by Nadia Aguiar
“Please to tell me,” Valerie said, smiling and sniffling. “You said you came to here on a boat? How?”
Maya told her the story as briefly as possible. Valerie closed her eyes. “So sad,” she whispered. “Poor children, poor children.”
Maya and Simon looked down. It was so sad.
“But we think they might be here, in Tamarind,” said Maya. “We met someone who may have seen our parents.”
Something in Valerie’s eyes worried Maya. It was a sad, knowing look.
“Have you seen our parents?” Maya asked. “Have they been here?”
“No, they haven’t,” said Valerie. “Oh, children, children,” she sighed sadly. “This place—” She swept a hand over the dimming forest. “This place is strange and wild. Strangement, you know? You cannot fathom it. I cannot, Pascal cannot, the Cloud Forest People cannot, and you cannot. We are safe here. The Cloud Forest People are peaceful, but beyond . . . it is darkness.”
And certainly darkness did seem to be creeping in all around them, thickening like smoke. No Cloud Forest People were left on the ground, all had retired to their tree houses for the night. There were no lights in the homes and one by one in the distance they slipped into darkness in the canopy. A faint bit of moonlight reached the porch where the children sat.
“Didn’t you ever try to go home?” Maya asked.
Valerie seemed far off in her own thoughts.
“We tried,” she said, her gaze returning to Maya and Simon. “Once. But there is nowhere to go,” she said. “Children, enfants. There is no escape from this place.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Valerie’s Story * Lights in the Jungle
Valerie told them that she had been a young woman when she arrived in Tamarind from the Outside. Pascal had been sent to study volcanoes in the Caribbean when a storm came, blowing them off course and grounding their ship on reefs. They rowed to shore, bringing with them what belongings they could, and by the time they reached the beach, their ship had slipped beneath the surface and was gone. Monkeys and parrots climbed and flew at the edge of the jungle above the beach, and the sultry green hills rose above them. They did not know it yet, but they were in Tamarind.
They decided that they would explore until they found a town. There were seven of them to begin with, and they followed a freshwater stream. At night Valerie wrote letters to her sister by the light of their campfire, still thinking that it wouldn’t be long before they would reach civilization. Then the stream they had been following went underground and the jungle grew denser and they had to slow down. Their knives grew dull and it was difficult to cut their way through the tough vines. The first one of their company who they buried was the ship’s cook, who had been bitten by a strange spider and did not wake up one morning.
The next one to disappear was the man who had been walking at the back of the line. At first they stopped and waited, thinking that he would come along. They shouted and shouted, and turned and retraced their steps, but they never saw him again. By then they were hungry and thirsty. They tried to drink the moisture in the cups of leaves, but it was not enough.
“Now I would know how to catch water, of course,” said Valerie. “We learned everything from the Cloud Forest People. But then we were thirsty and frightened and we didn’t know where we were, or even how to get back to the beach.”
Valerie seemed to be sinking into memory and as she did her English improved.
“There were five of us. Me, my husband, Pascal, our old friend Pierre who studied volcanoes with Pascal, another passenger from the ship named Thomas, and the cabin boy, Louis. But then Louis started to complain that he was having trouble seeing, and when he woke up one morning he was blind. I can still hear him scream when he woke up and everything was dark. He was so terrified, poor boy. We took turns leading him through the jungle, but he began to come down with a fever and before long he was too ill to move. He was burning up. We laid him down and tried to comfort him, but there was nothing we could do. We had no medicine. He died and we bury him as best we could.
“We were very thin and hungry then and we thought we would die in the jungle, too. At night there were strange, tiny blue lights in the air all around us. I wondered if it was ghosts, spirits, black magic—and I was very afraid. Now I know it was only lighted bugs, jungle fireflies that—what is your word for it? Pollinate? That pollinate the cloud orchids. The lights were beautiful but they terrify us. We were so deep in the jungle that there was little change between night and day, but night was very most black. Noir. It seemed to press on our throats.” Valerie lifted her hands to her throat. “Complete black darkness and then these little blue lights turn on and off.
