The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  “This means we’re near the Ravaged Straits,” said Simon.

  “Where?” asked their mother.

  “We’re near where Papi is,” said Maya, sitting back down in the barrel with their mother. “Mami, we didn’t want to tell you earlier, because there was nothing we could do, but we think that Papi went to a place called the Ravaged Straits. Someone told him we were there. It’s a cursed place.”

  “What do you mean?” asked her mother.

  Maya and Simon bowed their heads sorrowfully.

  Helix cleared his throat. “Nobody knows exactly,” he said. “Very few people have ever returned from there. I’ve heard stories about it before. The ones who made it back had all aged by decades and they couldn’t speak, so they could never tell anyone what was there.” He paused. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It sounds very bad.”

  Maya watched her mother closely and she didn’t cry or fall to pieces. Her face paled, but her dark eyes flickered as she thought quickly.

  “We’re near there now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Maya. “If we go to the base of the Black Cross, a current will drag us out into the Straits.”

  “We have to go ashore,” the children’s mother said. “You wait for me there, and I’ll go to find your father.”

  “No,” said Maya and Simon at the same time. Simon wriggled back down into the barrel.

  “No,” repeated Maya firmly. “We aren’t going to be separated again.”

  The children’s mother shook her head. “Enough is enough,” she said. “I want you to go to shore. And then I’ll get a proper boat and go on my own.”

  “We don’t have time,” said Simon. “Papi needs us!”

  “This is our chance,” said Maya seriously. She turned to Helix. “Helix, if you don’t want to come you should leave now, before the current catches us.”

  The Black Cross loomed dark and ominous as they drew closer to it.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Helix. “I’m coming with you.”

  Maya was about to object when the barrel, which had been nodding happily along toward the shore, was suddenly tugged in the opposite direction.

  “I think we found the current,” Simon shouted. “Hold on! Here we go!”

  The children’s mother protested, but it was too late. The barrel had picked up speed and suddenly they were hurtling swiftly away from the coast. Maya and Simon and Helix stood up again so that they could see out. The current was like a river running right through the middle of the ocean, and once again, the barrel was jounced from side to side. Up ahead, Maya saw a thick white fog. But as they drew closer she realized that it wasn’t fog at all, but salt spray.

  The shore behind them had vanished and they were in an eerie world of white. Within moments, salt had crusted their eyebrows and eyelashes and frosted their hair white. It stung Maya’s eyes and she blinked quickly.

  The saltier the water, the more buoyant it is. The water in the Straits was so salty that the barrel sat about a foot higher in the water than it had before, and as they bobbed along in it, the children caught sight of a tiny salt island. Others appeared out of the mist, and the current guided the barrel on a bewildering passage between them. Some were small and barely grazed the surface of the water, others lifted grandly up to magnificent heights. They were all barren, sculpted smooth by the wind. Every now and then a chunk of salt would break free and plunge into the water. The salt in the breeze made a faint sound, somewhere between the tinkling of bells and the sound of smashed glass being swept across a floor by a soft broom. Maya looked up, but the sky had been blotted out by gusts of salt and only a dull, diffused light shone through, casting a faint blue sheen on the white mounds. The salt parched the children’s mouths and burned their eyes. If this was where Papi was, how could he have survived? Maya wondered. The air was grainy and she felt it needling her arms like fine shards of glass. Her mother had covered Penny with her shirt to protect her, and salt gathered thick as sand in the folds of the fabric. The salt mists stretched endlessly all around, like a great white blindness, and they were hopelessly lost.

  And then, through the haze, on one of the tiny islands, came a spot of color.

  “Look!” Simon cried, and they all turned to face where he was pointing. They kept their eyes on it and as they drew closer the spot of color turned into a human figure. Maya’s heart skipped a beat. Could it be him? She didn’t know if she wanted the motionless person, half buried in drifts of salt, to be her father. He would have been without water for too long now. . . . They neared the island and the current was about to sweep them right on past it, but Helix lunged forward so he hung half out of the barrel and he dug his fingers into the shore of the salt island.

