The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  Seagrape hopped around on the ground, stretching her wings. Helix lifted their bags out of the back of the truck and tossed Maya’s to her. She double-checked to make sure the logbook was still there. The sight of it was comforting and she touched its edge with her fingers before closing the bag and hoisting it onto her back. The dusty truck turned and drove back the way it had come. Maya looked back once to see its mirrors twinkling in the sun, and then it was gone. She and Helix were alone in the wild, barren mountain pass.

  For long stretches there were no towns visible, no signs of human life at all. Just Helix and Maya and the pair of condors, who were so high above now that they seemed like tiny black etchings. Seagrape hung around, never getting too far away from Maya and Helix. As they climbed, the air thinned and cooled. Pearly white down bearded the plants that grew from the rocky heights. Far below was the hiss of the river, a shiny seam slipping in and out of the verdant depths of the valley. Occasionally a giant yellow bee or two, humming like airplanes, crisscrossed in front of them. Cow and donkey dung, dried in the sun, spotted the path here and there. At one point thin clouds wreathed the path in front of them and clung coldly to the folds of their clothes as they walked through it.

  They walked for a few hours in silence. The air was thin at that altitude, so it was easier not to talk. The path had a metallic shine from flecks of quartz. In its middle, the stone was worn smooth by centuries of feet and hooves. Boulders as smooth as eggs sat along the edges. Sometimes in the distance they could see tiny mountain villages of three or four stucco huts—the In-between Towns, Isabella had called them—whose inhabitants belonged to neither side and had lived in the mountains for centuries. Close to these villages the hillsides were terraced and green bands of vegetation flattened in distant breezes. Soft-eared donkeys carrying sacks of onions passed them from time to time.

  Sometimes on the road they passed the remnants of human skeletons still wearing soldiers’ uniforms. Both bones and cloth had been bleached by the sun. Once they saw a skull with a soldier’s cap still pulled firmly down over its forehead. They began to notice more bones on the slopes of the valley, reminding them of the danger that lay all around them. The war had raged for years here, and the mountains had seen much carnage.

  Yet at moments the beauty of the landscape was breathtaking.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Helix, stopping at one point to look around in awe.

  “Have you ever been to the North?” Maya asked, realizing she didn’t know.

  He shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Never.”

  Maya was glad that something was new for Helix, too. They were both seeing all of this for the first time, and neither of them really knew where they were going or what would be in store when they got there. The mountains were both eerie and humbling, and she was glad not to be alone. They passed the entrances to old mines deep in the mountains, where Isabella had told them that runaway soldiers lived as hermits. Maya looked inside the dark mouths of the cliffs but never saw anyone, though often she had the sensation that they were being watched silently.

  Just when Maya was starting to think that the mountains weren’t so bad after all, she heard the tinny clatter of pebbles chasing each other down the steep slope above her. She looked up and saw that high above, a waterfall of dirt and rubble was cascading down from the heights of the mountains, coming directly for them. It was an avalanche! Maya screamed and Helix reacted in an instant, seizing her hand and pulling her after him. The roar of the rocks was deafening. In moments the air was so thick with dust that they couldn’t see anything and they were running blindly. Maya pulled her shirt over her mouth with one hand so she could breathe without choking on the dust, and with the other she held tightly on to Helix—she felt that if she could just hold on to him she would be all right.

  But then Maya heard Seagrape squawk. She turned back and as she did so her foot slid off the path and her leg hung suspended over the miles of empty air down to the valley below. She scrambled desperately for a foothold but her foot felt only cold nothingness. She clung, panic-stricken, to Helix’s hand.

  Then she felt Helix haul her back to safety. They ran until they could run no more and a few minutes later they stumbled, choking, out of the thick cloud of dust and fell on their knees, fighting to get clean air in their lungs. Maya’s whole body was shaking and for a while she couldn’t move from where she had collapsed. As suddenly as it had begun, the avalanche had stopped, except for a few stray rocks that groaned as they rolled over each other and began a silent plunge off the cliff until they shattered in the valley below. Clouds of sand hung thickly in the air.

