by CJ Brightley
“She has a point, though, about Jiminy,” Small Bill said, a little later, when I told him. This was on the way to the Ikahos’ to see if Marcela maybe might could come with me. I figured, she’s part of Minorities Mobilize, and she said Minorities Mobilize wanted to help Kaya, so maybe? Small Bill was keeping me company, just the two of us in the dinghy.
“I mean,” he went on, “about him being your own flesh and blood. Maybe Kaya’s got ten brothers and sisters who’re planning a rescue for her right now. They’re nearer.”
He can only talk that way about a rescue because he don’t see the Ruby Lake in his mind’s eye the way I do. He’s never looked at pictures on the library computer. Me, I think about it, and I start to sweat, and I can practically taste the sulfur on my tongue.
“She never mentioned even one brother or sister,” I said. “Or a father. I think it’s just her and her mother.”
We were right by the Ikahos’, so I pulled in the oars.
“Look, Seafather’s signal!” said Small Bill, pointing to the bright green flash where the sun had just sunk below the waves. We both waved back. Black specks, maybe gulls, were silhouetted against the flash, and suddenly Mr. Ovey was in my mind, maybe because of what Small Bill said that other day, about seeing him way out there, waving. Then it washed over me:
“Your dad said that sea families have all kinds of members. He told me I cast a strong net for families and that I can pull everyone into the boat. I fished for Kaya, and the Seafather helped me catch her. And your dad’s telling me I can pull her into my family, like y’all pulled Cody into yours.”
“Yeah but—” he paused to tie the dinghy to the mooring ring at the end of the Ikahos’ veranda “—Jenya’s marrying Cody.”
“But I think you can pull someone in just as a brother or sister, too. Your dad told me to keep you in my net, but it ain’t like you and me are getting married.”
(Squirmy thought. I don’t want to think about marrying nobody for a long time.)
“We can be like brother and sister, though,” I added. “Or maybe crew. You can be my first mate.”
“Huh. I ain’t nobody’s first mate. You be my first mate,” he said, flicking water at me. I jumped onto the Ikahos’ veranda, unbalancing the dinghy, and if it had been anyone other than Small Bill, they would’ve been in the water. As it was, he got good and wet.
“You bringing us the ocean one splash at a time?” It was Tomtale, come out onto the veranda with Windward on his shoulders. Windward’s mom, Tomtale’s sister Sweet-rain, leaned in the doorway.
When Jiminy was in high school, he liked Sweet-rain, but she liked Tidal Fearing better, and now those two are married and have Windward.
“We’ll take it, if you are,” said Granny Ikaho, peering out the kitchen window. “When’s your granny coming over for a sleepover with me, Em?”
I grinned and peeked over Granny Ikaho’s shoulder. “You sure she ain’t already in there?” Those two were best friends when they were kids, like Tammy and Clara, or me and Small Bill. Marcela appeared behind Granny Ikaho.
“Hey Em, I hear it was a big day for you today,” she said, grinning.
“It was but—Marcela, can you come with me? To W—? I can’t go by myself. My dad won’t let me. But he can’t come with me, and my mother can’t either.”
My words were like a magic spell, freezing everybody. Marcela’s mouth was frozen in an O.
“Ma ma ma ma …” Windward said, breaking the spell. He leaned his arms toward Sweet-rain, who took him from Tomtale.
“Em, I can’t. I gotta go back up north. My adviser wants to go over the first two chapters of my dissertation with me, and I have to have the next two done before Thanksgiving.”
“She’s already got her ticket,” Tomtale said.
“But she’ll be back soon, won’t you Marcy.” That was Nimbus Ikaho, Mr. Ikaho to us kids, emerging from the house with some of Windward’s diapers, which he pinned to the clothesline.
“She’ll come when she’s able, Dad,” Tomtale said, with a bit of heat in his voice, and Mr. Ikaho disappeared back inside, saying he didn’t see the point of catch-and-release fishing.
