by Nadia Aguiar
Simon began to question if it had been wise to come into the Neglected Provinces after all. He was sure he would have seen someone by now. The ostrillo was getting tired and had slowed to a lumbering walk. Finally Simon pulled gently on the reins and it halted. He was disappointed, but without knowing which direction to go in, it seemed foolhardy to continue. Reluctantly he decided to head back. The Red Coral men would be gone by now and he could catch up with his sisters. He took out his compass. He waited for the arrow to settle, but it kept circling. He tapped it lightly. He tried turning it over. He rapped it hard with his knuckles. But it was no use. The arrow just kept spinning in a slow, mindless drift. It didn’t work out here. In spite of the heat, the sweat on Simon’s skin suddenly felt cold.
Deep in thought about his predicament, he didn’t notice the figure shadowing them, head dropped, muscular shoulders braced, paws treading silently in the sand. It was downwind so the ostrillo was oblivious, too. Then, from the corner of Simon’s eye, he saw a sand-colored streak tearing out from behind a rocky outcrop—a huge yellow cat with great saber teeth! Instantly the ostrillo bolted. Simon hung on for dear life as the animal ran like the wind. Sheer will and terror kept Simon from falling. The landscape melted in a blur around him. After a few minutes the ostrillo suddenly slowed. Hopeful that this meant they had shaken off their pursuer, Simon looked over his shoulder and as he did, the ostrillo jerked to the right, throwing him. Simon sailed through the air and landed with a thud in the sand. He scrambled to his feet but he was too late. He watched in dismay as the creature ran off. He heard paws thundering on the earth behind him and turned in time to see the cat bearing down on him.
It screamed—an awful, tearing sound—its thick, yellow tail whipping stiffly behind it as it sprang. In terror Simon reached for the sparkle pistol. The creature was only feet away and Simon could smell its foul breath. Hands shaking wildly, he pulled the trigger. White light exploded and he was lost in the blinding glare. It felt as if lightning had struck just feet away from him. He pulled the trigger again and again and the recoil threw him back.
As the glittering light faded around him he found himself lying on the hot sand, quaking but alive. He had not been mauled. His blood wasn’t soaking the sand and his limbs were all still intact. He clambered to his feet and saw that the cat, terrified by the explosion, was running away in a fast lope across the plains. Simon watched him go, but it took a while before the shaking stopped. He had had a terrible fright. He looked down at the sparkle pistol. It had saved him. With no one to see him, Simon took a shivery breath and brushed a tear from his cheek. He realized the pistol was out of bullets. He looked at it a last time and put it in his backpack. Now he had nothing to protect him. Rubbing his bruised ribs, he gazed out at the desolate landscape. The ostrillo was gone from sight—losing it was the worst thing that could have happened. He was alone. Very alone.
He had no idea which direction he should go to get back to Hetty’s Pass, or on to Prince’s Town. Between the mad dash on the ostrillo and the ever-changing landscape, he was hopelessly lost. There was no turning back now.
Shading his eyes with a shaky hand, he tried to take his bearings from the sun. He decided to walk north—or where he thought north was, anyway—in the hope that eventually he would reach the coast. You’ll be fine, he reassured himself. He wished it was easier to believe.
* * *
Simon had been walking for a long time without coming upon any signs of civilization and he was growing more and more worried. The day had moved on and before long the sun would set. He realized he would probably be spending the night in the desert.
Then he saw a single brilliant red bird, stiff as an arrow, flying purposefully overhead. His heart leaped. It was the first trace of life he had seen in hours. Wildly, he hoped it might be a sign from Milagros. At the very least he knew that birds headed home to roost in the evening—maybe it would lead him to shelter. Spirit buoyed, Simon followed the direction the bird was heading in. Before long a slender-necked pink bird flew overhead, and shortly after it a pair of plump, spotted birds that cooed as they passed him. Simon’s mouth was dry and pasty and his stomach grumbled, but he marched doggedly on and eventually he saw a green blur floating on the horizon.
