Island's End

by Padma Venkatraman

  Something inside Ashu seems to break at the sound of the bones cracking. His shoulders fold inward and I see him hunch forward, hugging his chest tightly, as though it hurts.

  Lah-ame flings the broken necklace at my brother. “I return your chauga-ta with four bones broken. If you ever dare behave this way again, I will throw it into the ocean, along with your bows and spears and arrows.”

  Ashu catches his chauga-ta with shaking fingers. “I am sorry, Lah-ame,” he murmurs.

  “Louder,” Lah-ame says. “What for?”

  Ashu’s head drops to his chest. “For dishonoring the spirits of our ancestors.”

  “Now, break the strangers’ fire twigs and throw them into the waves.”

  Without even glancing in my direction, Lah-ame walks away. All around me, I hear sighs of relief, like a wind blowing through the leaves of a great tree. The crowd breaks up into little groups and most people start wandering back into the jungle or the village, but I stay on the beach with Mimi and my brothers, worried that Lah-ame is angry with me too, for not preventing my brothers from using the fire twigs.

  Ashu and his friends collect the boxes of sticks and throw them into the water as Lah-ame commanded. After they are done, Mimi pulls Ashu toward me and places our hands against one another, forcing our palms to touch. “No more argument, children,” she says.

  Ashu grunts something, but his eyes refuse to meet mine.

  I struggle to find words of peacemaking. “When we were children, our quarrels washed away as quickly as footprints on the beach. Can we not let that happen again?”

  “Go away,” he mutters and stalks off down the beach.

  Mimi strokes my cheek. “I am sorry, Uido. Your brother has an angry spirit.”

  Tawai approaches Mimi. “I caught a tarcal-ta this morning. Do you want to see it?” Already he seems to have forgotten what just happened. Mimi gives me a hug and follows Tawai to his fish.

  I look around the beach, hoping Danna is waiting for me. But before I spot him anywhere, I overhear Natalang telling one of her sisters, “I know it was wrong, but is Ashu not brave? He is the only one who was not afraid of the strangers’ magic!”

  Her words feel like thorns piercing my ear. Hurt by her and Tawai and Ashu, I run as fast as I can, away from them, away from our village, away from the tribe and into the jungle.

  24

  I go deeper and deeper into the jungle. Confused thoughts whirl like storm clouds in my head. How quickly I agreed to become Lah-ame’s apprentice, not knowing the training would push Tawai and Natalang so far away. The spirits seem to have forsaken me too—forgetting to send a warning dream before the strangers’ arrival this morning. Even Lah-ame ignored me just now. But I am not sure what more I should have done to control my brothers’ behavior.

  I hear footsteps close behind and glance back to see Danna’s stocky frame gaining on mine. “Uido!” he calls out. “Is something wrong?”

  We sit together on a fallen tree trunk. I lean my head against his shoulder.

  “Sometimes I wish I had never started the training. How will I ever lead our people if I cannot even be friends with my own brother?”

  Danna encircles my waist with an arm. His touch is calming. “Ashu and his friends left the beach saying they were going hunting and would not be back for a few days. I think they are too ashamed to face the tribe—at least for the moment.”

  “But Danna, Ashu will be back sooner or later. And so long as he is part of the tribe, he will always fight me.”

  “Many En-ge want to see you become oko-jumu, Uido. I am not the only one who supports you.”

  I sigh. “Sometimes I am not sure I will ever be able to protect the tribe from the strangers as well as Lah-ame does. To tell the truth, I am curious about Ragavan’s ways myself. If it was not for that, maybe I would have acted faster today.”

  “Even Lah-ame must have had trouble keeping the tribe safe when he was young,” Danna says. “I am sure the elders remember his early mistakes. And anyway, I sense a change in you already. Your body looks as strong as a leader’s.”

  “Did you like the old Uido better, Danna?”

  “I like Uido,” he says simply, placing my hand on his chest. The steady thud of his heart soothes me. “Your spirit may travel too fast for me to keep up, but I will always be here, waiting, every time you return from the Otherworld.”

  In the sunlight that drizzles like honey onto Danna’s shoulders, he looks more beautiful than ever. We bend toward one another. My lips wander across his smooth cheeks and chin. We kiss once, twice, four times.

