Secrets of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  Simon heard a splash off the lee, but when he whipped his head around there was nothing there. Helix hurried back from the bow.

  “Don’t freak out,” he said in a low voice, “but there’s something up ahead.”

  He held the torch over starboard and light was flung on the opposite side of the passageway, where a shelf of rock rose a few feet out of the water. At first Simon thought he was looking at odd rock formations, but then they moved and he realized that they weren’t rocks at all. Heaped on the ledge, like seals basking, were giant salamanders, the biggest Simon had ever seen. The greatest among them was easily seven feet long. They were white as drowned corpses and a thick ooze of mucus covered their skin. Phlegm wattled their jaws. They lifted their heavy heads and with their lazy, opaque eyes they watched the boat pass.

  One of them opened its impossibly wide mouth and hissed, swiveling its head slowly back and forth. The others followed suit and hissing reverberated through the passageway. Suddenly the first creature lumbered to its feet and wriggled down the ledge and dived into the water. Its head surfaced a moment later, swimming toward the boat. Other lumps in the shallows lurched to life. Simon shuddered. They didn’t try to attack, just followed the boat, swimming lazily, keeping their eyes trained on the children.

  The Pamela Jane continued down the passage, her ghoulish escort patrolling languidly alongside. More salamanders slunk along the ledges. The water pillowed silkily around the hull. Here and there Simon saw bluish tinted foam where the water lapped the oystery sheen of the cave walls. Curtains of rock poured down around them, looking to Simon like ice cream that had melted and refrozen.

  The children heard rustling and as the boat turned a gentle bend in the river, they came upon a colony of albino cave crickets. The size of rats, they were gathered in a crevasse, munching on something, their backs to the boat. As they heard it coming they looked around. One slipped and fell into the water and began swimming with long, easy kicks like a frog back to the shore. Before it could make it, a pale salamander burst up through the water. The cricket disappeared down its gullet in a single gulp. A shrieking noise erupted from the rest of the crickets, who began hopping wildly and noisily down the tunnel. The salamanders surged up onto the rocks with surprising speed. Swiftly and ruthlessly, the crickets were devoured and the passageway fell creepily silent again. Frothing at the mouth, many of the salamanders returned to the water and stared up at the children in the boat.

  “I don’t like those things,” said Penny, a quiver in her voice. She stopped winding the stopwatch and it began to unwind, buzzing on the chain around her neck.

  The ceiling of the long, watery corridor grew jagged. Stalactites hung everywhere, like an upside-down forest. As they glided under them, the children began to notice the rustling of small hairy bodies in the dark nooks and crannies. Countless little eyes reflected the orange torchlight. Bats, thought Simon with relief. Nothing to be afraid of. Granny Pearl loved bats and would sit on the porch in the evenings watching them in the dimming sky.

  “Hey, Pennymouse, look up there!” said Simon softly. “Mice like you, but with wings!”

  “Simon,” whispered Maya, squinting up at the ceiling, “they’re not bats—they’re spiders.”

  As Penny’s stopwatch wound down, the buzzing ceased and the cave was quiet.

  Suddenly a heavy black spider dropped on a sticky thread and landed on the back of a salamander that had been slithering along the ledge. The creature hissed in pain and terror, and in a flash the others dived underwater to escape. Almost instantly the poisoned salamander stopped fighting and went rigid. The thick-legged spider ran up and down its back and within seconds the salamander was trussed in sticky threads. A Penny-size lump lay cocooned like a mummy on the ledge. Other spiders poured down the wall to feed. Simon shivered in revulsion.

  He became aware that the huddle of spiders on the ceiling had begun to move, as if someone was stirring under a fuzzy brown blanket. Suddenly one swung down, its deadly string landing like a tentacle across Helix’s shoulder. He cried out in pain and dropped his torch. Seagrape exploded in a blur of feathers, beak, and claws. She snatched the creature up and dropped it in the water before it had a chance to bite her.

  More spiders had begun slowly levering themselves down on strings, all hanging at different lengths and swaying in the thin wind.

