The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  Maya gasped and stopped in her tracks.

  “Simon!” she cried. “Simon, Penny’s gone!”

  “What do you mean, gone?” he asked from up ahead on the path.

  “I mean, she’s gone!”

  Simon came charging back through the trees as Maya pulled the empty baby sling over her shoulder, holding it limply in front of her. She met Simon’s eyes, fearful of his reproach. Simon stared at the empty sling.

  “How do you lose a whole baby?” he asked incredulously.

  Maya shook her head slowly and her eyes filled with tears that spilled over.

  How had this happened? One moment Penny was there, the next she wasn’t. Maya tried to remember when she had noticed that the sling felt lighter. It was only in the past minute or two. Think, think, think, she told herself. But all she could think was that her baby sister was missing and it was all her fault. She no longer knew what to do next.

  Simon frowned and swallowed. “All right,” he said. “It’s all right. We’ll just retrace our steps and find her. Let’s go!”

  Maya stumbled blindly after him back along the path, except the path they had been walking on seemed to have grown over as soon as they’d left it. After a few minutes Simon stopped and turned slowly in a circle, surveying the jungle.

  Maya sank into a crouch and closed her eyes and put her face on her knees. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “I’m the eldest. She was my responsibility.” She started to cry softly. “Don’t, Simon, don’t,” she said, pushing him away when he came to sit next to her. “Leave me alone.”

  She heard him tramp a ways into the jungle and stop. After a moment, from the cracks between her fingers she could see shadows passing evenly back and forth in front of her and she heard the creaky sound that a rope swing makes when it rubs against the polished part of a branch. Something was touching her forehead. She hung her head lower, burying her face in the crook of her elbow and brushing the leaf or bug or what ever it was away with her other hand.

  When she heard the baby gurgle only a few inches away from her she nearly leaped out of her skin. She shouted and jumped to her feet just in time to see a thick green vine, curled over into a cradle, sweep Penny back up away from her. Maya gasped but was struck dumb when the vine rose up slowly and swayed. There was no breeze in the jungle, so the vine was moving on its own.

  Like the vines that had enveloped the Pamela Jane, vines all around Maya were growing, right before her very eyes. Green and muscular, they advanced like snakes. In the curl of the vine that held her, Penny giggled. The vine seemed to be tickling her. Simon ran back through the jungle toward his sisters and stopped and stared in shock when he saw Penny. Maya jumped up to try to grasp the baby, but Penny was just out of her reach.

  “Quick!” said Simon. “Lift me up and I’ll grab her!”

  But Simon was too heavy for Maya and they both toppled over. As she scrambled to her feet, Maya heard the sound of tinkling chimes and in the distance through the trees she saw another school of flying fish zipping past.

  Just then a whistling sound came through the air above the children’s heads and an arrow struck the vine just above where it held Penny. Then more appeared, whizzing through the air, all coming from the same direction, and struck the vine. Wounded, the vine released Penny and she dropped into Maya’s arms. Maya fell to the ground, struggling to catch her breath, staring at the vine as it slunk away back into the jungle, arrows protruding brokenly from its skin. She held Penny close and looked her over quickly but the baby seemed to be unhurt. Maya and Simon looked in the direction from which the arrows had come but no one was there.

  Slowly the realization crept over Maya that earlier, when she had seen the face, her eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on her after all. Someone was out there.

  “Come out!” she called, getting her voice back.

  “I don’t like this. . . .” whispered Simon, his voice trembling.

  “Come out!” Maya called again. Her heart beat painfully against her ribs.

  Maya and Simon stood close together and Maya held Penny tightly. They gazed into the darkness of the jungle but could see nothing.

  Around them, thick, fleshy vines were waving slowly. Every now and then one of them shivered violently, as if it had sneezed. One swiveled a little as if it was observing Simon. Then quick as a snake, it whipped down and coiled around his ankles and hoisted him upside down ten feet off the ground. One minute he was standing next to Maya, the next he was gone. He was too surprised to make a sound, but Maya screamed.