  Maya had sand in her eyes and her legs had been scratched badly. There was a paste of dirt in her mouth and her shoes were full of dirt. The road ahead was a steep ledge above a sheer cliff face. It was miraculous that they hadn’t run straight off it, Maya thought, looking down over the precarious drop. A haze of fine sand and soil settled slowly through the air, revealing the pair of condors, their wings powdered with dust, still wheeling in the air over the valley. Spitting out sand, Helix had stood up and was surveying the wash of rubble that had come to rest behind them. The path they had been on was no more.

  “Seagrape!” Maya cried suddenly, looking back in dismay. Helix limped to the edge of the rockfall and Maya followed. They began to dig through the rubble. They dug until their fingers bled, but there was no sign of the bird. Not a single feather or even a feeble squawk. Helix dislodged a larger stone, which sent a gush of new debris sliding down the hill and over the cliff. They leaped back and Maya’s heart plunged to her sand-filled shoes.

  It was too dangerous to keep digging. Helix stood there and whistled, and the sound ricocheted around the valley and sent a new shower of pebbles plinking down from the top of the hill.

  “We have to keep going,” he said finally.

  Maya could hear the emotion in his voice, but he didn’t cry. He turned away and started walking. She had to hurry to keep up with him. She gulped down silent tears. Poor Seagrape! She had been such a good bird. She had seen them out at sea that day and landed on the mast, and then she had brought Helix to them. It was her feathers that had protected them from Evondra. It wasn’t fair! She belonged to Helix—she was his friend. And now because Helix had helped them, he had lost her.

  Soon the teetering ledge melded back onto a proper path that descended into a valley, and a rich green roof of trees closed over them. Helix didn’t speak again and Maya didn’t know what to say. They heard water ahead of them and suddenly the path opened out onto a majestic, foaming white falls feeding a series of green pools. They stopped to eat, unwrapping the food that Lucia had packed for them in Lopez-Maranzo. The bread was stale and the cheese had melted, and they were both so miserable about Seagrape that the food seemed tasteless, but they ate to keep up their strength. They took off their shoes and cooled their feet in the water. It was icy, and Maya was glad to feel numbness creeping up her legs. She watched as the water swirled around her feet and a single yellow leaf turned slowly across the surface.

  “I’m sorry, Helix,” she said miserably. “It’s my fault—if you hadn’t come with me, this never would have happened.”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Helix. “I wanted to come with you. It was an accident. If I hadn’t come with you, something else could have happened. Really, don’t blame yourself.”

  A tear sneaked down Maya’s cheek and she wiped it away quickly. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the jingle of water over the rocks from the tiny waterfall.

  “How long did you have Seagrape?” she asked.

  “As far back as I can remember,” said Helix.

  Maya’s mother’s voice came back to her from the last day before the storm. It’s a big ocean. It’s lucky that we’re all together on it. Her mother had been right. Maya thought how it would have felt to have been alone—entirely alone—on the Pamela Jane the morning after the storm. And even though she didn�
�t know everything, she knew that Helix had been that alone before. As far as she knew, Seagrape had been his most constant family.

  “She was with me when I lived in the jungle with the Coboranti,” Helix went on. “Maybe she was even with me in the car that day . . . She may have been our pet. I just can’t remember.” He paused. “Seagrape was the reason I escaped from Evondra, you know,” he said. “In the end.”

  Maya’s heart beat faster. Evondra. Helix had been in the camp—she knew it. She kept her eyes on the slowly spinning water, afraid that if she interrupted, Helix would stop talking.

  “I don’t really remember very much,” he said slowly. “Actually, I really only remember one day. I was traveling in a car. I was with a woman. I believe she was my mother. I could see the sky through the window. We had been traveling for a long time and I was dozing, my head was in her lap. She had a ring on her finger. A little diamond. When I woke up I played with it and made it twinkle in the light. She wore some kind of perfume. It was so hot that my skin was sticking to what ever it touched. The road was very bumpy. I can remember all of that like it was yesterday.

  “Then we stopped. It was sudden. There was something on the road up ahead. She was scared and she and the man in the front seat were talking to each other. They were upset. Then she opened the car door and she told me to get out. She told me to run into the trees and hide. I heard men on the road up ahead. Then I heard loud noises—now I think what I heard were gunshots. I ran as fast as I could and when I stopped I didn’t know where I was. I was lost and then it was nighttime.

