She’s gone before I can catch her by the arm. Right behind her, Lees runs to the mouth of the cave and climbs up on a boulder that partially blocks the way.
“Lees, stop! You can’t go in there—”
“She could need help—”
“She’s not your responsibility.” My eyes brush over the body of the dead woman. I don’t mean to abandon her daughter, but I can’t let my own sister run headlong into danger to help someone who isn’t even of our clan.
“But the dog—”
“What could you possibly know about dogs?” I ask. Lees has never seen a dog in her life. Neither have I.
“Father used to tell me stories about them,” she says. “Before he died.”
This stops me short. I wouldn’t have guessed Lees remembered any stories from our father at all. She was only six when he died. “He told you about dogs?”
“About how long ago our clan kept dogs. How they were like wolves, but tame, and helped the people with their work.”
I know these stories too. Stories of the days many generations ago, before a storm took the lives of half the clan. All the dogs were lost in that storm, and our clan has never kept dogs since.
Maybe dogs remind Lees of our father. Maybe the thought of seeing one feels like reaching back to him, to the stories he told in the past. Before I can ask, Lees is beyond my grasp, climbing through the mouth of the cave. I call her name but she never turns back.
Lees’s willingness to help a person who is not clan is beyond my understanding. She hasn’t been groomed for clan leadership. She hasn’t been taught to never let anyone or anything come before the clan. She’s fortunate—in so many ways, she’s the most free of the three of us—because the least is expected of her.
At least until now.
I call her name twice after she drops down into the cave, but I get no response. I have no choice but to follow.
Inside the cave I find two boulders as high as my shoulders. Above my head, light pours in—these rocks must have formed part of the ceiling before the quake loosened them and let them fall. A sound—part howl, part cry—comes from beyond the place where Lees and the other girl stand. They have gone far back into the cave. Sweeping my eyes over the space beyond the girls, I see nothing.
The sound comes again and Lees drops to a crouch. “There!”
The other girl straightens and slides farther into the dark, skirting the edge of a huge trench that splits the floor in two. “Be careful!” I imagine this girl falling into the trench, and my stomach drops. As I get closer, I see how deep it is—at least as deep as the height of three men—with sides too steep to climb. She would be lost to us if she fell in.
I think of this as I move closer to Lees, reaching for her hand. I edge forward, peering into the hole. It’s narrower at the bottom than at the top, with straight, smooth walls. And at the very bottom, tucked so far into the rock that his voice is muffled, stands an animal that looks like a wolf with a black coat. If I saw him in the wild, I would think wolf. I would think run.
He sees the girl, and he howls again. His front paws claw at the steep ledge of rock that separates the two of them as if he intends to climb straight up to her, but his feet skid back down. He tries again, manages by force of will to climb a bit, but then tumbles to the bottom once more. He lets out a yelp as he twists from his back onto his feet. The sound bounces from the walls, mingling with the skittering of pebbles.
This dog confounds me. Everything about him tells me he’s a predator—everything except his behavior. He whimpers, and I suspect he’s no danger at all.
I suspect, but I can’t be sure.
“Don’t cry, Black Dog,” the girl says. “We’ll get you out. We’ll find a way.”
“Don’t tell him that,” I say. The dog whimpers again, and the sound claws at my heart the way his feet clawed at the rock. “We can’t help him. We can’t reach him, and there’s no way to lift him out.”
“Yes, there is,” says Lees. I turn toward her, to ask her what she has in mind. But before I can get out a single word, she is far below me, clambering down into the trench.
“Lees!” I don’t think; I don’t wait for her to turn. Instead I scramble out to the rim of the pit and start to climb right after her. There is only a small incline at the top edge where the rock slopes. Then it drops off sharply—too sharp to climb up or down. All I can think of is getting my hands on her and pulling her back out while I still can.
“Don’t follow me,” Lees says, as she crawls to the lip of the rock that plunges straight down to the floor of the pit. Without a look back at me, or even a glance at the girl, she swings her legs out and drops to the small circle of ground beside the dog.
