You curse the name of Meredith Nowitki as the two of you are marched up the trail as prisoners of the Wobans. Your hands are not bound, and your captors have even let you keep your packs for the moment. But with three spears each pointed at the two of you, you estimate your odds of escaping are pretty much zero.


At a junction of trails about half a mile past the cave entrance, the Wobans turn left and descend a long hill back toward the shoreline. They are in a celebratory mood, singing boisterously like Boy Scouts marching to summer camp:


Hele mai na mea hele waho no ka pohaku o Vul-Kar


Aka 'a'ole makou e 'ae ia lakou


Malama makou i ka pohaku a pale maika'i


Ma makou e 'ai ai i na 'aihue e hele mai e 'aihue!



It's a primitive form of music to be sure, lacking the civilized innovations of both meter and rhyme. But boy, do they sure seem pleased with themselves singing it!


"Why are we putting up with this? Didn't you say Walter gave you a g—nnh!" Meredith starts to say, but the Woban behind her shoves her to shut her up. You decide it's best not to respond. Whatever your captors have in store for the two of you, you doubt it will be anything good.


You are led to a small village of thatched huts, with about two dozen dwellings. One larger structure stands atop a mound of earth, making it elevated about five feet above the rest of the settlement. Your guards march you through the center of town, and then stop you at the foot of the mound.


The leader of your guards is a fierce-looking young man with a painted face and a tattooed body. He steps forward and shouts: "E ke ali'i nui a mahalo 'ia, e hele mai e 'ike i ka mea a makou e lawe nei ia 'oe!"


A grizzled old giant emerges from the elevated hut, with wild locks of graying hair and what looks like claw marks just above his middle eye. His face is painted with bold stripes of white, black, and yellow, and despite his obvious advanced age the tattoos that adorn his entire torso are still sharply defined.


Beside the chief stands a woman who appears much younger than he is, with long black hair and a necklace adorned with seashells... and a shrunken head. All three of her eyebrows are furled in an obvious expression of scorn as she regards you and Meredith from her elevated position; by contrast, the doll-sized head dangling at her chest only has two eyes forever set in a blank, horrified gaze. You try not to stare too closely, but you're curious whether the head belongs to anybody you know.


Looking around at the inhabitants of this village as they emerge from their daily routines, you can see now that grass skirts are the only garments worn by any of the island's natives, male or female. And this answers another question you never knew you wanted to ask until just now:


Eyes are the only anatomical features that Wobans possess in threes.


"'O ka'u Manu-'opio-i-hana-me-ka-Pohaku, he aha kau e lawe mai nei i mua o ko 'oukou ali'i i keia la?" the chief says. His hair may be gray, but his voice is still forceful.


"Lawe makou ia 'oe i 'elua mau 'aihue, e ka Haku!" barks the captain of the guards. "'Elua mau holoholona i hele i ka makou 'aina e hana i ka 'aihue a me ka pepehi kanaka."


"He aha ka mea a lakou i 'aihue ai? He aha na kanaka a lakou i pepehi ai?" the woman says. Is she the chief's wife? His daughter? You can't tell.


"Pepehi lakou i ka makou mau kia'i 'ekolu me ka lakou la'au ahi," the guardsman says, "a laila laila holo i like me na daimonio weliweli i loko o ke ana!"


"A laila ua na'auao 'oe i lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i 'ane'i," the chief says, descending from the mound. "E 'ai makou i ko lakou 'i'o a luku i ko lakou 'uhane 'ino."


"'Ae, 'o ia ka makou ala," the woman says, joining the chief.


"I don't get it, what is this about?" Meredith says to you.


"E noho malie ka mea pio!" the chief spits in her face.


"'O kela holoholona ka mea like 'ole na iwi!" the woman says, looking Meredith up and down. "'Oiai 'a'ole keiki e lilo i momona ma ka 'aina i kona 'i'o."


"No laila he mea maika'i ka'u i ho'iho'i ai i 'elua mau holoholona," the guard says, gesturing to you.


"'O ke 'ano keia, e loa'a no na holoholona 'ekolu no ka makou 'aha'aina," the woman says, "e helu ana i ka mea a He-kanaka-ho'omake-i-na-Manoke i lawe mai nei ia makou i nehinei."


She points to your right, and reflexively you look in that direction even though you have no idea what she's talking about. There, tied to a tree, is a young man — a two-eyed outsider like yourselves — who looks not only terrified, but also gaunt, as if the Wobans have been saving him for something special.


The chief returns to the top of the mound, with the woman close behind. He turns and decrees, "E lawe mai i keia mau daimonio i na kanaka o ke kauhale. 'Ae i kela me keia kanaka e koho i kahi o na 'apana a kana 'ohana e 'ai ai."


