The Lost Island of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  Maya felt the strength return to her arms and she began to paddle again, more slowly this time. The paddle splashed rhythmically and the canoe skimmed along. The jungle burbled and chirped around them. The children saw a monkey leaning down from a branch to drink from the river. Countless furry spiders scuttled to the other side of the tree trunks they passed and bright birds twitched overhead. Happily, the children were oblivious to the black snakes coiled on branches overhanging the river and the chomping piranhas circling beneath the boat, as well as the alligator that they glided right past, its two eyes like yellow lamps just inches from their elbows.

  After some time they noticed that the water was growing shallower and finally it reached a dead end. Maya looked in dismay at the jungle around them. This wasn’t on the map! She had thought they would meet the larger river again. They must have taken one of the tributaries that didn’t go all the way through the jungle. What were they going to do? They consulted the map, but there was nothing that could help them take their bearings. They were lost.

  “We’re all alone,” said Simon.

  Since they couldn’t paddle back against the current and they couldn’t go any farther in the canoe, they would have to go on foot, heading, they hoped, toward the Nallanda River on the other side of the jungle. They spent the next few hours marching deeper into the jungle, where woolly spiders huddled in the crannies of trees and even the air seemed green.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Cloud Forest Village *

  Valerie and Pascal * A Volcanologist *

  The Last French CHANSON

  The children stumbled into the village—or rather, under the village—without realizing it. They would have walked right on through, noticing nothing, but Maya paused to shift Penny’s weight in the sling and when she did, from the corner of her eye she saw a rope being drawn quickly up into a tree. She grabbed Simon and pointed above them.

  Built between the branches of an enormously tall tree was a wooden house. The house had windows and doors and a porch with a railing. Its roof was thatched with palm leaves. To Maya’s amazement, she saw another house in the next tree, and another after that. The houses were built high up in the cloud forest, the misty top layer of the jungle, and as the clouds shifted, some tree houses disappeared and others appeared. It was incredibly beautiful and Maya was speechless. A web of ropes and footbridges and ladders connected the houses. The sight was like standing on the deck of a tall ship and looking up into the rigging. People were running deftly along tightropes and bridges, and baskets were being passed back and forth along a pulley system.

  When the people in the trees saw that the three newcomers on the ground had seen them they froze. Children stood stock-still on hanging bridges, and the baskets being passed between the huts ceased moving and rested there like great birds’ nests. A murmur passed through the people in the treetops and then Maya and Simon saw a woman being lowered down to them in a chair connected to ropes from a branch high above—it was almost like the bosun’s seat on the Pamela Jane, Maya thought. When the woman reached the ground she stepped out of it and stood staring at the children.

  She was much older than their mother, but it was impossible to tell exactly what age she was. She didn’t look like the rest of the people in the trees. Her skin was lighter and she seemed bigger, though it was hard to tell since everyone else was so high up that they appeared quite small. Her eyes were pale, pale green and her lips were colorless. She wore a faded green dress, on which Maya could just make out the faintest etchings of a long-ago pattern. Her hair was almost colorless, too. She didn’t look scary, she looked worn out.

  “Hello,” Maya ventured finally.

  The woman stared at them.

  “Hello,” Maya repeated. “Can you help us?”

  A strange expression passed over the woman’s face. “Pardon you must me. You must to pardon me,” she said. “I am very rust with the old languages.”

  She seemed to be fumbling for the next thing to say. “Valerie Tétine,” she said, putting her hand to her chest. “I am her.”

  With this pronouncement, a large smile broke over her face and tears filled her eyes.

  “You must to pardon me,” she said again. “I am amazement. To you. It has been so long to see anyone here. The lookouts did not see you until you were already under the village. But give me patience. The old languages will come back at me. Who are you? Why are you here?”

  “My name is Maya, and this is my brother, Simon, and our sister, Penny,” said Maya. “We’re looking for our parents. They got swept overboard in a storm and we sailed to Tamarind.”

