Carter remained standing on the beach for as long as she could before entering the jungle. If she was being perfectly honest with herself, it frightened her. She didn't like bugs and she didn't like the dark, and she was uncomfortable with the possibility that the jungle might harbor wild animals. She had never liked uncertainty of any kind, which was why she’d applied to the same university her parents had gone to, the same university at which they’d first met. Of course, she was very different from them in that they loved art and self-expression, and she didn’t really feel she had anything new to express. She still hadn't decided on a major. But at least attending Lemongrass was a tradition rather than something entirely new. With a sigh, Carter stepped into the unpredictable shadows of the jungle.
The trees were tall and thickly green at the tops, with thick smooth trunks. Fallen gray palm fronds formed a carpet under her loafers as she tiptoed in. Carter could hear a soft sound of rushing water, which she followed. The earth grew wetter and greener. She came out on the other end of a swath of undergrowth and found herself standing in a thin but noisy river.
Her task of the day already completed, Carter took note of the path she'd taken to get to the river and then decided to check on how the others were doing. She especially wanted to discuss the situation alone with Earnest, and she remembered the general direction in which Earnest had gone, so she walked that way. She always kept close to the edge of of the trees so she wouldn't become confused. But after a while, the trees grew sparser and were replaced by boulders and piles of rock. The land flattened and dried out. It was then that she began to hear Earnest humming under his breath.
"Earnest?" she said.
As soon as she’d spoken, a face, freshly covered in white dust with the eyes and lips ringed in black mud, popped over the top of an especially large boulder. Black gloved hands snapped up to frame his cheeks, and the mouth opened in a comic o of surprise. Earnest attempted to leap over the rock pile and run toward her, but he appeared to collide with an invisible wall before he could reach her and ended up sliding elaborately along the wall until he finally dropped face first at her feet.
Carter clapped. "Earnest! Wow. My heart almost stopped when you hit that imaginary wall," she said.
He scrambled to his feet and bowed. "Thank you, Carter-boo."
"Have you started a building us a shelter yet?"
In response, Earnest began pushing off along his imaginary wall again. Immediately it became clear that there were actually four walls, plus a sturdy invisible ceiling which he pounded on repeatedly to demonstrate its solidity. There also seemed to be lots of springy sofas and a water bed, and a dining room table which he spread with a long fluttering tablecloth. He acted out each detail of the little house with such skill, care, and clarity that she could almost believe that it was real. But in her heart she knew her friend's display was useless, though amusing and even beautiful.
When he was finished, he tiptoed out of the insubstantial little cottage, shut and locked the door, and took a bow.
“Really, though, Earnest,” she said. “Where are we going to sleep tonight?”
He looked down and snapped the black suspenders that held up his costume, a subtle sign that she knew meant he was losing his patience. “Cart-bug. You need to stop stressing. Let the Tao work its magic.”
“Do you even know what the Tao is?”
“Of course I do,” he said loftily. “It has to do with…the universe.”
Carter sat down heavily on a rock and avoided his eyes. “Ok. Then maybe you can explain to me why Sybil thinks trusting in the Tao is more likely to save us than hard work and logic!”
“Carter! Why are you spreading negativity?” Earnest said, outraged. Then he softened and sat down next to her. “Listen, we’ve only got each other now. We have to be supportive of everyone’s ideas. So you shouldn’t talk about Sybil like that. Buddha knows, she never has an unkind thing to say about you.”
Carter slumped. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” she said, and hugged him. “You’re a good friend, even if survival isn’t your strong suit.”
Earnest put out his arms. “What can I say, Carter-bee? I believe that pursuits of the mind and the emotions are more important than obtaining the skill set of a Neanderthal.”
“That’s valid,” Carter said, to end the argument.
“How about we go see if anyone else is having more luck with their assignments? I think I saw Sybil head this way.” He pointed back toward the beach.
Carter didn’t really want to talk to Sybil right then, but she had no other ideas. “Sure.”
They pulled themselves to their feet and left Earnest’s shelter of air among the boulders and the dust. They walked through green forest again for a while until they began to feel relentless sun and sand beneath their feet again. The ocean spread out in front of them like a blue Ann Powell print. Carter looked down and saw that her loafers were crusted with dirt, so she yanked them off and tossed them into the water.
“Cart-poo,” Earnest said. “I appreciate the grand gesture of tossing away your shoes along with your cares, but you saved up for those for four months last year!”
“I didn’t mean it as a grand gesture,” Carter said. “They are beyond repair at this point, and they’re giving me blisters.” She coughed. “Dear God, I’m thirsty.” As soon as she said it, her awareness of her thirst heightened. The back of her throat was rough and itchy, and her whole mouth seemed to be coated in a thin sticky paste.
“Me too,” said Earnest.
“I need sunglasses,” she added. “And I’m getting a sunburn.”
"I always buy stage makeup with SPF, so I'm feeling pretty good," said Earnest. "Hey, I think I see Sybil!”
“Where?” And then she saw it: Sybil’s thin kneeling form, surrounded by a ring of color. “Wait, what is she doing?”
“I don’t know, but it’s beautiful,” he said, and took off down the beach. Carter followed him at a slower pace. The details of the ring became clearer as she got closer. She suppressed a gasp: the design was made of curling tendrils of orange-, yellow-, red- and white-colored sand.
Sybil was crouched over the one section of the ring remaining without color. She seemed to be transferring grains of sand from a glass bottle one at a time onto the design. Sybil appeared transfixed by her work, but she looked up and smiled when they approached.
“It is a sand mandala,” she said by way of explanation.
“What’s a sand mandala?” Earnest said, gaping at the ground.
“It is a work of art most commonly created by Buddhist monks to demonstrate the impermanence of life,” she said. “They create beautiful circular designs using grains of colored sand, and when they are done they allow them to be washed away by the elements.” She turned to them, her face shining. “I have always wanted to create such a masterpiece, but even at my Lemongrass art classes I was required to create art that could last, that could be submitted to the teacher for a grade. Here, I have the freedom and time to express myself as I choose.
“Don’t you see what I mean now, Carter?” she added. “We are so blessed to have been brought here.”
“To have crashed here, you mean,” Carter said.
“It is all part of the great plan,” said Sybil, returning to the mandala.
“I agree,” said Earnest. He was so full of enthusiasm that he bounced as he talked. “I think I just did my best performance yet, right, Carter? I simulated a house that was so real I almost fooled myself. This island is quite conducive to creative energies.”
“It is indeed.”
“Right, ok,” Carter said. “But Sybil: do you have any idea on how to build us a fire?”
Sybil looked up, stood, took a careful step of out of the center of her mandala, and tapped Carter gently on the chest. “What of the fire within your heart?” she said. “Is there nothing to be said for the fire of the human spirit?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carter said nervously, “but we need an actual physical fire, so we can, you know, cook food and boil water and stuff.”
Sybil smiled. “I intend,” she whispered, so that the two listeners had to lean in to hear her, “to light a fire at the center of this mandala, once it is finished, and allow it to consume. It symbolizes the manner in which the physical shall annihilate the emotional and the aesthetically beautiful. It symbolizes how all art and intellect must yield to the forces of nature.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you,” Carter said despairingly.
“And so, too, must nature yield to the powers of human darkness!” someone shrieked from close by. They turned around to see Lillith standing at the edge of the jungle, her whole body bent backwards at the hips, a huge carving knife clutched high above her head. The knife point seemed to be aimed straight at her heart.