Then something strange happens. Your packs are removed, and you and Meredith are each grabbed by the shoulders by one of your Woban guards. Your shirts are ripped off, and you are forcibly walked to the entrance of each hut in the village. There, one member of the household makes a mark on your bodies with a piece of charcoal, often making a show of licking his or her lips right in front of you. You can't help but notice that you are getting more interest than Meredith. It is only towards the end, when your body has been all marked up, that the last of the Woban families reluctantly place their marks on your diminutive companion.


When this ordeal is completed, the two of you are brought to where the other foreigner is tied up. You see that his body has been marked in a similar way.


Bound with your hands behind a tree of your own, you watch as the Wobans rummage through the backpack — the same backpack you bought just days ago, and which Meredith stole, and which you've barely had the opportunity to use. The three-eyed villagers toss about packages of freeze-dried meals, extra clothes, your stove and your cook set, the water filter, and so forth. The down sleeping bag explodes into a cloud of goose feathers when one unappreciative fellow digs his long fingernails into it. None of these items mean anything to these primitive people, and probably confirm their belief that you are evil spirits of some kind.


"They're going to eat us, you know," the young man says, his voice frail.


"How do you know for sure?" you say. "Can you understand that language of theirs?"


"A little, I think," he says. "My mother was a linguist, and so am I. They speak a dialect that is not unlike others in this region. The more they talk, the more I understand, I fear."


Meredith has clearly been traumatized by the ordeal of being shown around the village, and she is now slumping against her bonds. You need to keep your mind clear so you can figure a way out of this. Therefore you talk.


"A linguist, huh? That's interesting. What brings you to Woban Island, then? Studying the natives, hoping they'll help you find the Stone of Vul-Kar?"


"Heavens no, not Vul-Kar," the man says. He makes a spitting motion, but you see no saliva come out. "That's what my mother came here for, Dr. Cynthia Bolt. Just up and left one day, decided that's what she wanted to do. We never heard from her again. I came here to look for her."


You are struggling against the leather thong that binds your wrist, trying to reach your hip pocket. "Did you find her?"


"I only just arrived a few days ago. I thought if I just approached the Wobans and showed them my friendly intentions, they would help me. So that's what I did, and here I am."


Almost there! you think to yourself, trying to ignore the burning pain as your wrist strains against the leather. "You must be Dr. Brian Bolt, then."


"I am. I feel like I should be flattered you know my name, although I doubt that my academic career has made me a famous person. Or that you are here to come to my rescue."


Your fingertips can just touch the metal item in your pocket. "Before I landed on the island this morning, I received some intel on who else might be present. Your name came up."


"I will let myself feel flattered anyway," he says, but without much enthusiasm. Everything about Dr. Bolt seems defeated: his forlorn posture, his reedy voice. He is convinced he is about to die, and all your presence has done is assure him it won't be a lonely death.


"So when is the big dinner?" you say. You're finding that the trick to grasping the item in your pocket might be to jerk your right hip upward to meet your fingers halfway, thus extending the reach of your hand.


"Big dinn— Oh, you mean us," Dr. Bolt says. "I don't know how you can be so flippant about such a horrific act."


"I don't mean to be flippant, I just—"


"My family has never been very lucky," Bolt says. "My Great Uncle Ben died when he fell into a sinkhole in Florida. Aunt Lydia got run over by a cement truck crossing the road to her mailbox. But I think getting eaten by cannibals will be the most gruesome death in my family's history."


Success — the jackknife is now in your hands! If you don't manage to cut your own wrists in the process, you now have the means to free yourself from your bonds. You feel grateful that those grass skirts the Wobans wear have no pockets, and that it therefore never occurred to them to check your pockets for contraband.


But you may have another situation on your hands: Bolt's pessimism is starting to feed Meredith's anxiety.


"No, no no no no no! This can't be happening! This can't be happening!" she says.


"I'm afraid so," Bolt says. "Do you know what those marks on our bodies mean? Each household gets to claim their cut of meat."


"Oh this is so insane, I never should've come to this effing place, I just wanted to do something for myself for a change, now I'm just going to get eaten by a bunch of effing cannibals—"


"Meredith!" you say softly, trying to get her attention without attracting the Wobans. You have just finished slicing through the strip of leather at your wrists, and are now free to make your escape. But you remain in place, pretending to still be tied while you make up your mind what to do.


"—but no I had to follow this idiot, and look where it's gotten me—"


"Meredith!"


"What the eff do you want?" she finally says, as if she is about to burst into all-out rage any moment now.


"Your gun. Where is it?"


"Now all of a sudden you care about that? It's in a side pocket of that little book bag you gave me, not that it's going to do us any good way over there."


Both backpacks are about fifty feet away. You watched carefully when the Wobans were emptying your pack, but they never found the pouch on the hip strap where you stuffed Berringer's pistol while you were back inside the lava tube — nor did they even touch Meredith's bag. This means both weapons are right where you stowed them, just a short sprint away.


