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dead boar going to waste. There was enough meat there to
keep them all going for at least a week, he reckoned.
    He already
regretted being disgusted by Celly’s actions. As she’d quite
rightly pointed out, she’d saved his life. And as for the question
of killing the boar, yes, he was being hypocritical.
    When they’d
first come to the island, he’d tried to remain aloof, somehow
distanced from the killing and the preparing of the animals they’d
caught for food.
    Perhaps if
Hincheley had used knives rather than his talons, he might have
accepted the situation quicker. Perhaps if Mary had looked just a
little sickened as she’d expertly skinned their catches as
effortlessly as if she were peeling off little fur coats, he
wouldn’t have felt they were reverting to a more brutal, bestial
state.
    But, as Celly
had pointed out, all this had also taken place at home; it was all
just conveniently out of sight, out of mind, so that he and
everyone else could kid themselves that the neatly packaged meat on
the shelves had never, ever really been another living
being.
    Still, despite
the recognition of his own hypocrisy, he was glad that Celly had
refused to cut the boar up in front of him.
    Now, if they’d both done it, using knives , perhaps, you
know…
    ‘What about it?’
Celly demanded, having finally drawn up to a halt and angrily
turning on him.
    ‘We can’t just
leave it–’
    ‘We’ve already
had this conversation, haven’t we?’
    ‘I was wrong;
before I mean. Wrong to make out what you were doing…You saved me.
Thanks Celly. I’d be dead or injured if it weren’t for
you.’
    Celly frowned,
sighed, like she was wondering if Jake’s apology made up for his
previous behaviour.
    ‘Okay,’ she said
resignedly. ‘But I’m not cutting it up in front of
you!’
    She tilted her
head back slightly, closed her eyes as if concentrating.
    ‘Mary; Mary’s
nearby. She can take care of it.’
    As Celly
finished speaking to him, she continued to say something in a
language of hisses, of tongue clicks.
    Jake had heard
her parents and their servants use this language before. It was the
first time that he’d heard Celly using it however.
    How did it work
over such long distances when used so quietly?
    How had Celly
known that Mary was nearby?
    Had Celly
somehow heard her with what must be an acute sense of hearing? Or
was it more to do with a heightened sense of smell. As Celly had
concentrated, it seemed to him that she could have also been
raising her nose to smell the air.
    ‘What did you
say to her?’ he asked.
    ‘I told her
there was large, dead boar at trap five. She said she’d deal with
it; but I sensed she wondered why I wasn’t dealing with
it,’
    Her eyes probed
his as she said this, like she was holding him responsible for her
inability to take care of things.
    ‘How’d you know
where Mary was? Could you hear her?’
    Celly shook her
head.
    ‘No; at least,
not until she was directly speaking to me.’
    ‘Then you smelt her?’
    Celly’s eyes
blazed.
    ‘What? Smelt her
like an animal, you mean?’
    ‘No, no…I just
meant–’
    Whirling around,
Celly stormed away from him once again, shouting back over her
shoulder.
    ‘You just meant
I’m a monster and you’re not!’
     
     
    *

Chapter 6
     
    As they
descended through the jungle and neared the beach, the covering of
thick leaves began to thin out a little, allowing Jake fleeting
glimpses of the crudely made huts they now called home.
    It was hardly
Swiss Family Robinson, but everything had been ingeniously
constructed to make it all as civilised as possible.
    Yes, Jake
thought; civilised .
    Everyone had
worked hard to create a home that provided as many comforts as
possible. A form of thick canvas sheeting had been made from
shredded and woven palm leaves, whereas walls were generally
constructs of a lattice work of wooden strips supported by a timber
frame. There were separate areas to prepare the food, separate huts
for the