The latch rattled again, harder this time. Sweat rolled down the sides of my face. Somewhere beneath the fear, there was a thrill. I could almost taste it, like chimney ash. In the next minute, I might blind a man with my own hands. It made me feel savage and powerful.
Outside, somewhere in the jungle, one of the bloodhounds howled. A small ripple of hope.
Suddenly the door went still. The dog howled again, and then several more joined it. They had picked up a scent. I tried to peer out the window but saw nothing. The shears were slick in my sweating palm.
Then, as sudden as they had come, the footsteps left.
I waited ten seconds. Twenty. I lost count. Still, the doorknob did not move. I forced my legs to walk to the window. The porch outside was totally empty.
Had the dogs frightened him off? Or was he just around the corner, waiting for me? I stood still as long as I could before the dust dancing in the air began to choke me like poison. I pounded at the latch with the shears until I could twist it. Slowly, I inched open the door. Sweat rolled off my face and soaked my blouse. I took a step onto the porch.
There was no one there. He’d gone. But he’d left behind wet footprints on the sagging wooden porch, interspersed with my bloody prints. I crouched down to study the print closest to the door. It dwarfed my own. He’d been barefoot, which was strange. Stranger still was the number of toes.
One, two, three.
Twenty
I JERKED UP FROM the porch floor, searching the jungle. An eerie feeling of watching eyes crept over me. The island was full of life, and yet I saw none of it. The living things here had a way of creeping silently, like ghosts, keeping to the shadows, whispering. The spaces between the leaves could hold all kinds of dangers.
I snatched the walking stick and jumped off the porch, wincing as my tender bare soles connected with the ground. I hurried to the edge of the clearing. Sweat poured down my neck, pooling in the space between my br**sts. Ahead, the grass bent from someone recently passing through. An insect trilled behind me. The jungle watched my every move.
I turned and cut across the clearing, following the direction of the dogs’ barking. Tall blades of grass slashed at my skirt. Through breaks in the trees I could see the volcano plume but there should have been a second column of smoke from the compound’s chimney. Either the fire wasn’t going or I was too far away. I decided to circle the island until I found a road. The terrain flattened gradually as I neared the coast, but I hit a patch of dense brambles. My walking stick became a machete. At least beating back the vines gave me a distraction from not knowing which way to go. And not knowing if Edward was all right.
He might be wandering the island, lost like me. I know about the scandal, he’d said. But if that was so, why hadn’t he said anything earlier? Why had he agreed to come if he knew my father was a madman?
I beat back another bramble with my walking stick. Edward Prince was as difficult to figure out as the twists and turns in the jungle labyrinth. Every direction looked the same. Big, woolly vines clung to the trunks of many-armed trees. Brambles tangled like a wild horse’s mane.
A cry sounded in the distance, and a bolt of fear propelled me forward into a run. The three-toed creature was still out there—man or beast or murderer, I didn’t know. Maybe watching, even now. Waiting for nightfall. Following my steps like a phantom. The faster I ran, the greater the fear swelled. I wiped slick sweat off my forehead but more took its place. I started sprinting, faster and faster, until I crashed into a copse of leafy stalks. When I fought my way through, I found myself next to a small, winding stream.
I collapsed on the bank. The thump of my pulse was deafening. A bird warbled, and then another. But no phantom pursuer crashed through the jungle behind me. My breath slowed.
I splashed water on my burning face and lay back on the moss and leaves, letting my lungs fill with air. Nothing about the island was predictable. It was as alive as a person, full of whims and lies and contradictions. I didn’t know what to trust. Each snap sounded like a pursuer. Every half-trampled path led to nothing. How could I even trust my own instincts? They had led me to the island to test some theory—some desperate hope—that the world had been wrong about my father.
My instincts had been wrong.
My vision was blurry and my head pounded—I’d missed my injection that morning. I wiped my face and noticed a streak of red on my arm. Blood bubbled from the thorn scratches. I touched my forehead, my cheeks, my neck. Blood stuck to my skin like tar. I’d become prey to the island but, as in my dream, I felt no pain. Only a fascination with the webs of slashes and bloody marks on my body. I was sliding, slipping away from humanity.
Had my father slid the same way?
Something fast and damp darted across my hand. I sat up with a shriek. Across the stream, something flashed again, then closer, moving incredibly fast. It was about the size of a rat but of an odd fleshy color. The longer I sat still, the more creatures appeared, slinking around on the other side of the stream. I bent forward slowly to take a drink, cupping the water in my hands, and looked up to find one standing on its hind legs on a rock, head cocked. I gasped. Not afraid, just bewildered. I’d never seen anything like it. It was a little smaller than a rat, furless, with a face like a snapping turtle. The thing squawked and disappeared back into the foliage. For a few moments, not a single leaf rustled.
Biologists discovered new species all the time, but these seemed unnatural somehow. My thoughts were so consumed that I hardly noticed that the water had turned a dark tint like rust. The little creatures congregated on the other stream bank, leaping and chattering.
“What are you so excited about?” I muttered, wading over to them. The creatures scattered, revealing a mauled chunk of flesh and fur—one of the rabbits I’d set free. I jolted in surprise. It was ripped apart but uneaten. Blood still trickled into the stream.
A recent kill.
Something much bigger than the rat things had killed it. Maybe something with three claws, big enough to kill the islanders. I scurried to the opposite bank, tunneling into a thicket of bamboo to hide. The ratlike creatures vanished. The jungle filled with the trickling sound of water and the ever-present calls of birds. Slowly, I made out two voices.
Arguing.
The voices had a strange, rough lilt, like Balthasar’s. Thou shalt not crawl in the dirt, I remembered him saying. Thou shalt not kill other men. The voices of islanders, which meant they were likely loyal to my father and could take me to the compound. But something held me back. There was no proof the murderer was a wild animal. It wouldn’t be hard for a man to disguise knife wounds to look like claw marks.