Cynda said, “Bundi told me it’s not gods in control but a strange force, genetics. Mutagens. There didn’t use to be monsters in the river. He says, unchecked, animals change fast. Whatever took her, he says, might have had a carp for a parent or a salamander.”
“You mean like a bad cow or chicken? A blasphemy we’d kill at birth?”
Jermone had a hard time imagining the creature’s parent the villagers had netted from the river the next day after Cynda’s sister’s death having been an innocent salamander. Larger than a pig, the animal had come from the water raging, all teeth and spines and ferocious velocity. It had torn two good nets to tatters before they’d killed it.
“Do you want me to row for a while? No one will know.”
“No. We’ll do this right. We’re there.”
The palm trees’ dark line peeked through the mist ahead. Waves slipped onto the shore, and their escape down the narrow beach hissed gently. Beyond the sand’s long stretch, old stained metal and glass buildings reflected bright bites of sun through the trees and vines that covered them.
“Can you see any of them… the clothes-apes?” Jermone asked.
“They hide. They’re afraid.”
“Do they… you know… wear clothes?”
Cynda grunted. Jermone couldn’t tell if she was mad at him or thought it a silly question. He wanted to make conversation. Anything to not talk about the ceremony. He forced himself to sit still.
Jermone continued, “They hide because you’re the queen. You’re a special person. The gods protect you, and the clothes-apes know it.”
She sighed. “Being special didn’t help my sister, but Bundi says it has a lot more to do with hunting parties. Many seasons ago, he says, before you or I were born, a queen’s daughter was taken while gathering medicine root. She vanished. A hunting party came and killed clothes-apes by the dozens, and now they stay back in the woods. We’re safe on the beach as long as there are two of us. At least during the day.”
Jermone wanted to ask about the night, but he bit his tongue. She sounded unsure already, and he didn’t want her talking about it again, so he studied the beach instead. A black ribbon moved along the water line, and for a while he thought it was a long snake, undulating back and forth with the waves. As they drew closer, he could tell it wasn’t a continuous line at all, but hundreds of separate parts. Finally, as the waves turned from swells to breaking water, he saw crabs no bigger than the palm of his hand made the line. They skittered down the beach, followed the retreating wave, and moved inland when the water returned. When the canoe plowed slushily to rest, and Jermone jumped out to pull it onto the beach, the crabs scurried off or dug themselves out of sight. He could see them a spear’s throw away, but they wouldn’t come closer.
He crouched at the water’s edge and placed the flats of his hands on the wet sand to thank the sea gods for safe delivery and ask the earth gods to welcome them. Cynda stepped from the canoe and didn’t pause as she strode up the beach. He prayed for her too.
Long seaweed strands, turned brown in the sun, lay above the water line, and when the wind off the ocean paused, their mossy, damp smell floated down to him. The trees, too, smelled: dark and huge and vegetable. Then the breeze picked up, carrying away land odors and replacing them with salt spray and fish.
“Should we start now?” asked Jermone. He tried to calm his voice, but he couldn’t. It quavered.
“No, the tide’s not fully out.”
“What should we do?” He scuffed his feet through the sand. The texture differed from the island, grittier, as if broken shells filled it, but it was also warm and soft. He sat. In the trees, something screeched.
They both started. “Was that…?” Jermone said.
“I don’t know. Didn’t sound like a bird.”
Jermone moved closer to her, keeping an eye on the woods.
Cynda said, “I’ve never seen a clothes-ape. There’s lots of things on land I haven’t seen. Bundi says changes happen fast here too. There’s no one to check, no Queen mother to pass judgments on births. Other animals might be here beside the clothes-apes.”
“Maybe they are the gods.”
“I doubt it.”
Cynda sat beside him, facing the woods just paces away. Under the dark canopy, the sand vanished and everything became shadow. Great vines wrapped themselves around trunks and swooped from tree to tree. Above the forest, tiny birds darted in and out of the palms, feeding on insects; and more birds, long-legged ones with gray bodies and long beaks trotted along the tree’s roots, poking their bills into crevices. The trunks creaked in the sea-breeze; bees or wasps hummed, and behind them the waves whispered their secrets in steady rhythm. Jermone scrunched his fingers deeper into the warm sand until they were under Cynda’s hand. She didn’t move other than to tilt her head back to look at the ruined buildings that rose from the forest. “Do you believe people used to live here?”
Jermone glanced at her. A grain of sand clung to her thigh, and he wanted to brush it away, but he feared to touch her now with the ceremony so close. He thought about Jaimie and Clurk.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They’re sad to look at. Not like the gods’ homes at all.”
She turned to study him, propping herself on one arm. “Do you have doubts?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. None at all. I just thought they seemed broken down, like… I don’t know… deserted. But, of course, they’re not. The gods are there, just as they are in the sea and land.” He looked for evidence of the gods in the ruins, but rust-streaked metal and broken glass in shiny bits clinging to gaping windows’ edges consuming sunlight revealed nothing within.
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?” she said.
Jermone tried to swallow, but he couldn’t. She sat too close, and all he wanted was to hold her. He remembered the run on the beach. She had quivered then. Mystery filled her, and he felt lost within it. But he knew he had to discover it; to find it out, and yearning’s ache stirred inexorably, irresistibly. The memory tormented him. Her closeness dominated, not the ceremony’s importance. He feared if his mind were not pure, the gods would be displeased. The ritual had to be perfect, but she was so close. He remembered her breath’s taste beneath the palms.
She dropped her hand behind her again so she didn’t face him. “I don’t believe in gods anymore. There are none, and Bundi is right. My sister wasn’t killed because she made a river god mad or because of pride or anything else. She died because a hungry animal needed to eat, and she was there.”
“But the ceremony?” he offered.
“It doesn’t work. The Whale’s run whether we try to please the gods or not. The whaling will be successful whether we do this or not. Some men will die. Some will live. Some cows and chickens and goats and babies will be born who are not what they should be, and the Queen mother will take them behind the hill and smother them. The world is as it is.”
“But everyone believes in the ceremonies. If we don’t sacrifice to the gods, why would they care for us?”
In the vegetation, Jermone thought he sensed movement. Something watched back there; something that did not want to be seen.
“Bundi says we don’t belong here. We’re from someplace else. He says we’ve become magicians, and our magic is associational.” She stumbled over the word. “A goat sheared and left in the forest for the goat god. A painted fish for the river god. A handful of blessed grain for the grain god. In the spring… well, for the spring, a fertility rite. The whales must run, and there must be ritual and offering. There’s cruelty in it, he says. Logic and cruelty.”