First Fall: The Canoe Thief Read online

  “India isn’t the type. She doesn’t trust Elikai. We found her canoe tethered on the northern islands, right on the edge of the channel. She harvested herbs there. We thought she’d fallen overboard and the current drowned her.”

  Sugar chewed the inside of his cheek. “What if he did fall in? What if Tare was watching him, he saw him fall, and he tried to save him?”

  “Her,” Charlie corrected. “She tried to save her.”

  “Are you listening, or trying to correct my grammar?”

  “Listening. So you think she tried and failed? They’re both gone?”

  “Or they’re both on the mainland.”

  Charlie sat up and lurched forward as if he was going to bolt out of the hut. Sugar had to grab his shoulder and force him back to a sitting position.

  “Let go!” he snapped, knocking Sugar’s hands away.

  He held up both palms to show he meant no harm. “If you run into the camp, one of my brothers will spear you.”

  “But India could be on the mainland!”

  “And you can’t cross the channel at night.” Sugar tried to reason with the Varekai. “In the morning, you can go home and tell your broth—sisters. The Elikai will come too. Together we will look for them.”

  “I have to go!” Charlie protested. “India could be trapped over there with an Elikai who has been stalking her!”

  “Yes,” Sugar said with a sigh. “We established that, but he also might have saved India. Okay? Have a little faith in him. You had faith in me.”

  Charlie gave him a suspicious look, like he was already regretting that. But then he stretched out again, sullen and pale.

  “Promise you will not try and leave my hut tonight,” Sugar said. “And you will wake me before you leave. I will escort you to your canoe myself.”

  It took Charlie a long time to reply, and Sugar hoped the deliberation meant that he was giving it serious thought and that his word would be kept.

  “I will,” he said grudgingly.

  “Good night, then.”

  Sugar stretched out as far from the Varekai as he could get.

  Chapter Eight

  Eden—Before the World was Born

  Bravo was the oldest of the Varekai. She was sixteen seasons, a whole eight years, which made her three seasons older than all the others. So whenever the tribe had a problem and wanted to put forward their case to the teachers, Bravo was their spokesperson.

  The Varekai did not see the teachers often. Once a day, for a few hours in the morning, one or two of them would arrive. They would take Varekai to the clinic sometimes, or else just instruct them on the day’s lessons. Classes on effective weeding, collecting seeds for sowing next season, food preservation, making clothes, recognizing animals and insects, math, science or allowing them to watch videos on the TVs they rolled in with them.

  The teachers were not like the Varekai. They were almost twice their height, towering and powerful. They had pale skin, like sand, and wore white lab coats and blue shower caps over their feet. They smelled strongly of mint and chemical flowers. Some had large protrusions on their chests, and some had unnaturally red lips or dark powder around their eyes. They were an omnipotent force, controlling the doors that led from Eden to the clinic, demanding the Varekai’s compliance when they gave an order. If the Varekai refused, they could be punished, and there was always a slight sense of unease when the doors opened and the giants invaded the little village.

  No one was jealous of Bravo’s role facing off with the creatures.

  The entire tribe, all twenty-six of them, had gathered together for the morning meal and were waiting for the teachers to arrive. India sat beside Charlie, their arms touching, leaning on one another.

  “Why does she keep wiping her nose like that?” Charlie murmured.

  “Who, Bravo?”

  “Yes. She looks like she’s going to cry. If she cries, they’ll never take her seriously.”

  “She’s not crying. It’s her sinuses again. She’s been all mucusy, and sometimes she gets nosebleeds.”

  Nosebleeds and mucus were not uncommon in the animals, but it was rare in a Varekai. Bravo had it before, last season, but it had gone away.

  Charlie crinkled her nose. When the animals got mucusy, it was better to kill them before it spread around the herd.

  The doors to the corridor whooshed open, and a teacher walked through, her blue shoe-hats making a plastic crackling sound on the grass. She had a clipboard and a packet of seeds hanging out of her top pocket. Teacher Janice. She had extra-red lips and auburn hair streaked with gray. Her face was wrinkly around the eyes and mouth.

  “Good morning, Varekai,” she said, glancing around and ticking things off a list on the clipboard.

  “Teacher Janice.” Bravo stood up, drawing herself to her full height of four and a half feet. “The tribe would like to negotiate with the teachers.”

  “Not today, Bravo,” she said, distracted.

  The girls exchanged angry looks, and there was a murmur of discontent from the gathered tribe.

  “Today,” Bravo insisted. “You will listen, or no one will give blood at the clinic.”

  Teacher Janice rolled her eyes to the huge sun globes in the dome overhead and sighed. “Quick, what is it?”

  “We demand more water.”

  “More water.” The teacher looked bored.

  “There isn’t enough for bathing, watering crops and drinking for us and the animals. We don’t want to choose between the grapes and the lambs,” Bravo said, and there was a murmur from the Varekai sisters. “We only have three water filters too, for all twenty-six of us. We want more filters and more water. Even with our runoff system collecting rain from the afternoon drench, we don’t have enough.”

