Bernadette moved to cross the second forked stream when the birds swooped again. This time she had no choice but to flee straight for the waterfall itself. The mass of birds came straight at her in a phalanx of feathers and beaks. They chirped and yelled at her as they dove at all directions, forcing Bernadette into a cavern under the lowest waterfall. She was now wet, cold, and frightened by the sudden events and she wished she had never left the furs.
The water deterred the birds enough. They dispersed like a pacified mob back to their homes along the wall of the cliff. Bernadette must have gotten too close to their nest, but she didn’t think she was anywhere near it. Offended by the needless attack, she pouted for a few moments under the waterfall and looked around the small cavern.
It was large enough to provide maybe three people sanctuary but that was it. There was nothing of interest in the little hole, but she noted the walls of the cavern looked soft. From inside the cave, the rain sounded as if it were several people chatting all at once.
Just when she thought she was making out a conversation, it grew too quiet and a louder one overtook over. She noted the walls of the cavern looked soft. Too soft to be the interior of a cave. She placed a hand on the wall and the wall bounced back as if it were a flexible barrier of some sort.
Bernadette forgot the curiosity of birds flying at night and thousands of little conversations she couldn’t make out when she pressed her hand into the wall of the cavern, and it became submerged. She let out a yelp and attempted to withdraw her hand, but it stuck in what felt like ooze.
She cried out for Otto, then Cal, but they couldn’t hear her over the sounds of the chattering noises the waterfall was making. Something from inside the cavern wall pulled her in by her arm and she screamed. Bernadette was now submerged up to the shoulder and desperately wished she wasn’t crying, but she was.
She whispered prayers from trembling lips. It sounded as though the waterfall was laughing as some unknown entity while Bernadette was pulled into the cavern wall. All the world’s noises became muffled and she was forced into a blissful sleep, fully suspended in a sort of cocoon within the cavern wall.
#
A sharp, isolated pain poked her back repeatedly. Bernadette opened her eyes and found that she was face down in the dirt. How she had gotten here? It was only when she rolled over that she remembered the night before. Had she been dreaming? It felt too real to be a dream. She looked out and found several pairs of dirty little feet surrounding her.
Lifting herself, Bernadette turned and saw what was hurting her back. Tom was poking her with a stick. She swiped it from him and tossed it with sheer annoyance. She felt groggy from too much sleep.
Rubbing the dirt off her cheek, she sat up and looked up at the boys. “What happened?”
“We told you not to go into the water,” Cal said.
“I thought I saw Alexi.”
“Did you go to the waterfall, Birdie?” Adam asked.
“I had no choice,” she said as she explained what happened the night before. She felt so stupid. She must have hallucinated the birds and what happened in the cave. Now her dress was soaked and dirty. She was chilled. She hated feeling too cold. It made it harder for her to move.
“Maybe you did see him,” Jon said, extending a hand. “We didn’t get you out of that cave. We found you right here.”
Bernadette looked up at wise little Jon and took his hand with gratitude. She didn’t know if he said that to make her feel better, but it worked. He helped her up and Bernadette limped with stiffness back to the campfire. “Turn around,” she ordered.
All the boys did as they were told, and she peeled the wet garment off, dropped it to the ground, and wrapped herself in a fur blanket. They remained with their backs to her ever so obediently that it made her smile. “All right,” she said.
“I can wash that up for you if you like,” Jon volunteered.
“Thank you.” Jon had several things in a bundle that were to be washed, it seemed. Bernadette couldn’t make out exactly what those items were, and when she peered around the boys to look, they all seemed to grow a bit bashful.
“That’s their underwear,” Adam’s voice carried. “We only wash them once in a great while, so they smell awful.”
“Adam!” Otto said, his pockmarked face red with embarrassment.
“Well my underwear is now in there as well,” Bernadette said. “Though I am glad it’s Jon doing the laundry and not Tom.”
