When the Butterflies Came

by Kimberley Griffiths Little

  I shake my head, mouthing back in the faintest whisper. “There’s nothing important in the dune buggy. The dune buggy is going to take us where we need to go.”

  “Maybe something is under the floorboards.”

  I shake my head again. “Wear your swimsuit.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  I smile and pretend I have everything under control. “I know,” I answer as calmly as I can even though my stomach is quivering and I’m suddenly tingling with nerves.

  Quickly, we change into our suits, throw on shorts and tank tops, then grab towels. I stick my hand into my pocket, double-checking that I’ve got Key Number Ten with me.

  As we cross the walkway to the outside staircase, I call out, “First one to the dune buggy gets to drive!”

  “I’m the one with a driver’s license!” Riley yells back, limping as fast as she can. For once in my life I have an advantage over her.

  Jumping down the last three steps, I go flying past the laboratory and into the mangrove forest. Soon I see a little wooden shed that’s been turned into a garage. I pull at the wooden doors, swollen by years of rain. With Riley’s help, we finally get them open.

  Inside the shed, there’s a dusty dune buggy, filled with a layer of sand at the bottom.

  “Looks homemade,” Riley laughs, running a hand over the soldered metal frame. “Think it runs?”

  I hold up Key Number Ten. “Only one way to find out.”

  “I’ll bet Grammy Claire made this herself,” my sister grumbles. She climbs into the driver’s seat and we have a standoff.

  “I’m driving. Grammy Claire gave me the keys.”

  “She told me to help you. And I have a license.”

  “You don’t need a license to drive a dune buggy to the beach; anybody can do that.”

  “Not a twelve-year-old.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Just watch.”

  Riley runs a hand through her magenta hair, which is now fading to a weird purple shade. “Listen, Tara, don’t be ridiculous. I’ll drive so we don’t end up flipping over or in a hole. You need to be the navigator. I don’t know the way.”

  She quickly snaps the seat belt, and I know there’s no way I’ll be able to haul her out of the driver’s seat. Finally, I climb into the passenger side. “You have to do exactly as I say.”

  “Fine. Give me the key.” She’s rubbing her hands, gleeful.

  I practically stick my face into hers. “I’ve been safeguarding the keys all this time, and if Grammy Claire wanted you to have Key Number Ten, she would have given it to you. So I will do the honors.”

  “Fine! Just do it already!”

  I pull the silver key from my pocket and feel a shiver run down my neck. It’s the very last one. I’m finally here, almost to the end of my journey. Am I ready for what I’m going to find?

  Inserting the key into the ignition, I find it fits perfectly. My sister pumps the gas pedal as I turn the key over. The engine growls to life.

  “Woo-hoo!” Riley yells. “Let’s make tracks!”

  She backs out of the little garage and nearly runs over Eloni, who’s standing there, out of breath, like he’s been chasing after us.

  “Hey, Eloni!” I shout. “Look! The dune buggy works.”

  “You are still coming to the barbecue?” he says. “Food is ready. We will eat soon.”

  My stomach growls. I am hungry. “Are you hungry?” I ask Riley.

  “Starving. I think you talked me to death today. We didn’t get lunch.”

  I think about the key and the clue and the caves. I’m so eager to go back I can’t hardly stand it. And I’m dying to find what else Key Number Ten unlocks.

  “The party is for you,” Eloni reminds me. “And Riley.”

  “You mean, we’re, like, the guests of honor?”

  His eyebrows wiggle. “Best food in the whole islands. Best music, too. Where do you have to go?”

  “Somewhere really, really important.”

  “Are you showing your sister the nipwisipwis?”

  “Um, yeah. Grammy Claire told me to.” I don’t tell Eloni about the key, though.

  He nods, but he looks suddenly apprehensive. “Riley needs to see the butterflies. But you need to meet my family. That’s important, too.” He says this in a solemn tone, and I wonder if there’s more to the party than making new friends or being welcomed to the island.

  Riley spins the steering wheel and the tires swivel. She’s chomping at the bit to drive.

  Eloni puts his hand on the edge of the dune buggy, staring straight at me. “You are coming. Right?”

