by Nadia Aguiar
Before Maya knew it, tears were spilling down Simon’s cheeks and he had begun to sob. It distressed her to see him this way, and she put her arm around him.
“It’s all right, Simon,” she said. “They’ll find them and bring them back.”
Inside the house, the vine chair squeaked as Valerie rocked back and forth, holding Penny close and singing softly.
The drumming never ceased, even as the morning turned into afternoon, and afternoon to evening, and evening to darkest night. When a drummer grew exhausted, another came to take his or her place, and the villagers kept the drums beating throughout the night. They kept them beating until evening of the second day, when one of the search parties returned with the nutshell necklace that had belonged to Bongo, which they had found in the mud half a day’s walk from the village. There was no sign of Netti. Weary and defeated, the searchers climbed to the treetops. People came out to watch them return, and the drummers lowered their heads sorrowfully and put their instruments down. The village was quiet except for the sound of weeping from the home of Netti and Bongo’s family.
Maya woke up the next morning feeling miserable. Her friends were gone. All joy had left life in the Cloud Forest Village. Children were kept inside the tree houses, and people moved somberly about their tasks. Now that there was no more running around playing and exploring the leafy green heights of the village, Maya realized how attached Valerie had become to Penny. