The Islanders

by Wesley Stein

  Tua took another look at the challenge and finally had to agree. In the end, Tua and Free helped Tuahine get to the top and she offered a hand down to Robbins. He went up with ease.

  “Go check it out,” Tua told them.

  Once they’d reached the summit, Tuahine turned back and reported what she saw.

  “There’s the shore,” she said, squinting toward the north. “Wow, it’s a whole village.”

  “Look there,” Agent Robbins said to Tuahine as he pointed out something on the hillside ahead of them.

  “What is it?” Tua asked from the base of the wall.

  “It’s a hut,” his mother answered. “Way up here, on the side of the mountain.”

  “Can you see a way around the crest?”

  There was no answer. Robbins spun around looking for a path. Tuahine took a few steps from the edge of the wall and disappeared from her son’s sight.

  “Hello?”

  “She’s checking out the hut,” Robbins relayed. “I don’t see a pathway to-.”

  Suddenly, Robbins hit the deck. Tua watched him drop, vanish suddenly as if he were hiding.

  On top of the crest, Tuahine had come close to the primitive hut and spooked its resident.

  As she approached, a man emerged and called to her.

  “You there!”

  He was all but nude, just a small patch of cloth to cover himself. His hair was short and poorly cut, his medium-length beard was reddish-brown. His body was muscular and shining.

  The man's house was no more than a straw shack on the side of the mountain.

  Tuahine froze but did not answer him. Robbins had vanished into the bushes. The man came further away from his dwelling.

  “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Tuahine couldn’t speak and she was unsure what she’d say anyway. Finally, she thought to introduce herself and nervously came out from hiding.

  “My name is Tuahine,” she said. “I’ve come to find my daughters.”

  The man smiled and took a step closer. His eyes flashed in recognition. He reached Tuahine and paused, looking her up and down.

  “My name is Thomas,” the man said. “But everyone calls me Shakespeare.”

  CHAPTER 8

  FIRST ASSAULT

  While Tua and Free frantically worked to find a way up the wall, Tuahine sat with Robbins inside Shakespeare’s hut. The man had prepared them tea, boiling a kettle over a small campfire and steeping herbs and roots.

  “Brewed with pure rainwater,” Shakespeare said. “It’s the only source of drinking water on the island. Though it hardly ever rains.”

  He pointed to a collection system in the corner of the hut, a crude hopper and bucket, connected with a length of pipe.

  “She poisoned the freshwater supply,” Shakespeare said. “So that everyone would be forced to drink from the fountain, sooner or later.”

  Tuahine had no idea what the hermit was talking about but knew the water she’d seen in the stream below was not potable.

  “What is this place?”

  “This is my home,” the man replied. He smiled at her and then Robbins, who returned the gesture politely.

  “I mean down there,” Tuahine clarified. “The village?”

  Shakespeare sat back and dropped his chin.

  “It’s a colony of slaves,” he said. “Juliet rules an army of addicts.”

  “Juliet?” Tuahine asked.

  “She’s the leader of the northern shore, the ruler of Three-Hook Island.”

  “What’s going on here?” Tuahine asked again. “Who are those people down there?”

  “They are deceived,” Thomas answered. “They were told they’d be given never ending pleasure, everlasting life, in exchange for their contributions. But what they were given was a tether, a chain to shackle them to this place for all eternity.”

  Shakespeare told Tuahine and Robbins the story of the fountain. They sat and listened with their mouths agape.

  It was the fountain of youth tale, a story as old as man. Mills told them about finding the island and living alone there for over two centuries.

  “I couldn’t leave the island,” he explained. “I couldn’t be away from the water.”

  Shakespeare told them the story of when he met Juliet and her partner, Romeo. When Robbins heard the name, his jaw dropped. He had spent more than a decade as Romeo’s caretaker and had still never heard the full story of his mute friend.

  “Tell me about Romeo,” he asked the hermit.