“And then one day we realize that a man is following us. We never see him but we know he is there. He follows with us for three or four days. One night we fell asleep around our fire. I feel someone watching me in my sleep and I open my eyes and he is there, standing, looking down on us. I shouted and shouted and the others woke up and he disappeared. Pascal said that I had just had a nightmare.
“The next morning when we wake up, there is a pile of fruit left beside us for us to eat. We look all around and then we see a man jump down from a tree. I knew he was not going to kill us because he had stood over us when we were sleeping and if he wanted to kill us he do it then. He took the cupuaçu fruit from the pile and he split it on a rock and he comes to us with the pieces. Oh, my hand trembles when I took it from him! We did not take our eyes off him, but we eat the fruit and then we follow him and that evening we arrive here, at the Cloud Forest People camp.
“You can imagine our shock when we see the sight of all the tree houses and bridges and ladders and ropes—a whole world above our heads. All the Cloud Forest People came out to see us and they took us up the ladders into the trees and we spent the night up here and we have been here ever since. The Cloud Forest People adopt us. They gave us a tree house to live in. We moved to this tree later, when we knew how to build better. They taught us how to farm the cloud orchids. In time we learned the language. Pierre, God rest him, never really learned it. Until he died two years ago he was always gripe, gripe, gripe.”
Valerie pointed to the house in a nearby tree that stood empty and dark.
“I write letters to my sister every week since the shipwreck, even now. I keep them all. She was my younger sister, but she’ll be une vieille, an old woman now, if still she is alive. If she had children, they would be grown up. I try to picture what she would look like, where she lives. But sometimes I just tell myself I will not think of this—I won’t see her again, so what does it matter?”
Valerie sighed deeply.
“Most of the time, I feel like I am one of the Cloud Forest People. But seeing you, speaking European languages, so many memories are brought back to me. But those memories I have, they are from a long-ago time. It is gone. If even we could get back now it would all be change. All be different.”
“But you said you tried to leave once,” said Maya. “You tried to go back home?”
“Once,” said Valerie. She paused, her face hidden in the shadows. “It was a mistake.”
Moonlight sifted through the trees, and Maya and Simon waited quietly for Valerie to speak.
“We had been here perhaps for several months,” she began. “Pascal, Pierre, Thomas, and I took food to last several days and we left on foot. We had been walking for three days when we got close to civilization. We heard guns and cannons and we could smell smoke far up ahead. The next day we came across a group of people who were fleeing from their town. They were wounded and hungry. They looked like ghosts walking to us through the trees. They carried a child who would not wake up. Soon we passed others like them. There was a war, they said. They were fleeing and we traveled with them for some days.
“At night when the fireflies came out they were all terrified. They believed the fireflies were evil spirits who would steal their souls. And it seemed like there must be evil spirits here, to make
these people look as they did, so hungry and scared. We kept going and we found bodies rotting in the jungle, left where they had fallen. We thought that maybe another part of the island would be safer, so we changed our direction, but everywhere it was these fleeing ghosts. So many of them. There was no place safe. And then finally we were attacked by soldiers. Thomas and some others were killed. Pascal, Pierre, and I escape, and we come back here to the Cloud Forest Village, to the peaceful tribe, who live high up, where the air is pure.
“I tell Pascal I will never go out there again. Out there it is bad, here it is safe. It was time to give up our hope to return home. Here is home now. All that will make us leave is if that volcano goes up in fire—the volcano is the only thing worse than facing what is out there. But until then, we stay.”
The phonograph had wound down and was silent. Valerie looked out over the darkness before she spoke again.
“And so, we are froze here,” she said. “Froze, in the middle of the hot jungle.”