“What about someone else? Is there anyone else who could come with me? From Minorities Mobilize, I mean,” I added, as Tomtale and Granny Ikaho and even Sweet-rain started shaking their heads and talking about getting food for the table and making sure the roofs were snug over our heads for the cool months.
“Because y’all at Minorities Mobilize want to help her, right?” I pressed, keeping my eyes on Marcela.
“Em, about going to W—. I wanted to talk to you.”
An unexpected voice. I nearly jumped out of my skin, and not just me, Small Bill and Tomtale nearly did, too. We had our backs to the water and hadn’t noticed Cody poling up in the Oveys’ dinghy. Sitting in it, with his arms wrapped around his backpack, was Mr. Dubois.
What’s he doing here? Why can’t he just leave me alone? I thought.
Cody threw a rope to Small Bill, who tied it to the mooring ring. Mr. Dubois stumbled a little, stepping onto the Ikahos’ veranda, and Sweet-rain caught him by the elbow and steadied him.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude … Em, I know I upset you last week, with the things I said. I’ve been trying to find a time and a way to apologize.”
I know I should of been a big-hearted person at that point and said I understand and no hard feelings, but it would of been a lie.
He passed his hand across his head. “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve been doing a little research on W—, and on your friend Kaya, and I thought I could share it with you … You know, so you could familiarize yourself—”
I cut him off. “I ain’t going,” I said, feeling angry heat in my stomach.
He stared at me, hand still on his head.
“Not going?” he repeated.
“Nobody can go with me, and I can’t go alone,” I said. And then, maybe because of the heat in me, I added, “Bet you probably think that’s the wisest thing, anyway, huh.”
“Em,” murmured Cody, frowning, and all that heat went right to my cheeks. I felt worse than if Ma had swatted me.
“No … no, that’s not what I think at all,” Mr. Dubois said. He looked out toward the Gulf. “I was wrong the other day … sometimes being too careful just makes things worse. I think you should go—with an adult, of course, but …” He turned back to me. “Em, do you think you could stand it if I went with you?”
Well shatter me and scatter me on the waves. It was almost harder to believe than the invitation from the government of W—.
“Must be the Seafather’s work,” muttered Granny Ikaho.
“But don’t you gotta teach, Mr. Dubois?” asked Small Bill.
“Maybe I’ll just have to take a page out of your book, Billy, and miss a few days. If Em’ll have me.” He was waiting for my answer. Everybody else was, too. I gulped for air.
“Yes, yes please—I mean, Yes, thank you! I-I mean—” I was getting tangled up. Mr. Dubois smiled.
“Shall we go see your dad, then?” he asked, and I nodded.
“I thought you thought it wasn’t good for me to try to help Kaya myself. What made you change your mind?” I asked as I poled us homeward.
“Reading more about her, partly, and her country. And thinking about you … and Jiminy,” he said.
Jiminy. My criminal brother. Anger came up behind me and caught me between its teeth, its hot breath all sour in my nose.
“You said Jiminy’s troubles could rub off on her and hurt her,” I said, anger’s teeth making the words come out sharp.
He looked me straight in the eye. “I’m really sorry about what I said that day,” he said. “I was- It was a mistake … Judging from you, I’d say a bit of trouble in a body’s life makes ‘em braver. People without your troubles should be as brave.” The left side of his mouth crooked up, half a smile. “Maybe that’s part of why I want to come with you. Get some of your bravene
ss to rub off on me.”
My braveness? Rubbing off … on Mr. Dubois?
I don’t know what I think of that, but him saying it shocked the anger into letting go of me, at least. And then we were gliding up to the house, and Dad and Tammy and Gran were on the veranda, waiting for us. Dad still didn’t jump with joy at the idea of me going to W—, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Won’t do for me to hold you back. You’ll just slip out like water—like your brother and your mother.”
“It’s not like I’m going for good!” I protested. He answered me with a smile that was as full of sadness as a bucket of tears.
I’ll come back, though. He’ll see.
