Beside a Burning Sea (35 page)

Isabelle looked at the hill. “I hope so.”

The foursome proceeded down the beach, parts of which were inundated with dead fish. Earlier that morning, the fish had appeared. No one had understood how or why the fish had died until Nathan realized that they’d likely perished during the naval battle—perhaps poisoned by the oil of a sinking ship or killed by exploding shells. The fish, numbering in the hundreds, were now covered in crabs and flies. Joshua had thought about burying them so as to remove the stench, but needn’t have bothered—most of the fish were already half-eaten.

Arriving at the end of the cliffs, Joshua turned right and strode into the jungle. Isabelle, Annie, and Akira followed him. The jungle continued to seem quieter than before the typhoon. Only a few mosquitoes harassed them, and with the soil still somewhat damp, seldom did branches crack underfoot. The hill loomed above them and they soon started to climb. The way wasn’t easy, and as they struggled up the slippery rise, they called Scarlet’s name. No response came.

Reaching the top of the hill, they continued to shout her name and peer into the jungle. Joshua studied the distant surroundings and noted that no ships were present. The sea and sky were little more than two shades of blue that merged at the horizon. Annie and Isabelle were still calling out when Akira suddenly put his hands to his forehead.

“What?” Annie asked anxiously, reaching over to grab his arm. “Akira, what is it?”

He shook his head, biting his lower lip. “She is . . . gone.”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“Below. Look below.”

For the first time since they’d been atop the hill, Joshua, Isabelle, and Annie looked nearly straight down. Far below, Scarlet lay motionless on her back. A large amount of blood made the rocks upon which she rested glisten. Her eyes appeared to be open and unmoving, and without question she was dead.

“Scarlet!” Annie screamed. “No, no, no!”

“Oh, Scarlet,” Isabelle muttered, stepping next to her sister, instinctively putting an arm around her.

“No!” Annie repeated, shaking her head. “It can’t be true! It can’t!”

“She must have—”

“But how?” Annie asked in disbelief, interrupting Isabelle. “How could she be gone? She told me that she was careful! She said . . . she said this place was safe!”

Joshua dropped his head in sorrow and frustration. He made a sign of the cross and briefly prayed for her. Only when his prayer was finished did he study the area before him, the spot from which Scarlet must have fallen. A flat, rectangular slab of rock perched atop the precipice. From the edge of the rock, the drop immediately commenced. Noting the loose sand atop the rock and how it tilted toward emptiness, Joshua realized how easily she might have slipped. “That rock’s not safe,” he said quietly. “She must have been looking through the binoculars, and slipped.”

“We should go to her, yes?” Akira asked, wanting to comfort Annie but feeling constrained by the presence of Joshua and Isabelle.

Sniffing, Annie led the way, retracing their steps, her misery causing her to stumble several times. “She was looking out for us,” Annie said. “We should have looked out for her. Oh, why didn’t we look out for her?”

No one responded, as each of their minds occupied a different realm. Isabelle wondered how they would bury her. Joshua asked himself if he’d made a mistake in granting her wish to search for ships. And Akira scanned the ground before him, believing that Scarlet was too careful and capable to fall from a cliff. However, as thoroughly as Akira looked, as near certain as he was that something was amiss, he saw nothing but their footprints.

After dropping to the approximate height of where Scarlet lay, the four survivors circumvented the hill. “Do you want to . . . see her?” Joshua asked, as Scarlet came into view.

“We’re nurses,” Isabelle replied. “And she was our friend. Of course we want to see her.”

Scarlet lay between two rocks. Her open eyes were bloodshot. Her face was red from being exposed all afternoon to the sun. The rocks below her were covered in blood. Just to be certain, Isabelle felt for a pulse. Finding none, she closed Scarlet’s eyes. “She’s been dead for hours,” Isabelle said softly.

Akira dropped to his knees. Though he felt bad for this woman—whom he hadn’t known well, but nonetheless liked—he forced himself not to mourn for her or to console Annie. Instead, his eyes examined Scarlet as quickly as possible, settling upon a bruise on her neck.

“Why are you looking at her like that?” Isabelle asked.

Though tempted to mention the oddity of the bruise, Akira decided that it wasn’t the time or the place to discuss such matters. “She was Christian, yes?” he asked, knowing that she was.

