CHAPTER ONE
Mirage
THE BOY WITH fair hair opened his one good eye. At first all he could discern through the blurry film left by his lid was a spot of light, a lone white star against black, some way off from his buzzing body. He tried to calculate its distance but could not: the speck was either a few metres away or on the other side of the galaxy. Stolidly he stared at the star.
After a while other specks appeared on either side of the first light, blinking into existence one by one on a new horizon. Somehow their nature seemed intrinsically unknowable, and it occurred to the boy to distinguish instead the blackness around them. He knew that one cannot breathe in space, so it must be the night sky he was staring into. Then why was he not cold? The boy could feel subtle yet distinct currents of warm air exhaling onto his face in uneven thresholds. Slowly he remembered his origins.
This was not the thicket. There were no rough branches or tickling fronds surrounding him now. He tried to recall his journey from that space to his current location, but the blackness was uncommunicative; nature was not going to help him with prickly associations. His brain was blank. All was silent and neutral about him.
He closed the good eye again and concentrated on his physical circumstance. Lying on his back with his head tilted slightly to the right, he noted a dry, soft pressure on his tailbone and behind his shoulder blades, yet whatever was under his body was still too hard to be a bed. His head was propped up by a mound of something furry.
Remembering his other faculties, the boy took his breathing off autopilot to inhale by himself as deeply as he could. Instantly shards of pain struck inside his lungs, and he paused the action before slowly allowing the air out again. One of his nostrils was clogged up, but the autopilot resumed as he turned his attention to his tingling limbs. His left hand was resting on his stomach, with the right lying parallel with helpless legs. His feet and chest were bare, but damp fabric clung to the front of his thighs.
His mind drifted into unconsciousness again, and imperceptible time went by. During this stretch of slumber he thought he heard rustling by his face, and could almost make out particular words spoken high up, in every direction. Did he perceive traces of humour, compassion, scorn? Through these deep, nebulous impressions perhaps he himself spoke too, though what he uttered, and whether anyone responded, was not ascertained. Finally even the nightmares subsided, and his mind cleared itself of all notions entirely. Darkness fell upon darkness.
THE BOY WITH with red hair stood silhouetted against a navy expanse of evening sky. Dressed only in ragged shorts dyed brown by earth and blood, he held a straight wooden spear by his side and looked out at the trembling ocean. His mind too was blank, but unencumbered by mystery and fear; his face showed no emotion, though his countenance was always hard to gauge through the smears of plant and animal juice.
Tonight a thick black line ran from ear to ear up over the bridge of his nose; the forehead was daubed red and the chin white. His body, supple yet ossified by the elements, was filthy, streaked all over by grazes, pigments and sweat, and in some areas his own wounds were receptive to the fresh blood of other creatures. Earth had worked itself into every pore. His natural complexion had vanished.
He turned from the vast horizon and looked down to his right, over a short isthmus of rock at the straggled entrance to a forest. A little beyond, the growth became verdant and evenly distributed, but farther away black patches sullied the landscape. Here and there dark smoke crept between trunks living and dead, and the whole forest had been exhausted by heavy rainfall.
The boy thought dimly of a distant beach fire extinguished by a torrid thunderstorm, and moved his head upward to dislodge the memory. A mile away, adjacent to the rocky peninsular on which he stood, sat a mountain, an imposing crimson pyramid in the faltering light. The boy stared at it unblinkingly, then stepped from his rock and clambered down, back towards society. In the distance the sun burned orange, became obscured by impatient streaks of dark cloud, then finally relented to night and the boy's retirement.
WHEN HE OPENED his eyes again, the fair-haired boy saw no light at all. He was completely surrounded by black. In contrast to his earlier awakence, however, now he could hear noises: quiet yet heavy breathing. The inhalations were rhythmic, and after listening intently the boy guessed that there were at least five people sleeping around him. The paralysis of the daytime – if it had been the daytime – was succeeded now by a conscious tensing of his muscles. If he got up he might stir the sleepers, but if he waited what would become of him?
He realised his fear and traced its origins. Before, his mind had been free of cognition, intellect; now he remembered faces and events. He remembered the beach, the pool, the long scar plunging deep into the forest. What had happened between the thicket and the darkness was still enigmatic, but the earlier history of his time on the island was growing clearer in his mind. His brain was imposing dissonances on him, and the boy fought to form a narrative. In need of context, he was reaching out into the blackness for stars of understanding.
