The cane still stuck out of the grave, like a big toothpick. The wind still sailed past his cheeks and his breathing still echoed in the dark chamber. But somehow it all seemed a bit simple to him. He turned around and faced the jungle.

“Sula,” he whispered. It was time to go. Shannon ground his molars, spit blood to the side, and ran into the night, unable to contain the hot rage that boiled through his veins.

That was it—his sorrow had given way to a bitter fury. That was the difference in him. He stopped and looked around at the dark jungle. An image of the old witch doctor, grinning with twisted lips, flashed through his mind. It was true, then. Sula lived.

Shannon felt a finger of fear crawl up his back.

A sudden dark fog crowded his mind and he blinked in the night, disorientated. Where was he going?

Oh, yes. He was going to the cliffs. He was running away. But that hardly made sense. He should go back to the plantation and do something!

No, he should escape. Then he would do something. What, he had no idea. He was only eighteen. A mere boy. A boy with Sula.

Shannon reached the black cliff, spit into his hands, and started to climb. It rose two hundred meters into the dark sky, lighted occasionally by the moon, which peered through passing clouds. Night creatures chirped in disjointed, overlapping chorus, millions strong.

Despite the cool night air, the climb quickly coaxed streams of sweat from Shannon’s pores. The thin crack he’d often studied as a possible ascent path rose like a dark scar in the dim light. Using his hands as a wedge in the thin crack, he picked his way up the rock surface. With proper climbing shoes the task would have been tricky. Only because his bare feet were calloused did he manage it now.

“Sulaaaa . . .”

He’d climbed a full hundred meters without any major problems when the crack began to thin. He paused, blinked the sweat from his eyes, and pressed on.

Within another ten meters the gap closed to a paper-thin seam that stopped at a small ledge jutting from the smooth surface above. Another hundred meters of cliff loomed above him. He couldn’t back down now, not without rope. A chill ran down his spine, and he breathed deep to steady his nerves.

He walked the face of the cliff with his fingers.

Nothing.

Shannon stared again at the ledge above, his heart now pounding like a piston engine. It was one foot, maybe eighteen inches beyond the nearest handhold. Reaching it would require him to release the hold securing him to the face. Missing it would send him plummeting to his death.

An image stilled his breathing: a man free-falling with his arms and legs stretched to the sky, screaming. Then a sickening thud—a large boulder at the base breaking the fall like a fist to the back.