Kanana Read online

  My makeshift boat had come aground beneath a magnificent capirona tree that grew near the bank, its roots reaching out into the water. For several minutes, I stayed where I was and pondered my probable fate—lost in the wilderness of an unexplored continent and pierced by an arrow. At last I climbed down into the water, and using the tree roots as handholds, pulled myself onto the bank. The first thing I did after that was to tie the piece of rope which dangled from the steamer trunk’s corner onto one of the roots. I didn’t want to risk it floating away while I was unable to fetch it.

  Then it was time to turn my attention to the arrow, loath as I was to do so. I sat with my left shoulder leaning on the trunk of the great tree. The arrow was protruding from my abdomen about fourteen inches, and feeling behind me I found it stuck out there even further. Grasping the shaft just behind the stone arrowhead, I broke it off. Though I couldn’t stop the scream of pain escaping my lips, I was able to muffle it. After stopping to catch my breath, and to make sure that there were no loose bits of wood clinging to the broken shaft, I reached behind with my right hand and pulled the arrow. At first it wouldn’t budge, but at last it gave way and I pulled it through. I had no sooner done so though than I collapsed, unconscious.

  * * * * *

  The two thugs were beating the man unmercifully, but they were concentrating so much on doing so that they didn’t notice me until it was too late. I kicked the first one in the back of the knee, causing him to drop down, and then punched him as hard as I could on the side of the head. The second brute turned toward me and I hit him across the chin with a left, then in the stomach with a right. He bent at the waist and I gave him an uppercut to the nose. The first man was up again and took a swing, which I blocked. I gave him two more lefts and a right. The second man made no more move toward me. As soon as he could rise, he turned tail. The other, seeing the back of his friend, followed.

  I turned my attention to the fellow on the street. It had been an attempted robbery, but the thugs had dropped the man’s wallet on the ground. Picking it up, I returned it to him after helping him to his feet. He was unsteady and I threw his arm over my shoulder as a cop ran up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Robbery. They went that way. This fellow’s badly hurt. I’m taking him to Mass General.”

  Even though I didn’t know him, I waited for the robbery victim to be cleared by the doctor. He might need an escort home. As it turned out, he wasn’t as badly injured as he could have been. He was patched up and ready to leave an hour later.

  “I think I owe you my life.”

  “I doubt that. You would have probably come away a few dollars lighter and perhaps with a few broken bones.”

  “Preston Quincy,” he said, sticking out his hand. “Otis and Quincy Shipping.”

  “Henry Goode. Newly arrived in town.” I accepted his firm handshake.

  “Are you looking for work, Mr. Goode?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Then I have a position for you.”

  “You don’t know me from Adam. How do you know I’m the man for you?”

  “Oh, you’re the man. You are the man.”

  * * * * *

  As consciousness returned, I could easily detect the smell of my own blood, which covered me. As this registered in my mind, I became aware of something else—the feeling that something, something big, was moving very close to me. I opened my eyes to see a lion. It was gigantic, far larger than its African cousins. Tawny brown with a thick black mane, it stood not more than a dozen feet from me, panting in the heat of the late afternoon. It made no move to attack. It simply watched me with a sort of casual detachment. I slowly reached for my pistol, only to find an empty holster on my belt.

  Then it made a noise. I would have expected a lion to roar and I would have expected the roar from this particular lion to be a mighty and a frightening one because of its size. It didn’t roar. It made a series of moaning sounds. “Mmwuugh. Mmwuugh. Mmwuugh.” It seemed to wait expectantly, and when nothing happened it made the same series of noises again. This time it was answered from somewhere nearby. “Mmwuugh. Mmwuugh. Mmwuugh.” Obviously this lion was the leader of its pride and having found helpless prey was calling the others to feast on me.

  I was far less surprised to find myself the probable meal of a pride of lions than I was at what happened next. The figure of a human being dropped from the tree above to land right next to me. It was a female, though it took me a moment to recognize her as such because of her appearance. Naked but for a loin cloth, she was covered from head to feet in a layer of thick brown mud, which also caked her hair, leaving almost nothing of her humanity visible except for two bright green eyes staring into mine. She was thin and athletic, with well-tone muscles that flexed with every move. Paying no attention to the lion, she ripped open my shirt and pressed a handful of leaves onto my wound. I winced as the foliage poked the swollen and tender injury, but froze again when the lion took a step toward me.

  The strange mud-covered girl lowered her face to just in front of mine and stared into my eyes with a look of wonder in her own. I could see now, not only the brilliant green of those eyes, but could also see just around them, where the thick coating of mud had been wiped away before it dried. Her skin, revealed only in this tiny area, was very light. It was in fact, at least a shade lighter than my own.

  “Mmwuugh,” the lion moaned again. Then it took several steps toward me. I couldn’t help but be fascinated by the huge fangs in the panting mouth.

  “Mmwuugh.” To my surprise, the girl answered the lion with the same sound. It must have been her that I heard before from a distance. She stood up, crossed over to the lion, and gave him a shove. I expected her actions to be met with a full-on attack. But the lion, who must have possessed seven or eight times the weight of the girl, allowed himself to be pushed away. He turned and wandered away into the nearby jungle.