  I find myself blinking into his big brown eyes, and my breath catches. “I promise. Right now. Get in and show us the way.”

  It’s only a couple hours past noon so we have hours and hours until sunset. And now we have wheels so we don’t have to walk home in the dark.

  “Good. Good.” He jumps in behind me, his bare knees under his shorts sticking out in the cramped back space.

  The tires spin as Riley steps on the gas. We shoot straight through the trees. Mangrove leaves whip past my cheeks. The path is not an actual road, but the dune buggy gets through perfectly.

  Eloni’s voice comes in my ear as he directs us, pointing with his hands right or left around the jungle of trees. The dune buggy lurches over mounds, and shoots through corridors of palms. A slithery voice in my head makes me wonder if the party is a trap. Another slithery voice tells me Riley and I should have protection if we return to the Butterfly Lagoon alone. A third voice reminds me of the secrecy Grammy Claire urged. The life-or-death situation of the nipwisipwis. When I return to the cove with the key and Riley, we have to go alone. Nobody else can know that we’re searching for another lock for Key Number Ten — the most dangerous lock of all.

  There’s time, I try to tell myself. According to the Last Will and Testament, we don’t have to give up the tree house for thirty days after Grammy Claire’s death. Quickly thinking backward, I count the days in my head and feel a rush of panic. “Oh, no!”

  “What’s wrong?” Riley says as she makes a turn in the path.

  “We only have three days until the house is turned back over to the Chuukese people. Three days!” I tell her. “We may not have enough time! What if I can’t find the lock — ?”

  Abruptly I stop, aware of Eloni sitting right behind me, his breath on my neck.

  What if I’ve got the last clue completely wrong? What if I fail?

  Riley glances over at me, squeezes my hand briefly, and then grips the steering wheel again.

  The afternoon is bright and hot as we shoot out of the mangrove forest and hit the soft sand of the beach again. The dazzling blue of the water is always close, I’ve come to realize. It’s never very far away.

  Two more curves and we enter the clearing of a little village; houses of wood and concrete with metal or thatched roofs sit under trees along the beach.

  As we drive, Eloni tells us names and relationships and I am completely confused. At least we’re dressed okay. Little kids run around in shorts, barefoot, no shirts, playing with a ball. Girls younger than me wear a type of wraparound skirt in bright blues and pinks. I find myself wanting one so I don’t look so out of place in my shorts and sandals. Even though Riley’s got shorts on over her bathing suit, she’s wearing socks and her combat boots. A sheen of sweat glistens on her face, and she looks really uncomfortable, holding herself apart after we park the dune buggy under a palm tree.

  Bare-chested men wear a type of shorts/loincloth created out of swaths of red and yellow material around their waists. I recognize Alvios as he and two other older men tend to a roasting pig over a spit. The pig is sizzling and brown, the spit created under a barbecue hut with a thatched roof.

  Women and teenage girls chat in their multicolored skirts, blouses every color of the rainbow. Dark hair spills over their shoulders. They all have beautiful brown or black eyes. They’re also talking a mile a minute in Chuukese as they prepar
e food under a second thatched-roof cookhouse, kneeling in the dirt or on palm leaves.

  I recognize roasting chicken, baking breadfruit, taro roots, pots of steaming rice.

  A couple of other young men are arranging fruits in a wooden bowl. I hear Eloni call it a unoong. Another man appears out of the trees carrying a long paddle over his shoulder, a woven basket at each end of the paddle-like stick filled with green, melon-shaped breadfruit.

  That’s when I notice a few of the teenage boys and young men with sticks in their pockets or tucked in the back of their shorts as they set up an eating area. Carved love sticks like Eloni has. I can’t help smiling, watching the boys and the teenage girls and young women talk and work together, trying to match them up and see which girl will get one of the beautiful sticks from a particular young man.

  The smell in the air is heavenly. All that food. The smell of barbecue, fresh fruit, dripping pineapple, the sweet tang of ripe bananas and papaya.

  My stomach growls just as Eloni grasps my arm to go introduce me to his family. “I heard that, Miss Tara.”

  “Just Tara.”

  “Just Tara,” he repeats.

