Misplaced 4, part 1.

Strange Adventure!


Ruth was worried. A couple more days had passed, and very little had changed. Several people had been ill after their feast, and the conclusion had been that it had been the mushrooms in Alex’s stew. Since they didn’t know exactly which they were, they had been avoiding mushrooms and fungi since then.

Except for Patrick. Determined not to give up his vegetarianism, he had continued to eat them. Or at least Ruth assumed he had. Very often he didn’t eat with them, or turned up just as they were finishing, his pockets full of fruit and fungi. But he didn’t look well. Ruth suspected that he had accidentally poisoned himself more than once in his search for non-meat food. She had seen him looking very ill and in pain when he had thought no one was watching. He appeared to be always tired as well.


Ruth was tired too. After her last set of dreams she was afraid of more, and found it hard to get to sleep. Seeing your friends killed, if only in a dream, was not pleasant and somehow it had scared her more than a mere dream should have done. She wondered why that was.


She would have given a lot just to be able to go off alone for a bit, but she felt that, for the time being, it was more important to stay with the others. Several people were suffering the ill-effects of the mushroom poisoning and Ruth spent a lot of time looking after and staying with them. The techies had begun constructing a raft to fish from, so more of a burden for collecting food and wood fell on the others, and some of them were quick to loose interest and to disappear about their own business, so altogether Ruth had her fair share and more of the work to do. And she was too shy and under-confident to protest that certain others contributed very little.


Emma, on the other hand, had no such qualms. But her ire fell in a different direction. For some reason, probably due to his apparently frivolous, devil-may-care attitude- which he still kept up- her disapproval was directed at Patrick. She wasn’t the only one. Other people also began to complain about him, about what they saw as his stubbornness and refusal to co-operate. Kath, a second year who had been chair of the society, was one of the worst. Several times she snapped at him or was rather rude, so that Ruth didn’t blame him for wandering off. She herself found it hard to keep her temper sometimes, but she struggled to make allowances for them. After all, the very situation, marooned on a desert island, was enough to make people act not quite themselves.


She was thinking this as she sat by the fire that evening attempting to make something tasty out of tough meat and roots. She was hot, tired and felt utterly depressed. Almost everyone had spent the day at the beach, either helping with the raft or ‘helping’ with the raft (which generally involved lying around in the sun), leaving her feeling obliged to do most of the work.


Patrick appeared from the forest and added some wood to the pile. Ruth took a look at him and was shocked.


“Are you ok?” she said. “You don’t look well.”


“Ah, I’m fine,” he said, sitting down. He pulled some leaves out of his pocket and began to make tea. But this time Ruth wasn’t going to give up so easily.


“You really don’t look well,” she said. “And I know we’ve always joked that you’re skinny, but really- have you eaten anything at all today?


“Not really,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling too well so I didn’t want to upset things.”


“Yesterday?”


“I had some fruit, and- stuff. I’m fine, don’t worry.”


Ruth looked at him, disbelieving, but she didn’t get a chance to argue as the others arrived back.


“The raft’s nearly ready,” Nick said. “We should be able to launch tomorrow.” They all sat down around the fire. Kath came over to help serve the stew, and Ruth went down to the stream to get some more water.


When she came back she saw that Kath had served out the stew to everyone- including Patrick. Ruth hurried over to him.


“You know that’s got meat in it?” He stopped, aghast.


“No.”


“I’m really sorry, I was going to say but I didn’t get a chance.”


“It’s not your fault,” he replied. “I asked Kath if there was meat in it and she said no. Obviously she didn’t know.”


Ruth tried to remember who had been there when Alex brought in the animal who was in the stew. She was sure Kath had been there. She must have known there was meat in the stew.


Should she say anything? It could perhaps have been a genuine mistake. But out of the corner of her eye she could see Kath watching them. She didn’t think it was accidental.


Rachel, sitting nearby, suddenly exclaimed, “I thought there wasn’t any meat in this stew?” She looked at Kath. “You haven’t eaten any of of it?” she asked Patrick.


“I don’t think I ate any meat, but the roots and stuff were all cooked with it,” he replied. Rachel looked over at Kath.


“I thought you said there wasn’t any meat in this?” she said.


“Oh, is there?” Kath said. “Sorry.”


“But you knew there was,” Tom said, suddenly. “I remember you saying so earlier.”


“You knew?” Rachel said. “But you told Patrick there wasn’t!”


“Yeah, I did,” Kath said. “Look at him, he’s not eating properly so he’s weak and no use to the rest of us. He needs to be snapped out of this fussiness, it’s just selfish, and making life more difficult for the rest of us.”


Patrick didn’t say anything. Ruth could feel the anger of the last few days boiling up inside her.


“You can’t just trick him into not being vegetarian,” Rachel exclaimed.


“It’s not fair,” Ruth said heatedly. “How would you react if someone tried to trick you out of your beliefs? And anyway, he’s been more help than some people in collecting food and wood.” She turned to speak to Patrick but was not there. He had disappeared.


“Off again,” Emma said, annoyed.


“Do you blame him?” Ruth said. “I don’t.”


 
The story continues...