  “Why are they all coming now?” wailed Maya, recoiling in horror.

  Simon pulled Penny to him. As he did so he noticed the stopwatch on its chain around her neck.

  “That’s it!” he cried. “Penny, keep winding the stopwatch!” Penny grabbed the watch and immediately began winding it. As soon as she stopped, the watch began buzzing again.

  The effect was instantaneous. A giant spider that had just landed on the deck stopped in its tracks, stretching up onto the tips of its legs and trembling horribly for several long seconds before it crumpled into a furry pod. Its legs twitched and then it lay motionless. The spiders that had been rappeling down from the ceiling turned and began climbing back up in a panic. Some shuddered and fell into the water, where they floated stiff and brittle for a moment before slowly sinking. Others leaped back onto the stalactites and scuttled away, shrinking into the dark recesses of the ceiling, only the orange dots of their eyes still visible.

  “Keep winding the watch, Penny,” Simon told her, taking a shaky breath. “It must send out some sort of vibration that the spiders can’t tolerate.”

  “Good job you figured that out,” said Helix.

  Simon looked at Helix, who was rubbing his arm. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Helix, but his face was pale and his right arm hung useless at his side. “It’s like a bad jellyfish sting; it’ll wear off.”

  Penny insisted on being the watch winder for the duration. Simon and Helix kicked the husks of the dead spiders into the water and kept a watchful eye on the ceiling of the cave. The boat drifted on, the soft hum of the stopwatch keeping the spiders at bay. Somewhere far up ahead was the sound of rushing water.

  The wind drew the Pamela Jane on through the cave system. To the children’s relief they left the corridor of spiders behind and entered a majestic, cathedral-like cavern with a vast, soaring ceiling. They sailed out into a huge dark lake and gazed around in wonder. They were deep inside the mountain now. The walls and ceiling glittered with ophalla stones, naturally inset like gems into the rock.

  “They look like stars,” said Penny.

  “It’s as if we’re in the middle of the ocean at night,” whispered Maya.

  The breeze carried them into the middle of the immense black lake. Seagrape flew up and coasted around the cave, a dark silhouette crossing the firmament.

  The faint purr of water grew louder as they approached the other side. As Simon’s eyes adjusted he saw five colossal entrances to different tunnels, opening like great black maws in the cave wall. Each tunnel entrance was a hundred feet high, but barely wider than the boat. And that rushing sound—he realized with alarm—was coming from the tunnels, some of which must drop steeply from the lake.

  “Which do we take?” Maya asked, worry creeping into her voice.

  Just as she was asking, the wind began to rise and the boat started sailing purposefully toward the opposite side of the lake. Within seconds she had picked up speed and was slicing swiftly through the water. Seagrape returned and perched on Penny’s shoulder and Maya sent them both to stand in the companionway. Maya and Helix reefed the sails to slow the boat down, and Simon tried to tack away from the tunnels to give them more time to figure out what to do.

  But the water was converging into powerful swells heading toward the tunnels, and despite their best efforts the boat skimmed across the water like a skater sliding across ice. The water echoed loudly in the tunnels. Simon didn’t know which one they were supposed to take. The boat pitched wildly in a gust of wind and waves cuffed her hull. The wind was rising steadily. A storm was starting, deep in the cave! The
false stars glittered dizzyingly around them. They were almost at the tunnels—they had to make a decision!

  Then Simon realized that something felt familiar.

  It looks like stars, Penny had said.

  Stars. Why was that reminding him of something? Who had he been talking to about stars recently? Then he remembered. The monk, Frascuelo, behind the Blue Door! “Some things have a double use in an image,” he had said. “For instance, close your eyes a bit and look at the ophallagraph of the tree.… it occurred to me that the fruit is clustered in patterns, perhaps like constellations of stars.”

  “Get me the ophallagraphs from my backpack!” Simon shouted, struggling to hold the wheel steady as the water grew wilder. “The one of the tree in the Emerald Oasis!”