He squinted. Was it a mirage? But as he got closer he knew that his eyes weren’t deceiving him. A tiny island of jungle—an oasis—stood in the middle of the hot, lifeless sand. It was no Blue Door, but all the greenery meant there must be water, and maybe food, too. This was where the birds had been heading.
A spring in his step, Simon hurried on, and soon he entered the cool green fringes. Suddenly he was in another world altogether. The air was soft and moist. Vibrating clouds of hummingbirds floated through the crooked paths between trees. “Hello,” said Simon softly but there was no one there to answer. Deep pools of fresh water stood here and there and he immediately dropped to his knees and drank deeply—the water was clean and cold. Finally he stood up, wiping his mouth. He felt refreshed and the grassy taste of the water tingled in his mouth. He looked all around him.
It seemed that the plants of the oasis were somehow immune to the searing heat and piercing glare of the sun that baked the earth just footsteps away. The trees looked primordial. Crimson pods dangled from branches. Plush mushrooms grew in moist cups of soil in hollows of branches. Sumptuous emerald moss flowed in luxurious waves from the branches. The air smelled like freshwater and ripe fruits. A fuzz of insects furred the air. Apricot-colored flowers bloomed in the lower branches. Famished, Simon tried to pick a fruit that looked like an orange from a big tree in the middle of the oasis but it was puzzlingly hard—like a stone on the end of the branch—so he left it and moved on to the next tree, where he found a sweet green fruit that he reached up and knocked free. Hungrily, he devoured several in a row. He found bananas and nuts, too. Finally sated, he wandered on.
The oasis looked almost aquatic, like something that would have appeared under the sea. The plants growing from the crannies of the trunks and the crooks of the branches looked like broad sea fans, pink coral, supple anemones. The air itself seemed murky and green, as if algae were growing in the microscopic droplets of humidity suspended in the atmosphere. Creatures that looked like starfish were suctioned onto tree trunks. Orange-and-blue-striped slugs as big as sea cucumbers journeyed down the branches. Simon could hear them chomping through the moist green forest with their miniature jaws. Long-legged birds had snowy caps of hair that drifted over their eyes with the dreamy sway of anemones caught in a current, hiding their expressions.
For what environment had these strange creatures been made? His father would know, but Simon could discern no rhyme or reason in the long, triple-jointed legs of the fluffy-headed birds or the almost perfectly spherical shapes of the pair of spotted birds he had seen flying in, who were now perched together on a branch peering at him curiously. But the little world was peaceful and safe. When he had entered the light had been fading. Soon it would be dark.
“I’m going to sleep here tonight, birds, frogs, bugs, whoever else is here,” he said softly. “Hope you don’t mind.” It was comforting to hear a human voice, even if it was his own. Simon thought about his sisters and was glad they at least were together. He hoped powerfully that they were already through the tunnels and safely in Prince’s Town.
Simon was looking for a place to settle when he noticed that something had begun to happen. The striped slugs were all creeping down the branches and trunks to join a colorful carpet that crept across the oasis floor. They were heading on all sides toward the deep pools of water! As Simon watched, they paused for a moment at the water’s edge before launching themselves in. Each was a tiny, vibrant raft that floated for a moment on the surface of the water before sinking toward the bottom of the pond. Other insects followed suit. Ants, beetles, brassy-winged dragonflies, apple green caterpillars—a whole diminutive army—hurled themselves into the pond. Simon tried to peer down into the water, but in the dimming light he
could see only a few inches below the surface. Other animals crept into deep hollows inside the trees. Birds took flight, wings thumping as they headed out of the oasis. Only the woolly-headed birds remained. With their mechanical-looking legs, they levered themselves into the water, taking big steps down the rocky sides until they were submerged except for their beaks.
“That’s so weird,” muttered Simon. “What are you guys doing?”
