Orphan Island

by Laurel Snyder

  Then it was as if Deen swam into Jinny’s head for a moment, reminding her in his new deep voice about the rules. Jinny thought of Tate and the curlyferns. She knew this was how it was supposed to happen, how it had always been done. She decided she didn’t want to start right off the first day, breaking the rules.

  If Deen was right, there was a reason for everything—a reason for the shoes, for why the littles were never allowed to bank the fire, for why they didn’t try eating scuttles, a reason why nobody slept on the beach at night. Jinny couldn’t think what most of the reasons were, but she knew the rules and remembered them, usually. At the very least, it was her job to teach the rules to Ess.

  Jinny got down on her knees in the sand. “Look, Ess,” she said, brushing at the pile of sand until she uncovered the very small shoes. “Look at them all. Mine are in here, and Sam’s, and everyone’s. See? It’s neat, how they’re all different. Some have laces, and some have buckles, and some are blue.”

  Ess nodded and pointed at her feet. “Ess sooze,” she said, determined.

  Jinny sighed. “It’s a rule. Get it? We are supposed to do this, and then we get you new clothes. That’s day one. Isn’t that fun? New clothes! Don’t you want new clothes?”

  Ess thought about this for a moment, then nodded and added firmly, “But deeze Ess sooze.”

  Jinny sat in the sand. She stared at a tiny shoe on top of the pile. It had a little tarnished buckle on a strap. They’d once been black leather, she supposed. Now they were gray and stiff with salt and sand.

  “How about this?” she said at last. “You can keep your shoestrings, but we’ll put the shoes in the pile. How’s that? If you get to keep something?”

  Ess tilted her head to one side and frowned, like she was considering.

  “And we’ll tie the shoestrings into a bracelet, a pretty bracelet, and you can wear it on your arm. Okay? You can add shells to it, or stick flowers in. It’ll be fun.”

  Ess held out her bare wrist and stared at it. At last she looked back at Jinny. Her brow was furrowed. She wasn’t happy.

  “Oh, come on, Ess!” said Jinny. “Pretty please? I don’t want to sit here all day. I’ll make you the best bracelet ever. Will you do it?”

  The little girl stared at her doubtfully. Then at last she opened her mouth. “Ess,” she said, nodding slowly.

  “Thank goodness!” Quickly, before Ess could change her mind, Jinny reached down and unlaced the girl’s shoes, twisted the strings together and began to knot them firmly around the skinny arm, doubled them over several times, into a thick cuff. “When I was your age,” she said as she worked, “I loved bracelets. And necklaces. And rings. Trinkets of any kind, really. I don’t know why, but they always made me feel happy.” She stepped back to examine her handiwork. “Okay!” she said. “What do you think? Pretty good?”

  Ess petted the grubby band, then turned her big eyes up at Jinny and smiled. “Pitty!” she said. “Pitty and doohd.”

  Jinny grinned. “Yes, pretty and good. And now can we put the shoes in the pile?”

  Ess delicately set both her shoes on the very top of the pile, then stood a moment, staring at her arm. “Mama,” she said, patting the bracelet again. A moment later, with no warning at all, she turned around and careened back down the beach in the direction of camp.

  “Yikes,” said Jinny, repiling the fallen shoes as best she could before briskly taking off after Ess. “Wait up!”

  As she sprinted behind the girl, Jinny wondered if this was always how it was going to be. How had she never noticed before how much effort it was, having a Care? Faintly, she remembered the time Sam had tried to catch a kitten in the prairie, and how Deen, not Sam, had been the one to come home all scratched up. There had been a scrape right on the end of Deen’s nose, she remembered, that caused him to go cross-eyed each time he tried to look down at it.

  When she caught up with Ess, Jinny grabbed her hand. “Come on,” she said. “This way! I want to show you something else!” She tugged Ess up over the dunes, onto a pile of low flat rocks that baked all day in the sun. This was where the island snakes spent their mornings, rolling their tight, smooth bodies in the warmth and hissing pleasantly.

  “Oh!” cried Ess, freezing like a statue when saw them. Hundreds of snakes, coiled and twitching on the smooth pale rocks.

  Jinny crouched down beside her and pointed. “See?” she whispered, watching for the girl’s response. “Aren’t they something?”

