The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

The day before Looma’s and my wedding, her brother took me on a long hike into the interior of the island. He showed me the well-beaten paths that cut through this semi-jungle area. Here and there we came upon fellow tribesmen who were gathering fruit or roots.

  The well-beaten trails, Looma’s brother explained, circled the entire island. He made a rough model out of earth, and from his diagrams I caught the impression that the known portions of the island circled around a mountainous interior something like a hat brim around the crown of a hat.

  Eventually we stopped and rested on a low stone wall. I started to step across but Looma’s brother pulled me back.

  “Not today,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it isn’t customary.”

  I gazed at the wall with some curiosity. It stood about a foot high. The Traysomians had built it of loose stones, evidently many generations before, for it was in bad repair. It appeared to be endless, extending to the left and right as far as I could see, disappearing in distant shadows.

  “This wall marks the boundary between the known and the unknown,” Looma’s brother explained. “That is why we do not cross it.”

  I smiled to myself. This was a silly superstition—the savage’s fear of the unknown.

  “Are there any enemy tribes living in the interior?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Wild beasts?”

  “I do not know. I have never heard of any.”

  I mused. “Then what are the Traysomians afraid of?”

  “Vling-gaff!” he cried. A bad slip on my part. I should never accuse the Traysomians of fear. Truth to say, it was not a consciously-felt terror that kept them from crossing the wall. It was simply the accepted taboo. To cross must have once led to failure or defeat. The rightness of staying on the outside of the fence was not something to be questioned. It was something solidly established in the Traysomian customs, the same as marriage or funeral ceremonies.

  “I believe I understand,” I said sympathetically to Looma’s brother. “Whether or not there are any dangers within the interior, no one shall ever cross this line of stones.”

  “Except as tribal custom shall demand it,” he replied. After a little pause he added, “Tomorrow you and Looma shall cross.”

  Again my eyes followed first to the right and then to the left, studying the curious ancient wall. More curiously than ever I gazed across it. The topography beyond seemed to be similar to that which we had just traversed: swamp lands flanking the Lakawog river, flowered blutanwa trees, lush green tropical foliage.

  “The spring?” I asked.

  “It is somewhere beyond,” said Looma’s brother. “Looma has told you?”

  “Yes. When I first talked to her of marriage she told me that she was born with a sacred obligation that she must fulfill. She told me that whomever she married must be brave enough to conduct her to a sacred spring at the headwaters of the Lakawog.”

  “Yes.” Looma’s brother seemed relieved to find that I already knew. He mopped the perspiration from his brown face. We wended our way along the fence to a clearing where the afternoon breeze seeped through, and my companion’s tense manner eased and he began to joke.

  But my own feelings were far from complacent. Instead of allaying my apprehensions, this conversation had aroused them. I felt that the Traysomian ancestors who had gone to the trouble of building that stone fence must have had some good reason for doing so. Moreover, if danger lurked somewhere within that enclosed area, it was a cinch that no Traysomian could give me so much as a hint of what it was. No one knew.

  Or if anyone did know—vling-gaff!

  As Looma had told me from the first, the adventure required of her by the tribe was a blind one. To accompany her on a journey into the unknown was the price of marrying her.

  Very well, no price would keep me from marrying Looma. No silly superstitions or blind fears—vling-gaff! I cut short my thoughts of fear. Fears, defeats, weaknesses were to be purged from my vocabulary henceforth. Silence upon these matters. I was about to become a Traysomian. I would play the game their way.

  Our wedding was held at dawn. The first shafts of light glinted across the sea as the ceremony began. The pink mists across the broad beach melted like magic curtains on a vast stage.

  When the weird stringed music from the native dulcimers sounded forth, people appeared from all corners of the village. They moved slowly to the center of the clearing, chanting the wedding song. Soon they were thronged around us.

  Looma and I stood back to back. Our bare heels pressed down into the rich scented black soil of the little earthen pyramid which had been built for us the evening before. Looma’s head pressed soft and warm against the middle of my back.

