“An exile?” Miss James blurted.
“Exile is a punishment rewarded to those with opposing loyalties in a war, to failed princes and kings—and to criminals,” Van Resen said evenly. “The man whose bones we found did not leave his homeland by choice.”
“How can you know?” the governess asked.
“I cannot know with certainty,” the scientist said. “But this situation preys upon my mind, and I am angered that I have not the facility to research the problem sufficiently.” He laughed dryly, his voice a rasp. “And as this plays upon my memory, it brings to mind the doctor that I spoke of, and the peculiarities of his character...half a world away!”
“What of Gazda’s medallion?” Miss James asked.
“Gazda is a white man of exceptional abilities who indicates by his actions that he has long lived in the wilds of Africa,” Van Resen said, before looking up at the ceiling. “How did he get here to a place where there are no native people of that race?”
“You think this yurt is his home?” Mr. Quarrie said.
“He covered himself with animal hide similar to those skins we found here,” the scientist said. “And his possessions, the knife and medallion, even the arm bands and anklets that he wears, he may have scavenged from this building or from its former occupant.” Van Resen thought of the remains they’d found inside the yurt. Just skull and bones with worn and rotten clothing that had offered little to indicate a place in society above the level of servant.
“What then, doctor?” Miss James asked, half-rising from her chair.
“It is a mystery, and solving it might tell us the true nature of Lilly’s illness,” Van Resen said, digging into his breast pocket for his cigar case. “I shall smoke and think now.”
He saw Mr. Quarrie begin to rise, so raised his hand.
“Please sir, if I might have your esteemed company at another time. I would like to be alone with my thoughts.” The scientist moved toward the open door, his pant legs and shoes turning orange in the light that angled through. “The sun is near to setting. I will not be long.”
CHAPTER 25 – Dark Discovery
Once outside the yurt, Van Resen stood before it to watch the lowering sun send rays dappling through the distant trees that grew between the clearing and the sea.
He held the cigar clamped in his mouth but set no flame to it. Rather his eyes were drawn to the shadows that haunted the roots of the dark moringa grove. They formed a blot on the landscape seeming almost to absorb what light remained in the day.
So it seemed, but such a thing could not be true. The eyes played tricks when subjected to natural phenomena and stress.
Steeling his nerve, Van Resen slipped the cigar away and withdrew the butcher knife from his coat pocket before climbing down the ladder to cross the grass to the southwest.
As he moved toward the brooding stand of moringa, Van Resen felt a chill despite the tropical heat that filled the clearing. This effect was accentuated by another trick of the eye for the gently waving grasses gave the shadowy, somewhat murky air that hung about the tumorous tree trunks the illusion of moving outward as a fog might drift on a cool, calming lake.
So it seemed to the scientist’s reluctant gaze that the darkness was flowing out to meet him. Of course, he knew this was improbable, though several adjustments of his eyeglasses only muddied the waters when he could perceive no explanation for the illusion.
Remarkably, as his foot first entered the misty shadow cast some ten feet to the east of the moringa grove, a spike of cold shot up his leg—and in response, his fingers ached with the same numbing tingle he’d felt when touching the wild man’s medallion.
In fact, he pictured its graven face at that very moment, and for a minute afterward, he cautiously scrutinized the ground ahead, fearful of treading on a snake.
“Imagination,” he scolded himself, holding the butcher knife out before him on the right. “And exhaustion.” Indeed, he had managed only a little sleep for the duration of his time upon the African shore.
But the cold dank stench that reached out of the trees was no mirage. The fetid odor repulsed his senses like the smell of rotten flesh, causing him to rub and chafe his whiskers with his free hand.
Van Resen saw a subtle shifting of light between the trees, the rays of which had not descended through the grove’s greasy branches, but rather seemed to reflect upward, as light might from a lantern held above a pond at night.
So convincing was this effect, that he continued to glance down at his feet to catch these glimmerings as he crossed out of the long green grass that abounded in the clearing, and onto the dried and blackened tufts of undergrowth that followed the earth’s rising contour until the ground was lost beneath a twisted mat of moringa roots.
Deeper he traveled between the trunks until he stood fully surrounded in the tight arboreal maze, where with some dismay he did look down to see the light replaced by murky shadow that had condensed and like a black fog drifted around his feet with the wafting haze sometimes rising to his knees.
So enclosed by trees and darkness, he was aware of a ringing depth and ambiguity of space that trembled with subterranean echoes and reflections of watery sound, all while in his ears came a rising, high-pitched whine reminiscent of cicadas.
His pulse surged suddenly as he stood in place until the annoying peal reached its height and there he gasped with thrilling nerves, for the shadows before him obliterated the forest, and became a mirror to his thoughts.
Thoughts he could see of Lilly Quarrie, and Virginia James. Beautiful they were depicted on this ebon, dream-like canvas. Beautiful despite the age difference—but Van Resen was a man was he not?
Why would they deny him?
“Steady,