  After a while, Danna breaks away, murmuring, “I found a new beehive. Shall we collect some honey?”

  “But we have not been chewing the tonh-je leaves,” I say. “The bees will sting me. Would you like me better with a swollen face?”

  “I would never let anything bite you. I have tonh-je leaves.” He reaches into the bag that hangs from his quiver, pulls out a few tonh-je leaves, starts chewing on one and pushes a few into my mouth. I crush a handful of leaves and smear them over him. With the tips of his fingers, he works the tonh-je juice into my skin. His touch feels as soft as the stroke of a butterfly’s wings.

  “Why are you trembling?” Danna asks. “What is wrong now?”

  “It is just—our friendship is changing. Lah-ame says to an oko-jumu the tribe must always come first. I think that is why he never took a woman. But I cannot imagine being alone and spending every rainy season away from the tribe like he does.”

  “Imagine being married, then, like the women oko-jumu before you.” Danna turns my face to his and blows gently across it. His breath, thick with the tonh-je scent, makes me feel light-headed and my concerns seem to drip away like honey from a comb.

  Danna pulls me to my feet and we walk to the bee colony.

  “Look.” Danna points at a beehive that hangs halfway up the tree. “Wait here while I get it?”

  “I climb as well as you,” I tell him.

  He grins. “All right. Ready?”

  With the help of the thick vine encircling its trunk, we pull ourselves up. Our hands press against the bark and our toes find footholds in the rough trunk. Soon we are near the hive.

  We blow into the air. The bees scent the tonh-je and grow drowsy. They settle on our bodies, droning mmbbzzz, mmbbzzz. Far below us, in the midday light, the jungle floor is mottled with shadows like a moth’s wing.

  “Biliku-waye, Pulug-ame, spirits of the Otherworld, thank you for showing us this food.” Danna works until the comb comes away in his hands. We scramble down.

  “I have never plucked a hive so easily. Not stung once.” Danna pierces the comb. With a sticky forefinger, he teases my lips apart. I lick his finger, then let my tongue slide down its honey-sweet length. Cool air rushes into my throat and tickles me. I break off a tiny piece of comb and hold it to his mouth. He nibbles the edge and slurps at the thick liquid that dribbles out.

  We break off other bits of the comb, suck them dry and spit out the wax. But we save most of it to share with the others. While we linger beneath the tree, the sky darkens as though it were evening instead of just past midday. A sudden downpour begins. I stare at the lightning Biliku-waye draws overhead by scratching lines in the sky with her pearl shell.

  “What does Biliku-waye say?” Danna asks.

  Thunder breaks and I wait for my spirit to sense an image after the next flash of light, just the way Lah-ame taught me. As the lines of white tear apart the gray clouds above, I see a picture of evil white spirits reaching out to capture one of us with their skeleton-thin fingers.

  “Illness,” I whisper, shuddering. “The lau are searching to catch someone’s spirit.”

  Thunder booms again, like a drum beating out an alarm. We race back to the village.

  25

  The rain stops as we enter the clearing. But not one happy face greets us.

  People are clustered in front of Lah-ame’s hut: elders, children, a few men, and all the women.
Nobody says a word as Danna and I push through to the center of the group. There, I see Lah-ame kneeling on the ground, bending over Tawai.

  My little brother’s eyelids are half closed. He shivers feverishly. My parents sit beside him, leaning against one another.

  I drop the honeycomb and rush to Lah-ame’s side. He strokes Tawai’s body with an eagle feather—trying to find the lau that has captured my brother’s spirit.

  I crouch down beside Lah-ame. “What is wrong with my brother?”

  “The strangers carried a disease spirit to our island. It has leaped into Tawai and made him ill.” Lah-ame shakes his head.

  “How can I help?”

  “We need a cooling paste,” he says.

  I enter Lah-ame’s hut, my mind so full of worry that for an instant I cannot remember how to make the medicine. But then I find his store of heartseed vine. Praying to the plant’s spirit to help Tawai recover soon, I grind the leaves into a paste and rush outside again.