  “Pitty . . . ,” breathed Ess, her mouth hanging slightly open. Then she glanced up at Jinny. “Ouch?” she asked.

  “Ouch?” Jinny didn’t understand at first. But then she got it and shook her head. “Oh, no! No, the snakes would never bite you. Our snakes aren’t like the snakes in storybooks. Real snakes are safe. Here, anyway. . . .”

  “Ohhh,” said Ess. “Otay.” She crouched down to stare.

  The patterns on the snakes’ skins were perfect, repeating endlessly in coils and stripes and ovals and diamonds, in all the colors of the island. The deep red of plomms and the pale sand color of the beach itself, the black of the night sky and the green of the prairie. Oz and Jak liked to come hunting the snakeskins to decorate their cabins, though the colors were never the same once the skins had been shed. The snakes took their colors with them.

  After a few moments of watching, Ess unfroze and reached down to stroke one of the tight striped backs with two soft fingertips. She chose the smallest snake, and there was something sweet, Jinny thought, in how careful the girl was with the creature. For all her careening and jangling, Ess knew to be gentle and still with the fragile thing. She stroked its back, then looked up at Jinny like she’d seen something magical.

  There was something magical about them, Jinny thought, watching. When one snake twitched, the others twitched too, as though they were all part of a piece of cloth, ripples in the same stretch of sea.

  After that, Jinny led Ess home. Only instead of heading back for the long walk around the beach, the two girls took a shortcut, up the sandy path behind the dunes that led over the ridge. “Eech, eech ooch,” cried Ess, letting out a sharp sound each time she stepped on a pebble, a shell, or a shorn bit of dried grass in her path. At one place she stopped, looked up at Jinny, and said with a sigh, “See. Ess sooze. . . .”

  So Jinny took pity on the girl’s tender feet and, with a groan, hefted her up onto a hip, to carry her the remainder of the hike, uphill at a steady pace. In no time at all they came around a clump of tangled bushes and found themselves in the place where the storehouse peered down at the sleeping cabins below. “Ooof,” Jinny grunted as she set the girl down.

  “Ooof!” repeated Ess, for no particular reason. She giggled, as though it was a good joke.

  Jinny only rolled her eyes and reached to open the storehouse door with her left hand, while she waved her right hand in the air overhead, scattering moths and a spiderweb from the doorframe. This was the cabin used least frequently by the kids. Often they went sleeps and sleeps without entering this place. The hinges squeaked when the door swung open at Jinny’s touch. Ess hung back at first, but Jinny pulled her inside.

  In the dim room, lit by two dusty windows, shelves lined the walls, and on those shelves were all the things a person might need on an island. There were stacks of garments—folded tunics and pants, sleeping shifts and wraps for the occasional cool evenings—all of them cut from the same soft gray-green cloth. Beside the clothes sat extra blankets, blue, but worn with use.

  On the floor beside the door, Ess found a box with old kitchen tools that had become rusty and been retired. But on the island, everything was saved. Even if something had been deemed useless, there was no good place to throw it, except perhaps down the wishing hole. Besides, even an old ladle with a broken handle might be used later for scooping ashes from the fire or digging up cattail roots on a fetch. Everything had its purpose. If you waited long enough, a useless thing would become useful again.

  Jinny surveyed the stacks
of clothing, picking out a sleeping shift and a day tunic for Ess, in the very smallest size, and also a pair of loose pants, which she handed to the younger girl. The kids wore these clothes until they fell to bits, and then the bits were washed and returned to the cabin, for the ragbag. Rags were used for all sorts of things, from games of blindman’s bluff to bandaging small cuts.

  Since she happened to be there anyway, Jinny decided to swap her own pants for a fresh pair, as they’d been getting threadbare. But when Jinny turned back around in her new pants, Ess was standing before her, completely naked in the middle of the dim room. She’d managed to unsnap her dress and drop it on the floor. Now she was waiting patiently for Jinny to help her with her new things.

  “Oh!” said Jinny, blushing and turning away. She was used to seeing other kids in states of undress, but it still seemed funny. Ess was so very new, and so very naked.

  Deen had warned Jinny that this might happen. Apparently Sam had done the very same thing. “Don’t make your Care feel embarrassed,” he’d said. “It’ll be hard, but try not to laugh at her. Instead, smile. There’s a big difference between smiling at someone and laughing at them.”

