The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  “Wait,” she cried. “We must stay. It is bad out there! I was wrong, children, come back! Stay!”

  “We have to go!” Maya shouted back up to her, shading her eyes from the ash to look up at Valerie Volcano’s frightened face. Ash drifted silently down between the trees.

  “No,” Valerie cried, clutching the rope ladder. “I am too scared. I cannot leave! You children, stay, please!” she begged. “Please, children, stay with me! Come back!”

  Tears ran down Maya’s cheeks, leaving paths in the ash that was slowly coating her skin. It was awful to see the terror in Valerie Volcano’s eyes. Ash had settled on Valerie’s hair and shoulders and limbs and for a moment she looked to Maya as if she was already half buried.

  “Keep going,” she said to Simon, gritting her teeth. “We can’t stop.”

  They slid down the end of the rope. On the ground, Maya grabbed Simon’s hand and they began to run as fast as they could, far away from Valerie and Pascal and the sad final days in the treetops. As they ran, the air thickened with ash and the lofty heights of the Cloud Forest Village were lost behind them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Earth’s Lungs * 1,000 Bottles of Beer on the Wall *

  Nearing the Mines * A Horrible Little Man * Witchwood Road

  Over the next days Maya and Simon, taking turns carrying Penny, went as fast as they could to get as far away from the volcano as possible. But they heard no more rumblings and no surge of molten lava came, crushing the jungle behind them. They believed that the volcano must not have erupted, after all. Only a faint smell of ash lingered in the air.

  “Remember what Papi said?” said Maya. “That jungles are like the earth’s lungs? The air will be best in here.”

  Maya had not realized how oppressive Valerie and the sadness of the disappearance of Netti and Bongo had become. Though they were alone in the jungle, she felt happier than she had in some time. They ate bananas and guarana and cupuaçu and found a tiny trickle of a stream to drink from. They followed the stream for days. Simon fashioned a slingshot out of a forked stick and a rubbery vine and he kept it always at the ready, but no piganos bothered them. It was as if the rumblings of the volcano had sent them all scurrying to their lairs, as animals do when disaster threatens. Maya carried Helix’s spear with them, but she never had to use it, except to reach fruit on high branches, when it came in very handy. Simon still wore the necklace of Seagrape’s feathers.

  They kept an eye out, but never saw any sign of Bongo or Netti. As they hiked they sang songs. They sang “One Thousand Bottles of Beer on the Wall” from the beginning to the end. They counted as high as they could in as many languages as they could: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch. They were much stronger and more used to hiking than they had been when they first arrived in Tamarind, and at times it all felt like a great adventure.

  “When Penny’s older, do you think she’ll remember any of this?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Maya. “She’s not even a year old. I don’t know if I can remember anything that far back.”

  The hill they were walking up got quite steep then and it was too difficult to talk, so the children fell into silence and just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

  “I think she’ll remember some stuff,” Simon said after the path had leveled again and they caught their breath. “Maybe she’ll remember without really knowing what she’s remembering. Like, when she’s older she’ll smell orchids or she’ll taste cupuaçu, things she doesn’t have all the time, and she’ll remember it somewhere in her mind, even if she doesn’t know where it’s from.”

  “Maybe,” nodded Maya.

  By the end of a week the air was free of even the faintest trace of ash and there were no longer any cloud orchids overhead or trickling down to the jungle floor. The foliage changed. Tree trunks broadened and leaves became thicker and darker and grew closer together. Ferocious red flowers—dark in the low light—bloomed in the hollows of branches and sprang onto the children’s path. Sometimes the children passed evidence of life: messy nests in the crooks of high branches, holes that led into dark burrows in the earth, roots that had been gnawed by jungle creatures, but they never saw anything other than birds and lizards and insects. They found ever stranger new fruits to eat. Each night they chose a tree and slept in a huddle at the foot of it. The jungle was too thick to see the sky, so there was no sun or stars to tell them which way they were going, but for stretches of each day they felt surprisingly brave and were not unhappy.

