by Nadia Aguiar
“COME ABOUT!” he shouted, and immediately he spun the wheel to port.
The heavy boom came cracking around. Startled, Dr. Fitzsimmons instinctively raised his arms to shield himself. Penny shrugged out of his grasp and ran toward Simon, who dived nimbly across the deck, grabbed her, and rolled over to shield her at the same instant that the boom hit Dr. Fitzsimmons square across the jaw. The gun went off. There was a splash followed by a howl.
The children ran to the stern to look over.
Dazed, Dr. Fitzsimmons was swimming back to the boat. Simon lunged for the lifebelt and tossed it over the railing. They could tie him up until they got home. But shadows were moving in fast from the fringes of the lake. The leeches started attaching themselves to Dr. Fitzsimmons one after another as he frantically tried to claw them off. Simon reeled the lifebelt in and cast it out again, trying to get it to land closer to him. But the creatures were a swarm now, and Dr. Fitzsimmons was panicking. He didn’t even appear to see it. His hand, tarred with leeches, splashed blindly.
“We’ve got to help him,” cried Simon, desperately reeling in the lifebelt again.
Maya covered Penny’s eyes and held her close as she and Simon saw the leeches crest Dr. Fitzsimmons’s shoulders, then his neck, then his face. The last they saw was his hand reaching out of the water, still trying to claw them off. Then the current bore him away and he disappeared down a narrow side tunnel into the darkness.
“Simon, stop!” cried Maya as Simon prepared to throw the lifebelt out again. “It’s too late—he’s gone!”
Just then Helix staggered up from the cabin, a cut on his head bleeding. He put his hand on Simon’s shoulder and took the lifebelt and dropped it onto the deck.
In a moment Penny broke free of Maya and peered over the railing, but there was nothing to see.
None of them spoke.
Simon sunk down and cradled his forehead in his hands and closed his eyes. For all that he loathed what Dr. Fitzsimmons had become, he would have saved him if he could. Seagrape crept over to sit with them, warbling softly. Maya crouched beside him for a moment.
“You did the best you could,” she said quietly. “It was too late to help him.”
After a few minutes, Maya let out the mainsail until the breeze caught it. There was only one passage open to the boat and she floated down it. Penny wound the watch dutifully. Helix, furious to have been caught off guard, paced angrily.
The Pamela Jane rounded a corner and the breeze petered out.
“Simon, look,” Maya whispered.
Finally Simon opened his eyes. The foul odor of the leeches had left the air and the boat hung suspended in the luminous waters of a large, calm grotto whose sides rose up to a domed roof a hundred feet above. Great rays of light shot down through the crystal water from the luminous hull.
On the steep wall before them glowed paintings of sea creatures, a breathtaking fresco of the sea creatures of Tamarind. As the children looked, mouths agape, it shone brighter and brighter.
Simon scrambled to his feet and leaned over the bulwark to try to get a better look. “The Ancients must have created it out of some sort of paint made of ophalla powder,” he said in awe.
Familiar sea creatures mingled with oddities unique to Tamarind, all lit with a strange silvery spume of ophalla. Moon jellies pulsed on the surface of the water, swept along in an invisible current. Spotted dolphins raced. Gently scrolled tentacles of octopuses unfurled toward caravans of lobsters marching in single file. Turtles with great hawked beaks nosed along, speckled eels with gaunt faces shimmied across the open, and a strange fish with dozens of decorative fins flowing like garments swam alone. From the humblest limpets and fluted sea sponges to the grandeur of a magnificent whale and her calf, it was an artful panoply of life in the ocean.
“My ancestors did this,” said Helix softly.
The creatures, rendered larger as they rose up from the underwater wall, ascended in a long train of luminous, ethereal bodies, swimming and floating and drifting, hoisting shells on their backs, bearing themselves from the dark depths of the cave up toward the highest point. Simon’s eye followed them up and, high above the others, he saw a porcine fish with big bright eyes and a single, twisted horn that pointed up near the top of the cave. Breathing shallowly, Simon squinted up and could just see a thin, bright outline of a door behind the strange fish.
A thrill went through him.
