He leaned over, grasped the gag with strong fingers, and jerked it over my chin, freeing my mouth. “You will now wish I had left you dead.”
“Then you were foolish for not killing what you could never have,” I said. “Now all the Tulim see that Wilam made what you could not.”
His eyes lowered to my belly. “So they tell me.”
“Any man can take a woman, but only the strongest can win her heart the way he wins the heart of all Tulim,” I said.
A wicked grin twisted his mouth. “Your intelligence surprises me. It’s true, I will never be favored in a struggle for the people’s affections. But I won’t have to. Your offspring will give the people to me.”
He was playing games, I was sure of it. I had no power over the people.
“I am not so weak.”
“No, I hope you aren’t. You will need to be strong to kill Wilam.”
Again, a game. But there was something in his voice that frightened me. His composure was not that of a bluffing man.
“I would die before I killed Wilam,” I said.
“Yes, you would. But would you also take the life of your child?”
“The life of my child is no longer in my hands.”
Kirutu smiled. “No. The life of your child is now in my hands.”
“What did the Nameless One whisper in your ear?”
The question seemed to rob all sound from the hut. Kirutu’s jaw clenched, bunching taut muscles along his cheek.
“You think I would bow to the whim of the one Sawim fears? Then you don’t know my heart.”
“I know only that your heart has been turned black with hatred. This isn’t the way of the Tulim.”
“This is my way!”
He snapped an order and two Warik warriors stepped into the hut. Their leader nodded at me.
“Hold her up.”
They quickly untied my hands and feet from the pole and pulled me to my feet, one warrior on each arm. The grease from their arms turned my skin the color of soot where they rubbed me.
Kirutu stepped forward and I knew from the look in his eyes that he was going to try to destroy my womb now, as I stood before him.
I felt raw with panic. “The child is your blood, Kirutu,” I said. My resolve began to crumble and my body began to shake. “Wilam is your brother…I beg you—”
His fist slammed into my belly like a battering ram. Pain bit deeply into my pelvis and spread up my spine. I instinctively gasped, but the air was already gone from my lungs. He hit me again, harder and lower this time, destroying what life might not have been broken with his first blow. My legs gave way, forcing the warriors to hold me up.
Kirutu hit me twice more while the muscles were still limp in my abdomen. I could feel the tissue tearing deep in my womb as his fist slammed into my gut. Horror washed through me. To have a wholly innocent and dependent child’s life pounded from your belly by a man’s fists is an offense impossible to describe. I could feel something wet flowing down the inside of my thighs. Urine, I thought, but it would soon be joined by blood.
I screamed my rage and my pain when breath finally came. With these blows Kirutu had crushed away not only my child’s life but my own. I cried for Stephen, because in losing my second child I desperately wanted my first. I cried for Wilam, because our only child was now dead, murdered while his father lay asleep in his bed. I cried for all the Tulim, because their love of life was as great as mine, and soon that very life would run down my legs.
I cried because once again God had gone deaf.
Kirutu lifted my skirt, stared at me, then let the fabric fall. “Put her down.”
They set me down against the wall, where I propped myself up with both hands to keep from falling over.
“Leave us.”
The warriors left.
For a long while I sat gasping, unable to speak, mind swimming in revulsion. How could I possibly tell Wilam? The death of his coveted seed would crush him, and my torn womb would render me useless. Better for me to bleed to death on Kirutu’s floor than to return home to Wilam and announce the death of his child.
“It is a terrible thing to lose a child,” Kirutu said. “Among the Tulim, it is even worse to be barren. You will never bear another child. For this, Wilam will throw you away. His interest is only in what power you give him through your womb.”
He was only reinforcing what I already knew.
I still could not comprehend how he thought the death of my child would compel me to kill Wilam. My determination to resist Kirutu was now unshakable.
“You must understand that I do this for the sake of my people,” he said. “Our ways have been protected for generations by a perfect law. Wilam is soft. His interest in the wam will only breed more and our laws will soon be like grass in the wind. By killing this one life I will save many. Now you must do the same.”
“I’ll never kill Wilam!” I screamed.
“Then your child will die.”
His words weren’t making any sense to me. He’d just killed my child! A great weariness settled over me and I thought my arms might give way. I wanted to curl up and let darkness swallow away all of the pain.
“They tell me he was found on the banks of the sea, bound to a mat. The party that found him considered taking him to the foreigners, but an Asmat war party took him during a dispute. I paid a great price to acquire his life when I learned he was still alive. Now your son is mine. And if you do not kill Wilam, then I will return him to Wilam, who will be forced to kill your son.”
My mind was reeling, hardly connected to his words. He was speaking as if he had Stephen, but my baby had died at sea six months earlier. Our boat had been smashed by the waves and I had survived only because I’d been trapped in…
An image of my baby tied to the seat cushion flashed through my mind. He’d been bound to a mat. How did Kirutu know about the mat?
“Bring him in.”
One of the warriors entered. His fingers were wrapped around the thin arm of a small, naked child tottering on wobbly legs. A white boy with shaggy chocolate hair and blue eyes that stared up at Kirutu’s towering form.
The child turned to look at me and I stared into the eyes of my own son.
The confusion and terror that flooded me in the moment are difficult to describe. I was in no condition to trust my senses and my mind was telling me that Kirutu was playing a cruel game.
My mind told me these things, but my maternal heart was crashing in my breast, telling me that Stephen, my dead son, was alive and standing before me. And I could not temper my sudden desperation for that to be true.
Then Stephen’s face wrinkled and he cried and he reached his hand out for me.
A groan filled the hut. My own. I lurched for him with both hands, but Kirutu had ripped the muscles in my abdomen, and they failed me. I fell to one elbow, screaming now, blurred eyes fixed upon my son. Even then it occurred to me that I might be dreaming, and if so, then in my dream I would sweep Stephen up in my arms and I would scratch out the eyes of any man or woman who came near us.
Then Stephen was walking toward me, crying. He reached me and wrapped his small arms around my neck and I knew then, when his cheek was pressed against my own, that my son, who had been swallowed by the sea, was alive.
Leaning on one elbow for support, I clung to Stephen with my free arm, pressed him against my breast, and wept over his shoulder.
How he had survived I did not care. What horrors he had suffered these past months I refused to imagine. All that mattered was that he was alive. And he still knew his mother.
I was clinging to more than my son in that moment. I was holding life, that great mystery that binds us all. He was an extension of my own flesh—skin on skin, cheek on cheek, fingers digging into each other’s back, weeping together. Perhaps only a mother can fully understand the sentiment that swept through my body when my son, who had once been dead, returned to me alive.