Outlaw (6 page)

MY FIRST thought was to run, but before I could properly consider where I might run to, three men stepped in, hastily shoved the bag over my head, and marched me out of the hut. I was confused, I was in shock, and I was terrified.

But another thought gave me a hint of hope as they steered me down the path. Although the hole they’d thrown me into was its own muddy hell, I’d found some solace there. Now without the gag, I could speak to the man who’d called out to me.

And yet they weren’t taking me to my hole. That much became clear five minutes later when we began trudging up a steep incline that I couldn’t remember.

I had difficulty walking on the stony path barefoot, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to complain, so I stumbled forward as best I could. When I tripped on a rock that sent me to the ground with a sharp cry, the men argued for a few seconds, then pulled off my hood.

“
Naneep
.” They motioned up the path. This could only mean “go” or “walk.”

I could see the trail well enough by moonlight to avoid most sticks and rocks, but the bottoms of my feet were already bruised. The underbrush on either side was thick and the trees a tangle of branches. After three days I’d seen only brief glimpses of the land itself, and I imagined the worst. It didn’t matter that I had yet to see a snake; I was sure they were there, just out of sight, as were crocodiles and lizards and every other kind of crawling creature. Truly, I was surprised that I hadn’t been attacked.

I struggled on, panting and sweating.

It took us at least an hour to reach our destination on a barren hill that overlooked two draws, one on either side, just visible by a three-quarter moon. Now I could see more of the terrain. We were nowhere near the river, which I assumed lay far behind us where this sweeping valley met the swamps we had crossed in the canoes. Beyond each draw, tall mountains eclipsed a starry sky.

Ahead, under a grouping of massive trees, stood a large shelter without walls, perhaps forty feet to a side. Firelight cast a glow into the surrounding foliage.

I could see dark forms silhouetted there as we approached, but my escort stopped under the closest tree. They tied a rope around my neck and secured the other end to one of a dozen posts. I was obviously not the first to be brought here, and fears of what awaited returned my mind to a state of frenzy.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a goat about to be slaughtered.

One of my escorts wagged his finger in my face, uttered a stern warning, then motioned at something to my right before leaving.

When I first laid eyes on the girl who waited in the moonlight twenty paces away, I thought we’d been followed by the woman who’d helped me undress. But as she approached I saw that she was much younger, perhaps twelve or thirteen. The simple bands around her arms and neck were fashioned from woven vines, and she wore no colored accessories.

Something else caused me to wonder if she was of a lower class than the three women I’d met earlier. The split skirt hanging from her waist was made from some kind of woven grass or thin bark rather than from dyed fabric, as the others had worn. And as she walked toward me I saw something even more distinctive about her. Her skin was a milk chocolate, not the near-black of the others’. Her hair wasn’t as curly. In fact, she looked altogether racially divergent, from her tiny stature to the roundness of her face.

She stopped a few paces off and looked at me with round brown eyes. After a moment she addressed me.

“Are you English?”

I was too stunned to answer. Her accent was heavy, but I refused to believe I’d misheard her words.

“I am Lela,” she said. “I will speak for you.”

“Speak for me?” My voice was hoarse.

“I will speak for this trial.” She shoved her chin toward the square structure.

Tears flooded my eyes. “You speak English!”

The girl named Lela stood still. “What is your name, miss?” she asked.

My breathing was heavy. “Julian.”

“Yulian?”

“Julian. I’m an American.”

“I attending English school. A long time past. I forgetting this words.”

“No, no, you speak perfectly!” I cried. Then, eyes darting in fear that I’d been overheard, I lowered my voice. Words rushed from me like water from a spigot. “You have to help me! This is all a mistake! My boat…I was taken but I’m an American. We have to leave before they kill me! This is a mistake, I don’t belong here!”

“It cannot leave this place, miss. Anyone leaves this place, they will be sick and die. It is the way, this
purum
. This evil spirit.”

“No, that’s only what they tell you.” Her earlier words caught up to me. “What do you mean, trial?”

“This lords. It is the way of
wam
who come to Tulim. This three tribes will decide if you will be with a man.”

I couldn’t process what she meant.

Lela looked at the council just out of earshot, then back at me. “You must make pretty or I think you will die.”

Oddly enough, the girl’s suggestion that this tribunal had gathered to decide if I would be married or taken or whatever
with
meant, unnerved me more than the possibility that they might kill me. My life had already been snatched from me. My child had drowned. What was left for me?

