by Nadia Aguiar
As he sat there on the porch steps, Simon longed for a moment to be back in Tamarind when, in spite of all the trials they’d faced, life had seemed simpler somehow, his purpose important and clear. The place he had worked so hard to escape from was now the place he desperately longed to return to.
It had already grown darker in the short time Simon had been sitting there, and the next time he looked up, to his surprise, he noticed a pale light glowing from one of the Pamela Jane’s portholes. At first he thought it was an illusion caused by the reflection of gray water and sky, but then he felt his heart quicken. Why was there a light in the boat and was someone on board? Everyone else was still in the house. Simon glanced around him. One of the watchers was walking around the other side of the house; the other was nowhere in sight. Simon ran quickly down the stairs, across the grass, and down to the cove, where he ducked behind the mangroves. The little rowboat was there but he wanted to get to the Pamela Jane unnoticed, so he stripped off his shirt and waded into the water, which lapped cold over his bare ankles. Another quick glance behind him told him no one was looking, so he began to swim out toward the schooner.
Whoever was responsible for the light could still be inside the boat, so Simon swam hidden underwater as far as he could. He popped up on the starboard side and swam along in the cool gray shadow the boat cast on the water, passing the black-stenciled letters of the Pamela Jane’s name, where a chiton had made its home over the N. He crouched for a moment at the top of the ladder up to the deck, making sure that no one on land was watching him, before he crept quietly to the hatch. He pressed his ear to it, but heard no one in the cabin below. He opened it and, taking a deep breath, dropped into the companionway.
To Simon’s relief the main cabin was empty. He closed the hatch softly behind him. The portholes were frosted with salt and the light was dim. He waited for his eyes to adjust, listening to the familiar creaking of the boat. It felt as if an old friend were talking to him, but through a dream, the words distorted. Though he stood still, straining his ears, Simon had no sense of whether he was alone or not. He wished he had brought something more than the flimsy pocketknife he always carried, but it was too late to do anything about it.
The light had come from the captain’s quarters at the bow of the boat, where his parents had slept, so Simon tiptoed cautiously forward. He went past the upper and lower bunks that had been his and Maya’s (how had they ever fitted into the tiny beds?); past the sling that Penny had slept in that had never been taken down and still hung from a center beam; past the galley, the cupboards bare, no smell of meals cooked thousands of miles out at sea lingering on the stove. He inched up to the doorway of the tiny laboratory, where once their parents had studied the mysterious, ethereal sea creatures that had led them to Tamarind in the first place, but it was silent and empty.
Simon’s next step squeaked on the deck and he stopped for a moment to steady his nerves. Sweat trickled down his back and he felt clammy and light-headed. He had only a few paces left to the door to the captain’s quarters. What if one of the men who had been lurking around the house was waiting for him? There could be more than one, even. What would they do if they caught him? He realized his hands were trembling. But he was more afraid of turning back than going forward. Bracing himself, he turned the corner.
The captain’s quarters were empty.
But his sigh of relief was cut short when his eye fell on the source of the light he had seen coming from the porthole.
A glowing foot-long gouge, half an inch deep, ran horizontally across the inside of the hull.
It was the last thing he would ever have expected to see.
He came and crouched next to it, his heart beating quickly. In the dim cabin, the cut glowed with a blue-green light, a color like phosphorescence stirred up in the sea on a summer night. It looked hard and polished, like deep ice under the sun, but its radiance was neither cold nor hot.
It was unmistakable.
“Ophalla,” he whispered.
Simon leaned in to peer at it more closely. A thin veneer of wood had been cut through to reveal ribs of ophalla that lay beneath it. Fine shining dust, like the talc from moths’ wings, spilled from the cut and lay in a small motionless heap, glowing softly in the dark. He reached forward and rubbed some of the ophalla powder between his fingers. There was no breeze inside the boat, but the Pamela Jane rocked in the waves stirred up by the wind and groaned on her lines.