Valerie set up grass mats for Maya and Simon on the deck that night. She offered to take Penny inside to sleep in a cot, but Maya said that she would keep her sister with her. Valerie seemed disappointed. Maya was glad when Valerie left them and she was alone with Simon and Penny again. Greater Tamarind was such a strange place, full of so many people with dark, secret sadnesses. Maya felt grateful that she had her brother and her sister with her and that at least this part of their family was still together.
“Maya?” Simon whispered.
“Yeah?”
“How long do you think that Valerie Volcano has been here?”
“I don’t know,” whispered Maya. “A long, long time.” She paused. “Wait a minute,” she said. “What did you just call her?”
“Valerie Volcano,” repeated Simon.
“Valerie Volcano,” said Maya. She began to giggle.
It was not just the name, but the serious way that Simon said it that seemed so funny to Maya. And they were both exhausted and their nerves were frayed, so it didn’t take much to set them off into a fit of giggles. When the giggles started to subside, all one of them would have to say was “Val” and the other would snort and then they would lie there laughing helplessly for the next few minutes, their hands clamped over their mouths.
“Okay,” Maya said finally. “We should sleep now. We’re going to have a long walk ahead of us tomorrow.”
“We could stay a little longer,” said Simon. “To explore the village.”
“No way,” said Maya. “We leave first thing.”
They were quiet for a few minutes.
“Hey, Maya, look!”
“Shhh,” whispered Maya. “It’s time to sleep.”
“No, look, for real!” whispered Simon. “I think it’s those lights Valerie was telling us about, the jungle fireflies!”
Maya opened her eyes.
There were indeed sparks of mysterious blue light, blinking on and off in the darkness beneath the canopy. There were a couple, far across in the next tree, then there was one, twinkling in the air just over the deck where the children lay. As it came close Maya could see the clear shell of its body and the luminous filaments of its insides. More appeared and filled the air, until the children could see them gathered thickly as stars all across the Cloud Forest Village, all the way into the distance where they were just pale glimmers, trembling like distant galaxies.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Charge of the Piganos * Penny in
Danger * Simon Explores the Cloud
Forest Village * Vertigo * Netti and
Bongo * Rebels * Vanishing Village *
The Child Stealer!
Valerie had warned the children the night before about the morning charge of the piganos. Still, when Maya and Simon were jolted out of sleep by the thundering roar of the approaching herd, their hearts pounded and it took them a moment to remember where they were. They crawled to the edge of the deck in time to look down through the milky dawn light to see a herd of pig-like creatures stampeding below the village. They were ferociously ugly animals, with great saber tusks and giant snouts and stunted little legs. Even the females had woolly beards. The odor rising from their hides was foul.
The herd galloped beneath the village and their thundering hooves faded into the distance. Maya hoped that they would be far away before she and Simon and Penny left that morning. The horrible smell dissipated and she looked out through the clouds of mist billowing through the treetops and soft wet leaves and the sweet-smelling white flowers. The treetop village was coming to life. Villagers, mere shadows in the cloudy light, were climbing high into the branches to pick the flowers and there was the faint squeak of ropes as empty baskets made their way into the heights. Penny had woken and begun to cry. Babies have all sorts of different cries, and this one alerted Maya instantly. It sounded distressed.
Thinking that she must be hot, Maya lifted the light sheet lying over Penny. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the rash, red as strawberries, blooming puffily over Penny’s stomach and back, her arms and legs. Even her toes. Maya saw at once that it wasn’t an ordinary rash that babies get. It was something strange and ferocious. The blood in Maya’s veins turned cold and she tried to stop herself from panicking. Penny can’t be sick, she thought, terrified. She can’t be. She felt Penny’s forehead with the back of her hand, as their mother used to do. It felt hot. But was it? Maya had never felt Penny’s forehead like that before and she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was always like that. What was she supposed to do? Maya desperately wanted her mother. Penny began to cry in earnest and Maya picked her up and began to rock her. It took all of Maya’s might to stop herself from crying, too.
