by Nadia Aguiar
“All right,” said Maya finally. “Just for a little while, though.”
“Yay!” cried Simon. “Come and meet everybody. This is Bongo, he’s been showing me around. Everyone else is with him.”
A smiling, black-haired boy waved to Maya, and Maya waved back. A necklace with a nutshell at the end of it rested on his neck.
“He has an older sister,” said Simon. “They live right over there, see, just a few houses away.”
Maya looked through the trees to the tree house Simon was pointing to. A girl standing in the doorway ducked quickly inside.
Maya suddenly felt free—she looked at the treetop village spreading out before her, waiting to be explored. It was amazing, and it would be so fun to be with other children. She smiled shyly and went to join them. But as soon as she stepped foot on the hanging bridge and felt it wobble beneath her, she was overwhelmed by dizziness. The earth below seemed extraordinarily far away and the spotted light through the canopy felt crawly on her skin. What was wrong with her? She used to climb the rigging of the Pamela Jane without batting an eye.
“Come on,” said Simon. “It isn’t that bad. You’ll get used to it!”
The Cloud Forest Children waved her on encouragingly. Gripping the rope railings, Maya inched forward until she was several paces out over the hanging bridge that connected Valerie’s porch with the rest of the village, but then she glanced down and her stomach felt as if it dropped to her feet and the earth heaved below her as if it were an ocean. She couldn’t go any farther—there was no way. She wouldn’t be exploring the village or playing with the other children after all. She felt bitterly disappointed.
“Go ahead,” she said to Simon through clenched teeth. “I’ll stay here.”
“Just put one foot in front of the other,” said Simon.
“Simon, go,” said Maya irritably. “It’s not going to help if you’re watching.”
“You know what Mami always tells you,” said Simon. “You’re going to miss out!”
He dodged around her and pattered across the bridge to the other side. The Cloud Forest Children waited behind her smiling, motioning her to go forward. One took a few steps out onto the bridge in front of her and tried to take her hand. Maya shook her head violently and clung to the guard rope.
Simon trotted back over the bridge toward her.
“Look,” he said. “No hands!”
“Don’t come crying to me when you fall and kill yourself,” she said.
“I can’t come crying to you if I’m killed!” he called cheerfully. He stopped and bounced up and down a few times.
“Oh, STOP,” Maya said. “You’re making it jig!” She glared at him.
Simon laughed and ran off, the small band of Cloud Forest Children following after him.
Fine, Maya thought. Just fine. That rat. He’d be lucky if a pigano didn’t eat him. He’d be lucky if Maya didn’t FEED him to a pigano, actually.
Angry with herself, Maya felt determined that she would make it across just this one bridge, then she could turn around and go back to Valerie’s. “Don’t look down,” she muttered to herself. Inching along gingerly, she made it a few feet farther before she snuck a glance down to the ground and the world began to spin. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment and waited for the feeling to pass before she started again. When she reached the end of the bridge she gasped and leaped onto a platform, hugging the tree trunk. She looked ahead through the trees and she saw the girl who she had seen before, Bongo’s sister, still watching her. Maya waved and the girl ducked back behind the door again, but then she looked back out and returned the wave. Simon and the rest of the Cloud Forest Children were nowhere in sight. A tear slid down Maya’s cheek. It was always so easy for Simon. She wiped it away quickly when she heard a bridge squeaking and looked up to see the girl approaching her. The girl walked lightly over the bridge, unafraid. She stopped at the edge of the platform and looked at Maya shyly.
“Hello,” said Maya.
Bongo’s sister’s name was Netti, and by counting on their fingers, Maya and she figured out that they were the same age. Netti was a thin girl, with dark shiny eyes like her brother’s. She had knobby knees and elbows and she wore a dress stitched together from soft leaves. She knotted together a dozen cloud orchids into a type of scarf and draped them over Maya’s shoulders. They blocked Maya’s view down to the ground, and Maya found she was able to walk across the bridges without being afraid. Netti took her to explore the village and later, when the flowers wilted and the scarf fell apart, Maya realized she had gotten used to running over the bridges and she didn’t need it anymore.