“I…” Words couldn’t keep pace with the revulsion flogging my mind. “They will force me?”

By her expression I could see that she still didn’t comprehend. But of course she was hardly a woman who could understand such things.

“They will hurt me?”

Slowly a smile nudged her mouth. “No, miss, you do not understand. They will not hurt you if you are beautiful,” she said. “It is great honor to be with this great lords. This are princes of this Tulim.”

“I don’t
want
to be with these lords!”

She looked shocked. “But you must, miss!”

I was nearly hysterical. There on the hill my circumstances became too much for me—the leeches crawling up my legs, the stench of mud and rotting river, the sweating black flesh. An image of Stephen sinking below the waves flooded me with anguish. I felt I couldn’t breathe.

“No! No, I will not be taken by any man, you tell them that!” My breath came hot and heavy as I marched in front of the astonished girl like a red-faced schoolteacher.

“You tell them that I will cut it off and feed it to the crocodiles if one of them even touches me!” I thrust my finger toward the gathered council. “Tell them that!”

Her eyes went wide and her lips tried to form a response but she was too shocked to voice it. I lowered my face into my hands and tried to regain my composure, but I couldn’t stop my tears.

“No, miss, this is not a good thing,” Lela said. “You must not cut this off. They cannot make baby if you cut off this.”

The sincerity in her voice shocked me out of my fear. I lifted my head and stared at her.

“You must make yourself beautiful and try to make a baby or you will die,” she said.

I realized then that I was seeing the world through a completely different set of lenses from this young girl. My head was abuzz with this simple thought: being taken by any man who gathered around that tribunal fire would be a great honor for Lela. In this context, being forced did not compute in her mind.

Lela was trying to help me. This young girl was a friend who spoke my language. English! If the men who’d taken me captive were gods in their world, then I was their slave and this girl was my only angel.

Shaking, I sank to my knees and pressed my palms together as if praying to her. “Please…please help me. I’m sorry. Please help me.”

She glanced over at the council, quickly stepped up to me, and pushed my hands down. “You must not do this. I am not this lord.”

I quickly lowered my hands.

“You must ask the spirit to help you look beautiful to this lords, miss. If you can make baby, then you will be safe.”

“My baby died,” I whispered. I’d become like a little girl myself.

“You already make baby?” she asked, surprised. The revelation seemed to impress her more than anything I’d yet said. “What you are saying is true? You can make this baby?”

“Yes…but my child is gone.”

“You can make more baby?” she asked.

“I don’t
want
to make another baby!”

She lowered her voice. “No, you must! I will say and this will save you.” The excitement in her voice was infectious. “There is little possible to make baby in this place. A woman who make baby is much good! You must make yourself pretty and I will tell them you make a baby.”

She seemed to be implying that pregnancy among the Tulim was not easily achieved.

Lela grabbed a handful of grass, wadded it up, and began to rub my skin. The heat and humidity coated my body with moisture, and the black soot that the women had applied earlier smeared. She shoved the grass into my hands and grabbed more.

“Quickly. You must clean. It is very important to clean if you want to make a baby.”

My every instinct told me to rub
more
dirt on my skin, to make myself as offensive as possible, but reason dictated that staying alive was, at least for the moment, the higher value. So I followed her lead and tried to wipe the soot off my belly and arms as well as I could without the help of soap and water, which hardly amounted to more than moving the stuff around.

Lela squatted and worked on my legs, smearing the soot over my exposed skin rather than cleaning it, a fact I quickly pointed out.

“You’re making me dirtier.”

“No, miss. You must not look ugly.”

Clearly they did not prefer white skin. The older women in the hut had made as much plain when they’d heaped soot upon me in the first place. This was only the jungle’s version of a good tan.

I nearly reverted to my impulse to look as ugly as possible. Instead I followed her lead.

“Are you sure they will like this?”

“It is better,” she said. “I will tell them you will make a baby.”

To hear Lela, children were the most precious commodity in that valley. I shoved from my mind any notion of how I might actually go about making a baby and assisted her in her attempts to spread the dirt on my skin. My arms, my legs, my belly, my chest, my back, my face—all of it was soon tinted brown.

“I will too soon make a baby,” she said, working on my feet.

“You’re too young!”

