Obsidian and Stars (Ivory and Bone #2)(28)

Once Noni pulls Black Dog out of the way, I lie down on my stomach again and reach for Lees. Each heavy thump of my heart lifts my chest from the ground. Exhaustion swamps me, but I cannot slow my effort. She is not out yet. My fingers wrap around her thin, cold wrists. She seems frail, like the little girl she was just a few years ago. Rocks fall and echo, tumbling out from under Lees’s feet as she scrambles up and drops onto the ground beside me.

All that I plan to say—all the anger and scolding—fades from my mind when Lees’s arm drapes across my back. I sit up. Black Dog jumps up against Noni as she bends to pet his fur. He runs a circle around her and licks her face. I’ve never seen anything like this—a tame predator, not only showing no threat but showing a kind of affection I would never have thought possible. “Look,” Lees says. “He loves her.”

I almost object. As I get to my feet, I almost say that a predator can’t love its prey. But I don’t let the words out, because watching the reunion between this girl and this dog, I think maybe I am completely wrong.

What enchantment does this island hold, I wonder, if this is possible?

The dog runs a circle around us, even pausing to jump up against my own legs. I leap back, startled, wondering if he meant to dig his teeth into my throat.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Noni says. “You can stroke his back. Go ahead. Lean over him and stroke him.”

He runs away from me, and I let out a deep breath. I do not want to touch this animal. I do not want to get near his teeth. But when the dog runs away, retreating behind Noni, I bend at the waist, making a show of my willingness to try.

From the blackness at the back of the cave comes the sound of falling rock. The dog lets out a howl, and I flinch. “We need to get out in the open,” I say. “It’s too dangerous in here.”

I let the girls go first, and the dog follows right behind them. I climb out last. There are so many things I want to ask Noni about—how she and her mother got here, and where they came from—but before I can speak, she is screaming, grabbing at the dog and pulling him away from her mother. “Stop! Black Dog, stop!” Looking, I see the dog licking blood from the woman’s face. “Get away,” she says. The dog leaps over the woman’s body and lies down, curled against her legs. “He’s so hungry,” she says. “He doesn’t know better.” Her voice is composed, but tears spill from the corners of her eyes.

I think of the food—the food Noni stole. “Well, give us back our food,” I say, “and we can all have something to eat. Even Black Dog. That’s first. But then we need to work hard, setting up a camp and digging a grave. It’s too late in the morning to prepare for a burial by midday, so it will have to be done tomorrow.”

I think of Kol, far to the south in his camp. I imagine him standing beside his father’s grave. I hear the echo of the drum. “We’ll dig the grave after we eat, and tomorrow at midday, we’ll bury her.”

“No! I won’t let you—”

“Noni, there’s no hope for her. She’s dead, and we need to treat her body with respect—”

“Then we can’t bury her. That’s what my father’s clan, the Tama, do. But my mother was born into another clan—the Pavu clan—and they don’t bury their dead.”

“Then what—”

“They burn them.”





TWELVE


Noni returns the pack of food she stole, but she offers no apology. I don’t ask for one either. I think of her mother, dead or maybe dying, when Noni dared sneak up on two sleeping strangers. I think of the fact that she took only food—she left knives, an ax, atlatls, and darts. I think of how long she may have gone without food while she tried to save her mother.

And I decide there’s nothing to discuss. She did what she had to do to survive and to help a person she loved. Isn’t that what we all do every day?

We don’t eat much, and what we do eat gets consumed in a hurry, sitting on the dunes facing the water, like we’re on a break during a long journey and don’t have time for a real meal. Noni gulps down pieces of dried fish and clover roots like she thinks I might change my mind and take it away from her. Even so, she shares what she has with Black Dog. I scoop out some extra fish for her, since she gave him almost half of what she had.

Noni eats with her head down, concentrating only on her food, but when she finishes she finally looks up at me and Lees. Something in her gaze says she’s trying to decide if we fit into her dreams or her nightmares.

“So, Noni,” I start, “are there other people from your clan here?”

“No,” she says.

I wait, giving her a chance to offer more of an explanation of her presence on the island. But that one word is all I get. “So you came here with only your mother?”

“We ran away,” she says.

“Were you running away from a betrothal?” Lees asks. Her voice is excited, as if she’s forgotten what it means to run away. The gravity of leaving your home behind.

“No. We were running from my father.”

Lees goes quiet. So does Noni. The only sound comes from the dog, as he sniffs the ground for dropped scraps.

“You paddled out to sea to escape your father?” I ask. “How did you know you would find land?”