The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  Mathilde dished up yams and stew, and Maya and Simon sat down happily to eat. How wonderful, Maya thought, to eat real food at a real table! A bell rang out, echoing off all the tin roofs.

  The tortoise had been sleeping in the corner but now he stuck out his wrinkled head and yawned at the children, then walked slowly on pebbled feet across the room and settled next to Penny. He leaned over the side of her wooden box and she sat up and squealed and patted his wizened, tolerant old face. From where Maya sat, she could see out the window, down to the harbor below.

  “Why are there so many pirates here?” she asked.

  “Well, because of the war,” said Mathilde. She looked at the children, perplexed. “You fishies must be from very far away, not to know about the pirates!”

  “Can you tell us about them?” Maya asked.

  “I can,” said Mathilde, testing her iron to see if it was hot yet from the stove. It was, and she smoothed a length of fabric beneath her hand and began ironing. “Back in the beginning of the war, the Council forced all ships and fishing vessels to join war fleets. The fleets were supposed to defend coastal towns and fight ships from the North. The North had their own war fleet, of course. But then—oh, fishies, it was terrible—everything in Tamarind turned completely lawless and the fleets, they stopped answering to anyone—it was each man for himself. Crews turned into ordinary pirates, looting and pillaging anything they could get their filthy hands on. Every now and then there’s a big sea battle, and all the fleets from the North will come together to fight all the fleets from the South. But mostly nowadays it’s a case of fleets attacking lone ships and smaller fleets and raiding towns on the coast. Sometimes ships even attack towns on their own side—it’s terrible what happens around here these days, just terrible.

  “The man who runs Port Town, Senor Tecumbo, lets fleets dock here. It’s supposed to keep the town safer, but if you ask me, I’d rather take my chances with ships from the North than have to walk down the street in Port Town every day with these savages running around causing havoc.”

  Maya thought about the rough-looking men they had seen in the tavern as she and Simon finished their breakfast.

  “Mathilde,” Simon asked thoughtfully. “How do you know Helix?”

  Mathilde paused, lifting the iron so that steam rose from it for a moment and quickly evaporated. She looked at the children with her clear blue eyes.

  “I found him,” she said. Before she went on she paused, steam curling up from the iron. “He was living in a sugarcane crate at the end of this alley. He was about your age back then, Simon. He had just arrived in Port Town. In very bad shape, he was, so I took him in. He never said where he was from or what had happened to him. He never wanted to talk about it and I never tried to make him.”

  “A sugarcane crate,” said Maya.

  “Yes, yes,” said Mathilde. “From the old sugarcane factory. You must have seen it, just on the edge of town. It closed down during the war. People took all the old boxes from it to use for this and that. You’ll see them lying around all over the place now. The Helix Sugarcane Factory, it was called. I used to work at the factory, and I saw Helix every day, stamped on all the boxes. It’s the only word I can read, you know.”

  So that was the story behind Helix’s name and the crate they had seen in the market. Maya felt the relief of having a small mystery solved, but the deeper mystery of Helix, who he was and where he had come from, began to gather weight in her mind. She felt sure that Helix really was the boy that the children in Evondra’s camp had sung about. But if he was, why hadn’t he just told them the truth? Where had he come from? What was his real name, even? Her thoughts circled restlessly, and she wondered if someone with so many secrets could be trusted. Should they be relying on him to help them?

  “Simon,” she said. “Would you get the logbook? I want to look at the map.”

  Simon retrieved it from his backpack and brought it to Maya at the table. Maya opened it to the page with the map and began to study it. There they were, Port Town. Right on the southwest coast. And just a little west of them, marked promisingly by a star, was the capital, Maracairol.

  “Mathilde,” said Maya. “What do you know about Maracairol?”

  “It’s our capital!” exclaimed Mathilde. “The capital of all of Greater Tamarind. Or it used to be, anyway. I suppose now it’s just the capital of the South.”

  “Is it bigger than Port Town?” she asked.

  “Oh, much,” said Mathilde, smiling. “Port Town is just a little town.”

