Return to Tomorrow (13 page)

A smuggler's skiff, Rachel decided with a shiver of returning fear, used to transport opium out to the river where it could be transferred to larger river-worthy craft. If this was indeed an opium transfer point, it was no place to linger.

“We must go,” Ahnle repeated. “Not good here.” Rachel shouldered her
yaam
and started walking away from the stream into the trees.

They stayed within earshot of the water, catching glimpses now and then of the stream growing narrower and wilder as they climbed into the hills. They ate dried fruit and cheese from their stores as they walked. Darkness came early and they camped above the waterfall Bohan had described to them, in an outcropping of rocks that offered some protection, however slight, from the rare tigers, or more likely, wild boars and snakes. They rigged a tiny lean-to from a square of plastic draped across tree branches and ate boiled rice and tea they made in an aluminum pan over a fire.

Rachel fully expected the sounds of the jungle to keep her awake, the horror of other nights spent lost in the limitless rain forest to haunt her dreams, but she was wrong. She slept restlessly, it was true, because the night was cold and damp and they had only the cheap Chinese blankets from the Chiang Mai market to cover themselves. She didn't dream at all and woke with the dawn to a dreary, overcast sky and the threat of rain.

Now it was late afternoon. They followed narrow
trails into the hills all day. At the top of a steep ridge they looked down to find the village Ahnle recognized as her own spread out below them on the other side. Rain clouds piled up behind the hills, ringing the far side of the valley, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The rainy season might have ended, officially, but that didn't mean the rain was gone for good.

“We go down, now,” Ahnle said, leading the way. Her expression was strained and Rachel's heart ached for the anxiety she must be feeling over their upcoming confrontation with the village elders and the couple who had custody of her son. “We will go in through the spirit gate. We do not want to enter the village any other way and anger the
phi
spirits. Or my uncle.”

“Certainly not.” As far as Ahnle was concerned, her uncle was almost as powerful as the spirits themselves.

“Do you think my uncle will see us at once?” Ahnle pulled a square of gaily colored silk from her bag to tie over her hair. Rachel did the same.

“I hope so.” As Rachel spoke it began to rain.

 

A
HNLE SAT, HER LEGS
folded under her, in the near darkness of the women's side of her brother's house. It was still raining outside, softly, as if the sky were weeping. The feeble light from a kerosene lantern cast strange, misshapen shadows on the mat walls. They had been in the village for several hours and she had not been allowed to see her uncle or her son. Her brother's second wife, with her new baby son, had welcomed her to their section of the house, but her brother's first wife had not so much as spoken a word of greeting.

The others were all asleep, including Rachel, curled up in her blanket on a mat near where Ahnle sat. In the morning her uncle would see her and hear her plea for the return of her son.

She wasn't brave and fearless as Rachel was. She would not have had the courage to stand up to the terrible men in the bar to save another as Rachel had saved her. She could not have stolen the car and the money from the dangerous man they called “Tiger,” as Rachel had. She could not have come back into the jungle where she had been held prisoner for so many years to aid another. She was not nearly brave enough and it shamed her.

All she could do was speak from her heart of how much she loved her baby and wanted him with her. That would be enough.

She lay down on her woven mat and pulled the blanket close around her. A man's face crossed the dark space behind her eyelids where the spirits painted dreams and pictures and recalled you to scenes from the past; a dark face with white teeth that gleamed when he smiled. She liked the man called Billy Todd very much. He had been kind to her; he had protected her from the men in the Teak Doll. She remembered his voice in the darkness of the room in the dangerous Jackson's house that was like the palace of the Thai king to her. She had pretended to be asleep while she listened to his rough, strong voice. She wished he had touched her, stroked her hair. She reached up, touching her silk-wrapped head in surprise. A maiden shouldn't think such things. Then she remembered she was a maiden no longer, but a woman full grown. And she had no time to be thinking of men when she needed to be planning on how to regain her child.

