Orphan Island

by Laurel Snyder

  “Yes, I think so,” said Jinny, searching his face, trying to see whether this meant she was forgiven. She still wasn’t sure.

  “Well,” said Ben. “All right.” Then he smiled, and Jinny felt a tiny gust of relief. Ben was smiling.

  “Hey,” said Jinny more brightly. “So, then . . . about Loo. I decided you can have him. You can be Elder now. It’s okay with me. I’ll just keep Ess.”

  Still frowning slightly, Ben slapped the spoon against his hand softly. “No, I think . . . No.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jinny. “It’s what you wanted. I’m trying to make things right.”

  “And I accept your apology,” agreed Ben. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you made a choice, and now Loo thinks you’re his Elder, and honestly I just want to stay out of this mess. You can be in charge. Of everything.”

  Jinny blinked in surprise. “Are you sure?”

  Ben nodded at her. “I’m sure. And you were right about one thing. I have plenty to do here, without a Care.” Then he smiled again cautiously and turned back to his cooking, before adding, “Besides, he looks like you, you know. Loo.”

  “He does?” Jinny was startled by the thought. Really, she had no idea what she looked like. But it was funny to think she looked like the new little boy.

  Ben nodded. “Sure. He has your eyes.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Jinny. “That . . .”

  “Other things too,” said Ben. “He reminds me of you in other ways.”

  “Really?” Jinny wasn’t sure what that meant or if she liked it.

  But Ben didn’t answer again. Something was bubbling on the stove that seemed to need his attention, so Jinny escaped and ran nimbly up the path, to start fresh.

  As she ran, a memory followed her up the hill. Blue eyes. Her own blue eyes. She’d been on the island for several years before anyone had bothered to inform her that her eyes were blue. She’d always assumed they were brown. Maybe light brown, like Tate’s, or nearly black, like Deen’s. But everyone had brown eyes, so of course she’d assumed the same about her own. It had been Deen who’d corrected her one day. “Blue, you big goof!” he’d said with a laugh. “Your eyes are blue, Jinny.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous,” she’d argued. “Who has blue eyes? Only people in books.” She’d thought he was playing a trick on her.

  “People in books, and you,” Deen had insisted.

  “Really? Blue?”

  Deen had nodded. “Just like the sky,” he’d said pointing upward. “Like that.”

  Soon, Jinny was back at her cabin. She opened the door with a bang.

  “Ess,” she sang, tousling the girl’s hair in the usual way. “Time to get up.”

  “I’m up!” sang Ess, sitting up straight, but with her eyes still closed.

  Jinny leaned in to wake Loo. She poked him in the belly with a soft finger. “Loo,” she said gently. “Hey, you, Loo! Good morning, and welcome!”

  Loo didn’t wake up.

  Ess tried next. She leaned in past Jinny and shouted. “Loo, get up! It’s breakfast time!”

  Loo didn’t say a word, but he did answer Ess, in a way. Though his eyes never opened, a little arm shot out, with a balled-up fist at the end of it, and punched her in the chin.

  “Ow!” cried Ess,falling back on the bed.

  “Loo!” shouted Jinny.

  “Whah?” said Loo, sitting up, and looking at Jinny wide-eyed. With those big startling blue eyes trained on her blankly. Like he had no idea what he’d done.

  Or almost like that.

  17

  Getting to Know Loo

  From that moment forward, Loo was a lot of work. Perhaps, Jinny thought, as she chased him down the path to the fire circle, he was just too tired last night to get into trouble. But now he was rested, and he seemed to be making up for lost time. In a funny way, Jinny was glad for the distraction. Nobody had a chance to be resentful of her at breakfast. Not with Loo shouting and slurping and smacking his plate on the table.

  Whereas Jinny remembered both Ess and Sam as timid and watchful on their first morning, Loo was the opposite—all sound and movement, like a thigh-high thunderstorm. He shouted and demanded. He jumped and hopped. He had trouble sitting still, and he did not like eggs, and he did not want nutcakes either, and he liked to throw the things he didn’t like, to be sure everyone knew. But he was still VEWWY HUNGWY.

  “How about some fish cake?” tried Jinny with a sigh.

  Loo made a face and shouted, “No! No! No!”