  Maya liked the sound of Maracairol. Didn’t it make sense that their parents would go to the capital to seek information about them? Maybe, if they couldn’t find anything out in Port Town, they should go to Maracairol.

  “If the fog on the bay ever clears, you can just make out the edge of Maracairol on the far point,” said Mathilde, nodding out the window across the bay. The children followed her gaze. The coast was jagged, jutting in points, then disappearing into deep coves. In the distance it was swallowed by white fog.

  “If you were walking, how long would it take to get there?” Maya asked.

  “Oh, a few days, I’d say,” said Mathilde. “But nobody goes to Maracairol anymore. Nobody goes anywhere anymore. In the old days before the war, people used to go back and forth between Port Town and Maracairol all the time. But it’s too dangerous now. There are rebel soldiers from the North and you never know when they’ll come down out of the jungle and attack and rob travelers on the road. Very bad times, my love. Much safer to just stay put in Port Town.”

  Mathilde folded a sheet and pressed it smooth with her palms. She looked over Maya’s shoulder at the map.

  “Oh, this is a very good map you have here,” she said. “And, look, here he is!”

  “Who?” the children asked.

  “The giant, of course!” said Mathilde, pointing to the road between Port Town and Maracairol. Rodrigo had drawn a broad, ample figure that until then Maya had thought was just some type of ornamentation, the kind you see on old maps.

  “Do you mean a real giant?” Maya asked.

  “What is it? Ah, little starfish has never seen a giant before, is that it?” Mathilde asked cheerfully. “There’s a giant on every main road between the towns. Though only one per road, of course. They don’t like to perform together, you know. Our giant has a wonderful voice—beyond compare. People used to come from far and wide to hear him. When I was a young woman, working in the sugarcane factory, we used to go to hear him on the weekends. We’d all pile into carts and drive out there and have a picnic and not come home until nearly dawn the next day!” Mathilde paused when she saw Maya and Simon looking at her skeptically. “What—aren’t there giants where you come from?”

  Maya and Simon shook their heads, but they both recalled the singing giants in the story their father had told them before the storm.

  Maya spent the afternoon helping Mathilde, folding sheets and holding pleats down flat while Mathilde ironed beautiful dresses that belonged to women who lived on the hill. When each dress was done it was hung from a clothesline across the ceiling. Soon Mathilde’s little tin shack was full of the most elegant silk dresses, turning gently on drafts through the window.

  Outside, festival preparations were under way and the streets were busy with people building stalls and stringing lights. Mathilde told the children that in a few nights there would be a great parade with people wearing sumptuous glittering masks. There would be food and games and per for mances by dancers and fire-eaters and magicians in the town square. The celebration would go on for a week, ending with another parade, even more spectacular than the first. There used to be festivals like it all over Tamarind, she said, but Port Town was the only place that had kept up the tradition through the war.

  It rained briefly late in the afternoon, leaving Port Town steaming when it cleared. The stifling heat reminded Maya of the jungle.

  “Mathilde,” she asked. “Do you know anything about the inte
rior? About the jungle?”

  Mathilde was folding sheets. The sun had come out for a while, but now there was a light rain pattering on the tin roof.

  “The jungle? No, love, I don’t know anything about the jungle. Nobody ever goes into the jungle. Except the traders. And the soldiers.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, it’s not safe in there. It’s full of wild animals and bloodthirsty tribes. I could tell you stories. You’d have your head chopped off if you went in there.”

  Maya and Simon met eyes. They wanted to say that they had lived with the peaceful Cloud Forest People and they had been imprisoned in the old ophalla mines, but Mathilde, back to ironing a pale blue evening gown, wouldn’t have believed them. For her, and for most people in Port Town, Maya guessed, the green curtain of the edge of the jungle, just up the hill from Port Town, may as well have been a stone wall dividing the town from another world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  A Striking Resemblance *

  An Audacious Plan

  Helix returned just as dusk was seeping down from the jungle, moving like smoke through the streets of Port Town. Sea-grape flew in the window and sat on her perch in the corner. Helix had not found anything about their father, but he had not returned empty-handed. He sat down at the table and took out a folded piece of newspaper and unfolded it and smoothed it out on the table in front of them. When he took his hand away and Maya looked down at the newspaper, she gasped.