  “Get out!” he said.

  Maya boosted Simon up and he scrambled onto the salt island and helped her up after him. Maya held on to the barrel so that it wouldn’t be dragged off in the current, and Helix pulled himself onto the island. He helped the children’s mother out with Penny, and then he lifted the barrel out so that it wouldn’t float away.

  Gusts of salt made it difficult to see the figure, which was sheltered in the lee of a large hill of salt.

  He was wearing tattered, olive green pants.

  He had a beard, and his hair was long and as white as cobwebs.

  He was motionless.

  Suddenly Maya felt deep down that whoever it was, he could not be alive, not here. If it was her father, they were too late. She stopped in her tracks, unable to go any closer. The salt chafed her bare arms and legs and a deep weariness began to creep over her.

  But then . . . the figure moved. Slowly his head turned toward them. Maya saw that his eyes were milky—it didn’t look like he could see them. But it was him.

  It was her father.

  “Papi!” she cried.

  He showed no sign of knowing she was there.

  Her mother handed Penny to the children and went to him, but Maya and Simon hung back, frightened.

  “He can’t hear you,” Helix said. “He’s been here a long time. The salt is in his eyes and ears. I’ve heard that’s what happens.”

  The children watched as their mother knelt beside their father. A strong breeze shifted the salt mists and a ray of sunlight crept through and spread across the salt island. When it reached her father, Maya saw him lift his face toward it. He looked like the faces of the gods on the corners of very old maps, she thought, the ones with the long white locks blown back and the lines drawn from their mouths to show them blowing the four winds across the oceans.

  Maya felt a pain in her chest. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. They were supposed to find one another and get back to the Pamela Jane and sail home, all together, all as they were before the storm. But her father had become an old man. He was bony and frail and the salt had burned painful-looking lesions on his skin.

  “Why did he come here?” Maya asked, beginning to weep.

  “He was told you were here,” said Helix. “I’m sure there was no stopping him.”

  Maya’s father had sensed something, and he had turned, his face tilted up. The breeze swept his flowing hair back over his shoulders and it seemed to float there behind him as he drank in the air. A new expression flickered beneath his blind face, and he lifted his hand and held it out in front of him. He made a sound. His voice sounded un-oiled, unused. Maya remembered that the old sailor had said that people who returned from the Ravaged Straits could no longer speak. The salt must have burned her father’s throat too badly.

  Maya’s mother leaned forward on the sand and took his hand and he reached for her face, reading it as blind people do, and they embraced. He stroked her hair silently, the saddest smile barely touching the corners of his mouth. Maya’s mother wept. Gusts of salt blew over them.

  Tears poured down Maya’s and Simon’s faces, melting tracks in the salt. Even Helix turned away and brushed the back of his hand over his cheeks. Penny was the only one not crying. Helix had taken her from Maya and
she was looking curiously up at him—she knew him well by now but he had never held her before—and the wind tousled her fine baby hair.

  Maya watched as her father released her mother and looked blindly over her shoulder. He waved his hand through the air as if hoping to feel something.

  Maya and Simon ran up to their father and collapsed into his arms. Drifts of salt spilled from the folds of his clothes as he hugged them. It was as if a giant hourglass had broken, and its sands were rushing all around them. Maya’s mother took Penny back from Helix and brought her to her father, who reached for her. His eyes were dim, but not blind. And he was not altogether deaf. Maya was gazing at him in amazement when suddenly she was interrupted by a frightened shout from Helix. When Maya looked up she saw that the salt island they were on, no longer able to bear their weight, was breaking apart.

  As they watched, a hunk of the island broke away and the barrel rolled off it, sliding away in the current. Dismayed, they watched it go.

  “It’s gone,” said Simon in disbelief. “What do we do now?”

