Lost Girls

by Ann Kelley

  Now comes the difficult bit: I must hurry back before the sun disappears. I put a few short twigs in a close crisscross on a level bit of rock, then crisscross broken dead hibiscus twigs on top of them. Then a layer of the driest coconut husk, finishing with a small nest of hairy lichens, which keeps threatening to blow away. Find the broken specs, hold the lens close to the lichens, and turn it to catch the sun’s rays. Is the sun strong enough this late in the afternoon? Did I blow my chances with all that looking around? A small coin of white heat appears, shimmers and settles. It intensifies. I hold the lens there for several minutes and nothing happens. I see a faint thread of smoke and smell burning. It’s happening—fire! Wonderful little flame! Like Tinker Bell. I try to remain calm, controlled. I blow gently to spread the flame. The dead twigs burn quickly, too quickly. I heap more on top, then bigger hunks. This is the perfect spot for a fire. No trees nearby to catch accidentally. Don’t want to send the entire island up in flames, do I?

  But no, my fire is dying.

  It’s gone—my flame has gone. I sob with frustration. I can’t even keep a fire going. I blow again. Is it still there? Not a glimmer. Our lifeline—a signal fire.

  I can’t stop crying. No one will ever find us now. We’ll all die, one by one, and no one will ever know. My parents and my grandparents will think I perished at sea, drowned like the boatman. They will forever think of me as a bloated unrecognizable corpse, broken and chewed by sharks and nibbled by fish to a skeleton, forever drifting over the seabed. There will be no body for them to bury or cremate, no grave or cross for them to grieve over. Nowhere to leave flowers.

  Am I feeling sorry for my family, or for myself?

  I take a deep breath—what would Phaedrus have done? He would work out precisely why the fire had died and do it right the next time, not make the same mistake.

  When he took his motorbike engine apart he wrote down every move, so he knew what part went where and how, so he could put it together again. He drew a diagram. That’s what I’ll do.

  What did I do wrong? Too much wood, too quickly? I’ve killed the fire, like suffocating someone with a pillow. I’ll have to start again from scratch.

  But the sun won’t be there much longer by the look of it. I need to work quickly. I have only a small amount of precious dry lichen and coconut husk left. I don’t have time to go back to the forest. I stand and look out at the horizon.

  Oh God, there’s a boat.

  I see a boat, not too far away, heading past the next island. And there’s no fire. I’ve failed. I’ve failed everyone—poor little Jody and Carly, who have lost their sisters. I’ve failed Jas. I am as bad as Layla Campbell.

  The sun has gone behind a black cloud. I desperately rummage around in my backpack for more scraps of kindling. Ouch! I’ve cut my finger. The pain flares. Cut on what? The mirror; it’s May’s broken mirror. I pull it out gingerly and wait, hardly breathing, until the sun appears again. Holding the mirror up to the sun, I point it in the general direction of the boat, turning my hand up and down slightly. Is it working? Is there a flash of light reflecting toward the boat? Is anyone looking in this direction?

  But the little boat is already heading away, toward the setting sun, where the sky is like the marbled endpaper of an old Bible. I collapse in a self-pitying heap and sob. I have failed, and night is coming. Shall I stay here on this exposed rock all night on my own as we arranged, or try to reach Jas and Jody before the light goes? Oh, Mom, I wish you were here. Or rather, I wish I had never come. The sudden night is here and I must survive it.

  seventeen

  DAY 14

  SUMMIT OF FIRE MOUNTAIN, INTERIOR OF KOH TABU

  If I had stayed at the base of the rock I might have been sheltered from the wind, but I’m frightened of being trapped down there by a tiger. Or the beast that dragged Sandy away—whatever that was. At least here I am safe from predators, I think. Well, I feel safer, anyhow. There’s a large slice of yellow moon making an intermittent appearance between huge clouds, and I can see if anything does get anywhere near me.

  The flashlight beam is fainter than it was. I switch it off and try lying down in my sleeping bag, using my backpack as a pillow—that way the wind goes over me instead of through me—but it’s a very hard rock. I ache all over. I get up and walk around, back and forth, back and forth, to get some feeling in my limbs, slamming my arms against my sides, jumping up and down to keep the blood circulating. I sing loudly to keep myself company, to keep wild boars away, to scare off tigers. I sing all the old Scottish folk songs Grandma taught me.