  Maya found it and quickly brought it to him. She held the wheel while, hands shaking, he lifted up the ophallagraph. Frascuelo had been right. The pattern of fruit on the tree mirrored the patterns of the stars in the cave!

  But how does that help? Simon thought, starting to feel frantic. The boat was hurtling closer and closer to the tunnels and they had to decide quickly. “The birds,” he muttered. “The birds point to clues.”

  He found the bird, the only one in the image, a long-beaked creature that hovered over a large mineral-fruit—or star—at the tip of a Z-shaped constellation. It took Simon only a moment to locate the same constellation and the bird star in the ceiling of the cave. It shone brightly over the right-most door.

  “That one,” he cried, pointing. “That’s the one we want!” He shoved the ophallagraph back in his bag just as a gust of wind blasted them from the other direction, blowing out the torches and causing the boat to roll violently to port and the wheel to spin out of control.

  The Pamela Jane was caught in a current heading for the wrong door. Seeing that Simon was in trouble, Helix ran back to help. With his one good arm he leaned into the wheel with all his strength. Simon tacked and the boat rolled to starboard. Simon braced himself against the wheel to stop it from spinning the opposite way. For a moment he was afraid the boat would breach. But she steadied and they were on the right path, speeding toward the tunnel under the bird star.

  In an instant they passed through the entrance and were racing into darkness. Simon’s stomach flipped.

  “We need a torch!” he shouted. “We have to be able to see!”

  A moment later there was a whoosh as Helix lit a wooden torch. When he saw where they were, Simon was horrified. They were hurtling through an underground gorge whose sides closed claustrophobically around them. The mast was barely clearing the top of the tunnel.

  One wrong shift of the boom, one inch too far a turn of the wheel, and the boat would smash into the wall of the gorge. The boat was solid and the first hit might be all right, Simon thought, but if the rudder or mast was damaged he would no longer be able to steer. She would crash into the rocks and her hull would splinter and soon she would shatter into scattered bits of driftwood. The children would be at the mercy of the river.

  The water flowed fast and dark all around them, its roar deafening in the claustrophobic space. Simon had to keep them steady in the middle. Maya and Helix clung to the railing and Penny braced herself in the companionway, only her head sticking out of the hatch.

  All of a sudden the gorge walls and roof widened and lifted, the current slackened and soon the boat was sailing in a slow drift through a dark cave.

  “Everyone okay?” Simon asked, trying to keep his voice steady. He wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm.

  Everyone was. Helix held the torch up. The current carried them along slowly, but spiky stalagmites poked through the water and they had to pay attention. In some places stalactites from the ceiling met stalagmites from the floor in great and ancient columns. Simon steered deftly around them.

  The children were so busy making sure they didn’t hit anything that they didn’t immediately notice the cave was growing steadily brighter. But then a faint sizzling sound came from the water and the Pamela Jane shivered.

  Simon looked over the side. In shock, he saw that the outside of the boat’s hull was half-eaten away. Hundreds upon hundreds of oily black leeches, big as fists, crept along it, ravenously devouring the wood. Beams of bright light emanated from the holes. Suddenly the boat shook mightily and a fizz of bubbles shimmied away from her hull. Seconds later, the last of the wood was gone, and one by one the bloated leeches popped off and drifted away. The boat rocked gently. The children gazed down at her in astonishment.

  Before their very eyes she had undergone a staggering transformation.

  The wood of her hull had been stripped to reveal not merely the solid crossbeams and ribs of ophalla that Simon had expected back when he had first investigated the glowing from the boat’s porthole, but an underlying hull built wholly out of ophalla that had long been hidden beneath a thin wooden veneer. The children no longer needed the torches—the light from the boat itself lit the cavern and illuminated their shocked faces. The Pamela Jane looked like a vessel carved out of shining ivory. No new leeches could climb her gleaming sides and they retreated to the gloomy shadows to wait, a dark ring outside the hull’s glow.

  “Milagros never said anything about this,” said Maya, gazing down over the brilliant side of the boat in wonder.

