Qingmu and Su Huilan knew what happened next: Anderson returned to rescue Alice, but was unfortunately shot in the leg by a poisoned arrow. He didn't have time to treat his wound and fled with Alice. Their goal was to return to the lake in the center of the island, take a lifeboat hidden there, and cross to the other side of the lake. Although there were bound to be cannibals on the other side, at least they could escape their current predicament of being hunted down.
However, the poison from the arrow prevented Anderson from running at full speed, so he could only create a false impression by turning back at the fork in the stream in order to deceive the savages chasing them.
After Su Huilan's treatment, Anderson's condition improved slightly. His dry, pale lips moved slightly, and he murmured, " Alice... Alice..."
Alice grabbed his hand. " Anderson, I'm here! Everything's alright, Anderson, someone's coming to rescue us!"
Anderson struggled to open his eyes and saw the faces of two strangers. He smiled and said, "Great! Alice, God heard my prayer! I asked God to send an angel to save you, and thank goodness! You are saved!"
Alice placed Anderson's hand on her face, tears streaming down her face. "Yes, we're all saved! We'll all be alright!"
Crow nearby, watching this scene, cawed, "Caw! How touching!"
Su Huilan felt a pang of sadness, and swallowed back the words she was about to say. She pulled Qingmu outside the cave and said, "Let them be alone for a while!"
Qingmu had a bad feeling. "You mean... his injury?...?"
Su Huilan shook her head and sighed, "The poison of the arrow poison tree is very strong; it's a miracle he's lasted this long."
Didn't you give him the medication?
"The medication can provide some relief, but it cannot prevent the toxins from damaging the nervous system and heart, unless we return to Rapa Island tonight and there are suitable medications at the camp."
Qingmu knew immediately that it was impossible. Let alone whether they could leave the island now, even if they could, it would take at least two days by boat to get to Rapa Island from here.
"What do you think?" Su Huilan suddenly asked.
"What?" Qingmu didn't know what she was asking.
"About this island, and the lake on it," Su Huilan said.
Qingmu rubbed his face, took out a cigarette from his pocket, and lit a match with a snap. He held the lighter close to the cigarette, deep in thought. The match hovered a few centimeters from the cigarette for a long time, until it was almost extinguished, before Qingmu finally lit the cigarette, took a deep drag, and, exhaling smoke, analyzed:
"Whether it was us, or Petru who came alone before, or Alice and the others, we all arrived at this island when it was foggy. This suggests that the island may only appear in the Pacific Ocean when there is fog, and it is hidden when there is no fog. Judging from what Alice and the others encountered, if there is no fog, it is impossible to leave the island by sea; one will only return to the lake in the center of the island. This is consistent with the scene in the wild woman's dream, where the sea and the lake were one."
However, there are a few things I don't understand. First, if going out to sea leads back to the lake, then why can't one return to the sea from the lake? Second, if the sea and the lake are one entity, then when it's foggy, the sea outside the island and our world, that is, the Pacific Ocean, are connected, yet the lake seems to lead to another island? Third, how was the scene of the lake and sea being one in the wild woman's dream constructed?
Su Huilan said, "I think about the same thing. There might be a completely enclosed folded space here, connected to our world through a wormhole."
"Folding space?"
"The name might not be entirely accurate, but you can roughly understand it like this." Su Huilan plucked a large leaf from a nearby tree and laid it flat on the ground. "If this is the sea," she added, then scooped up a clump of soft soil from the ground and placed it on the leaf, "This is an island."
"This is the lake on the island." She pointed to the center of the soil and made a hole, then wrapped the entire leaf around it from the outside in, like wrapping a bun, but pressing the edges of the leaf against the hole in the soil. "Due to some unknown spatial distortion, this sea has enveloped the entire island and connected to the lake in the middle, so the sea is the lake, and the lake is the sea."
"When we see the fog forming, a wormhole mechanism is activated, connecting this enclosed space with the outside world, like this—" She released her grip on the leaf, and the leaf opened, but no longer flat; instead, it stretched upwards into a lotus shape. "It becomes semi-open, and at this point, the space in contact with it also undergoes a certain degree of distortion. If this distortion is smooth, we can enter this space. When it closes again, we can't get out."
Su Huilan's reasoning may not be rigorous, but it is very intuitive and easy to understand. Qingmu couldn't help but admire her broad thinking.
"Then why are there different islands?" Qingmu asked.
Petru had been very certain that this island was not the one he had visited before, and the wild woman's dream also proved that there was more than one primitive tribe here.
Su Huilan said, "It could be multiple enclosed spaces connected by the same wormhole. Or it could be that the wormhole was created by the interaction between distorted spaces. It's too complicated to explain right now."
Qingmu nodded. "Yes, your analogy using leaves is quite vivid, but the islanders here probably can't imagine such a world. Why would that savage woman named Tafiti overlap the sea and the lake in her dream? Even if she always returns to the lake after going out to sea, it's impossible for the lake and sea to overlap visually. This doesn't conform to the way the human brain perceives things, nor does it conform to the rules of how the subconscious constructs dreams. Even if we now know about the existence of distorted, enclosed spaces, we would only imagine them as the leaf model you made, and certainly not as magical as what Tafiti saw in her dream."
The scene in Tafiti's dream, where the sea is a lake and the lake is the sea, with islands on the sea and lakes on the islands, is so unbelievable that it is a spatial structure that no human could imagine.
"Perhaps their visual system is different from ours. We see lakes and seas as separate entities, but they might see them as a single entity," Su Huilan said. "Different biological systems have different neural structures, so their perception of the world is different. Bats use echolocation to hear the wind and locate objects, and dragonflies have compound eyes composed of more than 20,000 ommatidia. They live in the same world as us, but the world they 'see' is definitely different from ours."
Qingmu paused, then exclaimed in surprise, "You mean, the people on this island aren't the same species as us?!"
"It's hard to say; it could be a preconceived notion. Our memories and knowledge have fixed our understanding of the ocean and islands. When we think of this island, we naturally assume that the ocean lies beyond it. But the people on the island don't have this understanding. In their eyes, the sea and lakes are the same thing made of water, and the whole world is a closed space made of land and water. So they have never tried to leave the island."