by Nadia Aguiar
Without warning, they shot out into the world again, into the bright, hot day. The ice slide had brought them to the foot of the mountains and when they stopped skidding they found themselves sitting in a puddle of water. The air was immediately hotter and the chill at once began to leave their skin. Not yet able to speak, they sat there catching their breath.
“Everyone okay?” Simon asked finally.
Maya nodded. Penny looked back up at the towering wall of ice they had come through, her eyes shining. “I want to go again!”
“Penny,” said Simon. “That was really bad.”
“Really bad,” said Maya.
“You knew you shouldn’t have climbed in there,” said Simon.
“But the feathers were there,” said Penny. “And look!”
Simon got slowly to his feet and squinted in the direction Penny was pointing. Then he saw a person walking, a distance away but still big enough to make out. Above the figure flew a green parrot. As they watched, it turned and squawked and began to fly toward them.
Maya stood on tiptoe and shaded her eyes. “It’s Helix!” she cried. “Helix! Helix!”
Simon could hardly believe it. He and Penny set off after Maya, who had begun running toward the figure.
“Helix!” the three of them shouted.
Helix stopped and turned around and moments later they reached him. Maya threw her arms around him and hugged him, then stood back to look at him.
Helix looked thin and strong, his hair uncombed, his skin darker, the blade of the knife on his belt recently sharpened and shining brightly in the sun. Camouflage mottled his face and his clothes from the Outside were worn to shreds and he looked once more like the boy they had first met in the jungle. As much as he had wanted to see Helix now that he was there in front of them, Simon felt a little unsure. Helix could have betrayed them back at Isabella’s, or earlier, even, before they had left home. Maybe he hadn’t been entirely honest with them about the other reasons he had wished to return to Tamarind. Perhaps he had put Simon, Maya, and Penny in danger in order to return.
But before Simon could say anything, Maya blurted out, “Why did you just leave like that, back in Maracairol? You left us locked up in Isabella’s tower!”
“I’m sorry,” said Helix. “I didn’t think I’d be gone so long. I saw a chance to escape and I took it. It didn’t make sense for the Pamela Jane to be captured and all of us locked up. It seemed like the right thing to do. I thought you’d be safe in Maracairol until I could figure out what the Red Coral were doing.” He looked at them, his face open, and Simon thought he really did look sorry.
At the moraine, Simon had felt a glimmer of Helix’s sad secret burden, a burden that was his alone and could never really be shared with others. Helix had lost people who were never coming back. If he had reasons for returning to Tamarind that had nothing to do with the Red Coral Project, Simon forgave his secrecy. The decision to come back had ultimately been made out of necessity—the Red Coral Project had to be dealt with. If there were other reasons that Helix hadn’t shared, well, that was okay. Simon, too, knew he’d had his own reasons for wanting to go back to Tamarind so urgently. They all had.
Simon cleared his throat. “It’s all right,” he said. “You had to make a decision. We figured that’s what happened.” He wanted to tell Helix about his aunts there and then, but he hesitated. How was he supposed to break such momentous news out of the blue? It was enough of a shock right now that Helix and the children had found one another again.
Maya burst into a flood of tears and she threw her arms around Helix. Simon looked at her, feeling something between annoyance and amazement—one second she was furious at Helix, the next she was sobbing in his arms. Maya really made no sense sometimes. Penny jumped up and down until Helix scooped her up and squeezed her tight and kissed her. “Hello, starfish,” he said. Maya straightened up, the squall over, and stood there sniffling and looking red-eyed and slightly chagrined.
Simon and Helix shook hands and clapped each other on the shoulder, which meant that everything was all right between them. Maya wiped her eyes and the four friends stood there in the golden light smiling at one another, a brisk breeze rolling across the earth, the sea twinkling in the distance and the icy blue point of the top of the highest mountain casting a shadow behind them. Seagrape flew high above them. Penny sat down then—her short legs needing a rest—and the others followed.
