The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  “A battle?” Maya asked, but the woman with the cabbages turned off onto a side street and did not look back.

  For about the thousandth time since the storm, Maya wanted to sit down and just give up. But she made her legs keep going, taking her closer toward the center of town. What should she do now? How could she get to Bembao?

  The city plan was orderly, the streets were swept clean and watered, and there were palm gardens everywhere with tidy patterns of flower beds. But apart from the woman with the cabbage cart, Maya hadn’t seen a soul. There were still no birds or insects, which Maya attributed to the quiet, steady breeze funneling along the streets. The loudest sound was the flags beating in the wind. Maya’s footsteps echoed against the stone walls. It was all eerie and strange and she felt very alone.

  The buildings were almost all several stories high, and Maya noticed that all the windows at street level had been sealed with stones. She had the sensation of walking through canyons. The stone faces of the buildings were often pockmarked, as if by bullets. Every now and then a whole building had collapsed into rubble, and the windows of nearby buildings appeared to have been blown out by the explosion and were now boarded up. Maracairol was like a fortress.

  On a street leading up the hillside, Maya saw a group of elegant old stone buildings set around a circular road. She walked up the hill and stood in the middle of them. They had sweeping roofs and broad, deep windows and doors that opened into grand pavilions. She recognized ophalla trimmings. Several of the buildings had ophalla window frames, others had garden ornaments made from the stone. There was a small white ophalla horse standing in one garden, but one of its legs had been blown off in an explosion. Maya caught sight of a sign outside of one building. Half of the sign had been blasted away. The half that remained read: EMBASSIES OF THE PROVINCES OF GREATER TAMARIND.

  It was clear that not long ago the embassies had been grand and important, but now they were abandoned. The war had allowed moss to grow thickly on the roofs and birds to roost in the eaves and had caused their great doors to be chained shut. The few doors that had been left open now squeaked in the light breeze, and Maya peered in. Within the dimness inside, pools of rainwater were visible, faintly gleaming, along with the outlines of debris piled up against the ruined silk-covered walls.

  Feeling uneasy, Maya turned and began walking quickly back down the street she had come from. As she did, she saw a shiny black sedan prowling a block behind her. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she ducked into a windowless alley. The alley was long and deserted. Maya started to feel more and more nervous. She came out onto another main street, empty of people, but with brilliant purple hydrangeas growing in evenly spaced pots down either side. Who was tending this town, she wondered, and where were they?

  Maya saw the shiny black nose of a car turning the corner toward her a block away. For a second she tried to tell herself it wasn’t the same sedan, but then it began to speed up, its engine still creepily silent. It was following her. Could somebody know she was there? Could Senor Tecumbo’s men have found her somehow?

  She started to run. Her footsteps echoed like shots against the high walls of the buildings. She dove down the next side street as fast as she could. She kept running until she was too out of breath to run anymore. She thought that she must have shaken the car. But she was just trying to get her bearings when suddenly it appeared again from around a corner. Maya broke out in a cold sweat. She turned and slipped down another alley, but this time she stopped halfway and returned the way she had come. She peered carefully around the corner but the car was gone. She dashed across the street and stumbled down another alley. In a panic she kept twisting and turning through the streets until finally she found herself in a dead end. Hopelessly lost, she sank down to catch her breath. The only sound was the flapping of the unseen flags and the thumping of her heart.

  “Maya!”

  Maya thought her ears were playing tricks on her, but then she heard it again.

  “Maya!” the voice whispered.

  Maya held her breath.

  “Maya! It’s me, look, I’m right over here.”

  Maya looked all around her but could see no one. The only windows in the buildings on either side of the alley were very high up and they were sealed shut. The voice sounded like it was coming from the street.

  “Right over here, look!”

  Maya looked to her right again and then she saw a hand waving from what must be some type of window just a foot above the street. She leaned out a little and saw that the hand was attached to an arm that was sticking out from between bars. It was too dark inside to see anything.

