The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  “And how big was it?” Simon asked.

  “It could be as big or as small as you wanted,” their father replied. “It always seemed to be changing sizes, you see.”

  “No way,” said Simon. “That couldn’t happen.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” said their father. “Almost anything can happen.”

  Maya sighed. She had heard it all before.

  Maya went down into the cabin and, checking the passageway quickly to make sure that no one saw her, slipped into the tiny laboratory where her parents kept the marine samples. Shades were drawn over the portholes and the room was dim. Salt water tanks lined the walls. If they hadn’t been covered with black canvas, Maya would have seen dozens of odd sea creatures drifting inside them: pale sea horses, crustaceans with dappled shells, alien moon jellies pulsing toward the surface. One tank was anchored to the table in the middle of the room where the microscopes were, and this was the one Maya approached. She had been there earlier when her father had drawn what was inside it up from the sea. She slid the canvas aside and slowly raised the lid; it opened up like the top of a treasure chest. Suddenly brilliant, blue-tinged rays of light shot out from the tank.

  It took Maya’s eyes a moment to adjust. The light dimmed a little and she watched as the tiny octopus floated slowly through the water. It was as clear as glass, with fine neon filaments. It’s so weird, she thought. All the sea creatures her parents collected these days were peculiar. It was as small as Maya’s thumb, but the power of the light it emitted was astonishing. Looking into the tank was like standing in a window with moonlight flooding in. Maya’s thoughts wandered back to the problem of life on the boat. She sniffled and a tear fell into the tank. The tiny octopus recoiled, its neon tentacles collapsing. A moment later it rose to the surface as if it was curious. Maya saw its eyes, luminous, with inky violet pupils, looking up at her. She sniffled again and wiped the back of her hand over her cheek.

  Maya heard footsteps in the hall pass the laboratory door. She knew in a moment someone would be back that way and would pop their head in and find her. Quickly she drew down the lid of the tank and the light in the laboratory dimmed. She lingered a moment, a few rays of the octopus’s light shooting through the gap and dancing on the wall behind her. Then she closed the lid firmly. She slipped quickly back to the passageway, pulling the door shut behind her. She ran up the stairs and onto the deck.

  The dolphins and nurse shark were gone now and the Pamela Jane’s white sails were blinding in the sun. Her father was standing at the wheel, writing in the ship’s log. She wanted to talk to him about school and Granny Pearl, and about the curious, glowing octopus, too, but she would have to wait.

  The logbook was full of boring stuff—their coordinates, the wind direction and speed, the weather conditions, sightings of other ships, and notes about unusual things, such as the large cargo ship buoy that they had had to tack to avoid earlier that morning. Her father recorded these things diligently at regular intervals each day. The idea was that if anything unforeseen happened out at sea, such as a storm that blew them off course, or if the mechanical navigation equipment broke for any reason and they were lost, they could consult the ship’s log. From the facts that had been recorded in it, they could piece together a good estimate of where they were and where they needed to go. Basically, a ship’s log is to help you find your way if you got lost, their father always said. Every seafaring vessel had one. He had taught both Maya and Simon how to use the information that was in it. Simon knew far more about the particulars of it than she did.

  Usually their parents used the same pale blue canvas books that they bought each year in port, but a few months ago they had run out of pages in an old book while out at sea. Her father began to use the book that had been on the Pamela Jane since they had found her. Kept for sentimental reasons, for a long time it had sat forgotten on a top shelf among volumes about coral reefs and intertidal zone crustaceans and other similar titles in the cabin. It was impressive, large, and old-looking, its red leather cover decorated with a fine gold pattern, parts of which had been rubbed away.

  Simon had caught something in a net and was examining it in a bucket of seawater, which he now lugged over to them.

  “Hey, look what I found,” he said. Inside was a small creature with soft purple spines. When he reached his hand into the bucket it shrank away from him. “What is it?” he asked their father.

  “It’s a purple maginot,” said their father, closing the log-book. “And you should probably leave it be. They don’t like company much.”

  “Ouch!” Simon cried, snatching his hand out of the water. “It stung me. It has prickles.”

