From the blackness at the back of the cave comes the sound of falling rock. The dog lets out a howl, and I flinch. “We need to get out in the open,” I say. “It’s too dangerous in here.”
I let the girls go first, and the dog follows right behind them. I climb out last. There are so many things I want to ask Noni about—how she and her mother got here, and where they came from—but before I can speak, she is screaming, grabbing at the dog and pulling him away from her mother. “Stop! Black Dog, stop!” Looking, I see the dog licking blood from the woman’s face. “Get away,” she says. The dog leaps over the woman’s body and lies down, curled against her legs. “He’s so hungry,” she says. “He doesn’t know better.” Her voice is composed, but tears spill from the corners of her eyes.
I think of the food—the food Noni stole. “Well, give us back our food,” I say, “and we can all have something to eat. Even Black Dog. That’s first. But then we need to work hard, setting up a camp and digging a grave. It’s too late in the morning to prepare for a burial by midday, so it will have to be done tomorrow.”
I think of Kol, far to the south in his camp. I imagine him standing beside his father’s grave. I hear the echo of the drum. “We’ll dig the grave after we eat, and tomorrow at midday, we’ll bury her.”
“No! I won’t let you—”
“Noni, there’s no hope for her. She’s dead, and we need to treat her body with respect—”
“Then we can’t bury her. That’s what my father’s clan, the Tama, do. But my mother was born into another clan—the Pavu clan—and they don’t bury their dead.”
“Then what—”
“They burn them.”
TWELVE
Noni returns the pack of food she stole, but she offers no apology. I don’t ask for one either. I think of her mother, dead or maybe dying, when Noni dared sneak up on two sleeping strangers. I think of the fact that she took only food—she left knives, an ax, atlatls, and darts. I think of how long she may have gone without food while she tried to save her mother.
And I decide there’s nothing to discuss. She did what she had to do to survive and to help a person she loved. Isn’t that what we all do every day?
We don’t eat much, and what we do eat gets consumed in a hurry, sitting on the dunes facing the water, like we’re on a break during a long journey and don’t have time for a real meal. Noni gulps down pieces of dried fish and clover roots like she thinks I might change my mind and take it away from her. Even so, she shares what she has with Black Dog. I scoop out some extra fish for her, since she gave him almost half of what she had.
Noni eats with her head down, concentrating only on her food, but when she finishes she finally looks up at me and Lees. Something in her gaze says she’s trying to decide if we fit into her dreams or her nightmares.
“So, Noni,” I start, “are there other people from your clan here?”
“No,” she says.
I wait, giving her a chance to offer more of an explanation of her presence on the island. But that one word is all I get. “So you came here with only your mother?”
“We ran away,” she says.
“Were you running away from a betrothal?” Lees asks. Her voice is excited, as if she’s forgotten what it means to run away. The gravity of leaving your home behind.
“No. We were running from my father.”
Lees goes quiet. So does Noni. The only sound comes from the dog, as he sniffs the ground for dropped scraps.
“You paddled out to sea to escape your father?” I ask. “How did you know you would find land?”
“We didn’t.” Noni scoops the final bite of clover root into her mouth. “But my father’s reach has no boundaries but the sea. Everywhere else, he’s found us. So the sea was the only choice left.” She scrapes the last of her fish to the ground, and the dog snaps them up. “I was wondering the same thing about you. I wondered why two girls would be all the way out on the sea. And why they would arrive right when the ground stopped shaking—”
“Right when it stopped shaking? Did it shake for long?”
“All day,” she says. “The first tremor came at first light. They stopped and started, over and over, until you landed on the shore after dark.” She keeps the same reluctant tone—like I’m a child tugging on her pant leg, begging her to tell me a story.
“And when did you—”
“I don’t think I want to answer any more questions,” she says. “I think I want to ask questions now.”
She asks us where we came from, and we tell her the truth. She asks us how we knew about this island, and we tell her the truth.
“So why, then?” she asks. “Why did you come? You must have been running from something.”
“Our brother is the High Elder,” Lees says, “and he wants to make me marry a man I don’t love.”
“My father is the High Elder, too. The High Elder of the Tama.”
“Is that the clan camped at the river? Straight into shore from here?” I remember the man who pursued us out to sea when Lees and I paddled past, but I keep this thought to myself.
“Yes,” Noni says. She glances up at me, then just as quickly slides her gaze away.
“And you and your mother left when your father did something bad?”
Noni sighs. She is not eager to tell this story—no spark of anticipation lights her eyes. Instead, they darken with resolve.
“My father is a hard man. Hard and violent. All my life he’s been violent toward my mother. Sometimes he was worse than others. Sometimes . . . he was much worse.” Noni pauses. She takes a drink from her waterskin. “We’ve tried to run away before, but he has always found us. And every time he’s dragged us back, he’s punished her worse for leaving. Finally, she stopped trying. I think she would have never left again if he had never . . .” Noni stops. Some subtle change ripples across her, and I’m carried back to the canyon where Kol’s father died, to the moment right before the mammoths began to run. “The day before we left, she caught him with me, and she swore he would never touch me again.” Noni’s hands fly to her face, muffling her last words.
“Your father beat you too?” Lees asks, her eyes wide.
“He did. . . .” Noni’s voice drops so low, I almost can’t hear her. “Since last summer, my father has beaten me even worse than he’s beaten my mother,” she whispers. “It was as if he wanted to find a new way to hurt her.”
Lees touches her arm, but she flinches back.
“I’m all right,” she says. “I know it wasn’t my fault. He’s a selfish man. A man who does whatever he chooses, and hurts—even kills—people who try to stop him. He chose to beat me, and when my mother tried to stop him, he killed her.”
“He killed her?” I ask. “I thought she died from the quake—”
“No. She was so badly hurt. He meant to kill her. I’m sure that was what he wanted.”