  Jinny, exasperated, turned to Ben for help. “I don’t know what else to try. I wasn’t aware that there were people who didn’t like any kind of food at all ever.”

  Ben shrugged, unfazed. “Remember when Sam got here? He didn’t eat for two days. It drove Deen crazy.”

  “I don’t remember that, actually,” said Jinny, wondering how she’d missed noticing. “But I’m guessing Sam didn’t shout and scream either.” She glanced over at Sam, who was quietly cleaning his plate.

  “No, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Sam shout, come to think of it,” said Ben. “Not even that time Oz whacked him in the eye with a stick.” Just then Loo let out a wild wail. Ben glanced at the boy briefly, then back at Jinny. “Well,” he added pleasantly, “good luck with him!”

  Jinny frowned at Ben. “Boo,” she said. But it was a relief, to see that Ben seemed like he’d truly forgiven her. Anyway, he was acting like himself again. She turned back to Loo and tried again. “How about some dried snaps?” She reached for a handful and held them out.

  Loo scowled and shook his head. “Bech!” he said, slapping her hand away.

  At last, Loo was talked into eating a bowl of leftover stewed plomms, though most of the fruit seemed to end up on his face.

  After breakfast, Loo hopped down right away and began to point at things. All the things. He wanted to know what this was and what that was, and he wanted to touch the fire circle, and he wanted to run into the water. “Now!” he demanded, pointing. “Now, now, now!”

  It seemed like every other minute someone was shouting out, “No, Loo, NO!”

  At last, to give the others a chance to clean up and catch their breaths, Jinny decided to take Loo to lose his shoes. “Come on!” she said, reaching out one hand to him and another to Ess. “I’m going to show you something neat. Okay?” Loo ignored her hand and instead catapulted himself off toward the beach and ran ahead. Ess followed him, and Jinny sighed, watching them run.

  “Feel free to take your time,” Joon said to Jinny. “Feel free to stay all day.” As Jinny headed off after her Cares, Joon added, “Wow! That new kid is more trouble than Oz and Jak put together.”

  Oz grinned. “No kidding! I guess we need to work a little harder, huh, Jak? Loo is a total disaster!”

  Jinny turned and called back at them over her shoulder. “You know, I can still hear you!” she shouted. The others only laughed.

  Following Ess and Loo as they took off down the beach, Jinny found herself thinking about how tall Ess seemed now, compared to this new little boy, how much she’d grown. And it wasn’t just her height. Ess walked calmly down the beach, while Loo was in constant motion. Jumping and shouting. Zigging and zagging. Periodically racing forward with a sudden burst of speed for no clear reason. He was chaos.

  But as hard as it was to keep up with him, Jinny had to admire Loo. He was agile, like a wild animal, spry and darting, quick and confident in his steps. Where Ess had always been ungainly, tripping over the air and toppling when she ran, Loo was strong, surefooted. When he came to a huge tortoise in the sand, he sprang over it and cleared the creature, almost without noticing it was a living thing. Ess stumbled along behind him, then stopped to tap on its shell and say hello.

  When they reached the bone tree and the shoe pile, Loo had no trouble whatsoever giving up his shoes. Jinny tried to explain to him what was happening. She wanted him to understand the importance of the pile. Ess wanted to show him her bracelet, her m
ama, and point out her own shoes, which she sometimes liked to visit. But Loo wasn’t interested in listening. Instead, he began scrambling in the sandy pile. Digging and curious, crowing at the tiny scuttles and sand beetles living in the old shoes. When he smashed a scuttle between two fingers, Jinny thought Ess was going to cry.

  Then he began to dismantle the pile. “Hey, whoa, Loo!” Jinny cried as he tossed the faded shoes into the air all around him. “Stop! You’re messing it all up. We don’t do that. We leave these shoes alone. This place is . . . special. It’s been like this for as long as we’ve been on the island. It’s our job to take care of it, to watch over it. We’re responsible for it. Do you understand?”

  Loo clearly heard Jinny’s words, but he said nothing in reply. Then he whirled back around and continued to throw the shoes as far as he could. Meanwhile, Ess scurried to recover her own canvas sneakers. She found one a few feet away from the pile, and immediately began to hunt around for its mate.

