Bride of the Baja

by Jane Toombs

  Her hands and arms were dirty from the wood, and though the sun was behind clouds, she was hot from the unaccustomed work. After first looking cautiously around, she pulled the chemise over her head and knelt at the ocean's edge to rinse it. She was about to struggle into the wet, torn garment when she changed her mind and spread the chemise on a rock to dry.

  She ran into the ocean until the water came to her waist, then walked as far out as she could, shivering until she grew accustomed to the cold. As she plunged into a breaking wave, she felt the exhilarating sweep of the salt water over her naked body. She dove into oncoming waves, letting them carry her shoreward until she was exhausted.

  Wading to the beach, she found a large, flat rock and lay on her back to let the warm air dry her. Looking down at her body, she brought her hands up over her legs and hips and along her sides to her breasts. She had never been so conscious of her body before. If she had thought of it at all, she had considered her body as something necessary yet vaguely shameful.

  A sea gull shrieked overhead as it wheeled above the beach. The sun came from behind clouds, forcing Alitha to shade her eyes with her hand. She stood up, raising her arms skyward as she stretched, feeling the sun's warmth bathe her as she recalled Chia's similar gesture of homage to the moon.

  We make such a secret of our bodies, Alitha thought, hiding them beneath layers of cloth. I doubt if many women even let their husbands see them unclothed. Chia doesn't seem to think of himself as naked—is the rest of his tribe the same? If the Indians feel no need to conceal their bodies from one another, are they also more open in other ways?

  She looked down at the swell of her breasts where the skin was turning an unfamiliar brown. I'm only beginning to know my own body, she decided, and I'll make a vow this minute to never be ashamed of it. The shadow of a cloud raced toward her along the beach. Shivering in the cold breeze, she ran to retrieve her chemise and slip it over her head. All at once she thought of Thomas.

  What would he think of her lying naked in the sun? He'd disapprove, she was sure. Her memory of him had faded; he seemed far, far away, and as she tried to picture him in her mind, images of her father kept getting confused with him.

  When she returned to Chia, he was standing on the rocky shore with his spear in his hand. He removed an object—a reddish stone, she thought—from the net bag he wore over his shoulder and rubbed it along the blade of the spear. The stone, no longer than Chia's palm, was carved in the shape of a fish and had a cord strung through a hole in one end.

  Returning the stone to his carrying bag, Chia walked along the water's edge to a boulder above an inlet sheltered from the waves by a reef. Spear poised, he waited. Minutes passed. Suddenly he thrust the spear into the water, and when he raised it over his head, she saw a fish impaled on the point. He climbed back to where she stood, removed the fish from the spear and laid it at her feet.

  Men catch the fish, she thought, and women cook them. There was no reason she couldn't catch them, too; it appeared easy enough. She pointed to the spear, reaching out her hand for it. Chia stared at her, hesitated, then offered her his weapon. Balancing the shaft of the spear in her hand, she went to the boulder where Chia had stood. She heard him behind her, turned, and saw him offering her his stone charm. She shook her head, remembered he might not understand, and made a negative motion with her hand. After staring at her impassively, Chia returned to the beach, putting the talisman back into his bag.

  Alitha stood on the rock gazing into the deep water. A silvery fish glided into the pool, a fish over two feet long, much larger than the one Chia had landed. She raised the spear, waiting, and when the fish was directly beneath her, she drove the blade into the water.

  The fish darted away, and when the spear embedded itself deep in the sand, Alitha was thrown forward. Releasing the shaft, she tried to keep her balance, failed and fell face first into the water. She surfaced, spluttering, and climbed out onto a rock, pushing her streaming hair from her face.

  Hearing a sound from the beach, she looked that way and saw Chia bent over with his hands on his knees. He was laughing, laughing at her. Embarrassed, she smiled uncertainly and in a few minutes was laughing as hard as he was. She pulled the spear from the sand, carried it to Chia and placed it at his feet. For the time being, at least, she decided, Chia would fish and she would cook.

