Lois arranged the pillow under his head and positioned his long legs on the chaff mattress. "It's going to be all right," she said. "You can rest now. The tagine is ready. I'll get you some as soon as we've both caught our breath."
She waited a little longer than that, crouched next to the bed, her hand cupping his as she stared at his face and wished she could peek into his mind.
He was different from anyone she had ever met - either at home in the United States or here in Africa.
There was something about him. Something that transcended his aloofness and touched her.
Something strong and undeniable.
Something deeper than shared skin colour.
Something beyond the strange circumstances that had thrown them together.
Something that made her wonder if she would look back on today's meeting as one of the most significant moments of her life.
Part 6
The smell of food twisted through his nostrils, intensifying the pinched feeling in his stomach.
Was he hungry?
He hadn't experienced hunger since he was fifteen - right around the time the weird powers had begun to manifest.
But now …
Clark opened his eyes and groggily hauled himself to a sitting position.
She was there. The woman. Lois. Holding a steaming bowl of something that looked like chicken and vegetables on couscous.
He inhaled, and his stomach growled.
"I was hoping you would wake up," she said. She put the bowl on the low table at the end of the bed and perched her butt on the mattress beside him. He moved his leg to avoid contact. She shuffled closer and reached for his hand, unfurling his fingers.
His palm was covered in dried blood.
She laid his hand on her thigh and took a cloth from the bucket on the dirt floor. After she'd wrung it out, she dabbed at his palm, carefully cleaning away the blood to reveal the underlying laceration.
"Ouch," she said. "You must have caught it on something sharp when you fell." She lifted his hand and peered at it intently. "I don't think it's deep enough to require stitches. Some goldenseal should do the trick nicely." She reached across to the table and dipped her forefinger in a small pot. "This stings a bit, but it's better than getting an infection." She took firm possession of his other hand and placed it where her bent knee formed a hump under her long skirt. "Squeeze my leg if it gets too bad."
Clark extended his fingers, deliberately loosening his grip on her knee.
"Ready?" She dabbed the ointment along the gash, and pain radiated into his wrist and fingers. She stroked his forearm as the stinging dissipated. "We'll give it a moment to dry," she said. "And then I'll bandage it so you can eat."
Clark slid his hand from her leg, letting it drop onto the bed and hoping she wouldn't notice. He stared at the wall behind her, uncomfortably conscious that his injured hand was being cradled in hers.
When she decided enough time had passed, she took a long white bandage from the folds of her skirt and coiled it around his hand. After fixing it in place, she smiled up at him and said, "Do you think you will be able to eat with that hand?"
Without waiting for his reply, she positioned a couple of pillows behind him and guided his shoulders back into them. She placed the bowl in his uninjured hand and a small wooden ladle in the bandaged one.
"Eat up," she said with another smile. "I didn't make it, so you're safe. Gislane is Matymbou's cook. She's one of the finest cooks in the Bangala."
Clark loaded the spoon and lifted it to his mouth.
The meat was tender and tasty, but it wasn't chicken. It reminded him of the fish he'd caught with his dad. He chewed and swallowed quickly, succumbing to the demands of a stomach vehemently complaining about the unfamiliar pangs of hunger.
The woman took the pail out of the hut, and when she returned, she was carrying a second bowl. She sat cross-legged on the other bed and began her meal in silence.
Too soon, Clark's bowl was empty.
The woman rose from the opposite bed, put down her bowl, took his empty one, and left the hut. When she returned, the bowl had been refilled.
Their eyes clashed as she handed it to him, and Clark quickly looked down - but not before he'd seen the kindness shimmering unmistakably in her expression.
"Tak," he muttered.
"You're welcome," she said, her smile widening as she sat down and resumed eating.
Clark ate more slowly now, savouring the taste and trying to distinguish individual ingredients. As he downed the last spoonful, he realised the woman was watching him.
"You were hungry," she stated.
Not knowing what else to do, he offered her the empty bowl.
She unfolded from the bed and took his bowl. "Would you like a cup of tea?" she said, lifting her hand to her mouth in a drinking action. "I promise it won't be as bad as the stuff I forced down you earlier. I think a nice relaxing brew like chamomile would be good for both of us."
She didn't wait around for his reply, leaving Clark alone and with the opportunity to survey his surroundings. The hut was tiny, its circular wall extending only a short way past the low beds. The only other piece of furniture was the table, crammed into the space at the end of the beds and shaped to fit inside the round wall.
