LIFE NEAR THE BONE Read online

  “Yes!”

  “Before she died, did she ever…did she ever scare you in any way? In how she acted or how she looked at you?”

  “Never! My baby was full of love, a gentle, loving child. What do all these questions mean?’

  “She is not right,” he said simply, and left it at that. He thought of sending the girl back to her mother, but had a feeling Angelique would not go. She cared no more for her mother than she did for him. That was evident in the way she’d left her and how, when the mother visited, she backed away without letting her mother touch her. When called by her name she said, “Call me Angelique!” Then screaming like a wild thing, “I am Angelique!”

  As his absolute last resort, and after much inner turmoil and argument with himself about the morality of it, Mujai decided he would have to kill her. He would never be free if he didn’t. He’d tell the villagers she had died of the fever. So many did and no one questioned it. When she asked, as he knew she would, he would tell the girl’s mother he would not raise her again. And then all this would be over. What he had done was so against the law of nature that it had created a creature he did not want around him. He had to fix his mistake. He certainly would never make it again. He was forever through with the raising of the dead.

  The day he meant to murder the child, he broke a large shale rock from a sea cliff wall and slipped it beneath his woven sleeping mat in the hut. The rock had a sharp cutting edge and fit his hand perfectly. It would slice into her face like parting water. He would cleave her ruined brain in two.

  Though she did not sleep and kept watch over him, she would never expect him to rise up with the rock in his hand to bludgeon her. He had never, after the first time when he raised his hand to her, indicated that he was dangerous or violent. The opposite, in fact, seemed to be his beaten demeanor around the girl—even subservient.

  All day he was excited about his plan. He sneaked looks at her as he worked around the camp site, thinking of her dead and buried and out of his life. Then it came to him. He would not bury her! She might in some way be a magical creature after her tryst with Death. She might know how to rise up on her own and had been asking after his secret potion as a ruse. In order to be safe he would throw her into the sea and let the fish nibble her pale little body down to the bones.

  If he had to watch her tear into a slab of meat one more time he thought he would go mad. Living with her was like living with the undead monster panther. As far as he could tell there was little difference between them.

  That night he went to bed not long after darkfall, as was his custom. He had said few words to the girl all day and had looked into her eyes not once. He feared she might know of his murderous plan if she could see what lay behind his eyes.

  After a few minutes she slipped inside the hut with him and sat cross-legged at his back. He could feel her there, her dark eyes staring. But this night he was not unnerved and sleepless.

  He bided his time. He wanted to make his move when he had his wrath worked up to killing pitch. He wanted nothing to go wrong. If he missed on the first strike, she might skitter away into the jungle. He would never get a second chance, he understood that implicitly. This was an intelligent, conniving child. A manipulative child. An evil child.

  After an hour he had his mind ready. What he was about to do was not a sin. Besides, she was supposed to be dead. He was going to do her a favor and send her back into the dark where she belonged.

  He grasped the rock, feeling the rough hardness of it, the cold heaviness of its weight. He must move fast and not falter. He must strike like a snake, without remorse, without a moment’s hesitation. He could not dare look into her eyes.

  He flexed the muscle of his right arm that held the rock. He drew in one breath and then he made his move. He sat up and swiveled around in the same motion, raising the rock high above his head. Though he didn’t know it, he was screaming one long, sustained furious scream.

  He felt a sudden horrible pain strike him in his midsection, but nothing was going to stop the downward motion of the killing blow.

  He swung. But where she sat, she no longer existed. The rock struck the ground so hard he broke two of his fingers and cut his palm. He dropped the rock, looking around in the near darkness for where she had moved. Panic caused him to lose his breath. He had missed! He had failed! But she had been right there a second ago, right there below his raised arm.

  A shadow fell over him from the doorway, blocking the moon. He turned and saw her, so beautiful, so small, so perfect. The island child beauty with the long dark hair, the perfect features. The little dead ten-year-old.

  “You will die a slow death, my master. Look to your belly for your future.” As were all her words, these were said without emotion or inflection.

  He glanced to his lap and saw the long spear sticking from his stomach. Blood poured from the wound, soaking his naked legs.

  “What have you done?” he asked plaintively. The unfairness of this situation was so great, greater even than the pain that was now like fire burning him inside out, that tears sprang into his eyes.

  “Only what you would have done to me.”

  “Death invaded you. You have a soul from a god of the deep down under.” He took hold of the spear, but he could not dislodge it without fainting outright. He knew he was doomed, but his mind railed against the injustice. Hadn’t he given her life? Hadn’t he raised her up?

  “Demon,” he hissed. “Monster.”

  “I am what you made. You snatched me from the dark and now you ask why the dark has come to fetch you. Goodbye, Master.”

  She turned then and walked out of the clearing, leaving him alone. He had no talismans to save himself. He had no potion to bring him to life. He was going to die in her stead. He had cheated death of her presence and replaced it with his own.

  He lay his head back and stared at the palmed ceiling that rustled in a breeze from the sea. At the very least he would be rid of her. Let the living be party to her baneful corruption.