  An’ it’s Oh! But I’m longing for my ain folk,

  Tho’ they be but lowly, puir and plain folk.

  I am far beyond the sea, but my heart will ever be

  At hame in dear auld Scotland wi’ my ain folk.

  Jas would laugh if she heard me. She says my singing would scare anything away.

  Oh ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road

  And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye,

  For me and my true love will never meet again

  On the bonnie bonnie bank of Loch Lomond.

  Oh, dear, that’s made me cry. Instead of singing, I fantasize about Lan Kua—about being in his arms. His light brown skin and warm smile, his lips on mine. His spicy breath. The muscles of his arms. Oh, I wish I’d stayed at home.

  I force myself to think of Scotland, and of my grandparents’ home when I was little: Their house is the middle coast-guard cottage of the three, with bare floorboards on which I run my Matchbox cars. The wheels make a satisfying whoosh and then a mighty crack as they crash against the skirting boards. The peat fire smokes with a damp, earthy fragrance. A smell I love.

  I peer down into the forest. How are Jas and Jody getting on? I haven’t seen a glimmer of their flashlight. Perhaps they are too well hidden from me. I keep having visions of a tiger leaping on them, dragging them from the sleeping bag, tearing them limb from limb and devouring them. I briefly flash my light in their direction, but there’s no answering beam.

  To keep from worrying about them, I go back to my childhood in Scotland again. It helps.

  I wake in the night to the sound of pebbles hitting the cottage window. They have been hurled by the gale and mountainous waves from the rocky beach far below. I call out but no one comes. I scream for an hour or more in the dark, the wind howling in the chimney and rattling the windowpanes. Eventually the neighbor woman comes in to me. I am inconsolable, hysterical. She has to send someone—her husband, I suppose—to fetch my grandparents from the lighthouse.

  As the minutes creep by, my thoughts become angry. What is my mom thinking? Does she think I’m dead? Where is she? Where’s Dad? Why haven’t they come to look for me? And the parents of all the other girls? If they were alive they would have come—they wouldn’t give up, would they? Is Mrs. Campbell right? Were the clouds we saw explosions? What was exploding? Cambodia is next door to Thailand. Everyone knows the war has gone there, too. Dad flies there all the time. It’s supposed to be secret, but we know it’s happening. Cambodia’s the next killing ground, Dad said.

  When the moon disappears behind a cloud and there are no stars to try to identify I stare at the glowing dial of the watch my parents gave me for my fourteenth birthday. It’s waterproof. I have snorkeled with it on and it works. What happened to my snorkeling gear? Last time I saw it, it was in a bag in the boat. Did I unload it? I can’t remember. We could have caught fish if I had my snorkeling gear.

  I remember Dad teaching me to swim. I was four. I wore a snorkel and a mask and big blue flippers and he held me under the tummy so I was lying on top of the water, and told me to put my head down so I was looking at the seabed. I was so amazed by what I was seeing—little fish swimming around, the waving sea anemones and coral that looked like pink cabbages—that I didn’t realize he had taken his hand away and I was floating on my own. I flapped my big blue feet and moved forward. I was swimming, just like that. He said I wouldn�
�t sink even if I tried to. So I tried and I didn’t sink. He was right.

  And I remember when I was ten and I had a swimming exam to do and I had a bad cold and Mom didn’t want me to do it, but Dad said it was my decision. And I did it. And I didn’t get pneumonia or bronchitis like Mom thought I would. They’ve always stood by me whenever I’ve made a decision they weren’t too happy about. Like when I chose to come with them to Thailand, leave my school and come with them. I could have stayed with my aunt Beth in Edinburgh, or gone to boarding school like lots of officers’ children, but I wanted to be with them. I couldn’t bear the idea of not seeing them for months—then we thought it would all be over in months, not years. I’m glad I came with them, even if I’ve ended up on this island trying to survive. I’ve lived in the tropics and learned to speak Thai—well, a little. I have met Jas and Lan Kua and eaten wonderful Thai food. There can’t be many girls my age who’ve been stranded on a desert island, discovered a golden Buddha, and seen a tiger.