Suddenly one blinked into existence: the solitary figure on the rock, with one arm hovering over the lever. Then another memory of the same shadow, pushing its weight down and unleashing the monstrous boulder. The tumbling, unstoppable cascade down the ledge, the litter of smaller stones, the little monsters, the strike, the fall into the boiling water… The fair-haired boy was open-mouthed from the growing frenzy in his stomach, and as his memories coalesced, his physical sensations become torturously specific: the wound in his side burned; the bloated swell beneath one eye ringed with dying blood. He moaned the name of his stolen friend out loud – then stopped.
A dim light had made him open the good eye. Now the blackness was home to a flickering orange diamond four feet up in the air. The fair-haired boy sat up, his back and palms immediately aching, and looked at what the light was illuminating. The red-headed boy stared back at him, his face and shoulders all that were visible. Still expressionless, he stood looking down at the emaciated blond at his feet, then finally parted his cracked lips and spoke lowly.
'Hello, Ralph.'
More sensations made themselves known to the recumbent figure: his ankles itched and his tongue felt heavy and swollen in his dry mouth. He salivated then murmured back at the standing boy.
'Jack…'
They remained in the same position for a while longer, the prisoner and the visitor, then the standing boy broke his gaze and retreated into the black, killing the flame with a bare hand. The boy named Ralph paused a while longer, then gave in to the pulses of pain around his body, his throbbing mind, and reclined again on the soft, hard ground.
NOW IT WAS day, in a glorious, extravagant summer. Ralph clutched towels around his shoulders and traversed the promenade deck of a gliding, silver cruiser. His filthy shorts were gone and now he wore clean slacks, a little too large, and a blue sweater. A sunny breeze blew through his washed hair as he looked up at the stacks of tiered bridges and the conning tower – a formal version of the ridged peninsula on the island – and ahead of them guns protruded out to sea and made him feel protected, even powerful. The other survivors had gone, but he was not worried about them – nor was he impatient to get home, for somewhere in the deep maze of this ship was his father.
What was taking him so long?
SUNLIGHT FILTERED FROM his dream into reality: yellow-white beams were streaming in through the oblong entrance to the cave. Ralph opened his eyes to the glare. He was on his side now, his right arm stricken by pins and needles, and he sat up carefully to examine the state of his body. The dull twinges continued in his limbs and the side of his stomach where the wound had been inflicted, but his brain was relaxed from deep sleep, his mind clearer now. Around him lay heaps of flattered fern and vitiated animal skin. The sleepers had vanished.
Ralph tried to open his bad eye but its vision was blurred. Wincing and grimacing, he got to his feet gingerly and slouched to the entrance. In front of him was a sheet of rock tilting upwards, and somewhere below and beyond that lay the neck, the forest, the mountain. The sun shone blithely down on his shoulders and made him shiver. He was alone for half a minute, then a voice called down from behind him.
'Morning.'
Ralph turned and looked up. A figure in shorts was sitting with a spear higher up on the rock, the bottom of which formed the jagged ceiling of the cave. The guard was silhouetted against the bright blue sky, and as Ralph's eyes were still growing accustomed to the sun glare, its identity remained nonchalantly mysterious for another half minute, though Ralph knew who he was not.
'Where's Jack?' he mumbled, his sight and hearing improving a little.
The figure remained motionless. 'Gone hunting,' it said. 'Won't be back for an hour. You look awful.'
The glare was fading from Ralph's eyes. Now he saw who the figure was: Roger, Jack's partner in crime. Presumably he had been stationed here thanks to his violent devotion to the leader. Ralph remembered his last glimpse of the previous guards, the twins, and wondered what had become of them. With a bolt of inward panic he imagined the hunters setting them loose in the forest then tracking them down… No. He himself had survived. Ralph was far more of an enemy to Jack than Sam and Eric were.
He turned back to the protecting sheet of rock opposite the entrance and sat down against it. The spot was free from wind but the sun filled it with warmth. Ralph closed his good eye and breathed, trying to live with the pains and flashbacks.
'Chief says I'm not to let you go,' called Roger, a trace of excited menace in his voice.
'Couldn't if I tried,' muttered Ralph meekly.
The sun grew hotter by the minute. Roger stood up on his ledge and casually walked out of sight, as if daring Ralph to attempt an escape, but the prisoner was too tired and too rational to move. He knew Roger's nature now, and did not want to provoke the boy's more pernicious tendencies. Ralph looked around and saw pink rocks providing a natural barricade for the cave and its crude patio. Behind the sheet was the ledge from which Roger had unleashed the boulder… He tried to remember the dream, to recapture its feeling of breezy hope, but the images were dying. The prisoner and the warden remained on the rock, alone and taciturn.
After a while a fresh sound drifted up from the forest; Ralph looked up to see Roger clambering down the rock and coming towards him with an admonitory jab of his spear. Ralph flinched as the other boy passed him and climbed over the sheet to greet the others. Again the sound pierced through the distant sounds of ocean and high wind, and Ralph recognised it as a conch. They had found another one.