Adam giggled. “Last time Tom did laundry, he made Cal’s underwear into a flag.”
“Yeah, he’s not good for anything but hunting. That’s where he is now,” Otto explained.
Cal was a large boy. His underpants were indeed the size of a flag. She could see where Tom got the idea, but Cal was sensitive about his weight. Otto must have sensed that and banned Tom from doing the laundry. Jon was much more mature than his twin. She didn’t need to fear her underpants being strung up for the world to see.
Due to it being laundry day, Jon did not return till several hours later. When he did, he only reimbursed Bernadette’s belongings. No one made any mention to Tom that is was laundry day for obvious reasons. Jon hung up her dress and undergarments beside the fire to dry. She couldn’t wait for her dress to be ready. She hated walking around in a fur blanket.
Adam wanted to snuggle within the blanket which would have been fine except for now he risked exposing her naked body underneath. It was challenging to use the bathroom without revealing herself, hard to eat, to do anything other than sit by the fire. The limitations reminded her of life at the Mármaros, and she found herself feeling resentful towards what she considered home not so long ago.
“Where will we go after this?” Bernadette asked.
Otto was gathering wood and Tom was out checking the traps he had set early in the morning, but Cal stayed at camp to keep an eye on Adam and Gabe. Jon was stacking the wood on the fire between his chores. “Wherever you want, I suppose,” he answered.
She was giving up on finding Alexi. It seemed that he wasn’t one you could chase. She wished it weren’t so. Bernadette longed for his touch and his lips. It appeared to Bernadette that if she could not find him, he would need to find her. Alexi did not want her to go back to the Mármaros, that much was certain.
“Why does Alexi not want me to go back to the Mármaros?”
Squatted by the fire, Jon tilted his head slightly while prodding the fire with a stick. “Do you want to go back?”
Bernadette shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, but if Alexi can talk through dreams, why would he care where I am at?”
“I don’t think he can reach you there.”
Bernadette said nothing for a moment and thought about what Jon had said. It felt right, though her education told her otherwise. What sort of being could only come out at night with the ability to appear in dreams but couldn’t enter the Mármaros? Alexi was indeed a different sort of person from herself or the jungle boys, but the boys elevated him to god-like status, and Bernadette did not believe in gods.
That evening, when her dress was finally dry, Bernadette had the boys turn around once more so she could dress. Adam snuck a peak and let out a giggle at his mischievousness, but she wasn’t angry with him. He was too young to understand why they were not supposed to look.
For dinner, they had a large mammal of some sort. It was skinned and on the fire before Bernadette could make out what it was. She supposed she did not want to know. It tasted like chicken, for the most part. Just about everything did except fish.
The river was louder than the day before. Exotic birds with their colorful feathers contrasted against the lush green of the tree line. They perched on high limbs and pruned themselves, squawking at other birds that encroached on their territory. Bernadette looked up and around at the menagerie around her and felt humbled by it all.
A slight thud sounded behind her. Bernadette turned to find Gabe with his hair tangled once again. He had something in his hand
s, and it forced him to walk upright. He gave small little grunts as he approached her with something cupped in his hands.
“What is it?” She asked.
Gabe opened his hands to reveal a sizable fuzzy spider. Bernadette had to struggle not to let out a gasp. It was a horrid thing to look at. Everything about it made her voice seize up in her throat, but Gabe was so pleased with the arachnid. If she reacted badly, he might not show her anymore of what he enjoyed. He was growing to trust her. Bernadette did not want to lose that trust.
“Oh, is that a spider?” She asked.
Gabe let it crawl around on his hands, and Bernadette noted how docile it was. It wasn’t all that menacing after all.
She extended her hand alongside Gabe’s and let the spider crawl on her palm. Its fur was soft, and it went still whenever her hand moved. Gabe grinned at her and let out a laugh before scooping the spider back into his hand and putting it back into a tree.
“Those are his favorite,” Cal said as he came out of the jungle.
