~ The Last Eden ~

by

Annie Taylor

Darkness cloaked the forest, and the branches overhead creaked and moaned as a whispered breeze passed above them. The light of the fire encircled the women and the children like great, loving arms.

Drumbeats rose up from the ground, the air vibrated in a familiar cadence. Unghatti heels pounded the earth, a rhythm that matched McKay’s own pulse, kept time with the quick rise and fall of her breaths. Low voices wove eerily in and out of the song.

Like shadows, Unghatti men slipped from the darkness. Black eyes reflected the light of the fire. Muscles rippled beneath glistening skin as the men broke through the waiting circle and formed their own ring around the fire, orbiting like planets around a sun. They danced until they reached exhaustion then retreated back into the shadows.

Long, uncomfortable seconds passed. Children whined, mothers shushed. McKay waited, wondering, watching. At last, Tikitu rose from her place beside McKay. She stood alone before the council, Hekura’s tiger skin wrapped about her shoulders. Her face glowed with a mysterious inner light, casting out the darkness. The lifeforce of her ancestors dancing in her blood, Tikitu swayed to the beat of her own inner drum.

Her face untroubled and childlike, Tikitu looked directly at McKay, and she held out her hands. Come, her eyes said. McKay rose, her heart thundering, and the two women joined hands, entwining fingers.

They danced. Around and around and around they went, circling the fire, circling each other. McKay searched Tikitu’s face; lines of laughter, tracks of tears. So different, yet so much the same. In that one precious moment in time, their joys mingled, their sorrows were one.

Fierce and beautiful and wild, Tikitu was the shaman, the magician, the goddess, and these Unghattis gathered at her feet were her faithful. Tikitu threw her head back and laughed; a silvery laugh that scattered in the night like a thousand stars. Her voice reached deep down inside of McKay, striking a joyous chord. They laughed as one woman, the river of their voices rilling and running together.

Nineteen

“Send her away!”

“But Maxwell--”

“I mean it, Theresa. Tell her I’m gone, and you don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“You’re asking me to lie?”

“I’m asking you to discourage her from staying in this bloody forest for one minute longer.”

“Shame on you, Maxwell. She’s come halfway across the world to see you, her own flesh and blood.”

“She doesn’t know the danger she’s in, the danger she’s putting everyone else in simply by being here.”

“You’re exaggerating, Maxwell.”

“Am I? Luta has threatened to make war. Do you think he was joking? And are you so certain that this will not be the incident that finally sets Luta into motion?”

“But the Unghattis--”

“--Are readying themselves for war as we speak. No, Theresa, you tell her I’m gone.”

Theresa dropped her eyes to her folded hands. “Where will you go?”

“To Three Falls. But don’t tell her that, Theresa.”

“Then what will I tell her?”

“Tell her she should be on the next plane back to the states.” He tipped his pith helmet then ducked out the back door of the convent.

~ * ~

Willy cleared his throat at the doorway of the hut. Tikitu’s cousin, Mutum, scrambled out of his hammock and picked up his bow from the dirt floor. The dark squatty man held out one hand to shake. Willy pumped his hand up and down, thinking there was no family resemblance whatsoever between the beautiful woman Tikitu had become, and this man. “You know the American custom of shaking hands?”

“This be not only ‘Merican,” Mutum said, sniffing indignantly. “Unghattis know many nappe, many nappe shake hands.”

“And you speak English?”

Mutum laughed. “You think Unghatti much like Benjis, like other animals who live in forest?”

“I wanted to introduce myself. I am--”

“Yes, Mutum remembers. Both boys, we. You small and afraid.”

The tight belt of fear around Willy’s chest eased open a notch. “The name’s Will, Will Alexander.”

The man jerked his head toward Granny McKay, who was standing in the clearing. She was surrounded by a dozen or more children who were touching her clothes, her glasses, even pulling at her hair. “Who be old woman?”

“That,” Willy explained, though he suspected Mutum already knew, “is McKay’s grandmother.”

“Mother of Kumareme?”

Willy hesitated a moment, quickly remembering where he’d heard that name before. “Something like that.”

“Why you have come to see Mutum?”

“You are Chief of the Unghattis.”

“This be true.”

“I have come to show respect to you.”

“Kumareme not come?” He craned his short neck to see out the doorway.

“She and Tikitu went across the river, to try to find Doctor Fine.”

A ripple of anger passed over his brow. “She not come to respect Unghatti chief?”

Willy’s eyes took in the bow, then the quiver of arrows propped against the wall. “She said it was proper for the man to come first.”

“This also be true. She will come later?”

Willy nodded. “If the chief wishes it.”

“Chief wishes it,” he said.