  “Who are you?” she hissed. She wanted to get up and run but she was so exhausted from her panicked flight that she felt like she could hardly move.

  “It’s me—Helix!”

  “HELIX!”

  “Shh, yes, it’s me. But you have to be quiet.”

  Maya crawled to the window and peered in. “Where are the others? Simon! Penny!”

  Helix was there, his grime-streaked face pale in the weak light of the alley. He was in some kind of dark stone cell. Maya squinted and waited for her eyes to adjust but she couldn’t see anything else. “Simon!” she shouted again. “Penny!”

  “Shh,” Helix whispered again. “They aren’t here.”

  “What do you mean?” she cried. “Where are they?”

  “They’re still on the ship. The pirates left me behind.”

  Maya’s heart sank.

  “Why? Where have they gone? Where are Simon and Penny?”

  “The fleet was sailing to Bembao. The pirates threw me off the ship before they set sail. Maya, I’m so glad to see you—you have to help me get out of here.”

  “You betrayed us!” she whispered. “You set us up so the pirates could kidnap us.”

  “No!” said Helix. “Maya, I swear I didn’t! I had no idea they were there!”

  He reached through the bars for Maya’s hand, but she yanked it away from him.

  “You set us up and then when the pirates didn’t need you anymore they got rid of you—it serves you right. I’m glad you’re in jail—I hope you rot!”

  Helix looked sad and stunned.

  “How do I get to Bembao?” Maya asked in a low, hard voice.

  “It’s far,” Helix said dully. “Almost halfway around the island.”

  How was she going to make it halfway around the island? Even as she sat there on the cold stones of the alley, Simon and Penny were getting farther and farther away from her. Tears welled warm in her eyes.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she whispered. “Why do they want Simon and Penny?”

  “They don’t want them,” Helix said. “They want your boat. Maya, I can explain everything, but you need to help me get out of here—”

  “Oh, get yourself out,” Maya said bitterly. “You’re the one who got us into this.”

  She turned around and sat with her back to the wall. She didn’t know where to go next. And she didn’t know what to think. Maybe Helix hadn’t betrayed them, after all. How could she be sure? Was he just lying so that she would help him escape? What should she believe? And why did the pirates want the Pamela Jane so badly?

  Maya hadn’t noticed the black sedan pulling up at the end of the alley. But suddenly she realized the shiny car had blocked her escape. She leaped to her feet and looked all around her. The walls of the alley couldn’t be scaled and the sedan had sealed the only exit. Maya was desperate. The only thing she could do was get a running start and try to leap onto and over the roof of the sedan. But before she could do anything its door opened and the driver stepped into the alley.

  “You!” Maya gasped.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Explanations * “This is a lost place” *

  The War Orphanage

  Indeed,” said Isabella. “The question is—who are YOU?”

  The two girls stood looking at each other for a moment. Their resemblance to eac
h other was uncanny.

  “We can figure everything out later,” said Isabella. “Right now you have to come with me. Quickly. Come on, we can worry about him later.”

  Maya glanced down at Helix but as she did she heard the rumbling of a new vehicle approaching.

  “Hurry,” said Isabella. “We don’t have time.”

  Isabella opened the door of the car, and Maya, after a moment’s hesitation, slid into the backseat. Isabella got in on the driver’s side and they had just begun driving again, the black sedan purring steadily, when an army truck appeared on the street behind them. Black guns bristled from all sides of it.

  “It’s okay,” said Isabella. “It’s just the patrol.”

  They turned down another street and the army truck continued past them and was gone.

  “You really gave me a run for it,” Isabella said, turning to smile at Maya.

  Maya noticed that Isabella was sitting on a pillow in order to see over the steering wheel. Great, she thought.

