Matymbou pointed upwards. "The sun will cross the sky, Lois," he said. "You can't push it, but when you look up, it's moved. That's how it will be for you and Kent."
Lois hugged him again. "Thank you, Matty."
"Come and drink coffee with me before the celebration meal tonight."
"I will," Lois promised as she looked around the village. "Have you seen Kent? He's not with Clyde."
"He is helping Romaric take the skin from the antelope."
"Oh," Lois said, a little surprised and a lot pleased that the men were together. "That's good."
"Hey, Lois?"
She spun around at the sound of Kito's call. "Yes, Kito?" she said, hurrying over to him. "Is anything wrong?"
"No wrong. Rolle is feed Martha. She want you see … is good."
With a wave to Matymbou, Lois followed Kito into his hut, but her thoughts were down at the river with two men whose friendship she hoped would further ensconce Kent in the Bangala.
Part 33
Helping Romaric prepare the antelope occupied Clark's hands and required enough of his concentration to dull the feeling of being impossibly wedged between the past and the future.
More than anything, he wanted to be with Lois and live in the Bangala village, but coming to that realisation didn't magically grant him the ability to absolve his responsibilities to Lana. If only he could be sure … sure that Tempus hadn't hurt her, sure that someone - the baby's father - was caring for her.
She had been his wife.
If she had died, wouldn't he have felt something? If she had been calling out to him, wouldn't he have sensed she needed him?
By the time the carcass was ready to be moved into the village, Clark had reached the inescapable conclusion that he wasn't capable of embracing a life with Lois until he had gained closure with Lana.
But closure wasn't going to be possible without leaving the Bangala. And leaving the Bangala - even temporarily - meant leaving Lois.
Would she understand? Or would she see his choice as showing an inexplicable preference for the woman who had betrayed him over the woman who had selflessly given him everything?
After the antelope had been hoisted onto a rod and positioned over the low fire, Clark went to the amenities hut to slowly lather and rinse every inch of his hands and arms.
Then, fearing Lois would discern his uneasiness and having been unable to formulate any reasonable explanation for his decision to attempt to return to Metropolis, he slipped into the refuge of the carpentry hut and resumed his project.
His hands plied the chisel, meticulously carving two curves until the letter 'C' had formed on the right side of the heart.
When it was done to the best of his ability, he inspected the gift he had made for the woman he loved more than life.
A heart separated the letters 'L' and 'C'. He'd meant it as more than a gift; he'd hoped it would signify his readiness to share his life with her - his future and his past. To tell her his real name. To answer more questions about his childhood. Perhaps even to answer questions about his birth parents and the bizarre circumstances that had led to him being 'adopted' by the Kents.
But now, the 'L' and 'C' reminded him only of his wedding cake.
Lana and Clark.
Was she all right? Had Tempus hurt her?
Clark tried to force his mind back through the fog of agony, desperate for clarity of recall.
Had Tempus threatened Lana?
Your body will rot near hers.
Had Tempus been threatening to banish Lana to Africa, too? She hadn't been on the plane, Clark was sure of that. Even in his pain-shrouded, semi-conscious state, he would have been aware of her presence.
He pressed deeper into the haze of his memories.
There had been something about a newspaper. A headline.
Abuse. Dirty secrets. Lies.
Lana had told them he'd hurt her.
He remembered humiliation stinging the gashes of betrayal.
But Tempus …
What had he said?
That everyone has their price.
Lana had betrayed him in body, but it was easier - and less painful - to believe that she had betrayed him in word because Tempus had blackmailed her.
Perhaps the price hadn't been money, but her life.
Or maybe the life of the man she loved.
Or her child.
Clark ran his finger down the stem of the 'L'. Lana had told him she was leaving him because she had fallen in love with another man.
Was that the truth? Or had his marriage disintegrated because Tempus, knowing that Clark Kent was an alien, had deliberately and systematically destroyed his life, piece by piece?
Despite Clark's life-long efforts to hide the evidence of his differences, had Tempus known that his alienness manifested with strange abilities? It would seem he had, because he had also known that the green rock could nullify those abilities.
Had Tempus been driven by simple hatred of someone different? Or had his motivation been the destruction of a potential adversary whose abilities made him a threat, even if his will and his heart did not?
But if Tempus had known the green rock would be so devastatingly effective in reducing the alien to weakness, why had he needed to dismantle Clark's marriage and irreparably tarnish his reputation?
Clark wandered to the doorway of the hut and looked out at the Bangala village.
Did it really matter why his former life had crumbled? If Tempus had wanted to destroy him, he had failed.