  Remembering, Jinny smiled now, and it worked! Ess smiled back.

  “Dinny hep?” asked the girl. “Peeze hep?”

  “Umm, yeah, sure, of course,” said Jinny. She took the tunic and dropped the folds of cloth quickly over Ess’s head. Then she wriggled the cloth down and around, until two thin arms found their way into the wide sleeves. When that was done, Jinny squatted down and, holding each tiny ankle, guided the wobbling girl into her pants.

  As Jinny finished tying the drawstring on the pants and stepped back from her Care, Ess grinned and spun around, looking down at her new clothes. Like all the other kids, she now wore a tunic that fell to midthigh, with voluminous pockets, for when she went on a fetch. She looked very proud of herself. “Ess dess,” she said, beaming and shoving her hands deep into the pockets.

  “Yes, it’s all yours,” said Jinny, picking up Ess’s old blue dress from home. “And now this,” she said, “goes in the ragbag. But you’ll still have your bracelet, okay? And you can keep it forever.” She worried that Ess would be upset at losing the blue dress, but the girl appeared to be fine. Trading in her dress was somehow different from burying her shoes in a heap of sand and walking away.

  After that was all done, Jinny opened the door to the storehouse, and the two girls walked out into the sunlit day. Together they trooped back down the path, past the sleeping cabins, to the beach, where Eevie and Nat were at work in the kitchen, shucking ersters.

  “Jinny!” called Eevie, exasperated. “You’ve been gone all morning. You need to help us!”

  “Let it go, Eevie,” said Nat gently. “Jinny has a big job right now, getting used to being Elder.”

  “Thanks for understanding, Nat.” Jinny glared at Eevie. To Ess she added, “Don’t mind her. She’s always a little grouchy. I don’t know why. She just came that way.”

  Ess nodded at this, though Jinny couldn’t tell if she really understood. But the little girl slipped her hand nervously into Jinny’s as they made their way over to the table.

  “Well,” Jinny said to Eevie, “if you want my help like you say, move over.” She gave a gentle shove with her elbow and reached for a knife. “And get your hair out of the way. Jeez! I don’t want to sit on it.” Eevie whipped her long tight braid sharply away.

  Meanwhile, Nat tossed shells into a basket. “Anyway, we’re nearly done,” she said. “Maybe we should all go for a swim, wash off before lunch?” Everyone nodded and shucked a little faster.

  Ess watched the three older girls at work on the ersters. Their hands moved so quickly, picking up and dropping the shells. She stared at the knives flashing. “Wha dis?” She pointed after a bit.

  “Oh!” said Nat in a soft voice. “Ersters? You don’t know ersters?”

  Ess shook her head.

  “I know they don’t look like much,” added Nat, “all goopy and slimy, but they’ll make you strong. Here, try one.” She held out the half shell full of gelatinous glop.

  Everyone stopped shucking for a moment, to watch as Ess stuck out her pointy pink tongue and touched the erster with it tentatively. Then she wrinkled her nose and looked up at Jinny. “Dinny like dis?” she asked.

  “We all do,” said Jinny, nodding.

  Nat added, “And you will soon enough, I bet. But maybe you’ll try one grilled first. How would that be?” She passed the offending erster to Eevie, who leaned down to slurp it up and then gasped. “Hey, look!”

  “Wha?” asked Ess, standing up to see what Eevie had found. When she did, she gasped too. Inside the shell, something gleamed. Ess poked at it. “Wha dat?”

  “It’s a moonball, Ess,” said Nat. “I’m not sure how, or why, but that pretty pink moonball grows in there, inside that ugly erster. Isn’t that funny?”

  Ess looked mesmerized by the moonball. Her hand hovered over the shell, tentative, as though she wanted to snatch it up. But before she could make up her mind to touch it, Eevie’s hand shot out and plucked it for herself. “And it’s mine!” she crowed, holding it up in the sunlight.

  Ess looked crestfallen.

  “Oh, Eevie,” said Nat. “We should share with her. It’s her first one, and she’s little. Who knows when we’ll find another. Especially a pink one.”

  Eevie shook her head. “She’s not that little. And nobody ever gave me a moonball. Humph.”