  For the next three days Chia worked on the raft while Alitha gathered wood for the fires she used to cook fish twice a day, at the same time adding constantly to the pile of driftwood on the top of the hill. On the evening of the third day, she helped Chia half-carry, half-shove the raft across the rocks to the water. With his charm stone in his hand, Chia walked around the raft, touching each of the four sides with the head of the stone fish. When he finished, he pushed the raft over the breakers, threw two hand-hewn double-bladed paddles aboard and rowed along the shore. When he returned to the beach he nodded, evidently satisfied with the seaworthiness of the raft.

  Using sticks, Chia marked the high-tide line in the sand and waded into the ocean where he indicated where low tide would be. Standing at the low-tide line, he pointed to the raft and, with his hands, showed the incoming flood tide sweeping in the direction of the mainland. Going up on the beach, he drew the rising sun and a curved arrow to represent the arc of the sun from morning to night, again indicating the start of a flood tide and then pointing to the sun at its zenith.

  She stared at him for a moment as she thought through what he was trying to tell her. Of course. He meant to sail with the flood tide, and that tide would come the next day at noon, Chia, she thought, may be a savage, but he was a seaman as well.

  Alitha nodded, then walked past him, motioning him to follow. He walked after her, keeping a few paces behind until he saw she was heading for the pile of wood on the hilltop. He quickly walked past her and led the way up the hill. Though the sun was down by the time they reached the top, she waited, sitting on the grass with Chia crouched on his haunches a short distance away. Neither spoke. Finally, after more than an hour had passed, she motioned him to light the fire. He twirled his fire stick in the hollow of a board and in a few minutes sparks showered onto the pile of dry slivers. The wood smoked, Alitha saw a spurt of fire and a moment later flames were crackling up the sides of the pile of driftwood, climbing higher and higher until she and Chia were forced back by the heat. When she saw Chia watching her expectantly, she frowned, not understanding what he wanted. He looked from her to the flames, his naked body a golden bronze in the firelight. Slowly he raised his arms to the blaze and as slowly lowered them again. Of course, he must be expecting her to perform some rite, make some obeisance to the fire.

  The sun, the moon, the sea, the earth, fire—these must be the gods around which his life revolved. If she were in his place, wouldn't she worship them just as he did? He must think this fire was her ceremony to speed their escape from the island.

  She knelt, praying the signal fire would be seen, praying for their safe passage to the mainland. When she stood up, Chia nodded, seemingly satisfied.

  Already the flames were dying, the darkness crowding around them to reclaim the small portion of the island from which it had been banished by the fire. Had anyone seen the blaze? During her days on the island, she had sighted no ships nor had she seen any signs of human life. Only the morning would tell if rescue was on the way.

  When she woke shortly before dawn, the sea on their side of the island was calm but empty. She cooked their morning meal—how she was beginning to hate the smell of fish—and they drank from their fast-dwindling supply of water. Leaving Chia to greet the dawn, Alitha climbed the highest of the hills, the same one she and Malloy had climbed when they first came to the island days before.

  The shipwreck seemed long ago. Now she was tanned almost as brown as Chia. At night she fell into a sound sleep as soon as she lay down, and she woke refreshed. She felt better than she could ever remember feeling before. She stood on the top of the hill looking around her,
saw another island to the east, even smaller and more barren than theirs, saw puffy clouds drifting overhead and the dark Line of the mainland to the north. Offshore a pelican dove into the sea and emerged with a fish held crosswise in his beak. But there were no ships, no beacon fires on the far shore, no sign that her fire had been seen. They would have to rely on the raft. With a sigh she turned and walked back down the hill.

  When the tide changed, they pushed the raft into the surf, waiting until they were beyond the breakers before scrambling aboard. Alitha took one paddle, Chia the other, and they sat on opposite sides of the raft rowing toward the mainland.

  Soon Alitha's arms and shoulders ached and she had to sit back with the paddle resting on the timbers in front of her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the beach, the grassy slopes and the twin hills of the island were already beginning to look insignificant in the immensity of the surrounding sea. With a start of surprise she realized that she regretted leaving the island, although she knew she had no choice.