  “I’m not supposed to be driving,” Isabella said cheerfully. “Girls aren’t supposed to be out by themselves and I have a driver, anyway. But he’s old and he sleeps half the day and doesn’t even notice that I’ve gone. The windows are tinted, so no one can see that I’m the only one in the car. I go out every day. And, anyway, it’s perfectly safe for me to be out on my own. See—” She rapped on the windshield. “Bulletproof.”

  “I don’t know how safe it is,” Maya muttered. “You almost mowed me down earlier.”

  Isabella laughed.

  Maya eyed the door handle, wondering if she should jump out and make a run for it. They weren’t going that fast. She saw Isabella watching her in the rearview mirror.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Isabella said. “You can’t, anyway—I have everything locked from up here. Look, I’m helping you. You don’t want to get caught out here. Everybody has heard about what you did in Port Town—they think you’re a spy for the North. My uncle’s men are looking for you.”

  “A spy!” Maya cried. “That’s crazy!”

  “I know that,” said Isabella. “You’re the daughter of the missing couple on the poster, you pretended to be me so that my uncle would help you to find them. I figured it out.”

  Isabella turned a corner and the car picked up speed, leaving Maracairol behind and heading into the hills.

  “You disappeared and no one knew where you had gone. My uncle was furious. There are dozens of people out looking for you now. Everything happened all at once after you left— the rest of the Festival was called off because there’s been new fighting on the border, and everyone thinks there’s going to be a sea battle near Bembao; the ships are gathering now. My mother and I came back to Maracairol early because things were getting bad and we were afraid the road would be too dangerous if we waited any longer.

  “Anyway, everyone thought you had all escaped, but I knew the pirates were looking for you—I heard they had come to my uncle’s house, asking about your boat. I suspected that they had captured you before you even left Port Town. I knew that the fleet was sailing to Maracairol first, so when we got here and I heard that a boy had been thrown off one of the ships, I thought it might be one of you. I found out he was just your friend, but I put him in jail, anyway, otherwise he would have taken off. I knew that you had been separated from the others and I figured that you’d hear that the fleet had sailed to Maracairol and you’d come here. I wanted to get both of you together.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry that I pretended I was you,” Maya said. “But can you please just let me go? I have to get to my brother and sister!”

  Isabella ignored her. “Is it true?” she asked. “Are you really from the Outside?” She looked hard at Maya. “It is true,” Isabella said triumphantly. The dirt road rolled away behind them and dappled light slid across Maya’s knees. Isabella grew quiet.

  “Tamarind is a lost place,” she said. “They always tell us that when we’re children. Boats that sail past the line don’t return, or they sail back without crew or cargo, just empty ghost vessels with torn sails and their hulls crusted over with barnacles. They’re unlucky, so the pirates sink them. There are dozens in the waters around us. Maybe hundreds. I’ve never met anyone from the Outside before. People from Outside are supposed to be crazy. But I know you aren’t crazy,” she added.

  “Gee, thanks,” said Maya. “Now, please, where are you taking me?”

  “To the one place where no one will think to look for you,” said Isabella. “The War Orphanage. I can help you. I know what it’s like to be separated from a sibling and not know where they are. My older brother is a soldier and he was taken prisoner in the North. For a long time we didn’t know if he was even dead or alive. But now I do know where he is. And I’m going to get him home.” Isabella’s face hardened and she looked out of the windshield of the car for a moment before she turned to face Maya. “We’re organizing something that will bring my brother and all the other young men back home again and end this stupid war. And you’re going to help us.”

  “Me?” exclaimed Maya. “What can I do?”

  “To start with, you can come to the meeting with me,” said Isabella, turning down a narrow, rutted road overgrown with weeds. “We’re already late.”

  “What meeting?” Maya asked. She held on to her seat as the car bounced over potholes.

  “The meeting of the Sisters of the Peaceful Revolution,” said Isabella. “I’m the president.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Sisters of the Peaceful Revolution

  Isabella cut the engine in a half-moon of cleared forest. Through the trees Maya could see the peeling turquoise walls of a stone building. Through a small gate and inside the yard, children were climbing mango trees. They jumped down and began running toward Isabella when they saw her coming in the gate.

