He forced himself to stop and listen. Get a grip, he told himself. He had to think about what he was doing, not just run in panic, willy-nilly. If he could only get to the surface, he might be able to reach the relative protection of Glinn’s camp.
As he waited, listening in the dark, he heard a new sound: a faint calling. It was Amiko, calling for the Cyclops. Searching for it. Pleading with it. Calling it in.
He began moving again, taking a fork in the passage that seemed to head in the direction of her voice. As he ran, he could hear — overlaid by Amiko’s voice — the creature’s grunting sounds of pain as it loped along. Where was it? The confusing system of passageways, with their echoes and re-echoes, made it hard to tell. Gideon paused, uncertain whether to advance or retreat, fighting back the panic that tried to bubble its way to the surface.
A minute went by, then another. Amiko’s voice had died away. Gideon hardly dared breathe. And then he heard other sounds — that same stertorous breathing, that same growl of hatred, the same slow sounds of movement. And this time, there was no confusion: they were coming from the unknown darkness behind him. He spun around just as the thing came shambling out of the darkness into the beam of his flashlight, bloody eye staring.
Gasping in fear, scrambling backward, Gideon dove through a random hole in the lava tube, tumbled down a sandy slope, and rolled out into a huge space — the crystal cavern. He ran toward its exit, the Cyclops grunting and dragging itself behind him. Gasping for breath, he gained the outer cavern, ran through the entrance, and burst out through the crack in the stone into the blinding sunlight.
His momentum almost carried him off the cliff and he scrambled desperately at the edge, rocks falling away into sheer space, before pulling himself back. He raced up the trail, the Cyclops directly behind him. At the very lip of the cliff, the creature’s arm whipped out and seized his calf from behind. With a brutal roar of triumph, he plucked Gideon up from the face of rock and swung him out over blue space, preparing to fling him off the cliff. Gideon cried out as he hung upside down in the massive fist, staring at the crawling blue ocean a thousand feet below.
“No!” came Amiko’s cry as she suddenly appeared just above them on the trail. “Stop!”
The Cyclops hesitated, dangling Gideon over the precipice. Then, slowly, it looked up, toward Amiko…and past her. Its eye widened with apparent horror at what it saw. Despite his desperate plight, Gideon followed the creature’s gaze — and saw it, too.
The island was on fire. A massive firestorm swirled upward in a spiraling tornado of flame: leaves, twigs, entire burning branches lofted on the updraft, shaking the very air. As he stared, momentarily forgetting even his own predicament, a chopper flew overhead, speeding for the mainland. The fire was consuming everything, advancing at a furious pace, fueled by the wind blowing toward their end of the island. Even as the Cyclops stood, paralyzed at the sight, animals escaping the fire came flying off the cliff, wild pigs and big cats and creatures Gideon had never seen before racing out of the jungle and tumbling into the sea below with cries and yelps of terror, twisting in the air as they tumbled into space.
There was no hope for the island — none.
Staring at the conflagration, the Cyclops lifted his head and bellowed out a roar of impotent rage. It was as if his horror at seeing the final end of his world, his centuries of loneliness and pain, were all rolled up into that one horrible cry. He seemed to have forgotten Gideon, still dangling from his massive arm.
“No,” said Amiko, stepping toward him with a strange air of calm. “Please, no.”
Gideon clawed the air, trying to catch hold of something, in a perfect terror of the dizzying heights.
Amiko stood there, and the Cyclops stared at her, at the all-consuming fire, at Gideon, and then back to her. Gideon stopped struggling. Some sort of communication seemed to take place between Amiko and the creature — an understanding that almost transcended language. And then, gently, the Cyclops drew Gideon back from the brink and released him to the ground.
Gideon collapsed on the rock, breathing hard.
Amiko stepped over to the Cyclops. They turned their backs to Gideon, to the island — and stared out toward the infinite blue horizon.
The Cyclops took a step toward the cliff face. He was a ruined creature, burned, bloody, his leg shattered, blood streaming down his back. Above, the fire crackled and roared. More animals went driving and falling past them, their screams whisked away by the wind.
There was a brief moment of stasis. And then, with a motion that was almost graceful, the Cyclops joined them, leaping from the cliff. Gideon rushed to the edge and stared down. It took a long time for him to fall. At the end his body made a flower in the water…and then the blue sea smoothed over and it was gone.
Gideon retreated from the cliff face and glanced back, across the clearing to the wall of jungle. Now he could see the fire advancing in its full fury. A sucking updraft was developing as the smoke and burning detritus whirled into the sky in a tornado of flame. A tapir came charging past him, zigzagging, making a high-pitched sound of terror, before disappearing over the edge.
The Cyclops had realized it was the end of his world. Vengeance, rage, struggle were useless. There was nothing more he could do. And somehow — maybe with Amiko’s help — he had reached within, found that human core of mercy, and spared Gideon’s life.
He turned. Now Amiko, following in the footsteps of the Cyclops, was also approaching the cliff edge. As he watched, she took a slow, deliberate step — and then another.
“Wait,” said Gideon, a terrible realization dawning within him. “No. No, don’t.”
She looked at him sadly. “There’s no place for him in this world. And none for me, either.”
“For God’s sake, Amiko—!”
She stepped to the edge of the precipice, preparing to follow.
“Amiko,” Gideon said in desperation. He reached out a hand to stop her, then withdrew it; he sensed that any physical contact would result in her immediate plunge. He gasped, forcing himself to think. She stood there, toes over open air, glancing down at the foaming rocks that had already claimed the Cyclops.
“Do you remember that book of poetry I told you about? There was a line that stuck in my brain, from a poem by Delmore Schwartz.”
She had paused. She was listening.
“He wrote: Time is the fire in which we burn. That line has always haunted me — all the more so now, when I have so little time left.”
She did not turn; did not make any indication of having heard. But neither did she jump.
“I’ve got ten months. You’ve got the rest of your life. And you’re going to throw away all that gorgeous, wonderful time, time that I would love to have — but can’t. For what? Because you say there’s no place for you? Because you’re afraid?”
She seemed to sway a little, teetering on the edge.
“But you aren’t afraid. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. The way you handled those pirates with the gaff hook. The way you rescued me from the sacrifice to the Lotus Eaters, and took a spear for your pains. The way you climbed the cliff face with a raging fever.” He took a ragged breath. “Sometimes it takes courage — maybe all the courage you’ve got — to just live life. Every morning I wake up and the first thing I think is: Oh, shit, I’m dying. And that makes me want to make my time count. My condition may be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s also done something good: I’ve learned the value of time. And here you are, about to throw your life away. Don’t do it. Listen to a man who knows the preciousness of time.”