© Copyright Cupideros, Tuesday, February 4, 2016
BOOK 6, CHAPTER 3
When the moon started downward, Muriel left her camp. She guessed it was three o’clock in the morning—too late for Glen to be awake, even if he were reading his Bible. Nearing Camp One, wearing only her black skirt and her midriff-torn white blouse, Muriel crept, slow and low, onward. Her spontaneous menstrual plug held its place high inside her sex. From her low position, critters moved on the sands, but she ignored them and listened for any sounds of Glen’s rough masculine voice—that voice that caused her to swoon on occasion, especially when they were on good terms, which she now had to reject. But her anger at him returned as she clenched her teeth and furrowed her brow. Now, Muriel refused to allow her emotions, love, or sexual desires to muddle her purpose. First, reclaim her spear. Second, retrieve some food from the fishery cove.
Her jaw dropped when she noticed how small the fishery cove was. Glen had cut its size in half. “I guess I failed at the fishery cove business, too,” Muriel smarted. Her anger grew further at Glen Norman. Fine for the shark to sneak up on her in the small fishery cove. What chance did she have in running? Let her take all the risk. As long as he ate tasty, hot-cooked meals, he never complained about the fishery cove. Now, up and about, he went undoing all of her hard work. His contempt for her actions continued unrelentingly.
Where was he? She noticed another thing: he had used the extra stones to spell out “help” in the sand. Muriel broke up the letters. That’s all she needed—a surprise from a ship knowing of their stranded condition on the island, a woman alone with a man. Let him smart at her counterdecisions.
The fire burned bright at Camp One and cast big shadows on anything that moved. That presented a peculiar problem for her. Her peach-marked spear rested on the far side of the huge blaze. Sure, as the sunspot told the time in her ornate well, her standing and gaining the spear would block the light on the far side if he were awake in the slightest. He would notice the change in light like a predator. Perhaps not as dangerous as a shadow falling across his body, but nevertheless, either way, if he slept lightly, he would discover her.
Dropping her eye to the fishery cove again, she noticed some familiar silvery, black and yellow, red, blue, and silver-finned fish. “I’ll come back for this,” she murmured. “First, to get my spear.”
Muriel bit her lip. She stalked a wide berth around the sleeping Glen Norman, who had the gall not to snore, giving her fair warning of his wakefulness. She moved closer and peered at her spear. After watching her shadow fall on the white sands, she grabbed her spear and took a step backward, ready to hush, hush her footprints back to the fishery; only the spear held fast. Muriel muttered, “Science.” She stared at the spear; for some reason, it was no longer taller than her. Did he dare cut it? Her spear! Muriel grasped her spear and tugged again. Spreading her feet to form a solid foundation on either side, she pulled. Fast, almost like an Excalibur sword embedded in stone, her peach-marked spear held—stuck good in Makta sand and earth. What in GOD’s name? Muriel tiptoed and saw Glen still sleeping. This time she grabbed the spear by its base and pushed up using her legs, pulling with her arms, too.
It moved. Half an inch only, but it moved.
She remained squatting and looked at her calloused hands. Rocks, moss, spear-carrying, and tearing down green vines had all roughed her hands. Muriel took a deep breath; one, two, three, she repeated in her mind and quickly grabbed the spear, pulling with her hands and lifting with her legs. All the effort nudged the spear another inch. Again, Muriel softly panted. “By the gods, I am going to get my spear,” Muriel muttered angrily in a whisper. “I’m on this island alone. I need protection.”
Like one of the snapping branches returning to its place on the path to Camp Two, Muriel snatched at the spear a third time, pulling it out slowly, as her legs pushed, straining against the object embedded in deep sand and earth, her feet twisting slightly, sinking deeper into the sands. It was mooo-vvvvv-iiiiiiinnnnnng.
Muriel watched the spear sliding free, and all at once, half-standing, her hands whipped back in the air, holding her peach-marked spear.
A whoosh sound spread into the silent night. Sand dropped into her pinkish hair, and some even cascaded toward her wide blue eyes, but she blinked her eyes closed.
I did it! She held the spear high above her head.
Glen murmured and half-turned in her direction.
Muriel pointed the raised spear in his direction in a flash. Then she relaxed. Sleep on, Glen Norman. With GOD’s help, and this spear, and our fishery cove, I am self-sufficient on Makta Island. She moved toward Glen slowly, carefully, quietly. Timing her steps to the rising tide’s crashing on the beach, she moved in segments, almost like movements of a violin piece, closer and closer toward Glen. Until at last, she stood above him, holding her spear.
Muriel whispered, “So, this is what a perfect male looks like sleeping. The almighty, knowing Glen Norman, who can shorten fishery coves, attack natives and nearly die and recover, and criticize his helpmate’s sexual experience—the perfect, pristine male without any sexual flaws, but single. How do I know you have not slept with ten, a hundred, or even a thousand whores? Whore more likely fits you than I, Glen Norman. If sex is sex, and it is, how dare you criticize me for sleeping with one man? If I were forty-five, I surely would have slept with at least one other person. I have said my piece.”