  The first clue that they were going the right way was that here and there on the jungle floor they began to see traces of a powder that glowed in the dark. They knew that they must be nearing the mines.

  After days of ducking under branches and clambering over tree stumps on no real trail, one morning the children found a narrow footpath. They walked along it for some time. When they stopped to rest, the foliage was so thick that there was nowhere to sit but right in the middle of the path, which is what they did. That’s where they were when a gnarled little man, coming from the opposite direction, nearly stumbled into them.

  The children scrambled to their feet, hearts pounding. The little man—he was less than four feet tall—froze in his tracks and stared at them in horror. He was so still that for a moment he seemed to blend in with the undergrowth.

  “Lord save me,” he whispered. “Spirits. They’ve come for me.”

  “We aren’t spirits,” Maya said, afraid that he would faint with fear. “I’m sorry. We’d just stopped to rest. We’ll get out of your way.”

  “Can you tell us where this road goes?” Simon asked.

  The little man looked around him, as if expecting more strange children to appear from all sides. Through the gloom of the jungle his skin was eerily pale, as if it had never seen sun. His eyes were set far apart, like those of a reptile, and the irises were light as sand. His bare feet were covered in calluses thick as boots and he carried a sack over his shoulder. His eyes glittered suspiciously.

  “No children walk freely through here,” he said. “Who are you? Why hasn’t she found you yet?”

  “Who?” Simon asked.

  “You know who,” the little man said ominously. He lowered the sack from his shoulder and rested it on the ground. Maya squinted to see what was inside it, but it was too dark to tell.

  “Please,” asked Maya. “We’re trying to get to the old ophalla mines. Can you tell us which way this path goes?”

  “The old ophalla mines,” said the little man slowly, an ill-tempered glint appearing in his yellow eyes. Maya noticed that though he was short, he looked immensely strong.

  “What’s in the bag?” asked Simon, peering at it and taking a step forward.

  The little man reached for the sack greedily, as if he didn’t even want Simon to look at it, but as he did so, his short little leg kicked it. Its contents rattled together and then something slipped out and rolled across the path to the children, stopping only when it hit Simon’s toe. Maya and Simon recoiled in horror.

  It was a skull—a very small, round skull, with great hollow eye sockets and a hinged jaw and set of wobbly brown teeth grinning up at them. Without thinking, Maya kicked it hard, back to the little man, who seized it and tossed it into the sack and drew the string tight.

  Maya and Simon trembled and could not speak.

  “War skulls,” said the little man. “The earth is still giving them up. Soldiers, people who fled from the towns and hid out in here. The jungle is full of their bones. Sometimes I find whole skeletons hanging from trees, bodies blown there in explosions and left to rot, until I come across them all these years later. She finds uses for them, so I take them to her.”

  He moved the sack behind him on the path as if he was afraid that the children would steal it.

  “Who are you?” she breathed.

  “Who are YOU?” the little man asked. He was growing increasingly bold and unpleasant. “What are you doing here?”
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  “We’re looking for . . .” began Maya. She didn’t want to say her beloved parents’ names in front of the stranger.

  “Looking for someone?” the little man asked, digging a grimy finger into his hair to scratch his scalp. “Whoever you’re looking for, you won’t find. Unless you want to look in here.” He rattled the bag of skulls, and Maya and Simon jumped back. The little man laughed.

  For a moment Maya believed him, believed that somehow he could know that they would never see their parents again. He seemed to take pleasure in the stricken looks that passed over their faces. Then Maya noticed Simon’s chin beginning to quiver and as scared as she was, she also felt a spark of rage kindle in her. Who was this horrible little man to upset her brother? Who was he to tell them anything? He couldn’t know anything about their parents. Maya squeezed Penny to her protectively. Penny had been silent the entire time, as if she dared not make a peep. As she turned, Maya’s foot slipped off the path and into the vegetation. A strange tingling sensation traveled up her leg. She hoped she hadn’t touched some poisonous plant—that would be all they needed right now.