The Cloud Forest Village was vast and everyone they met on the bridges and in the huts was friendly and gentle. Emerald snakes glided down tree trunks and rainbow-colored parakeets flitted between branches. Netti told Maya the names of things in her language and Maya repeated them diligently. Maya and Netti met Simon and Bongo and the other children and they raced over bridges together and spent hours swinging from ropes between tree houses, the green jungle passing in a blur, soft plants batting their arms.
Maya discovered a lot about the village. She learned that food was abundant in the trees: juicy red berries from curling vines; lichen that looked like spinach; crowds of giant mushrooms; even a type of amber beetle that the Cloud Forest People would pluck from the bark and pop into their mouths. In soil-filled hollows in the trunks they farmed different types of nuts. The main food was the cloud orchids themselves. Most work in the village went to gathering them from the lofty heights of the canopy, then separating the petals from the stamens. The meaty stamens were fried or roasted or left raw, and served with every meal. Water was hoisted up in buckets from a stream below and carried throughout the village.
Through hand gestures Netti told Maya about the volcano, and then took her up one of the elevators to the volcano viewing platform. They rose up, up, up through the leaves, the ropes of the elevator squeaking, and then broke out of the canopy into the light. Maya found herself in the middle of a bright blue sky, a few puffy clouds skating along, miles of jungle sprawling all around them and then there, to the north, the volcano. It was green at its base and climbed up into purple-brown rock. Thin steam rose from it, like a kettle. It had been so long since she had been in fresh, dry air that Maya breathed it in deeply, feeling the sun hot on her hair.
Maya and Netti went back to check on Penny a few times, but it was not until dusk that Maya returned for the night. Penny’s rash was far better and Valerie was feeding her when Maya ran back across the bridge, out of breath and happy. It felt like such a long time since she had had a carefree afternoon!
They stayed in the Cloud Forest Village for the next few days, while they waited to make sure that Penny’s rash wasn’t going to worsen, and Maya escaped happily each morning to run and climb and play with Netti and the other children. She told herself that they couldn’t do anything until they were sure that Penny was okay, and in the meantime, why shouldn’t she be out with her new friends? After all, when had she really ever had a friend before? It wasn’t fair that she had to be responsible for her siblings all the time, and for getting them all back to their parents. She knew that Penny was safe with Valerie, so when her worries intruded, Maya pushed them out of her mind as forcefully as she could. She would grab onto a vine and go hurtling through the air or scamper on ropes to the very tops of the trees where the orchid pickers worked, and by the time she reached the top, she would be so out of breath that the only thing in her mind was the sound of her pounding heart.
The one threat to Maya’s enjoyment of those days was Valerie. Maya didn’t like her very much. When Maya and Simon returned for meals, Valerie chattered to them about things they must beware of in the jungle: poisonous plants, piganos, soldiers, and, most dangerous of all, the Child Stealer. Valerie would usually wait until dusk to talk about the Child Stealer, as if she wanted to make Maya and Simon as scared as possible. Her face would pale and she would drop her voice
to a whisper, as if she feared being overheard.
“They call her the Lady Who Rides the Jaguar,” she’d whisper. “She kidnaps children who stray too far and she makes them her slaves.”
But it was hard, with food in their stomachs and a safe place to sleep, and the promise of another day of swinging from vines and journeying deeper into the wondrous cloud forest, for Maya and Simon to feel much fear. They felt safer here than they ever had in Tamarind. The logbook lay untouched in Simon’s backpack and they did not think beyond their days in the trees. After Valerie would go to bed, Maya would wait until the jungle fireflies came out and then she’d catch as many of them as she could in a large orchid she had plucked earlier. When the rest of the fireflies moved on into the jungle, she would kneel at the edge of the porch with the ones she had cupped in the flower, their electric bodies glowing through the translucent petals. She would wave the flower back and forth until, from several tree houses away, she would see an answering light from Netti’s house. They would communicate in long and short flashes of light, a complicated sequence of Morse code that meant nothing except that they would see each other in the morning. After a while they would tire and release the petals. The fireflies would lift up and hover like tiny sparks before dispersing and fading singly off into the night.
