And in the silence that followed, the jungle breathed again.
“You are not of the village,” he said, his voice a low rumble that did not rise above the hum of insects. “You are not of the white men’s towns anymore. You are of the tribe. My tribe.”
He turned and threw the locket into the dark river. It vanished without a sound.
Tarzan stopped inches from her. He reached out and, with impossible gentleness, took the locket from her clenched fist. It was cheap brass, already tarnishing.
Jane Clayton stood at the edge of the clearing, her khaki shirt torn at the shoulder, a thin line of blood tracing her collarbone. She had defied him—not out of malice, but out of a desperate need to prove that the civilization she had once known still lived inside her. She had walked into the native village alone, trading her father’s old compass for a tarnished locket, a trinket of the world she had left behind.