Valerie came out and when she saw the rash her eyes widened and she disappeared immediately down the tree, promising to be back in a few moments. Maya knelt rocking Penny, murmuring soothing things. Simon sat silently, his eyes large with fear.
Valerie returned with a brown root in the pocket of her dress, which she took to the kitchen and boiled and mashed into a pulp. When it cooled she smoothed the paste over the baby’s skin with a damp cloth. She spoke to herself in French as she worked. Before the children’s eyes, the welts began to subside and Penny’s sobs tapered off. Soon she was resting quietly in Maya’s arms. Maya took a shuddery breath.
“Will she be okay?” she asked.
“Oui,” said Valerie. “Not to worry. It is from a plant that must have brushed against her. But she will be fine.”
“From a plant?” asked Maya hoarsely. “Then why didn’t Simon and I get it, too?”
“Oh, you are too tall,” said Valerie.
“Too tall?” asked Maya.
“She means we’re too old, probably,” said Simon. “Maybe it only affects babies.”
“Enfant is fine, yes,” said Valerie. “But we must watch her. The thing, how do you say? The rash, it can come back with a very bad fever for a few days. After that, no rash, enfant is okay.” She gazed down at Penny. “She is very precious, yes?”
“Yes,” whispered Maya.
Maya did not want to chance moving on until they knew for sure that Penny would not get a fever, so she agreed to stay in the Cloud Forest Village for the next few days. Simon went off on his own to explore the village—Valerie assured Maya it was fine, as long as he stayed in the treetops and didn’t go down to the jungle floor below. Valerie urged her to go with him, but Maya refused. She was too shaken to let Penny out of her sight. She spent the morning on the platform porch, amusing Penny with flowers and twigs and her spare shirt, which she tied into a rag doll. Pascal came out a few times and glanced down at them from beneath his bushy silver eyebrows before shambling back inside. She could hear the clatter of copper instruments from inside the hut.
Later, when Penny napped, Maya leaned back and watched the lacy green leaves above her shuffle in a fine breeze. The breeze loosened stray orchids and they drifted past, white and cool as clouds. She had nothing else to do, so she took the logbook from
Simon’s backpack and turned to the map. If they were near the volcano that Rodrigo had drawn, then they had not come nearly as far as she had hoped they had. The best thing they could do, she thought, once Penny was well, was to keep heading east until they found the river again. Even if they had to walk along the Nallanda River all the way to Port Town, it was still a shorter route than they would have taken with Helix. Though she couldn’t help but reflect on the thought that if they had stayed with Helix, they would have been there already.
That settled, there was nothing else to do but turn the pages, looking at the dreamy pageant of sea life floating across its pages. Suddenly a phrase returned to her, from the conversation overheard in St. Alban’s. Her father’s voice: from deep in an equatorial jungle. He had said something about something coming from an equatorial jungle . . . what was it? Maya struggled to remember but his words escaped her. She wondered if it was part of the puzzle somehow.
By the afternoon she was bored and Penny was sleeping peacefully so she was happy to see Simon return. As usual, he seemed to have made friends with everyone already. An entourage of children jogged across the bridge with him and waited, smiling and waving at Maya. The girls made sympathetic faces, nodding to Penny. Simon had found nothing out about their parents, but he was full of interesting details about the workings of the camp.
“Want me to stay with Penny for a bit, so you can explore?” he asked.
Maya shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
“No, no,” said Valerie, coming out onto the porch. “You go to see the village. Play with the other children! I stay with baby.” She squeezed Penny’s pudgy little hand between her fingers. Before Maya could protest, Valerie had scooped the baby up out of her arms.
“Come on, Maya!” said Simon. “Come with us!”
Maya looked worriedly at Penny, but she seemed fine and did not appear to be bothered by Valerie holding her. Valerie gazed down at her, rapt.