“Lillith! What the f***!”
Carter spun around in shock. The voice had come from Sybil. Sybil’s face went red and she slapped a hand over her mouth. Then she collected herself, threw up her arms and cried out, “Lillith, my dear, the Tao shares in your pain and so do we! But there is still hope for our lives on this island! Please don’t do this!”
“That’s right! We’ve all had moments of darkness before!” Earnest said.
"That's right!" said Carter, in a fit of panic. "Think of the Tao!"
Lillith dropped her arms and let the weapon swing by her side. "I actually wasn't trying to kill myself,” she said, as though even she were surprised.
Everyone went silent. "No?" said Carter.
"Then what's with the gigantic carving knife?" said Earnest.
"It takes a fearsome weapon to subdue the fearsome beast," she said.
"You were - oh, that's right," said Carter. "You were hunting. Catch anything?" she added hopefully.
Lillith looked at her resentfully and said, "It takes a steady eye to track a creature on its steady escape. And my eye was interrupted."
"Oops. Sorry."
"But how did you happen to have a knife on you?" Earnest asked.
Lillith held the blade up reverently to the sun, which had at this point almost disappeared under the edge of the ocean. A stormy mass of clouds was gathering above it. “In a previous life, I simply enjoyed to stare at it pensively and contemplate death," she replied.