The number of beds was both a relief and a concern.
Clark could think of nothing more daunting than being thrust into a group and being subjected to their pointing and whispering. But once their interest in him had subsided, a group would perhaps afford him the chance of anonymity - something that was definitely not going to be possible in a cosy twosome with a woman called Lois who seemed determined to nurse him back to good health.
He was trapped. The food had sated his hunger, but it hadn't yet dispelled the creeping weight of weariness by translating into fuel for his lethargic body.
He had no choice but to stay for the night. By tomorrow, perhaps he would have regained normal human strength.
The woman returned with two steaming cups and offered him one with the smile that was becoming very familiar.
Did she always smile so much? Or was she doing it more regularly because she thought he couldn't understand her words?
"Now that you’re awake, perhaps you won't mind if I talk," she said. "I go a little stir crazy when things are too quiet." She ran her fingers down one of the numerous braids that bounced around her shoulders. "It's funny, Romaric says I'm the most talkative person he's ever met, so you'd think I'd have no trouble filling dead air, but I'm really not sure what to say to you." Her brow puckered as she released a slow breath. "I guess I should have said this already, but you weren't exactly up for introductions when we met. My name is Lois Laka-Matymbou." She patted the middle of her chest. "Lois."
She pointed to Clark and plied him with a questioning look.
He stared back, his tongue feeling as if it had been tied in knots. The globe had informed him his name was Kal-El, but he'd only been a few weeks old when he'd been banished from the planet of his birth. Since arriving on Earth, he'd used the name Clark Kent, but the Kents weren't his real parents, and as much as he had loved them, they hadn't been a part of his life for nearly twenty years.
By now, Clark Kent had probably been listed as missing. A man gone, a name erased, a life dissolved.
"What is your name?" Lois said. "Kombo na yo nani?" When he didn't answer, she patted his arm, her fingers soft on his skin. "That's OK. Perhaps you'll feel more like talking tomorrow."
If he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, would she assume he wanted to sleep and leave him alone?
Before he'd acted on that thought, Lois was speaking again. "You probably won't understand most of what I say," she said, "but I can't sit here drinking tea and staring at you like you're an exhibition in a museum." She chuckled. "Although, visitors are so scarce around here, you're probably going to have to get used to people looking at you."
Clark sipped from his tea. It was sweet and soothing.
"I figure that if you could ask questions, you'd probably want to know why we are here," she said with a swirly gesture that encompassed the area inside the hut. "Whenever anyone comes onto Bangala land, he must stay in quarantine for five days before he's allowed into the village to mingle with our people. You're welcome to stay as long as you like. Luckily for both of us, the Bangala are some of the most accepting and friendly people on this planet, but their isolation makes them particularly vulnerable to introduced disease, so they need to be sure that your arrival isn't going to have a detrimental effect on their health."
Clark felt as if he were being swallowed into a powerful vacuum. He didn't want to be accepted. He didn't want to make new friends. He didn't want to forge new bonds - bonds that would, inevitably, be severed when they discovered he could never be one of them.
"I guess your second question would be about our location." Lois's slight shrug was accompanied by a wry grin. "The truth is I don't know exactly where we are, other than somewhere in Africa. The last place I knew for sure was Brazzaville, but this definitely isn't Brazzaville."
They were in Africa? The droning sound must have been an airplane.
Which indicated that Tempus had ordered Clark be pushed out of an airplane. Had they thought he was dead already? Or had they not cared?
The cold hand of hatred crawled up Clark's back. All his life, he had feared that if they knew the truth about him, they would despise him. Distrust him. Tempus knew the truth. Tempus had tried to kill him.
"I figure there's a chance that what the Bangala call the Big River is the Congo River," Lois continued. "Romaric told me that our river is a tributary of the Big River, so my guess is that we're somewhere in the Congo Basin."
The Congo? That was a long way from Metropolis.
"I guess you're wondering about the Bangala," Lois said. She smiled into her tea. "If you had to get lost somewhere in Africa, you couldn’t have chosen a better place." A little line appeared between her eyebrows, and her hand reached across the short distance between them to rest for a moment on his hand. "It's natural that you're thinking about home and the people there, and you're probably wondering how you're going to get back to them, but for now, try to accept that you're safe here. You won't be ostracised because you're not Bangala. They'll accept you, just as they accepted me."
