The Isle of Blood

He left me alone on the terrace with the breeze and the advancing shadows and the ever-present faraway jingling of the tambourines. The little Arab boy came out to fetch Rimbaud’s empty glass and asked if I wanted another ginger ale. I ordered two and drank them both quickly, one right after the other, and was still thirsty afterward, as if this lifeless land had sucked every drop of moisture from my body.

Around five o’clock the door opened behind me and I turned around, expecting—knowing—it was the doctor.

Two men stepped outside. One was very large with a shock of bright red hair. His companion was much shorter and thinner and ad no hair at all. Rurick took the chair on my right; Plešec sat down on my left.

“You will not run,” Rurick said.

I nodded. I would not run.

“Where is Warthrop?” he asked.

The question eased some of my terror. It meant the doctor was still alive. How long he—and I—would stay that way was the issue. For a brief moment I wondered how they had found me, and then I decided it was a pointless speculation. The how did not matter, and the why I already knew. Would it be if

or when? That was the salient point.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

Something sharp pressed against my stomach. Plešec was leaning toward me, his right hand hidden beneath the tabletop. When he smiled, I noticed that one of his front teeth was missing.

“I could gut you right here,” Plešec said. “You think I won’t?”

“You are staying at this hotel?” Rurick asked.

“No. Yes.”

“I will explain rules to you now,” Rurick said patiently. “Rule one: tell truth. Rule two: speak only when spoken to. You know these rules, yes? You are child. All children know these rules.”

I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good boy. Very polite boy too. I like that. Now we start again. Where is Warthrop?”

“He’s gone into town.”

“But he comes back—for you.”

“Yes. He will come back for me.”

“When does he come back?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

Rurick grunted. He looked at Plešec. Plešec nodded and put away his knife.

“We wait with you for him,” Rurick decided. “It is nice here in the shade. Nice breeze, no smell of dead fish.”

It was the best I could hope for in a nearly hopeless situation. Perhaps Rimbaud would wake up and come back downstairs. I thought about leaping from the table and hurdling the railing and chancing I could reach the quay without Rurick putting a bullet into the back of my head. I decided that chance was exceedingly slim. But if I didn’t run, if I did nothing and Rimbaud did not get up before the doctor returned, Warthrop was doomed.

Two doors. Behind one, the lady. Behind the other, the tiger. Which should he choose?

As I watched, a tern dove into the surf and emerged with a shiny fish twisting in its beak. I looked farther out and saw the edge of the world, the line between sea and sky.

It is part and parcel of the business, Will Henry. Eventually the luck runs out

.

A gull shot from its sentry post on the shore, its shadow long and fleeting on the sun-burnished sand. I remembered the shadows of the carrion birds upon the bare rock at the center of the world.

There is nothing left when you reach the center of everything, just the pit of bones inside the innermost circle.

“What is it?” asked Rurick. “Why do you cry?”

“I’m not waiting for him,” I confessed. “He is waiting for me,” I lied.

This is the time of the dead. The time of the Dahkma-nashini.

In the fourteenth hour, on the second day of the week, a boy dies of cholera in his mother’s arms. Her tears are bitter; he is her only son.

His spirit hovers nearby, troubled by her tears. He calls to her, but she gives no answer.

She holds him until his body goes cold, and then she lays him down. She lays him down, for the time has come; the evilspirit approaches to take his body, and after that she will touch him no more.

The next

Geh is begun. He is nasu now, unclean. It is time for the Nassesalars. It is the sixteenth hour of the second day.

“I do not understand,” said Rurick. “Why does he meet you up there?”

“That’s where he was meeting with Dr. Torrance.”

“Who is Dr. Torrance?”

“Dr. Warthrop’s friend. He’s helping us.”

“Helping you to do what?”

“Find a way to the island.”

“What island?”