The Other Side of the Island

by Allegra Goodman

  “Promise first.”

  “Promise.”

  “Mommy is alive.”

  He didn’t ask how she knew, but he smiled at her. He said, “I’ll eat bananas.”

  “No!” Honor protested. “Other things too.”

  “Bananas,” Quintilian said.

  There was an old saying of Earth Mother: A watched pot never boils; a watched sky never rains. Now that Honor and Helix were watching the sky, they could count day after day of sunny weather. Twenty-eight days of sunshine. Twenty-nine. The air was stifling; there was talk of drought. There had never been such heat. The teachers thought about canceling the school field day for fear that children would suffer heatstroke. Then they talked about holding field day inside. But there were no rooms big enough to hold so many footraces, three-legged races, wheelbarrow races, potato-sack races, egg-in-a-teaspoon races, relay races. The teachers decided to hold the field day first thing in the morning before the sun became unbearable.

  That morning the sky was overcast, but the sun beat down anyway. The whole school gathered on the Upper Field, the same place Honor had come her first day at Old Colony. As on that day, teachers stood with banners for their classes, but now the littlest children lined up by a banner painted R. The littlest children had names like Rebecca and Rapunzel and Romulus. All the teachers shook their heads and said how time flies and how wonderful it was and was it possible. The youngest students had been born in the eighteenth glorious year of Enclosure.

  Miss Blessing wore a white visor to keep the sun out of her eyes. She blew on a silver whistle. Other teachers held stopwatches in their hands, or lined up hundreds of plastic cups of water on the water tables, or arranged ribbons on the ribbon tables. The ribbon tables were covered with white cloths and then adorned with shining satin ribbons in orange and deep purple, sea blue and emerald green. The ribbons were printed in gold: 1st Place, 2nd Place, 3rd Place, 4th Place, and Participant. They were all beautiful, but the green first-place ribbons were the most beautiful of all, because they were adorned with a green satin rosette.

  Quintilian competed in a hopping race and won a purple Participant ribbon. Helix ran in the three-legged race with Hector, and they won a red third-place ribbon. Honor stood in the special roped-off archery area and eyed her target. She was not the best at archery anymore and she knew it. True, her eyes were keen, her hand was steady, her arm was strong. She’d won many ribbons in the girls’ archery competition when she was younger, but in the past year, other girls had improved at the sport. There was a group of younger girls, especially, who were now quite good. They practiced together during recreation time, while Honor had hardly touched a bow since the day she’d admitted her parents had been taken.

  The younger archers all wore their sun hats at the same angle, and they clustered together and giggled. They had the superior look of girls with parents. They were from year J, and their names were Jessie, Jocasta, and Jill. Of course they wouldn’t speak to Honor. She stood apart and didn’t speak to them either.

  A large crowd of students stood behind the ropes to watch. All the children who had finished their races had come to see the competition, and they stood five and six deep with their satin ribbons fluttering in their hands.

  Miss Teasdale said, “First three, take your places,” and the three J girls stepped up to shoot. Honor watched with Fanny and Hagar from the waiting line, five yards behind the shooting marks.

  Jessie, Jocasta, and Jill knocked back their arrows. Each arrow had a notch for the bowstring. The girls’ arrows all had different feather crests, but the girls looked alike to Honor with their hats pulled back the same way and their smooth brushed hair and their flouncy way of standing, as if they owned the shooting line. When they let fly, each arrow hit its target.

  Sweat streaked Honor’s face as she waited and watched the younger girls. The best two out of three would advance to the next round, but the scores were close. It wasn’t clear until the last moment which of the friends would move on. When Jocasta was eliminated, Jessie and Jill rushed to hug her and make her feel better while the audience applauded. The three girls reminded Honor of herself when she had decided to become perfect and make Helena her friend. They were sickeningly sweet.

  She set her quiver down next to her mark and began testing the string of her bow.

  “Oh no, Heloise, wait!” Miss Teasdale cried, alarmed, because the first-round shooters had not yet cleared away. “Back off! Back off! No shooters on the mark until I give the all-clear signal.”