  Taking a deep breath, she resumed rowing. The sea was calm, rising and falling in gentle swells, but even so water splashed over the sides of the raft, soaking them both. Each time she looked ahead, the land seemed no closer than before, so she bent to her task, her eyes on the furrow made by her paddle in the water.

  Finally, exhausted, she laid the paddle at her side and lowered her face into her hands. She didn't look at Chia, but she heard the steady beat of his strokes. She heard the thump of waves on a shore, opened her eyes and saw the mainland a few hundred feet ahead. She began rowing again, and for a time they were swept parallel to the shore by the current. Seeing a beach, Chia pointed, and they rowed toward it as the current tried to sweep them past. Paddling with all the strength she had left, her arms heavy with fatigue, for a moment Alitha thought they had won the battle and would reach the sand.

  She plunged the paddle into the sea with renewed fervor. They were safe—they had challenged the Pacific and won. She smiled across at Chia just as the raft rose on a cresting wave and was borne higher and higher, with the beach to their left and menacing black rocks to their right.

  The wave broke in a shower of spray, sending the raft crashing forward onto the rocks and hurling Alitha into the water. As she tried to swim, she heard Chia's grunt of pain above the boom of the surf. Her hand touched a sandy bottom and she waded shoreward, finally pulling herself onto a rock shelf above the churning water.

  Looking around, she saw Chia lying on the rocks near her. She stood up and climbed over the rocks toward him, expecting him to get up at any moment to brusquely lead the way ashore. He didn't get up. When she reached him she saw that one of his legs was twisted under his body.

  As she tried to turn him over, he raised his head and she saw that his face was drawn with pain. He gestured weakly with his hand in the negative sign she'd learned. No, don't move him. Alitha stared down at the twisted right leg and saw that the foot was turned in at an impossible angle. She knew then that his leg was broken.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Alitha bowed her head in despair as she crouched over Chia. She was wet, she was exhausted. Without him, she was helpless on this alien shore. He moved, attempting to hunch himself to a sitting position. She looked at him and waved her hand in the negative gesture he'd so often used to her.

  Chia's helpless but I'm not, she admonished herself. It's up to me now. She forced herself to touch his twisted leg. Though he made no outcry, she heard him catch his breath. What could she do for a broken bone?

  When the seaman on the Yankee had fallen from the rigging off the Falkland Islands, her father had used canvas and wood to splint and straighten the man's broken leg, and in time the man had walked again. With a limp, to be sure, but he'd walked. Alitha looked about her. What could she use to splint Chia's leg?

  The broken paddle caught her eye. Leaning over Chia, she unfastened the knife from his hair. He watched with pain-dimmed eyes as she waded into the water and retrieved the paddle. The sharpness of the flint knife surprised her as she trimmed off the splintered ends of the paddle after breaking the wood in two over her knee. But how was she to hold the pieces of wood in place on Chia's leg?

  She looked at her ragged chemise. If she took any cloth from it, she doubted if the chemise would hold together enough to cover her. Chia, of course, was naked except for the net bag now wound about his waist. Could she use that? The net was fashioned of some kind of plant fiber; if she could unravel them..

  Alitha knelt beside Chia, placing the two pieces of wood on either side of his right leg. She slipped strands of the rough twine under his leg and the wood and tied the upper ends. She took a deep breath and grasped his foot, which turned inward, and twisted so that the toes pointed up.

  Chia grunted. Holding the foot in place between her knees, Alitha quickly lashed the wood to the leg with the remaining twine. Chia hadn't made another sound after the first moan, but she saw blood trickling down his chin and realized that he'd bitten his lip to keep from crying out.

  Tears came to her eyes, but she brushed them away impatiently. He was the bravest boy she'd ever seen, but now she must be equally brave or he was doomed. He needed food and water, he needed shelter. The first thing she had to do was move him away from the beach.