  The girl sat down beside me again and graced me with a broad smile full of perfect white teeth. She pressed the poultice she had already applied with the palm of her hand, and reaching behind me, placed a similar poultice on the entry wound. Handily ripping a good portion of my shirt off, she tied it around my stomach in a crude bandage. Then she left me for only a moment as she walked to the river ten feet away, and brought back a drink for me, using a very large leaf curled into the form of a cup. She sat cross-legged next to me as I drank.

  “Kanana,” she said when I was finished, placing her hand upon her chest.

  “Kanana,” I repeated. “You’re supposed to be a legend.”

  “Kanana,” she insisted. She had a deep, almost boyish voice.

  Reaching over, she placed the palm of her hand on my chest and looked at me expectantly. With a vicious predator no longer looming, I took leave to examine her more closely. She was at that moment closer to me physically that most women I had ever in my life known. Though it was coated in mud, I could tell that her hair was long and had been braided together with shells and other beads, just as I had seen some of the natives do in Abbeyport. I could make out nothing concerning the condition of her skin, as it was completely smeared over, but her perfect breasts were presented directly in front of me, muddied but otherwise bare. Though her arms, legs, and torso were all well muscled they did not appear unfeminine. Quite the contrary, and I couldn’t help but stare. But my fascination was not due to lewdness or unseemliness, but a simple appreciation of beauty. She was like an ancient Greek statue of Artemis come to life.

  She pressed her hand again to my chest.

  “Henry Goode,” I said.

  “Henry Goode,” she repeated. She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Good Henry. Good Henry Goode.”

  “Yes, you sound like the children in my grammar school. Kanana,” I said, pointing first at her and then back at myself. “Henry.”

  “Henry. Henry Goode.”

  “Could I have some water?” I made a cup with my hand and held it to my mouth, then pointed to the river. �
�Water?”

  The girl jumped up and took three swift steps to the bank, returning seconds later with the leaf full of water. I drank it down and she refilled her ad hoc cup twice more.

  “Thank you. I’ve probably lost quite a bit of blood.”

  As I said this, I noticed that the pain had mostly gone from the arrow wound. Only when I stopped to think about it, did the throbbing return. The plants. The plants that the girl had pressed over the two holes through my middle must have had an analgesic quality.

  “Jungle medicine,” I said, more to myself than to her.

  “Mm?” When I looked back up at her, the girl lifted the leaf again as if asking whether I was still thirsty.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I really don’t feel like it, but I should probably eat something.”

  “Mm?”

  I made eating and chewing pantomimes.

  Kanana, for what else could I call her, sat down cross-legged next to me and picked up a small leather satchel that I had until this point, not noticed. Reaching inside, she pulled out another wad of the plants that she had doctored me with and handed it to me.

  “No. Food.” I again pantomimed eating.

  She pushed my hand holding the plants toward my mouth.

  “I can’t… I want food. Well, I don’t really, but I probably will…”

  She grabbed the leaves from my hand and shoved them into my mouth. When I didn’t immediately being chewing, she took my jaw in her hand and moved it up and down. I resigned myself and began chewing. Almost immediately I felt my tongue going numb. A few seconds later, I felt an overwhelming sleepiness come over me.

  “Good Henry Goode,” she said, just before I passed into sleep.

  Chapter Four: The Jungle Girl

  I started awake and for the life of me could not remember where I was or how I got there. This wasn’t my home in Boston and I wasn’t propped against a tree near a river in the jungles of Elizagaea either. I was lying on my back on something soft. Feeling down, I found it was a pile of straw or hay. Complete blackness surrounded me and looking up I could see neither stars nor moon. I tried to sit up and immediately felt pain shooting through my side. If that wasn’t an indication of where I was, it was at least a reminder of recent events. The air felt cool, but I was drenched in sweat—most probably a result of fever.

  Getting to my feet, I found that I was under a roof of some kind far above my head, but that I could see stars off to my left. With great effort I walked in that direction, but had taken no more than five steps when someone grabbed me and jerked me back.

  “No Henry Goode!” said a female voice.

  “Kanana?”

  “Kanana,” she confirmed.

  “What is it? What’s the matter? Where are we?”

  Though I don’t know whether she understood any of my questions, she guided my hand down to the ground and along a smooth stone floor beneath my feet. Just a few inches in front of me it ended. I was standing on the edge of some great precipice and had been about to step off. Pulling me along by my shirt, she led me back to where I had started and guided me back down to the bed of straw.

  My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness but I could only make out her outline. Kanana could evidently see just fine, for she pushed something into my hand. I could feel that it was some kind of fruit and when I took a bite I recognized it as a plum. While I ate, she left me where I was, and though I wanted her to stay with me, by the time I finished eating the plum I had drifted back to sleep.