  Jinny frowned at Eevie, then stood up and reached out a hand to her Care. “Come on, Ess. Enough ersters and cranky meanies. Let’s find something else to do.”

  “Sorry, Ess!” called Nat, as they walked away.

  6

  Bedtime Tales

  That evening, when Jinny and Ess arrived and offered to help with dinner, Ben looked surprised. “Wow,” he said softly. “You did the shoe thing already . . . and got her clothes?”

  “Sure,” said Jinny. “That’s day one, isn’t it? Shoes and clothes?”

  “I guess so,” said Ben, turning away to mix something in a bowl. “I just . . . I thought I was supposed to go too. For my Elder lesson.”

  “Oh,” said Jinny. “Well, sorry, but no. Deen didn’t even take me along for that. Anyway, it’s hardly something you need a lesson for. You take off the shoes. You put them on the pile. You change clothes and put the old ones in the ragbag. Easy peasy.”

  “O-okay,” said Ben. “I guess I can do that.”

  “Well, of course you can,” scoffed Jinny. “Anyone can.” Then she turned to Ess. “Let’s help set the table, okay?” And together, they all laid out the plates and cups, as Ben served up a good dinner of dandelion salad and grilled ersters, which it turned out Ess did prefer to raw.

  After dinner, all nine kids gathered around the fire. Suddenly, Jinny had a flash of memory, recalled this same night, exactly one year prior. Deen had taken his usual spot beside her, but on his other side, for the first time, Sam sat, quietly nervous. Chewing his fingers.

  “I feel funny,” Deen had whispered to Jinny. “It feels strange, without Tate. I don’t remember what to do.”

  “You’ll be great,” she’d promised him. “I know it.”

  Then Deen had taken a deep breath, put an arm around Sam, and said . . .

  “Oh!” Jinny cried, suddenly remembering and turning to Ess. “I know what I’m supposed to tell you now! About the stars!”

  “Tars?”

  “Yes,” said Jinny. “See, this is what we do, every single night—we gather around the fire, just like this. But now look, up there, see?” She pointed at the sky and whispered, as the others settled into their places. “See how there are starting to be stars in the sky?”

  Ess nodded.

  “Well, you should always come here, to this very spot, when you see three stars in the sky. That’s a rule—do you understand? Three stars? It’s important. Everyone does this, just the same way. So if we can all see three stars, but we
don’t see you, we’ll worry. Understand?”

  Ess nodded solemnly.

  Jinny stared at the eight faces surrounding her and felt sad and happy all at the same time. It seemed impossible that only two nights ago, Deen had been sitting in that same spot, with his knee touching Jinny’s. Now there were three stars, but he was gone, and it was as though everything was somehow the same for the rest of them. Happy to enjoy dinner and the fire.

  Jinny stared across the fire at Sam, seated now at Ben’s knee. The boy was holding a stick and gazing off into space. She wondered what he was thinking. But not enough to call across to him.

  “Hey, aren’t you going to read, Jinny?” called out Joon.

  “Oh! I didn’t think . . . I forgot . . . to grab a book,” said Jinny. It hadn’t occurred to her that the nightly reading was her job now too, with Deen gone. “Should I run and get something?”

  Around the fire, heads nodded in agreement, so Jinny hopped up and ran through the darkening night to the book cabin, a path her feet knew by heart. It didn’t matter what she grabbed. With the exception of Ess, they’d all read just about every book in the place. She reached blindly.

  Back at the fire circle, Jinny opened the book, cradling its worn spine in one hand as she turned the soft, crumbling pages with the other. All the kids knew to be careful with the books. They were swollen, faded, eaten by the salt air and the grit of sand, not to mention so many grubby, grabbing fingers. When a book died, there was nothing to be done about it. The kids could only bury it in the sandy earth beyond the book cabin door and try to remember the story. They marked these little graves with the biggest shells they could find. It made a funny sort of garden.

  Jinny wondered, whenever she walked between the carefully placed shells, what books there had been before she came to the island. What stories were planted in the ground that had died before she got there. Books she’d never know, their pictures disintegrating in the earth, their characters gone forever. It was a funny thought, strange to imagine the bright stories in the dark ground, surrounded by scuttles and bugs.