  Honor did not back off. She stood and glared at the target before her, while Miss Teasdale ushered the other girls away protectively. When Fanny and Hagar stepped up to shoot with Honor, Fanny whispered to Honor, “What’s wrong with you? Do you want to get disqualified?”

  Honor shrugged. She felt strange, as though she were standing outside herself. Why had she ever tried to act like those girls from J, sweet only to one another and mean to everybody else? What in the world had she been thinking? Why had she thought she could change her name and that would make her fit? How had she been so sure her parents were wrong about everything and her teachers were right? She could see herself standing there on the field, and she remembered the day she’d begun crying uncontrollably when she tried to shoot. She would not cry now. She would not shoot into the grass now. She would not behave like those girls from year J. She stared at the target. She stared so hard that the colored circles seemed to float before her eyes. Red, blue, black, white.

  She scarcely heard Miss Teasdale give the signal. She knocked back her first arrow and let it fly, straight into the bull’s-eye. “Ooh.” The children watching drew a breath, but Honor didn’t care. Fanny and Hagar were shooting next to her, but she didn’t notice. She knocked back her second arrow and sent that close to the first, in the blue circle outside the bull’s-eye. Then she took the third arrow from her quiver. She pulled her bowstring back and felt the muscles in her arm tense and ache. She felt a cold prickle on her shoulder, and for a split second she thought she might have hurt her arm pulling too hard. She let the arrow fly. “OOH.” The crowd was louder this time. Bull’s-eye, just to the right of the first.

  The crowd grew louder. The onlookers had begun to scream. Honor realized it wasn’t because of her shot. What she’d felt on her shoulder was cold rain. The sky was dark. Teachers were blowing their whistles and racing with the children for the shelters.

  “Come on! Come on, Heloise!” screamed Fanny, but Honor held her bow, unable to move. The storm sirens were sounding; the wind was picking up. Honor knew what to do, but she had been waiting so long, she felt for a moment she couldn’t do it. “Take my hand,” Fanny shouted, and she began dragging Honor to the shelter. The girls were wet all over; they were already drenched. Honor slipped her hand from Fanny’s and turned her head the other way. “No, Heloise!” screamed Fanny. “Come back! Come back! You’ll get hurt. You’ll get killed.” Honor ducked her head, clutched her bow, slung her quiver over her shoulder, and began to run.

  THREE

  SHE SPRINTED OVER THE SLICK ARCHERY FIELD AND BEHIND the targets. She could hear the screaming and the sirens, but her heart was pounding louder. The quiver with her remaining arrows bounced against her back. The air was full of flying plastic cups and ribbons. The fields streamed with screaming children and teachers, shouting themselves hoarse. Faintly, far away, she heard Miss Blessing’s silver whistle. Security orderlies wheeled around catching stray children, one in each hand. Everyone was racing to the shelters, but Honor ran the other way, up to the Model Forest.

  Her feet slid out from under her. She tripped and fell flat, only to scramble up again. Her legs were streaked with mud, and her feet slid and sloshed in her wet sandals.

  The rain weighed her down. Her drenched skirt slapped against her legs as she stumbled forward. The wind ripped off her sun hat, and her hair flew into her face. Trees shook above her. As she ran into the forest, branches slashed her face and body. Mud sucked her sandals. The
sky was dark with the storm, and the trees made the way even darker and more difficult. She knew she shouldn’t go to the lookout; it was too exposed. The wind would sweep her up into the sky. She couldn’t go there. She was afraid Helix had tried, even though they’d agreed he would stay with Quintilian.

  Her arms ached. She thought of casting off her tall bow and quiver, but she was afraid someone from school would find them. She knew she had to keep climbing as far as she could into the mountains. She was well past the Model Forest now. She stumbled between tree trunks wet and soft. Bark peeled off and stained her hands where she tried to hold on. Huge vines snaked upward into the tree branches, choking out the light. Philodendron leaves the size of open umbrellas shook water down on her. Spiky green shoots stabbed her legs. The forest thickened. She struggled against roots and branches as she pushed her way higher.