Glen murmured uncomfortably and rolled back to the West, toward where Muriel had started walking.
“Now, this fishery business. I need to take my spear in with me and continue to use science.” Muriel counted the tide rolling in and how long it lasted—and it lasted a little longer, she noticed. She got the countdown pattern, and when the flow went out, she gathered her black skirt in her left hand, raised her peach-marked spear in her right, and pointed at the fish stock. Chasing the tide out of the waters, Muriel used her spear, ending the life of the fish quickly, skewering them one after another—three at a time. She stopped and speared three more. She had nine fish in no time and quickly stepped out of the readjusted fishery cove, holding her black skirt tight to her belly, and ran out and stopped cold.
All her footprints from Camp Three stood marked in the sand!
He would find her, sure as a plant finds sunlight, or a rock finds gravity, or a man spots a woman. From this terrible recognition, she changed her strategy. She had once heard of Australian bushmen covering their tracks using tree branches filled with leaves.
She didn’t run far. She ran until she was out of sight of Camp One. Then she looked behind her. Her small, dainty footprints were clearly marked in Makta Island’s white sands!
And why hadn’t Glen followed her foot trail the night before? She gazed at the sky. Maybe it was too dark, and in the day, he hadn’t searched? Muriel looked at her spear and pointed the blade at the white sand tracks. Pushing the spear blade left and right, carefully like an artist, she covered up her tracks from the cove. But the other tracks in Camp One she dared not go back to hide. The perfect solution came to her as she used a hunch that popped into her mind—a vision of her running in the surf. Too late for this trip, she reconsidered. But for all future trips to the fishery cove, she needed to run to and from it in the tidal surf. Let the tide surf wash away her footprints by the time Glen woke up.
Walking backward, Muriel painstakingly dragged her peach-marked spear across her tracks in squiggly lines and then wavy signs pointing toward the sea. “I hope this works.” Muriel thought she heard her name at one point, and she scurried to work faster, erasing her tracks. “He must not find me. He must not find me. At least not until my period is over,” she whispered.
Her trip back took twice as long, but after covering her tracks one-third of the way back, Muriel turned and walked safely back to Camp Three.
Old, old, old Shaman Omaokiq puffed on his vision-seeing pipe. King Mayutab had gone an hour ago to investigate whether Quetzahacon sought the help of their enemies in the South. “It’s about that time, God Patlkiq. I have no idea what YOU wanted with these old knives given to me by the previous shaman. I was a young man then, agile and strong, when he presented them to me. I found them quite baffling.” Old, old, old Shaman Omaokiq never turned around, waiting for his murderers—Quetzahacon’s spies, who were now climbing the high peak.
At last, the two murderers thought to one another before lifting themselves up over the cliff’s edge and standing. They turned to one another, thinking a similar thought: we’ll put that old shaman to his death. They lifted up their right foot over the edge and then their left foot. Standing exhausted for a second, they caught their breath.
Old Shaman Omaokiq turned on the legs of a twenty-year-old, rose to a standing position, and before the two men fully registered their shock, the two tiger-handled knives plunged into their chests. The murder spy on the left grabbed the knife and said, “Impossible for an old—”
The second murder spy fell silent, flat on his shocked face.
“Nothing is impossible for God Patlkiq. But you young military types found that out too late,” said old, old, old Shaman Omaokiq. He blew a circle with a wavy line in the sky at the men’s souls, sending them back to God Patlkiq. “Do what YOU will with them, God Patlkiq.”
Then Shaman Omaokiq sat back down, closed his all-black eyes, and meditated some more.
Right after Muriel moved out of sight, Glen woke up with a start. “Muriel. Muriel!” He rubbed his forehead and looked around the camp. “What a dream! What a dream?” Glen slouched back into the dinghy boat. “Why did I think she was here? That woman drives me crazy whether she is next to me or far away. I need to marry her and get it over with, GOD. Why, why . . .” Glen Norman fell back fast asleep.
Muriel found her way back to Camp Three by a long series of vines she had placed along the dirt path. Finally, at last, she turned into the pathway that narrowed, narrowed, narrowed, and disappeared. She was home safe.
The first thing she did was cook herself dinner by her own roaring fire, its shadows flickering ominously in the ornate cave. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say ghosts lived in this well,” Muriel commented as she wrapped up silver and black fish and placed them in a cage of sticks to roast over the fire. The other fish she wrapped up in leaves, secured them with a green vine, and weighted them down with a stone to stay fresh in the water of the pool until needed.
After eating and then resting, Muriel came to some conclusions. She had to accept the fact that she was not going to agree with Glen Norman belittling her work and ignoring her positive contributions to their survival. He needed to admit he was wrong and then admit that she had done right. Only then would she take him back. Just as she had willingly made changes for him, he must voluntarily make adjustments for her. He must come to grips with his willingness to ignore her contributions to their survival. Because Muriel was adamant on this point, there would be no rousing male-male talk about how he had saved the “little woman” when they were abandoned on Makta Island once they got back to civilization.
