The Arm of the Starfish

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Daddy,” she asked, “what are the specifications for a fashion model?”

  “Oh—thirty-four, twenty-two, thirty-four,” Dr. O’Keefe replied absently.

  Poly signed. “Oh, dear. I’m twenty, twenty, twenty.”

  Her father laughed. “I really think you look better in the red wool, even if it does fight with your hair.”

  Poly sighed again. “Yes. Okay. I’ll change, while Adam’s getting into his trunks. Mother says time will take care of this particular problem, and I suppose it will. Was mother gorgeous when she was my age?”

  “Frightful,” Dr. O’Keefe said. “Much worse than you.”

  “That’s encouraging, at any rate. And I suppose it’s a good thing about time, because right now I’d have an awful time choosing between Adam and Joshua, even if Josh is too old for me.”

  Her father laughed again. It was a good laugh, warm and open and loving. “Time seems to be making its inroads already. A few weeks ago you were announcing that you were never going to grow up.”

  “Oh, I’m over being Peter Pan. Maybe it’s jealousy. Knowing that that Kali has her hooks into Adam. Come on, Adam, let’s go. I told María I’d be back in time to help serve lunch.”

  It was another golden day, the sand was gold; gold shimmered from the sun into the blue of the sky, touched the small crests of waves in a calm ocean. Adam and Poly swam out, side by side, until Poly stopped and began to tread water, making the strange, breathy whistling noise that was her call to the dolphin.

  It was longer this time; Poly’s calling began to sound tired, and Adam had given up and was just about to suggest swimming back, when silver arched out of water in a swift flash, and Macrina came leaping, diving, flying, to meet them. Again there was the ecstatic greeting, Poly with her arms about the great, slippery beast, Macrina giving her marvelous, contagious dolphin smile, so that Adam felt that he was grinning like a fool. After a while Macrina left Poly, came over to Adam and gave him a gentle, inquisitive nudge. For a moment he was frightened. He knew that dolphins were friendly and gentle, that sailors rejoiced at seeing them because they kept away sharks, but Macrina was so large, so alien, that it was all he could do to make himself keep treading water quietly, and to say, “Hello, Macrina.”

  Macrina nudged him again, then flashed out of the water, dove, disappeared, and came up on Poly’s other side.

  “She likes you!” Poly cried joyfully. “Macrina, show Adam your flipper.”

  As she had done the day before, Macrina obediently rolled over and waved her sleek, wet flipper.

  At last Adam realized. “The flipper—” he said. “Did she—”

  Stroking Macrina, Poly nodded. “Yes. We don’t know how it happened. I found her on the beach, flipper torn off, bleeding to death. I ran and got daddy, and he was able to stop the bleeding. Of course we didn’t know her then, but she seemed to know that daddy and I wanted to help. Daddy has some big tanks in the village. They’re not in a building; the village is around a cove, and there are some pens in the cove. Luckily Father Tom was here, and he helped, and we managed to get her to the village and into one of the pens. Daddy and Father Tom stayed with her all night. As a matter of fact, we could hardly get daddy away for weeks, he ate there with Virbius, he’s their chief, and I guess you’d call him their medicine man, too, he’s a hundred and forty-nine years old, and he prayed over Macrina and it all worked, the augmented nerve and stuff, and isn’t she marvelous and good and beautiful and virtuous and wonderful?”

  Macrina rolled over in the water and smirked.

  “Okay, Macrina,” Poly said. “We’ve got to go in to lunch now, I promised María. Give my love to Basil and Gregory.”

  “Basil and Gregory?”

  “Her brothers. They’re very intelligent. Of course dolphins are, but we think Macrina’s family is more so. It’s quite obvious they are, isn’t it?”

  Macrina waited for no further goodbyes. Down, down she dove, and then, a hundred yards away, Adam saw her flash through the air.

  “By the way,” Poly said. “While you were in the lab that Kali’s father called and talked to mother. They’re sending the hotel helicopter for you at seven-thirty. I don’t know why daddy wants you to go there for dinner. I think it’s just awful. But I suppose if he wants you to go you’ll have to go.”

  “Yes.” The pleasure ebbed from Adam’s limbs. “If he wants me to I have to.”