  That’s when I know that he calls me “Miss Tara” not because he forgets, but because he likes to tease me. I blush like crazy and glance away.

  “Here is my mother,” he tells me, pulling me over to a pretty woman with her hair tied in a heavy rope down her back. She finishes stirring a pot of steaming rice, and rises.

  “Looks done, Maama,” he tells her. “Now we can eat!”

  She laughs, pinches his cheeks, and then kisses him.

  “Maama, this is Miss Tara, Professor Claire’s granddaughter.” Eloni repeats it in Chuukese, the melody of the words rising at the end of the sentence. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to speak it. But then I realize that won’t happen. In three days I leave and will never return. And I’m suddenly so sad, I have to swallow hard before I can speak.

  “Hello,” I say. “How you do? That’s what they say back home on the bayou.”

  Eloni’s mother grins and I see his smile in hers.

  “I’m very glad to meet you,” I add.

  She bows to me, then takes my hand in her warm palm and presses it with her other hand. “Welcome,” she finally says, in stilted English.

  “Thank you for inviting me and my sister.”

  She nods and motions for us to go play. “Cook. Eat. Soon!”

  Next, Eloni introduces me to his older sister, Tana, who is wearing flowers in her hair and a beautiful swishy dress that brushes her bare feet. She’s hanging out with several other girls who are just as pretty as she is with their luscious Pantene Island Princess hair and flowers and gorgeous eyes.

  I suddenly feel very plain, with my white, skinny legs, stupid shorts, and a tank top, the straps of my swimsuit hanging out ungracefully.

  Alvios greets me with a bow and a big smile, patting my hands in his, and I feel a teensy bit better. The older man is very easy to like, even if he worries me, too. There is no way this man is more than seventy years old. And why is he on Grammy Claire’s list of suspects?

  Hanging out under a tree, Tafko ignores me so I sniff and ignore him back. A few minutes later, Butler Reginald shows up with wet hair and a shiny face, in casual slacks and a patterned island shirt. He gives me a quick hug around the shoulders and I know he’s still feeling bad about the reading of the will.

  I’m glad I’m not at the tree house still crying. The party is a good distraction from the bewildering and melancholy news of Grammy Claire’s will. I don’t want to think about Mamma and losing our home. I don’t want to look into the future without Grammy Claire.

  I run my finger along Key Number Ten in my pocket and try to feel hope — not just hysterical urgency.

  Minutes later, Tafko pulls out his banjo and starts playing a song. Then another older teen starts pounding on drums and someone else begins picking at a guitar.

  The music floats through the open windows of the bamboo houses. Circles around the cooking fires, drifts across the palm trees, and loops around my heart, tugging hard.

  Eloni moves me closer to the musicians sitting deep in the shade of the mangroves, and I’m glad to get out from under the burning sun. We sit on soft woven cloths spread across the spongy ground.

  All of a sudden, the women are bringing over massive mounds of food in wooden bowls or trays perched on gigantic banana leaves. Hot chunks of pork meat, fish, bowls of rice, steaming taro.

  “What is that?” I whisper to Eloni, pointing to something wrapped in a banana leaf.

  “That’s breadfruit that’s been mashed with coconut milk and baked in the leaves in the coals.”

  Everything smells fantastic.

  A boy near the band blows a conch shell several times and the sound vibrates in my heart. It’s a signal for everyone to be quiet as Alvios stands and give a welcome in Chuukese. He smiles at me and Riley and Butler Reginald. “Etiwa, and welcome to our friends of Professor Claire,” he says in his limited English. I can hear the happiness in his voice, but I also see sadness in his eyes. It strikes me suddenly that hearing about Grammy Claire’s car accident has been a blow to Alvios and Eloni. They were friends of my grandmother, and Eloni and Alvios depended on the salary she gave them, which is now gone.

  After that, Alvios sweeps everyone to their feet, shooing us to the center of the circle. Everyone digs into the spread, loading up banana leaf plates with food. We eat with our fingers, and I can practically hear all seven generations of French Doucet grandmothers tsking their tongues in my ear for eating dinner on the ground with my hands.