"Ok, that's all I need to know about that," said Carter. "Seriously, you guys, it's getting dark and nobody's completed their task. I found a river, but we can't even drink from it without boiling the water over a fire first. What are we going to do?"
Lillith continued as though Carter had not spoken. "But here - oh, here! - this knife may realize its true purpose. In the civilized world it had no history of blood; it had never even cut a loaf of bread. It was pure ornament, pure show. But on this island it has new meaning. And so have I!"
"Your great poetic significance is somewhat lost on me," Sybil said intently. "But I sense that you are embracing the island's mysticism, and I applaud you for it!" Carter couldn't be certain, but she thought she saw Sybil toss her a meaningful glance, and this irritated her.
"You aren't listening to me!" Carter cried.
"We are, we are," said Earnest kindly. "Listen, how about we use Lillith's knife to strike some sparks, start fire - then bring over some water from the river. I'm sure things will look better when we're all rehydrated."
Carter smiled in relief, nodded - and then the rain began to flow. The four liberal arts students were so parched at that point that their first impulse was not to take cover, but to stand under the downpour with their mouths open. Sybil produced a painted leather flask from the folds of her flowy clothes and set it on a rock to collect water. But finally they got cold and withdrew into the jungle. Icy raindrops slipped through the trees and down their backs. They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while, sandy, wet, bedraggled, and not touching. Carter struggled to clean the lenses of her glasses with her slimy sweater. The jungle got darker with every minute.
“We should find shelter,” said Earnest.
“You were supposed to build us a shelter,” said Carter.
“Don’t be so hard on me!” he said. His makeup had been smeared by the rain into a checkered parody of a sad clown’s tears.
“Do not seek to externalize your problems, Carter,” Sybil admonished. “Remember, we do not have permanent access to water either, and that was your job.”
“But I did find water,” Carter mumbled. “We just can’t boil it. And we have you to thank for – ”
“Squabbling isn’t going to help us,” Earnest interrupted. “If we work together, perhaps we can find somewhere safe and dry to sleep tonight.”
“Home is where the heart is,” said Lillith. “But for the heartless, home is where the art is.”
“In that case, we are home wherever we go,” Sybil said.
.
.
.
It seemed to take hours of feeling their way across the dim island before they found the cave.
“Isn’t this the place where you were trying to build a shelter?” Carter said to Earnest.
“Yes,” he replied.
“How could you miss this cave then? It’s huge!” she exclaimed. The mouth of the cave was high enough to stand in and wide enough the lie in horizontally.
“I was busy practicing my act,” he said primly. “I didn’t notice it.”
“Let us be grateful that we found it at all,” said Sybil. “Let’s settle in, everyone.”
“Into the belly of the beast,” said Lillith.
Inside the cave was even darker than outside, but at least it was dry. They all stripped down to their underwear and set their clothes on rocks to air out.
“How deep does this cave go?” said Earnest, squinting into the dark.
“Its depths are unfathomable, like the depths of my depression,” said Lillith.
“Who will take first watch?” Carter asked. Her question was met with blank stares. “All right, I’ll do it.”
An unenthusiastic chorus of “thank you’s” rose from the three arts students, who were already half asleep. Lillith disappeared under her saturated black puffer coat. Earnest lay down on his side, using his beret for a pillow. Sybil went to the opening of the cave, where she’d laid her clothes out to dry, and came back with a thin straw mat. She spread it on the floor and flowed through a few soft yoga positions before saying a prayer in Sanskrit and lying down to sleep.
Carter settled herself against a wall, faced the mouth of the cave, and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her stomach contracted painfully. She was hungry. The feeling had been there for a while, but it had become more pointed ever since the rain had started and thirst had ceased to be a major problem. She knew the others must be feeling it too. They must be curled around their stomachs right now, nursing a pain and a fear that were based entirely on physical human need, that overwhelmed and drowned out emotion, thought, and individuality. Hunger is proof that you are only an animal. No one had complained that they were hungry yet.
She stared out at darkness streaked with silver shooting points of rain. Carter was cold and she was hungry, but she was also so tired that she could not hold her eyes open any longer.

Hungry, guttural sounds emanated from the inside of the cave. Carter snapped awake. It was dark as ever but the rain had stopped and the island was silent. Then the sounds started up again.
Her sleepy brain fought to keep up with her instincts, which all told her to pick up and run. Instead she slid a cold hand across the floor until it bumped against somebody’s foot. She grabbed the foot and shook it.
“Unngh?” said Earnest.
“Something’s in here with us,” she whispered. The snarling grew louder.
“Ohmigod,” he said, a hysterical note creeping into his voice. “It sounds like Godzilla. We watched that movie in film class last week. The special effects are kind of cheesy – but you know me – I’m a sucker for classic cinematic kitsch. Did you know that the sets were actually miniatures made of balsa wood?”
“Earnest,” Carter hissed.
“Sorry,” he said. He reached back into the darkness and shook Sybil, then Lillith awake.