The oasis, emptied of its inhabitants, was almost completely dark now and Simon was tired. He settled down in a hollow between two tree roots and laid his head on a pillow of moss. Weary to the bone, he drifted right to sleep.
He was awakened by a powerful strobe of light shooting through a gap in the treetops above him. He didn’t feel that he had been sleeping for very long, but night had fallen and outside the strobe of light it was dark. He recognized the scent of burning. Something was being singed. The light seemed to be growing brighter and coming from more directions—Simon realized that where earlier there had been moss overhead, now there was none, and the moonlight was pouring down to the forest floor. It was like being inside a giant, brilliant diamond. The silhouettes of trees sharpened. The burning smell grew stronger. Simon was wide awake now, crouching and looking all around him. The temperature had dropped and he found he was shivering. What was going on? Then he realized that the moonlight was scorching the moss. Huge, shorn flanks of it dropped to the forest floor, burned to a crisp, and crumbling to ash before his eyes. Leaves and fruit came tumbling down after it. The moonlight was devouring the forest! In a few moments it was over, and there was nothing left, just great, smooth-limbed trees, castle-shaped, the wood smooth and polished. Nothing alive remained. The cold, pocked face of the moon looked very close and a wind breathed through the oasis.
Then something caught Simon’s eye. Round lights glowed up ahead, bobbing gently in the breeze. The wind subsided and the lights grew still. Simon got to his feet and approached cautiously. Clouds slid over the moon and the only light came from the lights in the forest ahead of him. Simon followed them through the trees, disappearing and reappearing every now and then. He pushed a final branch aside and, hardly daring to breathe, stopped before the great tree that stood in the center of the oasis, the one he had tried to pick the orange fruit from earlier.
Except that now the orange fruit had turned silver.
A tremor passed through Simon.
It was the tree from the third ophallagraph.
Globes of glowing fruit hung lanternlike from the boughs. Simon reached up to touch one of them. It was the size of a grapefruit. It was harder than any citrus and didn’t yield beneath his touch. It was neither hot nor cold. These were what had been glowing so distinctly in the ophallagraph. What were they? Simon wondered. What were they for? And what was he supposed to do with them? He reached up with both hands and plucked one of the mysterious spheres. It popped free and the branch bounced back and the other lights nodded and swayed. He lifted it to his nose but it was scentless. Whatever secret it contained was locked safely within. But it was important somehow, Simon was sure of it, so working quickly in the eerie half forest, he filled his backpack with the strange fruit.
Chapter Thirteen
A Breakthrough • Alone for the First Time • Thirstier and Thirstier • Pillars of Unnatural Light • The Little Blue Door
Simon woke to the sound of creeping over leaves and opened his eyes to a colorful parade of newborn slugs flowing out of the deep pools. The stilt-legged birds walked around the shallows, their long necks curved, feasting on the unlucky ones that did not make it out in time, but such a horde kept coming that hundreds still escaped. A lime green fuzz of moss was sprouting from the smooth bark of the trees. Bright-colored mushrooms grew before Simon’s eyes and the plants that looked like sea fans sprang once again from the crannies. The previous night seemed almost like a dream. Simon opened his backpack and took out one of the weird fruits to see it in the light of day. Its silver sheen had dulled, but otherwise it had not changed from the night before. He returned it to his bag. He refilled his canteen from one of the pools, but all the fruit had been burned off the trees so his stomach went empty.
He figured out his bearings as best he could and set out. When he had been walking for half an hour he stopped and looked over his shoulder to see that the oasis had sprung back to life. A verdant green mist seemed to hover on the plain and as he watched, it expanded like a cloud—a cool breath of life on the barren yellow sands. The next time he glanced over his shoulder it was gone from sight and the hot, sandy void spread all around him.