Maya was returning to Valerie’s one evening when she heard a sharp, insistent birdcall and became aware that something was happening across the Cloud Forest Village. People were reeling in the last of the orchid baskets and dashing into their homes. As she watched, they tossed what looked like sheets of leaves, stitched together, out of their windows, camouflaging their houses. It was as if the village was vanishing before her very eyes. Just then Maya felt the bridge she was on begin to shake and Simon, Bongo, and a couple of other children appeared.
“Run, Maya,” Simon whispered. “Back to Valerie’s! I don’t know what’s going on but someone’s coming!”
The birdcall still sounding, Simon grabbed her hand and they ran over the last part of the bridge into the Tétines’ tree house. Pascal was throwing the sheets of leaves out the windows, and Valerie was sitting in the middle of the floor in the house, rocking Penny back and forth and trying to stop her crying. She looked at Maya in relief when she came in and handed the baby up to her.
“Please,” she whispered imploringly, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. “You must make her to be quiet!”
Maya held Penny close to her and murmured in her ear until Penny stopped crying.
Pascal shut the door of the house and they all sat down in the semidarkness. The piercing cry of the warning birdcall ended and the Cloud Forest Village fell silent. Maya was eye level with a crack in the wall and from it she looked out over the village, except that it was as if there had never been a village there. The rope ladders and suspension bridges had all been taken in, and the houses were invisible through shaggy masses of leaves. Then from the earth below, Maya heard the sound of feet approaching. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled. It wasn’t just one pair of feet, it was many. And they sounded like they were in boots.
Pascal sat in the dimness, looking angry as usual, and Valerie’s cheeks were pale. Bongo and his friends sat silently, but Bongo smiled reassuringly at Maya when she looked at him. The footsteps were getting closer. Simon tapped Maya’s shoulder and pointed to a knot in the floor, through which they could see down to a small area of the ground below. As they watched, soldiers in uniform passed below. Maya kept absolutely silent. The soldiers wore different uniforms than those worn by the soldiers who had ambushed the barge. Their uniforms were olive green, not black, and even from up high Maya could tell that the fabric was frayed and patched and caked with dirt. They had rifles slung over their shoulders, the muzzles pointing unknowingly up into the treetops. They weren’t making a great effort to be quiet, so they must have felt quite safe. They seemed tired. One picked up a fallen cloud orchid and twirled it between his fingers before dropping it, where it was crushed underfoot by soldiers marching behind him.
Maya glanced at Penny, who was looking watchfully at everyone around her. Thank goodness she was quiet now, Maya thought. She looked back down through the knot in the floor, but there were no more soldiers passing beneath. The footsteps seemed to be getting fainter. Swishing leaves and cracking twigs could be heard in the distance. Everyone in the tree houses stayed where they were for some time after the soldiers could no longer be heard.
“It was just soldiers,” said Valerie, brushing her hair back with a trembling hand. “At least it was not her.”
The Cloud Forest Village was just beginning to stir again. People were slowly opening their doors and coming out onto their porches. Valerie took Penny from Maya, and Maya went outside. The sheets of leaves were withdrawn into the windows and the bridges were hung between the trunks again. The climbing ropes were tossed back down and the baskets began squeaking on their pulleys back up into the lofty heights of the canopy. Maya ventured out onto the porch, the others following after her, when suddenly the warning birdcall pierced the air again. Maya turned in time to see Valerie grab all the children she could reach and pull them back into the tree house. Maya crouched down and froze, her heart hammering in fear.
In a few moments, without moving her head, she lowered her gaze to the jungle floor and then she saw, right below her, the largest jaguar she had ever seen. Sitting on the jaguar was a cloaked female figure whose face was hidden. The jungle all around had fallen deathly silent. Maya had never heard it like that before. The frogs and the crickets and all of the myriad chirping, whistling, whirring, buzzing, singing insects were silent. The woman held a lamp in front of her, lit by a strange white stone. Maya felt that the figure below must be able to hear her heart beating. She looked back to the tree house and met Valerie’s gaze. Valerie’s face was pale as a ghost’s and her eyes were dark with fear.