  Half-carrying, half-dragging him, she managed to get Chia over a slight rise to where a group of boulders formed a windbreak and also offered shade. Leaving him there, she hurried to cut foliage from nearby bushes, brought the branches back, then collected driftwood. Now he had fuel for a fire and could use the branches for a blanket.

  It took her a long time to find and kill a number of the small, scuttling sand crabs, and she was disappointed to uncover only a few clams to bring to him. More of a worry was the fact that she'd found no fresh water. She fussed over him until Chia made the negative chopping motion with his hand.

  "Rancheria," he said, pointing west along the beach. His finger then touched her gently. "Leeta," he said. Immediately he pointed west again.

  Rancherias. She'd heard her father use that word for the Indian settlements on the Mexican coast. Did Chia want her to leave him and seek help from his tribe?

  She pointed to herself, then west along the shore. "Rancheria?" she asked.

  Chia smiled in agreement. He broke a twig from one of the branches and drew two circles in the dirt, gestured at the sky, then west again.

  Two. Two suns? Moons? A two-day journey, is that what he meant? She thought it probable.

  Alitha knew she'd have to make the journey, for Chia needed more help than she could give him—she doubted whether she could keep even one of them fed. Now was the time to begin walking west; now, while she had the strength. She leaned over and kissed Chia on the forehead, stood up and started off without a backward look.

  The soles of her feet had grown considerably tougher from the days on the island, but by nightfall both feet throbbed with pain. She had walked along the beach as much as possible because of fear of losing her way, but now she turned her back on the ocean, searching until she found a crevice among the boulders where she could huddle until morning. She had no way to make a fire, and she'd returned the knife to Chia.

  Though she fell into an exhausted sleep almost immediately, she woke with a gibbous moon still overhead. She was chilled through. Alitha rose, wincing when her feet took her weight. If I have to keep moving to stay warm, she decided, I may as well walk toward the rancheria.

  The moon made a shining path on the water, a path leading to the west. To the islands and Thomas. What would he think if he could see her now, barefoot, nearly naked and almost as brown as a savage Indian? Would she ever see Thomas again?

  Alitha blinked back tears. No, she couldn't afford to waste her energy crying for what was beyond her reach. Just as she couldn't allow herself to grieve for her father. Not now.

  An animal howled somewhere in the hills to the north. Another answered, then another. Wolves? Were there wolves in California? She didn't know. The
wailing rose eerily until she felt the sound came from all around her. Alitha broke into a run, stumbled on a rock and fell headlong. Curling herself into a protective ball to ward off whatever terror stalked her, she huddled against a bleached log. The howling rose and fell, diminished and died away altogether. Relaxing, Alitha slipped once again into the welcoming oblivion of sleep.

  The sun, warm on her bare arms and legs, woke her. Yards away, waves lapped on the sand. She raised her head and two stilt-legged shore birds skittered away from her. She sat up and was immediately conscious of a desperate desire for water. Her tongue felt dry and thick, too big for her mouth. Getting to her feet, she stared westward along the sand. She could see no streams making their way into the sea.

  She hesitated, aware she wasn’t headed south. She changed direction, tears running down her cheeks as she limped along. When she finally recognized the scent of burning wood, she realized she'd been smelling the smoke for some time. Anxiously she scanned the sky above the trees.

  There! A drifting plume of gray-brown. She broke into a clumsy run.

  Alitha splashed through the water of a small stream, wondering vaguely if this was the one she'd found earlier, and was brought up short on the far bank when she caught sight of a large domed dwelling. At the same time she heard a woman call sharply in a language she didn't understand. She turned and saw an Indian squaw staring at her. Behind the woman, smaller domed lodges were scattered in a clearing.

  The Indian woman had long black hair cut in bangs across her forehead and wore a band of seashells around her hair. She was bare to the waist, but a two-piece skirt covered her in front and in back, ending at her knees. The skirt looked like deerskin and was fringed at the bottom and decorated with small colored stones and shells. She spoke to Alitha again, unintelligible words, and Alitha shook her head.