  He, the greatest witchdoctor who had ever lived, was now through with it all.

  His body sagged to the side. His last fleeting thought was that he hoped no one ever chanced on his secret potion ever again. A world populated by the living dead would be no world for the living.

  What had he done? What had he done?

  CHAPTER 4

  RULING THE TRIBE

  First she had to find the panther. She hadn’t gotten Mujai to tell her how his magic brought her back from the dark but he had spoken—bragged really--of the three animal experiments before her.

  It was the panther she felt closest to, more than to any human. She knew she was not the person she had been when alive. She was all new. And all different. If she managed to escape accident (and enemies who meant to murder her) by using her new-found powers, she thought she might live forever.

  It was a pity she had to take Mujai’s life, but he had tried to destroy her. She had known he would come to that. He feared her as he would fear the green venomous viper that trailed in the island’s tree limbs.

  She knew she could outwit and out live him. He was just a man. A normal unchanged man. He could not move from one place to another in an instant. He could not tell what a person was thinking by looking into his eyes. He could not hear the whisper of padded feet in the forest a mile distant. And, of course, he could not see and hear and interact with the People from the Dark, who gave her all sorts of secret knowledge useful against living men. He had none of the gifts she’d been graced with after her awakening.

  She moved stealthily through the jungle, unafraid, but alert, her mind on a quest. If she could get to the panther and make it her friend, she could demand great power over the people on the island. They might not, at first, fear her, but they would immediately fear a panther, especially one that walked at her side as if her guardian. And most of them knew the rumor of a panther brought back to life by the witch doctor, a panther that was now supernatural and so fierce it w
as like a new beast walking the earth.

  It took some time, and much concentrated thought, but finally Angelique came down a narrow ravine, following the thin ribbon of water washed silver in the moonlight and there she saw the panther.

  He stood majestic, a large cat with rippling muscles and a great smooth head with widely spaced yellow eyes. He was sipping at the water when she approached. He raised his imperious head and his lips rolled back from long, sharp teeth. Water and saliva dripped down his massive chest. He growled deep in his throat.

  “Don’t fear me,” she said calmly, moving ever closer to him. “I am like you. Come. Smell me and you will know. Let us be friends.”

  She walked toward him, down the narrow bank path, her bare feet making no noise in the soft undergrowth. The cat did not move, but watched carefully. She could hear his breathing mingle with the gentle trickling of the waters sliding over rocks.

  She got within two feet of him, holding him still and calm with her magnetic gaze. “Do you understand? I am like you. I am your brethren.”

  The cat’s lips lowered over his teeth. He moved forward until he was breathing hotly on her bare skin. He lay his head against her arm where she lifted a hand and stroked him softly.

  “There will be no love for us from anyone or anything else. We will be a team and help one another.” She wasn’t sure that he understood the individual words of her language, but he appeared to understand she was no threat to him, nor was she food.

  The thought of food made her stomach churn. “Let’s go hunting,” she said, jolly now that she had made the panther her friend and cohort. “Come! You catch the prey and we will feast on it together.”

  The panther, now completely under her power, turned with her, wheeling toward the upward bank and together they climbed back into the chaos of the jungle to look for their midnight supper.

  Chapter 5

  A GATHERING OF THE PEOPLE

  Angelique strode confidently into the village proper, the panther she had named Sokuru, at her side. People came from their huts and dropped whatever they were doing to stare. No one moved a muscle, fearing the panther might leap. Even the children were silent and kept still.

  “I am Angelique and this is my friend, Sokuru. If you obey me, I will not have him kill you. If you run or you hide or you disobey, you will die. Do you understand?”

  The village elder, the tribe’s leader, stepped forward, trying to appear unafraid. He held his spear at his side, its tip in the dirt. “Are you not the daughter of Lenosa? The girl she gave to the witch doctor? Is your name not Kera?”

  “I am the daughter of Lenosa, but I am emancipated. I no longer belong to my mother or the witch doctor. He is dead because he tried to do me harm. My new name is Angelique and that is what you will call me when you speak to your queen.”

  The elder turned his head to the side. “Queen?”

  “You dispute me?” She took her hand from Sokuru’s back and gestured for him to move forward. He went into a crouch, the way a big cat will do when it is ready to take down prey.

  The elder stepped back and immediately dropped his spear, in essence giving up his title as leader. He brought his hands together before him and bowed his head. “My queen,” he said.

  Angelique walked forward and again put her hand on the panther’s back. He stopped, straightening, awaiting command.

  “I want a runner to go to all the tribes, island wide, and invite them to this place. There will no more be separate villages and groups. We will all be as one. And I am the queen of all. Obey me.” She glanced around at all who had gathered before her. “All of you.”

  The elder motioned to their fastest runner and gestured for him to go. He immediately set off into the woods to disappear into the thick jungle to summon the tribes.

  Angelique smiled now. Had she not tamed the panther and made him her vassal, this would have been vastly more difficult. She patted the head of the big cat.

  “Now call for my mother and tell her I will need a maid servant and she will be that maid servant. I also require a hut.”