  A priestess took up the chant. The words were foreign to me. I had learned many of the unmixed Traysomian words during the past weeks, but most of the ritual was made of words little used in ordinary conversations. However, the musical sounds enthralled me, and I was vaguely disturbed to catch hints of mocking and ridicule from a few natives at the outer edge of the throng. Was there some hidden mischief in this sacred ceremony?

  Sometimes between phrases of chanting the low undertones of mocking laughter passed through the throng like a wave of water rolling along a rocky coast before a storm. But no faces betrayed more than the slightest hints of this discordant emotion.

  At last the priestess was speaking in words I understood.

  “You, Looma, are bound to this man. And you, Trodo—” (that was their name for me: Trodo, meaning the white one)—“you are bound to this woman.”

  Looma’s body trembled. I caught her hands and held them tightly.

  “But remember, Looma, my daughter,” the priestess’ voice continued, with a shade of stridency in the tone, “the happiness of one or two is as nothing compared to the welfare of all. You have been born to serve—as few are privileged to serve—the welfare of the Traysomian people.”

  To me these words did not signify anything terrifying. I was surprised that Looma’s fingers should stiffen with tension.

  “Is anything wrong?” I whispered.

  “Nothing,” she returned breathlessly. But her fingers broke out of my grip.

  Again the music tinkled and the throng chanted. It was not the wedding song now, but the clostosong—the chant of the unknown journey. I breathed deeply. The ceremony was almost over. Soon we would be taking that unknown journey—

  The final bit of wedding ritual was, I am certain, a ritual of symbolism, although at the time I did not understand it.

  All the young virgins of the tribe, other than Looma herself, approached the little fresh-earth pyramid where we stood. Each girl carried a long rope of blutanwa flowers. The end of each rope was placed in my hands, and I was told to hold the ropes up over my head.

  The circle of girls spread outward and began to weave around us. The ropes of the highly-scented blutanwas wrapped around me as if I were a Maypole.

  But not around Looma. She was not caught in the interweaving strands. She danced a weird dance down the side of the earthen pyramid, escaping each strand that threatened to capture her.

  At last I was bound and the virgins placed the ropes in Looma’s hands. I was ensnared. Looma pulled me toward her, laughing as she did so. Again

  I thought I heard that rippling undertone of mockery among the male voices; but it was lost under the gayety and laughter of all.

  An impulse I started to administer a bit of ritual of my own. With a quick jerk of my arms I broke out of my bonds and reached toward Looma, intending to kiss her, American style.

  Looma, however, gave a swift tug at the ropes that bound my feet, and I rolled to the ground. The laughing crowd bade me roll out of my tangle, which I did as quickly and gracefully as I could under the circumstances.

  I emerged to find that the mood of frivolity and merriment had vanished.

  Looma was bidding her parents and her friends good-by. There was no talk of dangers, but there
were tears and there were throbbing voices. The quick business-like orders of the priestesses and matriarchs attending the details of our departure were mingled with the solemn and intense words of farewell.

  We were off at once. That was the tribal command.

  A large group from the wedding crowd accompanied us for several miles inland. But when, at last, we came to the little stone fence, they stopped.

  Looma and I stepped across and walked on. A song echoed after us. We trudged slowly, listening to the words. Sometimes a matriarch would sing it, sometimes the entire group of women. They were singing to their men, now; not to us.

  I caught the words and I did not like them. They struck me with the same discordant note as the ripples of mocking laughter. The words, partly in Traysomian, ran something like this:

  The men, our men, our beloved and constant men

  Will still be with us when tomorrow comes.

  The rising sun shall find them ours Tomorrow and tomorrow.

  If one must go, let it be one

  That we can spare from out of our fold,

  That won’t be missed from out of our fold,

  Tomorrow or tomorrow.