In fact, all the mayor's efforts to crush him had only succeeded in positioning Clark within touching distance of everything he craved - belonging, love, family. A beautiful woman.
He should just take it.
He should figuratively cut all ties with Metropolis and become Kent Bomoi-Lois.
New name. New tribe. New family. New wife.
Except …
The promises he had made to Lana were branded into his conscience. He had vowed to look after her.
If she were happy with her new lover, those promises became null and void.
But if she was scared or hurt or being blackmailed, there was no way to avoid the truth that she was most likely suffering because she had married an alien.
Lana had known about his differences. They had made her uncomfortable. But she had married him anyway.
He couldn't abandon her.
If she had been killed, he needed to know. He needed to seek justice on her behalf.
Clark closed his fist around the wooden disc and slid his hand into the pocket of his shorts.
During the hours he had worked on it, he had repeatedly visualised the moment he would give it to Lois. He'd hoped it would make her happy. He'd hoped she would recognise that it represented his appreciation and love for her and his commitment to their future together.
That future was clouded by an unresolved past.
He opened his hand and let his gift fall into the bottom of his pocket.
He had to find Lois. But what was he going to say? How could he tell her that he was worried about his wife's safety because a vindictive tyrant knew she'd married an alien?
Lois had been so understanding, never demanding answers to questions about how he had gotten to Africa and how he'd ended up under a tree near the Bangala village, wounded, unconscious, and mottled with green rock.
He'd allowed Lois to think that Lana had left him because she'd fallen in love with another man. On the surface, that was the truth.
But a much greater truth lurked below.
He had to tell Lois.
The truth.
All of it.
He couldn't allow his love for Lois to continue to grow as if its only impediment was a finished and soon-to-be-forgotten marriage. He couldn't remain with the Bangala, pretending he was fundamentally the same as them.
If they expelled him, he would find a way to return to Metropolis. He would find Lana and meet his obligation to her.
And then, caring nothing for his own life and safety, he would do what he should have done in the past - expose the violence and corruption and greed that was poisoning the American way of life.
He approached Lois's hut, hoping she wouldn't be there, hoping he would be granted more time before he destroyed his second life as surely as Tempus had destroyed his first.
Three feet from the door, he sensed her presence.
"Lois?" he said, full of hesitancy.
"Kent?" Her voice - so soft, so sweet, so full of love - gripped his thumping heart. "Come in."
He entered the cool dimness and saw her sitting on a seat with her book and pencil. "Don't get up," he said quickly, wanting to avoid physical contact. "Is it OK if I sit, too?"
"Of course," she said with a smile that etched into his memory.
He sat. He stared at his hands.
"Kent?" She reached over and touched his hand. "What's wrong?"
If only he could force out the words to proclaim that there was nothing wrong. If only he could take her - right now - as his wife. If only he could live free of old responsibilities.
But, he was as powerless now as he been in the presence of the green rock.
"Lois," he rasped.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
Clark looked up at her. "Lois," he said. "I love you. Don't ever doubt that. I love you."
Her smile was quick and shallow and spiked with trepidation. "But?"
"But I have to go back."
"Back?"
"Back to the US. Back to Metropolis. I have to find La-"
"Metropolis?" Lois straightened, sweeping aside her book. "You said you lived in Kansas."
"I was raised in Kansas. Lana and I were married there. But we lived in Metropolis."
"You lived …" Lois swallowed. "You lived in Metropolis?"
"Yes. After we were m-"
"How long? How long were you there?"
"Nearly three years. I moved there just before we were engaged, and Lana joined me after the wedding."
"Why?"
"Because of my career. I had always wanted to work at the best newspaper in the-"
"You were a reporter?" Her question was fired like a bullet from a gun, and Clark flinched as it struck his heart.
"Yes," he said.
"Which paper?"
"The Daily Planet."
Lois shot to her feet. She swung around to face him, her cheeks red and her eyes glinting with resentment. "Why did you come here?" she asked coldly. "Why did you come to the Bangala? And don't waste my time with stories about unfaithful wives and unlikely pregnancies and broken hearts. I want the truth, Kent. All of it."
Clark shrank back against the fury of her attack. "I didn't mean to come here," he said. "I was unconscious. They brought me here."
"You were a reporter? With the Daily Planet? Living in Metropolis? You came to the exact place where I have lived for five years? But you didn't mean it?"
Her contempt stung. A faltering "Yes," was the only reply he could manage. He followed it up with an even less convincing, "No."
"Somebody else - they - brought you here?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
"I think … I think it was Tempus."