  “I stopped and sat under a tree. And that’s where a hunter found me in the morning. He was from the Coboranti tribe. They took me in and raised me, but when I was old enough I ran away. The Coboranti treated me like one of their own children, but I wasn’t a Coboranti and there was a whole world outside of the Coboranti camp. Even when I was a little kid I knew I had to leave there one day.”

  “Your mother . . .” said Maya. “Did you look for her? When you left the Coboranti camp?”

  “Where would I have looked? The only memory I had was that time in the car. I couldn’t have been more than three years old—it was so long ago. And I’m not even sure that that woman was my mother—maybe she wasn’t. But I feel that she was.” Helix paused. “I’ve always believed that she was.”

  Maya’s feet were cold and numb in the water, and the small waterfall was sending up a white mist that dampened her skin and hair.

  “I never went looking for her, but I kept my eyes open,” Helix said. “I had two clues. But I never found anything. Until the day I met all of you.”

  “What do you mean, until the day you met us?” Maya asked.

  “Well, that last day in the car, my mother left me two things,” said Helix. “Before she pushed me out of the car she slid her ring off her finger—it only took her a moment—and she gave it to me, along with a piece of paper that she took out of her purse. She told me to hold on to them tightly. I’ve carried both things with me ever since.”

  Helix untied a tiny cloth pouch from his belt. Maya watched as he shook out a tiny diamond ring and a folded square of paper so dirty and old that it had nearly disintegrated. Helix placed the ring in Maya’s palm. It glittered faintly in the sunlight. He unfolded the paper gingerly so that Maya could read it. It was some sort of official document, but at some point it had gotten wet and the ink had blurred and was now unreadable. In the lower right-hand corner was a red wax seal. A red wax seal that bore the same insignia as the seal on the page from the logbook on the Pamela Jane.

  “That’s the same seal that’s in the First Mate’s journal in the logbook!” Maya exclaimed. “Why—?” She looked in astonishment at the paper Helix held, trying to piece things together.

  “I don’t know,” said Helix. “I had never seen another one like it until I saw the one in your logbook. I noticed it when Simon was reading the book on the beach, after you had talked to Dr. Limmermor, and that night I waited until you were all asleep and I took the book so I could look at the seal properly. I don’t know why they’re the same—it’s a mystery.”

  Maya looked at the seal on Helix’s letter. In the low light beneath the trees it appeared dark as blood.

  “It rained the first night I was by myself in the jungle and the ink smeared, so I’ve never known what the letter said. Nobody in the Coboranti camp could read, anyway. You can imagine how shocked I was when I saw the same seal in your book. I thought it could be a clue somehow, but I couldn’t figure anything out. It’s probably something I’ll never know— who my mother was, why she had that paper with that seal on it, or why she gave it to me. If she was even my mother at all. What I believe now is that there are some things you just never figure out.

  “After I left the Coboranti, I was working with traders from another tribe, the Zambata, carrying açai and lurdertree paste from the interior to the coast, when I was captured by the Child Stealer. The other boys I was with got away, but I stopped to fight. Not that you can fight a woman on a jaguar. She took me to the camp and I was put to work in the ophalla mines with a lot of other children. We were kept prisoner in the ark that had gotten stranded on the riverbank when the river dried up.”

  “I knew it,” Maya murmured, remembering the ark and all the children. “Why didn’t you just tell Simon and me the truth?”

  Helix shrugged. “I hate talking about it. It was a horrible time. Anyway, I escaped. I got out. Why should I think about it anymore? It’s in the past.”

  Maya sat there, absorbing everything Helix had said.

  “How did you escape from Evondra?” she asked.