What was ophalla doing here? The precious ice blue mineral was from Tamarind, where it had long wielded a mysterious power over the people. Wars had been fought over it, children had been enslaved to work in mines deep underground (Simon and his sisters had been taken prisoner at one—a memory that still made him shiver), and it had created more havoc and chaos in Tamarind than any other single thing ever had or should. Yet it also possessed rare healing powers—Simon had seen it cure his father after he had been trapped in the inhospitable salt islands of the Ravaged Straits. And it had been here, beneath their noses—beneath their very hands and feet—for years and they had never known. Simon’s skin prickled with excitement.
He kneeled, deep in thought, and stared at the whitish dust. He was oblivious to everything else around him for a few minutes so he was startled when he heard the footsteps on the deck. Someone else had come aboard the Pamela Jane! He looked around frantically for something more threatening than his pocketknife to use as a weapon, but the captain’s quarters were bare. Whoever it was had opened the hatch and descended the companionway and was now walking softly down the short corridor. Simon ducked behind the door and held his breath. To his dismay he remembered that he had swum to the boat and his shorts had been soaked—his wet footprints led from the companionway through the main cabin and down the corridor, directly to where he stood right now. Whoever was coming knew he was here and knew exactly where he was. Simon clutched the pocketknife and his knees began to quake as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
“Hey!” said an indignant voice. “Where are you? What are you doing in here?”
Simon almost leaped out of his skin.
“Maya!” he said, furious. “Why did you sneak up on me like that?”
“You’re the one sneaking around,” said his sister. “I saw you swim out here. What’s going on?” Simon could tell that she had been scared, too. He was surprised she had come out here on her own and he felt a bit embarrassed by how afraid he had been. They both looked at each other angrily, Maya shivering in her wet clothes. Then she caught sight of the glowing cut. She sucked in her breath and hurried past Simon to see it.
“I saw light coming from the porthole, that’s why I came out here,” whispered Simon. “I think it’s fresh.” He came closer to peer at the cut with Maya. “You don’t know anything about it?”
“No more than you,” she said. They spoke in whispers. “Ophalla,” she murmured, incredulous. “Do you think those men who’ve been hanging around the house did this?”
“I haven’t seen any of them coming out to the Pamela Jane,” said Simon. “But…” he whispered, “I don’t know who else would have.”
He looked closer at the glowing scar. It wasn’t a gash, he noted; the cut was neat and precise and shallow. The culprit had been gentle.
“Whoever it was knew what they were looking for,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s not random. And they didn’t want to damage the boat—it’s not vandalism.” He paused. “I think they suspected there was ophalla here, and they wanted to know for sure.”
“But how would they know?” Maya asked.
Simon shook his head, mystified.
Maya turned to look all around the cabin. “Do you think it runs through the whole hull?”
Simon had been wondering the same thing. He took out his pocketknife and went to the hull on the opposite side of the cabin. He began to score a line through the wood.
“What are you doing?” hissed Maya.
Simon ignored her, and a few moments later the scratc
h in the wood began to glow and a fine powder of blue-green ophalla trickled to the floor. Simon stopped. He tried a few other spots around the cabin. In some there was nothing; in others fresh ophalla was exposed.
“It’s in the main beams,” he said excitedly. “This is incredible! It’s almost as if there’s a skeleton of ophalla inside the boat and just a thin layer of wood covering it. It would have been really hard to build. Whoever did it would have had to know how much ophalla the frame could bear before it became too heavy to float, and all sorts of other things. But there must be a reason why she was built this way—I wish I knew what it was!”
Maya looked all around them in wonder. “How did we never know?” she whispered. “We lived here for years!”