  I’m probably unique.

  In Borneo I had a pet praying mantis that lived under my mosquito net. It caught any insects that had managed to get through the barrier. He was bright green and watched me as I read in bed. When I spoke to him he moved his articulated long neck, and I swear his eyes followed me around the room. I called him Maurice. I didn’t tell Mom about him; she would have had him removed. I also had two cockroaches living under my bed. (The maid wasn’t very good at cleaning.) I fed them bread crumbs. I didn’t tell Mom about those, either. I was a completely free spirit in Borneo. I never wore shoes. My feet became so thick-skinned I could step on a thorn and not feel it. I could run on pebbles and it wouldn’t hurt. The only problem was scorpions. There were two kinds: blue ones, whose sting would make you very ill but wouldn’t kill you, and black ones, which sunbathed on the wooden walkways of the compound, and which could kill you. The local people, the Ibans, showed us how to kill them. The best way was to approach one from the rear, so that its curved tail was projected forward, and step on it. After Mom came across one on the front step she insisted I wear shoes.

  No scorpions here, yet! Instead, ants are biting. How do they survive in this wind? My neck burns from the bites. I scrape the insects from under my sweatshirt collar. Chiggers have burrowed into my crotch and armpits. There’s nothing I can do except scratch.

  I close my eyes and pull out another Scottish memory:

  There are lots of peat bogs, heath and moss, black lochans where wild ducks paddle and fish, a lighthouse surrounded by a white painted wall. Behind on the hill the low-built coast-guard cottages, castellated and painted white, huddle from the winds. There are also the remains of buildings that were once radar stations to track U-boats passing through Scapa Flow during World War II. These buildings are empty, but still frighten me for some reason. I don’t like going anywhere near them. In my head they contain something that has the power to destroy my world. The sea almost surrounds us, but the sky is bigger than anything else and is always changing. Huge clouds race from one distant horizon to another. I see in each a lumbering hippopotamus or a castle of glass. My imagination turns thunderclouds into furious giants. Rainbows are everywhere and nowhere; you cannot catch them even when they end in your backyard. Rainstorms move from one part of the coast to another, blanketing the moor, the lighthouse, the gray flat country beyond the headland.

  I try to name all the spices and vegetables and other stuff we see at the market in Pattaya: galangal, ginger, coriander, lime leaves, curry leaves, chilies, peppercorns on stalks, tamarind paste, mustard seed, cumin, garlic, cardamom pods, fennel seeds, cloves, mint leaves, star anise, fenugreek, cinnamon sticks, turmeric, mace. I love watching the noodle man make rice sticks, transparent hanks of flat, wide noodles.

  Shellfish! So many wonderful shellfish: mussels, clams, stalked barnacles, spider crabs, green-shell crabs, limpets, shrimp, tiger prawns, lobsters, crawfish… uh… uh… sea cucumbers, seaweed. Okay, those aren’t shellfish.

  I’m so hungry. I imagine a big bowl of pad thai—flat rice noodles with bean curd, vegetables, egg, peanuts, and dried shrimp, with a handful of coriander leaves on top. I can almost smell it. Actually I’d settle for a bowl of plain rice, or—better still—a big plate of fries with ketchup, or porridge with honey and cream.

  What’s that? In the dim gleam of the slice of moon that appears briefly from behind a cloud I see two golden eyes, shining and deep, like pools of fire, and there’s a smell of something familiar—incense, maybe. Then they’re gone. Did I see them or imagine them? I’m shaking. They were real. The eyes of a tiger? My own eyes are wide open. I’ll never sleep now.

  I struggle to see through the gloom and write:

  If I survive this, God, I promise I’ll be good forever. I’ll never argue with Dad again.

  I’m shaking with fear. Why did I ever want to go camping? Why did I come up here on my own? I must be crazy. My mouth is dry. I can’t swallow, I can’t breathe.

  Eventually I sit myself up against the backpack so I’m sort of protected from the worst of the wind, and now that my eyes are accustomed to the dark I can see more or less all around me. I can smell forest smells—earth, leaves, flowers, the faint scent of the sea. The forest is not quiet. Perhaps when this is all over, I could come back and study the ecology of the island. I wonder what exams I’d have to take to be able to do something like that. Perhaps I could do it with Jas. She knows so much already.