“I can see why.”
Cal smiled as he looked up at Gabe, scaling a nearby tree. “He really likes you.”
“I really like him,” she admitted.
While everyone was surrounding the warmth of the fire, Bernadette asked about where they should go next. “We can’t go back to your cave. There’s a chance my people have laid traps for you all.”
“You don’t want to go back, do you, Birdie?” Adam asked, clinging to her side.
“No,” Bernadette said. “Not unless things change, but I fear they never will.”
Otto thought about it as he cleaned the cooking utensils. “There’s the abandoned ship, the rolling hills, the bushlands...”
“I want to see the ship!” Adam announced.
Cal frowned at the notion. “It’s a long trek to the bushlands. It’s creepy, if you ask me.”
Bernadette wanted to ask, but before she could, Tom yelled, “The rolling hills!”
Jon seconded his twin's vote with a nod.
“Are they just hills?” She asked.
Cal gave a knowing smile. “Far better than that.” The boys all exchanged smiles and refused to answer any of her questions about any of the locations they spoke of. They were magical places to the children and Bernadette—with much reluctance—had to respect that.
Chapter Ten
It was a long march to the rolling hills. The jungle trees that had surrounded them for weeks thinned and reduced until their surroundings left large open gaps between trees. The dirt of the jungle floor was patched with grass but as they moved forward, they became enveloped in the wild green pastures. The boys were unaccustomed to being in such wide-open spaces and they took greater care to not wander too far.
Rabbits and deer were now their food sources, as were the fruit that hung from the trees. The quickly gained progress through the plains stalled when they encountered swampy bogs and more challenging terrain. It was somewhere between bogs that Bernadette fell ill.
At first, it was just an unsettled stomach. A few sips of water seemed to help. Bernadette figured it was something with the food they had found. Along with the game, these berries were a new source of food for the group, and Bernadette loved their sweetness.
The servants of the Mármaros did not venture out this far. They relied on their gardens and crops and the jungles to the east of the Mármaros for meats. Bernadette ignored the upset stomach for the first few days, but one evening after dinner, she became physically ill.
She retched for several minutes while Adam shouted questions like, “Birdie, are you okay?” as if she could answer while vomiting.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand once she was sure she finished. “I’m okay, Adam. I think I’m not supposed to eat those berries.”
If only that were the end of it. Over the next few days, it didn’t matter if Bernadette ate berries. She still felt ill. Waves of nausea came weakly yet consistently one day only to come on sharply and abruptly the next. Exhausted from it, she left the group nearly immobile.
The jungle boys were worried. Adam always hovered and patted her back gently when she vomited. He was unhappy with the fact that she had to sleep separately from them for fear of mid-night vomiting episodes. Gabe was forced to walk on the ground with the rest of them due to the lack of trees. He was already unhappy and nervous, but with Bernadette sick, he was becoming a bit of a menace.
Tom had spent most of their time carving a thick branch into a curved bow. He honed it with great effort and precision. Bernadette laid beside the fire while he showed her his craft.
“This will help us catch all sorts of things, and it will protect us, too.”
“It’s beautiful,” Bernadette said while she felt the smooth wood.
Gabe flew out of nowhere, grabbed the bow, and tried to take it from Tom. “No!” Tom attempted to wrestle it from his little brother’s hands.
“Give it back,” he shouted.
“Give it back, Gabe,” Bernadette said. The older boys stepped in to separate the two. Otto went for Gabe and Cal went for the bow. They had to pry his little fingers off the bow. When he did finally let go, he turned around and bit Otto so hard that he slapped the child on the side of the head to get him to release his clutched jaw.
Gabe ran off, and Bernadette stood and went after him. It was her fault that this happened. He was unhappy to be out of the trees, so exposed and forced to interact with them for extended periods. They would have been to the rolling hills by now if it were not for her prolonged illness.