But now you have a quick choice to make: do you free your companions, race to retrieve the two guns, and then hope you and Meredith can shoot your way out of this pickle? Or would you be better off fleeing into the jungle on your own? Sure, yes, the moral thing to do is to free both of your fellow prisoners, but Meredith looks like she is on the verge of an outburst; the Wobans haven't been paying close attention to you since they tied you up, but if she freaks out before you can get away, then the show will be over.


At least if one of you gets away, it would be better than if all three of you became the main entrées at tonight's dinner.  


__________________________________________________

You forget the others and run for your life.

It's a cold and calculated decision you have to make, but these two companions you've inherited are liabilities. One is practically dead already, and the other is in the angry-denial phase of dealing with her situation. Together, their attitudes and their antics are sure to get you killed. You know you are the only one with a real chance of escape, and there is no point squandering the opportunity in an act of charity. Get out alone, or don't get out at all — those are your only real choices.


But how should you go about it? The only sure path to safety lies in the dense jungle that begins just a short distance behind you. There are two perfectly good weapons in the opposite direction — unguarded since your captors have no idea they exist — but the act of retrieving them would merely alert the Wobans to the fact that you have freed yourself from your bonds. If you rouse their attention, you might as well not even bother trying to escape. For this reason, you decide to dispense with the guns.


"Really, I don't know what Walter saw in you," Meredith goes on. "You haven't even been here a full day yet and look where you've gotten us. Last night we were eating swordfish, tonight we're the ones about to get eaten…."


Whatever else she says, you don't linger long enough to hear. She and Dr. Bolt are bound tightly to their trees, forced to keep their gaze focused on the Woban village ahead of them; neither can see you too well without awkwardly turning their heads. With your wrists free of the leather thong that bound them, you merely walk away from the tree to which you had been tied and walk silently into the jungle. Meredith and Bolt never see you leave.


All of your gear and provisions are behind you, though, strewn about the ground on the edge of the Woban village. Other than the jackknife that freed you, as well as the clothes that you wear, there is nothing in your possession that will help you out of your predicament. Your only asset is your desire to live.


Your exit from the village is as uneventful as you could ever want it to be. You walk into the forest as casually and inconspicuously as somebody stepping away from a noisy party for a moment of fresh air. You can hear Meredith sputtering on behind you, until finally her voice grows faint with distance. When you can no longer hear her at all, you can't tell if it makes you feel relieved or guilty. Is it possible to be both at the same time?


Perhaps you have freed yourself from your predicament, but you know the hunt for the Stone of Vul-Kar has been tabled indefinitely — and with it, your hopes of a lucrative payout from Walter Berringer. The best you can do now is make it back to the shoreline and hope that the runabout is right where you left it. Then you'll get off this hell hole and back to… well, it's difficult to think that far ahead at the moment. One step at a time.


You have no idea where exactly you are on the island, so you try and mentally retrace your progress throughout the day: landing on the east shore, climbing the ridge, going up the lava tube but then coming right back down, getting captured by the Wobans, and then heading down a short hill to their village. You deduce that you are therefore still deep in the hilly interior of the island, meaning the coast is somewhere below you, probably several miles away. If you are correct, then your way off the island begins by heading downhill, hoping there are no more cannibal outposts in your way.


It was late afternoon when you escaped, and soon the tropical twilight begins sneaking up on you. At these latitudes, darkness sets in less than half an hour after the sun sinks below the horizon. During the bit of daylight that you have left, you'd like to put as much distance as you can between you and the village. You bushwhack your way through the thick jungle underbrush, stumble across another trail, and then follow that downstream alongside a brook with brown water. As before, you find the walking to be easier along the trail, but after all that has happened today you feel as skittish as a rabbit. Every rustling of the leaves, every creaking of a tree swaying in the sultry breeze could be a Woban sneaking up behind you, and therefore even in your freedom you are never at ease.


Twilight comes and goes with no sign that you are nearing the ocean. And if hiking through the jungle in the daylight wasn't unsettling enough, being stranded alone in the dark proves to be nearly unbearable. But what else can you do? Hungry and alone, you step off the trail and find a secluded spot at the base of a tree where you hope to pass the night unseen.


It is not a quiet night, however. Behind you, back in the hills from which you have been fleeing, the Wobans seem to be putting on quite the party. There is a glow in the night sky from what must be a massive bonfire, and you can hear the distant voices singing gleefully to the rhythmic banging of a leather drum. For a second you think you hear a woman's scream, but the sound is cut off before you can fully make sense of it. It might have just been a bird.


So you have gotten way from harm's reach, and in the morning you can complete your journey to the shore and search for the runabout. But the glow in the sky and the sound of the cheerful natives makes you feel small. Never have you felt so inadequate to meet the challenges of a mission. And now that you think about it, never have you ever had to save your own hide by abandoning someone else to a tribe of cannibals. Of all the places you've been, of all the perils you've faced, none have left you feeling so defeated, so diminished, as Woban Island.


You slink back against the base of the tree, alive and physically well, but with the sense that your role in the world will never again be what it once was. It is going to be a long and sleepless time before dawn arrives.


THE END