Anua, her brother's second wife, who was two seasons younger than Ahnle, let her hold her infant while she washed the dust of the day from her elaborate silver-bangled headdress. Once a girl became a woman in the Hlông world, she almost never took it off. She even slept with it on. And baby girls wore caps from birth to accustom them to the weight and restrictions of the head-dresses they would don later in life. Ahnle's brother had taken her headdress after she became pregnant. She had never seen it again. She no longer mourned its loss.

“Your son cries much,” Anua had told her with a sad shake of her head, “especially at night.” Chengla's fat, lazy wife was losing much of her beauty sleep.

Anua thought Chengla's wife could be persuaded to take the money to return Ahnle's son. Chengla had a new, young second wife who would surely give him a son within the year, and his fat first wife would be comforted with the silver bangles she could buy with Ahnle's gift. All Ahnle had to do was persuade her uncle that she could give her son a better life among the unbelievers.

A tear rolled down her face and she brushed it away, furious with herself. Rachel had told her time and again that she could do whatever she wanted to do in her new life. Right now, the most important thing in that life was retrieving her child from her old one. She would not give up. She would not fail. On that fierce and uncharacteristic resolve she willed herself to sleep.

 

“A
HNLE, DAUGHTER
of my younger brother's second wife.” Ahnle bowed courteously to the wizened old man sitting on a pile of woven mats in the center of his four-room house, by far the grandest in the village. “You have
come to petition for the return of your son, born to you by a man who was not your husband.”

“Yes, Uncle, to my shame,” Ahnle replied formally, in a very small voice, but Rachel sensed a new pride and determination in the girl-woman and let a small sigh of relief sift past her lips. She had woken in the middle of the night and been unable to fall asleep again from worry over the outcome of this meeting, but so far Ahnle was holding up well.

“Your brother brought the child back to us before the rains. He said you could not care for him.”

“I thought I could not but now things have changed.” Ahnle didn't raise her head but spoke to the floor.

“Why have things changed? You are still Hlông. They do not honor our people across the river.”

“The unbelievers in the camp honor all who work hard to succeed. I have work that I do there. They pay me
baht
. I will be able to give Chengla and his wife a gift for their kindness in caring for my son all these months.”

“Does she speak the truth?” he asked, turning bright, dark eyes on Rachel.

“She does, Honored Father. She is my helper. I work for the missionary's doctor at the camp.”

“You have lived among us. You know our ways and our language. I believe what you say is true.” He took a deep puff of his cigarette. He was very old and very wise, but whipcord strong and capable of working long days in the fields, or hunting in the hills.

“Why did you return without your brother to guide you and protect you?”

Rachel held her breath. She wasn't certain how much
honor and respect Ahnle's brother commanded in the tiny village. He was, after all, almost their only contact with the outside world, the source of their gunpowder and ammunition, the canned food that supplemented their meager stores of rice and corn and wild game. He was also, most likely, the dealer for their small cash crop of opium. To make accusations against him in his absence was risky.

“My brother did not honor me.” Ahnle lifted her head, still covered by the brightly patterned silk scarf, but kept her eyes averted from the old man's. “He sent me to the city. He sold me to a man who made me dance for the pleasure of strangers, with my head uncovered and my hair unbound.” There was a murmur of disapproval from the women sitting along the wall, as well as from several of the men squatting around the smoky fire in the middle of the hut, their machetes and old-fashioned, muzzle-loading rifles beside them.

“To set a woman to a task is not against our beliefs,” the old man pointed out. “But to display her for the enjoyment of unbelievers, I do not approve of. I have heard of life in the city. It is far away and dangerous for such as we. How did you come to leave that place?”

“My friends,” Ahnle made an unconsciously graceful gesture as she pointed to Rachel.

“You are brave for a woman.” Rachel could feel him studying her.

