by Nadia Aguiar
He broke off as he saw Isabella and Simon. His face lit up.
“You made it!” he said to Simon. “And Isabella, I mean Madam President!” He bowed awkwardly as Small Tee came down the companionway, bumping into him. Overjoyed to see the beloved woman who used to come to the city to read him stories, the little boy ran and threw his arms around Isabella, who picked him up and kissed him. Maya looked on in surprise.
“We need your help,” said Simon to Jolo, and quickly he explained their plan.
Jolo nodded at once. “My cousin will let us take his boat,” he said. “It would be our honor to take you, Madam President!”
“We’ll have to disguise you,” Simon said to Isabella.
Fifteen minutes later Isabella’s long dark hair was lopped off—courtesy of Maya, who wielded the scissors with relish—and what was left was shoved under a cap. Her face was smudged with grease and she wore a grubby old mussel diver’s uniform belonging to Jolo’s cousin.
“Excellent,” said Simon. “No one will look twice at you.”
“Twenty-four Rua Santa Flora, in Floriano,” Isabella said. “I know where to get a message to you—we’re going to need all the help we can get.”
She left with the city boys and within minutes they had released the dock lines on their fishing boat and were making their way out toward the open sea.
Simon calculated quickly. Jolo had said that the Red Coral fleet wouldn’t pass by until nightfall. That meant the children had until then to get to the moraine and be back in time to leave well before the Red Coral arrived.
He turned his gaze to the gleaming peaks of the mountains. “Bring any spare clothes you have,” he said to his sisters. “It’s going to be cold up there.”
Chapter Nineteen
The Moraine of Lost Loved Ones • The Children Come to the End of the World • “Look, green feathers!”
Simon, Maya, and Penny left the boat and Prince’s Town and hiked an hour to the base of the mountains where they began their climb, following the track the birds made in the ophallagraph as best they could. Excited by the prospect of finding Helix, they ascended energetically at first, but soon the steep inclines and wobbly footing slowed them down. Every now and then they found rotten old rope elevators or steps hewn into the mountainside—at one time there had been a real route, but now it had fallen into disrepair and they had to scramble, crawling or scooting along precarious ledges. The air began to smell cold long before they reached the first snow, tinged blue at the edges, which appeared on the sides of the path. They put on all their clothes—Penny wore a big sweater of Maya’s—but they were still cold, and it grew even colder the higher they went.
Simon was tired and his feet were still sore from the Neglected Provinces but little Penny barely made a peep, and it was this that kept him going.
They turned a bend in the path near the top, near the “chin” of the mountain, and a frigid gust of wind nearly blasted them off the narrow ledge. Penny tottered and Simon had to haul her back from the brink of an icy chasm. Simon, in front, dug his shoulder into the wind, and arm in arm like a chain they hugged the mountainside and muscled their way around the corner, a few hard-won inches with each step, until they made it into the lee. They stood out of the wind for a moment, breathing hard, blinking snow off their lashes.
When they could see again they found they were on a plateau between the mountain peaks that had been impossible to see from the earth below. Simon took the ophallagraph out and found the path the birds made. They were going the right way, he was sure, and now they were supposed to head across the plateau. He would have liked to curl up for a nap, but before the drowsy, peaceful feeling could overtake him, he shook himself and scrambled to his feet.
“Come on,” he urged his sisters. “We have to keep going.”
They began walking again, and to their great surprise, when they rounded a jagged crop of ice they found a stone road lit by ophalla lanterns. They stopped and looked around them in wonder. The lanterns glowed in the false twilight of the fog that was swirling down toward them. Everything around them was white.
“It’s like it isn’t even Tamarind at all,” said Maya in a hushed voice.
Snow crunching beneath their feet, they followed the lanterns. There was not a shiver of wind. Puffs of frost hung in the air from their breath. Simon kept an eye out for footprints, but if Helix had come this way, newly fallen snow had covered his tracks.