She stood and grinned wide. Two of her bottom teeth were missing. “No, miss. I already give this blood. I will be chosen.” She said it as if nothing could possibly make her more proud. I wasn’t sure whether to reprimand her or cry for her.

It was then, standing under the tree as I awaited my trial, that the raw humanity of the inhabitants in the Tulim valley first overshadowed my fear of them, if only for a few moments. Lela was only a girl doing her best to belong, like any girl her age in any social circle anywhere in the world.

I assumed that she, like me, had been brought in from the outside. What was more, she seemed to have come to terms with her place in this world.

She lifted a slender hand to my mouth, pulled down my lower lip, studied my teeth, and
ahhed
.

“It is very pretty,” she said, and released my lip. “It is very healthy, this teeth. I will tell them.”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“I am from this Tulim.”

“But where did you come from, before this Tulim?”

She hesitated. “I am
wam
, miss. I come from this Indonesia. It is where I learn English.”

“What is wam?” I asked.

“This is offspring of animal and Tulim, many years past. You are wam, miss. Only this lords and this people are not wam.”

A voice called to us from the council, and Lela hurried to untie me from the tree. “They call. We go. I will tell them, miss. You will make this baby.”

THIS LORDS, as Lela called them in her broken English, were positioned around a massive rectangular slab of gray slate about a foot thick set upon four stumps. I say positioned because I immediately saw that each side of the table hosted a unique group.

These were the leaders of the three tribes that occupied the Tulim valley, and as a group they looked as imposing as the scarred man who’d plucked me from the sea.

I couldn’t shake the certainty that I was walking directly to my death. The script was already written and I was only following the same path many others had taken before their demise.

I should run now. I should spin and flee into the jungle to face whatever fate awaited me there, beyond their reach.

And yet I walked confidently. One foot in front of the other, captive already in a world that offered no escape.

I stopped at the edge of the thatched roof. To a man, they stared back at me. It was as if I were not only in another world but in another dimension altogether, a newcomer to an alternate reality.

My head swam with a sense of déjà vu and my heart, beating quickly already, slowed to heavy beats.

Maybe this was all a horrible nightmare. An illusion that was swimming through my head as I slept peacefully in the white sailboat, still in calm seas. Perhaps at a single prod from the captain, or at my son’s fussing, I would wake to find all well.

Lela gave me a gentle nudge. I looked at her. The plain reality of my predicament returned, free from illusion. But of course I’d known the full certainty of it already. My mind, so strained by terror, had offered me a moment’s reprieve, however absurd.

She gave me an encouraging smile and glanced at the one side of the table that was unoccupied. I faced the council and edged forward into a yellow glow provided by the fire pit in the middle. Smoke drifted up to the blackened ceiling high above.

Each group consisted of five men, four of whom stood on the ground or sat on rocks behind their spokesman. Another twenty or thirty warriors from each tribe stood idly in the dark beyond the structure, peering in with interest.

They were all fully clothed in their own way. That is to say they were naked except for woven bands around their thighs, arms, waists, and heads. Piercings graced their nasal septa and earlobes, some accented with pieces of bone, fangs, or claws. They all wore headdresses of colorful feathers or animal carcasses—bird heads, fox-like heads, boar heads. Each of the men in the group to my left wore a human skull on his back, suspended between his shoulder blades on a cord.

I stood in my own near-naked glory, trying to present myself as beautiful and fertile and worthy of bearing a child. According to Lela, this was my only hope for survival, and I had no reason to doubt her.

I stood quivering, trying to be strong and failing miserably. The spokesman to my left began to speak, a long rumbling sentence that sounded dismissive. He wore a thick bone through his nose and was missing three fingertips at the first knuckle. Bright yellow feathers fanned out above his head. I thought he must be the master of ceremonies here.

Head bowed, hands together in a praying position, Lela stepped forward and addressed the speaker, stopped immediately when he interrupted, and then continued in a similar fashion through several exchanges, which ended with a collective mumble from a number of the men.

The scarred warrior who’d taken me from the sea was seated cross-legged on a flat rock behind the speaker. Around him squatted three other warriors, but none with shoulders squared or jaw fixed to display the same authority as he. My captor wore a human skull on his back and the top half of a boar’s head on his head. As soon as my eyes met his, I was convinced that he was indeed one of the princes and I felt compelled to look away.