  Lah-ame dips his hand into the paste and spreads it on my brother’s forehead. I see Tawai’s temples throbbing. “Go, lau, go. Go out of this body,” Lah-ame chants.

  But the lau does not answer his call. Tawai groans, “My body hurts.”

  “Uido, bring a drink to cure pain,” Lah-ame says. I return to his hut, where I squeeze coral berries into a juice to soothe body ache. Lah-ame pours it down Tawai’s throat.

  But Tawai’s body will not take the medicine. A few moments after it passes his lips, we watch him vomit it back out.

  Lah-ame looks up at the crowd. “Let all leave but Tawai’s family,” he says. “The lau inside him is a greedy one. It may catch anyone who comes too near.”

  An anxious murmur spreads through the crowd and slowly people begin to leave.

  Danna lingers at my side. “I will stay with you,” he says.

  “No,” I whisper to Danna, thinking I could not bear it if the lau caught his spirit too. He takes my hand, but I pull away. “Lah-ame knows best,” I tell him. “Do what he says, Danna, please.”

  “Shall I look for Ashu?” Danna asks. “He only left this morning. He cannot be that far away yet.”

  “Tawai will get better before Ashu returns from his hunt. There is no need for Ashu to hurry back.” I speak with a confidence I do not feel.

  Danna lets my hand drop. He blows gently on my cheeks and walks away.

  Kara carries Tawai into Lah-ame’s hut and I follow. He lays Tawai down on a reed mat and then sits beside Mimi.

  Throughout the rest of that long day, Tawai worsens. He coughs up everything except fresh water from Lah-ame’s nautilus shell vessel. As evening approaches, he no longer tries to speak, and his silence frightens me more than hearing him moan. He does not respond even to Mimi’s touch. Though his body is burning hot, he shivers like a spiderweb caught in a storm.

  Only once before has Lah-ame failed to heal—eight seasons ago, when one of Kara’s sister’s babies fell ill. Now, Tawai’s eyes remain closed, like my little cousin’s did before she died. After her death, Mimi said babies’ spirits were the hardest to keep alive because they were like tiny plants just climbing out of the earth. But the older a spirit grows, the sturdier its roots, and the firmer its grasp on this world.

  I tell myself Tawai’s body is halfway grown. It will struggle hard to hold on to his spirit. "Biliku-waye, Pulug-ame, spirits of the Otherworld and of my ancestors, let my brother become well,” I plead softly.

  Lah-ame leads us outside, where I see the purple bruise of dusk spreading across the sky. “I cannot sense Tawai’s spirit,” he says. “It has wandered too far away to hear my call.”

  “How can that be?” Mimi asks.

  “His spirit wants to be cured by the strangers’ medicine,” Lah-ame replies. “They carried this lau to him. Tawai will not be healed by me.”

  “Why?” Mimi says. "Why can you not cure him?”

  Lah-ame runs a hand across his wrinkled forehead. “I have already told you. The lau has taken over Tawai’s body. His own spirit has wandered far away.”

  “He is only a boy,” Kara says. “A child. His spirit is trusting.”

  “Not in me.” Lah-ame’s voice is tired but firm. “His spirit wants to travel across the sea, not return to the heart of the jungle.”

  Kara looks hollow, like a dead tree trunk with its insides scraped out. Mimi clings to him like a withered vine. “You can save him, Uido,” she whispers. “I have faith in you.” Then my parents return to our hut.

  Lah-ame hugs me for a moment and lets go. “I have tried everything we know again and again, Uido. There is nothing more I can do for Tawai. I am sorry.”

  Leaving me alone in the clearing, he walks away into the jungle. But as long as Tawai is still alive, I cannot walk away as Lah-ame has done.

  In the life of the jungle, the death of one small boy means little. Every day the spirits watch the deaths of countless beings. But Tawai has a special place in my life. A place I want to hold on to.

  Surely there is a chance that Tawai will respond to my call. My healing touch may not be as powerful as Lah-ame’s, but I am Tawai’s sister. His spirit has been close to mine all our lives.

  As I return to Lah-ame’s hut, his warning echoes in my mind again about trying to heal before meeting my spirit animal. Ignoring it, I close my eyes and move my hands over my little brother’s body, searching for the lau. But Lah-ame is right—I cannot feel where the illness is lodged inside. All I sense is a pale cloud spreading across his body.