“I found Seagrape’s feathers in the slide,” she said.
“Wretched bird,” said Helix. “I had to fight with her to get her to go in there with me. But I’d been told that was the fastest way down. I think it used to be a gradual slope all the way, but over time it’s melted and become steeper. I was wandering around in the mountains for days before I finally found the moraine today. We must have just missed one another.”
“Tell us everything,” said Maya. “Where did you go when you left Maracairol?”
“We found the boat,” said Simon. “The Blue Duck? Seriously?”
“It was all I could think of,” said Helix sheepishly. “I was in a rush. The first thing I did after I escaped was to stop somewhere so that I could disguise the boat. I ducked into a cove and hid and watched Isabella’s fleet sail right past—then I sailed to a little town where I painted the hull and changed her name.
“I tried to find out what I could about Faustina’s Gate,” he went on. “I asked people all across Tamarind, but no one I talked to had ever heard of it. I think that the Red Coral must have gotten it wrong. Or whatever it is has another name.”
Maya was about to say something but Simon motioned for her to wait.
“I caused some trouble around the Red Coral camp and found out more about what they’re planning,” Helix said. He paused. “You know that Fitzsimmons is here. I saw him, from a distance. The red hair gave him away.”
Simon nodded grimly. “We know,” he said.
“He started out planning to just gather a cargo of ophalla and return home to study it,” said Helix. “Now it’s turned into something else. He wants to take over all of Tamarind. He’s out of control. Right now there are thousands of new Maroong heading west—”
“To Floriano,” finished Simon.
“You already know,” said Helix. “There’s no resistance to speak of. Everything’s a mess and it’s getting worse. Floriano is going to be their biggest operation yet. The huge steel ship they came in is sitting off the north coast, ready to be filled with even more ophalla. And even more Maroong are marching to Floriano from the East.”
Simon listed gravely. “We were actually on our way back to Floriano now,” he said. As quickly as he could, leaving out the señoras, he told Helix about their plan with Isabella. He took out the ophallagraphs to show Helix, as well as the mineral-fruits, the key, and the newest tool, the stopwatch. Simon held it flat in his hand and they looked at it, glinting when the sun caught it. The metal was still cold.
“I’m afraid it’s broken,” said Simon. “Here, look, you can wind this knob and it makes a buzzing noise, but that’s it. I think the water sealed it shut.”
“I wonder what it was supposed to be for,” said Maya.
But none of them knew. Simon had thought that the final clue would help all the others make sense, but now he began to think that the frustrating, mystifying secret hidden in the ophallagraphs would elude them forever. Perhaps they had done everything they could already and the problem lay in the riddle itself. Perhaps it was incomplete or unsolvable. Either way, it seemed less and less likely that the secret—whatever it was—would be able to save Tamarind before the Red Coral opened the mines at Floriano.
“So you went to the moraine because it was in the ophallagraph, and because you heard I was there,” said Helix.
Maya nodded. “Why did you go?” she asked.
Helix dropped his gaze as if he were ashamed. “Going there had nothing to do with the Red Coral,” he said. “I thought that if I came back to Tamarind now that I was
older I might be able to find out who my family was. I know now it’s impossible. I went to the moraine to … to say good-bye, I guess.”
Simon and Maya looked at each other.
“We have something to tell you,” said Simon.
The yellow sunlight was growing weaker. A breeze came down from the mountain and ran across the tall grass. The glazed peaks of the mountain shone behind them. Simon took a deep breath, then he and Maya told Helix about his aunts.
“They’ve been looking for you all these years,” said Maya softly.
Helix looked as if the wind had been knocked out of him.
After a few minutes, without a word, his face sealed, he got to his feet. “Let’s get started,” he said.
The others let him be. Who knew what it would feel like to find out after all this time that you had a family after all, and you were about to meet them again? Though their legs were weary they walked as though they were not tired. Seagrape flew high overhead, her shadow dipping and bobbing urgently on the ground before them. A few hours later the Pamela Jane—still disguised as the Blue Duck—was setting sail out of Prince’s Town as the sun set, and heading swiftly toward Floriano.