  “Told you,” said their father. “They’re quite antisocial.”

  “It reminds me of Maya,” said Simon. “They should call it a Maya maginot.”

  Maya saw her father look away so that she wouldn’t see him smile.

  “Why don’t we give your sister a break, and why don’t you set that thing free back in the ocean?” he said to Simon, squeezing Maya’s shoulder. “St. Alban’s is right up ahead, anyway—see?”

  “I see it!” Simon shouted, pointing to a green speck in the distance. “We’re there!”

  As they watched, the green speck grew palm trees and sandy beaches and houses. The warm air rushed over the Pamela Jane, filling her sails, and the water broke icy-white around her bow.

  “This is a short visit, right?” Maya grumbled.

  “Yes,” her father said. “We’ll be in and out within a few hours. We just need to drop off the samples.”

  Usually Maya loved stopping at St. Alban’s. The head marine biologist, Dr. Fitzsimmons, was an old friend of her parents, from the days when they had all been students together at the Oceanic Institute. He had a tufty red beard and weak blue eyes and freckles that blended together across his cheeks. Whenever they had a few days in St. Alban’s, the Nelsons would go to dinner at the home he shared with his wife, who made an excellent mussel pie and always made sure there was plenty of hot water so that the Nelsons could take proper showers. Maya loved to sit at a real table in a real house that didn’t rock and sway. On the bookshelves were rows of marine science journals that her parents and Dr. Fitzsimmons had published articles in. And the St. Alban’s laboratory was superb, with state-of-the-art equipment and friendly junior marine biologists who worked for Dr. Fitzsimmons. Recently Dr. Fitzsimmons had been hired by the Red Coral Project, which was studying the effects of pollution on certain types of coral. He had brought the Nelsons on board and they had been collecting samples for the project for nearly a year now. In the beginning everything had seemed like business as usual, but in the past months they had been discovering unusual, glowing sea creatures like the octopus.

  Dr. Fitzsimmons was waiting for them on the dock when they arrived. He waved to them and offered them all a hand onto the dock. As usual, Maya was the first one off the boat, and she realized instantly that Dr. Fitzsimmons didn’t seem like himself. Usually a friendly, furry man, he seemed strangely nervous, and when he pulled her up he grasped her arm roughly and barely seemed to see her.

  A man who Maya had never seen before was standing behind him, off to the side. He didn’t seem to notice her either, so she was able to take a long, curious look at him. He wore an eggplant-colored wool hat, even though the sun was out, and it was pulled down over his craggy brow, which jutted out over a pair of very deep-set amber eyes. Wiry white hair sprouted from his chin and his ears. His nose was purplish and it had bulbous growths all over it that reminded her of the eyes on a potato. He was not looking at her, but was staring so intensely at the boat behind her that Maya felt as if she was in a cold shadow. Then Simon scrambled up behind her and then her whole family was there and the dock was suddenly noisy and full of people.

  Her father handed up the tanks with the marine samples. In one of them the moon octopus was in his small dark cage, sloshing gently from side to side. Her father hoisted himself onto the d
ock after them.

  “Wait until you see these,” he said to Dr. Fitzsimmons. Then he caught sight of the stranger.

  “Let me introduce you to Dr. Izquierdo,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons. “Dr. Hábil Izquierdo. He’s working on the Red Coral Project, too. Dr. Izquierdo, these are the Nelsons, Dr. Nelson and Dr. Nelson and Maya and Simon and Penelope.”

  But the stranger barely seemed to notice them. Instead he was staring at the Pamela Jane, rocking gently on her moorings behind them. His eyes traveled over her sunny yellow hull, crisply furled white sails, freshly scrubbed deck, and neatly coiled lines.

  “She has good speed for a boat her size,” he said. “How many feet is she?”

  “Fifty-two,” said Maya’s father.

  “And a half,” added the stranger, almost to himself.

  “Yes,” said Maya’s father, surprised. “You have a good eye. She’s actually fifty-two and a half feet from bow to stern.”

  “Still a beauty,” said the stranger, again almost to himself.

  Then abruptly he turned and began walking past all of the moored boats toward the end of the dock. Maya noticed that one of his shoes made a peculiar clicking sound on the dock.

  “All right,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons quickly. “Why don’t we get these samples up to the lab?” He helped Maya’s father carry the tanks of samples and they started up the hill to the Marine Station.

  “Strange old guy,” said Maya’s father.

  “He was a weirdo,” said Simon.

  “Simon,” said their mother warningly.

  “He is different,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons. “I’ll grant you that. The Red Coral people sent him over for a few days. But now tell me . . .” And he changed the subject.

  Maya glanced back over her shoulder but the man was gone and the dock was empty.

  By the time they reached the Marine Station she had forgotten about the odd visitor. Her parents left her to watch Penny outside in the garden while they went into the lab with Dr. Fitzsimmons. A lazy breeze rustled through the big poinciana tree and red petals fluttered loose. Simon wandered off to talk to a student biologist who was feeding the turtles in the outdoor aquarium. Maya sat there with Penny in her lap, her thoughts drifting off to Bermuda and the friends she would make at her new school, if only she was allowed to go. What Maya really wanted, though, was just one friend, better than all the others. A best friend. Maya had imagined this friend for so long now that she felt she knew her very well. She imagined them eating lunch together at school every day and taking the bus home together (because, of course, her best friend would live on the same road as Granny Pearl), and having long conversations about everything under the sun while they sat on Granny Pearl’s porch in the evenings. It was going to be wonderful, Maya had no doubt.

  Through the open window of the laboratory she could see her parents and Dr. Fitzsimmons talking. Their conversation drifted out to her.

  “Because of the presence of the cobaltmoravia, we believe that it’s coming from deep in an equatorial jungle,” her father was saying. “It’s most likely that the mineral is being carried downriver and that’s how it’s entering the sea. . . .”

  “Peter,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons. “The Project wants this to stop here. You’ve already gone far, far beyond what you were hired to do. You aren’t authorized to undertake independent research in this area. I’ve been instructed to warn you that . . .”

  At this point Dr. Fitzsimmons walked across the room and closed the window and the rest of the conversation was lost to Maya. She felt a brief moment of alarm—what on earth were they talking about? But then Penny pulled a daisy out of the ground and began chewing it and Maya had to take it away from her, and by the time she had taken all the bits out of Penny’s clenched fists, her parents were walking out of the laboratory with Dr. Fitzsimmons.

  The adults made idle conversation as Dr. Fitzsimmons walked with them back down to the Pamela Jane, but Maya thought it seemed strained. Simon ran ahead of everyone. He reached the boat first and leaped on board and ran down into the cabin. His bloodcurdling shout a few moments later made Maya’s heart leap into her throat.

  In a few strides Maya’s father was down on the dock, just as Simon emerged in a hurry back onto the deck. Dr. Izquierdo appeared quickly behind him.

  “What’s going on?” asked Maya’s father angrily.

  “I was just taking a look,” growled Dr. Izquierdo.

  “You could have asked to come aboard,” said Maya’s father, an edge to his voice. “I’d have been happy to show you around.”

  “He was trying to take the logbook,” said Simon.

  “I was only looking at it,” said Dr. Izquierdo, glowering.

  Simon was holding tightly on to the logbook, its strong red cover shining.

  Dr. Izquierdo looked shiftily down the length of the dock. His hooded eyes were barely visible. He’s not a marine biologist at all, Maya thought suddenly. He did not apologize, but instead his face grew stormy. He looked sullenly at Dr. Fitzsimmons before turning and walking briskly toward the steps leading up the hill to the Marine Station. A hollow echo bounced off the stone dock with every other step he took.

  “I’m sorry about that,” said Dr. Fitzsimmons as they watched Dr. Izquierdo, his figure receding as he went up the stairs on the hillside.

  “Well . . . no harm done,” said Maya’s father. Maya could tell he was still annoyed but was trying to be polite.

  As they stood there, a breeze came off the sea and at once the day turned cool. Maya glanced out over the water. The wind had stirred up white horses at the mouth of the harbor, and the water had become a chalky turquoise color. The Pamela Jane shifted on her moorings and her timbers creaked.