“It’s up there,” he said. He couldn’t stop smiling. They had found it. He pointed to show the others the outline of the door.
“I see it!” said Maya. “You think that’s it? That’s Faustina’s Gate?”
“I don’t think so,” said Simon. “Faustina’s Gate is supposed to be like a well. But I bet that it’s behind the door.”
But the door was a hundred feet up a steep cliff face. How would they ever reach it?
Simon looked closer at the wall.
“It’s almost as if there’re handholds as well as footholds,” he said. “One of us will have to climb.”
The others looked at him. They were all tired and dirty. Maya’s hair was tangled and mud from the mangroves back in Floriano streaked her face. There was blood on Helix’s head from where Dr. Fitzsimmons had struck him. Penny’s pink pajamas were now a shade of grubby gray, torn and tattered and frayed. She looked very small and serious as she held Seagrape on her shoulder, stroking her.
Helix glared at his injured arm. The sensation was returning and he was able to wriggle his fingers now but it wasn’t enough. Reluctantly, he nodded. “You can do it, Simon,” he said. “You’ve figured out everything this far.” He looked paler than usual, but smiled reassuringly.
“What about me?” asked Penny. “I’m not scared of heights.”
“You’re not scared of anything,” said Simon.
“We need you to stay down here and keep winding that watch,” Helix told her.
“I know that’s not a real job,” Penny grumbled. “They’re not even in here.” She looked around and quickly gave the stopwatch a couple of turns, just in case.
Simon waited until the boat was as close to the cliff as she could get. Maya looped mooring ropes around rock formations to hold it in place. Simon started to waver. Who knew what he would find at the top?
“All right,” he said at last, securing his backpack with the key and the mineral-fruits in it. “Here goes.”
He balanced on the railing of the deck until he got a good hold of a crevice in the wall above him, then he boosted himself up and found a foothold. He climbed carefully but quickly, and as he got higher he could see the door. It was carved and inlaid with faintly gleaming white ophalla, and in the middle of it was the dark eye of a keyhole.
“Be careful!” Maya called.
“I’m fine,” Simon called. “There’s a ledge by the door, I’m almost there.”
He pulled himself up to the top of the cliff until he was sitting on the ledge, his legs hanging over the edge. He looked down for the first time. From up there the Pamela Jane looked like a miniature. The water was shallow and the sharp points of stalagmites thrust up from the cave floor. If Simon fell on one of them he’d be in big trouble. Queasiness washed over him and he closed his eyes until it passed.
He took off his backpack and withdrew the glowing key.
“Here goes,” he muttered under his breath. He hardly dared to breathe and his hand shook slightly—what if this didn’t work?
But the key slid like butter into the lock. Seconds later both began to shine brightly. Something in the door rumbled faintly, like stones grinding, then the sound died away. Simon felt his heart hammering as the door swung smoothly inward.
He crawled through and found himself in a small, domed room chiseled out of ophalla. It was like being inside a giant, hollowed-out hive. Into the ophalla walls had been carved breathtakingly intricate pictures and patterns, whose meanings had been lost to time.
And there in the middle was Faustina’s Gate.
; Simon knew it when he saw it. It was a round hole, like a natural well, just as Davies had told him, and it descended deep into the earth below. Its sides and the floor all around it were made naturally of dully glowing ophalla—the whole room, in fact, was made from the stone.
After all their trials, here it was at last.
He ducked his head out of the door. “It’s here!” he called triumphantly. “We found it!”
He crawled as close to the edge of the hole as he dared and peered down into seemingly endless darkness. He knew that the bottom of the well opened into a tunnel that branched out in a network that led all the way out to the Blue Line. He felt around for a pebble and dropped it down the hole and waited, but there was no answering ping. He shivered—it was a long way down. What was he supposed to do now? He was stumped. For all his excitement, Faustina’s Gate was only a hole in the ground—how was it supposed to save Tamarind?
But there was one last tool that he hadn’t used yet.
Simon opened his backpack and took out the mineral-fruits.
What were they for?
He arranged them in a line and waited.
Nothing happened. Simon began to feel panicky. What if their journey had been for nothing? Perhaps the gate didn’t work anymore. Or, almost worse, what if it did and he couldn’t figure it out?