Chapter Twenty
Reunion • “It’s a ghost!” • Beneath the Aliandis Tree • A New Edition
Late the following afternoon, the children and Helix left the Pamela Jane in a secret, sheltered inlet near the bay in Floriano, as close to the town as they could get. They furled her sails and hid her deck beneath palm leaves. Maya made Helix wash his face in the salt water to scrub off the camouflage. He combed his hair with a wet comb. His ears were bright red. They walked into Floriano on foot late in the afternoon. Finding no one at home at Señora Rojo’s, they slipped through the bars of Señora Medrano’s tall iron gate and climbed the hill to the pink stone mansion that Simon had previously glimpsed through the trees.
“I don’t know if this is such a good idea, after all,” Helix whispered nervously. “Maybe one of you should go first.” He looked so uncharacteristically pale and edgy that Simon was half-afraid that if they let him out of their sight he would run away and not be seen again.
“It’ll be fine,” Simon said reassuringly. “They really want to see you.”
No one answered their knock—maybe whoever was home was too deep in the house to hear—so the children and Helix walked in through the open door.
Expecting that he would have to call again, Simon was surprised when Señora Medrano appeared suddenly through the parlor door, Señora Rojo behind her.
They stopped in their tracks.
No one spoke.
Everyone was watching Helix. Simon and Maya held their breath.
Simon had never seen Seagrape alight on a shoulder other than Helix’s, but now she flew first to Señora Rojo and then Señora Medrano. Then she coasted once around the room, stirring up the thick dust that had rested there for so long, before she returned to Helix’s shoulder. The señoras turned very pale and took each other’s hands. Finally, through her tears, Señora Rojo spoke.
“This is the happiest moment of our lives,” she said. Her sister nodded.
* * *
In the past few days, Simon had wandered lost in the Neglected Provinces, been taken prisoner and escaped, plunged over a waterfall, scaled a frozen mountain, and sailed at speed all night and day so that the Red Coral wouldn’t catch up with them—he couldn’t stop yawning as the children sat in the great room, telling the señoras about their adventures.
When they had first arrived, the señoras had ushered them into the great room, where for a while they sat together, stunned. Later Helix went out on his own to the purple aliandis tree, beneath which they told him his mother was buried. The señoras prepared dinner and when Helix returned they all ate together. It was decided that nothing could be done until morning. They hoped to have word from Isabella by then and could assemble the colonels and decide what to do next. The señoras told the children that an advance guard of Maroong had arrived in Floriano a few days ago to begin clearing land for the new mine.
Now night had fallen and candles glowed softly in the black windows. A slight dampness seeped in and the scent of animals was carried on a light breeze. Every now and then they heard rumbling deep within the earth, and the herd of ostrillos came galloping out of the trees and moved across the open grass like a cloud pushed by a swift wind.
None of them noticed that someone had come and sat beneath the window and was listening to their story, every now and then nodding. He sighed once, deeply, but if any of them heard it, they thought it was the wind or a bullfrog or the sigh of a bird’s wings. Only Penny saw him looking in, but she had seen him before and was not afraid. He winked at her and put his finger in front of his lips, and she knew that he didn’t yet wish to be noticed.
Soon Maya motioned to Simon, and saying good night, they took Penny upstairs to the rooms the señoras had prepared for them, leaving Helix and his aunts alone to talk. Maya carried Penny. At the top of the stairs the little girl took her thumb out of her mouth.
“I want to go home,” she said for the first time.
“Me, too,” said Simon.
“Me, too,” said Maya. She hugged her little sister close to her. “Soon,” she said.
Maya and Penny went to sleep in one room and Simon in another. He lay awake in the dark for a while. Every now and then from downstairs he could hear the señoras’ voices.