  “Seagrape,” said Helix. “When Evondra first captured me, Seagrape put up a fight. She kept swooping down and attacking Evondra. But Evondra sped off on the jaguar—me bouncing along on the side—back to her camp. Seagrape found us though, and the whole time I was there she never stopped harassing Evondra. Evondra shot at her all the time, but always missed. It was as if Seagrape couldn’t be killed. I knew Evondra hated me, but somehow she was scared of me—or really of Seagrape—so she kept me alive, if just barely. I saw other children lose the will to live, or die of hunger or overwork, but I swore I would get out of there. The first time I tried to escape, Evondra’s jaguar caught me right away—that’s how this happened.” Helix motioned to his scarred ear.

  “The second time I tried, though, I was lucky. It was near the end of the day. Seagrape had been fussing around near the mine all afternoon, and each time she landed on the overhang to the entrance, a shower of pebbles would come down. I realized the mine was about to collapse. I shouted to the rest of the children who were inside and everyone ran out. All of a sudden this colossal rumbling sound started coming from deep inside the earth and then Seagrape came flying at full speed out of the mine, screeching, her wings out and huge. All this sand and dust exploded in the air from the mine. The air was choked with dust. You could hardly see anything. The children had started running and there was confusion everywhere. I knew it was my chance. I didn’t even have time to think about it, I just started running into the jungle. I ran straight into the river so that the monkeys wouldn’t be able to catch my scent and track me down, and I grabbed onto an overhanging branch. I climbed across to the tree on the opposite side. I waited for a whole day and night in that tree. I wasn’t very far away from the camp at all—if I had sneezed they probably could have heard me—and I could see everything that was going on. Seagrape joined me in the tree. Evondra came down to inspect the collapse. I was missing and she thought I was still down in the mine. I watched as she ordered the children to seal it up. Most of the ophalla was gone from that particular mine, anyway—it wasn’t worth her opening it up again. She thought I was dead.”

  Helix cleared his throat before he continued.

  “Once the monkeys had stopped looking for me, I climbed down from the tree and began making my way through the jungle. A few weeks later I got to Port Town. It was during the rainy season. I
had nowhere to stay and so I was living in a bunch of Helix Sugarcane Factory crates on the edge of the road, which is where Mathilde found me and took me in. I didn’t talk for months after I escaped from Evondra. It was like I’d lost my voice. Mathilde didn’t know my name and so she called me Helix. By the time my voice came back I decided that I didn’t want to go back to my old name. I stayed with Mathilde after that. I couldn’t leave my old Coboranti life behind completely, though. I’d leave town every now and then and go back into the jungle to hunt. That’s how I came across all of you that day, on the Lesser Islands.

  “When I met all of you again in Port Town and found out that you had been in Evondra’s camp it was—it was just, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about that place in so long. I couldn’t talk about it. I always felt guilty, because I got away and they didn’t. Once I escaped I tried to never let myself think about it.”

  Maya’s mind spun. Everything that had not made sense about Helix now did. Her heart ached. He had been so little, all on his own. She debated reaching out and taking his hand. She wanted him to know—to know what? That it was a horrible story? That she wished it hadn’t happened to him? Maybe just that she was his friend. But she hesitated because she was afraid that Helix would feel embarrassed, or that she was acting like a dumb girl or something, and so she just sat there. Helix got to his feet suddenly and the moment was gone.

  Taking off his shirt, he dove cleanly into the pool and swam along the bottom to the other side, where he surfaced.

  “You should come in,” he said. “And wash off all the dirt from the avalanche.”

  The water did look inviting. Maya dove into the pool. The water was so cold that it knocked the wind out of her. She swam to warm up and then lay on her back, floating. The river was dappled with green light. A leaf and a flower bud drifted past slowly, and the jingle of water over yellow stones rang like music up into an olive tree where blue macaws shouted down to them. Now that Maya was over the initial shock, the water felt good. Helix surfaced with a pebble, which he skimmed across the water before he ducked under again. A moment later Maya felt something tug her ankles. It took her another moment to realize that it was Helix. “Don’t you dare!” she managed to call out before he pulled her under. Maya struggled but Helix was stronger and when he finally let her go they popped to the surface, their faces close to each other. They looked at each other for a moment, water streaming down their faces and hair. Maya’s heart beat painfully against her ribs. Then Helix swam away on his back and clambered noisily out of the water onto the rocks. Maya followed him and when she got out he tossed her his shirt.