And then, as quickly as Stephen had come to me, he was dragged away by Kirutu. I screamed my horror, grabbing at thin air for his body.
“You will have your son,” Kirutu said.
“Don’t you dare touch him!” My voice was hysterical. “I’ll kill you!”
“You will have him only if you kill Wilam.”
Stephen was still crying, reaching for me.
“It’s OK, baby!” I could hardly speak. “It’s OK, Mommy’s here now.”
My eyes searched his body and face. He was over two years old but still such a baby! His hair was overgrown and tangled. He had a bad sore on his right shin and a dark bruise on his cheekbone. His nose was crusted with mucus. The Tulim would have washed and tended to one of their own, but Kirutu had left my child in this condition to inflict me with pain.
“Please,” I begged. “Please…”
“Take him away.”
Kirutu’s intentions were plain to me, and there was nothing I could do to stop him. I did not cry out for my son as they swept him from his feet and took him away. I simply lay down on my side and wept.
When Kirutu spoke again his voice was matter-of-fact, even soft.
“Now you know I have your son. If Wilam learns that your son is alive, he is bound by law to put him to death.”
“You’re lying…”
“By law, any child from your womb must come only from his seed. You are his wife, your child must be as well. By blood. For you to have a living son not of Wilam’s seed would remove him from consideration for power.”
I had never heard of the law and the thought horrified me. I tried to dismiss it as another ploy by Kirutu, but even hearing it I knew the law made perfect sense to the Tulim way of thinking.
“If your son dies now, you are purified, so I will not kill him yet. Your only hope is to kill Wilam. Once he learns that you have lost his son, you will be worthless. I offer you the only way for you and your son to survive.”
“You’re lying to me!” I screamed.
But I knew he wasn’t.
“If Wilam isn’t dead within three days, I will return your son to Wilam to be killed. If you kill Wilam, I will take you and your child to the sea.”
My mind was only a dim reflection of itself, unable to process my thoughts with any certainty, but one thing was perfectly clear: I could not let any harm come to my son. Never again. Nothing else mattered to me as I lay on Kirutu’s floor, weeping.
“How?” I sobbed.
He stepped over to me and bound a thin roll of leaves into my hair, near my scalp where it would not be seen without a search. “You will put this in his food. Half will be enough.”
“They will find it.”
“Then you will find another way or your son will die.”
Kirutu turned away and left me on the floor, a shell of myself.
I don’t remember what passed through my mind as the warriors bound me up and carried me over their shoulders to the clearing several miles up the mountain. I could only see my son crying, reaching for me.
They left me under a tree in the middle of the same clearing where the anthropologist Michael had led me. I lay in a heap to be found by the Impirum.
Chapter Eighteen
MY FIRSTBORN SON was alive. And my second child was dead.
The jungle around that clearing screamed its empathy as I huddled in anguish. I can’t say that I grieved my forced miscarriage as much as I grieved Stephen’s life. He, like me, had been saved from the sea only to meet a much crueler fate.
In my despair I cursed God for delivering me and my son to that fate.
I cursed the Tulim valley, not because I hated the people, rather because I hated their law. Stephen’s life depended on the death of Wilam at my hand. My pain beside that tree wasn’t caused by the cramping of my gut, nor by the vines biting into my flesh.
It was caused by knowing that God was mocking me.
For an hour I lay in a heap, unable to think clearly. My first instinct was to run to the Warik and rescue Stephen myself. But I knew it would be a fool’s errand that would end only in more pain, perhaps pain to Stephen. Cutting off one of my son’s fingers would mean nothing to Kirutu.
Gradually, as my tears ran dry, the simple truth of my predicament settled into my consciousness. I slowly pushed myself to a sitting position and stared at the jungle, mind lost to any danger it might pose.
I could not trust Wilam to find grace for Stephen. His conscience was tied to the well-being of his people, and to that end he would do whatever was necessary to take power. Every bone in his body rejected the suggestion that Kirutu would bring any good to the Tulim valley.
I couldn’t let him know that Stephen was alive.
Neither could I tell him of my miscarriage. If he learned that Kirutu had savaged my womb, my status among them would be compromised. The trust I had earned might be lost, and my access to Wilam along with it.
I had to have access to Wilam. It was the only way to kill him.
My thoughts surprised me, but in that frame of mind I saw no other alternative. The only chance my son had for survival was through Wilam’s death. Even then I would be at Kirutu’s mercy, but I didn’t have time to think about that.
I had to get back to the Impirum village on my own, before the sun rose. For the sake of Stephen, I had to muster the strength and do what was needed.
I pushed myself to my feet and staggered up the path leading to the north, no longer caring what kind of dangers lay along the way. All I needed was to put one foot in front of the other.
For Stephen’s sake.
It was painful, but most of the aching was in my abdomen. I gathered moss to hide the bleeding. My legs were still strong, and months of walking on bare feet had toughened my soles.
The path led over low hills into steep crevasses before climbing again on switchbacks tangled with thick roots and mud, and I slipped often. But I knew the way.
My memories of Stephen’s cry pushed me forward. The image of his sweet face, dirty and hurt, dragged me forward. I was going away from him, but it was the only way to him.
The journey was long, but my sense of time was off and I found myself at the creek just west of the main village as the horizon began to gray.
I had to wash away the blood. I had to cover my abdomen in pigment to hide any bruising that would show. I needed more moss—they’d never leave me unsupervised again. I had to appear normal, even refreshed, not puffy-eyed and destitute, and as to this I felt hopeless. So I madly searched for an explanation that would allow me to avoid questioning.
The washing came easily. The pigment almost as easily, because I had applied red mud from that very creek to my face and belly on more than one occasion with the children.
The mud was on my belly when it occurred to me that there would be no way to hide my abduction. They would find the guards who had been posted outside my hut dead, unless they hadn’t been killed. It was unlikely but not out of the question that they had been a part of the plot.
My mind spun. I had to tell Wilam about the abduction. But I couldn’t tell him about my miscarriage. How I could avoid the subject, how I could succeed in hiding it, I didn’t know, but I would try.
I set out from the creek, intent on maintaining my poise.
I only made it halfway, to the edge of the large clearing just outside the village, before he came.
Wilam came.
I heard the sound of the warriors’ thundering feet before they emerged from the jungle. They came down the slope like a rushing wind in the dim morning light, five hundred of the Impirum’s most skilled warriors led by Wilam, whose blurred figure looked like a ghost to me. At first I thought they were Warik and that the warrior speeding toward me was Kirutu. But then I heard Wilam’s thundering cry.