CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Iwoke to bright morning light spilling in our palm branch cocoon. Jahnu was no longer lying behind me. I was alone, damp and stiff from spending the night on the ground, but feeling otherwise rested.
I rose, finger-combing the wild mass that was my hair—humidity and natural curl created a frizzy mess—and peered out of the opening of our cave. Water dripped from the leaves overhead. The sun shown through the gaps in the branches in glorious rays of warmth and light.
“Good morning,” came a soft voice from the thickness.
Jahnu emerged with more wild fruit in his hands and tucked up under his arm.
He stood, shirtless, his dark skin glistening, his head cocked to the side as he studied me.
It reminded me of the way my dog, Sasha, used to look at me, questioning, head tilting to one side. Adorable.
“What?” I asked, feeling self-conscious under his scrutiny. I reached an arm to cross my body.
“Did you sleep well?”
“Yes…did you?” I asked awkwardly.
“I have not slept that well in many moons,” he said, a bit surprised. “But you talk in your sleep.”
“I do not!”
“Oh? And how would you know?” he asked, tossing the fruit on the ground and squatting to eat.
I excused myself to use the restroom, or the trunk of a tree, and rejoined him for our breakfast, wondering silently what I might’ve said.
“Do not worry,” he said between bites, “none of your words made sense to me…your secrets are still safe,” he said, winking. I wanted to say I didn’t have secrets, but that wasn’t entirely true. I also wondered how he seemed to know what I was thinking.
“You snore,” I accused. To this he laughed, a deep-throated, open-mouthed belly laugh, which made me smile and eased the awkward tension between us.
I had spent the night with a stranger. Not just any stranger, but a savage, indigenous chief of an obscure tribe in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.
And not just spent the night, but slept cocooned in his arms!
If someone had told me a month ago something like this was going to happen, I would’ve laughed at the absurdity.
We finished our breakfast in companionable silence before starting our journey back.
I didn’t know what to think of the growing bond I felt toward Jahnu and remained quiet on the walk back to the village, lost in my own thoughts.
I had enjoyed the night, despite the relative discomfort of the ground. I enjoyed the way his body felt against mine and was torturously distracted for the next couple days as we melded back into the structure of the tribe.
I found myself wanting to get lost in the jungle at night with him again, and wondered if he felt the same since he stayed close and always had some excuse to interrupt the work I found to do with Sali and the others in the kitchen.
“That man hasn’t stepped foot in this kitchen since he was a boy…and now, he comes to ask questions every day?” Sali’s exasperation only kept my head down and I pretended not to hear her, but my heart leaped to my throat at her words. This was not happening.
There never was a chance for us to be alone.
Not that I was looking for it, because I wasn’t.
I wasn’t. But the days passed, too full and busy for even a simple conversation.
He flitted in and out of my daily routine just enough to keep him on the forefront of my thoughts, but never close enough to revisit the intimacy we had shared in the cave.
I had to get out of here. My heart was a runaway train that would only end in a crash.
My rational self was pitted against this strange longing in my heart like a demented ping-pong match.
Back and forth…back and forth. I need to get back to Makia, but I had come to enjoy my time with the Hundi.
I was engaged to be married to Greg, but I had feelings for a man I couldn’t in my wildest dreams imagine.
My thoughts experienced constant upheaval.
Finally, one morning I was awake before the rest of the tribe and climbed down from my treehouse making my way to the kitchens to stoke the coals for the morning fire.
“You fish?” came a voice from the door to the kitchen.
I looked up to see his dark silhouette lit from behind by the growing gray light of dawn.
Jahnu gestured for me to follow him with a quick, “come,” and a jerk of his head and I went without reply.
He was holding a few small pieces of bamboo and a roll of string.
We walked the path toward the river as light was just barely making things visible in the village square. Birds called out a distinctive two-syllable shriek wa-wow! wa-wow! as they cavorted in the palms. The towering trees leaned together like doting grandparents watching young ones at play.
“The friarbird is timekeeper,” Jahnu whispered over his shoulder. “He wakes the fisherman up in the morning.”
He pointed to a stand of towering trees with wide girths.
“See those? Very good for making canoe. Erima tree canoe can last four or five years.” I loved learning from him.