  Poly stopped treading water, rolled over onto her back, blew a jet of water upward like a small whale, and floated. “Promise me one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t go without saying goodbye to me. I have something to give you, and you mustn’t leave without it. Promise.”

  “Okay,” Adam agreed. “I promise. What is it? A charm?”

  “No,” Poly said. “A weapon.”

  14

  After lunch José brought three horses around to the bungalow, and Dr. O’Keefe, Poly, and Adam set off for the village, riding uphill to the plateau with the monolithic slabs of stone. As Joshua had stopped by the great central table the day before, so did Dr. O’Keefe, although he did not dismount. Poly and Adam reined up beside him. Adam’s spirits soared, despite the fierceness of the sun.

  The doctor was sitting erect on his horse, as though waiting. He caught Adam’s inquiring gaze and said, “Virbius, the chief of the village, wished to meet us here. Visitors aren’t encouraged there. The people from the hotel have brought only disease and trouble. But you are under my aegis, and he will escort us.”

  Adam nodded. Dr. O’Keefe continued to sit straight and tall, and Poly was in one of her rare silent moods. Adam looked around, at the great stone table, above which a large golden butterfly was fluttering. The flash of a bird’s scarlet wing led his gaze beyond the encircling stones and through the trees that edged the plateau and into a clearing. In the clearing were a few small, white slabs, with light moving over them, and leaf shadows, green, mauve, and indigo.

  Again Dr. O’Keefe followed Adam’s gaze. “Yes. It’s a cemetery. A small one. The villagers have their own, and if anyone does anything as inconvenient as dying at the resort hotel they’re whisked back to the mainland as inconspicuously as possible.” He held up his hand for silence, and they could hear a rustling in the brush. A yellow-and-black bird flashed across the clearing, followed by a wizened old man on a horse, a dark and shriveled old man, with a few strands of soft, silvery hair. Adam had no doubt that this was Virbius, the chieftain. Poly had said that he was how old? a hundred and forty-nine? Adam knew that the villagers’ way of counting time was probably different from the way he had been taught in school, but if Virbius was not a hundred and forty-nine he was certainly the oldest man Adam had ever seen, far older than Old Doc, who, after all, was ninety.

  Dr. O’Keefe raised his arm in greeting; Virbius responded, the gesture full of dignity despite the fact that his hand was tremulous with age. Without a word he turned his horse and headed into the brush again. Dr. O’Keefe followed, with Poly and Adam in single file behind him on the narrow path.

  They rode through the low brush along the spine of the plateau; the sun was high and hot, so that their shadows were small dark blobs moving along the scrub. Somehow Adam was grateful for the golden warmth that seeped through him, even though his shirt began to cling damply to his body. The blue, almost cloudless sky was so high that there seemed to be between earth and sky a golden shimmering of sunlight. The red of Dr. O’Keefe’s and Poly’s hair was touched with gold; gold, gold, everything glinted and glimmered, and light as well as heat penetrated Adam’s pores.

  He had lost track of time (would time ever seem normal, countable, accountable, to him again?) when the path started to descend. Below them lay the straw roofs of the village, the large central hut, with smaller huts raying out from it, the whole village on a promontory about a perfect, natural bay. In the bay fishing boats were anchored, and Adam thought he could see others, small dark specks out at sea. While they were still a fair
distance above the village Virbius stopped his horse, raised his arm, this time in a gesture of command, and let out a strange, penetrating whistle. For a moment all the activity in the village seemed to cease, suspended in time. Then women and children scurried into huts; men, who were working on upturned fishing boats, on spread-out nets, moved leisurely but definitely away, disappearing either into the thick jungle growth that edged the village, or into the huts.

  Poly turned back to Adam. “Don’t be hurt; it’s just because it’s your first time here. They have to make sure. They’ve been so abused by the hotel people.”

  “Poly,” Dr. O’Keefe said without turning.

  “Sorry, daddy,” Poly said.

  Virbius started forward, his horse moving slowly, carefully, on the last, steep downward grade. As they came into the village Adam saw that each hut was surrounded by a profusion of flowers that seemed to grow wildly; but, remembering his mother’s garden on the Cape, he had a suspicion that they were carefully tended. The fishing boats were large, heavy shells, reminding him of pictures he had seen of Phoenician vessels. All were painted with strange emblems. The most startling boats were stark black or white with prows which reared sharply upward and on either side of which were painted two very wide-open eyes.