So it’s set. I’m going to go to W—, and very, very soon. I’ll ask the Seafather to hold my right hand and, maybe, if she can hear me, I’ll ask the Lady of the Ruby Lake to hold my left.
15
In W—
(From the W— State Security Service’s files on the insurgency: email records)
From: Lt. Sana
Subject: Re: flying conditions, how to proceed
Date: October 22
To: Lt. Den
I don’t want to make do with a filmed plea—a tiny image on a damn phone screen? That’s supposed to get 116 to give in? That’s not what I greased palms to get the kid over here for. If it’s safe enough for us to put our lives at risk, landing there, it’s safe enough for that damn kid to ride along.
(From the W— State Security Service’s files on the insurgency: email records)
From: Lt. Den
Subject: Re: Re: flying conditions, how to proceed
Date: October 22
To: Lt. Sana
Tell that to the minister of foreign affairs and the US ambassador. Anyway, what the hell extra leverage do you think having her there in person would give you? You’re not orchestrating a family reunion; you’re trying to pry 116 out of the damn temple. If she knows she can meet the girl if she cooperates, and the girl’s begging to see her, it’ll still work—assuming conditions ever do improve enough to fly. The way volcanologists are talking, 116 may get her fiery exit whether we like it or not.
October 22 (Em’s diary)
They say the sky’s an ocean over our heads. It’s weird to be sailing through it now, seeing all those white-cap clouds from on top instead of underneath. A plane ain’t really like a boat, though. You can’t feel the wind. A plane is more like a submarine. A sky submarine. I wonder if me and Small Bill could make a submarine. Not a sky one, just a regular water one.
Mr. Dubois is letting me use his electronic book-reader. It’s about the size of the bottom of a loaf tin, just a thin rectangle that’s almost all screen. It has books stored in it. Mr. Dubois tapped his fingers on the screen and made a book appear. Then he slid his finger along the screen a couple times, and the page changed.
“It’s a phrase book,” he said. “I figured you might like to learn to say ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’”
The heading on the page was “Greetings.”
I slid my finger the way Mr. Dubois had done, and a new page appeared with the heading “Asking Directions.” I slid my finger back the other way, and then two more times, and got to a page that said “Introduction.”
“It’s for W—’s national language,” I said, after reading a couple paragraphs of the introduction.
“That’s right,” said Mr. Dubois.
“But that ain’t Kaya’s language. People in the mountains have their own language.”
“Uh huh, I know. I couldn’t find a phrase book for Kaya’s language. But it wouldn’t hurt to know a few words in the language of the folks that’ll be meeting us at the airport, right? The folks that arranged for you to come? Kaya’s fight, her people’s fight, with them isn’t yours, except as she’s your friend. But as her friend, if you show the officials in W— just how charming you can be, well, that might help her, right?”
“I guess …”
I looked at some more headings: At the Hotel. Food and Drink. At the Market: Bargaining.
“There’s no section for human-rights phrases,” Mr. Dubois said with a half-smile.
“Maybe I could use this,” I said, pointing to a phrase in the bargaining section: Is that the best you can offer?
Mr. Dubois’s lopsided smile widened. “Maybe so. Let’s see if we can’t put together a polite greeting first, though, what do you say?”
I said okay. Then he handed me an actual book, with paper pages. Footloose Traveler, it said up top, in small letters, and then W— in bigger letters in the center, over a photo of a boat with a prow shaped something like a dolphin, but snarling instead of smiling.
“It’s a travel guide. You can read up on W— in there,” Mr. Dubois said.
Inside was a description of W—’s geography and plants and animals, and then it told about the arrival of humans, thousands of years ago, first one wave and then a second, which pushed the first up into the mountains.
Then came history: lots of little kingdoms all along the coast that kept on getting swallowed up by this or that bigger empire, until finally the whole island of W— was part of a sultanate whose ruler lived on a faraway island. Then W— broke free and was its own kingdom for a little while, but not for long, because then the British came and gobbled it up. After the British came the Japanese, and then the British again until 1961, when W— became its own country again.
