Day 2

My name is Lavina Hanisette, I am twenty years old, and now that I finally have some means to put pen to paper I will write as much as I understand about this. It has been a hot summer this year, I last recall the date being August 24, 1887. The winter just previous was a brutal one, my parents lamenting a great loss of stock owned by my uncle out west. Little else happened to us of much distress, although my parents did also shake their heads a great deal when racetrack betting became legalized here. Of course I would never even go to a racetrack, let alone bet, but for those who are so unhappily inclined, they said it is a great disservice, and we still offer our family rosary in reparation for it some months later.

But where, now? I am not in New York or even America anymore, I think. The mountains are like nothing I have seen, though the weather is humid and warm, and whatever body of water I woke up upon the shore of is not salt, or perhaps a little, but drinkable.

The worst of this place is the animals—oh, they are huge, and have a most terrifying aspect, and they did not seem afraid of me at all, though I was severely frightened, myself.

I have long pondered if this is Purgatory. If I am dead or alive. I do not know the answer yet. Surely I would suffer more, and feel the comfort of God's hand less, were it truly Purgatory. In this way I am sure it is not Hell—not to mention only last week I was at confession, and I try hard to make good ones. I feel alive, to myself, but this place is so strange, I cannot help but question, and not least because of my circumstances of arrival here, which were as strange and sudden as death must be.

I blush to admit when I woke up on this beach I had no clothes on, only the most insufficient of undergarments. Terrible will be the retribution, if there is some party responsible for this injustice! And not only that, but there is something like a stone, yet lighter than a stone, of a diamond shape, that emits a strange light, embedded in my arm. It is not painful, but it does not come out, and this makes my flesh crawl. A lack of clothing can be from an accident, but such a device as this requires some diabolical intent. Not lightly does the Revelation warn us of the mark of the beast! So marked, and in a state of dress like the harlot of Babylon—oh, it is hard to bear!

But the grace of God sustains me even through this. I am innocent and yet unmarried, and by Providence has it so been arranged that I have encountered no human being to see my shame, though I have seen buildings, that, though crude, are obviously built by people. I am staying in one now, that seems abandoned. Still, I have had time to resolve at least one dilemma. The leaves of the plants here are very large and fibrous, and despite my growing fatigue, and blisters, I have MADE clothes for myself, as best I can.

The sun is setting now. I have some idea of the animals on this island and I will watch them more, tomorrow. Some of them ARE dangerous, I am sure of that.

God keep me!
+JMJ+

Day 5

My suspicions of the animals are correct. I dared not venture out again without some kind of defense. I have no knowledge of weaponry. I am not a country girl! Yet I am learning how to be one! Of the items I found in this abandoned building I managed to make myself a slingshot. It is not easy to use, but I have been much consoled and given spiritual strength by this tiny weapon, which David used to fell the great Goliath who terrified the king's armies! So similarly, even we, small and helpless though we are, are made and designed to have God as our suffrage rather than physical power, teeth and claws, speed and strength. In the hands of one such, man's appointed dominion becomes clear!

There are two types of animals I have so far met that are dangerous. The more dangerous of the two is actually creatures like tiny lizards, that walk on two legs like birds, and jump very high. They are treacherous—they will even act friendly at first. Thank God that they are as small as they are, or I should never have survived them.

The other dangerous animal is also on two legs, and it is large, as large as a big mastiff. It is something like a lizard, but it chirps and coos like a pigeon, and has feathers on its body and colorful crests and frills. I think it may be poisonous as I have seen it spit venom to incapacitate its prey.

But for all of their diabolical features—there are enormous animals here with huge curved horns like demons!—I try not to think of the animals as dragons, or worse—no, I would shudder to consider!—in spite of these features, I really do think they are just animals. The spitters are almost benign as dogs, although obviously predators. I stunned one with a stone from the slingshot, and while I approached with caution, it was far more interested in the food I was carrying. Very like a dog!

It is getting dark. May God and His Blessed Mother keep me!
+JMJ+

Day 12

I have been so tired at the end of each day I have not written. I have almost been too tired to say my prayers, I am not used to such labors. My hands bleed, and it is a great grace of the Lord, as I have not even a rosary on me to count my prayers, that I have not yet lost any fingers to hatchet or stone or wild beast!

My only company continues to be animals. There are not as many up here on the mountain as down in the jungle, and I have worn my feet out walking. I am no hunter, not at all, but there are birds here for people like me, large, unafraid, slow, harmless, full of surprisingly tender meat.

Besides the spitters, I have befriended a big herbivore. I named him Virgil. He is rather like a cow in many ways, but his mouth is billed like a duck's, and he shovels in the mud for his food, for roots and plants. Hauling water up the mountain on foot every day is so tiring and dangerous, and today I have finally gotten a break, when I finally finished a saddle for Virg I have been trying to put together. He was very patient as I have had to climb all over him to adjust it every time I fall off. I am still amazed at the congeniality of these animals, once befriended. It is as if they know their place, like this is some great Garden of Eden from an antediluvian age.

May God keep me!
+JMJ+

Day 15

Blessed be God! Today I have met other people! If I write hurriedly, it is because I cannot express my relief. I had ridden Virg down to the water for my morning haul, and I saw, past the buildings in which I had never had the fortune of finding anyone, a fire, lit and smoking on the beach! Virg enjoys a good swim, and so we went that way down the shoreline.