  In a matter of moments all the shoes were dispersed, and Loo began to dig in the sand with his hands. Jinny stared at his back, unsure of what to do next. She was having a hard time knowing how much Loo was in control of his actions, and how much he was just very, very young. But at least he was occupied now. Jinny sighed and turned to clean up the shoes. She would need to reconstruct the pile. Ess was one step ahead of her, helping without being asked. She’d already started collecting the shoes in pairs, and then lining them up so that the pairs of shoes made a sort of parade in the sand, along the waterline.

  It was interesting, Jinny thought, as she walked along and stared at Ess’s line, how the shoes differed as much as Ess and Loo did. Some of them were made of cloth and rubber, and many of them had a funny strip of plastic bristles to fasten them. Others were leather, with rusted buckles or rotted laces. She reached down to pick up one particular shoe and found it was bigger than most of them. Slim and flat and made of leather, with no fasteners of any kind. In fact . . . Jinny leaned over and fitted the old slipper onto her own callused foot, and it slid on just so. It fit perfectly, snug and stiff.

  For some reason, gazing at all the matched pairs of shoes, Jinny began to count them. One. Two. Three pairs. Jinny counted them all. Forty pairs. Eighty shoes, each with a match. Not a single one missing in all those years. And now that she was looking at them, she noticed that only a few pairs were larger than the others, like the slipper on her foot—but only a few. Why was that?

  Jinny stared at all the shoes. Deen’s must be here, somewhere. She tried to imagine Deen small enough for the tiny shoes, and found it made her smile to picture him so young. She couldn’t remember him little, could only imagine his older face—sharp cheekbones framed by floppy hair—atop a compact little body like Loo’s.

  Idly, Jinny wondered if perhaps a pair of the bigger shoes had belonged to Abigail. “Abbie,” she corrected herself, in a whisper. Based on the letter, Abbie had come to the island when she was older. She couldn’t have come here when she was Loo’s age, or she wouldn’t remember her mommaloo so well or be able to write so prettily. Jinny considered her foot in the cracked slipper. This might even be Abbie’s shoe, on her very own foot. She hunted around and found the mate, slid it on. It felt odd to be wearing shoes. Tight. A new feeling. The soles were cracked and scratchy. Her feet looked like someone else’s. Like feet from a picture in a book. Alice’s feet. Or Dorothy’s. Feet from the world out there. Did nobody ever wiggle their toes out there? Did they all dress in things so stiff? Jinny took off the shoes.

  Heading back up the beach to join the others a little while later, Loo and Ess ran ahead of Jinny. Loo leaped up onto a dune, and then the air filled with shrieking, as the boy began to scream wildly, kicking his legs in front of him, punching the air. A few feet away, Ess was standing statue still. Frozen.

  Jinny sprinted up to them. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She reached for Loo, who was still screaming, but he didn’t stop. She lifted his writhing, shouting body off the ground, but he was wild, strong, all clenched muscles, and hard to hold. “Shhh!” said Jinny. Then Loo pointed and Jinny saw what had scared him. A snake. Coiled in the sand, blocking his way.

  “Oh,” laughed Jinny. “That. Don’t worry. It’s just a snake. No need to shout.” She set the boy back down in the sand. Immediately, he wrapped his arms around her waist, whimpering to be carried.

  “Loo,” hushed Jinny. “Loo, Loo, Loo . . . calm down. It’s nothing. Animals are our friends, when they aren’t our dinner. There’s nothing to shout about. Here on the island all the animals are safe. Look at Ess. See, she’s not scared. She loves the snakes. Right, Ess?”

  But when Jinny looked over, Ess was in fact standing rigid, with her arms frozen at her sides. Her eyes were wide, and she didn’t even turn to look at Jinny. She looked as scared as Loo, only quieter.

  Dragging Loo with her, because his arms were still connected to her hips, Jinny walked the three long paces in the sand, to lean over Ess. “Ess, what is it? What’s wrong? You know better. It’s only a snakey. It’s nothing. It’s fine.”

  Ess looked up at Jinny through tears. “It hissed,” Ess said. “That snake hissed. At me, and he showed me his teeth. He’s a mean snake. Mean. Look, Jinny.” She raised a stiff arm and pointed.

