Eileen shrugged. “People like you and me.”
“That bad?”
“And worse, can you believe? Everyone has heard about Kathy, seen her on television.”
Jennifer nodded. She remembered how she had seen Kathy Dart at five o’clock in the morning. “Where do we sleep?” she asked. “They don’t have dorms, do they?”
“Oh, no. Everyone has his own room, with a single bed. Kathy believes that people need to be isolated, especially if they’re meditating. Also, she believes that everyone needs their own personal space. Especially twin-souls.”
“Twin-souls?”
“Yes. A twin-soul is someone with whom we may once have shared a lifetime. There is a tremendous attraction between twin-souls, but also great resentment. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were twin-souls. And Madonna and Sean Penn. Real twins often function like that in life. They love and hate each other simultaneously. Your problem might be because of some conflict with a twin-soul.”
“What has happened to me—is still happening to me!—is more than just a love-hate relationship.”
Eileen nodded. “I realize that, and I don’t know the reason for these outbursts, but you seem to be suddenly attracting other souls who once shared a lifetime with you. Your past lives are coming together in this one.”
“Why now?” Jennifer sat back, and for a moment they rode in silence. “I didn’t ask for any of this,” she finally said.
“I know,” Eileen admitted. “Maybe I’m the cause. I exposed you to Kathy.” She kept her eyes fixed on the road. “But Kathy can save you, too. And if not Kathy, then Habasha.”
Jennifer closed her eyes and was comforted with the thought that help was waiting for her in Minnesota. When she opened them again, she saw bright lights on the dark horizon. The sudden sweep of lights made her think of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when the sky lit up with the arrival of the spaceship.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“I believe,” said Eileen, easing her foot off the gas pedal, “that it’s downtown Akron.”
“What if there is no such thing as reincarnation?” Jennifer asked next, as Eileen pulled off the highway. “What if there are no twin-souls or collective lives or multiple personalities!”
Eileen did not take her eyes from the interstate as she answered. “Then I think you are in real trouble,” she said quietly.
“Why?” Jennifer asked.
“Because it means you are a killer. A cold-blooded killer.”
It was colder now during the day and the light of the sun disappeared before Bura and the others had time to gather wood from the valley.
Because Bura was older, having lived through thirteen winters, and strong, strong as any of the males, except for Nira, she carried a full load back along the length of the valley.
She paused on the grassy slope where they had lived as long as she could remember. As she looked into the deep caves that had been cut with flint axes into each ledge, she thought of what her mother’s mother had told her. When her mother’s mother was a girl, they had come to live in these limestone caves, spending the cold months huddled by the charcoal fires, wrapped in the skins of wolves. Only the men would go out during the few hours of sunlight to hunt, and when they returned with a beast, there would be a great feast for all their people.
Bura thought how wonderful it must have been to live in the cave. Her mother’s mother had shown her where she slept on the cold ledge, hidden from the north winds, while the old men talked, and told Bura how she used to lie awake watching the flame dance against the rock walls, huddled there beside her sisters.
But now they lived in a round hut made of bones and bear skin, and now only children played in the caves during the warm months. Bura had bled from her womb, and her mother and her mother’s mother had taken her to the cave of drawings, and there she had drunk of her own blood, and her face and breasts had been marked with thick dark smears, and the women had prayed to all the spirits that her womb would flower with offspring. Her mother had said that Bura would go to live with Nira’s people, and she had gone that night to sleep in the thick warm skins with his sisters, and now it had been three days and three nights, and he had not come for her.
Bura knew that he would come that night. She had been told that the men never came to take their women on the first night, and that the longer they waited, the more powerful was their coupling. She was not afraid. She had seen her brothers coupling with their new women, heard the moans of pleasure and pain.
Bura was climbing up the cave path at dusk, bent forward to balance the driftwood on her back and shoulders, when they seized her. They had hidden themselves in the shadows of the ledge, kneeling out of sight and waiting for the women to climb up and out of the riverbed. One covered her mouth with his hand, slipped his arm around her naked waist. The second one pulled her legs out from under her, tumbling her over as if she were a thin-legged deer. They dragged her back into the forgotten caves, littered now with the bones of animals.
Bura bit the thick hand that covered her mouth and kicked out with her legs, but the two men had her between them. They had seized her skin covering and ripped it from her waist. She was naked now except for the shells she had strung around her neck, and one of the men seized them, twisting the thin cord of leather tight around her throat until she could not breathe.
They were trying to mate with her. Already she could feel the one who had her from behind, his arms wrapped around her stomach, shoving his organ into her. She twisted in his grasp until the leather cord grew even tighter around her neck. She broke one hand free and scraped her fingernails down the face of the man in front.
As the strip of leather around her neck loosened, Bura tumbled into the dirt, gasping for breath. She knelt on the ground, and when she had swallowed one long breath of air, she bolted from them, darting off like a rabbit caught in an open meadow.
They ran to catch her as she climbed up the steep limestone path. She was taller than both of them, and faster, and even in the dark, she knew the caves and ledges. If she reached the ridge, she would be all right.
Her breath was on fire in her throat, and there was a pain in her side. But if they caught her now, they would kill her. She could not see them behind her on the path, but she heard them, knew they were still after her.
She reached the top of the path, ran into the open meadow, and sighed with exhaustion and relief. She was safe. She saw the sparkling flames of the fires, twinkling like stars, and pushed forward for the safety of her mother’s hut. She could even smell the meat burning on the flame as she lengthened her stride and ran into Nira’s arms.
“Where were you?” he asked.
She tried to speak, to explain, but managed only to raise her arm, a signal that she was being followed.
He saw them at once, stumbling into the open meadow, and he leaped at them, hitting one of them at the base of the neck with his club. Bura heard the bones break, like a tree struck by sky light. She ran after Nira, jumping over the dead body of the fallen male, and followed him down the limestone path as he went after the other.
Swinging the short club with all his strength, Nira struck the other male once on the side of his face, killing him as the men of the plains killed the lynx that came down from the hills, and pushed him over the edge.
Bura ran to Nira and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. She leaned forward to stare into the deep black pit. There was no sound, no echo that came back to them as it did when they tossed rocks off the high ridge.
She looked up at Nira and saw his black eyes studying her. She wanted him to take her into the private, forgotten caves and mate with her, but he didn’t seem to hear her silent longing, so she took his hand and brought it up to touch her naked breast.