  She didn’t know how long she’d been running. She didn’t know where she was, except that suddenly the ground grew steeper. The earth was red, and a path emerged between the trees, a muddy gully studded with rock but not impossible to climb. On hands and knees she clawed for a handhold here, a tree root there. Slowly, she made her way upward until—whoosh—a flood of water poured down from above. Honor tried to hold on, but the current was too strong and swept her under. The water tore her quiver from its strap and swept away her bow. Water gushed into Honor’s eyes and mouth and ears. She reached out blindly, stretching for something solid to hold, but she felt nothing. She was choking. Her clothes dragged her down.

  Like all children, she’d learned to fear water, not to swim. I’m drowning, she thought. She had to pull herself up; she had to breathe. She slammed into a huge fallen tree. The current tried to suck her under, but she held on to the tree’s trailing branches. She clung to the tree and forced her head up. She was gasping for air as the water roared around her.

  Honor held on, but every moment the current tried to pull her down into the tangle of branches and leaves below.

  The water wasn’t cold, but she was shaking, chilled from the inside. Her hands were bloodied where she held the tree branches. She knew she had to climb out or she would lose her grip. She slid one hand along the tree trunk, just an inch, and then the other. The water pulled at her with all its might; the current tangled her skirt around her knees. Still, she worked her way along the trunk, little by little. Her hands were raw, her body numb, and when she looked up, she almost despaired at how high and steep the bank was. Tree roots hung down, but she didn’t know if they would hold her weight. She would have to thrust herself high up out of the water to grab hold of them. She was afraid to try for fear of falling, but she was also afraid to hang on where she was. She needed to catch her breath; she needed to wake from this nightmare and find herself in bed, but the water roared and pulled so hard she couldn’t rest. She closed her eyes a moment and remembered her father and mother. Then she judged the distance to the roots and lunged for them.

  She fell back, flailing. Desperately she reached out with both arms and snagged the fallen tree again. Here the tree roots on the bank were not so high. She gathered all her strength and jumped like a fish from the flowing stream. She seized the roots with one hand and then the other. Gasping, shivering, she dragged herself up the muddy bank. She was soaked to the bone, her body covered with bruises, her torn clothes caked with mud. She wedged herself between the roots of a young banyan tree and tucked her knees to her chest and tried to rest.

  She slept fitfully. When she did drift off, she heard strange muddled voices. She dreamed of boats seeping with cold water. The thud and plink of raindrops into pots and pans and someone shaking her. Her mother shaking her awake. “We have to go. Wake up, we have to go now. They’re coming.”

  She woke up sweating. Her heart was pounding, even though she saw no one coming. She was alone, and the storm was over. All the water in the gully below had sunk away, leaving a huge mud slick behind. Honor’s white shirt and tan skirt were unrecognizable, nearly black with mud, but she had no way to clean herself. Her feet were bare. The flood had ripped away her sandals.

  She was thirsty and her stomach hurt. When she stood, she felt sick with hunger. She needed to find food, but she was afraid she wasn’t far enough from school. She could not hear the weather bulletins from the City, but she had no precise way to measure how far she’d come from the Model Forest. If she were anywhere near, then orderlies and search dogs would find her. She needed to climb farther, but there was no path in the wild rain forest, and she could scarcely find an opening.

  Slowly, Honor moved upward from foothold to foothold, picking her way around sharp rocks, trying to avoid the hissing scorpions and the slimy lizards hidden under every leaf. She had been too tired before to fear the wild animals that lived in the mountains, but now she remembered everything she had learned in school, and she shuddered to think of the wild boars that might be hiding in the trees, just waiting to charge her and eat her. There were no snakes on the island, not a single one, but there were poisonous toads, and there were biting spiders. She knew the forest was a treacherous place.

  Berries hung from vines, but she didn’t know if they were safe to eat. She picked guavas hungrily, but they were green and made her feel sicker than before.

  Some of the philodendron leaves had filled with fresh rainwater. With two hands, Honor tipped the leaves like great bowls. And so she made her way slowly up the mountain, sipping from one leaf and then another.

