Elloch woke to a cool throbbing upon his forehead.
He opened his mouth, and the raindrops resurrected his tongue. Elloch blinked open his eyes to the rainstorm and judged his surroundings. The makoro swayed slightly, stirred by waters kinder and calmer than the sea. Elloch grunted as his blistered hands grabbed the makoro’s sides and hoisted his weight into a sitting position. Malek’s frightful corpse stared back at him, and Elloch sobbed for finding it impossible to dream the loss only a nightmare.
But he opened his eyes again after the tears ran their course. He felt thankful at least for the rain that soothed his inflamed skin. The makoro had drifted ashore. Perhaps the taking of one twin was enough so that the sea did not need a complete pair.
After removing his sandals for the rashes the water summoned between his toes, the shore’s sand burned his feet as he took to land. The beach was narrow, and Elloch did not stumble very far before entering the shadow provided by a thick wall of trees. Unlike in the swamp, the ground beneath those leaves remained firm. No lom swayed from the earth to conceal the llungruel lizard. He listened intently after each of his footfalls. He held his breath at each snap. The forest was so different than the swamp, and Elloch’s imagination created frightful predators in his unfamiliar mind. Still, the forest answered his noises with silence, and Elloch strode deeper into the wood.
Elloch peeked often into the overhead canopy. It was a rare sunbeam that penetrated to the forest floor. Hunger clawed at his stomach, eventually evaporating much of Elloch’s caution. He pulled strange fruit from the branches scraping at his face. He focused his discipline to nibble at the unknown pulp. But his stomach did not revolt. His vision did not blur, nor did his head swoon. Such was ample proof to him that he did not feed upon poison, and Elloch gorged his appetite on the magenta fruit.
He walked for many hours. Elloch thought morning passed into afternoon though he perceived no change in the forest’s dim illumination. He occasionally considered the wisdom of leaving the makoro, and his brother’s corpse, behind him. He was unsure if he would find the direction back to the shore if he desired to retreat. And so he plunged deeper into the woods, the shadows doing what they could to soothe his blistered skin, the moist fruit replenishing much of his thirst. Darkness descended thickly. His sight dimmed, and his legs tired. Elloch crumbled before a thick trunk and gave himself to visions of purple, pulsating birds and small, scurrying lizards he failed to judge as dream or as nightmare.
The beating of drums woke Elloch in the dark forest. The rhythm raced his heart, and Elloch again stepped cautiously deeper into the woods towards the beating sound. He badly missed Malek. He felt afraid. He wished for his father’s encouraging nod, for his mother’s warm grip on his shoulder. He missed Talson’s laughter.
Elloch trembled as he grew nearer to the drum’s beating. He wanted nothing more to do with the old ways. He felt such fear. He had lost too much. He thought perhaps the outsiders’ were correct, that their ships had brought a better way.
The drumbeats pulled him forward. Elloch discerned a soft glow far ahead of him. The orange light expanded with each step, casting shadows through the forest, long tendrils of black that danced with the light flickering in front of Elloch. The drums grew louder, filling Elloch’s ears as he lowered to the ground to crawl closer to the bonfire the thinning trees exposed before him.
Twisting silhouettes of men and women danced around the fire, outsiders twisting to the music the drums offered. The firelight accentuated their long limbs and cast orange and red highlights upon the elbows and forearms of gray skin. Men and women clutched at one another. They tore at each other’s blouses and jackets to reach the softer, paler parts hidden beneath. Naked, the dancers fell upon the ground, where they writhed and contorted, panted and bayed, as they howled for the drumbeat to spin them again into the mad dance rotating around the conflagration.
Elloch crouched unseen in the darkness beyond the fire. He looked into the faces illuminated by the flames and saw ghastly expressions, incredibly twisted smiles that menaced hatred, tilted, oversized eyes that wafted fear. An instant later, with a dancer’s twist and a step further around the bonfire, Elloch recognized that each who circled the flames wore an elaborate creature mask. A mask like those hung upon Glennis’s wall covered every face.
Elloch gasped. His mind threw a spark. Staring at the wild masks twirling around the fires, he realized he had arrived at the sacred island.