Anticipating a humiliating confrontation with his old enemy in front of the hunters, he staggered back to the cave to be shielded by darkness again. The furry thing on which his head had rested was the bolstered hide of a wild pig – and another was on the way, for the hunters had returned triumphant; Ralph heard the gloats and cheers from the throng as they passed the cave entrance and went farther up the rock to where the fire was. He remembered his own hunger and his stomach rumbled. If offered food, he knew that he would take it with little hesitation or pride.
He sat pondering in the dim, cool cave for a while, then he heard feet shuffling on the ground outside. Looking up he saw two symmetrical outlines pausing at the entrance, and immediately recognised them.
'Sam 'n' Eric!' he cried, hoarse but affectionate.
The twins walked in, thankful for his warmth, and sat on the floor, creating what Ralph hoped was a triangle of potential rebellion. They had brought an older hide with them, in which a strip of unevenly cooked meat sat in its juices. Together they held it forward and Ralph fell on the flesh, devouring it within a minute.
After he had finished licking his lips he looked up at the twins gratefully. They gazed back at him with guilty, troubled faces.
'It's alright,' said Ralph, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand and almost licking that too. 'Don't feel bad about yesterday.' He recalled their agonised moans outside the thicket. 'Did Jack and Roger hurt you badly?'
The twins shifted on their behinds. 'Not so much,' said one, whom Jack thought was Sam. The other said, 'We're part of the tribe now.'
Their initiation rite had been torture. Now Ralph was the lone rebel.
'What will they do with me?' he asked, thinking uncomfortably about Roger perched on the high rock. He could be right above him even now.
The twins sustained their glum countenances. 'Don't know,' mumbled Sam. 'He never tells us anything,' followed Eric. 'Just orders us around.'
Ralph's hopes of staging a revolution faded. The twins had been humbled by the hunters, and now that the other two fifths were gone forever… He shook his head, suddenly depressed, and told the twins to leave him alone. Sadly the two brothers trudged to the cave entrance together and disappeared into the sunlight, as Ralph reclined on the flattened skin and held on to the flickering traces of his dream.
The day grew older and he wallowed in dejection. An hour or two passed, then at around noon the first silhouette returned. Ralph identified the matt fronds of long red hair, plastered by sweat and blood, and regarded the spear with unease. Jack walked into the cave and crouched down two feet away from Ralph's raw bed.
'I let the twins in,' he said, his face impenetrable through the red and white. 'Couldn't let you die, could I?'
Ralph stared back neutrally. 'What happened yesterday?'
'I thought you'd give us more of a fight,' remarked Jack, sitting down with the spear jutting up between his legs. 'Though if you had, perhaps we wouldn't have spared you.' He snorted lightly. 'You were raving mad by the time we got to you on the beach. Roger wanted to do you but I said no.'
'How charitable,' Ralph dared with his sarcasm. 'What happens now?'
'Dunno,' said Jack, tapping the spear from one hand to the other. 'You could never be a part of my tribe. You're too independent. Always getting clever ideas.'
'Well I can't stay locked up here,' said Ralph, bitterly. 'Let me go. I'll… I'll live on the other side of the island.'
'With us as the only source of meat?' said Jack, surprised. 'You'd die. You can't live on fruit forever. Besides, those wounds have to heal.'
'As if you care,' said Ralph. 'Maybe you just want to rear me like an animal and then…' He stopped himself, feeling swells of emotion inside his chest.
Jack stood up and laughed. 'Interesting idea. I'll ask Roger what he thinks of it.' The hunter left Ralph in the ambiguous shades of the cave.
NOW THE VOICES were easier to distinguish; opening his good eye again, the fair-headed one could hear Jack and Roger talking sotto voce at the entrance to the cave. The two hunters were squatting down, black shapes against the evening navy, discussing something of importance away from their prisoner and the other hunters. Around him Ralph made out about ten supine shapes on the floor, and guessed that the rest were outside or in a lower cave. Now that Ralph's group had been crushed and there was no division on the island, perhaps some of them had rebuilt the shelters near the pool… No, Ralph snorted to himself, it was probably too much work for them. Jack heard the noise and turned inward to the sleepers, and Ralph could feel those dispassionate eyes burning into his through the darkness. He lay down again silently and waited for his mental exhaustion to drag him under, but he remained perturbed into consciousness. With a scuffle Jack and Roger crept into the cave and lay down in their beds near the entrance. Ralph watched them from the good eye. Jack tossed about for a while then was still, but Roger seemed anxious; after a while he sat up on an elbow and looked down at his sleeping captain. He was still gazing at Jack when Ralph finally fell asleep.