  What am I thinking? Come back here, with these ants, these chiggers, the mosquitoes! Wild boars and tigers! Oh God, please save me from the tigers! And the snakes.

  I rely on my Scottish memories again to stop me from panicking:

  I learn to read and write in a schoolhouse that has four-to six-year-olds in the front row where I sit, older children behind, and the fifteen-year-olds in the back row. We eat bowls of broth at our desks. A peat fire burns in a cast-iron stove in the corner. One morning I jump up and down to get feeling back to my feet and one of my rubber boots goes flying into the fire.

  “I’m telling on ye,” says a classmate.

  No need; the stench is appalling. I am carried home through snow, as the drifts are too thick for a vehicle.

  I keep forgetting to breathe. Terror paralyzes me.

  eighteen

  DAY 15?

  Okay. I haven’t been eaten yet. And I’ve survived the longest night of my life.

  I’m cold and thirsty, and I ache all over. I’m incredibly itchy. My teeth are coated with what feels like fungus. I can smell myself. When the sun comes up properly I’ll thaw out.

  The island is blanketed in thick white mist again, apart from the top of my hill. There’s no sun. The air smells of spice and seaweed. No birdsong, but I can hear the hoo-hoo-hoo of a gibbon choir, far below me in the invisible forest.

  Finally the sun breaks through. I jump around to get my legs working again and climb down the hill to find more dry kindling and branch wood. I see a bush with great bunches of crimson berries, but I don’t know if they are edible. How did people ever discover what was edible and what was poisonous in the old days? Trial and error, I suppose. If you lived it was edible; if you were sick or died, no one tried to eat it again. And how did people ever work out what to do with spices like peppercorns and salt? Potatoes! Who found out that you have to cook them to make them edible? Who invented french fries? The French, I suppose.

  I lick one of the berries. Yuck—maybe not. I must remember Dad’s edibility test. Don’t eat any red plants.

  Breadfruit, for example: How did anyone ever find out you have to cook it? Green and bumpy on the outside, rather like enormous unripe lemons. If you roast them in an oven or in the embers of a campfire they sizzle and split to reveal white flesh. The core isn’t edible, though.

  I should concentrate on fire.

  This time I have made plaited twine from stripped bark to hold the bundle of wood. I poke at a branch with a long cane to get at a hank of stringy lichen—ideal for tinder—and can�
��t quite reach, so I climb the tree. It’s not difficult and I feel warmer already, but I am suddenly covered in a sticky orange web and when I look around to see where its occupant is I come eyeball to eyeball with the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It has a spread of about five inches and a long yellow and black body, and it looks deadly poisonous.

  I don’t know who is more shocked—the spider or me. Me, I think.

  I hurl him from my shoulder quickly before he regains his senses and bites. I hear him plop on the ground. Ugh, big spiders—I hate them. Jas told me once that huntsman spiders’ bites have some sort of toxin that liquefies living flesh.

  Brown ghosts of cicada casts cling to the tree trunks. There’s a termite nest I have to climb around. It’s made up of termite crap—digested wood. It would burn well. Perhaps I should hack some off?

  But suddenly a cough and a sigh come from below me, followed by a yelp.

  I keep very still, heart pounding, and look down but see nothing. The forest is teeming with life. Big dragontail butterflies are flitting in the canopy and through the stripes of sunlight lower in the trees. I reach my lichen and clamber down again, getting yet more sticky web all over me. Spider’s webs can be used to cover wounds and aid healing. Why have I thought of that only now? If I had thought of it earlier it might have helped Natalie.

  There’s no sign of whatever yelped.

  The sun is higher and stronger now and I make my way back to the mound and my fire site. I’m getting better at climbing, and at fire-making. This time I get it right. It takes ages to heat the lichen tinder, and I hold the glasses lens close, watching the spot of white heat work its magic. Then when it ignites I place not too much kindling on top of the lichen; I add a little bit at a time—patience—then a few dry leaves, a little twig or two, yes, another, more small kindling, get it going, that’s it, that’s it. In a few minutes I have a real fire going, but it burns fast and I have to keep feeding it. I should have gathered more wood.