* * *
Simon had expected to come across people before now, but he hadn’t seen a soul. Even the Red Coral Project had not infiltrated this deeply into the island. It seemed that no one at all was there. It struck him that this might be the first time he had ever been alone, completely, entirely alone, in his whole life. He realized that he had rarely ever been without Maya. Growing up on the boat together they had always been a team. When they had been to Tamarind the first time, Simon had been only nine years old. He had been frightened at times—many times, in fact. But Maya had been in charge, really. Even after they moved in with Granny Pearl and they had been separated in school, she was never farther away than a few classroom doors. As much as she infuriated him sometimes, underneath everything he knew that she was one of the few people who really loved and understood him—look at everything they had been through together. Now he was on his own and lost. Not only that, but he had the ophallagraphs and he was responsible for figuring them out and for getting them all home safely.
Simon thought about his friends at the boatyard at home and the boat they had spent months working on. It had taken up so much of his thoughts back then, but it seemed like such a simple problem now: put this there, move that there, connect these two things, add a third, and there you had it—a working engine. Simple, easy, satisfying.
A flash of anger seized him. If his parents had done something about the Red Coral they wouldn’t be in this mess. It was their father’s job to keep them safe—it was his fault they were here like this! Guilt swiftly quenched Simon’s anger. Whatever the Red Coral had been doing to his parents, it had been bad. It wasn’t fair to blame Papi.
Long ago, in that magical time when they had lived on the Pamela Jane and sailed the sea, Simon had trusted his father with all of his being. Whether they were caught in a thunderstorm or stranded in the doldrums, or the fog was so thick that they couldn’t see beyond the deck of the Pamela Jane, Simon never felt afraid because his father was there, and he would keep them safe. He wished it were still like that now.
Just then a violent rainstorm began out of nowhere. The drops fell so hard they left welts on Simon’s arms. He had been walking past a group of abandoned cottages, the type he had come across from time to time earlier in the Neglected Provinces, and he ran toward one for shelter. He dashed through an open doorway and crouched in a corner under a bit of roof that was still intact. He began to put the umbrella up to shelter him more, but quickly realized that it could be put to better use catching rainwater, so he turned it upside down and gleefully watched as a pool of water began to form in it. He kneeled down and guzzled it noisily then, thirst quenched, sat back with a sigh. But he’d had no food since the night before and he was hungry. His stomach grumbled.
He took out the ophallagraphs but they didn’t make any sense. Suddenly he felt frustrated. They were too hard—he was never going to figure them out! They were just meaningless fragments. In the beginning it had been easy to be optimistic—the discovery of each new image brought the hope that the pieces would suddenly fall into place, but Simon was starting to wonder if that was ever going to happen.
He took a deep breath. What do you do when you’re stuck? he asked himself. You remain calm and approach the problem from a different angle, he heard his father say, as he had heard him say so many times before.
But still nothing made sense.
The rain s
topped as suddenly as it had begun. Simon poured the rainwater caught in the umbrella into his canteen, careful not to spill a drop. He was putting on his backpack when he looked up through the window and saw something startling. He ducked quickly and peered over the edge of the windowsill. The thick gray rain clouds were being sucked at high speed over the horizon. Simon had never seen anything like it before. In seconds the clouds were gone altogether and the sky was blisteringly blue once again, mirrored in the deep puddles that stretched across the landscape, each holding a single blinding reflection of the sun. It was going to be a sloppy walk now, through all that dazzling water. He was about to set out when suddenly he heard the sound that fat makes when it strikes a hot griddle. He looked up to see steam rising from the puddles! The air quickly grew too thick with steam to see more than a few feet in front of him. A minute later it cleared and the landscape was revealed once again—dry and cracked, the earth baked. All that was different was that the scrawny cacti were now plump and green and brilliant red flowers bloomed from them.
Simon wished that Maya and Penny were there to witness the strange sight.
The abandoned cottages were unpleasantly forlorn and the sight he had just witnessed had unnerved him a little, so Simon was happy to be on his way. As he left the ruined cottage he suddenly had the sensation of déjà vu. He turned and looked behind him at the cottages. They looked familiar. Suddenly he was afraid that he had been there earlier and was walking in circles.