  Maya had been so focused on the woman that she didn’t realize that the whole camp had begun to climb down the trees on rope ladders and chairs and were now suspended at different heights through the forest watching them. A few children had come right down onto the ground and gathered in a circle around Valerie and Maya, Simon, and Penny. They all wore skirts made of soft green leaves and they had shiny black hair and dark eyes.

  “I was right,” whispered Valerie. “You are from the Outside.” She gazed at the children. “I think that you must to come with I and we can talk proper. And we must leave the ground before the bad creatures come!” Her gaze fell on Penny and stayed there for a moment. “Ah, beautiful, yes, the baby?”

  She turned to the people gathered around and spoke to them in a language the children couldn’t understand. A sympathetic whisper traveled up through the trees. A few women came forward, leaf skirts rustling, and patted the children on their heads. Then everyone began to melt back into the trees, climbing ropes and vines and standing on wooden platforms that were lifted like elevators up into the clouds.

  “Do you think they’re going to roast us?” Simon whispered to Maya.

  “Hopefully they’ll roast you first,” Maya whispered back. “It’s too bad you’re so skinny.”

  “You’re the biggest,” said Simon. “If they roast anyone first, it’ll be you. Unless they want just a little nibble, then they’ll roast Penny first.”

  Penny gurgled.

  “Enough,” Maya whispered to Simon. “Keep your wits about you.”

  “Move with me,” Valerie said. “Don’t be fright, they won’t to hurt you.”

  She started walking and the small crowd that had come down out of the tree parted. Maya and Simon and Penny followed Valerie. Other children ran behind them, talking excitedly to one another. One little girl ran up behind Simon and pinched him on the arm and ran off giggling with her friends.

  Valerie took them to the foot of the great tall tree that she had come from. She tugged on a rope and a rope ladder fell down. She began to climb and Simon and Maya, with Penny in the sling, followed her. They climbed and climbed, past plump, spotted mushrooms that grew from knots in the trunk; past giant red moths, folded into soft triangles against the bark; past lines of leaf-cutter ants marching in a column to the base of the tree, crunching loudly on leaves just inches from the children’s ears; past deep cushions of emerald moss and coiled vines and the silvery undersides of leaves; past a hollow in the tree trunk from which a round-faced owl peered out at them with yellow eyes; all the way to a wooden platform that turned out to be the porch of Valerie’s house. Valerie offered them a hand up and they stood there, looking all around them and blinking in amazement.

  Around them, stretching far into the jungle on all sides, were hundreds of tree houses, connected by ropes and ladders and footbridges. It was a whole village in the treetops. Pristine white clouds nosed their way through the village, sometimes passing right through one doorway of a house and out another. The whole village was forever vanishing and reappearing as the clouds rolled through.

  “You must to meet my husband, Pascal,” said Valerie. “Pascal!” she called, going into the house. “Ou étes vous? Pascal!”

  The children waited. There was a sound of shuffling inside. Valerie reemerged, chattering away to a tall, broad-shouldered man with steely gray hair. He was an old ma
n, but he had thick muscles in his arms and a rugged jaw. He was carrying a tiny metal instrument and when he saw the children he lifted his shaggy silver eyebrows for a moment. He questioned Valerie, who responded impatiently. Then he made a grumbling noise that Maya took to mean, “Oh, well, children are quite ordinary, even ones found wandering alone in the heart of the jungle. Now let me get back to my work.”

  Muttering in a deep gravelly voice, he went back inside and drew a curtain behind him. Alone on the porch again, Valerie smiled at the children.

  “Um,” said Maya. “Where are we?”

  “That is a very big question,” said Valerie, studying her. “Me, I don’t ask that question. But right here is where the Cloud Forest People live. Look, listen, écoutez, we all have many questions, yes? You for I, and I for you? But you must have hunger! So, how about we have some food and we get to know each the other. And we ask the questions then, when my English comes back to me better. It’s been so long since I spoke in the English, so long, so long . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and again her eyes filled with tears.