After another sip of her tea, she said, "Rules? There aren't too many, and most of them are obvious. Don't take stuff that isn't yours." She grinned. "Although the Bangala are so generous that if you asked, they'd probably give it to you anyway."
She adjusted her position, moving further back on the bed and leaning against the mud-brick wall. "There are five elders who have the responsibility of making sure everyone is looked after and treated fairly. Matymbou is the mokonzi. That means the chief. He's kind, and he cares deeply for his people." Her grin flashed again. "Although, I warn you, he says whatever pops into his head, and I often think it would have been better if he'd been born with a filter somewhere between his brain and his mouth."
She chuckled again. It was a deep sound for a woman, with a lilting resonance that seemed to come from low in her chest.
She shuffled forward on the bed and reached over to put her hand on his knee. "The Bangala will trust you," she said solemnly. "They're so isolated, they haven't learned that some people are greedy and corrupt and dishonest. Please don't show them that side of humanity. Please let them remain in their little sanctuary of peace. Please don't teach them to be suspicious of the next visitor who stumbles onto their land." She edged back a bit, lifting her hand from his body. "That's why we're here, you know? Because someone came and hurt them, albeit unintentionally. Many years ago, when Matymbou was just a boy, three strangers came to the Bangala village. They were welcomed, given food, and treated with the best medicines when they became sick a few days later. They died - but so did about thirty of the Bangala people, including Matymbou's mother and newborn sister. From that time on, all newcomers have to wait in quarantine before being admitted into the village." She gave him another smile. "So we're stuck here, together, for five days."
Clark had no intention of being here for five days. He would leave tomorrow, allowing her to return to the Bangala people she spoke of with such affection.
She didn't say anything more after that, and they finished their tea in silence that was broken only by the crackle of the fire and a cacophony of distant sounds that Clark figured came from the local wildlife.
Lois took Clark's cup from him and indicated that she wanted him to follow her out of the hut.
He did. She pointed to a sapling wall built between two tree trunks. "Behind there is the bathroom facility," she said. "If you're expecting five-star amenities …" She shot him a wide grin. "Let's just say that you're welcome to use it first. I'll bank up the fire."
Clark wandered into the moonlit murkiness. Behind the wall, he found a pail of cold water and a board across a long drop-hole.
It was a long way from five-star.
But it didn't matter. He had been subjected to an explosion of poisonous rock, survived being pushed out of an airplane, and had landed near a group of people who hadn't tried to capture him or kill him, but had fed him, given him somewhere to sleep, and allowed one of their women to treat his injuries.
Of course, they didn't know he wasn't just a stranger from another area or a foreigner from another country.
They would never know.
By tomorrow night, he would be nothing more than a memory.
Someone who had been with them for a fleeting moment and then left without explanation.
He'd been alone when he'd arrived on Earth.
The Kents had accepted him. Then they had died, leaving him alone.
He had drifted through various foster homes until he was seventeen. By then, he was in love with Lana, and he'd thought marrying her would guarantee he would never be alone again.
But she had betrayed him, lied to him, and left him.
Alone, again.
But this time, something had changed.
He'd finally accepted his destiny. He would fight it no longer.
~|^|~
Lois perched her butt on the table and watched the soft glow of moonlight amble across her sleeping patient's face.
His breathing was regular. His heart rate was normal. A night's rest was exactly what his body needed.
When she'd returned from using the 'amenities', she'd been disappointed to discover him lying on the bed on his side, facing the wall. He hadn't responded when she'd told him she was going to apply chaparral ointment to his back, legs, and arms to promote healing. By the time she'd finished, he had been asleep and she'd had to accept that they weren't going to build on their earlier moments of interaction.
Not today, anyway.
Now that he was oblivious to her presence, she was finding it difficult to take her eyes from him.
He was handsome in a classical kind of way, but it wasn't his looks that had captured her attention. The mountain of her questions just kept building up, but its focus had shifted. Oh, she was still eager to know the details of how he'd been injured and why he was in Africa, but now she was far more intrigued about what had damaged him on the inside.
Lois Lane had never been able to accept an unresolved mystery. She'd driven herself until every last piece of meat had been gnawed from the bone of an investigation and all the interwoven facts had been laid bare.
And then, she'd written the story. Clearly. Succinctly. Brilliantly. Usually exclusively.
She had more front-page stories than she could count, seven Kerths, three Merriwethers, and two Pulitzer nominations.
