As he drank, his fingers explored the swollen cut on the side of his ribcage, sustained during the clash on Ford Island. He squeezed it between his thumb and forefinger, examining the resulting mix of blood and pus. With nothing to treat the infection, he’d have to rely on his body to fight it off.
It had been nearly twenty-four hours since he’d left Oahu, and Ruan was exhausted. He’d never make the perilous final leg back to his home at Diamond Head without getting some sleep first. Settling in under his canoe, he did his best to ignore the nagging itch around his cut and get comfortable.
***
Hours later, he shot upright to the tickling sensation of flies swarming his wound, feasting on the draining ooze. He scrambled to his feet and waded into the water to wash himself off, preferring the sting of saltwater to the lingering sensation of crawling insects.
Shielding his eyes, Ruan glanced skyward to gauge the sun. Late afternoon. His former captive must be among friends and family by now, infecting them with a pathogen that would condemn most of them to death. Ugly, maybe, but what choice did he have? With diminishing supplies and an aging body, he couldn’t keep fighting off incursions. The invaders had forced him to do something that would take on a life beyond his own, and mark O’ahu as forever cursed.
Perhaps with luck, the disease would spread to Maui and Lanai—maybe even as far as the Big Island. Along with it would spread the tale of the terrifying encounter on Ford Island, as relayed by the two fishermen he’d allowed to escape, and confirmed by his captive in the hours remaining before he could no longer find the strength to communicate.
They’d embellish the story with whatever meaning they derived from the canoe in which he had returned, filled with the severed heads of warriors lying in a bed of their own putrefying entrails. Ruan himself had no particular message in mind when fashioning the grisly scene, but felt confident their primitive minds would invent a suitably terrifying narrative.
Whatever happened with his former captive was now beyond his control, and he needed to focus on getting home alive. An inventory of his food and water rations left him confident he’d brought adequate supplies. The only remaining obstacles were the water conditions and his own stamina—undoubtedly compromised by injury and infection. Relieved of the burden of the second canoe dragging along behind him, perhaps he could make it home by daybreak.
As he pushed off, Ruan promised himself he would never again venture onto the open water. Taking the compass from his breast pocket, he read the message next to the sight wire.
May you always find your way home to me. Love, Lenora.
He shook his head. What had been meant as a message of love now seemed like a taunt. Still, it would bring him back to a home of sorts—keeping his course true after the distant peak of Diamond Head disappeared into the darkness.
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***
Ruan pushed through increasing discomfort all night, arriving on Waikiki Beach a little after sunrise. It took longer than he’d hoped due to his vanishing strength and repeated stops to vomit over the side of the canoe. Lying in the warm sun to catch his breath, he couldn’t stop shivering amid worsening symptoms of acute septic shock.
He struggled to put on his ruck, determined he would somehow make it back to his hut to stow his gear, and then ascend one last time to his favorite place on the island; his ocean lookout at the peak of the crater wall. Rational or not, having a mission upon which to focus offered comfort in the face of the realization he would soon die from the infection spreading through his body.
Dangerous under ideal circumstances, Ruan had put considerable effort into easing the climb up the outside of the crater. At a low spot on the north side of the wall, where he came and went from his hidden campsite, he’d made a discrete pathway, taking advantage of the natural step-shaped features in the volcanic rock.
Typically, the one-and-a-half kilometers from the beach to where the path started was an easy fifteen-minute jog. From there to his hut inside the crater took another thirty minutes. Battling sickness and fatigue, it took him four hours to make the same trip after the arduous journey from Moloka’i.
He uncovered the plastic containers hidden near his hut and opened them for a final survey. Sliding his holster and K-bar sheath off his belt, he placed them in the container with the other weapons. His belt and ruck went into the other with his personal supplies, clothing, and two worn-out pairs of boots he kept in case he got desperate enough to use them again. After a moment of consideration, he closed both containers and covered them over.
The trail to the summit appeared to have doubled in elevation from his perspective at the bottom. Though he could think of no practical reason to subject himself to the climb, he felt compelled to do so nonetheless. Perhaps he would find some solace at the summit in his final hours—if he made it.
Each step sent pain radiating through his body, and every grab at the rungs of his makeshift ladders was a jab in the side from the warrior’s spear. He had lapses of awareness, losing track of progress as he climbed, and forgetting where he was.
At times, he would hallucinate about climbing the path to Devil’s Peak behind his childhood home in the Rondebosch suburb of Cape Town. Lenora was there, too, wasn’t she? She scampered ahead with ease, urging him on before disappearing over some rock or ledge and reappearing further ahead—always out of reach.
Ruan reached the summit with little recollection of the climb, and no idea how long it had taken. The sun, though low, had not yet taken on the orange hue of sunset. Below him, the sprawling city of Cape Town sparkled like a jewel against a backdrop of iridescent azure. Or maybe it was Honolulu. He no longer had a sense of place or time as he sat on his familiar perch, watching one image blur into the next.
Lenora sat next to him, sharing the breathtaking view. The sunlight glinting off the waves looked like a swirling sea of sapphires, filling him with a euphoric sense of peaceful awe. He turned to his wife and smiled.
“I knew you’d be here.”
She frowned and shook her head, the corners of her mouth quivering as a single tear rolled down her cheek.
“But I’m not here. Not really.”
“Yes, you are. We can be together now.”
“I can’t be with you, Ruan. Everything good about you died with me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes,” she said, disintegrating into a fog, “you do.”
He collapsed back, dislodging the compass he’d forgotten to remove from his breast pocket as he hit the ground. It slid down his shoulder, coming to rest beside his head.
The glittering sapphires in his mind transformed into sparks rising from the campfire of the fishermen on Ford Island. He saw the men gathered around it—talking and laughing. His former captive turned to him, his face transforming into the grotesque, misshapen mess resulting from their collision. As he howled with laughter, his unhinged jaw flapped about, opening wide like a snake’s. Everything started to spin, and Ruan fell headfirst into the blackness of his former prisoner’s deformed, gaping maw.