  “Do you think the teachers can just ‘make’ more water?” she demanded. “Do you think water filters are cheap?”

  “We’re not blind,” Bravo said coldly. “We’ve seen the cupboards full of water filters in the clinics. We’ve seen you turn on the taps and let clear water run down the drain. You waste it. Give it to us. You tell us that sharing is critical to our survival. You take a share of our meats and vegetables. But you won’t share with us.”

  Teacher Janice looked back to the clipboard. “It’s not my decision,” she said.

  “Then we will wait until someone arrives who can make that decision.” Bravo sat down and folded her arms across her chest.

  One by one, the other Varekai mimicked her, crossing their arms and staring silently at the teacher. She paused, looking over them, and for a moment she looked unnerved. “Charlie, come with me.”

  “No,” Charlie said.

  “Right now.”

  “No.” Charlie didn’t move.

  “We’re not going,” Bravo said, chin jutting stubbornly.

  Janice chewed the inside of her cheek, then she rolled her eyes again and left the way she had come. Bravo grinned, and there were a few cheers from the other sisters.

  “She’ll bring back water and water filters,” Bravo insisted. She wiped her hand across her nose and left a long smear of blood up her arm.

  The next day the filters did come, along with a snaking hose with a pump on the end that let the Varekai fill any container they liked with water. They dug a deep hole and lined it with plastic, making their own pond. Teacher Felicity gave them reeds and water lilies to plant in pots to keep the water clean. She said they might even be able to have fish. Cheered by their victory, the Varekai posed no more resistance to the blood tests. Charlie and India were allowed to go to the clinic together to give their bloods, both still filthy from digging the pond.

  They were separated inside and taken to different rooms. India waited patiently as the strap was tightened around her arm and she was told to pump her fist.
She was used to the prick of the needle, and distracted herself by watching the teachers passing the room through the glass window that looked into the corridor.

  Bravo rolled past on a gurney. Her nose was streaked with blood and it was in stark contrast with her skin, which was unusually pale, almost gray. Her eyes were open, but they were cloudy and stared unseeing at the ceiling.

  “Where are they taking Bravo?” India asked, curious.

  Teacher Felicity glanced up. “She had a cold. We’ve recycled her.”

  “What does that mean?” India asked.

  Felicity slipped the needle out and pushed a cotton swab to India’s arm. “Hold that.” She got tape to stick it in place. “She’ll be back soon. You’ll get a new Bravo. A healthy one.”

  India frowned. “She’s not in trouble, is she? Because we refused to come to the clinic yesterday?”

  Felicity’s smile was sad. “No, India. She’s not in trouble. Come on, you’re done.”

  India told Charlie about the gurney and how pale Bravo looked, and they waited by the corridor until the lights dimmed and night fell, but Bravo never emerged. After evening meal, there was still no sign of her, and India and Charlie went to bed worried.

  It was a week before Teacher Janice returned with a baby. It was fat and brown with tiny toes and fingers, and she handed it to Alpha with a look of pride.

  “This is Bravo,” she said. “Try not to drop her.”

  Charlie and India exchanged looks. The baby had Bravo’s ocean-gray eyes and warm dark skin, but it was not the Bravo who had been wheeled away the week before.

  They waited and waited, but they never saw their old Bravo again.

  * * *

  India woke to the surf and gulls. The fire had died and two dogs, little more than skeletons with knobbly, misshapen tumors along their spines, were sniffing around the coals. Their heads whipped up, as if they sensed India’s gaze, and they bared their teeth. One was blind and its mouth was a nest of jagged ivory, as if it had the teeth of five dogs. India tensed, expecting an attack, but the starving animals ghosted away at a gallop, vanishing from view.

  India sighed with quiet relief and prodded Tare in the ribs. She groaned and wriggled closer, burying her face in India’s chest, before promptly going back to sleep. India rolled her eyes, then flexed her knee. It was stiff, bruised now in patchy brown and blue. She would be able to walk, perhaps run a short distance, but she could not hike all the way up the beach to the eastern end of the archipelago in one day.

  There was only one way for this to end. They would try to make the trek, and her knee would swell up. Tomorrow, Tare would be forced to abandon her and push on alone. She would take the canoe, and India would be left defenseless on the beach. Perhaps she could take shelter in the empty shell of Eden and hope Tare told her sisters where to find her. Assuming she even made it back across the channel alive.

  India would have no way to feed herself but for scavenging coconuts. Freshwater would be hard to find. She would get weak. Her prospects here were not good.

  She started to crawl over Tare, but the Elikai woke up, startled, and caught India by the waist.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to pee.”

  “It might be dangerous.” She looked out at the campfire and the ocean.

  “You missed the feral dogs, oh fearless protector. They ran away.”

  Tare let her go, and India slid out from under the canoe. Despite what she had said, she straightened cautiously, scanning the area for predators. Down the beach a few hundred yards, she could see two saltwater crocodiles basking in the sun. A bright blue-and-gold eagle soared overhead with a wingspan greater than Tare was tall.

  There were no other signs of life.

  Tare slid out beside her, and for a long moment they just stood.