  She was looking at a photograph of herself. It was her eyes, her nose, her cheekbones, her hair, long and dark and brushed neatly back behind her shoulders. How had the newspaper gotten it? Maya had never even seen it before. She squinted and looked at it more closely. But she had never worn that dress, with the bright floral pattern, and she had never worn that necklace. And wait, the eyes in the photo looked like her eyes, but not like them at the same time.

  “She’s Senor Tecumbo’s niece,” said Helix. “Her name is Isabella. She lives in Maracairol with her mother, but she’s coming to Port Town for the Festival of Masks. This will be the first time her uncle has seen her in years.”

  Helix had spent most of the day trying to find someone in Port Town who had seen the children’s father, but no one could help him. He realized that working like that, it would take weeks to talk to everyone in Port Town and then he might not find out anything, anyway. At a loss, he was on his way home when he stopped to pick up laundry from the villa. While he had waited in the magnificent grounds, the thought had crossed his mind almost idly, that it would take someone like Senor Tecumbo to find the children’s parents. Senor was the most powerful man in Port Town—in the whole South. With his help, maybe they could launch a proper search for the children’s parents. But even if they could somehow talk to Senor, he would never offer to help them. However . . . if it was his niece who asked him for help, how could he refuse?

  Maya, disguised as Isabella, could arrive a few days before the real Isabella was scheduled to arrive. She would somehow persuade him that her mother had asked him to help launch a search for the children’s parents. Hopefully Maya would find a clue to the whereabouts of her parents, and the children would be gone from Port Town before the real Isabella arrived.

  Maya had had such a shock when she saw the photo that she still felt a little dazed. She looked at it again. Okay, it wasn’t her, she could see that now. The other girl’s face was slightly broader and her hair was thicker and a few shades darker, though it was hard to say for sure from the black-and-white photograph. If you looked closely you could see that their smiles were a slightly different shape. But at least judging from this photo, they looked to be about the same age and build and their faces bore a striking resemblance to each other.

  “I went to Senor Tecumbo’s villa tonight to pick up laundry for Mathilde—she washes all of their silks,” said Helix. “While I was there, I overheard some of the cooks talking about Isabella. They had a newspaper with a photograph of her in it. I saw that she looked a lot like you and that you’re about the same age. She’s supposed to arrive here in three days. But . . . she could get here early. . . .” He explained his plan as best he could.

  Maya and Simon sat there, letting everything Helix had said sink in. It was a bold idea. Did he really think it could work?

  “But look at me,” she said. Mathilde had washed her clothes, but after weeks in the jungle they were practically rags. She plucked at her torn shirt and let it fall back against her body. “How would I ever convince him that I’m his niece?”

  Helix waved his arm across the room, where the beautiful party dresses in blues and greens and golds, freshly washed and dried, hung swaying softly in the breeze.

  “Take your pick,” he said.

  “But—” began Maya.

  “You can borrow a dress from here to wear to the villa, and you can say that your trunk was stolen on the road from Maracairol. The road between here and there is very dangerous—he won’t question you. And I’m sure he’ll have a closet full of new clothes for you by the next day. Simon will stay here and he and Mathilde can take care of Penny. I can help, too. The Festival of Masks begins with Mask’s Eve, in three nights from now. Senor Tecumbo has a party every year to mark the opening of the Festival. The real Isabella isn’t due to arrive until the morning after Mask’s Eve. We can make our getaway before that. In all the confusion of the party, we’ll be able to slip away.

  “Isabella hasn’t been in Port Town since she was a little girl—her mother and Senor Tecumbo had a falling out, and Isabella and her uncle haven’t seen each other in years. But Senor Tecumbo and Isabella’s mother reconciled last year, and have decided to travel to Port Town for the later part of festival. You will have three days to find out anything you can about your parents.”

