Chapter Eighteen

"The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak."

- Rudyard Kipling

The group of ten set out in the direction Tracey had disappeared, with Steve initially directing. He had only seen her retreat so far until she had disappeared in the jungle. He had thought she would have gone only a little ways in, to allow herself time to cool off before returning. In his own anger, he had gone back to camp. "I should have followed her," Steve kept murmuring, and no one tried to dissuade him from his guilt. After awhile, he stopped saying it.

Locke and Marcus together did the tracking, seldom disagreeing with one another. As Sayid walked, he glanced occasionally at the native vegetation, which grew increasingly less familiar as they pressed on. This was not a part of the island anyone had explored before. In his solitary pilgrimage, Sayid had set out in the other direction, and he had never made it all the way around.

Sawyer plucked some fruit from a tree. "I've never seen pink fruit before," he said. "I wish Sun were with us to tell us whether it was poisonous. Did anyone think of asking her to come?" He sniffed the fruit.

Ana walked by and struck it from his hand. "Don't be a fool, Sawyer," she said. "Eat what you know." She plucked a familiar offering from a nearby tree. "Here."

Sayid glanced at Ana as she passed by him. Her posture was less defensive than usual, but she was alert. Her guard wasn't down, but the walls were. He tried to concentrate on Ana but his eyes kept straying to Nadia, who was walking beside Eko. She looked so diminutive in the shadow of his dark and towering frame.

Sayid had never thought of Nadia that way; she had never seemed small to him. He wondered if Locke and Sawyer were right about Nasser. It would explain why Nadia had insisted on going with her husband on his last trip. But if Nasser had been with another woman, how did she endure the knowledge of that betrayal, day by day? How did she make love to him in that tent at night? What must it feel like to drink down bitter herbs in a sweet tea? That, he thought, was almost a Sawyerism. Of course he hadn't meant it that way, but suddenly he couldn't dispel the redneck's jumble of metaphors from his mind. Bushes and beavers and pumpkins—

"Oh my!" exclaimed Kate. "Oh my, God!"

They had just entered a clearing in the jungle, and all around them a dense fog set in, completely obliterating their vision.

"We have to wait until this fog lifts before we can continue," said Locke.

"We should turn back a ways until then," said Marcus. "And set up camp where we can see."

The rest agreed with action rather than words, turning around to retrace their steps, but now the fog had settled in every direction.

"Hold hands and make a chain," ordered Jack, "so we don't lose anyone."

Sayid reached forward into gray obscurity and grabbed Ana's hand. He reached back and grasped another. He felt an almost pleasantly painful sensation in his flesh that was unlike anything he had felt since the shock of Nadia's touch in solitary. And that was when he realized he was holding Nadia's hand. She had been near the front with Eko before. He had not noticed her fall back.

They walked on like that, stretched in a horizontal chain, back, they, thought, in the direction they had come. But the fog did not lift. Sayid heard Locke somewhere in the distance. "This isn't right. We got turned around. Somehow we got turned around. We have to turn back."

"No," came Marcus's disembodied voice. "We could not have. We followed Steve, and he only went backwards. Isn't that right Steve?"

"I'm not in the front of the line," Steve called back.

"All right," said Marcus. "Everyone sound off, starting from my end. Marcus."

"Locke."

"Eko."

"Jack."

"Kate."

"Sawyer."

"Ana."

"Sayid."

"Nadia."

"Steve."

"That's all ten," said Marcus.

"Then," came Steve's tremulous voice from the front of the line. "Who's hand am I holding?"