  “He was a treasure hunter,” Shakespeare said. “He thought he was searching for gold, but what he found was much more valuable. Juliet had been hired to be his translator and island guide. Once they arrived here and drank, they knew they couldn’t leave.”

  “So what did they do?” Robbins asked.

  “They joined me,” the man answered. “We formed a Triad and agreed to each rule a section of the island. Romeo used his connections to get us supplies and we started building on the northern shore.”

  “His connections?” Robbins asked. “You mean Pace and Tompkins.”

  Shakespeare nodded.

  “What went wrong?” Tuahine asked.

  “Romeo left,” Shakespeare answered. “Juliet broke his heart.”

  “How?”

  “She had sex with me,” the man replied. Tuahine was surprised by his candor.

  “That’s it?” she asked.

  “He chose to suffer without water. We call it withering. He left the island to wither somewhere, rather than live with us here.”

  “And what about you?” Tuahine asked while Robbins rubbed his temples in thought.

  “I was exiled,” Shakespeare said. “She sent me away from the fountain, to live up here alone. If she found out I talked to you, she’d have me caved-in.”

  “Caved-in?”

  “That’s what we call an execution for those who’ve drank, those who can’t be killed,” Thomas said. “If Juliet sentences someone to death, it’s carried out by caving-in. It’s very grotesque.”

  “Their skulls are crushed?” Robbins asked with a vertical line of concern forming between his eyebrows.

  “They are buried alive,” Shakespeare said. “Crushing their skulls would only add to their suffering. They must be entombed.”

  Tuahine put a hand over her mouth. Robbins shook his head in disgust. Shakespeare continued.

  “A while back, she realized she could kill two birds with one stone,” Thomas said. “She started using the freshwater cistern as the death row. When someone is sentenced to death, they are taken to the cistern, immobilized, and tossed in. The decomposing flesh is what pollutes the island’s streams.”

  Now Robbins put a hand over his mouth too. Tuahine thought she might gag. She could recall the metallic odor of the water in the stream they had crossed not long ago.

  She composed herself and continued her questioning.

  “So everyone down there must follow her orders,” Tuahine clarified, “or they get caved-in?”

  “No,” Shakespeare said. “They follow her orders or they don’t get to drink from the fountain. Only those who risk the island by breaking protocol are thrown into the cistern. I was only exiled because I was one of the founders of the Triad.”

  “Andy Stahl is with us,” Robbins suddenly said with excitement.

  His host froze for a moment. A smile crossed his face as he drifted into a reverie. Robbins tried to meet Mills’ eyes.

  “Mr. Thomas?”

  “He’s here?” Shakespeare finally asked. “He’s on the island?”

  “He’s out on the boat, in the lagoon.”

  “That’s amazing,” Shakespeare said. “I can’t believe you found him.”

  “The years have taken their toll,” Robbins replied. “He doesn’t speak anymore. There’s not much left of his mind. But what is there, is not more than a mile or two from us right now.”

  Shakespeare jumped up eagerly and moved to the doorway.

  “You mus
t take me to him,” the hermit said. “I beg you. Right away.”

  “We can’t,” Tuahine replied. “We need to get down to the shore. I have to save my girls. And Tua is probably worried sick.”

  “Come with me,” Shakespeare said. “I can show you to the catacombs. I can help you save them. But we’re going to need Romeo.”

  “The rest of our group are outside, below the crest,” Tuahine informed her new friend.

  “How many?”

  “Two others.”

  Shakespeare nodded. He went to a wooden box in the corner of his shack. Opening it, he found a ball of linen with something wrapped inside it. Thomas held it up before his face and kissed it as if it were a bundled infant.

  Then he stood and led Robbins and Tuahine from his hut, back to the edge of the cliff.

  They peeked over and saw Agent Free pacing back and forth along the base of the wall. Tua was further down the crest, searching for a route around.

  “Langston,” Tuahine called down. Free turned and his face relaxed.