  Beneath, the island made a crunching, grinding sound. Maya watched as little pieces of it broke free and flowed past them.

  “Forget the barrel!” Maya said. “We’ll float back on the island! We’ll use this island like a raft and we’ll push it back to land.” She sat down and took off her shoes so that they wouldn’t weigh her down in the water. “Papi is too weak and Mami has to hold Penny, so they’ll have to stay on it, but the three of us can get in the water and kick our way back to shore! We’ll be like the motor! Hurry!”

  “Maya, stop! The current is too strong!” said Helix. “We can’t kick our way out of it. And if you get in the water there’s no way you’ll be able to hang on to this island—you’ll be swept away!”

  But Maya had already jumped into the water and dug her fingers into the salt to hang on. She began kicking furiously. Within seconds Simon had given his backpack with the logbook in it to his mother, and he and Helix had jumped in after Maya and the three of them were side by side in the water, hanging on to the island and kicking with all their might. On the island, the children’s mother and father sat in a huddle, sheltering Penny. Beneath the salt masking her mother’s face, Maya could see her fear as she watched them in the water. Maya kicked harder.

  At first they made little headway. There was nothing but unbroken whiteness and the low hum of the current as it bore them along, despite their efforts to kick themselves out of it. Maya’s courage wavered. Salt mists came down so thickly that she could no longer see her parents and Penny on the island. But after a while the current slackened and she realized that inch by inch they were making their way out of the middle of it, to the edges where it wasn’t as strong. The salt mist thinned and she could see her mother again. Maya’s hands began sliding from the island. She couldn’t seem to hold on to it anymore. She looked up and saw that the same thing was happening to Simon and Helix.

  “It’s dissolving!” cried Simon.

  It was true, Maya realized. They had made their way out of the Straits and into the ordinary ocean and now the salt island was melting back into the sea. The area the children’s parents and Penny were on was shrinking before their very eyes.

  The island completely gone, the five of them would have to swim to land. The ghostly mists of the Straits hung behind them and they saw that they were about 600 yards away from the shore. They were all strong swimmers but they were exhausted and land seemed terribly far away. Maya felt currents tugging her ankles.

  “Stick together,” said the children’s mother.

  She swam holding Penny, Simon held the backpack with the logbook out of the water as much as he could, and Maya and Helix helped her father, since he was too weak to make it by himself.

  Finally they clambered out of the water and lay on the sand of a narrow beach, exhausted.

  It seemed a long time later that Maya opened her eyes, but the light was still strong. She could hardly believe that they were all there together. Had it really been that same day that she and Simon and Penny had been taken from the Meggie Vic to the Gretchen Ella where they had found their mother? Maya felt like whole lifetimes had elapsed since then. She wanted to talk to her parents, but she was so weary that she could barely keep her eyes open.

  Helix filled the children’s canteens at a nearby stream and they took turns drinking. Maya stared at her father. Simon couldn’t take his eyes off him, and even Penny was studying him with interest. It was not just the salt that had made his hair appear white—his hair itself had turned ivory. The sight of it astonished Maya afresh each time she saw it. Maya noticed that he had a canteen tied to his belt. He must have survived in the Straits by conserving what little freshwater he had in it, refilling it when it rained. Maya could barely think about all this—it was simply too harrowing.

  Simon had taken out the logbook and was looking at the map of the island that Rodrigo had drawn.

  “What’s the best way to get back to the Pamela Jane?” he asked Helix.

  “We need to find a doctor for Papi first,” said Maya.

  “A doctor can’t help,” said Helix, softly so that the children’s mother didn’t overhear. “People who have been in the Ravaged Straits can’t be cured. They’ve been too badly damaged.”

  “Then we have to get Papi home,” said Maya, her voice thick. “Maybe one of our own doctors can help him. Tomorrow can you take us back to the boat?”

  “All right,” said Helix, nodding.