  She looked up to see him in the air above her, a large green vine coiled around his middle. From the corners of her eyes, Maya could see more vines advancing, some of them crawling along the jungle floor, others dropping down from branches high above, some moving straight through the air like the heads of snakes about to strike. Thinking she was about to be taken, too, Maya clutched Penny to her and began to scream. And when Maya began to scream, so of course did Penny. She did that thing that babies do: She took a huge breath in and hollered until her face turned purple.

  The vine had pinned Simon’s arms to his sides and was inching toward his neck as he struggled to free himself. Penny was crying at the top of her lungs. The vine on the ground near Maya had almost reached her. She kicked it furiously, but more were coming at her from other directions.

  “Help!” she shrieked. “Help!”

  And then, out of nowhere, a boy dropped down onto the path in front of her. He landed in a crouch, touching the ground as silently as a cat and steadying himself with one hand for a moment before he rose in a fighting stance, holding a spear in front of him. Arrows bristled from a loop in his belt. Maya knew at once that his was the face she had seen twice that day already. His skin was painted with camouflage and his hair was wild; no wonder he had blended into the undergrowth. Maya stopped screaming and stared.

  “What are you doing here?” asked the boy. He held the spear clenched in his fist. Its tip glinted hard and bright as a diamond.

  Maya’s mouth hung open but she couldn’t speak.

  “Boat,” shouted Simon. “Boat, boat, boat! We came on a boat!”

  Maya leaped to one side to avoid a vine that had snuck up behind her. Then she was dancing from foot to foot as the vines crisscrossed the path, gliding over one another and reaching for her. Overhead, the vine that had Simon began to lift him higher into the trees.

  “Do something!” Maya cried.

  The stranger swung onto the low branch of a nearby tree and, with a flourish, raised his spear toward Simon. Maya screamed and closed her eyes, opening them just in time to see the stranger make a few swift strokes across the vine, which bled a bluish sap and wilted, easing Simon to the jungle floor. The rest of the vines began to retreat, as if they were being sucked slowly back to where they had come from. They rattled through the leaves on the ground and knocked flowers loose. Then they were gone and the jungle around the children was still.

  “What were they?” Maya breathed.

  “Carnivore vines,” said the boy, putting the knife back in his belt. “Some plants are flesh eaters, you know. They’ll grab you and squeeze you to death and then have you for lunch.” He turned to Simon and helped him up.

  “Thank you,” said Simon.

  “No problem,” said the boy.

  Maya and Simon looked at him in amazement. A necklace of shark’s teeth rested on his bare chest. His ragged pants were held up by a rope tied around his waist. A lumpy scar was all that remained of his left ear. Though he couldn’t have been much older than Maya, the tattoos on his arms were already faded. The green parrot from earlier, invisible until then, sailed down from the canopy and landed on his shoulder. Penny’s sobs had subsided into hiccups and she was looking curiously at him.

  “What are you doing here?” said the boy. “You obviously don’t know anything if you think it’s safe to walk through here. Especially with that baby.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly by choice,” said Maya
a bit haughtily. The boy had saved them from the vines, but he had also been following them for hours before, maybe since they had reached the island, and she didn’t think he was to be trusted.

  “We just got here,” explained Simon. “We were in a storm and our boat was blown off course—we don’t really know where we are.”

  “I watched you sail in,” said the boy. “But what I want to know is why you were sailing in the first place.”

  “We were on our way to Bermuda,” said Maya.

  “Bermuda?” said the boy. “Never heard of it.”

  “Look,” said Maya. “Please, we need to get to a radio or phone. We have to get help.”

  “No, you look,” said the boy. His tone had changed and he no longer sounded so pleasant. Maya held Penny tightly to her. “There’s nowhere on this whole island—North or South— that’s called Bermuda. And nobody just sails around—the only people on the water are the pirates. Where are you really from and who sent you? Are you spies from the North?”