We approached the fire, and I admit I was afraid. There were two men, rough, without clothes on but for an insufficient loincloth each, holding crude spears, one of them big, and dark, the other pale. I was worried, but my worries, praise God, had no basis. One of them spoke like a Confederate, and the other I do not know his accent, but he seemed very kind and magnanimous, for a heathen. The poor men, they had woken up here on this beach the same as I had, with no clothes, and abused by the same implants in the left wrist. Virg and I took them up to the abandoned building I had been staying in. I made clothing for them like I had for myself, and we lit torches and talked long into the night. My mother would be horrified—that I spent the night in a crude little hut in the jungle with two strange men!

But this is a different place than the world I left. I miss my family, my mother and father, my brothers and sisters. Some of them were out of the house, married themselves with children, but they always visited. All of this being alone, and cut to the bone with the work it has taken me to survive, I am not used to this, and it is only the grace of God that He has given me the strength to pull through, or I should have curled up in a ball at the first sight of a giant horned demon and never arisen again out of terror!

These men know no more than I do about this place. The heathen, he told us that he was a Chief, and we call him Chief, as he seems not to remember his name, nor possess sufficient geographical knowledge to tell us where he is from. Indonesia? The British Colonies? Mexico? I could not say. He has big, soft eyes, and dark, like a cow's, and he is so generous and warm that I think he must have been a very good chief of his heathen tribe. The other man's name is Johnny Lights. He seems a good and responsible Christian, but he does swear frightfully at times. They are both of them bold and able fighters, and I feel much more safe, in their company—it is a different and far more reassuring thing, to have rational and upright men around, than to have only for company even the fat and happy spitters, Bede and Hitty, sleeping in the doorway for the warmth of the fire, their bellies full of birds and monkeys.

Thank you, St. Joseph, for sending protectors to me! May God keep us all!
+JMJ+

Day 17

I shall sleep after I write this. We yet again encountered more people. A man named Braxton, in what looked like full metal armor, flying on a great winged dragon—no, I promised myself not to call them that, lest I give occasion to the devil, though Mr. Johnny Lights calls them dragons, as he is far braver than I—landed to speak to us as we were walking to investigate some of the other buildings on the mountain in hopes of finding some clue of other men.

Braxton was a kind and generous man, though I could not see his face behind his mask. He gave us some metal tools, hatchets and picks, and some long, bladed weapons like metal spears. He told us that our object of investigation was a merchant's caravan, and that people indeed had settlements and traded with one another here. I was so glad! Not just for the tools, which may help to save my poor hands—and the men were so delighted with the weapons—but that civilization seems to exist in some form on this island. As I had noticed by their pliable and unfearing demeanor, it seems these animals are indeed routinely domesticated.

But there are some other problems. Braxton warned us of raiders. Of course, I could hardly be surprised at such a warning, for there will always be scoundrels doing the devil's work wherever there are men.

Mr. Lights saw another man some time later… and the stranger ran away, down the mountain, when he saw us. Chief and Mr. Lights were concerned that the man was a raider, and so we elected to search for him at least until nightfall, lest he return on his own terms and with no good intentions. I brought Bede and Hitty along, at Mr. Lights' request, and it was good, praise God, that I did, because it got dark before we returned up the mountain, and we were attacked—not by raiders or any human being, no, it was spitters, surprising us in the dark. I did not even see them by our torchlight, and I now know the potency of their venom, for I was shot in the face with it and could not see for a long time. Bede and Hitty gave their lives in the battle, and it was a long and painful crawl back up the mountain. I cannot even count the number of Hail Marys I said on that trek!

We are safe now. Mr. Lights is sleeping after having torniqueted off a leg wound—I pray Our Mother she lets him keep his leg, I do not want him to lose it—and Chief is sleeping off the venom… my eyes are still itching and burning, but it seems the damage to my sight was not permanent, thanks be to God. I can see quite well enough to write now.

I would be sleeping as well, except for the questions that are filling my mind and disturbing it.

Braxton was kind, but in our brief meeting, he laid out no country laws, no order of hierarchy to king or government, no description of the townships or free enterprises to which we, as newcomers, might be expected to report, no request of identification (although, to be sure, our impoverished state must have indicated we had no such items). Only a kind gift of weapons and tools, a warning of raiders, and a future invitation to visit his people at their own stronghold. He mentioned a large temple—are all the people here heathens, I wonder?—and he looked well-fed along with being well-equipped.

This, then, is my concern, that there is no true order here, no unity of country or government, no law enforcement or military protection of citizens. It rather seems that many good people have simply banded together in tribal groups to protect against those who are not so good, and against the wild animals. Oh, Heaven help us! For if my concerns are true, much will be asked of us, and we may lose much, in such a barbaric country as this!

As this, after all, is just what I myself and these two strange men are doing—banding together like war refugees—I'm sorry, Mother! To live here is very different than living in New York, but on my honor I promise to God and His Blessed Mother to, with the help of their grace, do no wrong, to cheat or abuse no man, and to allow no defilements in my heart or my body of the sort whispered of by the devil in lonely and overworked ears!

I mean, as soon as opportunity presents, to see Braxton or someone else who has lived here long, to put to them these questions of law, governance, and protection. I wish also to ask what they know, if anything, of the implants, and the strange beacons of light that appear on distant mountains. I fear some devilry at work, but where there are good men, no evil power can come between us and the peace which Christ bought for us!

Whatever the answers to my questions are, I am thus relieved and happy, especially, to have a family in this place (or a tribe with a 'Chief'!) made up of good men even if they are a stranger and a heathen.

May God keep us all!
+JMJ+