“Yes,” Isabelle answered. “And we should bury her now. Before Ratu sees her like this.”

No additional words were exchanged as Joshua lifted Scarlet. He followed Isabelle down the remainder of the hill and into the jungle. After carefully setting Scarlet upon the ground beneath an old tree, he used his hands to dig in the soft soil. Akira started working beside him.

Annie sniffed, absently wiping her nose. “We’ll . . . we’ll be back.”

“Where are we going?” Isabelle asked.

“Don’t bury her yet,” Annie said, taking her sister’s hand.

Joshua and Akira watched the two women disappear. Then they returned their attention to the hole, widening it between them. “Should I have let Scarlet go?” Joshua asked, pulling a root from the soil. “Maybe it should have been my job to watch the sea.”

Akira picked up a flat rock and used it to dig. “She wanted to go, yes?”

“She did.”

“Then your choice was correct.”

Joshua continued to dig. “Why did you kneel so close to her? I know that Buddhists kneel, but I don’t think you were praying.”

“I will pray later,” Akira replied. “Please look at her neck.”

Leaning toward Scarlet, Joshua quickly spied the bruise. “What do you make of it?”

“Something soft hit her there. A rock would scratch, yes? But she has no scratches.”

Joshua touched the heavy binoculars that were still draped around her neck and amazingly were unbroken. “These could easily do it.”

“Easily? So sorry, but I think not. The bruise is too thin and long.”

“But it had to be the binoculars. Nothing else makes sense.”

Akira started to dig again, his pulse quickening with the scenes that formed in his mind. “The edge of a hand could leave such a mark.”

“A hand? You’re saying she was killed? But why? There’s no one else on this island. There’s—”

“There is Roger. And where was he today?”

“Roger’s a brute, and a dangerous one at that, but he wouldn’t kill Scarlet. There’s just no motive.”

Lifting a rock from the soil, Akira continued to dig. “May I tell you something?”

“Please don’t ask me that question again. Tell me whatever you’d like.”

“When I was interrogating the prisoner, we spoke in Japanese.”

“I remember.”

“He asked me to fight with him, to attack you while he attacked Roger. And when he asked me this I think . . . I think I saw Roger tense, as if preparing to defend himself.”

“You believe that he understood you?” Joshua asked incredulously. “That he speaks Japanese?”

“I am saying that he appeared to understand me. And perhaps he is not who you think he is. Perhaps Scarlet saw something that she was not supposed to.”

Joshua didn’t immediately respond, though he stopped digging, his face tightening in consternation. “Mother Mary, are you sure?” he asked, wondering if Roger had betrayed them. The mere thought of such treachery nauseated him.

“I am not sure. Perhaps.”

“But . . . but could you test him? Could you somehow test him?”

Voices emerged from the jungle, and Akira nodded. “I will test him in the morning. Be ready.”

Joshua stared at Scarlet’s bruise, reeling at the possibility of Roger being responsible for the sinking of
Benevolence
. Forcing himself to start digging once more, he glanced up at the approaching figures of Isabelle and Annie. “Where did you go?” he asked in an unsteady voice as Isabelle emerged from behind a bush.

She gave him an odd look and then pointed behind her to Annie, who carried several beautiful bird feathers. “She loved birds,” Annie said softly, her face wet with tears and sweat. “So it seemed . . . like they should travel with her.”

Akira nodded, proud of her for thinking such thoughts, and disappointed in himself for not properly honoring Scarlet. Pushing his conversation with Joshua from his mind, he bowed slightly to Annie. She sat beside him, and for the first time she openly held his hand in the presence of others. He looked into her bloodshot eyes and felt a sudden urge to pull her against him. Instead he squeezed her hand, which caused tears to tumble down her face.

Joshua carefully lifted Scarlet’s body into the hole. Annie leaned forward and placed two feathers in each of Scarlet’s hands. The feathers were green and red, likely from one of the many parrots that inhabited the island. “She just wanted to go home,” Annie said. “To go home to her family.”

“Let us hope that she still will,” Akira replied.