She searched the tall golden grasses that danced in the breeze, but it was in a lone tree that she found him. It was a pathetic excuse for a tree compared to the jungle trees with sparse branches with pale leaves at the ends. The thin limbs barely supported Gabe's weight.
Bernadette walked up to the tree and crossed her arms over her chest. The breeze was a little too chilly for her liking. “You want to go back to the jungle, don’t you?” she said.
Gabe sat with his back to her, refusing to acknowledge her.
“Come down here.”
He shook his head and made a noise that probably meant no. Bernadette thought about how to make him feel better and came up with an idea. She searched along the tree but there was nothing to be found. Bernadette combed the rocks and other things until she found just what she was looking for. Gabe couldn’t help but watch from his branch at what she was doing.
When she had, at last, found it, she nudged it into her hands and covered it to prevent from spoiling the surprise. Gabe was now half hanging out of the tree to get a better look at what Bernadette had in her hands.
“I know it’s not as big as the ones in the jungle,” she said, opening her hand. “But little things have ways of making us feel at home.”
A spider, small in body but with legs ten times its size, crawled from her hands to his. Bernadette was in awe of how gentle Gabe was with the spider. He let it scuttle around on his arms freely, and when it neared danger, Gabe steered it to a tree branch and watched it creep away. He laughed and hopped up and down excitedly.
Bernadette returned to the camp with Gabe on her hip. The rest of the jungle boys stood when they saw them approaching, all but Otto, who was still sulking over the bite Gabe had given him. She walked up to Otto, looked at Gabe, and said, “It’s all right. Take your time.”
Gabe hid his face in her locks and mumbled the word, “Sorry.”
All the boys were shocked by the admission. Otto’s eyes watered and he quickly sniffed back the tears in his eyes. “It’s okay.”
“I think that’s the first time he’s ever spoken,” Cal said later that night when everyone else was playing tag in the tall grass.
Bernadette nodded. “I had to coach him the entire way here. He understands well enough. He’s not practiced in speaking.”
Cal rocked back and forth slightly as he spoke. “He was on his own for so long. I hated Alexi for not finding him sooner.” He wouldn’t break his s
tare from the fire.
She could relate to Cal in this way. Bernadette, too, loved Alexi though she hardly knew him. He was something none of them understood. He could have been listening to their every word, or worlds away. They knew nothing of his thinking nor his proximity, and it left them forever off-balance.
“So many times,” Cal said, “Otto and I would find ourselves lost. Alexi found us every time, but sometimes it took a while. He has a lot of children, you know.”
She struggled with what Cal was telling her. It broke her heart to hear how sad and scared they all must have felt. She resented her people for what they were doing, all the harm they had done. She tried not to cry because she, too, was complicit in the jungle boy’s pain as well as the enslavement without even knowing it.
What was worse was the conflicting feelings she felt for Alexi. How could he be so irresponsible? Where was Alexi when his children fought for their lives in hunter’s traps and wildcats in the jungle? Gabe would be forever stunted by what happened to him. Bernadette watched Adam playing with the rest of the boys and knew that if it were him who had gotten lost, he wouldn’t have survived.
“If Alexi is your father, then who is your mother?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Cal said. “I don’t remember ever having one. You’re the closest thing I have to a mother, Birdie.”
“Alexi never told you?”
“Never asked.”
Another wave of nausea ended the conversation.
Despite her reluctance, Bernadette nibbled on some berries, and the sickness subsided. It seemed that it wasn’t the berries, but rather a random occurrence. Throughout the rest of the day, Bernadette ate every time she felt the sickness coming on. It was counterintuitive, but it was working. It seemed she was sick from not eating, and when she did eat, it was too late or perhaps too much.
With her nausea under better control, traveling went at a quicker pace. The fear of her being terminally ill seemed to lessen as they moved along the plains. Bernadette still had several debilitating waves of sickness a day, but by the time they reached what the boys named the rolling hills, her illness seemed to subside entirely.
Daughter of the Mármaros Page 8