  “Oh thank god,” he said. Then he saw Shakespeare appear on the bluff, behind his friends. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s going to help us,” Tuahine said. “He’s an old friend of Romeo’s. Where’s Tua?”

  Free pointed.

  “Tua!” He called.

  Free helped Tuahine get down from the bluff and Robbins and Shakespeare followed her. Their guide had told them about a cave opening, not far around the wall.

  When they had all gathered at the base of the outcropping, Tua shook hands with Thomas Shakespeare and thanked him. After a brief word, they parted ways.

  “We’re going down to the village to rescue my friends,” Tua had told him. Shakespeare smiled and clutched his loaf of special bread.

  “And I am going to your boat to rescue mine.”

  

  Joanna looked at the dagger, then looked at me. She was considering taking the knife handle in her hand.

  Would she do it? Was she already that far-gone? I looked at her eyes and though I couldn’t see the sister I knew, I could neither see a killer.

  Juliet shook her head.

  “No?” Juliet asked.

  She pivoted and offered the blade to Jacey.

  “How about you?”

  Jacey thought for a moment, then held out her hand to take the knife. I gasped. But then Jacey’s hand retreated.

  Then I saw Juliet move in close to Jacey and whisper to her. I imagined her goading-on any resentment Jacey might have had toward me. I was the youngest, so I had the easiest life to endure.

  Jacey glared at me and grabbed the dagger. She moved past Juliet and across her line of followers. I screamed beneath my gag.

  Joanna never protested, but someone did.

  “Don’t!” I heard a man’s voice say. The voice had come from Tybalt.

  The only person who would come to my defense, in a village-wide ceremony attended by my mother and father and two sisters, was my sworn enemy.

  Jacey kept coming.

  She circled the fire and came to the first stone, about twenty feet away, but then she slowed down and hesitated at the second stone. At the third stone she stopped.

  She looked into my eyes. I tried to find clues in hers. Was she capable of this?

  Don’t do this, I was saying under my gag.

  Jacey’s eyes filled with tears and she turned her head away from me.

  “I don’t want to kill her,” Jacey said finally and flatly. Then she stepped back down the boulder pathway and returned to her place near Juliet.

  She handed over the knife and apologized with her head bowed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “That’s okay my dear,” Juliet said as she spun the dagger around in her hand. Her head turned and her eyes raised toward me. “Sometimes you have to make the sacrifice yourself.”

  Juliet lunged from the sand and darted toward me. She quickly reached the first stone and stepped up. She hopped to the next one, and then the third.

  This is it, I thought.

  Finally, she stepped to the final stone, an enormous rectangle boulder, four feet high. She turned and surveyed the three rows of followers, each line dressed in its unique color.

  “To the new world!” She cried, then turned to face me and raised the dagger just above my heart. Before I closed my eyes, I saw a flash of metal.

  I heard myself heave, but I didn’t feel the blade. When I opened my eyes again, I could look down far enough to see blood, but still I felt no pain.

  Then I saw the dagger, and it was clean.

  Suddenly, Juliet collapsed to the stone and rolled off of it, onto the ground. A wave of shock rippled through the square as everyone realized that Juliet had just gone down and the island may be compromised.

  A single gunshot blast had rung out in the night, but in the final moment of Juliet’s angry throes, I hadn’t heard it.

  From above the luxury huts, crouching on the thatched rooftops, I could see the gunman.

  He was a tall, well-built native man dressed in black. Then I saw another man, even bigger, also dressed in black, take up a position on the promenade. The colorful lines of villagers were already scattering from the square in a kaleidoscopic flurry. More gunshots rang out. That’s when, among the chaos, I saw her.

  It was Tuahine, sweet Tuahine. She’d been there for me when I was nine, and she was there for me now. I could hardly believe my eyes.

  She ran across the square and up the stone steps. She brandished a knife and quickly cut my bonds.

  “Tuahine!” I shouted as soon as my gag was loose. I was suddenly crying with relief.