When the fog cleared they saw it—a vast lake stretching out before them like a flat blue pan at the top of the world.
“The Moraine of Lost Loved Ones,” Maya whispered.
The three of them stopped where they were and looked out over it. Maya held tightly to Penny’s hand.
There was such a feeling of stillness and eternity, of peace and sorrow. They had come, it seemed, to the end of everything. On the other side of the moraine was a steep wall of ice, blue light glowing from inside its crevasses. Ice birds must nest in them for they flew in and out. They looked like bits of snow blown against the sky, itself full of snow that had yet to fall.
Simon dropped onto one knee, overcome by melancholy, and gazed out across the blue limits. His heart ached; he didn’t know what for exactly. Had Helix been here? What had their friend been seeking? He wished they could find him and tell him about his aunts. He needn’t have come here—he had family in Tamarind who wanted desperately to see him.
And was the man in the green-striped jacket really here, lying beneath the milky turquoise water? Simon was afraid to go to the edge to look, but he told his sisters to wait and went alone. Now that they had stopped climbing, he felt the sweat on his skin begin to prickle icily. The air was sharp in his lungs. He stopped a foot from the edge of the lake. The water trembled and pulsed almost imperceptibly against the pebbled shore. Taking a deep breath, Simon looked down.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to see through the watery lens.
Then he realized there was a body below in the water, perfectly preserved. And another next to it. And then others beside that, and then hundreds beyond it, all the way out into the middle of the lake. Bodies reposed at ten feet deep, twenty, forty, eighty. Loved ones had taken them here, lit by the lanterns through the high plateau, and offered them up to the blue abyss.
He looked for some time at the figures arranged in eternal slumber—old men and women; fathers and mothers; someone’s brother, another’s sister; and here and there a child; and around them too many young soldiers to ever count. Simon felt as if he were utterly alone in space and time. Then he felt Maya and Penny come closer. Penny leaned against him and Simon clasped her small fist, and Maya put her arm around both of them, and there on the banks of the high, lonely lake, the living huddled together.
A single, unmanned raft with dragonfly-light sails, barely big enough to hold the three of them, came around a curve in the lake.
“We have to go across,” said Simon quietly, breaking their silence.
It was the Last Ferry, the raft the monks had described. It sailed alone, making its way toward them, then stopped at the shore beside them as if it sensed their presence there.
They stepped gingerly aboard. Simon felt the coldness of the deep water permeating the wooden boards. A subtle wind filled the sails and began to drive them toward the opposite shore. The children looked down and saw all the bodies that lay beneath. Currents animated their clothes and hair, which floated weightless in the water. A breeze stirred the lake into silvery ripples and beneath the molten surface the bodies below grew distorted, as if life had been breathed into them and they moved again. Each face looked as if it knew a secret unknown to any on the other side of the silvery divide.
“Look for something glowing in the water,” Simon whispered.
Mist came down from the glaciers and for a moment the little raft sailed blindly through the water. Every now and then Simon caught a glimpse of an icy shore looming on the opposite side of the lake. Now that they were here, he wondered if they
had been wrong about the man in the ophallagraph. What if the man with the glowing chain wasn’t here at all?
But then Penny pointed.
The others saw the peculiar muffled glow, too, twenty feet ahead, off the starboard of the raft. As they all leaned to one side the raft turned and they began to head toward it. They held their breath as they drew alongside it, and looked down to see a figure lying two feet underwater, a glow emanating from a chain that hung around his neck, its end tucked into the breast pocket of his green-striped jacket.
“It’s him,” whispered Maya. “It’s the man in the ophallagraph.” She paused. “I can see the chain there,” she said softly.
“I’ll get it,” whispered Simon. “He’s very shallow—I think I can reach him.” He hesitated only a moment before he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He took a deep breath and plunged his hands into the water, disturbing it as little as he could. The water was cold as needles and his arms quickly went numb. His heart was racing. He had never touched a dead person before and his dread made him suddenly start to sweat. He could reach the figure, though, so bolstering his courage, he took hold of the lapels of the man’s coat and drew him to the surface very slowly.