  Jinny smiled reassuringly, but when her eyes fell on the snake, she saw something she’d never seen before. The snake wasn’t lying in the sand, basking in the sun, like usual. Instead it had raised its head up high, nearly a foot in the air, and was staring at them, its tongue flicking in and out, its eyes level and staring, straight at them.

  “Ooh, it does look a little scary, doesn’t it?” said Jinny, feeling slightly unnerved herself. “Standing up like that? I see what you mean. That is odd. But he’s still just a snake. Okay? Snakes don’t bite. That only happens in stories. Our snakes are nice snakes.”

  Ess shook her head. “I think he’s a mean snake.”

  Loo bellowed, “MEAN SNAKE!” at the top of his lungs.

  “No, no. It’s fine, I promise,” said Jinny. “Now hush, no need to yell.”

  But even as she shushed her Cares, Jinny had to admit that something about the rigid snake scared her too. The tongue flickering like a warning, the black eyes watching her so carefully. Jinny wondered why she’d never seen such a thing until now. Something about it made her want to hold Ess tight.

  Just then, Loo gave a shriek, let go of Jinny’s waist, and bolted. He ran away from her, away from the snake, away from the water, farther up and over the dunes. Jinny sighed and turned to follow, dragging Ess behind.

  18

  Strange Catch

  A few days later, bright and early, everyone on the island was roused by shouting. They all burst from their sleeping cabins and dashed for the cove, but halted on the path when it became clear that the shouting was only excitement. Down by the water, Jak and Oz were whooping into their nets.

  “What is it?” Joon called out from her spot on the ridge. She peered down at the boys on the dock. “What’s happening? Is everyone all right?”

  “Just fine,” bellowed Oz in reply. He looked back up at the cabins, squinting in the hazy sunrise. “Better than fine. We’ve got an inkfish!”

  Joon flashed a quick grin. “For true?”

  “Yeah, inkfish!” said Jak, jumping uncontrollably up and down on the dock.

  Sam, Ess, and Loo looked baffled by all this. But the older kids were grinning broadly, from one to the other. Inkfish!

  “Come on, guys, hurry!” Jinny urged her Cares, shoving them back up the path and inside the cabin to dress.

  Sam looked lost in the shuffle, still standing in his cabin doorway alone. “Inkfish?” he asked. “What’s an inkfish? Deen didn’t tell me about inkfish.”

  “Get dressed!” said Ben, running past. “You’ll see!”

  A few minutes later all the kids stood on the beach and watched as Oz and Jak attempted to haul a huge slippery creature from the dock to the kitchen in a bucket several sizes too
small.

  “Oh!” said Sam, when he caught sight of the strange beast, its many legs dragging in the sand.

  “Bech!” shouted Loo. “Icky!”

  “What’s it?” asked Ess. “Jinny, what’s a ninkfish?”

  “Fun!” said Jinny. “An inkfish is wonderful fun!” She tried to ignore Loo’s noises of disgust and turned away from him to grin at Ess. “It’s going to be a good time. Just you wait!”

  Once the animal was up on the table, they all gazed in awe. It was enormous, as big as Loo, stretched out, so that its many strange slimy legs draped and fell over the rough board surface into the sand. The inkfish was a funny color, a sort of purple-pink, with black dots all over. Loo ran forward to poke at it with a finger, and nobody stopped him. They all wanted to see what would happen. Nothing did.

  “Has anyone ever actually seen one before?” asked Nat thoughtfully. “Or have we all just heard the stories?”

  “I have,” offered Ben. “I was little. I think I was still a Care. But I remember. That means Jinny remembers too, right, Jinny?”

  Jinny nodded. “Yes,” she said foggily, barely recalling it, the last inkfish. It had been an event. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “Why is it so good?” asked Sam. “What does it do?”

  “It’s not what it does,” said Jinny. “It’s what you can do with it.”

  “Well,” said Oz, bouncing slightly on his toes, “do it. Make it happen! Cut it open!” He looked to Ben, who generally wielded the knives in the kitchen.

  Ben considered the slimy, confusing creature on the table, and then he looked at Jinny and grinned. “I think Jinny should do it,” he said. “After all, she’s the Elder, right? She’s in charge. She should have the honor.”