  Maya and Simon were dumbfounded. He didn’t believe them? And spies? They were just kids—how could they be spies?

  “The North?” Maya asked, clearing her throat.

  The strange boy narrowed his eyes. “If you want to play games, I can leave you to find your way out of here yourselves,” he said. He turned and swung his spear over his back and began walking away.

  “Wait!” Simon cried. “Please don’t go! We’re telling the truth! Our parents were lost overboard in the storm and we sailed here, but we don’t know where we are. We left our boat so that we could climb one of the hills to see better. Please, we’re telling the truth!”

  The boy stopped in his tracks and then he turned to face them.

  “You’re telling me you’re from the Outside?” he asked, watching them closely.

  “We’re from the Pamela Jane,” said Simon helplessly.

  Maya felt the seconds tick by thickly as the boy stared at them. She realized she was holding her breath. Finally the boy dropped his gaze.

  “Maybe you are telling the truth,” he said. He seemed amazed by this. “It does happen sometimes, people blowing in from the Outside,” he said almost to himself as he levered his spear back down. He studied the children, his eyes bright with curiosity. “I’ve seen a few of them before.”

  “I knew it,” Simon whispered to Maya, his eyes lighting up. “This is the place from Papi’s story. I knew we were here.”

  Maya felt amazed.

  “Where are we?” she asked the boy.

  “Where are you?” the boy asked, raising his spear over his head. He twirled it around with a flourish and planted it firmly in the earth in front of them. He smiled.

  “You’re in Greater Tamarind.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Greater and Lesser Tamarind *

  Seagrape * An Enchanted Banyan Grove * Sleeping Jaguars

  Greater Tamarind.

  When they heard the name, a strange feeling came over both Maya and Simon. They had been sailing around this part of the ocean all their lives and knew the name of every island and inlet, beach and cove, but Greater Tamarind was nowhere they had ever heard of before. It was a mysteriously powerful name, and Maya repeated it several times in her mind.

  “Welcome,” the boy added wryly. “Right now we’re actually just on one of the tiny Lesser Islands. Greater Tamarind is just to our east. There’s just a tiny channel separating Greater Tamarind from the Lesser Islands.”

  Suddenly Maya felt angry. She didn’t want this to be happening. She wanted to have come to shore in an ordinary place, where they could get to the authorities, who would send out search boats to look for their parents. No one had ever heard of Greater Tamarind—it wasn’t a real place! It didn’t exist. They must be just on the uninhabited side of some Atlantic island. This boy, what ever his name was, was playing a cruel joke. Exhausted from the ordeal of the storm, her feet blistered, her heart heavy from the burden of trying to find their parents, her pulse still racing from the scare of the vines, Maya began to get angrier and angrier. If this boy had wanted to help them, he would have done so first thing that morning, instead of following them all day. He wasn’t to be trusted. She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “We can’t wait here anymore,” she said. “We have to keep going.”

  The strange boy laughed. “Going? You have no idea where you’re going. I’ve been following you for hours. You’ve been walking in circles.”

  “Told you,” said Simon to Maya. He was gazing at the boy’s shark’s teeth necklace admiringly.

  “We’re going to climb one of the hills,” Maya said. “To see where we are. So we can get help.”

  “You can’t climb these hills,” said the boy. “They’re way too steep. Even I couldn’t do it. And your parents wouldn’t be on this island, anyway, even if they were here. Like I said, this is one of the Lesser Islands. Nothing here but flesh-eating plants, flying fish, and jaguars.”

  “Jaguars?” asked Simon.

  “There’s hundreds of them,” the stranger said.

  “Then how come you’re here?” Maya challenged.

  The boy smiled and tapped his bow. “I’m a hunter,” he said.

  Maya looked at the glinting tips of the arrows. He had been tracking them all morning as if they had been prey. She saw a shadow flicker in the canopy high above them and she shuddered. What if the boy was right? What if there were jaguars?