There was a rustling in the doorway and Simon looked up, startled. Seagrape was hovering in the air outside. She flew through the door and landed with a thump on the ground near him and began to sidle over.
“Hey, Seagrape,” said Simon. “Come to help?”
As Simon kneeled there, thinking, Seagrape pecked slyly at the fruit.
“No!” said Simon sharply. “Don’t do that!”
But Seagrape had rolled one of the fruits away, near Faustina’s Gate. Before Simon could reach it, she put the sharp, curved tip of her beak to the depression at the bottom of the fruit and pulled. A single long ribbon of peel came loose. She kept pulling and the whole thing came off in one piece!
She squawked as Simon tried to take it, and as she lunged to peck him, she pushed the fruit, which wobbled towards the hole and disappeared over the edge.
“Now look what you’ve done!” said Simon in dismay. “Bad bird! Go back down to the boat!”
Seagrape flapped her wings and hopped over to the rest of the fruit.
“No!” Simon told her, but she squawked fiercely when he tried to shoo her away. She flew around the room once, screeching terribly, and as she flew past him she reached down and wrenched out some of his hair with her talons.
“What’s got into you?” asked Simon in surprise. He had never seen her behave this way.
And then Simon noticed something that made him stop and stare, astounded.
The mineral-fruit that Seagrape had peeled and pushed into the well had left behind a trail of juice. And everywhere that liquid touched had begun to glow and bubble. As Simon watched, the ophalla on the edge of the well began to grow thick and lumpy, like dough rising. Deep inside Faustina’s Gate a rumbling sound began, and the blackness of the pit lightened.
Then Simon remembered the ophallagraph of the tree—the bird in the image had its beak to the fruit!
“Sorry, Seagrape,” he whispered. “You knew what you were doing, didn’t you?”
Fascinated, Simon bent closer to inspect the stone. Something in the mineral-fruit was causing a reaction in the ophalla. As he watched, the stone began to bubble up and expand and tiny holes appeared in it. Suddenly the holes sneezed tiny puffs of dust. More dust drifted up like smoke through the well. Simon’s nose started to tingle.
Simon had been out on coral reefs with his parents to see the coral reefs spawn. Triggered by the moon and the tide, the whole coral reef would suddenly release a cloud of trillions of gametes. This reminded him of that.
It wasn’t dust coming from Faustina’s Gate, Simon realized—these were spores.
At last he understood the true meaning of Milagros’s words: What appears alive is dead and what appears dead is alive.
The ophalla was alive! Or if not the stone itself, something inside it. He remembered the wriggle of movement across the slide at Davies Maroner’s. Simon had thought his eyes were tired, but perhaps something under the microscope had moved.
Did his parents know? Had they guessed?
The well was like a cauldron of life. Tiny specks vibrated in the stone, orbiting furiously, dozens of them within each marble-size chip of the rock. The ophalla was growing before Simon’s very eyes and the well was getting smaller as the new stone was filling it in and sealing it. Faustina’s Gate was closing.
Seagrape hopped over to the mineral-fruits again and this time Simon didn’t stop her. As soon as she had peeled each fruit he broke it in his hands, squeezing out the juice, and tossed the pulp deep into the well.
The spores in the air were getting so thick that Simon was starting to have trouble breathing. He coughed. The air had a sharp tang, like ammonia. His nose was running heavily. Light was streaming out of the well now. He tossed the last mineral-fruit in and scrambled to get his backpack on. Seagrape squawked and flew out of the tiny chamber into the cave.
The ophalla was getting brighter and brighter, too bright to bear. Simon’s eyes stung. He rubbed them but it only made them worse. It wasn’t until then that he heard the others calling him frantically.
“I’m coming down!” he called through a sneeze. His eyes were watering fiercely.
He looked once more at Faustina’s Gate, rapidly sealing shut, and he left through the door and began to climb back down. He didn’t get very far before he froze on the face of the cliff.
“Something’s in my eyes—it’s getting worse—I can’t see!” he shouted. “I can’t tell where to go!”