  She smiled and collected me in her embrace. She kissed my forehead then helped me get down the stairs. When we had stepped off the final stone, I turned and looked behind the large boulder, where Juliet had fallen.

  She was gone.

  “Come on,” Tuahine urged.

  “Water,” I said.

  Tuahine paused and casually handed me a slim bottle. Then she kept moving.

  I drank every drop of water in the bottle before tossing it down and running to catch up.

  We ran across the square and back up the stairs to the decking of the huts. I swiveled my head back and forth in search of my sisters and finally spotted them.

  “There,” I said and pointed toward the boardwalk leading to the catacombs. Joanna and Jacey were running toward the cave, following Claudius and Gertrude and also Tybalt, who was carrying Juliet, limp in his arms.

  Tuahine whistled toward the roof above us and suddenly the tall, dark, and handsome man appeared, standing on the edge of the roof while he holstered his gun.

  When he jumped down and landed in front of us, his hair fell into his eyes. I still didn’t recognize him.

  “You haven’t seen him in a while,” Tuahine said by way of an introduction. “But he looks pretty much the same.”

  I had to double-take.

  “Tua?” I asked in disbelief. “Oh my god!”

  He smiled, and suddenly I was certain it was him. I could never forget that smile.

  We hugged and then took another look at each other, and then hugged again. He looked so good, strong, and clean. I was a mess, tired, and dehydrated.

  “They’re taking the girls into the caves,” Tuahine told her son.

  We were already heading that direction. I interjected and offered my opinion.

  “They’re not being taken,” I said. “They’re going willingly.”

  “What?” Tua asked in disbelief.

  “I know,” I said. “I can’t believe it either but trust me, they’re not themselves right now.”

  “What? What are you saying?” Tuahine asked. “What happened?”

  I grabbed the dear woman’s hands and tried to explain everything that had happened at the fountain. She made me back up to the shipwreck and start again.

  We could still see some of the locals scurrying about among the cabins and huts, many of them cha
sed by the large man with a shotgun.

  Soon, the man was coming toward us and eventually arrived in a huff. Tua introduced him.

  “Jennifer, this is Special Agent Langston Free,” he said. “He’s with the FBI. He came from California.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said and we shook hands. He smiled and then he wagged a finger at me.

  “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for a very long time, young lady.”

  “Agent Free worked your Mom and Dad’s case,” Tua said. “Way back when.”

  I cast an impressed look at Free.

  “That’s a long time to work a case,” I said. “I like the grit.

  I resumed filling them in on what had happened but was interrupted again. This time, by Tua, when I told them about the rapist taking us from the ship.

  “You almost killed me,” he said with a sideways grin.

  “What?”

  “That was me, Jenn.” Tua reiterated. “I was trying to save the three of you.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could we have not recognized him? My mind began to replay the events from two nights before. It was Tua who had taken us in the boat. It was Tua who we had struck in the head with a paddle and tossed overboard. Tua wasn’t one of the abductors, he had been trying to save us from the abductors.

  “We have to get them off the island,” Tua said. His mother and Agent Free were already nodding in agreement. “Even if they don’t want to go.”

  “Let’s do it,” Free said and pumped another shell into the chamber of his shotgun.

  We walked down the plank-way, to the entrance to the catacombs. I had no problem finding the correct tunnel and soon we were in the cave with the wooden platform.

  “Up there,” I said, pointing to the entrance. But no sooner had I spoken, than Joanna and Jacey appeared in the steam-filled passageway above us.

  Their faces were blank, their eyes windowless voids. They stepped out onto the platform and Juliet came out to join them. Tua saw her and his face went pale.

  “But, I shot you,” he said in disbelief. Juliet smiled and laughed.

  “One drop of what I got,” she said. “Is more powerful than all the guns in the world, Babe.”

  Tuahine stepped forward and held up her hands.

  “Please,” she said. “We only want these girls. We’re not here to threaten your way of life.”