End of Women: Part Four

A Heavy Burden

'He can do it, he's doing it, go on! Yes!'

Degan caught Kindra around the midriff just before he fell on his face. His boy had just taken five steps in quick succession, and by the broad smile on his face, Kindra knew he had done something good.

'That's it now.' Degan told Millie with nervous excitement in his voice. 'Pretty soon he'll be running over this island and we won't be able to keep up!'

Millie was slouched up against the cavern entrance, gazing at the two of them with folded arms and a lazy expression. 

'Yeah, great.' She said.

Degan chewed his lip as he looked at her, not sure if he should say something. Instead he looked back at his son and pinched his nose. Kinda smacked his hands together and laughed raucously.

They passed by Millie as they went back into the cavern together, pushing aside the old sail tarp Degan had re-purposed as a drape door for their cave home. The steps leading up into the living room had now been fully carved and laid with rushes, the worn-down chisel lying in testament to the hours of work it had taken Degan to make that happen. Up on the landing Degan dropped his son into a bath of hot spring water and let the boy splash about. He had yet to find a way to turn palm leaves and rushes into something that could work as a diaper, but the basin he had carved out had an opening at the bottom which fed out to the sea, and he had plugged it with a bottle cork found in some wash-up on the other side of the island. The cork was connected to a string, so - and this he was almost too proud of - he had managed to turn stone, cork and spring water into a fully-functioning sink and baby bath. The water for the sink ran out from the lower half of the cave's spring, while their drinking water came down from two sources; bamboo stalks that were great at passing and purifying water on its way down to a plastic container, and the hotspring well from higher-up that dropped down into a saucepan that worked as their kettle. It wasn't like they had any coffee beans on the island (and even if they did, he had no idea how to turn coffee beans into actual drinkable coffee) but there was some herb he had identified as being like tea. As it turned out, it was definitely not tea. He held his stomach queasily just thinking about that particular experiment he had carried out on himself. 'Never again', he muttered.

Food had been the biggest problem until Degan had researched how to make a fishing net. The wreck on the North side of the island had given him everything he needed (barring an actual net) and the remainder of the sail he had unworked and then re-strung as a net. It was currently bobbing in the surf just off the reef visible through a gap in the cave wall. Most of what he caught was plastic bottles, caps and candy bar wrappers, but there was some edible stuff, too. And the bottles didn't exactly hurt.

'We're like Crusoe learned to recycle!' He told Kindra, and the boy splashed and laughed in reply.

Degan sat down on the reed-bed he shared with Millie and took out his TabPhone. It was a habit he had still not broken, looking at the thing every time he sat down, and yet he had made the decision, for the protection of his family, that he would not turn it on again. There had been so many times when looking up basic survival tips would have saved him hours of trial and error. When they had landed, he didn't even know how to build a fire. Even so, he resisted the temptation. All the research he had done had come from books aboard the wreck or the seaman's guide on the boat they had taken to get to the island. If he turned on the thing just once, the Universal Locator implanted into every Bluenorth device would ping his location back to Ekpow, and then they would have to start all over again somewhere else. He wasn't sure they even had fuel to make it to another island. One slip, one moment of weakness, and there would be airships all around them within an hour. 

'Gaaaahk!'

Kindra yelled out at his father, slapping the gap in the cave wall. Degan was too lost in thought to respond. He had it all running so well. Everything was doing what it was supposed to do. They had clean water, food, shelter and stuff for Kindra to do. There was Millie, of course, sulking and moping all day long as if she would rather be back in her cell, but he had no idea, nor any inclination to work on her. He wanted Kindra to know his mother, and that was all. So long as she was here, he was doing that part for his son.