“Don’t bring him out of the water,” Maya said nervously. She and Penny held on to each other and watched. “Do you want me to help you?” she asked.
“It’s okay,” whispered Simon. “I’ve got it.” The man, once he started rising, seemed weightless in the water, and it was easy for Simon to let go of him with one hand and pull the thin chain over his neck with the other. Simon felt a quick horror that the man would suddenly open his eyes, or that the frigid grip of death itself would seize Simon and tear him off the raft and drag him underwater.
But the man was dead and not to be feared. He had been somebody’s father or brother or uncle, Simon thought, not so different from Simon himself or the people he loved, and he felt ashamed for feeling afraid. Aside from the pallor of his skin, the man looked as if he was simply asleep.
Simon had pulled the chain over the man’s head, but it was attached to something in his jacket pocket that wouldn’t budge. Simon reached down and felt something round and cold and metal nestled in the pocket. He worked it gently free and drew it out on the end of the chain. It was a stopwatch. He lifted it out of the water and Maya leaned forward and took it from him. Then he lowered the man gently down. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. This time the body came to rest all the way down on the lake floor, his face perhaps even more peaceful now than it had been when they first saw it. Simon withdrew his freezing arms from the water. He dried them roughly on his jacket and put it back on, shivering.
“I think it’s broken,” said Maya, handing the watch back to him.
There was an ornate winder, but the watch hands must have fallen off, and any internal workings must be totally waterlogged. There seemed no catch, no way to open its face. It looked soldered together by the cold water. Simon’s disappointment was tempered by the cold in his hands and arms—he would look at the watch more closely when they had left the snow. Right now, all he wanted was to get back to somewhere warmer.
The ferry had begun moving again and in a few moments it had stopped at the far shore. They waited but it didn’t move again, as if it were waiting for them to disembark. “I think we get out here,” said Simon. “We can walk around the edge of the moraine and go back the way we came.”
His legs felt like frozen blocks and his teeth were chattering. It was going to be a long, painful walk back down the mountain.
They stepped out onto a snowy verge at the foot of a giant mineral blue wall that rose high above them until it got lost in the fog. Deep inside the ice they could see chunks of pure ophalla hanging suspended like asteroids in space, each emitting a violent glow. The children heard the faint trickle of water down icy gorges. Ice birds carved the air high above them but made no sound. The blue light made Simon want to sleep forever. He yawned. They had to get away from there—the cold, the sadness. If Helix had been there he wasn’t anymore. “Come on,” he said. “It’s time to go.”
Then Penny saw something.
A little way down from where they stood a crisp green feather lay on the snow. There was no wind there to have stirred it. Penny ran to it and held it up triumphantly. They all looked at it, thinking the same thing.
“Seagrape!” Maya called. She spun around. “Helix! Seagrape! Helix!”
They had been here!
The others joined her but their voices echoed unanswered off the glacier. Albino ice spiders scurried across the ice ahead of the vibrations of their voices, and moments later at the other end of the lake the glacier calved and a mammoth block of ice crackled as it sloughed off the glacier’s face and splashed—boom!—into the water. The sound died away and within moments the water was locked still again. But there was no answer from Helix, and no green bird flew into view.
“Look,” said Penny, pointing to the ground. “Parrot poop.”
“It’s not even frozen yet!” said Simon, poking it with his shoe. “They couldn’t have been here that long ago.”
They tried calling again but their calls echoed forlornly from the desolate mountaintops. Snow began to fall. The ice birds grew nearly invisible, pale arabesques in the dimming sky. Suddenly, and with overwhelming intensity, Simon wanted to be away from that cold and lonely place. He wanted to see their friend; he wanted to go home.
As the others scanned the sky one last time, Penny wandered off and peered over an icy ledge into a great blue hole that descended into the wall of ice. By the time the others saw her she already had one leg over the edge.