  Over and over the plaintive melody was repeated until we were so far away that we could no longer hear it. Then the silence was only intensified by the sounds of our footsteps and the light whisper of tropical leaves high overhead.

  CHAPTER III

  Madman of the Jungles

  We walked vigorously until the sun was high. Then we stopped by a clear brook, drank deeply of the cool bubbling water, and deposited our luggage for a brief midday rest. Looma started to prepare some food. I spoke to her softly.

  “You are my wife now, Looma.”

  She nodded and her wide brown eyes looked up at me questioningly.

  “Do you know how eager I have been for this journey into the land of the unknown?” I said. “To me it is not something to be—”

  I was going to say “feared” but I caught myself.

  “This will be our honeymoon, Looma,” I said smilingly. The word honeymoon probably conveyed no meaning to her. I drew close to her. “I shall always love you, Looma—”

  I started to take her into my arms to kiss her. Quick as a little jungle animal she slipped out of my grasp. Her hand went to her belt, and on the instant she whipped out a small gleaming dagger.

  The weapon, not more than eight inches long, flashed sunlight into my eyes. Looma backed away from me three or four steps and stood, breathing hard like a frightened animal. I folded my arms and waited.

  “Trodo,” she spoke breathlessly, “I am not angry with you.”

  “No?”

  “No. I do not wish to use this weapon—either upon you or upon myself. It is tipped with poison. A touch of the point would bring either of us death—”

  “Looma!” On first impulse I almost leaped toward her, to grab the knife away from her. But I thought better of it. Her half-desperate, half-imploring voice held me at bay.

  “No, please—you must listen. There is much that you do not understand, Trodo. You must promise not to love me—”

  “Not to love you? But Looma, I do love you. I have been terribly in love with you from that first morning—after the funeral—” I stopped myself with the shuddering realization that the taboo of silence barred my way. I must not remind her that she had tried to run away from life. Now, as never before, the tragic conflict that fought within her came home to me. It was this journey that she had sought to avoid—this adventure into the unknown that had been assigned to her at birth. She had even preferred death—

  Looma turned her eyes away from me. She slipped the dagger back into its concealed case, walked a little distance from me, and dropped down and buried her head in her arms. I had said too much. Without a mention of her fear, I had sent her thoughts bounding back to the event that in itself convicted her of fear.

  “Looma, what is it that lies before you? Do you know?”

  “I do not know,” she answered without looking up.

  I moved closer to her, dropped down on the carpet of swamp grass within a few feet of her.

  “You must have had some hint of danger—”

  “Vling-gaff!”

  “That last song they sang, Looma—it practically told me that I would never come back—”

  “Vling-gaff!”

  “I want to know what’s back of all this, Looma. Before I take you any farther I want to know what I’m getting you into. It’s all wrong, Looma. The very fact that they’ve kept the silence taboo over our journey proves that we’re heading for defeat—”

  “Vling-gaff!” Looma sprang up and drew the shining dagger. I thought she was going to kill herself then and there. I bounded toward her. I stopped three feet short of her. The point of the weapon was toward me.

  “Don’t talk, Trodo!” Her tense whisper was barely audible, as if the last of her breath was gone from her lungs. “Don’t say another word. If you break the taboo again I’ll—”

  Her words were spent. She closed her eyes, let her hands fall limply to her sides. Her breasts heaved deeply.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry. I won’t say anymore. Come. We must have our meal so we can hurry on.”

  “I’ll go on alone,” Looma murmured. “You must go back. You have no obligation to the tribe.”

  She slipped the knife back into the case, picked up the small blue sacred packet which the priestess had given her, and tried to shoulder one of the two bags of provisions which I had carried. The bag was much too heavy for her. I smiled at her heroic effort, caught her arm, and persuaded her to sit down and rest and eat.

  “You say I have no obligation to the tribe, Looma? You are wrong. You forget that I am a Traysomian now. I am your husband. Wherever you go, I’ll go too. I am your protection.”