  After dispatching another runner to collect the child’s mother, the elder went to his own hut, which was the largest in the village, and swept open the grass door. “This is yours,” he said. “Please. I can build another.”

  She liked the elder and when she passed him by on the way into his hut, she tapped his arm. “I make you my chief food gatherer and advisor. Sokuru and I require large quantities of fresh food, preferably meat and seafood. Be sure to keep us well supplied and your fate is secure.”

  She entered the darkened hut, the panther strolling behind her. She closed the grass door and sat down on a cushioned bed of palm fronds. It had been a long night and she needed sleep, but not yet.

  Sokuru paced before the door, back and forth, until she told him to lie down and rest. “Only if I am in danger,” she instructed the cat, “do you attack.”

  The cat came to her and purred as he rubbed his fat cheek against her much smaller cheek. Then he moved like the majestic beast he was toward the back of the dwelling and circled twice before he lay down for a much-needed nap.

  There was a small tapping outside the door and Sokuru raised his head.

  “Come,” Angelique said. She motioned with her hand for Sokuru to relax.

  Angelique’s mother, Lenosa, entered. She rushed to her daughter without noticing there was a beastly presence in the room. When she went to embrace the girl, Angelique pushed her away. “Don’t ever touch me.”

  Shocked and hurt, Lenosa said, “But Kera…”

  “Never call me that again, I told you! Kera is dead. I am Angelique and you will address me as you would your queen, for I am your master now and not your child any longer.”

  “No entiendo.” Tears stood in Lenosa’s eyes.

  “Listen to me, you dumb pig woman. Your Kera died. You had her raised up, which was a selfish thing for you to do, and a thing for which you will later be punished. And then you gave me, not Kera, me, to the witless soul who did this thing. Kera drifted into the dark and did not return, do you understand that? I am Angelique and I am not like your Kera, nor am I like you or anyone on this forsaken island. I will live forever, but because that witless Mujai brought back a child, I will remain a child forever, too. I am doomed to this little body because of you and I ought to have your head on a spike, but if you prove yourself useful, I’ll let you live.”

  Lenosa listened to this blasphemy with wide eyes. It was evident she would not say “no entiendo” again, no matter how confused she might be.

  “I will serve you,” she said, bowing her head with grave misgiving and a sharp pain in her heart where she had carried her daughter, Kera, for ten years.

  “Yes, that’s right. Trust me when I say Kera is dead and gone. I see you understand. You and Mujai carried out an unholy act. He paid for it this past night when I took his life. I would not hesitate a minute to take yours.”

  “Could you…could you tell me where you came from?”

  Angelique cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. She smiled and it chilled Lenosa’s heart. “I like a curious spirit. But if I told you you would not believe me. Suffice it to say I am not ten years old, but ten thousand times ten thousand. It has been a thousand years since anyone was able to raise the dead so that I could return to this world. I find it…” She glanced around the bare hut and the palm leaf walls. “I find it nearly unbearable. You are a barbaric people. Nevertheless here I am. And here this is. And that is that. Now fetch clean water and come wash me, I am dirty.”

  As Lenosa bowed her way backward out the hut door, Angelique sank back onto the palm mattress. She didn’t know why she had told the woman so much. She had the very human need to confide in someone and Lenosa was as good as another. She probably didn’t understand a word of it anyway. There was nothing in Lenosa’s life experience that could parse such a tale and make reason out of it.

  From the moment Angelique opened her eyes and saw Mujai in t
he firelight of the dirty little hut, she knew she must get away from this place. Discovering it to be an island plunged her into deep despair. These people didn’t even fashion boats, but fished with their hands and bark rope nets tied to long poles, fishing from shore. They were so primitive they still had witch doctors and hadn’t even the skill to weave cloth to cover their nakedness. When she had walked the Earth alive before, a thousand years in the past, Angelique hadn’t even known this little island existed.

  But Angelique had been in dire straits before. Many times. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t work with it.

  She lifted one hand and held it before her eyes in the shadowy light. She turned it from palm to top, from top to palm, examining it. Her hand was so small, so frail. She would never be a woman, never know a man, never birth children of her own. Just because she had been given life it didn’t mean she would grow. In fact, she would remain as she was the rest of her days. Fully half of life’s joys were denied her. Her physical strength was minimal. This was the cruelest curse of all, to be trapped in a child’s body, and it had never happened before.

  On the other hand, she could sense the nubs of thick matter in her back, at the top of her shoulder blades and knew eventually she could make them grow, splitting human skin as easily as air parting leaves in a tree. The nubs were the buds of her wings. Her wings! She had not come into this body completely without resource.

  And at least the vessel was female. Not just female, but superbly beautiful. She had some advantages, she admitted. Some advantage is all she would ever need.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE COMING OF THE SPANIARDS

  Angelique had ruled the island for two hundred years and was so weary and bored that she instituted human sacrifice into the culture to spice things up. Each season of the year she had the people choose a victim by lottery. A large flat stone jutting out over the sea was used as a sacrificial altar and in a grand sweep of a hand-made axe, the victim’s head was separated from his body, both thrown afterward into the surging sea below the rocky cliff.