  “Maybe she didn’t know,” said Simon. “I guess this is why the Pamela Jane was the only boat that could make it through the caves—an ordinary wooden boat would have been chewed right through.”

  Just then a hushed sound came from the cabin. Simon’s heart sank.

  “I hope she hasn’t sprung a leak…” said Maya.

  “I’ll check the cabin to make sure no water’s coming in,” said Helix. He disappeared down the hatch.

  Simon leaned nervously out from the boat to look at the hull, but saw no sign that the Pamela Jane was taking on water. He felt anxious, though—if the ophalla wasn’t completely watertight, even a tiny crack somewhere would be the end of them out in the open sea. Penny crouched down and reached over to touch the bright ophalla.

  As she did so, the children heard a shout and a thud from the cabin.

  “Helix,” Maya said.

  Simon dashed toward the hatch.

  But before he reached it he stopped short.

  It wasn’t Helix coming up the companionway. It was a tall man with red hair. He wore a sweat-soaked shirt. He was all elbows and cheekbones and jutting forehead. His face was streaked with mud. His pale hands clutched a trembling gun.

  Dr. Fitzsimmons.

  With cold, spreading dread, Simon realized he must have been on the boat the whole time.

  His gun was pointing right at Simon.

  “Maya, get Penny!” Simon shouted.

  But like a flash Dr. Fitzsimmons leaped out of the hatch and seized the little girl. Penny immediately burst into tears. He waved the gun in Simon’s face. “Stand back!” he shouted.

  Maya was near the bow. Hands raised, Simon took a few steps backward toward the wheel. “It’s okay, Penny,” he said. “Don’t be scared.” He locked eyes with his little sister, who was now sobbing uncontrollably. The blood drained from Simon’s head and he felt dizzy. How was this happening? There was no sound from the cabin below. Helix must have been knocked out. Or worse.

  Simon felt his knees begin to shake but he fought to keep still and hold his ground. He mustn’t show fear.

  Slowly his fear was replaced by outrage. Dr. Fitzsimmons had sneaked onto their boat. He had taken their little sister and he was hurting her and she was terrified.

  It was their boat.

  This was their family. This had gone on long enough.

  Simon’s heart was racing, but a calm descended on him. Anger focused him.

  “Let Penny go,” he said.

  “I’ll let her go when we’re on our way,” said Dr Fitzsimmons. “I’m coming with you.” In the ophalla light cast by the hull, his brow was white as marble.

  Simon concentrated on keeping h
is face expressionless as he tried to figure out what to do. Penny’s tears had subsided to hiccups and she was shaking. Dr. Fitzsimmons held her arm roughly. A breeze picked up and the boat began to sail slowly forward.

  Fitzsimmons was desperate, Simon realized. He had probably been terrified to see all the Maroong deserting him in droves and the army moving in. But he had fled, deserting his crew and his workers, and now he was using a small child to get what he wanted. Simon couldn’t believe that he had ever known this person. He’s a coward, Simon told himself. You don’t have to be afraid of him.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” said Simon quietly. He had to get Dr. Fitzsimmons talking to buy himself some more time. Maybe Helix would wake up—then they might have a chance. Penny looked very small.

  “When did you board the boat?” he asked.

  “When I realized the army was coming I escaped,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons. “I was going through the mangroves when I found your boat—I didn’t realize at first it was the Pamela Jane, but then I heard you coming. I hid in the cabin. I knew that I’d be able to get rid of a bunch of kids when I had to.”

  It was strange to hear his voice again after so long.

  The breeze freshened and the boat began to pick up speed. Simon kept a hand on the wheel. He saw that Maya, still up at the bow, was trying to tell him something. Without making it obvious he was looking at her, he watched from the corner of his eye as she mouthed something. What was she saying?

  Then he realized.

  Jibe! Of course! Dr. Fitzsimmons was standing in the arc of the boom.

  It was taking a big chance. But he may not get another one. Sweat poured down Simon’s face. He tried to steady his breathing. He met Penny’s eye so he was sure she was paying attention to him. He took a deep breath.