Maya looked back down and when she did she saw that the figure on the jaguar was looking up now, directly at her, but a clump of leaves hid most of her face and all that Maya could see was a smile, a woman’s smile, with curved lips, and sharp, straight teeth. Maya stopped breathing. Had the woman seen her? And then the woman lowered her head and the cloak hid her once again. The jaguar began moving and in seconds Maya could neither see the spotted orange fur of the immense creature nor hear the tread of its giant padded feet. The cat and the woman were gone.
Maya couldn’t move. Still crouching, her legs were turning numb. Finally, she stumbled back to the door of Valerie’s tree house.
“Who was that?” Simon asked Valerie.
Valerie brushed her hair back, her hand still trembling. Her voice shook as she spoke.
“The Lady Who Rides the Jaguar,” she whispered. “She was looking for a child to steal.”
“Why doesn’t somebody stop her?” Simon asked, a quiver coming into his voice. “Make her go away?”
“You cannot stop evil,” Valerie whispered. “You never can. You just have to hide from it so it does not get you!”
Simon shifted closer to Maya. But Maya was frightened, too.
“You must be very careful now, Simon, Maya,” said Valerie, her face pale but her eyes frighteningly bright. “She will come back!”
Simon had shrunk into a little ball.
“She will come back until she has taken a child,” said Valerie. “She will—”
“Stop!” Maya cried. “Stop telling us these things! You’re just scaring us!”
“Children must be scared!” said Valerie, her cheeks flushing. “It is the only way to keep them safe! You must be afraid of everything, children! Everything in the world wants to hurt you! And enfants, you are so precious! Children are so precious. You must be kept safe!”
Maya put her arm around Simon and she hugged Penny close to her with her other arm. I will keep them safe, she thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Very Sad Event * Simon Wants to Stay *
The Big Dark
Maya’s frightening
glimpse of the Child Stealer jolted her. She realized that she had let time slip past, and she regretted that they had lost many valuable days in the search for their parents. Penny was healthy again and they could move on. But even as Maya was deciding this, something terrible happened. The morning after the Child Stealer had been seen, while Maya and Simon were having breakfast, commotion broke out in the village. Valerie dashed outside and stood at the railing of the deck.
“What is it?” asked Simon. “What happened?”
Valerie listened to the shouts from the trees and then she bowed her head sorrowfully.
“The Child Stealer,” she said. “She returned. Two children have been taken.”
Cloud Forest Men, armed with bows and arrows, swung down on the ropes and jumped onto the floor of the jungle. They split into different groups and took off running in all directions. Whistles and birdcalls passed among the tree houses and echoed across the jungle.
“Who was taken?” Maya asked. “Which children?”
Valerie paused. “I am sorry,” she said. “It was Bongo. And Netti. They think that Bongo was taken first, and Netti found out and she went after him.”
Maya felt something catch in her heart. Netti! Her friend! Her first friend. And Bongo! Sweet little Bongo! With his shiny black hair and twinkling eyes.
“Will they get them back?” she asked hoarsely.
Valerie lowered her gaze.
Simon looked shocked.
“That’s why you children mustn’t stray,” said Valerie, wiping her eyes. “It’s very bad out there. I have told you,” she added, looking sternly at Maya.
The sky darkened then and the light in the jungle dimmed. Rain began, rustling on the thatched roofs. Tiny ferns growing from the trunk of the tree trembled in the drizzle. A cockatoo sitting on a nearby branch ducked its head into its chest to stay dry. Then from the houses drumming began. The drums were made with the hide of piganos, stretched across hollowed-out tree stumps. They beat in rhythm, deeply and loudly through the rain. If Netti and Bongo were out there, if there was even the slimmest chance that they had escaped from the Child Stealer and were wandering lost in the jungle, the booming drums would guide them home. No one in the village believed they were still out there, but the drums beat on, anyway.