The last few paragraphs, about the development of modern W— (industrialization, politics, international relations), were complicated and hard to follow. There was nothing in the history chapter about Kaya’s people. The only mention the mountains got was for natural resources (timber and copper) and cash crops (coffee and cardamom).
I looked up “mountain region” and “mountains” in the index and found “Mountains, the Prince in,” but that turned out to be just a picture in the folktales part of the culture section, a photograph of people in glittering costumes and elaborate masks on a stage, with a caption that said, “The banished prince enlists the aid of the pythons, the eagles, and the dark men of the mountains to guide him safely through the spirit-haunted forests to his allies on the far side of W–.”
When I meet Kaya, I’m going to ask her to tell me proper mountain stories and history.
I tried one more lead from the index, “Mountains, trekking in the.” “The mountain regions are not as developed as the rest of W—, but they are a rewarding destination for hikers and nature lovers, offering breathtaking views and abundant wildlife,” the book said. The caption beneath a photo of the Ruby Lake bragged, “The ‘Ruby Lake’ in the crater of Abenanyi is one of the world’s few persistent lava lakes and an awe-inspiring sight for the intrepid hiker.” Like every other picture I’ve ever seen of the Ruby Lake, it was from before Kaya’s lotus was built.
Another photo in that section showed a woman pouring something into tiny red clay bowls. “You can buy delicious roasted peanuts or piping hot honey coffee at market stands in the larger towns,” the caption said, but what drew my eye was the woman’s face and hair.
“The mountain people are black,” I exclaimed, showing the picture to Mr. Dubois. As black as Vaillant, I was thinking.
Maybe I could sing Kaya into Vaillant’s lineage. She could be my big sister—and Tammy’s and Jiminy’s, too.
“You didn’t know that? You’ve never seen a picture of Kaya?”
I shook my head. Mr. Dubois pulled out his phone and made a photo appear on the screen, a smiling blond-haired woman with sunglasses on, her hands resting on the shoulders of a girl wearing a baseball cap and a striped shirt.
“Whoops, that’s my wife and daughter.” Mr. Dubois lingered on the photo a moment, then flashed through a bunch more before stopping at a black-and-white picture of five people on a stage. Underneath the picture it said, “Undergraduates in Cornell’s Department of Crop and Soil Sciences present at the Conference on Soil Depletion.”
“See that one? That’s Kaya.” The woman Mr.
Dubois was pointing to barely came up to the shoulders of the others. She seemed like a kid beside them. At first I thought she must have her hair cut real short, but then I saw it was just pulled back tight: a puff of it showed like a halo behind her head. And she was as dark as I am. Darker, even.
I wanted to see her face better, wanted to look right into her eyes, but the picture was too small.
“Do you have any others?”
“Well, there’s this, but it’s blurry.”
It was soldiers in green-and-black speckled fatigues, guns in their hands, one pointing and some others corralling a bunch of people who had crowns of flowers on their heads and long, bright-patterned cloths tied round their waists, the men and women both. In the background, more soldiers, a wall of them. Here and there between their shoulders, you could just make out the faces of onlookers.
“It’s from the English-language version of the main newspaper over there,” Mr. Dubois said. “It’s from when they first arrested Kaya and her friends. I think that one’s her.”
Her face was half blocked by the arm of the pointing soldier, but I could see her eyes all right, wide and frightened. The force of that fear stole my breath from me.
“You okay?” Mr. Dubois asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”
I’ve gotta be okay. I’m gonna make myself be okay. I wasn’t able to get to Clear Springs for Jiminy, but I’m going to W—. I’m doing it. And I didn’t have to stow away in a truck or hitchhike. They invited me. So hang in there, big sister. I’m coming. I’ve got the Seafather’s blessing and everything. I’ll work a miracle for you, like you did for me.
October 23 (Em’s diary)
It turned into tomorrow when we crossed the International Date Line. I practiced some of the phrases from the phrase book for a while, then slept for a bit, and the next thing I knew, the pilot was saying we were coming in for a landing at Palem International Airport in W—.