  It was late afternoon before this bit of conversation was resumed. We had ploughed through miles of marshy lands and had emerged upon a rising sparsely wooded plain. We could see the thin blue mountainous skyline deep in the distance. Somewhere in those distant blue hills Looma would find the sacred spring from which she must drink.

  The sight of her goal, distant though it was, had a heartening effect upon Looma. Again she turned to me with the suggestion that I should go back. She was sure that she could make it alone, now that we were through the swamps.

  Nothing could have struck me as more absurd, and I told her so in forcible terms. “I am your husband. I am going with you, wherever you go. I’m a Traysomian, don’t you understand?”

  Looma shook her head slowly, looking at me with her steady dark eyes. “You do mean it, don’t you!”

  “Of course I mean it!”

  “You seem not to realize that you have been tricked,” said Looma with a touch of compassion in her voice.

  “Tricked?” The sweat broke out over my face.

  “Let us make camp here for the night,” said Looma. She went about the business of making a fire and preparing the evening meal. I was of little or no help. I sat in a feverish daze, eating my food absently. When we had finished, neither of us was in a mood to rest. We gathered up our provisions and marched on by the light of the dying sun. It was a red sun, I think; but everything I saw was red.

  “How was I tricked, Looma?” I finally mumbled, after my head had lost a little of its fever. “Are you trying to tell me that you do not love me?”

  “I am not free to love you,” Looma answered. “My life is not my own until I have fulfilled my duty to my tribe.”

  “Then why did you marry me, Looma?”

  “Believe me, Trodo, it was not to hurt you. I like you, Trodo. That is why”—the girl’s eyes filled with tears—“that is why it would be better if you would go. Leave Traysomia, Trodo. I want you to have your own life—”

  “Looma, why did you marry me?” I repeated.

  “It was the will of the tribe that I marry an outsider,” Looma said quietly. “If you had not come, our ships would ha
ve gone forth to the ports of other islands in search of someone—someone who would be brave enough to conduct me on my destined voyage into this unknown land.”

  I nodded. At last I was beginning to see where I stood. The events which had befallen me from the day I came to Traysomia all fitted in with the tribal scheme. I was treated like a prince. I was encouraged to marry into the tribe (since my obvious choice was the beautiful Looma). My proposal of marriage was accepted on the condition that I make a journey with my bride to a sacred spring.

  Yes, all of those puzzling incidents of the wedding ceremony had their obvious meanings now: the low undertones of amused laughter from the Traysomian males, the admonition of the priestess that the happiness of one or two was as nothing compared to the welfare of the tribe, the Maypole ritual in which I was symbolized as the victim of the bride, and finally the song which the women chanted after we had crossed the wall—a song of pride that none of their own men would be lost.

  “Now you understand,” Looma said, “why I was ordered to carry this dagger. Nothing must come between me and my mission for the tribe.”

  “Nothing will,” I responded. “Nothing,” Looma echoed, and to my surprise she was trembling. She caught me by the arms and looked up at me as if imploring for help. “Nothing . . . Not even love.”

  Something in my heart rocketed and I too was trembling and breathless. “You mean—that you do—”

  Looma’s lips were suddenly against mine, she was clutching my bare arms in the warmth of her hands. Then, a few moments later, she drew herself away from me.

  “I mean,” she whispered, “that I must not—I dare not—yield my heart to love until my mission is done. All my life I have been warned, Trodo. I am bound to kill myself rather than break this pledge. I trust you to help me, Trodo.”

  “I will help you, Looma.”

  We had been standing on the crest of a knoll in the deepening twilight. Hand in hand we sauntered on. We walked in silence. Our thoughts were matched to the evening sky—vast, bewilderingly vast, but crystal clear.

  A slight rustle sounded from the brush several yards to one side of us. Several times during the day I had been momentarily disturbed by similar rustlings. Occasionally I had wondered whether we were being followed. But I had checked my imaginings with an inward snort of vling-gaff!