  “The old ophalla mines are down that road,” the man said, pointing to where Maya’s foot had slipped.

  “There’s no road,” said Simon, looking into a wall of green jungle.

  “Oh, there’s a road,” the little man said. “That’s Witch-wood Road. You won’t know it until you’re already on it, but it’s a road all right. It will take you straight to the mines.”

  The mines! Maya and Simon looked at each other.

  The little man paused and lowered his voice. “They could tell you where it leads,” he said, shaking the sack so the skulls knocked together. He grinned, revealing rotted stumps of teeth.

  A macaw screeched and dove off a high branch and into the jungle, startling them. The man hoisted the sack over his shoulder. Maya and Simon squinted into the jungle where he had said a road was and thought they could almost make one out. It was overgrown and murky with shadows before it faded into blackness. It was strangely menacing. Did it really lead to the mines? And was the “she” the little man kept talking about the Child Stealer? They were both afraid of the new path. But they had set out to go to the mines . . . Simon looked at Maya and without speaking, they decided.

  They would take Witchwood Road.

  The little man saw it, too, and a smile curved up one side of his face.

  “She’ll find you now, anyway,” said the little man gleefully. “It doesn’t really matter which way you go.”

  Suddenly the little man caught sight of the necklace around Simon’s neck. He froze, looking swiftly over the children’s faces again.

  “Who are you?” he whispered, and this time it was he who seemed afraid of them. Holding the bag of skulls between himself and the children, he squeezed past and began hurrying away nervously. Soon he was gone from sight. The volume of the birds’ and insects’ chirping seemed to intensify as Simon and Maya stood there.

  “What just happened?” Simon asked.

  “I have no idea,” said Maya, looking at Seagrape’s green feathers. “It seemed like the feathers scared him. Come on, we should keep moving,” she said.

  The children began to make their way down Witchwood Road. Maya still felt her legs tingling. The undergrowth stirred as they passed and then closed around the place where they had stood. No one would ever have known that only a moment before three children had been there. A snake slid down a tree and over the patch where they had stood and went on its way. A tiny bright yellow bug, previously hidden from view, crawled out to the edge of a leaf and took flight, right into the paw of a giant red monkey who had been sitting motionless, camouflaged in the vegetation, unseen by the children. The monkey glanced down at the bug and then closed its fist around it. He lifted it to his mouth and, with an almost delicate flutter of his lips, swallowed it. Then he turned and began climbing to the top of the canopy. He swung silently and swiftly, arm over arm, in the direction that the children had gone.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Monkey * Labyrinth * Terror

  The jungle was hot and airless. Only faint sunlight filtered through the thick canopy, and Maya and Simon had no way to tell what time it was. They lost their way sometimes, but then the narrow slip of a footpath would reappear, drawing them deeper into the jungle. Simon had been in the lead for a while when Maya noticed a blue butterfly perched on his backpack. She was going to tell him when she saw a second attach itself to his shoulder. Another had settled on Penny’s foot. And then Maya and Simon and Penny were in the midst of a silent maelstrom of blue and yellow and red and emerald.

  “They’re so beautiful!” Maya cried.

  Simon had turned to face her and they smiled at each other through the soft storm of color, mute as snow. Simon stretched out his arms so that butterflies landed on them, hanging upside down like bats or tiptoeing like ballerinas, flexing their wings slowly. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, lighting the dim jungle with a riot of color. They converged in a flock ahead of the children and the color grew dense, like a strange, magical vapor. A few stragglers fluttered around the children’s heads. The children followed them until the butterflies began to fly too fast for them to keep up and then dissolved into the darkness up ahead.

  “Oh,” said Maya. “They’re gone.”

  Mesmerized by the butterflies, she and Simon had left the path and this time it did not reappear. Softly glowing dust powdered the earth here and there, and they believed that they must be very near the mines. They stopped and looked all around them, trying to get their bearings. That’s when they saw the first of the stone totem poles standing in the middle of the jungle. It was about twenty feet tall and five feet thick. Maya and Simon went closer so they could examine it. The stone was worn and cool to the touch. It was covered in a soft fur of moss.