“Why have you roused me from soft oblivion to this waking nightmare?” Lillith snapped.

Just then, an animal scream rippled through the cave, closer than ever before. "And what horrors is this nightmare peopled by?" Lillith whispered. Carter was dismayed by the new emotion that filled Lillith’s voice - not despair or disdain, but fear.

Everyone froze except for Sybil, who rose on thin legs and held up her hands. “Creature of Earth,” she called in a benevolent voice, “We receive you.”

A pair of glowing yellow eyes appeared, deeply set in the darkness, and that was all Carter saw before she scrambled backwards, grabbing Sybil’s wrist as she did, so that Sybil came with her. Lillith and Earnest, of course, followed.

“Quick! Crawl on top of the cave and hide!” she cried. They scrambled up the rocks and crouched there, shaking with fear, as they listened to the creature glide like lightning to the mouth of the cave. They could not see it. They could not risk looking over the edge and having the creature look up at the same time. The creature was silent for a moment. Then it let out another horrible scream and streaked off into the jungle. Its shape was difficult to make out in the darkness but Carter could tell that it was very fast.

They lay there for a long time. Carter was so afraid that she was sure she would never raise her head again. It was clear to her now that they had had no chance of surviving on the island for long when their only problems were getting food and water; now, with an eating, breathing, eating predator, they could not possibly last another day. Her eyes were tight shut, but she could see Sybil’s superior smiling face burned into the blackness.
At last Carter said, “We have no chance against that thing. We can’t run from it. Our only choice is to hide from it. And it knows we are on the island now.”

Earnest jumped up. “I don’t get it!”

Carter grabbed the hem of his boxers and whispered, “Shh! It might hear you!”

He shook her off. “How is it appearing just now? How could we have missed some kind of horrible creature lurking around the island all this time? It’s just unbelievable!”

“It is most likely nocturnal,” said Sybil.

“Like my soul,” said Lillith. She’d left most of her clothes drying in the cave, like the others. But she still had her puffer coat, which was zipped up to her chin and only exposed her thick bare feet to the world.

“And it must not like the rain, or it would not have waited until the rain stopped to come out to hunt,” Sybil continued. “From the speed at which it ran I would guess that it is a carnivore who takes down fast, medium-sized prey. But we haven’t seen any animals that fit this description – deer or monkeys or the like.” She pulled a pocket-sized manual – Species of the Tropics – out of her bra and opened it to the Index.

“How do you know all that?” snapped Carter. “And why the hell do you carry bottles and mats and books in your underwear?”

Sybil frowned and tucked the book back into her bra. “I make it my business to understand all the ways of the Earth and its inhabitants, so that my artwork might reflect it,” she said, acknowledging only one question. “To that end, I’m minoring in biology.”

Carter stared at her. “Then how come you’ve been so useless all this time?” she shouted at last.

“Shh!” Earnest said.
“You almost got us killed in that cave, trying to commune with the Earth! You’ve been no help ever since you convinced everyone that survival was secondary to writing a really nice poem during our stay here in this hellhole. You’re very serene and convincing, but you can’t convince me when the facts are this grim. We’ve got no food, nowhere safe to sleep, no fire, and now we have to contend with a monster…”

Sybil remained seated. “I am not the one,” she said, “who insisted that we rush into that cave to take shelter, who insisted on attempting to control every aspect of fate. I am not afraid to let life take me where it will, to surrender to the changeable tides. If we let go completely, instead of following your every word – ”

“My every – ?”

“ – perhaps the Tao will deliver us, and inspire in us some excellent artwork as well.”

Earnest was nodding vigorously. Lillith looked depressed, but not suicidal. Carter could have died of frustration.

“All right, Sybil,” she said. “What is your damn Tao-sanctioned plan?"

Sybil gave her a sympathetic look. “I feel for you, truly. You won’t let go. You don’t know how to live. You can never be an artist.”

Carter felt something she’d always made solid inside of her evaporate. “Sybil,” she said sharply. “Please answer my question.”