My legs convulse so hard, I drop onto the slanted rock where I stand. I almost can’t look down. When I force myself, the world around me spins. A loud sound echoes though the cave—the sound of my voice as I scream my sister’s name. My ears ring with her name, mixed with a buzz like a thousand honeybee wings. I tremble so hard, I almost lose my balance and join her at the bottom of the pit.
But I can’t fall to pieces. I need to stay calm. I look around, searching for tools that could help us. The two girls are calling to each other, Lees shrieking with delight that the dog is being friendly to her. The other girl sobbing that Lees is with the dog and she is not. My eyes move from rock to rock—there’s nothing here. The net outside isn’t strong enough for Lees to climb. It would never hold her weight. Would my spear be long enough to reach her, if I lay across the ground and dangled it over the wall of the pit? Could she use it to pull herself up, or would she just slide back down again?
Far below, I hear her, struggling to find footholds. “I didn’t expect this to be so hard,” she says, breathless with effort. The other girl shouts instructions to her, but I know it’s no use. Even before Lees climbed down, I knew there was no climbing up those straight walls. If I’d thought it were possible, I’d have climbed down myself.
My eyes search the cave, but I find nothing long enough to reach her, nothing strong enough to pull her up. All I see are rocks—small rocks, big rocks, boulders.
“Wait,” I say. It comes out as a whisper, a word spoken more to myself than to the girls. But they both hear and they both listen.
I look across the wide mouth of the trench at the girl. This girl who is not even clan. This stranger for whom my sister is risking her life. “What’s your name?” I call.
“What’s yours?” There’s a clear note of distrust in her voice.
“I’m called Mya,” I say. “And that’s my sister Lees, putting herself in danger to rescue your dog.”
“My name is Noni,” the girl says.
“Well, Noni, you and I have a big job to do.”
Together, Noni and I gather the largest boulders that we can lift and bring them to the rim of the trench. There are others bigger and heavier—those we would have to roll—but I don’t dare use those.
After the boulders, we collect the bigger rocks. These we stack separately, off to the side.
I stand back and study the shape of the trench—the way the walls slope down from the front edge, but drop almost straight down from the edge that faces the back of the cave. Even the sloping side drops over a ledge a few paces down, right where Lees climbed over. Though the trench is wide at the top, it narrows as it deepens, so that the space where Lees and the dog stand is a circular spot of ground only about twelve paces wide.
With Noni’s help, I carry one of the largest boulders to the rim of the trench and look in. “Stay as tight against the back wall as you can,” I tell Lees. The dog, sensing that something is about to happen, huddles against her. “Lees, you need to stay out of the way. I’m going to let it roll down. If it comes close to you . . .” I trail off. What can she do if it comes close to her?
“If it comes close, I’ll jump,” she says. “Don’t worry.”
I do worry, of course. But with Noni’s help, I slide the boulder forward until it rolls into the trench.
It tumbles quickly, crushing chunks of rock as it slides down the slope and over the overhang to crash into the bottom of the pit. Lees jumps back, and the dog yelps and dives behind her legs. The boulder rocks forward, coming to a rest in almost the center of the space.
“All right,” I say. “That’s the first one.”
In this manner—Noni and I dropping one boulder after the other into the pit—the pit gradually fills. Lees builds a small wall to stand behind and keeps the dog out of the way of the falling rocks.
Boulder after boulder falls, each making the trench a little shallower.
After the sixth boulder and a pile of the bigger rocks, Lees can reach my outstretched arms when she climbs to the top of the mound. Still, the dog is skittish and won’t follow.
Noni takes my place, leaning over into the trench and calling, “Black Dog!” At the sound of her voice, the dog bounds up the rocks. He comes partway and begins to slide back down, but Lees grabs him by the scruff of fur behind his neck. My breath stills, my heart freezing from the sudden chill that runs through my blood at the sight of my sister so close to the jaws of a wolf. But it’s not a wolf. . . . It’s not a wolf. . . . I whisper this to myself as she hauls him up, dragging him until he finds footing on the sloping edge of the trench. Noni leans over and grabs him by the front legs and he is out.
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.”