“No need for that! I’m fine!” Chloe shouts.
“Someone reported seeing a large flash and a fire out here.”
“My fault really, I guess! I wasn’t careful fueling one of the boats . . . Somehow I set off the fuel tanks!”
“You’re lucky you weren’t hurt, ma’am. Is there anything we can do for you now?”
“No!” Chloe shouts. “One of our friends knows her way through our channel. I’ll ask her to come out in the morning.” She waves as they cruise away.
After a few minutes, I join her on the veranda, a loaded shotgun cradled in my arms.
Chloe stares at me, at the gun. “Now what? Can’t we just go to bed now?”
“You can if you want to. I want to take a last walk around the island. Make sure everything’s okay,” I say.
Together we circle the island twice. Other than the destruction from our battle with the Pelk and the wounded dogs we find skulking in the bushes, we find nothing unusual.
“Satisfied?” Chloe says when we return to the veranda.
I gently bump my hip against hers. “I guess I will be if I get to sleep in my own bed tonight,” I say.
Chloe smiles and thinks for a moment. “I would like your company,” she says, bumping me back, a little harder. “But not yet. Not tonight. Later, when everything’s settled.”
“
If
everything ever gets settled,” I say, rubbing my midriff where Lorrel had stabbed me.
42
Pain. I open my eyes and stare into the dark, not sure where I am at first, then finally remembering, Henri’s room. I look for his clock, sigh when I read the time, 4:50.
Another jolt of pain shoots through me and I shudder. Rubbing my midriff with my palm, becoming aware of the dull, hot ache building inside me, I get up and throw on a pair of cuttoffs. I consider waking Chloe, but know that without the correct formula or ingredients, there’s little she can do for me.
Picking up my cellphone, I dial Claudia’s number. After the fifth ring, she picks up. “What? What time is it?” she says.
Yet another pain rockets up my insides. I gnash my teeth and say, “A little before five. Have you talked to your cousin Raoul yet?”
“Come on, boss. Who’s had the time? I was going to call him this morning. . . .”
“Call him now,” I say.
“The sun’s not even out. He’s going to think I’m nuts.”
“Let him think whatever he wants. Listen to me, Claudia, I’m hurting.”
“Already?” Claudia says.
“Already.”
“Oh. Sorry, Peter. I’ll call him right now. I’ll call you back as soon as we get off. Don’t worry, boss. We’ll work it out.”
After I disconnect, I clip the phone to my shorts and go to the door. Throwing it open, I inhale the cool, early-morning air. I smile. Warmth seems to be overtaking my body, like a fever out of control, and I welcome anything that cools it the least bit.
Max snorts and whines in his sleep and I turn and look at him. He remains asleep, his sides heaving but his body still. I notice a shotgun propped against the wall near him and return to the room to take it. Though all is supposed to be over, it brings me a little peace.
I walk up and down the veranda, waiting for Claudia’s call. After fifteen minutes, I move down to the beach, pacing across the sand, letting each wave that rushes to shore cool my feet.
The cellphone rings and I pick it up. “Yes?”
“Bingo,” Claudia says.
“Bingo what?”
“I found out that cousin Raoul doesn’t like to be woken up before dawn. He told me so, many times, in many different ways.”
“What about the word? What did he say about the word?”
“Oh, that?” Claudia says. “He said Pop was right about it meaning sapling.”
I groan. Claudia continues to talk, but I pay no attention to her words. After everything, after my long journey to Andros and back, after all my plans and battles, I will never be able to lie with my wife again, never be able to see my children. How ridiculous. For what purpose?
“Peter? Peter? Aren’t you listening? Raoul said
arbolillo
also can mean seedling. Couldn’t that make a difference for the antidote—if we boiled a seedling instead?”
I nod. “Of course, that has to be what my father meant—you can’t get a smaller tree than that,” I say. “It could have a different chemical composition at that stage. It makes sense.”
“Let Chloe know I’m coming. I’ll get dressed right now. I should be out there in an hour or so,” Claudia says and hangs up.
The pain blossoms inside me again, but this time I merely tense my body, grit my teeth and wait for it to pass. I decide I’ll wake Chloe after I go to the harbor and pull up one of the red mangrove seedlings.
Then I remember the fire, the burning trees at the far end of the harbor, and I shudder. I begin to run across the island, hoping at least some of the mangroves have survived.
It takes almost no time for me to arrive at the grassy area under the gumbo limbo tree, looking down on the harbor. I shake my head at the burnt remnants of my boats and dock and the blackened coral wall on the side of my house facing the harbor. Turning toward the stand of red mangroves that grew at the far end of the harbor, I gasp.
Not a single tree still stands. Only a few blackened branches and an occasional scorched root remain to show where they grew. I look for any sign of green growth, any possibility of life, but see only dark ashes. I shake my head again, refusing to believe that nothing has survived. The pain burns inside me and I moan, stumbling toward the far end of the harbor, holding my shotgun by its barrel, dragging its butt through the sand.
Scorched branches, twigs and roots snap and crunch as I walk though them. I kneel by the water’s edge, laying my shotgun down on the dry land behind me, and sift through the ashes with my hands. Though I can see fairly well in the dark, I wish that the sun would rise and aid me in my search.
My fingers touch something soft and pliable. Drawing in a breath, I brush ashes away from it. Water bubbles near me, but I pay no attention, running my fingers up a small slender stalk, touching and flexing two tiny, supple leaves.
“Undrae,”
Mowdar mindspeaks. I look up and find him and two of his warriors standing near me, all three dripping, their tridents pointed at me.
“You need not say anything, Undrae. Before we kill you, I want you to know that I think you’ve defended yourself and your island well.”
Mowdar pauses and looks at me.
“I want you to know we will try to make your wife’s death as painless as possible.”