The three groups launched into a short but pointed discourse that ended with all three staring at me. I looked down at Lela.

“Miss, this lord wish to know if it is true, what I have said.”

I cleared my throat. “What did you say?”

“As we have spoken,” she said. “You must not be ugly spirit.”

“Yes. I mean, no. Tell them I am not a spirit. I am a woman from America.”

She spoke to them and the first speaker scoffed.

“This lord says that all peoples is spirits. You are white and this must be evil spirit.”

“Tell him he is wrong. Where I come from nearly everyone is white and they are not evil spirits.”

Lela’s eyes grew at my request. “You cannot say this is wrong, miss. This is lord.”

“You tell this lord what I said, you hear me? I am not an evil spirit.”

The speaker followed with a command that I took as agreement.
Tell me what she said
.

Lela faced the council and spoke, this time with some trepidation. I looked around the council with more boldness, realizing that after days in their possession, I was finally in a position to be heard. That I was as free as I might ever be. That standing before the council might be my last opportunity to be fully human here in their realm.

When Lela finished, the man snapped back his response, which she quickly interpreted.

“He says that you are wam and can know nothing.”

“And he’s a savage!”

She blinked. “What is this?”

I rethought my remark, grasping for something that might give me an advantage, however slight. The courage I’d found helped me rise from the immobilizing fear, and I clung to it.

“I will only tell them who I am if I know who they are.”

She looked confused. “This is lords, miss.”

“Who are lords? All of them are lords?”

“All this people is lords.” She pointed to the group on my left, my captors. “This Warik clan.” Then to the tribe on my right. “This Impirum clan.” Then to the tribe directly across from me. “This Karun, the keeper of this spirit. There is three princes, one from Warik, one from Impirum. One from Karun tribe.” Her eyes drifted to a figure to one side and behind the Karun tribe and I could see immediately by the fear on her face that she was afraid of the man.

“This Karun tribe has shaman,” she whispered.

I followed her glance. Behind the Karun clan, just beyond the fire’s brightest reaches, stood an old man with wrinkled flesh covered in glistening black pigment or grease. He wore a darkened mask made from plaster or mud with large white pig’s tusks that jutted from the mouth and deep holes drilled for eyes.

The deep pits in his mask seemed to look through me.

For a moment I found myself swallowed by those black holes. I was suddenly so terrified that I couldn’t move. It was as if they were sucking me into an abyss of horror deeper than my fear for my own life.

What kind of evil hid behind his eyes I could not know, and I forced myself with great difficulty to avert my stare.

It took me a moment to settle my mind. I had just found some courage. I couldn’t afford to lose it so quickly.

Three tribes, three princes, one shaman. I wanted nothing to do with the last.

“Tell them I must know who’s the most powerful among the three princes,” I said.

“I think this is not good.”

And yet I knew most leaders to be brokers of power above all else, and I knew that if my father had found himself in an argument among three powerful men, he would have played them against each other until he saw some weakness to exploit.

“It’s the way of my people,” I said. “I can only address the most powerful when telling my secrets.”

The speaker demanded to know what was going on and Lela gave them an answer. They discussed the matter briefly.

“Did you tell them?” I asked.

“No, miss. I only say that you have very important secrets.”

“Why didn’t you say what I asked?”

“This is not good. There is much trouble for you.”

“Tell them I need to know their names before can I tell them my secrets.”

When she told them, the speaker for the Karun tribe objected in the most strenuous terms, spitting on the ground to accentuate his point. When he’d finished, Lela was visibly shaken.

“What did he say?”

“He say you are evil and will use names to speak evil. He say your eyes are the color of the sky where this evil spirits fly.”

A somber silence settled over the gathering. Again I had a strange sense that everything I was seeing was a mistake. This could not be happening to me. I was in a world in which talk of spirits and evil trumped all else, and I had firmly planted myself on the wrong side of that world. I silently begged God to save me, though he hadn’t paid any attention to my prayers thus far. I felt utterly powerless.

A soft but certain voice spoke to my right. One of the Impirum.

All eyes immediately turned to a man with strong cheekbones and gentle eyes. Well muscled without an ounce of fat. Wide woven bands wrapped around his biceps, his neck, his waist, his thighs, and his calves, each bordered by blue body paint. His headdress was exquisite, fashioned with blue and black feathers that protruded from a beaded yellow band.