  Virbius led them directly to the waterfront, to the harbor. He raised his hand and two small boys came running to him, appearing, it seemed to Adam, out of nowhere, to take care of the horses.

  A long T-shaped wooden dock let out into the water, and Virbius, moving slowly and stiffly, his great age more apparent than it had been while he was mounted, led the way, keeping always a few paces in front of the others. Ahead of them in the water Adam could see what he realized must be the pens Poly had told him about. As they reached the T at the end of the dock Virbius beckoned to Poly, pointed to one of the pens, and began to speak to the child. Adam stood beside Dr. O’Keefe, looking into the pen in which a dead shark floated. It had obviously been wounded, not by another fish, but by some kind of weapon; a long knife, judging by the wounds. A strange odor came from the water which Adam guessed was something to disguise the smell of blood, and the water itself was murky.

  Virbius’ words sounded like gibberish with a touch of the Portuguese soft ssh and jjh added. Poly, head cocked, listened, frowning with concentration. “He says that this is the same shark that attacked Temis.” To Adam she explained, “Temis is one of Verbius’ great great grandchildren, Adam. Last night the shark attacked one of the children right here in the harbor, and one of Virbius’ nephews went after him with a knife and drove him into the pen. The child is all right; his wounds are healing cleanly and there will be only a scar on one leg to show that anything happened. They did everything you told them to about the shark, daddy, but the shark has died. Virbius says that he has prayed neither for nor against him, but that it is justice. The shark died this morning and they only kept him for you to see.”

  From the dock Dr. O’Keefe took a pole with a large hook and pulled the dead beast in. Then he squatted down at the edge of the pen and examined it carefully.

  Virbius had moved along the dock and was standing beside the next pen. Adam followed him. Here the water was a brilliant, clear green, with purple shadows. A small school of tiny fish flashed by in a swoosh of silver. At the bottom sea plants moved, their green, white, rose fronds undulating in a sinuous dance. Swimming ponderously in the pen was a large and extremely cross-looking tortoise. His head was stretched out on the leathery neck to its full length, and he glowered and blinked. Adam could see that one of the four legs had been almost, or perhaps entirely, torn off. It was healing neatly. The turtle turned his head toward Adam, put a scornful nose in the air, and then, with an indignant gesture, retired completely into his shell.

  Poly shook with laughter. “He’s the snootiest animal I’ve ever come across. Macrina’s fond of him, so I suppose he’s all right, but he has no manners whatsoever.”

  Adam was surprised to hear Virbius let out a thin, dry cackle of amusement as he moved on to the next pen. In this was a shark whose dorsal fin had been ripped off in some kind of marine battle. Small, ugly lumps were appearing where the fin had been.

  “Of course we don’t get many sharks,” Poly said, “but we’ve never had one regenerate normally. I can’t even be sorry for them and Josh says I’m a fool about all animals. But not sharks. I hate them. I would far prefer to meet a sting ray coming around a corner, and they look like bats out of hell if any beast ever did.”

  Dr. O’Keefe moved up to join them. “I’m very pleased about the turtle, bad manners or no. One of our most exciting successes has been a sea-gull wing. We would never have managed that without Virbius. While the bird couldn’t fly it was all right, but he wanted to use his wing too soon, and only Virbius could control him.”

  Virbius spoke, and again Poly translated. “He says his gods are very powerful, and they gave him some of their power.”

  Virbius spoke again, spreading out his hands.

  “He says it was the way Father Tom’s God gave him of His power the night he stayed up with Macrina. Virbius says they must be good friends.”

  “Who?” Adam asked. “Canon Tallis and Virbius?”

  “No, silly,” Poly said impatiently. “Their gods.”

  Virbius nodded. If he spoke nothing but his own native tongue he understood, Adam guessed, almost everything that was said. And if he understood English it was more than likely that he also understood Portuguese. Adam realized that the old man was no one to underestimate. As a matter of fact, he reminded the boy in many of his mannerisms of a combination of Old Doc and Mahatma Gandhi.

