
When she finally calmed herself enough to reason, Romell backed away. Taking each leaf separately in her fingers, she unhooked them from her skin and sarong. Blood trickled down her arms and legs from tiny wounds and her clothes were in tatters. In her flight, she'd lost one of her sandals and now she realized the bare foot was cut and bruised.
If I don't get hold of myself, the jungle will certainly kill me, Romell thought. I must walk carefully and watch for danger. Every plant, every animal may be an enemy, waiting for a careless move.
She looked about, listening. Raindrops still pattered down from the jungle canopy in an irregular rhythm although the rain had stopped. Insects and frogs croaked and whistled and shrilled. She heard a flock of birds chattering somewhere in the distance. The dimness seemed a bit brighter. Orchids grew in profusion here—purple, lavender, salmon pink, and pale blue— thrusting from tree boles or sprouting on the decaying branches littering the ground.
From nearby rose a hideous stench, the stink of spoiled meat. As Romell walked slowly on, the smell grew stronger until Romell grimaced with distaste. When she spotted a bizarre plant in her path, she didn't at first associate it with the smell, but when she came closer, she saw the plant was actually a monstrous flower and the carrion stink its perfume.
What kind of horrid insects would such a flower attract? Holding her nose, Romell managed to come close enough to peer into its depths, a massive cavity at least four feet across. From this well, a huge pallid spike rose some seven or eight feet tall. The entire flower swarmed with beetles. Romell backed away and went on.
The scolding calls of a troop of monkeys sounded to her left. Romell hesitated. Monkeys usually gathered in fruit trees and she was hungry. Monkeys, at least, were harmless. She turned toward the sound. A few minutes later she saw them feeding in a clump of palms, brown and tan monkeys with a white rim around black faces.
As she neared, she saw the trees were banana palms, with bunches of brilliant yellow fruit hanging higher than she could reach. There was no possible way for her to climb a banana tree. The palms had flowers, green fruit and ripe, all growing at once.
The call of the monkeys changed as she approached, the shrill chattering turning to menacing hoots. She stopped and stared up at them and they stared back, shifting restlessly among the green fronds. One leaped to another tree, dropping a half-eaten banana, and Romell hurried to pick up the fruit. Whether or not her quick move had anything to do with it, she didn't know, but suddenly the monkeys began to toss bananas at her. Some of the fruit struck her and she fled, pausing long enough to scoop up five bananas.
The monkey's pursued her overhead for awhile, but soon lost interest and left her. Romell slowed, stopped, and ate three of the bananas, savoring the rich, creamy taste. The dripping from above had almost stopped. Romell glanced up at the canopy that had all tints and tones and shades of green, showing gray, brown, or black where tree trunks pierced through the interlacing leafiness. To her surprise and relief, she spotted a tiny wedge of blue sky. The jungle was thinning.
She walked on, seeing more and more blue between the leaves, but at the same time finding her path blocked by underbrush now that the sun got through to encourage the smaller plants. Romell struggled through the brush and at last came to a clearing where she stopped in astonishment.
Two square stone buildings thrust from encircling growth. She'd never seen such buildings in Java before. The native villages, the kampongs, had thatch and bamboo huts; the houses in Batavia were wood. Hesitantly, she walked into the clearing, staring in wonder at the carved stone.
As she came closer, she saw that the buildings were not dwellings but shrines with niches for statues. The stone statue of a man, twice human size, sat cross-legged in the nearer of the two shrines. As Romell stared, she became sure she was looking at the image of an alien god. Gooseflesh pricked her arms despite the heat.
The statue was so old! Already the edges crumbled, and the darkened stone was pitted with age. Vine creepers had snaked out to crawl up the side nearest the jungle, and a small tree's growth had cracked both shrines. Moving to her right, Romell examined the second shrine where the likeness of a woman could barely be made out. Pieces of rock had fallen from the statue and a vine wound completely around the bottom, like a large jungle snake crushing its victim.
Romell turned away. If natives lived nearby, wouldn't they be taking care of their gods? She thought of the wooden shrines she had seen near the villages, where figures made of rice straw sat amidst offerings of fruit. Still, this clearing had been made by burning, for there were charred stumps from an old fire and this was how the Javanese cleared land.
She picked her way through a tangle of bushes and vines, hoping against hope to find a kampong. The sun had lowered to the treetops when she came upon an abandoned village. Romell stood among the ruins of huts, fighting tears. How could she survive another night in this wilderness? Was there really a spotlessly clean little house in Amsterdam where her cousins sat down to meals of meat and milk and eggs? Did the Reijts actually exist?
And Adrien. Where was Adrien, her beloved Adrien? For a moment his face flickered in her mind—his smile, his dancing blue eyes—and then the image faded and refused to return, no matter how hard she tried to bring him back.
She was hungry and thirsty and tired, and she hurt where the ants and the thorns had wounded her. Her shoulders drooped. A parrot squawked nearby. Another answered. Bells tinkled. Bells?
Romell raised her head, then sighed, remembering she had been fooled once by a bird with a bell-like call.
Yet this sounded like many small bells, all tinkling together, and the bird had had a single clear note. Romell turned her head, listening, and pictured a caparisoned horse ornamented with bells. Yes, a trotting horse would ring the bells just as these rang, but what would a horse be doing in this wilderness? More than likely it was only more of the strange insects or birds that lived in this equally strange land.
But when the sound grew fainter, she could bear it no longer and pushed wildly through the undergrowth, running toward the fading sound.
"Wait!" she called; "Help!" until she was too winded to force the words out. Still she staggered on, hardly noticing when the trees closed her in again.
Romell didn't hear the bells now. All around her the forest stirred into nocturnal life, its evening cacophony drowning out any such fragile sound. She came to a halt, gasping for breath, her feet bleeding, the other sandal lost. Slowly she slumped to the ground, unable to go on.
I must get up, she told herself. It's growing dark and I'm not safe here. But her body sagged in exhaustion. Despite her struggle to stay awake, to get to her feet, her eyes drooped closed.
Bong, bong, went the church bells in London. Clang, answered the bell from the small white church in Virginia. I'm dreaming, Romell thought, and opened her eyes to near darkness. Clang, clang, called the Virginia bell.