Her eyes narrowed. Clark couldn't be sure if her reaction had been recognition or deeper scepticism. "Why?" she said. "Why did he bring you here? Why Africa? Why the Congo? Why - out of everywhere on this planet - did you end up in the exact place where I am?"
She sounded as if she wished he'd gone somewhere else. Anywhere else. "I didn't choose," Clark said. "I was attacked. You saw the green rock. They dumped me."
"They dumped you near here?"
Did a mile above the ground count as 'near'? "They dumped me a distance away, and I came here."
"What were you looking for?"
"Somewhere …" He'd been looking for somewhere to die.
"Somewhere?" Lois snapped. "Or someone?"
"I …" Clark stalled, wondering if there was any way to erase the past few minutes. "I wasn't looking for anyone."
"You weren't chasing a story?" Lois's face was hard with suspicion.
"No." Then comprehension clunked through his confusion. "You think I came here, looking for you, so I could get the story of what happened to you?"
"Did you? Is that what happened?"
"No! I never even -"
"Don't tell me you've never heard of Lois Lane."
Her name hit him like an avalanche. "You're Lois Lane?" he gasped. "The Lois Lane? The super reporter who …" His words stalled in the murky fog of revelation.
"Go on," Lois ordered with biting frostiness.
"The reporter who went chasing a story and never returned?"
"So you have heard of me?" It sounded like an accusation.
"When I first worked at the Planet … people talked sometimes."
"About me?"
"About some of the stories you got."
"So you thought you'd make a big name for yourself by tracking me down and writing the story and winning the Pulitzer I never won?" she demanded, pointing an angry finger directly at his heart. "But you were smart enough to know that if you admitted your real agenda, I would realise you were a threat to everything I have and the people I love. So you cooked up a snivelling story about an unfaithful wife and child and figured I'd lap it up."
"I didn't come looking for you. Everything I told you - about Lana, about the baby - it's all true."
"But there's so much you didn't tell me," Lois said, marching a couple of steps away and then spinning around to confront him. "Like how you got to Africa less than a week after your life supposedly dissolved. Like what the green rock is. Like what contacts you must have maintained in order to get back, because the best story in the world isn't worth much if it's never published. Like who helped you get here. Like why, out of everywhere on earth, you knew to come to this continent, this country, this river, this village."
"I didn't choose to come here," Clark said with quiet resignation. "I wasn't looking for you. The story of what had happened to you wasn't current anymore."
"If you're any sort of a reporter, you know dead stories are only one discovery away from storming right back onto the front page."
"I wasn't trying to get a story."
"No decent reporter ever believes in coincidence."
Clark nodded his grudging agreement.
"So, you tell me, Kent," Lois continued. "What are the chances that the two people who stumble across the Bangala in five years both happen to be American? Slim, but possible. What are the chances both are from Metropolis? Metropolis is a big city, but that's stretching belief. What are the chances that both have the same job and come from the same newspaper in the same city?"
Clark lifted his hands a few inches in silent defeat.
"Zero," she answered for him.
"I knew about Lois Lane," Clark said, still awash with amazement that the Lois Lane he'd heard about was the woman who stood before him. "I knew she'd gone to Africa, chasing the biggest story of her career. I knew she never returned. I didn't know anything else. I didn't come trying to find you or get a story. And it never occurred to me that you could be her."
"So Perry never mentions me anymore?"
A little of her anger had died, replaced by something that sounded a lot like sadness. Regret, even. "Perry's not at the Planet anymore," Clark said. "He left two years ago."
Lois stepped closer. "Perry left? He left? By his own choice? He didn't disappear?"
"He retired. It was a sudden decision."
"Why?"
"Mr Olsen had encouraged him to contest the mayoral elections. He pulled out just prior to the voting day. He said it was too stressful and a newspaper man had no business trying to be something he was not."
"Did you hear from him again?"
"He went to his fishing hut."
"Did you ever hear from him again?" Lois repeated. "A Christmas card? A letter? Anything?"
"No."
The colour drained from her cheeks. She swallowed. "Did you … Did anyone try to contact him?"
"I didn't," Clark said, feeling ashamed by his negligence. "I don't know if Mr Olsen did."
Lois slowly shook her head, her eyes trained on a spot on the ground. When she looked up at him, her disdain caused his heart to curl into a tight ball. "Do you realise what I've done?" she said in a tight voice. "I've put the Bangala people - their entire way of life - in jeopardy. I trusted you. I believed your story, even though it was full of holes. I assured Matty he could trust you. I told him he had nothing to fear from you."
"I'm not going to hurt them," Clark said. "That was never my intention."