Though she had belonged to their family for years now, the children knew little of the Pamela Jane’s past before the day she had drifted into the little cove at Granny Pearl’s, her sails in shreds and her hull encrusted in barnacles, back when Maya had been just a baby and Simon had not yet been born. It wasn’t until after the great storm that took them to Tamarind that they even learned that she was from the mysterious island. Whatever secrets were locked within her timbers were hers alone. The day had changed irrevocably, and the boatyard and Simon’s friends suddenly seemed very far away.
“We have to tell Papi,” said Maya.
“I guess…” said Simon grudgingly. Part of him wanted to keep the secret until he had time to investigate further.
When Maya shivered again they decided to go back to shore. They drew a chest in front of the glowing scratch to conceal its light, then climbed back up to the deck. The water was chillier the second time, and as the wind picked up from beyond the mouth of the cove, the Pamela Jane rocked from bow to stern. Impulsively Simon swam along the lee and took his knife out of his pocket. He pried off the chiton from the Pamela Jane’s name and, feeling a moment of small triumph, watched it wobble down through the water and come to rest in the turtle grass beds below. Then he swam back toward the little beach. The clouds were thickening in the sky and the first raindrops were splashing down, dimpling the surface of the water.
Chapter Two
Note in the Conch • The Red Coral Project • Faustina’s Gate • The Compass and Strange Stromatolites • “Hello?” • One Extra
There were two chairs empty at dinner that night. Helix’s, of course, had been empty for weeks, and tonight Simon’s father was too busy working to come out of his study. Through the closed door everyone could hear the wheezing and crackling of static on the CB radio. Simon wondered who he was trying to talk to. Simon and Maya had told their parents about the ophalla as soon as they returned from the boat. Marisol and Peter Nelson had not seemed as surprised as Simon would have expected, but when the children left they had talked privately behind the closed study door.
Now Granny Pearl and the children’s mother met eyes and Mami nodded.
“Come on, Penelope,” said Granny Pearl. “Time for your bath.”
Penny scrambled down from the table and she and Granny Pearl left the room. The children’s mother waited until they were gone and then she looked at Simon and Maya.
“You both know things have been a little strange lately,” she said delicately. “And now this thing with the Pamela Jane … We don’t want you to worry, but until we know more we want you to stay close to home after school. Just to be on the safe side for a little while. And I’d like you to help Granny Pearl keep an eye on Penny.”
Simon dropped his fork and looked angrily at his mother.
“We know those men are from the Red Coral,” he said. “Why don’t you just tell us what they want!”
His mother didn’t answer.
“They can’t do this to us!” said Simon. “They’re trespassing—it’s illegal! Why don’t you and Papi just call the police?”
“Your father and I have our reasons,” said his mother. She leaned her elbows on the table, chin in her hands. Simon noticed dark circles under her eyes.
“I’m thirteen,” he said resentfully. “I shouldn’t have to be stuck at home. I’m not scared of those men. I can take care of myself, you know.”
Maya looked concerned. “Don’t worry, Mami,” she said. “We’ll be okay. And we’ll watch Penny. It doesn’t matter if we have to stay home for a little while.” She looked pointedly at Simon.
Simon glared at her. Just because she was older didn’t mean she could act like she was his mother. He picked up his fork and pushed it through the cold potatoes left on his plate. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” he said, “so I don’t see why I’m being punished.” He pushed his plate away. “May I be excused?”
His mother sighed. “Go ahead,” she said.
* * *
Simon brushed his teeth and put on his pajamas and threw himself on his bed.
He couldn’t believe this was happening. One afternoon missed at the boatyard was bad enough, but now his parents were being unreasonable. It was like torture.
He hated the Red Coral Project.
Simon was fed up with his parents. Why didn’t they take charge of the situation? He wouldn’t have let anyone push him around—why were they? It didn’t make any sense.
Through the window, Simon heard footsteps on the darkened grass and saw a shadow slip into the trees at the eastern end of the garden. The watchers were still out there. The rain had stopped and a sallow moon was out and bats were in the throes of a mad, erratic ballet in the purple sky. A fine rain began, rustling on the grass.