“We can’t live in conflict with this creature. It is too fast, too strong, too hungry for us,” she said. “Clearly, we have to make an effort to coexist with it.”

“You’re crazy!” said Carter.

“You can remove the artist, the human being, from civilization, but you cannot remove the civilization from the artist,” Sybil said, knocking her knuckles together softly. “Art is our buffer against the chaos. It’s what separates us from the creature and its kind. But it is also what will allow us to connect with it.”

“Oh Sybil!” Earnest cried, and threw himself over her lap. She stroked his head benevolently.

"I propose that we wait right here at this cave, and create a work of art so powerful that it will reach through the tangled hungers of the creature's wild heart and touch the part of it that we all share, the spark of its life, the soul."

"Brilliant!" said Earnest.

"We will speak a plea for friendship - Lillith and I could collaborate on that - and Earnest's expressive body movements will be key to translating our request to the creature, since it is most likely illiterate, poor thing," she finished, smiling at the two of them in turn. Lillith and Earnest looked back at her as though she was the Pope and they were lost pilgrims.
Carter forced her voice to sound slow and deliberate. “That creature is wild and hungry. It doesn’t care about art,” she said. “I refuse to participate in this.”
Earnest threw his beret on the ground in frustration.
“If there is any artist still in you, then have faith, Carter,” said Sybil. “Have faith in the power of art. Life without art, or the faith that the world will be receptive to it, is not a life worth living.”
Carter looked at the three of them, Sybil standing full of conviction and innocence, and Lillith and Earnest crouched behind her like goslings, and lost hope.
.
.
.
Carter felt very clear of mind as she walked out of the jungle and onto the beach. She had Lillith’s knife in one hand – lent to her by Lillith, who probably intended to die a poetic death in the jaws if chaos – and was collecting dry branches and flinty bits of rock with the other.
She walked along the beach and found a warm spot facing the sunrise. She sawed the knife against various different rocks until one produced sparks, and then – remembering the fire-making process described in the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen – shredded bits of thin bark into a pile to catch the sparks.
“Artists,” she snarled as she watched the sparks smear down glowing wooden wires. She needed to divorce herself from that identity. It was not hers and couldn’t be. She didn’t have the optimism, the ability to assume that what she had to say mattered, no matter the situation. Sybil had seen it and called it.
Bit by bit she fed leaves and twigs and incrementally bigger branches into the signal fire. The sun burned and spread at the edge of the ocean. It took hours, but the fire grew and stretched up to the sun, which had by then risen overhead. She boiled river water in a conch shell nestled at the edge of the fire and drank it. She pulled her knees into her stomach to press out the hunger.
Panicked noises began to come from deep in the jungle. Carter’s stomach clenched, but not with hunger this time. She curled onto her side and stared at the ocean as the noises escalated to animal screams and human screams of terror, and then to sudden silence. Her whole body was shaking by then, so much so that she moved away from the fire, just to be safe.
“You didn’t want my help!” she screamed, her face in the sand, sand cupped in her eyelashes.
She couldn’t have done anything. They didn’t want her to do anything. They were caught up in a high-minded fantasy land, and she was the heavy anchor of truth. Wasn’t truth supposed to be the core of art? But most artists don’t understand that, and produce reams of horrifiying poetry as a result. They pick pretension and a pretty story instead. The three artists had cut their anchor and flown straight into the sun.
But Carter saw Sybil’s mandala in the colors of her signal fire, and the open fire in Sybil’s eyes when she talked about freedom and communication. And she knew not all of this was pretension.
As she lay there, she noticed that a little bump had appeared at the edge of the ocean. She blinked and squinted. The bump remained and took on a whitish color. Carter pushed herself onto her knees, and from there to her feet, and leapt up and down on the sand. She didn’t dare scream in case the creature heard, but she scrambled for more dry wood to grow her signal fire. Soon the boat was so close that she could see the foam coming off of the bow. Two men in orange jumpsuits dived off the side of the boat and jogged up the beach.
“Only I survived,” Carter said, feeling a bit of inappropriate pride.
One of the rescuers wrapped her in a blanket. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said. “This is all over now. We’ll get you to the hospital, and possibly within a week you’ll be back at Lemongrass College for the Liberal Arts.”
Carter squirmed in the blanket. “No! No! I can’t!”
“Whoa, there, ma’am,” said the other rescuer. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. Don’t you remember Lemongrass? Do you remember who you are? You’re going to school to become an artist.”
“No,” she said, to the bewildered Coast Guard. “I’m going to become a business lawyer.”