"But you're going back, aren't you?"
"Lois," he said desperately. "I have to go back."
"To tell your story?" she said bitterly. "To return to the life you left?"
"No. No. I don't want to go back - there's nothing there for me now. But I have to go back. I have to make sure Lana is OK."
Lois's mouth twisted to a sneer. "Lana? The woman who got pregnant by having an affair with another man? The woman who let you think the baby was yours? The wife you loved who hurt you so badly you didn't want to live? That woman? You want to give up everything here for her?"
"She's my wife. I have to make sure she's OK. I owe her that much."
Lois stared at him for a long moment. "If what you say is true - that coming here was not your choice, that Lana really did break your heart, that you have no intention of reporting what you know about me - you can prove it by staying."
Her stance remained cold and aloof, but Clark sensed a fragile offer of reconciliation was threaded through her words. She was testing him. And he failed again. "I have to go back," he declared through a throat squeezed tight with a wad of unshed tears.
"If you leave the Bangala, you can never return."
He'd known that, of course, and he had no reply.
"Think about it, Kent!" Lois screamed. "If you go back now, there are going to be questions. People are going to want to know where you have been. People are going to want to know what happened to you. What are you going to tell them?"
"I don't know."
"Perhaps you could make up a story about an unfaithful wife. You're good at that one."
"It wasn't a story," Clark said in miserable self-defence. "Lana told me she was in love with another man. She told me the baby was his. She told me our marriage was over."
"So you came to Africa?" Lois said. All emotion had gone from her voice. When he looked into her face, Clark saw only the resolute reporter in relentless search of answers. "On a whim?"
"No. I was captured. By Tempus."
"Tempus flew you to the Congo?"
"Not personally. He ordered that I be taken away."
"Where did you land? Brazzaville? How did you get here? By truck?"
"No. There was no truck."
"There's nowhere to land anywhere close. The forest is too dense. You were in no condition to walk far. So, I ask again, how did you get onto Bangala land?"
"I …" How could he tell her he had been pushed out of a plane and lived?
Lois laughed, harsh and brittle. "To think, I believed you. To think, I was willing to accept your evasions and half answers."
"Lois, I didn't lie about anything important."
"I trusted you," she said. "And worse, the Bangala people trusted you."
"I won't hurt them," Clark said. "I promise I won't say anything."
"How can I believe you when you're willing to give up everything to protect whoever sent you here?"
"I wish I could tell you everything," he said wretchedly.
"Who brought you here? Who knows you're here?"
"Tempus. I think he intended my death. They pushed me out of the plane."
Lois raised her hands in anger. "You must think I'm stupid," she said. "No one falls from a plane and lives. No one. But you think that because you're from smart, sophisticated Metropolis and I've been living with simple natives, you can spin any tale you choose, and I'll just lap it up."
"I don't think that," Clark said. "I respect and admire you so much, Lois. I love you."
"I want you to leave," she said in a voice so cold, he barely recognised it. "I want you to go and never come back."
"OK."
His submission seemed to re-fire her aggravation. "When you first came here, I asked you not to spoil their trust," she said. "I asked you not to teach them to be suspicious and fearful. But that is exactly what you've done. From now on, the Bangala will always live under the threat that you or someone you tell about them will come here, intent on destroying the life they have. From now on, they will know they cannot trust any outsider. Your deceit has caused such incredible damage."
"I'm sorry," Clark said. "I give you my word that I will never speak to anyone about my time here. I will never mention you or your people."
Her look made it clear that his word counted for little. "Are you going to get food and water from Gislane? Are you going to ask Romaric for directions?"
"No." He couldn't face another volley of questions. Another barrage of suspicion.
"So you do have friends waiting for you? Have you been in regular contact with them all this time?"
"No. No. I have no one waiting for me."
"Then what you're planning is a suicide mission."
Clark didn't care. He hadn't cared before he met Lois, and he didn't care now.
"Don't give me the suicidal self-pity line, Kent," Lois said. "I fell for that once before. I won't be so gullible again."
Clark had to get out. He couldn't stand another lash from the whip of her words. "Goodbye, Lois."
Without looking at her again, he strode from her hut, marched past the celebration preparations near the roaster, and left the Bangala people via the village gate.
The path to the quarantine area offered the easiest way forward. He sprinted. He passed the quarantine gate, refusing to glance its way for fear that the memories would rise up and seize him. The jungle became thicker. He chose the way that seemed less dense and pushed through, snapping some low branches and crumpling the undergrowth.
He tried to clear his mind against all incoming thoughts, but one crashed through his barriers.
He was running away. Again.
