He was perhaps twenty years old and short, and if you could have removed the growth on his left temple, he would have qualified as a fresh-faced youth.
“Hello?” he said tentatively.
“You speak our language?” Lily asked, stunned.
He nodded. “Some. I am student of Chief’s Eighth Wife,” he said slowly, articulating each word carefully. “She and I both oppressed in tribe, so speak much. I have many asks for you. Many asks.”
“Such as?”
“What is your world like?”
Lily cocked her head, looking at this Neetha youth more closely, and she softened. Amid all the fierce trappings of this ancient warrior tribe was the most universal kind of individual, a gentle and curious young man.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I am Ono, seventh son of High Chief Rano.”
“My name is Lily. You speak my language very well.”
Ono beamed with pride. “I am keen student. I enjoy to learn.”
“Me, too,” Lily said. “I’m good with languages. Yours is a very old one, you know.”
“This I know.”
Ono, it turned out, was a very curious young man who had many questions about the outside world.
The concept of flight, for example, intrigued him. As a younger man he had helped disable a seaplane down at the carved forest. After the unfortunate people in the plane had been taken away and eventually killed and eaten, he had examined the plane for hours. But try as he might, he hadn’t been able to figure out how such a heavy object could fly like a bird.
Likewise, he had a radio—Zoe’s radio, taken from their belongings—and he asked Lily how such a device could enable two people to speak over great distances.
Lily did her best to answer his questions, and the more she talked with him, the more she found Ono to be not only curious but sweet and kind.
“Can you tell me about your tribe?” she asked.
He sighed. “Neetha have long history. Power in tribe rests on, how you say, balance between royal family and priests of Holy Stone.
“My father chief because family strong for many years. Strong chief respected by Neetha. But I think my father brute. My brothers brutes, too. Large of body but small of mind. But here, strong get all they desire—healthy women, first food, so strong continue to rule. They beat the weak and take from them: animals, fruit, daughters.
“But warrior-priests also have power because they guard maze. Inside their fortress, from very young age, them study and learn spells and also fighting arts so when come of age, emerge as killers.”
Lily eyed the dark temple-fortress nearby. With its high battlements, tusks, and folding drawbridges, it looked fearsome.
She asked, “Is their fortress the only way to get to the maze and the sacred island?”
Ono nodded. “Yes. Over centuries, ruling clan and priest class find it…beneficial…to honor each other’s power. Royal family orders people to honor priesthood, while priests approve royal marriages and support ruling clan by punishing any person who attacks royal.”
“What’s the punishment for attacking a royal?” Lily asked.
“One is sentenced to the maze,” Ono said, looking out at the massive circular structure across the lake. “Animals lurk in it. Sometimes accused is hunted in there by priests; sometimes by dogs; other times, condemned man is left to roam maze until starve or take own life in despair. No man ever escape maze.”
Ono looked off sadly into the distance.
“Sweet Lily. I am not strong. I small, but have keen mind. But keen mind mean nothing here. Disputes settled on Fighting Stone.” He nodded at a large square stone platform that sat between Lily’s slab and the triangular island on the lake. “I could not hope to defeat my brothers in fight, so I reduced to shadow life. Life in my tribe is not happy life, Lily, even when you chief’s seventh son.”
Ono bowed his head, and Lily looked kindly at him.
But then abruptly something clinked somewhere and Ono stood.
“Dawn comes. Village awakes. I must go. Thank you for talk, sweet Lily. I sorry for you, for day ahead of you.”
Lily sat upright.
“The day ahead of me? What do you mean?”
But Ono had already dashed away, disappearing into the shadows.
“What about the day ahead of me?” she said again.
MORNING CAME.
Shafts of sunshine lanced down through the tree canopy above the Neetha gorges as a large crowd gathered around the two prisoner platforms.
The enormous warrior who had previously assessed Lily and Zoe now stood before the assembled crowd.