  My hands tremble as I place them on Tawai’s chest. Using the beat of his heart as my guiding rhythm, I send my spirit out to search for Tawai’s. My spirit leaves Lah-ame’s hut and floats across the clearing.

  For a moment, I think I see a faint shape swinging on the vine hanging behind the bachelor hut, where Tawai loved to play when he was younger. But it disappears as I come closer.

  I drift to the beach where Tawai fished so often and gaze out across the ocean in the direction the strangers come from. There, in the distance, I see the glow of a spirit moving away over the waves, farther and farther from our island’s shores.

  “Tawai!” I call. “Come back. Come to me.” But he has slipped beyond my reach.

  My spirit returns alone to Lah-ame’s hut.

  I slump against the curved wall. As Lah-ame said, Tawai’s spirit has left us and gone in search of the strangers’ island, because it wants to be cured by them.

  In the loneliness of the hut, I try to think of how an oko-jumu should heal a boy whose spirit has more faith in strangers’ medicines than in our own.

  Perhaps I should follow Tawai’s spirit across the water and take his body to the strangers’ world. There must be at least a chance that the strangers and I could work together on their island to coax Tawai’s spirit back into his body. But if I cross over to the strangers’ world, my tribe may think Ragavan’s medicines are better than ours and lose faith in me and in the En-ge ways.

  A soft groan escapes Tawai’s lips. The sound cuts into me like a knife. Maybe I have walked the spirit paths for nothing. But I am not yet oko-jumu.

  Tonight I am only a girl who cannot watch her little brother die.

  III

  ACROSS A STRIP OF SEA

  26

  Tawai’s body is hot to my touch. He moans as I struggle to hoist him onto my shoulders, no longer the baby brother I once carried with ease.

  I make my way to the beach and head straight for our canoes. I set Tawai’s body inside the smallest one and drag the canoe toward the ocean. Praying for Biliku-waye’s understanding and protection, I shove the canoe into the surf and jump in.

  Branches of coral reach out like sharp fingernails, threatening to scratch holes into the boat. I give all my attention to getting past the reef. Soon the waves toss us into deeper water. Although I have never canoed on an open sea full of crashing waves, this skill feels surprisingly natural to me. My spirit seems to guide the movement of my arms and help me stay afloat.

>   I try to remember all Lah-ame taught me about the wind and the current and how to set a course by the stars. Praying to my ancestors to guide me across the ocean they traveled long ago, I row forward. Chants from the early days of our tribe enter my mind. I hear the words Lah-ame sang about the time when all the islands belonged to people like us. The memory of this watery path ahead has been tattooed into my spirit. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that we are already farther from my island than I imagined.

  Then, through the darkness ahead, I hear a voice. Its tone is commanding.

  Go back.

  Clutching my oar, I keep rowing.

  Clouds hide the stars above, darkening the night. The waves around us grow taller.

  Return to your island.

  Lightning tears across the sky and a sudden thunderstorm breaks. But despite the howling rain and the roaring sea, I guide the canoe onward. It is not for nothing that I walked the spirit paths.

  The rain makes my eyes sting, but I force them wide open. In the next flash of lightning, I glimpse something monstrous writhing in the water. For a moment I think I have lost my mind. Then I see it again.

  A pale creature is rising up out of the water. It looks like a gigantic sea snake. With all my strength I try to move away from it. But like an unseen hand, the current pulls us toward the creature.

  Lightning rips overhead again and I see that what I mistook for a sea snake is just one of eight tentacles of the most terrifying animal in the ocean—a giant squid. On our beach I have seen carcasses of full-grown whales strangled to death by these squid, patches of flesh torn off their bodies.

  This squid’s arms look ten times as long as our canoe. And they are slithering across the waves, coming nearer and nearer to our canoe.

  Do not go to the strangers’ island.

  No matter how hard I row, the boat swirls closer to the squid.

  I see a slimy tentacle touch the side of the boat. At once, it feels as if the monstrous creature is tugging my spirit out of my body, tearing my spirit away from me so that it could never return.