  “You enfants sit here. I’ll be back with the dinner for us. Okay, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Simon, taking off his backpack and plunking down. “Come on, Maya,” he said. “I’m tired. And we haven’t had a real meal since dinner last night.”

  Dinner last night—they had still been with Maria and Jose then. Maya felt a pang. The light was beginning to fade in the jungle. Simon was right, all they’d had to eat all day were bananas and mangoes they had picked along the way, and the cassava bread she had taken from Maria’s kitchen. She sat down, taking Penny out of the sling and laying her down on the ground on her stomach. Penny was able to lift herself up onto her hands and knees in a crouch now. She didn’t actually crawl or anything yet, she just wobbled around a bit. But still, she had only started doing that in the past few days. Maya sighed. She had to get Penny back to their mother.

  Valerie went inside to fix dinner, and the children were left alone on the deck. From there they could see the activity across the village. Realizing Maya and Simon weren’t a threat, people had gone back to doing what ever they were doing before the strangers had arrived. The treetops were bustling. There was a constant pro cession of woven baskets traveling between tree houses on a complex system of levers and pulleys. The baskets began empty and were hoisted almost out of sight in the heights of the trees and then were returned and transported from house to house, each basket brimming with a white foam of flowers, some of which trickled over the edges and drifted to the earth below, where the smallest Cloud Forest Children scurried about collecting them. A delicate, luxurious scent drifted through the trees.

  “This place is amazing,” breathed Simon. “Real tree houses! Where people live!”

  Maya could tell how awed Simon was by the treetop village and she didn’t want him getting any ideas about prolonging their time there. “We’ll stay right now and eat and we’ll ask if we can spend the night here,” she whispered. “Maybe Mami and Papi came by this way, too. We’ll find out what we can about Tamarind from Valerie—maybe she can tell us something useful. But we have to leave right away in the morning. Understand?”

  Simon ignored her and tiptoed to the window of the tree house and was peeking through a break in the curtains.

  “Come back,” Maya hissed.

  “Shhh,” said Simon. “Come look.”

  Her curiosity getting the better of her, Maya knelt beside him and peered into the Tétines’ tree house. Through the doorway to what must be the kitchen they could hear things clattering around and see the back of Valerie’s pale green dress. Another doorway opened into what looked like the bedroom, with a dried grass mat on the floor. The main room, though, the one they were looking directly into, appeared to be a type of study or office. Pascal was leaning over a table spread with all sorts of copper instruments. He held a bell-shaped instrument to his ear, listening, and he was scribbling in a notebook. Maya noticed heaps of similar notebooks stacked on the far wall. What ever Pascal was recording, he was serious about it. Just then he looked up, and Maya and Simon ducked quickly out of sight. Maya’s heart pounded. She found Pascal alarming. She and Simon went and sat down at the other end of the porch. Simon was frowning.

  “All those instruments on the table,” he whispered. “I’ve seen them before—not those exact ones, but ones like them. They’re what people used to use to study volcanoes—to tell when they were going to erupt.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “When we were in Suriname last time, Papi took me to the museum there and they had a room all about volcanoes. You didn’t come with us that day, you were in a bad mood.”

  Maya rolled her eyes.

  “Wait!” exclaimed Simon. “I just remembered something.”

  Simon opened his backpack and withdrew the logbook and turned the pages briskly until he reached Rodrigo’s map. His finger roved over the page until he found what he was looking for and then he brought it down, right next to one of Rodrigo’s tiny drawings: a triangle with what looked like smoke pouring from its top.

  “A volcano!” he said triumphantly. “Now we know where we are.”

  Maya looked eagerly at the map. She felt a great deal better knowing where they were. Now they had a chance of finding their way back to the river and on to Port Town. But a volcano? That was all they needed. Simon was frowning.

  “Something’s off,” he said. “Those instruments that Pascal has are what people used to use to study volcanoes a long, long time ago. No one uses them anymore. Now there are machines that do everything for you. So why would he be using such old things?”