  “Please, don’t worry about it,” said Maya’s mother to Dr. Fitzsimmons. “It’s not your fault he went onto the boat. No harm done, like Peter said. We should get going now, but next time we’ll be able to stay longer and see you and Emily properly. And maybe we can talk more about the project then.”

  The Nelsons climbed aboard the Pamela Jane then and a few minutes later they were motoring away through the harbor, out toward the open sea. Maya and Simon stood at the stern to wave to Dr. Fitzsimmons. He was still standing on the dock, growing smaller as they drew farther away. Maya scanned the hillside above the harbor and caught sight of the figure in the eggplant-colored hat. He had paused on the road to the Marine Station and he, too, was watching them as they sailed away. Suddenly a shiver ran through her and she felt afraid. Dr. Fitzsimmons seemed forlorn and vulnerable there on the dock. Then both figures shrank and were lost to sight as the Pamela Jane reached open water.

  CHAPTER TWO

  More of the Story * The Blue Line *

  Footsteps in a Storm

  Once they were sailing again, Maya’s parents were too busy to talk about Dr. Izquierdo or Dr. Fitzsimmons. Her father had checked the cabin quickly but everything seemed to be fine. He flipped through the pages of the logbook and glanced at the children’s mother. The kind of glance that was supposed to go over the children’s heads, but didn’t.

  “He was just a strange old guy,” he said to Maya. “No need to have another thought about him, sweetie.”

  But Maya still had a bad feeling, and so did Simon. They leaned over the railing and watched as St. Alban’s receded into a green spot on the horizon.

  “He wasn’t a marine biologist at all,” Maya said. “I wonder what he was doing in St. Alban’s. And why did he want the logbook?”

  “I don’t know,” said Simon. “But do you think Dr. Fitzsimmons will be okay?”

  “Who knows?” said Maya darkly. Something strange was going on—the scrap of the conversation she had heard between her father and Dr. Fitzsimmons ran through her mind again. What had it been about?

  “Earth to Maya,” said Simon.

  Maya blinked. St. Alban’s was no longer visible on the horizon. They were alone at sea again. She sighed.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” she said. When Simon
looked reassured she added, “Maybe.”

  She turned around and leaned with her back to the railing. Her father was standing by the wheel, making notes in the logbook. The wind ruffled the pages, turning them quickly, and her father finished what he was writing and closed it. The evening sun glowed on the gold patterned cover. Maya heard her mother calling her then, and she went to the galley to help bring dinner onto the deck. The family sat down to eat outside as the clouds turned pink and orange and the water reflected the ruddy glow of the sky. Maya felt a slight pang when she thought that if everything worked out how she hoped it would, this might be one of the last dinners she’d have on the deck of the Pamela Jane for a while. Soon she might be sitting down to dinner at a real table at Granny Pearl’s each night.

  Later, Maya left her family still sitting on the deck and went down into the cabin. The sooner she went to bed, the sooner it would be morning and the sooner they would be in Bermuda. She put on her pajamas and climbed up to her top bunk and opened her history textbook. She read studiously because if she went to school she didn’t want to be behind her classmates. She was still reading when her family came down off the deck for the night. Simon came barreling ahead of the rest of them and burst into the cabin.

  “Guess what!” he shouted. “We just saw a spotted whale shark calf!”

  “Can you imagine?” asked Maya’s mother, coming into the cabin. “A spotted whale shark calf this far south? Isn’t it the strangest thing? At this time of year?”

  “Hmm,” Maya said, turning back to her book. If she never saw another spotted whale shark calf in her life it would be fine with her.

  Simon got ready for bed and settled noisily into the lower bunk to wait for their father, who always read to him at night. It had gotten dark since Maya had first come down below and only a faint bluish light came in through the portholes, so she switched on the lightbulb over her bunk and picked up her textbook again. Instead of being read to, Simon asked to hear more of the story that their father had been telling him that afternoon. Maya concentrated on her book and tried to ignore them, but it was hard not to listen in.