The four of them knelt on the damp earth and prayed. The Christians prayed that Scarlet was in heaven, and that her family would find the strength to handle her death. The Buddhist prayed that she was being reborn and that her path toward Nirvana was growing short.

After everyone had opened their eyes and it appeared as if each was no longer praying, Joshua said quietly, “I’ll bury her.” Looking from Isabelle to Annie, he added, “I know that you’re her friends, but friends don’t . . . they don’t need to see everything. So please go back to camp and wait for me.”

Akira bowed to Joshua and then rose. Wordlessly, Annie and Isabelle followed him as he stepped away from the old tree, from the spot that would cradle Scarlet forever. Joshua sadly watched his wife depart, wishing that tomorrow he could take her to the house she wanted by the sea. Scooping up handfuls of soil, he began to bury Scarlet. He buried her from the feet upward, because he knew that it would be most difficult to place the dirt on her face. And he was right. When the soil covered her mouth, he knew that at least upon Earth, she would never taste again. When it covered her nose, he knew that whatever scents she held dearest were forever gone to her. And when it covered her eyes, he shook his head in profound sadness, for she’d never again look upon her brothers or her birds, and from what little he knew of her, it seemed that she’d miss these sights the most.

THAT NIGHT THE FIRE burned lower than usual, as if flames were by nature jovial and they too were in mourning. No one bothered to add additional branches or to stir up hot coals. The remnants of dinner sat idle on a large leaf—unusual because such leftovers were always immediately tossed into the sea. Conversation, which had been rare, tended to focus on either Scarlet or a desire to go home. Ratu had taken her death hard and now sat almost motionless on a log, his fingers wrapped around the shark-tooth necklace.

Joshua, who wore the binoculars, occasionally left the cave and searched the moonlit seas for ships. A formation of Zeros had flown over the island not long after he’d buried Scarlet. They’d proceeded due east, several trailing smoke and one flying erratically.

A year earlier, Joshua would have felt guilty about having his duty supersede his desire to quietly reflect upon and pray for a fallen comrade. But he’d since learned that if he didn’t adhere to his duty, he’d end up watching others die. And so he alternated between talking quietly with Isabelle and inspecting the seas.

Akira sat away from the fire, near the entrance of the cave. Annie was close by, and though they conversed, she was much less talkative than usual. Not surprised by her desire for silence, and not wanting to intrude upon it, Akira surreptitiously watched Roger and formulated a plan. Though uncertain whether Roger could speak Japanese, Akira’s instincts told him that Roger was hiding something.

Akira’s plan was almost complete when Annie found his eyes. “Can we go for a walk?” she asked quietly.

He nodded and rose to his feet. Outside, the thick air was warmer than it had been for several days. The night was clear, and the light from the moon and stars faintly illuminated the island and sea. Akira thought about how this part of the world now lay within an infinite shadow, and how in North Africa and in the Soviet Union and in the swells of the Atlantic, men were fighting beneath the bright sun.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to death,” Annie said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ve seen hundreds die, but . . . but they all seem to hit me.”

He helped her circumvent a tide pool. “That is good.”

“Good?”

“That means you are still alive. I have seen men who are used to death, and they are as dead as the people who lay lifeless before them.”

She continued to hold his hand after they had rounded the pool. “Nanking, it didn’t . . . do that to you? It didn’t harden you?”

An image of the little girl flashed before him. “Nanking will always, always be a wound within me. But even though that wound almost killed me, I still live.”

She sighed, intertwining her fingers with his. “No one should have such wounds. It’s not right. To fight two world wars in twenty years isn’t right.”

“There cannot be a third.”

“With men ruling the world? That seems wishful thinking.”

They walked in silence, their feet moving from stone to sand to stone. Akira still wasn’t used to holding a woman’s hand in the open, as he had never done such a thing; it was frowned upon in his country. But the feel of her palm against his greatly warmed him. “May I tell you something?” he asked, wanting to share his feelings with her, hoping that they might give her solace in her time of need.

“If you want to.”

“I would like to tell you that you are . . . my greatest discovery.”

“What? What do you mean?”

He glanced at her eyes, which seemed almost too full for her somewhat girlish face. “As a boy, I discovered small worlds within mountains. As a young man, I discovered words. And now I have discovered you. And that discovery has . . . it has made me complete.”