  The children sat in silence, each lost in his or her own sad thoughts. Maya did not want to let the idea sink in that although they were all together again, her father was in very precarious shape. Nothing was certain. Simon was gazing down at the logbook on the ground in front of him, and Helix’s eye fell on the map.

  “Let me see that for a minute,” he said.

  Simon passed it to him and Helix studied the map intensely.

  “Has everything else drawn here been accurate?” Helix asked.

  Simon nodded.

  “Yes, everything,” said Maya. “So far.”

  “What is it?” asked Simon.

  Helix pointed to the cluster of four palm trees that Rodrigo had drawn in the northwest of the island. Maya and Simon leaned over to look.

  “He’s drawn the Four Palms,” said Helix. “They’re supposed to just be an old story, but he’s marked it here as if it’s a real place. There’s a myth that somewhere in Tamarind there’s a sacred pool and its waters are supposed to have miraculous healing powers. The pool is in a cave, and its hidden entrance is marked by four palms in a valley. But everyone thinks the palms are somewhere different—nobody really knows where they are. The cave might not even exist at all. But if everything else on the map is accurate, maybe this is, too.”

  “And it might cure Papi,” said Maya.

  Maya turned the logbook so that she was looking at the map the right way around.

  “The Four Palms aren’t that far away from the Black Cross,” she said. “It’s just down the coast and inland a bit.”

  “But we might get there and find nothing—it could be just a story,” said Helix.

  “The myth could be true,” said Simon. “We thought the island Papi told us about was just a story, but it’s real.”

  Maya looked at the green-and-gold image Rodrigo had drawn in the middle of a long, tan valley southeast of the Black Cross. To reach it they would have to leave the coast and pass through a cluster of tiny towns. It was perhaps a day’s walk away.

  “What do we have to lose?” she asked.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  The Four Palms * “The story might

  be true” * Disaster

  They spent the night camping beside the stream and set off the next morning, moving very slowly because of the children’s father. Before long it became obvious that he could not make it much farther. His legs had already given out twice. Helix left the others while he went to look around the town for help. He returned with a w
ooden cart, which could be rolled along almost like a wheelbarrow, and he helped the children’s father into it. Walking slowly, they pressed on. Simon and Helix took turns pushing the cart. The wheel squeaked and the cart bounced along the rutted road.

  Town by town, it became increasingly clear that something enormous had happened in Greater Tamarind. It was as if the island had been under a spell and the Peace March had broken it. They heard snatches of conversations as they passed people in the streets and began to put together the story of the previous day.

  At dawn women and children had begun marching from Maracairol and Bembao, picking up new people in each town they passed through, all who had been prepared by the Sisters of the Peaceful Revolution. Columns of them marched along the coast and into the jungle, where they had found hungry and exhausted groups of soldiers, many who threw down their guns and joined the marchers. Northerners and Southerners met on the roads and marched together along the coast. The Sisters of the Peaceful Revolution had made contacts with tribes deep in the jungle, who had captured thousands of jungle fireflies and brought them to the shores near the fleets. When the Northern and Southern fleets met that morning, the fireflies had been released to devour the sails. Isabella had blown the conch and summoned the giants, who had agreed to the plan secretly only a couple of days before. The giants had destroyed all the fleets of Tamarind, and the waters were now free from piracy. Tamarind had been liberated.

  Change was evident everywhere. People were sweeping pavements and polishing ornamental shells cemented to the tops of walls. In towns like Maracairol, whose street-level windows had long ago been sealed, men with axes were punching new windows through the stone, and light was flooding into homes that had been in darkness for years. Cannons were wheeled into the jungle and abandoned. In one town, cannonballs were being dumped into the ocean. It took two men to lift each one, walking crab-ways to the edge of a cliff over the sea, where they released it and watched as it rolled, flattening sea daisies and smashing the stone white until it sailed off the edge. A few moments later the echo of a splash traveled back up the cliff.