“Penelope!” shouted Maya. “No!”
But Penny quickly hoisted herself onto the ledge. She disappeared.
“Penny!” shouted Simon.
He and Maya ran to the edge and looked aghast over it. Penny was all right, but she had scooted down a smooth-sided ice tunnel and was just out of reach.
“I’m getting the feathers,” she called, her voice echoing against the narrow walls of blue ice. “There’s more down here.”
“Forget the feathers,” said Maya in frustration. “Penny, this is dangerous. Come back up, okay? Come on, crawl back out to us!”
Penny’s voice sounded farther away as she looked back down the tunnel. “But the feathers,” she said. “Helix and Seagrape went this way. Maybe it’s a shortcut.”
“It isn’t a shortcut,” said Simon sternly. “Turn around right now and come back to us.”
The tunnel went at an angle down into the ice before it turned a bend and Simon could no longer see where it went. Reluctantly, Penny turned and tried to crawl back up the slope, but a thin layer of surface ice had melted slightly under the heat of her body and had become too slippery for her to grip. Each time she moved she slid another couple of inches farther into the hole.
“Stop!” cried Maya. “Don’t move.” She took off her jacket and tossed an arm of it down to the little girl. “Penny, grab on to the end of this and we’ll pull you out.”
But the jacket wasn’t long enough. Maya leaned in as far as she could and Penny stretched her hand up as far as she could, but it still wasn’t enough. Penny looked distressed for the first time and she started scrabbling against the ice, but that only made it melt faster.
“Keep very still,” said Simon, trying to stay calm. “We’re going to get you.”
They should have brought rope with them, he rebuked himself. He took off his jacket and one of the shirts he was wearing. His hands were numb and the fabric was stiff with cold and it was hard to tie a knot. But eventually he managed to tie his shirt and jacket and Maya’s jacket together. He lay down at the mouth of the tunnel and tossed one end of the makeshift rope down to Penny. “Grab hold!” he said.
But Penny had slid farther, and stretch as she might, the makeshift rope didn’t reach. Suddenly she slipped a few more feet. She was inches from the bend in the tunnel.
Quick as lightning, Maya tied the jacket rope to her ankle, hopped onto the edge of the ledge, and began to lower herself down. “I’m tallest,” she said. “Penny, grab on to the jackets—Simon, you’re strongest, try to pull us up!”
Penny let go with one hand and grabbed the jacket just in time. She pulled herself up until she was sitting between Maya’s legs. Simon, braced on the outside of the tunnel, had a firm grip on Maya’s wrists.
“All right,” called Maya, relieved. “I think we’re okay!”
Inch by inch, Simon succeeded in hauling them back up the tunnel—in another few moments they would all be on solid ground again. But the ice was melting beneath him, too, and he was beginning to slide. Sweat poured down his face.
“Don’t let me go!” Maya cried, feeling Simon’s grip loosening.
“If Penny can crawl over you up to me, then she’ll be out and it will be less weight,” said Simon.
He hung on to Maya with all his might but it was no use—suddenly the ice broke beneath him. Maya screamed, the sound changing pitch as the three of them slid into the tunnel. They swung around the corner and the slope steepened and they found themselves zooming through the polished blue ice, deep into the mountain.
Simon tried to grab the sides of the tunnel to slow their descent but the walls were too slick and they kept going faster. The tunnel narrowed and they had to lie back flat. And then, abruptly, the tunnel widened and grew brighter and brighter and then—whoosh! The ice walls and roof broke open and they were whizzing along in the open air and for a few surreal moments they could see out across Tamarind! Ice was all around them yet the steamy hot jungle was within sight. They were halfway down the mountain and going fast. In the next instant the tunnel closed over them again and they were hurtling, numb with cold, through the wintry passage, going faster than ever. At this rate they would reach the bottom soon, Simon thought. All he could do was hope fervently that they weren’t heading into a frozen pit at the foot of the ice where they would be trapped and never heard from again.