Simon wished Helix were there. His bed, empty all these weeks, sat on the opposite side of the room. It was crisply made, but lately Simon had begun to throw stuff on it. When they were younger they used to stay up late talking, and they’d whisper loudly to Maya across the hallway, too, until Mami or Papi or Granny Pearl would come and tell them to be quiet. If Helix were here they could figure out what to do about the Red Coral! Why had he left without telling Simon he was leaving or where he was going? He was supposed to be Simon’s friend.
Simon imagined weeks and possibly months ahead sprawling out before him—a barren wasteland, heaps upon heaps of hours, living like prisoners. Their lives would contract to a monotonous routine of school and home. Friends would fall away. There would be no afternoons at the boatyard, no exploring in the boat he and his friends had built, no riding around on his bike—no freedom. The same slithery thought he had so often these days crept back in: Something very big was happening right under his nose and he didn’t know what it was.
He turned his shoulder into the mattress and pulled the sheet up over his eyes. It had been a long day; he just wanted to escape into sleep.
“Simon … Simon, wake up.”
He opened his eyes.
It was Maya, standing in her nightgown in his doorway. Outside the moon was high in the black sky.
“Simon,” she whispered. “Helix is back.”
* * *
Maya came quietly into the room, shutting the door behind her. Eyes shining, she handed Simon a folded slip of paper. “Before Helix left he told me to look in the conch shell on the porch every night,” she whispered excitedly. “There was never anything there until now.”
Leaning sleepily on one elbow, Simon opened the paper. On it was scrawled: Meet me by the mangroves tonight. Don’t tell anyone. It was definitely Helix’s handwriting—he had only learned to write after he had come to the Outside and his writing didn’t look like anyone else’s, or much like writing at all, for that matter. Suddenly Simon felt wide awake. He looked quickly out of the window. The mangroves were down by the cove. If Helix had left a note in the conch maybe he hadn’t wanted the watchers to know he was back. He had been a hunter—he could perch in the crook of a tree unseen for hours if he had to. How long had he been there?
Simon scrambled out of bed and grabbed his dressing gown. A moment later he and Maya were climbing out of his bedroom window. Checking to make sure the watchers weren’t in s
ight, they ran across the damp grass down to the mangroves.
Clouds shrouded the moon and the Pamela Jane was silhouetted starkly against the midnight sky. The sand on the tiny crescent of beach between the dark mangroves and the water was cold beneath Simon’s feet. The spot was hidden from the view of anyone looking out from Granny Pearl’s house or from anywhere in the garden, which is why Helix must have chosen it. Maya saw him first.
“Helix!” she whispered joyfully.
“Shhh…” said the boy, putting a finger to his lips.
Simon could only just make out Helix in the darkness, but there was enough light to see the familiar angles of his face and mop of dark hair. The shark’s tooth necklace he had worn since the first day they’d met him was there, knotted on a string around his neck.
“Leave the flashlight off,” said Helix in a low voice as Maya went to turn it on.
“But I want to see you!” she said. Even in the darkness, Simon could feel her beaming with happiness. She hugged Helix. “Why did you just disappear? Where have you been?” She and Simon sat down on the sand beside Helix.
Simon was relieved that their friend was okay, but angry that Helix hadn’t taken him with him—or even trusted Simon enough to tell him where he was going. Simon was tired of being left out of everything.
“You didn’t even tell us you were leaving,” he said.
Helix sighed. Simon thought he looked older somehow. Suddenly those three inches Simon had grown didn’t amount to much. He felt like a kid.
“I’m sorry I left like that,” said Helix. “I thought it was safer if none of you knew where I was.”
“What’s going on?” Simon asked suspiciously.
Helix exhaled slowly. “Tamarind is in trouble,” he said.
“What do you mean?” asked Simon. Suddenly the chill in the air felt colder, creeping through his clothes. He and Maya edged closer to Helix.