“I have spent many seasons with The People. I have learned courage from you,” Rachel said politely, her eyes downcast, her head like Ahnle's, covered with a brightly patterned silk scarf tied in the distinctive manner of
the women of the village where she'd lived with Father Pieter.

“I can see that.”

“We also had the help of a man,” Ahnle said very softly. “He is the one they call Tiger.”

He shot Rachel a hard, searching look as she watched him through her lashes. “Does the girl speak the truth?”

“Yes.”

“You have powerful friends. Even here, we have learned of the one they say moves through the jungle like the great cat he is named for.”

The old man turned to Ahnle. “Your brother does not know you are here.” It wasn't a question but a statement. Ahnle answered as such.

“No, Uncle.”

“You were wrong to run away from him, but right to leave the place he had taken you. I will discuss this matter with him when he returns to his home.” The wily old man had neatly cleared away the hurdle of Ahnle's running away from the man the village considered her legal guardian. Rachel began to breathe slightly easier.

“I will not be so disobedient in the future, Uncle.”

“See that you are not.” He was silent a long moment. Ahnle seemed to be holding her breath. Rachel bit her lip. “I have spoken to Chengla and his wife in the matter regarding your child. They have taken him into their home and treated him as their own for several moons. It is very hard for them to give him up.”

“I am most grateful to them but my heart will always ache with pain and sorrow if we are separated longer.” Ahnle reached into the pocket of her loose cotton slacks.
“I have brought them a gift to show them my gratitude for keeping the child safe and well.” She held out the money. Changed into small bills and coins, the hundred
baht
made an impressive offering. “I give you all I have in the world, and this I have only from the goodness of the spirits,” she added formally.

The old man held out his hands. Ahnle handed over the notes and coins without touching him. “I will talk to Chengla and his wife today. I will give you my decision in the morning.”

Ahnle looked over her shoulder at Rachel, stricken.

“Honored Father,” Rachel interjected, bowing low. “We have only a little time left. Ahnle's cousin will be at the edge of the river at sunrise in two days' time. We do not wish to hurry your decision, but we must be gone from the village at first light tomorrow.”

“Yes. I see that there is a problem. Very well, you will have my decision at sunset. If Chengla and his wife agree to give up the child, you will have time to prepare the little one for the journey.”

“Thank you, Honored Father.”

He nodded very slightly. “Go,” he said, including all the women in the command. “We men have business to conduct.” As they filed out of the smoky hut, Rachel saw the pipes being brought out. A pipe of opium would help the old man think. He believed it brought him closer to the spirit gods and made his decisions stronger and wiser. She followed the other women out into the sunshine and walked beside Ahnle, back to her brother's house, and began to help chop vegetable greens for the evening meal, as if nothing important had occurred,
as though she'd never left her own hill village at all.
The thought
made her shiver and seemed to take the brightness from the sun.

For the remainder of the day, she did her best to keep the darkness of her own thoughts at bay, as well as encouraging Ahnle to keep her spirits up. They played with the children, who, once they got over their shyness at seeing Rachel's round eyes and pale skin, turned out to be imps of mischief. They helped to weed the poppies, and Ahnle showed her the burying ground where her parents and two younger sisters were laid to rest. Rachel's baby was buried in just such a place, watched over by the mountains and the spirits that inhabited them. As the afternoon grew warm and sleepy, they sat beneath a tree on a rise above the village and simply watched life go on around them.

“No matter what happens, I will never return,” Ahnle said, as the sun slid behind the hills, bringing instant twilight to the tiny valley and its scattering of dusty, untidy huts.

“Your uncle, the
dzoema,
is a good man. His decision will be wise and just.” Rachel wanted to tell the girl she would look after her, take her to America and help care for her child, but she could not. Her own life was in too great a state of disarray to make promises she might not be able to keep. And what if the old man decided against Ahnle? What if Chengla and his wife really had grown so attached to the baby that they could not bear to give him up? Rachel rested her head on her knees and tried not to think of anything at all.