  I feel happy and melancholy all at the same time. Sometimes I feel Eloni’s eyes on my face. Riley stays quiet, eating piles of food as she leans against the bark of a palm tree. Filling her banana leaf over and over again.

  As the food disappears and my stomach gets fuller and fuller, Eloni’s sister, Tana, and her cousins walk out from behind the cluster of houses under the trees, wearing long dresses and grass skirts. Hibiscus blossoms and orchids adorn their hair. The musicians play and the girls dance and I’m mesmerized and envious all at the same time.

  Eloni bumps my shoulder and smiles at me, gesturing to his sister and cousins. “How do you like it?”

  I whisper back, “I love it.”

  “I thought you would.”

  The girls’ hands and hips sway together, smooth and fluid, like water. Eloni explains, “Their fingers tell a story. That hand motion is for the waves of the sea. Those are raindrops. Our boats out on the water. Family. And love.”

  “I can see it,” I tell him, feeling a thrill in my gut at how beautiful it is.

  I never want the music and the dancing to end, but the sun is beginning to drop lower. We’re probably only thirty minutes away from the Butterfly Lagoon by dune buggy, and there’s still hours of daylight, but I’m restless to go. Terrified I’ll run out of time and never find the last lock.

  After the girls’ final dance, the young men take over, showing off on their drums and guitars, playing fast and slow. I can feel the drumbeats inside my chest, and it’s a peculiar sensation. Then it’s only three drummers. Fast patterns pounding, competing with each other.

  Riley stands and I watch her slip through the trees toward the beach. She motions to me. “Come on!”

  I give a tight shake of my head, not wanting to be rude.

  A few of the older men have lit a bonfire in the center of the sprawling group of people. The flames jump and swirl, crackling into the air.

  Suddenly, Riley comes up behind me and hisses in my ear. “Look!”

  “What?” She points through the trees and I see the figures of two people. They’re not together, though. One is off to my right and the other, a smaller person, stands in the distance behind the drummers. Just a shadow in the dense mangroves. The first person does look familiar, the way he’s walking.

  “It’s Mr. Masako from the bank,” Riley says, just as I recognize him, too.
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  “What’s he doing here?”

  Eloni nudges me. “What’s wrong?”

  “Um, nothing.”

  Mr. Masako is furtively edging his way through the trees. I hadn’t seen him at the party earlier as a guest of Alvios. I think he’s recently arrived, but it’s odd to see him hanging back, not entering the party like a normal person would do.

  “He spying on us?” I say in Riley’s ear.

  “Dunno. Almost looks like it, though.”

  “Who’s that other person?” I say a bit louder. “Behind the drummers.” It’s getting harder to talk as the drumming rises in volume and pace.

  “Who do you mean?” Riley says, and I don’t think she’s seen the other person.

  “Over there,” I tell her, trying to point without being obvious.

  A creepy feeling runs down my back as the shadowy figure moves deeper into the jungle. But as the person creeps forward, I catch a glimpse of shoulder-length black hair brushing the collar of a dress. Worn by a small, stocky woman.

  My heart leaps inside my chest. It’s Madame Erial See! Watching us! I felt her eyes on me — right before she slunk behind the trees.

  Reaching out to grip Riley’s arm, I lean over to tell her, but never get the chance.

  A second later, there’s two ear-splitting pops that rupture the air. Instantly, the bark of the palm tree I’ve been sitting next to spurts a shower of splinters. My cheeks sting from flying, razor-like slivers, and then shredded bark sprays over my hair, my lap, and my clothes.

  I’m screaming as I fall to the ground. Riley screams next, and then Eloni starts yelling.

  The next moment, I’m looking up into the swaying palm branches high above me, blue sky revolving, spinning, making me queasy.

  “Miss Tara! Miss Tara!” Eloni cries. “Are you okay?”

  “Am I bleeding?” I hear my own words coming out in a peculiar slow-motion way.

  “You’re not bleeding,” Riley tells me. “But a bullet hit that tree. Only a foot away from your head.” Her voice goes hard and steely. “You could have been killed, Tara.”

  I think about seeing Mr. Masako and Madame See not more than a minute ago. Uninvited guests. Hiding in the trees.