the ISLE

Dangerous Encounter

Lantern came awake suddenly, alert and listening for what had awakened him. Still night, his eyes could not penetrate the cave's inky blackness. Laying quiet, breathing lightly, he listened. There! Ears registering a slight hint of sound, he sat up, feeling for his knife. Quietly pulling off his boots so they would not echo against the rocky passage, he slowly crept along the narrow passage to the entrance. The waxing moon shed silvery light on the jungle around him.

Not yet knowing what awakened him, he stood motionless, his eyes continually sweeping the area. A slip of movement caught his attention, and Jack focused on it without turning his head. Without a doubt, something or someone was out there. Fixing his sight on the shadow within the darkness, he watched intently for more movement. It seemed like an eternity that he stood there waiting, but at last, his patience was rewarded. A dark form edged cautiously forward, becoming an entity separate from the night. Any doubts Lantern had that he had been undetected vanished as the apparition came directly toward him, slowly but unhesitatingly.

As quietly as he could, he slipped back into the gloom of the cave grabbing his boots as he passed them. He had no idea what kind of individual was coming, nor if said person was alone. If it came to combat, he wanted them both to be at the disadvantage of darkness within the cave.

A small scuff on the rocky passage told him that the cave was no longer host to one person. For an instant, the black silhouette stood framed in the entrance, and then it vanished. Not sure if the person had advanced into the darkness around him or retreated into the jungle he stood quietly. Several minutes passed with no sound. Finally, comfortable that he was alone, Lantern moved back to the entrance of the cave, scanning the area. A brief examination of the ground for prints betrayed nothing, the moonlight not bright enough. He would have to wait until dawn.

Convinced it was unwise to sleep, Lantern prepared to wait out the night. Long knife in his hand, his eyes never lost focus as they kept a vigil on the night. When the rising sun finally drove the shadows back and the sky turned grey, he left the cave and surveyed his surroundings. Nothing had changed since his late-night visitor vanished, but he had learned that it paid to exercise caution.

Stepping lightly from the narrow passage Lantern stopped, examining the clay ground that led up to the entrance. There were light marks of bare feet, almost invisible to him. Continually checking his surroundings, he made his way into the trees, following a barely visible set of footprints.

The sun was hot on his back and sweat dripped into his eyes when he finally lost the tracks on a rocky outcrop some miles south of the cave. As a crow flies it should have taken half the time to reach this point, but the person he was following seemed to meander about the jungle with no real purpose. It made no sense and Lantern began to feel uneasy like he was walking into a trap. The only reason to lollygag when you knew someone was on your trail was if you had reason to be confident in the outcome.

Some instinct made him flatten to the ground and crawl to the cover of the ground brush. Something was not right. With the patience born of the sea, he waited. Minutes ticked by the humid jungle air sweltering. Sweat ran in rivulets down his back and his arms ached from holding his position still he did not move. Almost giving up, thinking his instincts wrong, his ears picked up the sound of soft steps on the rocks. Several people were coming his way. He lay completely still, the blade of his knife burrowed in the dust to stop it from glinting in the sun.

From the corner of his eye, he saw them come. Hair blacker than ebony, skin the dusky red of ochre, they were tall and slender, yet he could see their lean muscles working under smooth skin. Their clothes were made of colored animal hide, loose-fitting in the chest, slender in the hip and leg. The most disturbing was their masks. Gruesome wooden faces contorted and painted garish colors; long hair attached to the outer edges gave them a feral, simian appearance.