I smelled the fecund lushness of the ground with each step, noted the soft sinking mud from the night’s rain, and tried to ignored the wild beat of my heart.
We took a small, worn trail through the vegetation, leaving the huts growing smaller behind us.
We didn’t speak, but it didn’t feel awkward.
It felt strangely like relief, being alone with him again.
It was the only thing I’d thought about for the past few days and relished in it as I watched the jungle come alive in the gradual rise of morning.
Ten minutes in revealed a quietly rippling creek bordered in grasses and ferns. Jahnu knelt by the edge and removed a cantaloupe-size rock. He motioned for me to join him, kneeling on the bank, dropping his rudimentary tools in front of him.
“You hammer,” he said softly, giving me two small pieces of bamboo and motioned for me to drive them into the earth.
I did so, not without effort, hammering the hollow sticks with a small rock, wondering what kind of fishing we were about to do.
I watched as he tied the thick string around the rock and threw it over a large branch overhead.
He finished his tying, creating a square contraption with the sticks in the ground and pushed a Y-shaped stick like a slingshot into the earth.
He tested the tension of the string by pulling and the rock rose, like a pulley.
“A snare!” I said, excitedly, and clearly too loud because he instantly brought a finger to my lips. My face warmed at his touch, and I felt embarrassed at his correction.
“You will scare away the fish,” he said, keeping his finger on my lips a bit too long. We held each other’s eyes until I looked away, ending the moment, and sucked my bottom lip between my teeth.
He squatted near the base of a tree, dug into the soft earth and produced a thick earthworm. He threaded the worm onto his hook, flung the line into the water, and motioned for me to join him a few feet away.
“You are a strange creature, Sid-de-nee,” he whispered, looking at me.
“I am? Why?”
He was thoughtful for a moment. “You think things, but you do not say them. You bury them, even though you do not want to. Do you not feel comfortable around me?”
My face bloomed with heat at his honesty, so I attempted my own.
“Should I feel comfortable around you? What if you were in my shoes? A stranger in a place that is not my home, around people who are very different from me. I think you would feel just as uncomfortable.”
“Maybe so,” he said, looking out at the bank of the river and the string that still hung slack across the edge.
“But you do not feel like a stranger to me…” he said, bringing his gaze back to my face.
“It is different, between us, yes? There is… friendship, though we have just met. You are easy to talk to. I enjoy being around you.”
His blatant honesty was unnerving, while simultaneously refreshing, but could I be as honest with him? I settled on 90% honesty.
“I enjoy being around you, too.” He held my gaze too long, so I asked, “Tell me more about Hundi. How far does the land reach? Has your tribe been here for many years?” Sali had said there were other Hundi villages around the mountain. “How many more Hundi live outside the main village?”
He looked away, sourly, as if this was not what he wanted to talk about, but began slowly.
“Our ancient people arrived in Papua New Guinea fifty or sixty thousand years ago from Asia, at least that’s the story they tell us as children,” he said with a smirk.
“They came during the time of Ice when the sea was lower and distances between islands shorter.” He shifted his position on the ground.
“Though, we are so much a part of the land, it is hard to imagine we come from anywhere else.” He gave me a small smile.
“Hundi form many hundred years ago. They were once the largest tribe on the island. They were…how you say…pure tribe, unwanted of change and true to the ways of their people. The coming generations, many disagree with their ways… My great, great grandfather, chief of Hundi, withstood the last rebellion and many Hundi split from the tribe. Your tribe, Makia, come from that Hundi split.”
“Makia came from Hundi? But how? When?”
“Almost one hundred year ago. This is not the first war with our brothers, Sid-de-nee.”
“But why did they split?”
“There were some in our tribe who did not want the way of old leadership,” he shrugged.
“You tell me Makia operate under elder-leadership and so this is what they want. But others disagree. So they fight. My great, great grandfather chief when they split from us.” He was silent for a minute.
“There are some family leaders, even now, within Hundi who question if the leadership of Chief is still the best way for them. Like you, Hundi has lost many a brother.”
I looked away, warmth spreading across my chest and up my neck.
“You are doing it again.”
“What?”