  “Where do you think it came from?” Simon whispered.

  “I have no idea,” said Maya, shaking her head slowly.

  There were three more totems at intervals along a path and then the children came to a pink wall straddled with hanging vines. In the middle of the wall, almost totally obscured by vegetation, was an archway. Simon parted the vines and he and Maya peered cautiously into a walled courtyard. No one seemed to be there. Glancing one last time at the jungle behind them, they stepped inside. When Simon let the vines go, a green wall closed behind them. It was almost impossible to tell where the archway had even been.

  The children stood looking all around them. They had a bad feeling about the place. There were white stone fountains and clusters of miniature palm trees. A footpath meandered through the flower beds, from which sprang a fury of startling jungle flowers of varieties the children had never seen before. At one time the courtyard must have been serene and beautiful. But now the foliage seemed to be devouring itself for space and the faint scent of rot crept through the air. Ferns taller than the children—taller than anyone—arched over the path, and spongy, spotted flowers grew close to the ground. The fountains were dry and the pink stone was crumbling. The air was curiously still.

  The children were startled by a small brown monkey, who began chattering and dropping fast, arm over arm, down the trunk of a palm tree. It crouched on the path in front of them, releasing a torrent of chatter, but then it stopped talking and sat there, absently stroking the tip of its own tail. When Penny gurgled, the monkey bounced up on all fours towards the children and reached up and touched Penny’s toes. Maya stepped back, holding Penny tightly to her, and the monkey spun in a circle, scolding. Penny giggled and kicked her arms and legs.

  The monkey sprang forward on the path, still chattering, and turned back as if to wait for them.

  “I think it wants us to follow it,” whispered Simon.

  “Do you think we should?” asked Maya.

  Simon thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ve lost the path.”

  They were in some type of ruins. . . . Could this be the ophalla min
es? They weren’t sure they could find their way out now, and the desire to know what lay beyond the courtyard was powerful—both of them felt it. Could they be on the brink of discovering what their parents had been searching for? When the monkey beckoned them again they followed him.

  The creature led them across the courtyard to a place in the wall where they had not seen a door, but it drew back the vines with its hairless little fingers, and the children entered another walled garden much like the first.

  The day seemed to grow darker and a buzzing noise was coming from somewhere nearby. A few stray butterflies had appeared and were fluttering around them. As Maya watched, their wings changed color, darkening until they became almost black. The buzzing grew louder and was now coming from directly overhead. Maya saw with horror a thick cloud of insects hovering in the air above them, blotting out the sun. In the dimming afternoon, the light from the lamps stood out brighter. It was then that she realized that the lamps along the path were not ordinary lamps, but skulls on poles, with tiny flames lighting their eye sockets and glimmering between their teeth. Panic filled her.

  A funny breeze stirred by the mass of insects lifted the vines overhanging the wall, and Maya saw that the wall beneath was built of skulls, too. They were in some type of sinister aboveground catacombs.

  “Simon, this was a mistake,” she whispered, grabbing his hand. “We have to get out of here.”

  Simon had seen the skulls now, too, and heard the buzz of the insects escalating overhead. The two children held hands and Maya clasped Penny tightly to her as they began to run back the way they had come. Except they didn’t know which way that was—it all looked the same. Suddenly they realized they’d been led into a maze—there was no way out. They turned wildly down alleys and corners until they were hopelessly lost. Maya dropped Helix’s spear and did not stop to pick it up. The insects descended and the volume of their buzzing rose. Then Maya spied a turning up ahead that looked familiar—yes, wasn’t this where they had entered the maze? She recognized the pink flowers growing over some fallen stones. Just around the next bend would be the archway and the freedom of the jungle. They ran as hard as they could and rounded the turn and there they stopped dead in their tracks.