Every award had stood in proud testimony to her single-minded doggedness. All she had cared about was getting the story.
But that had been another life in another world.
She was no longer Lois Lane. She was Lois Laka-Matymbou, mother of Didier Sol-Matymbou, wife of Matymbou, and Bangala medicine woman in training. Over time, she'd embraced the unsought change of direction so completely that her hankering to return to her former life had dwindled to nothing.
She'd been caught off-guard by the resurgence of her hunger for answers. Her reporters' instinct had shaken off its dormancy and was scratching over the known facts in search of leads. Mr Miracle had a story. She would never be able to write it, but that hadn't diluted her need to uncover it.
Finally, long after the fire had died down, Lois succumbed to her tiredness and climbed into the vacant bed. She closed her eyes, and her thoughts jumped to the village and Diddi.
She missed him.
She knew he would be fine. Everyone would look out for him. Romaric would check on him. Gislane would make sure he ate properly.
Perhaps Diddi would bring food tomorrow and she'd be able to speak to him from a distance.
Perhaps -
"No!"
Lois leapt from her bed at the cry.
"No, Lana! No! Please don't leave me."
Lois took Mr Miracle's hand and enclosed it in both of hers. "It's OK," she murmured softly. "You're not alone. I'm here."
The muscles in his hand and arm relaxed, and a few seconds later, his breathing returned to the steady tempo of sleep. Lois stayed beside him, his hand still tucked in hers.
Who was Lana?
Had she died? Or walked out on him?
Was she the cause of the pain that had carved valleys of sorrow on his face?
She had to be, Lois concluded.
He loved her. And he'd lost her.
Was that why he'd come to Africa? To try to numb the pain of his loss?
Had he tried to find solace in the harsh underground environment of a mine?
How long ago had it happened? Had it been weeks? Or months?
Lana must have been his wife. The indentation from his wedding ring was still faintly visible on his finger, indicating it had been removed only recently.
If she'd died, why had he taken off the ring when he was obviously still mourning her?
It could have been stolen.
Or she could have left him.
No, Lois realised. No woman would leave a man who loved her with such devotion.
With a deep sigh, she rose from the floor and returned to her own bed. Her mind replayed his cry over and over again.
His anguish had rasped through his words, digging deeply as they raked over her heart.
He was hurting so -
Lois lurched off the pillow.
He'd spoken English! Clear, accurate English, without a trace of an accent.
He must have understood everything she'd said to him.
She snuggled back under the blanket, her mind whirling as she tried to assimilate this new information into the puzzle of her patient.
Why hadn't he communicated with her? Asked questions? Given information? Helped her assess his injuries?
Why had he steadfastly ignored her efforts to interact with him?
Because of the overwhelming magnitude of his grief, Lois surmised.
Earlier today, she'd though he was in danger of dying from his injuries. Now, she realised he was in much greater danger of dying from a broken heart.
Losing hope. Giving up. Drowning in sorrow.
Mr Miracle didn't need a medicine woman to treat his body. He needed a friend to help him emerge from his heartache.
Sylva's medicines and treatments had done their job. Now, Lois needed a different strategy.
Fired with new purpose, she rolled over, wriggled into a comfortable position, and set her mind to work.
~|^|~
"It's not your child, Clark."
"I'm your husband."
"It's not yours."
"Then whose is it?"
"That doesn't matter."
It didn't matter? It mattered more than life itself. "You … you slept with another man?" His question conjured pictures - terrible pictures that lashed his mind and scored betrayal deep in his heart.
"I have known for a long time that we made a mistake. I can't do this anymore. You're not what I need. I can't make you happy. I'm with someone else, now." She put her hand on her abdomen. "We're going to be a family."
"No! No, Lana! No. Please don't leave me."
But she did. She faded away, just as she had turned from him and left the apartment they had shared.
And then he was alone.
Alone.
Shattered.
Distraught.
A hand grasped his.
Softly murmured words floated into his consciousness.
He wanted to turn on her with the full force of his anger and pain - to shout, to scream, to plead with her.
But she wasn't Lana.
Lana had never touched him like this.
Lana had never spoken to him with such understanding.
Lana had never let him forget that he didn't belong.
The call of unconsciousness came, luring him into its haven of peace.
He allowed drowsiness to dull his mind.
Her hand stayed with him.
And her voice was the last thing he knew before sleep reclaimed him.