“We could tell you stories about your mother for days and never get to the end of them … It’s good to remember…”
“On the coldest nights, we would sleep together in a big bed, all three of us—me, Estella, and your mother—huddled together under a mountain of blankets. Your mother was a kicker when she slept, but because she was littlest, we always put her in the middle…”
Their voices drifted away and Simon concentrated on the ticking of the grandfather clock coming from the landing.
He couldn’t imagine losing anyone in his family, and though he was tired, he tossed and turned, anxious about what lay ahead. The Red Coral Project were set to open the mine in Floriano the next day, and Simon still had no idea if Isabella would be able to stop them, or how he and his sisters were going to reach Faustina’s Gate. The clock chimed, echoing through the rooms. Time was running out.
* * *
Simon was woken the next morning by hammering. Dazed, he rolled out of bed. Helix, who had not come to bed until late the night before, rolled over and pulled the pillow over his head. Simon realized that the hammering was loud, persistent knocking coming from the front door. He dressed quickly and came downstairs to see the señoras walking briskly toward the door, Maya and Penny following behind them.
“Who the devil can that be?” said Señora Medrano. “Nobody comes here.”
When she flung the door open and saw the figure standing there, she and Señora Rojo nearly jumped out of their skins.
“It’s a ghost!” gasped Señora Rojo.
It was General Alvaro! Simon’s initial excitement at seeing the general—he must have come to help, after all!—was swiftly replaced by apprehension when he looked back at the señoras. In the emotion of the night before, it hadn’t even occurred to them to tell the señoras that the general was alive and well.
Señora Medrano took a deep breath and a big step forward and pinched the figure on the arm—harder than was really necessary, Simon thought. She stood upright. “He’s no ghost,” she said darkly.
“But we killed him!” said Señora Rojo.
“Apparently not successfully,” said Señora Medrano.
The general stood there, clothes rumpled, hip stiff from a night on the damp earth, expression aggrieved.
“Oh, but he’s grown old,” sighed Señora Rojo, putting her hands to her own wrinkled face. “Has it really been this long?”
“Enough of this infernal babble!” General Alvaro shouted, though whether he was insulted or exasperated Simon couldn’t tell. “Ladies, I’ve just traveled
all the way from the Borderlands and I spent an uncomfortable night in your garden because I didn’t want to intrude on what I realized was a reunion,” he said. “Now, please let me in—we don’t have time to waste!” He nodded at the children. “Good morning, children. Cadet,” he said, nodding last at Penny. She smiled at him, the only one not surprised to see him, pleased to have shared a secret.
“You know who this is?” Señora Medrano asked the children sharply.
“Um, we…” Maya floundered.
“Yes,” said Simon decisively. “We can explain—”
But he was saved from having to give an explanation because at that moment Dr. Bellagio appeared at the top of the hill. He was in a hurry and carried something tucked beneath his arm. When he reached the doorstep he stopped in surprise, first to see the children and then to see the man standing among them.
“General Alvaro!”
“Dr. Bellagio,” said the general.
The men shook hands warmly.
Señora Rojo gasped. “Wait—you knew!” she said to Dr. Bellagio. “All this time you knew he was alive!”
“Spare us your dramatics, you antique!” growled General Alvaro. “Bellagio’s the very reason I am alive—no thanks to you and your equally iniquitous sister!”
“I’m sorry, Conchita,” said Dr. Bellagio, pained. “I felt it was for the best…”
“But we buried him,” said Señora Rojo. “All three of us were there, that day…”
“To be entirely accurate, we buried an unidentified soldier,” said Dr. Bellagio.
Señora Rojo’s face turned from white to red to white again. Simon, Maya, and Penny inched away nervously. Señora Medrano, not taking her eyes off the general, raised her hand to her mouth to stifle a snort, but her eyes shone with glee.
“You old possum,” she said delightedly.
“But, Dr. Bellagio,” said Señora Rojo reproachfully. “In my home every week all these years and all this time, you let me believe I had killed this man … How could you?”
“How you could have even tried it at all is what baffles me!” retorted the general.