“We’ll keep talking so you can hear where we are,” Helix called, his voice strong and calm. “Move your right foot down about two feet, there’s a foothold there—good! Now if you move your left hand down about a foot and just a little more to the left…”
Simon made it a third of the way down before his foot slid and he lost his grip on the rock. Maya shrieked. He grabbed a small ledge but his fingers were slipping. His eyes burned unbearably. “I can’t hang on!” he shouted. He heard pebbles loosened by his hands rattling down the cliff.
“Simon!” Helix shouted. “Jump away from the cliff, as far out as you can! Trust me!”
Steeling himself, Simon bent his legs up and kicked out strongly. He swanned out into the light streaming down from the doorway and felt himself tumbling backward.
He had a moment of terror as he fell through nothingness, but seconds later he landed in the curve of the Pamela Jane’s sail, bouncing once on it as if it were a trampoline. He slid down and landed in a heap on the deck. Helix had pushed the boom across toward the cliff, underneath Simon.
“Simon, Simon, are you okay?” Maya cried, running to him.
The fall had knocked the wind out of him and it was a few seconds before Simon could gasp for air. The spores had blinded him and he could see only shadows. The boat had pitched to starboard when he landed in the sail and now it was rocking back and forth as it righted itself. Rumbling began deep in the stone around them.
“It’s alive!” he coughed, struggling to sit up. “Ophalla isn’t the stone—it’s what lives inside the stone! I saw it—something in the rock is alive—it’s spawning! That’s what Faustina’s Gate will do—take the new ophalla organisms out to the Blue Line!”
“The Blue Line!” said Maya urgently. “It’s going to close. We have to hurry. Simon, you rest here. I’ll untie us and get us going.”
The rumbling grew louder. The wind rose and a surge of water lifted the Pamela Jane and began propelling her through a narrow passage out of the chamber. Maya and Helix shouted to each other as they kept the boat steady. Simon could still feel the spores in the air, prickling his skin. Penny crouched beside him, Seagrape on her shoulder.
Simon was afraid that another violent cav
e storm was beginning like the one in the chamber with the stars, but instead in a few minutes the current slackened, a gentle breeze arose, and it was as if they were being expelled on a breath. He began to see light again—no longer the searing white of the ophalla, but the light that went with warmth—the sun.
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Choice • The Last Crossing • Home
They emerged out of the cave into the Green Vale. At first Simon saw everything through a milky blue haze. He blinked at shapes and shadows, but slowly outlines grew crisp and gradually color returned and the world grew bright and rich and saturated. He looked all around in awe. Milagros had told the truth. This was surely one of the most beautiful places in Tamarind. Steep green hills, thickly carpeted in vegetation, towered over them on three sides. Giant spotted flowers sprang from vines. Hundreds of multicolored birds hovered over the canopy. The air thrummed with insects. Striped-tailed monkeys capered up palms, chattering in surprise as they stared at the strangers on the boat. Sleepy-eyed slothe-slothas hung upside down on branches, munching lazily on juicy leaves. An amber cat prowled the opposite shore. There were no signs of civilization, just hundreds of miraculous plants and animals untouched by the Red Coral Project. A school of flying fish burst out from the trees, flitted across the vale, and disappeared into the underbrush on the other side.
“Look at all the animals!” said Penny in delight.
“We’re here,” cried Maya. “We made it! And Faustina’s Gate is closed! Tamarind is going to be okay!”
Simon’s eyes no longer burned. He felt fine again and he got to his feet. “Thanks,” he said to Helix. “That was quick thinking with the sail.”
“Of course, Simon,” said Helix. “You’re like a brother to me.”
Simon looked at him and smiled. “You, too,” he said.
Simon realized that this was it—they were about to leave Tamarind. Here the waters were tranquil, but outside the mouth of the Green Vale the glittering sea beckoned. The Blue Line was close to shore here and visible even from the deck of the boat. Deep beneath the surface of the earth ophalla was flowing from Faustina’s Gate out to the line, strengthening it. Already water was massing blue on one side of the gyre and green on the other. Clouds were tumbling from the horizon. The Pamela Jane glided across the glassy green cove, her tall, elegant masts straight and true, her ophalla hull shining, ready to take them back home. Sadness filled Simon—he would never see this place again.
