Angelique left Maria with the boat and clambered up the rocks to the trees and then up onto the island itself. It didn’t take much time to explore it and discover it had no usable water and nothing that really looked edible. It did, however, have enough ropelike vines to secure the boat to a tree. After that, she helped Maria up onto the island surface and they walked back just a little.
Angelique was dead tired, and she knew Maria must be in an even worse shape, but she didn’t dare allow herself to sleep just yet. Something within her told her that there was an urgency to doing the little things, and she didn’t hesitate to believe it.
She stood and faced Maria, and began a small chant, placing a finger on the controlled woman’s forehead. “Maria, Mother free you from spell. Remember all.”
The captive girl’s body swayed, and then she seemed to wake up and look around in wonder. “Oh, my god!” she breathed. “It wasn’t a dream!”
“No dream,” Angelique told her, suddenly finding words difficult again. “We escape. Now my life, you life, whole plan in you hand.”
“Angelique—what’s the matter?” Maria was tired and thirsty, but she was scared most of all. “Why are you talking so funny?”
“I use power of spirit. On you. On me. That why we here. More I use, more I am—her. Angelique still in head, but think her tongue. Much less words to speak, think. Think in her tongue, think her way. You see?”
Maria sat down and shook her head. This was much too much for her at one time. Still, she was aware of their situation and scared to death, and Angelique was all she had right now.
“Let me get this straight. You used—magic—to control me. But now because of that you’re finding it hard to think in English or French?”
“Yes. Old tongue. Plain tongue. Must fight to find words for you to know my talk. Is curse. No power, no get away, no live. Power make me not her but like her.”
“Then what can I—what are we going to do now?”
“See in hand. Speak totem.”
Maria brought up her right hand, and for the first time saw that she was tightly clenching a ballpoint pen and a piece of wet and crumpled paper. She had apparently been holding on to it the entire time. The pen was broken, the paper useless, coming apart almost as she looked at it. “It’s no good. It’s broken.” She looked at the plastic refill. “Maybe I could write, but there’s nothing to write on.”
Angelique sighed. “Then you sleep. When night come, you go. Bring help. I wait three moons here for help.”
“Go? Where? Get help from who?”
“You—write. Do on skin, Say—Bessel Island. Art Cadell. In white little house looking to water. Speak what happen. All. Come back for me. If not—Greg—or you come, will go. Never see again.”
She wrote down the information, with difficulty, on her arm. “But why just me? I mean—I don’t have a stitch on! Why not both of us?”
“You speak clear tongue. You say, they know. See me, laugh. Dark Man look for me. You bring Dark Man, we die. Bring friend, we may stop Dark Man. Be brave. Use head.”
“I—I’m not very brave. I could never have done this much without your hypnosis or whatever it was.”
“You be now. Dark Man, he catch you, he lie sweet but he mad. He put you in living hell. Believe.”
“But—what if I’m caught? What if I can’t make it in time? What if nobody’s there any more?”
“Then Angelique use power. Get to big land. Live in jungle. Be wild thing but not Dark Man thing.”
“You’re sure? You’ll be on this island—alone. No food or drink. No boat, and you can’t swim.”
“No worry ’bout Angelique. You do?”
“I—I’ll try. But I worry about you, even if I get back.”
“No can stop. Must become like her. Come too far to get power to do this. Had to be price to pay. Angelique know this may be. Not mind. Get arms. Got legs. Am strong.”
Maria was genuinely touched by that. Angelique was paying what was, to Maria, an intolerable price, but was it intolerable to Angelique? She would foil, perhaps stop, the Dark Man. She had traded her attractive Canadian self for the body of a young priestess of a Stone Age culture—and perhaps of the Stone Age itself. A quadriplegic heiress becomes a whole Stone Age person, cut off in communication from the world of today and forced to think in a simple, more basic, and probably long dead Stone Age language with few words and much mysticism. The language would in itself force her to think in those terms, make her inside what she appeared to be outside.
Was it worth the price? Was it a better choice? Maria didn’t know, but certainly Angelique had decided it was.
Maria had no doubts that the Dark Man’s people would be sweet as honey if they caught her, but out for terrible revenge when they recovered Angelique. Being hypnotized or whatever it had been would be no excuse. If they could create a monster out of something or other to do their killing and restore her youth while changing Angelique into—this—they would be very creative when she no longer had value. She’d been too long on the streets of New Orleans with the amoral, the vicious, and the truly evil to think otherwise.
“I will do it. Somehow I will do it,” she said, and kissed Angelique.
“I—I not be same when you come back. Be Hapharsi. Look, act, think Hapharsi, but be Angelique in head. No worry. Not all spirits evil. Find good high priest. Break spell. Angelique be like old but no stiff. You see.”
And, with that, they slept, huddled in each other’s arms.
It was dream-filled, troubled sleep for Angelique, but her dreams were not of anything she could remember. Rather it was something of an inner house cleaning, a rearrangement of her mental furniture. She could fight it while awake, at least slow it down, but asleep she was at its mercy. Still, some corner of her mind held on ferociously, at least until this part was done.
She awoke before it was totally dark, and slipped silently away from Maria’s still form. She went down to check the boat and saw that it was indeed still there. Reassured, she went back up and sat, cross-legged, across from the other woman. She needed to think.
Was she doing the right thing, allowing one who had betrayed her once to go alone? Still, she knew she had to do it that way. She was what the Dark Man’s magic had decreed, and his was the stronger magic. By that magic he had marked her, making her choose this life, but, no matter what, she had not lied to Maria. This life was better than being a living statue. She was whole and strong and she knew how to provide the basics to live, and thanks to the magic she wished for no more than those basics. But they would be looking over a tremendous area for two women, and of the two she was the one they most keenly sought. A warrior priestess is born, anointed by the spirits, and she does not get captured by an enemy. She fights and perhaps she dies, willingly, but she does not fall twice into enemy hands.
The Dark Man had anointed her the Hapharsi Mother for this time, but he did not want the true spirit of the ancient Mother to consume her. He wanted to break down Angelique, to remove all things pf her old people and tribal customs and rituals, to allow her to see the joy of living with power. To tempt her, so that she would be brought to their altar and, to get the highest pleasures and the greatest power, she would willingly wed herself to Dobak or some other great demon and herself perform the sacrifice.
She knew she craved the power and the indescribable bodily pleasures that this would bring, that she had experienced second hand through the ancient Mother’s spirit. But were she not to do his bidding, he could not find her any easier than he could find any other woman, and she could still have some power and some pleasure, for she had no children now to be responsible for.