  The plan was resolving itself in Maya’s mind. It all depended on Senor Tecumbo believing that she was his niece, a girl that Maya had never seen. But Senor Tecumbo hadn’t seen Isabella in years either, not since she had been a child. And so it seemed possible that he wouldn’t know that Maya was an imposter. But still, it was terribly risky. Maya didn’t know what to do.

  “I need a while to think about what I’d say,” she said.

  “You don’t have time,” said Helix. “If you’re going to do this, it has to be now.”

  “Now?” she asked. “Can’t we wait until the morning?”

  Helix shook his head.

  “There’s no time to waste,” he said. “You only have three days.”

  Three days. Maya shivered. The plan seemed crazy and dangerous. If she was caught . . . who knew what would happen? It would be a disaster. What would Simon and Penny do if something happened to her? But if it worked it was the best chance they’d have of finding their parents. Twilight was creeping through the streets of Port Town, and outside the window Maya could see the last light shining on the harbor. If they left now she could be at Senor Tecumbo’s villa before dark. She let her glance sweep quickly across the room and then she pointed at a simple blue dress.

  “That one,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Senor Tecumbo * Lorco Is Suspicious *

  A Conversation with Senor

  Wearing a stranger’s blue cotton dress that Mathilde had helped to pin in the back for her, and after a slightly tearful farewell to Simon and Penny, Maya walked through the darkening streets of Port Town with Helix.

  “It’s actually better this way,” said Helix. “The first time he sees you it will be shadowy. By the time he sees you in daylight he’ll be used to the way you look and he won’t think anything of it.

  “I didn’t want to scare Simon,” Helix went on, speaking quickly and quietly so that no one would overhear them. “But Senor Tecumbo can be a very brutal man. I wouldn’t say he’s a bad man, exactly. But ever since the war began the only way to keep order in Port Town is to be ruthless. He’s the reason why Port Town is one of the safest towns in Greater Tamarind. Most other places are in ruins.

 
“Senor surrounds himself with bodyguards. The chief one, Lorco, is known to be very cruel and cunning. Senor’s enemies have a way of disappearing. If he catches you you’ll be in very, very bad trouble. So you have to be careful, Maya, really careful—do you understand?”

  They stopped and Helix looked at Maya. The road was dark beneath a stand of low, thick palms. Beyond where they stood the road turned up to the great iron gates, on the other side of which it narrowed and continued up the hill to Senor Tecumbo’s villa.

  “Are you really sure you want to go?” he asked. “It isn’t too late to turn back.”

  Maya felt like she had lost her voice, but she managed to nod stiffly.

  Helix clasped her hand in his.

  “Good luck,” he whispered. “I’ll wait here until I hear that you’ve gotten through.”

  Maya swallowed. Now she was alone to face whatever lay on the other side of the imposing iron gates. She could still feel the warmth of Helix’s hand.

  Two guards stopped her at the gates. Maya thought her heart would come thundering out of her chest. One guard sent word to Senor Tecumbo and the other escorted Maya up the hill. A moment later she saw two men walking swiftly down to meet her. The man in front wore a white suit and a white Panama hat that hid his eyes. A few paces behind him was a tall, broad-shouldered man in a black uniform, a gun bulging from his holster. Maya tried to ignore the man and the gun, and focused on Senor, who was standing a few steps in front of her and looking at her suspiciously. She took a deep breath.

  “Uncle,” she said, just as she had practiced with Helix. “It’s me—it’s Isabella! It’s Isabella!” she repeated. “I’m here early!”

  Maya watched as Senor Tecumbo’s irritation turned to pure surprise.

  “Isabella?” he asked.

  “Are you surprised?” Maya asked. “Good—we wanted to surprise you.”

  Senor Tecumbo covered the ground between them in a couple of strides. Maya’s knees quaked and she thought she would collapse out of sheer fright. How had she ever thought she would get away with this? She closed her eyes, awaiting the worst. But then she felt herself being lifted off the ground into a great bear embrace that nearly knocked the wind out of her. Senor Tecumbo smelled of rich, bay cologne and hair oil. He put her back down and planted a kiss on her cheek and then held her at arm’s length, his hands on her shoulders.