  “Well,” Tare said. “Go pee.”

  India padded down to the edge of the sea. Urine would attract sharks, but she had no intention of swimming. Peeing on dry land would attract all kinds of predators too; this way the ocean would carry their scent away.

  She squatted, her feet in just an inch of water, something Tare seemed to find fascinating.

  Tare peed too, only she did it standing up, her cock acting like a hose that sent yellow water spraying out into the waves in a thin stream.

  “So what now?” Tare asked when they were done.

  “I don’t think I will be able to keep up with you.” India looked east up the beach. “I will slow you down. I can’t help drag the canoe, and by tomorrow I will be too stiff to hike again.”

  She accepted her fate: to be alone here, on the mainland with the predators and unfamiliar surroundings. Her chances were not good alone, but if Tare got word to the Varekai, her sisters would come for her. It was her best chance.

  Tare frowned. “Well, we can’t stay on the beach like this forever.”

  “We?”

  “I’m not leaving you,” she said firmly. “I almost died saving you.”

  India was silent for a long moment, stunned by the selflessness of the other woman’s decision.

  “We can hike to Eden,” she said slowly. “There may be things there we can use to make a proper shelter. And we can build a bonfire on the beach there.”

  Tare nodded, pleased. “We’ll do that. Don’t worry about the canoe, I can drag it. I have a rope. I’ll just tow it in the shallow water.”

  The plan needed no more discussion. They stripped off the branches that had covered the canoe, and India helped Tare push it into the water. Tare looped the rope across her chest and walked along the firm, wet sand near the water’s edge, the canoe skimming along in the shallows after her like an eager dog.

  India fell into step with her, a little further up the beach, watching for any sign of movement along the tree line.

  It took them five hours of walking before Eden came into view. They found water in streams, though some of it had an unpleasant metal tang. Luck had favored them, and the day was cloudy. If it had been sunny, the heat would have exhausted them.

  As they drew closer to Eden, the forest fell away.

  A ruined civilization was beyond the green, broken boxes hundreds of feet high with black empty windows and glassy doors. The ground was paved with cracked asphalt and cement. It stretched on forever, vanishing on the hazy horizon, wasteland of empty structures, weeds and scavengers.

  A long, high wall ended in gates that gaped open like some fossilized maw overrun with hoary clumps of an old man’s beard that dangled like teeth from the rusting arch. It was oversized to the extreme, as if the people before had intended to drive whole buildings through the opening. Or as if tens of thousands of people would have to stream through it in an orderly fashion. Through the rust and pale green growth, India could make out the words:

  Prehistoric Park.

  Through the wide expanse of the entrance, she could see the first of the cages. The curved wall of some massive tank, the stagnant, stinking water brown now and halfway down. Dried by evaporation, filled by rains, only to dry again. The sludgy algae did not bode well for life.

  “There might be shelter in here,” India said, pausing near the gate.

  Tare peered down the cracked walkway, deeper into the zoo. “With all those huge cages? It would creep me out.”

  India went to a sign posted beside the gate. She pulled away the ivy and scraped back some moss that had grown over the plastic plate. Inside, the poster was still legible.

  After the dinosaurs fell, the megafauna rose!

  Experience life as it was forty thousand years BC, when mammoths and saber-toothed tigers roamed and ruled. Brought back from extinction in 2057, the globe’s megafauna lives once again. Prehistoric Park is the world’s largest megafauna zoo, with animals from the Asia Pacific, South America and Africa.<
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  See the first-ever second-generation diprotodon. Meet Kenny, the world’s largest megalania!

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  The pictures were of massive monitor lizards, huge bears, thylacines, moas and long-tusked mammoths.

  “What do you think happened to all the animals?” Tare asked.

  India remembered a day, long ago, when they were still in Eden. Two of the teachers were talking in hushed whispers, and she had been struck by the looks of wry bitterness on their faces.

  “...Gates are blasted right open. It’s like Jurassic fucking Park out there.”

  “It’s like Jurassic Park out there,” India murmured.

  “Huh?”

  “I think they got out. I think they all got out. The teachers used to talk about how bad things were getting, before they died. How they couldn’t leave Eden.”

  “All the more reason to keep moving.” Tare put a protective hand on India’s shoulder. For the next hour, India found herself looking back over her shoulder uneasily.

  Eden was close to the beach, a massive white dome that rose hundreds of feet in the air, though it was still not as tall as some of the abandoned buildings they could see further inland. Plants struggled here; there were no trees, just bushes and hardy weeds that grew from every crack with the ruthless hunger of nature.

  Somewhere in that dome was the answer to the ultimate question: Where do baby Varekai come from? So close, India could have limped over, crawled into the fetid darkness, fumbled around until she found it. Or until she died there.

  The ugly wasteland made India feel small and sick. The way the wind caught in the cracks and hollows sounded like children crying. Stone steps led up from the sand; nearby, red and yellow flags, torn and faded, flapped on their poles. Tare dragged the canoe above the tide line, and together they hobbled cautiously up the weathered stairs to the cracked black asphalt beyond. Animal shit and coconut husks were the only signs of life.