  This time, if I did return to that vile dream, I had no memory of it when I awoke. I opened my eyes to see bright daylight streaming into the room where I lay. It was a stone room, or that is to say, it was most of a stone room. There was a ceiling and a floor and three walls, all constructed of massive stone blocks fitted together with brilliant precision. Each of the three walls had windows. Two of them looked out over the unbroken jungle below, revealing that this room along with whatever other parts of the complex existed, were built on a granite mountainside poking above the lush green country. The third window revealed an enormous rock jutting into the sky. On the fourth side of the room, not only was the entire wall missing, a good portion of the mountain had fallen away in a landslide, leaving only a narrow winding path down to the ground hundreds of feet below. I felt far too shaky in my current state to make the descent and wondered that I had ever been able to make it up here.

  My jungle girl was nowhere to be seen but it was obvious that she made this her home, at least sometimes. The mat where I had slept was on one side of the room, covered in a mattress I now recognized as savannah grasses. On the other side was a similar bed, along with several pieces of ancient luggage. Opening them up I found clothing that might have come from America or Europe but that was some ten or fifteen years out of style, not that I kept up with such things. There were a few very nice pieces of gold jewelry and a small personal journal.

  I couldn’t read the book. It was in a foreign language that I was able to identify as Russian only by the peculiar additions to the alphabet. From the inside cover I determined that this was the journal of one Aleksandra Christyakova-Romanov. I scanned the pages and found the names Robert James Haldane and Aleksandra Haldane. From this scant evidence I pieced together a picture of a Russian woman who married an Englishman. Perhaps he had visited Russia on business or in some diplomatic capacity, had met the young woman and married her. I knew of course that Romanov was the family name of the Russian monarchy, but surely there were others as well with that surname.

  Stuck between the pages in the back of the book were five photographs. They were of people I could not know, of course. Nor could I identify the locations where they were taken. Three were snapshots of people standing in front of unidentifiable buildings. All that I knew was that they had not been taken in Elizagaea—most likely somewhere in Europe. The fourth was a baby picture in an opal shaped vignette. The child was curly-haired and swaddled and could have been a boy or a girl. The final picture was a studio portrait of three people—a distinguished looking man with a thin mustache, a beautiful woman in a long white dress, and a pretty little girl of about six or seven. None of the pictures but this last was labeled. It had on the back, written with a very light touch of pencil in small delicate letters, “Robert, Me, Katarina, 18 April 1895.”

  Had I discovered the origin of my jungle girl? Was she the child in the picture—this Katarina? Kanana could have been about twenty-four years old, though it was difficult to judge from what I had seen of her mud-covered form. But if this was true, what was she doing here? I could well imagine the route taken by the Haldanes—across the Atlantic, riding the rails of America’s transcontinental railroad, and then across the Pacific by ship. But why? There was no way to know, unless I could translate the journal or if Kanana/Katarina could remember and tell me.

  Putting back the journal and other items where I had found them, I again gazed out of the three windows. In every direction, the jungle seemed to go on unbroken forever. Stepping to the edge of the cliff where the room’s fourth wall had fallen away and leaning outward, I could see other parts of the ruin stretching off to the left and right. This was some sort of ancient fortress, though I couldn’t recognize from any of the stonework what people had been responsible for constructing it. Not surprising, considering I was a stranger in this land and not many people from Europe or America had ventured this far into the interior. Below, I could see that the small pathway I had noticed earlier was part of a series of trails that wound along the sides of the rocky mountain. In some places the trail became so narrow that I didn’t feel very confident about descending even had I been in the best condition. And I wasn’t in the best condition.

  I suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired, and realized once again that my side hurt. I pulled up my shirt and found that the poultice Kanana had applied had fallen away. The wound wasn’t bleeding, but it was puffy, red, and swollen. Just looking at it made me sick to my stomach and I went back to my makeshi
ft bed, and lay back down. I felt chilled, but realized again, that it was probably fever.

  “I think I’m going to die,” I told myself.

  “Henry Goode,” said Kanana, suddenly there.

  Maybe it wasn’t so suddenly. I had probably fallen back asleep. Sitting up, I found her beside me, holding a large platter made of wood. Arrayed across this simple plate were slices of assorted fruits and small pieces of cooked meat speared upon sticks. The jungle girl pushed the platter toward me, and then screwed her face up as if trying to remember something.

  “Eat, Henry Goode,” she said.

  I was suddenly ravenously hungry, even though part of me revolted at the idea of eating. Since I now thought that I was likely to die though, I determined that dying on a full stomach was a much better alternative than depriving myself. The food was delicious. I couldn’t guess what manner of meat I was eating, certainly not beef, but it was cut very thin and was cooked well. I ate all of it and then started in on the fruit.

  “You do speak English,” I said, my mouth still partially full. “You’re the girl in the picture, aren’t you? The picture in the book?”

  She cocked her head to one side, her clear green eyes devoid of comprehension.

  “You speak.”

  “Eat,” she repeated.

  “Katarina,” I said.

  “Kanana.”

  “Kanana’s just a legend.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that this girl could have been lost in the jungle for years. If she and her parents came to Elizagaea shortly after the portrait in the book had been taken, then she could have been alone here for more than a decade. That was more than enough time to scar the brain of a young girl, left all alone. Perhaps she could no longer remember her former life. She could be permanently addlebrained for all I knew.