  Maya didn’t know—things were weird in Tamarind. Before she could respond, Valerie came back outside, arguing over her shoulder with Pascal. She set down a pot on the deck.

  “He and his volcanoes!” she said to the children. “That’s all he does—think about his silly volcanoes, that’s how we ended to this place. He’s a, how you say it? Volcanologist? He studies the volcanoes. It was his job. That is how we come to this place in the beginning. And now I have not stepped my foot on the ground in so many years, until I see you today. I tell Pascal that the only thing that will make me leave the cloud forest—to go to the bad place out there—” She motioned vaguely to the jungle. “Is if the volcano, it, how do you say—erupts one day. It is the only thing. Until then, we stay here, where we are safe.”

  She filled bowls with the contents of the pot: a thick yellow porridge with tender meat and vegetables. Hungry, the children dug in and fell into silence, their questions put aside. Valerie gazed at them happily.

  Out over the tree house village, work seemed to be ending for the night. The baskets returning from the heights of the trees weren’t sent back up again, and people looked like they were beginning to make their ways back to their tree houses. The aroma of cooking vegetables and spices from other houses began to fill the air. Valerie’s gaze fell on Penny, who was chewing on the edge of Maya’s wooden bowl. Valerie’s eyes grew moist and luminous.

  “You are too young to take care of baby,” she said to Maya.

  “No,” said Maya firmly.

  A slight shadow of a scowl crossed Valerie’s face but then she brightened.

  “May I hold the child?” she asked. Maya hesitated for a moment but then she passed Penny to Valerie, but the baby began to cry and Maya had to take her back.

  “It is all right,” said Valerie. “She will get used to me in time.”

  In time, thought Maya, trying to hide her surprise. How long did Valerie think they would be there?

  Simon had been studying Valerie.

  “You and Pascal don’t look like the other people here,” he said.

  Valerie’s gaze softened when she turned to him.

  “Oh, mon petit,” she said. “We are not Cloud Forest People. We came here long, long ago. It is a far story. I mean it is a long story. I will tell to you, but first, I wish to hear about you
. Poor enfants—without parents!”

  Suddenly and violently, Valerie began to weep. She hid her face in her hands. Maya and Simon felt horribly uncomfortable, and they looked guiltily at the floor of the deck.

  “I am sorry,” Valerie said, sniffling. “Je suis désolée. It is emotion, you see. You must to excusez moi! You are the first people here in all this time who are not from this place.” She dabbed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “But you must finish to eat. You are hungry! Me, I am too, how do you say? I am too overcome to eat. It is the emotion, you know. I have not seen other faces than Pascal and the Cloud Forest People for so long.”

  She dabbed her eyes again and then she looked at Penny and she smiled.

  “We will have a treat,” she said. “I will play the music for you, yes?”

  She went inside and carried an old phonograph to sit in the doorway. She wound its handle and its gears made a whirring noise. She gingerly withdrew a brittle old record from a thin paper sleeve, yellow with age, and placed it carefully on the phonograph. The record began to turn and crackle like a fire just catching and then a scratchy song in French came through the shell-shaped speaker. Maya and Simon could tell that it was a very old song.

  “It is old French chanson,” Valerie said, turning up the volume on the phonograph. “The phonograph is from our boat. It belonged to my mother and I take it with me when we leave Paris. It was my gift from her. Now all the records break, though. This is the last one I have. It was the most popular song when we leave Paris. When it break, too, then, poof—all gone. No more of the old music. So I take very good care of it.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again.

  A kernel of horror began to grow icily in Maya’s stomach about Valerie and Pascal, about just how long they had been in Greater Tamarind. She remembered the mad zoologist on the beach. He had been from the Outside, too. Did no one who came from the Outside ever leave? The Outside! Maya was alarmed that she was already beginning to think of the world beyond Tamarind as the Outside World. If no one who arrived here ever left, how were she and Simon and Penny going to find their way home?