  Night fell, and the dim forest grew dark. Mosquitoes clouded the air. Small animals scurried on the forest floor, rats or mongooses or something else. Moths the size of birds flew through the trees. False eyes glowed on their wings so that enemies couldn’t tell whether they were coming or going. One moth flew at Honor and struck her arm. She cried out in fright because the moth was so big and heavy, more animal than insect. Bats hung in the trees, folding their brown leathern wings to feast on fruit. In the distance Honor could hear strange echoing sounds. “Oh-oh, oh-oh.” And another sound like a question. “Twilleep? Ttttwilleep?” She had not heard birdcalls since she’d come to the island. In the City and at the shore there were no birds. Rats had destroyed all the nests long ago. The City was quiet. She had never thought about the silence before, but now she realized that without birdsong, the City streets were cold and dead.

  She could not see the birds, but she felt that they could see her. What other animals were watching? If she still had her bow and arrows, she might have shot a charging boar, but she had no weapon to protect herself.

  She looked uncertainly at trees crawling with ants and choked with creeping vines. Should she try to climb one?

  It was then that she saw a white patch on a low tree branch. She thought at first the white was a cluster of toadstools, the kind so common in that damp place, but the bulge began to move, and she saw it was not toadstools or lichen, but the soft body of a creature—an octopus. As she drew closer, close enough to touch the animal, it opened its bulbous eye and looked at her.

  “Octavio!” She recognized the animal immediately, or thought she did. Miss Blessing had said Octavio was a tree octopus, and this creature looked exactly like him. “They didn’t get you,” she whispered. “They didn’t kill you.” She touched Octavio’s rubbery body, and he wrapped one tentacle delicately around her wrist.

  Then Octavio drew back his tentacle and began to move. He sidled through vines and trees, and Honor followed him as best she could. She was slow, but she kept her eyes on Octavio’s ghostly body, and she never lost sight of him. He was showing her an easier path, picking his way around the forest’s thickest growth. When she stumbled or hesitated, he always waited for her.

  She was so light-headed she might have been dreaming, but dreaming or not dreaming didn’t seem so important anymore. She wasn’t frightened, because she wasn’t alone. Octavio was guiding her.

  He took her to a stand of trees hung with passion fruit vines. The fruit was ripe and Honor ate greedily. Her tongue curled because it was so tart,
but she gobbled up the juicy golden flesh, swallowing black seeds. Only when she stopped to pick more passion fruit did she realize that Octavio was gone. She looked for him, but he had slipped away.

  She found a hidden place between the close-growing trees. It wasn’t big enough to stretch out, but she could curl up safely, barricaded there by the young tree trunks, and sleep.

  She dreamed of gold, an avalanche of gold leaves falling at her feet. She dreamed of Northern forests, massive beech trees and slender white birches, towering pines and oaks and scarlet maples. She dreamed she was with her mother picking blackberries. Their arms and hands were scratched by brambles, but the wild berries were so sweet, warmed by the unfiltered sun. She dreamed of ice. “Look, Honor.” Her father showed her a cave jeweled with icicles. She dreamed of snow falling and falling from the white sky, no sun, no moon, no stars, only the snow falling, muffling every sound, softening every step, outlining every branch of every tree. “Will you remember the snow?” Honor’s father asked her. “You won’t forget?”

  “No, I—”

  She woke with a start. She was alone again. The trees were green around her, but she could still feel snow on her eyelashes and cheeks and hands. She felt faint. She realized her memory was playing tricks on her because she had no proper food to eat. If she closed her eyes even for a moment, the dream-snow returned to her: the whiteness and the crunch under her feet, drifts soft to the touch, melting at her fingertips like clouds.

  She was near the crest of the mountain now, close to the clouds. The forest was just as thick, but the air was misty, and the sloping rock faces trickled with water, a hundred tiny waterfalls. She shook herself and rubbed the dreams from her eyes. Bending down, she drank and washed her face in the clear running water. Sometimes she couldn’t tell which way a little waterfall was flowing, whether it was coming down from the mist or whether it was evaporating upward into the mysterious air. She imagined that no one from school could track her now. No straight-moving orderlies could follow her erratic trail.