  “They’re all children whose parents died in the fighting or were kidnapped,” whispered Isabella as they entered the grounds of the War Orphanage.

  Maya followed her quickly through the yard and into the turquoise building.

  The Sisters of the Peaceful Revolution turned out to be a group of about ten young women between the ages of twelve and twenty, all of who were waiting impatiently for Isabella in a schoolroom.

  “You’re late,” said one girl who was sitting on the window ledge twirling a strand of her hair. She looked like the oldest girl there—nearly a grown-up, Maya thought—and she fixed a bored, sullen expression on Isabella. The rest of the girls were Maya and Isabella’s age, and a few looked younger.

  “Sorry,” said Isabella as she breezed in. “But don’t complain. I have good news. Everyone, meet Maya. She’s going to help us.”

  All eyes in the room turned skeptically to Maya.

  “What’s she going to do?” asked the girl on the window ledge.

  “Patience,” said Isabella. “I’ll get to all that. Let’s all take our seats so this meeting can come to order.”

  Isabella whispered something to a tall, dark-haired girl who glanced at Maya and then disappeared out a back door. Some of the orphans had come to the windows of the school room and were looking in, making faces at them and jabbering excitedly. The girl on the window ledge drew the blinds down over them.

  Isabella tapped a chair and, still feeling dazed, Maya plunked down in it. Isabella went to the front of the room and clapped her hands.

  “This meeting will come to order,” she repeated.

  “We’re in order,” said the girl on the window ledge.

  “Only one person has the floor, Elouisa,” said Isabella. “And right now that’s me. So let me start by welcoming our new sister, Maya.”

  Isabella paused, pacing a few times before she cleared her throat and continued.

  “Peace,” she began. “We’re all here because we have a vision of a peaceful Greater Tamarind. We want to bring an end to the war, to bring our fathers and brothers and cousins and friends back home to us. We are here because we can imagine
this island as a happy, prosperous place again, like it was in the stories we hear about the old days, before the war. When there were no orphans, families were whole, the towns were vibrant, there was music everywhere, and you could travel from one side of the island to the other without fear and with the knowledge that you would be welcomed wherever you went. And we’re here because we believe we can make this dream happen—”

  “I just want a husband,” said Elouisa, the girl on the window ledge. A couple of girls stifled giggles. “That’s why I’m here. Isabella can have her war’s end and unity of the people and all the rest of it. I just want the boys to return home so that I can get married and have my own house and not have to live with my mother anymore!”

  “Isabella,” said a girl in the front row. “We know all this already. And we have to go home soon, so maybe you could skip this part and just tell us what we need to do for this week?”

  “I’m getting there, I’m getting there,” said Isabella. “Let’s go back to Elouisa’s concern for a moment. Before the war the towns were full of young men! Young men everywhere—plenty of husbands for Elouisa to choose from! Now all the young men are off fighting or are dead. We’re all here because we’ve lost family members in the war. Fathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, fiancés . . . the list is too long to count.”

  Maya noticed that a few girls watched Isabella as she paced but that others were not paying attention and were staring into space or picking at their fingernails. Maya got the sense they’d heard Isabella’s speech before.

  “So we’ve been meeting here for a year now to try to figure out a way to make peace with the North and reunite Greater Tamarind so that we can live again without soldiers, without rebels, without checkpoints and bombs and fear and the loss of those dear to us. And it isn’t just us—from here the movement has been growing and now there’s a group of women like us in every town—on both sides of this island. We’ve made contact with our sisters in the North. For months we’ve wondered what to do—how is it possible to bring peace to Tamarind? We can’t fight for it with weapons. And so we’ve sat here for months debating. You might think it was time wasted, but while we’ve been meeting here, more groups like us have been forming. Our numbers have been growing. And now the time has come.