“If she doesn’t kill you first,”
I mindspeak.
Mowdar laughs.
“I admire bravado,”
he says.
“But dawn will soon come, and we want to be gone before that. Do you want to receive your death kneeling in the dirt or standing?”
“Standing,”
I mindspeak, wondering what, if anything, I can do. In my human form I have no chance of overpowering any one of them, let alone all three. And I have no time to shift to my natural form. I see my shotgun in my peripheral vision. Even that lies too far from my reach.
Getting up, I stand straight and stare into Mowdar’s hard green eyes. If he’s going to kill me, at least I will watch him do it. Heat rises in my midriff again and an immense jolt of pain slams me. I gasp, doubling over, shutting my eyes.
“Ahh, Undrae, you’ve run out of antidote,”
Mowdar says.
“You should thank us for saving you from a terrible death.”
Still doubled over, I nod and another jolt of pain strikes me. I gasp again and stagger a few feet to the side. Taking deep breaths I wait for the pain to abate, opening my eyes only then, finding my right foot now near the shotgun.
“Enough! Stand straight and let us finish this,”
Mowdar mindspeaks.
I make my body spasm, as if another attack has hit me, and I fall to the ground next to the shotgun. Grabbing it, I roll to my side and fire. The slug rips through the fleshy part of Mowdar’s chest, just below his right shoulder.
The Pelk howls and drops his trident. Backing away he mindspeaks to his lieutenants,
“What are you waiting for? Kill him!”
Rising on one knee, I alternate shots, dropping one warrior with a slug to his chest and shooting the other in his midsection. Standing, I finish each with a shot to the head. Then I look for Mowdar.
I see no sign of him anywhere along the harbor. Nor do I find any ripples on the water’s surface. I turn and stare across the island, finally spotting the Pelk leader crashing through the underbrush, running toward the Wayward Channel.
Still holding the shotgun, I sprint after him, gaining on him with each wide stride. But he has too great a lead. By the time he reaches the water’s edge, forty yards remain between us.
Mowdar stops on top of the rock jutting into the water, turns and grins at me. I stop too, take aim and fire. The slug misses him and he laughs.
“I’ll be back, Undrae,”
he mindspeaks.
“And when I return I’ll have more than enough warriors with me.”
I fire and miss again and he slips into the water. Running the rest of the way, I stop when I reach the rock. Gasping air, my chest heaving, I stare at the channel. But the sun has finally broken through the horizon. Its light glares off the water surface and makes it difficult for me to see what lies beneath it.
Dorsal fins appear. Two, then four, then a dozen and a dozen more until the surface of the channel convulses with the movements of more than a half hundred dolphins. I gasp, wondering if this is the first wave of Pelk warriors that Mowdar threatened to bring.
A large dolphin sounds just a few yards away from me, blasting air as it clears its blowhole. I aim the shotgun at it, prepared to at least use my last few rounds in my own defense. The dolphin seems to sense my intent. It whistles at me, as if to reassure me it means no harm, and raises partially out of the water, balancing on its tail.
I suck in a breath at the sight of its almost pure-white body. I’ve seen only one albino dolphin in my life—the one that the Pelk called Ghost. Smiling, I nod at the beast and lower my gun. Ghost dives from sight. Staring at the water, I wait to see just what he and the rest of Notch Fin’s pod plan to do.
The water in the middle of the channel begins to churn and boil, and moments later Ghost and nine other large dolphins push Mowdar’s dark, bleeding body out of the water and hold it up by their beaks.
“Undrae!”
Mowdar mindspeaks, blood oozing from his mouth and pouring from at least a dozen wounds scattered across his body.
“Help me!”
The dolphins pull away and Mowdar crashes into the water and sinks from sight. The water churns again and I stay, watching as it boils—first turning pink, then turning deep red with the Pelk’s blood. I sigh and mindspeak,
“Mowdar?”
No answer comes.
Fins disappear as the dolphins begin to swim away, the water calming, the channel’s swift current diffusing and carrying off the crimson tint of the Pelk’s blood. Within minutes no sign remains of either the Pelk or the dolphins, and the channel’s blue water runs clear, just as it had before.
Pain strikes me again. When it abates, I turn and walk back to the harbor.
I shake my head at the two dead Pelk warriors lying near the burnt mangrove stand. Though I hate spending the time, I move blackened branches and twigs over them so they won’t be seen before Chloe and I have a chance to bury them.
At first I can’t find the seedling. I run my eyes over the scorched trees, the piles of ashes around them. Finally I spot a tiny flash of green near a pile of ash. Walking over, peering at it, I see it’s the edge of a small leaf. I kneel next to the seedling and brush the ashes off of it as best I can. Then I dig my hands in the dirt and loosen the soil around its roots.
Pulling as carefully as if it were a child I was delivering from the womb, I tug on it. It rewards my care by coming free from the ground without one tendril of its roots breaking.
Such a small thing. Holding it in my hands, shaking my head, I marvel that something so tiny and fragile could promise to bring so much good fortune into my world. Because of it, I will soon be able to hold my son and my daughter in my arms again. Because of it, I will have time to mend my relationship with my wife. Because of it, my family will grow to be whole again.
I sigh and brush some ash from its leaves. It will benefit Derek too, free him from the threat of the Pelk poison coursing through his veins. I wonder if my brother-in-law will want to return to his life in Jamaica. I hope not. My struggle would have been more difficult without his companionship and help. If he cares to travel in search of a mate of his own kind, I’ll be glad to sponsor him with enough money to allow him to do so in comfort.
Some smudge still remains on the seedling no matter how carefully I brush it. I rinse it in the water, shake it off and hold it up. Its green surface glistens in the early-morning sunlight. No trace of ashes mars any part of it. I smile, turning the plant in my hands, admiring it.