But it was the way he looked at me, with a sure yet amused expression, that struck me the most. Here was a man who found me interesting. Perhaps only in the way a cat might find a ping-pong ball interesting, but that was far better than the way a cat finds vermin so.

In that look I found comfort. And I was sure that only a very powerful man could command such respect.

The man looked at the ancient shaman behind the Karun tribe leaders and asked a question. To a man, those gathered stood in perfect silence. After a moment’s pause the masked man dipped his head just barely, but enough to make his approval clear.

“This shaman says I will tell you their names,” Lela said.

She quickly asked the council something, heard the answer, then told me.

“I will speak. At this time the chief is called Isaka, from the Impirum. This two prince of Isaka blood.”

So the leader of them all, this chief, wasn’t present.

“They are his sons?”

“Yes, miss, only two Isaka sons. They may be chief.”

Princes by blood.

She pointed to one of the Karun leaders opposite me. “This Karun peoples has this prince. He is Butos. Not son.” The man she indicated was shorter than the others and laden with beads. He was the Karun prince but not as powerful as the shaman behind him, I guessed.

Lela looked at the man with the scar on his chest, the one who’d captured me. “This prince is Kirutu of this Warik tribe. He is great warrior and kill many, many peoples.”

Kirutu, the man who’d taken me captive. I did not let my eyes linger on him.

“This Wilam prince of Impirum.” She indicated the man who’d convinced the shaman to let me hear their names. “This son of Isaka.”

I began to make sense of the council. The Tulim valley had one chief who had authority over three clans, the Karun, the Warik, and the Impirum. Each clan was controlled by a prince. They were Butos of the Karun clan, Kirutu of the Warik clan, and Wilam of the Impirum clan. Kirutu and Wilam were vying for their father’s title.

I doubted my learning this much helped my case, but I had gained a small victory in being heard. So I pushed further.

“And what about the other one?” I asked. “The shaman.”

“This spirit man is called Sawim. He is very important leader. You must not look at him.”

There it was. What to say next, I had not a clue.

“I will now say this secret, miss,” Lela said. And then, before I could stop her, she offered them my secret, whatever that could be. They watched me with new interest.

“What secret?” I whispered, when she had finished.

“That you will make this baby, miss.”

Yes. There was that. Seeing no good alternative I went with my advocate’s suggestion.

“Tell them that I am the only white woman to enter their valley because white women are rare and made only from good spirits.”

She told them and received a harsh rebuke from Butos, one of the three princes.

“This lord say not to think they are fools. They know this white peoples. But this white peoples is not too smart. They die quickly in this jungle.”

“But am I not the first white woman in this valley?”

She nodded but asked them anyway. “They say yes.”

“Then what they cannot know is that a white woman may be stupid because white women are not made to think, but to make babies. This is good, not evil.” I said it only for their sake, naturally.

Lela’s translation went on far too long, but it held their rapt attention.

“What is it?” I asked.

She looked up at me, beaming. “I say you have made baby. I know this. You say to me in secret. You will make many babies with this lords.”

Butos, prince of the Karun, objected again, spitting with disgust.

“This prince say it is forbidden for this lord to make baby with this ugly animal.”

Up until this point I don’t think I fully understood that the Tulim really did perceive me as a kind of animal. I wasn’t human to them. Furthermore, I was also too ugly to touch.

“I’m not an animal,” I said with renewed fear. “Tell him that.”

As she translated, I thought it wiser to play into their way of thinking than try to change it.

“I am wam,” I said. “Which is more than only animal.”

Lela nodded and repeated my claim with pride, because she too was wam.

“And I am proud of it,” I said.

Lela translated and I continued.

“Who is the most powerful among you?”

“It is this black one,” she said, and I could see the fear in her eyes. They darted toward the shaman.

But the shaman wouldn’t be vying for the throne.

“Besides him, which prince is the most powerful? Ask them.”

She did, haltingly.

By their sudden stillness I knew that by returning to the issue of power I had struck a chord.

“Who will be the next chief here?”

“I cannot say this, miss.”

“Ask them—”

“I am afraid! I must not say this. The one who is strong will be this chief. If he can make babies.”

So then, I had stumbled upon the conflict between them. The strongest would take the throne when the current chief died. Among other considerations, children were a sign of strength because producing offspring was difficult.