  The boy seemed to make a decision. “Look,” he said. “If your parents are here, they’re most likely on the main island, Greater Tamarind. I can take you there.”

  “But we can’t just leave our boat,” said Maya.

  “It will be safe where it is,” said the stranger. “The vines will hide it. And even if you could cut them free, if you try sailing around the island the pirates will get you. There are fleets sailing around the coast all the time. It was just luck that you didn’t run into one on your way in. You wouldn’t be so lucky again.”

  “Pirates?” asked Simon, his eyes shining.

  “Yup,” said the stranger. “The waters around here are teeming with them. Because of the war.”

  “What war?” asked Simon.

  “The War Between North and South,” said the boy. “It’s been going on since before most people here were born.” When Maya and Simon looked at him blankly, he shook his head. “Look, you’d better stick with me. I’ll take you to Port Town. It’s the nearest town and the safest place in Tamarind. You’ll be okay there.”

  Maya hesitated. She didn’t know what to do. She believed the boy that the hills were too steep for them to climb—they were barely making any headway through the flat part of the jungle where they were now. But how could they just leave the Pamela Jane! Then again, what if he was telling the truth— what if there were pirates? She could tell that Simon wanted to go with the boy—maybe her brother was right. She took a deep breath.

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll go with you.”

  “Who are you?” asked Simon. Maya could see he was in awe of the older boy, with the camouflage paint on his face and the tattoos on his shoulders and the sharp silver arrows gleaming from his belt.

  “My name is Helix,” said the boy. “Come on.”

  “Wait,” said Simon, hurrying after him. “Don’t you want to know our names?”

  “I already do,” said the boy over his shoulder. “You’re Simon, she’s Maya, and the baby is Penny. You’re all very loud. I’ve been listening to you all afternoon. Did you think you were the only ones in this jungle?”

  Helix moved quickly, slicing a path through the tangled undergrowth, and Maya and Simon had to hurry to keep up. Maya had moved the sling from her back to her front so that she could keep a protective hand on Penny’s sleeping back while they walked. The green parrot stayed a little ahead of them, coasting from branch to branch.

  “That’s the parrot that came on our boat this morning,” said Simon. “Even before we saw land.”

  “That�
�s Seagrape,” said Helix. “She disappeared earlier. I didn’t know where she went but then she came to get me and brought me to the beach. That’s how I saw your boat coming in.”

  Maya struggled after the boys, going as quickly as she could with Penny. Helix and Simon kept up a lively conversation but Maya didn’t join in. Instead she fretted. She didn’t like Helix or their situation one bit. Who knew where he was really taking them? They had no idea where they were going, not really. But Maya didn’t know what else they could do. She kept her eyes peeled for the jaguars Helix had talked about but she saw no sign of one.

  Finally Helix stopped and put his finger to his lips.

  “From here on we’re going to have to be totally quiet,” he said. “I mean it. Don’t say anything and watch where you walk. Don’t step on a twig even.”

  “Why?” whispered Simon.

  “Because in a minute we’re going to come out into a grove of banyan trees and that’s where the jaguars will be. They’ll all be napping at this hour.”

  “Then why are we going this way?” asked Maya. “Shouldn’t we be avoiding the jaguars?”

  “We can’t,” said Helix. “They’re on the shore all around here and my raft happens to be on the other side of those trees. Because of the way the currents run, this is the only point at which you can get to Greater Tamarind from the Lesser Islands. All the other currents drag you toward the Lesser Islands— that’s probably why you ended up landing here. You have to know the waters really well not to get sucked into a current. The winds are bad, too. We don’t have any choice but to go past the jaguars.”

  “Come on, Maya, we have to do what he says,” said Simon.

  Maya pressed her lips together. She didn’t say anything but she began following Helix, keeping one eye on the path in front of her so that she didn’t step on anything that might make a noise. She hoped that Penny wouldn’t wake up. When they got to the banyan trees, Maya and Simon stopped in their tracks and stared.