  There were two other tanks which were presumably empty at the moment, because neither Virbius nor Dr. O’Keefe went to them. Virbius led the way back up the dock to the village and to the green clearing in front of the central hut. Around the hut and climbing up its walls were flowers of every shade of blue, and Adam noticed that none of the other dwellings had blue flowers; there was every color of red, orange, yellow, but no blue. Virbius squatted down, beckoning to Poly to sit on his right side, Adam on his left. Dr. O’Keefe sat crosslegged opposite the old man.

  From the central hut came a woman and a child, a girl perhaps Poly’s age, perhaps younger. They bore coconut bowls which they set down in front of the visitors. Poly gave a warm, welcoming grin to the child, which was equally warmly returned, but neither of them spoke.

  Virbius raised his hand for silence, although no one was speaking, then bowed over his coconut bowl, murmuring in his native tongue and swaying slightly from side to side. He took the bowl, raised it over his head in a gesture of offering, then sipped from it. Dr. O’Keefe raised his bowl in a similar gesture, and Poly and Adam followed suit. Adam did not know what it was they were drinking; something strange and cool and sharp.

  Virbius beckoned to the child, who squatted down on the grass in front of the old man. Adam decided that she was definitely younger than Poly, although already more developed physically. She had straight, lustrous black hair, and a dark skin through which a golden glow seemed to shine, as though she had caught and contained the light in which the island was drenched. She smiled at Dr. O’Keefe, who smiled back, a smile of both compassion and joy. Virbius spoke and Poly translated.

  “It is all right?”

  Dr. O’Keefe nodded. “Tell them that Josh brought back all the lab reports Father Tallis got in Boston. Everything is perfectly normal.”

  As Poly spoke the child raised one golden-brown hand, looking wonderingly at the five outstretched fingers.

  Adam turned to Dr. O’Keefe.

  “Yes. This is Temis, the child the shark attacked six months ago. Her body was badly slashed, and one of her fingers was severed.”

  Beside him Adam heard a strange sound and looked to see that Virbius was crying, tears rolling unchecked down his wrinkled cheeks. Putting one hand on the child’s shoulder the old man stood up, then raised both arms heavenward, calling out in a loud voice. With
the tears still streaming he turned to Dr. O’Keefe and embraced him. There were tears in Dr. O’Keefe’s eyes, too. Temis stood quietly, smiling.

  Poly said to Adam, “We were sure it was all right, but it’s good to have all the lab work say so, too. When the shark attacked Temis, Virbius called daddy. I’ve never seen daddy so upset. He said he wasn’t ready, that it wasn’t time. The body would heal; that wasn’t the problem; it was the lost finger. You couldn’t say: let’s try, there’s nothing to lose. There’d been the deformities. And there’d been the—the horrible malignancies. Father Tom came, and he and Virbius and daddy sat up all night, and then daddy said they’d try. Father Tom stayed to help. He never left Temis, he and daddy and Virbius. And then it happened, Adam, it happened, and it’s all right, and Temis has five fingers again.” Her eyes filled. “But Adam, if it hadn’t been all right—if the new growth hadn’t been natural—if it had devoured Temis the way it has some of the animals when things haven’t gone right—” she choked and stopped.

  Her father took her hand. “Hush, Poly. It’s all right.” He said to Adam, quietly, “Poly’s anguish during this time was making her ill. As soon as we were sure that everything was going as we prayed it would, Tom Tallis took her away with him. The trip to Boston was to take slides and X-rays to a zoologist there, but served as a needed change for Poly, too. When you landed in Madrid instead of Lisbon and had to be bailed out of the airport things were complicated, but Tom managed to get the reports to one of our friends, who in turn got them to Josh. So, in spite of a little unexpected confusion, we have all the final lab reports and clearances.”

  “And it’s all right!” Poly cried, joy driving the tension from her face. “It’s all right!”

  Dr. O’Keefe said heavily, “Through the grace of God it’s all right. I know now that I know nothing, and many men think that I know everything, and this is where the danger lies. If only we had more time—”

  Virbius said something, and Poly translated for her father, “He says that time is a dream, but that his gods and Father Tom’s are awake.”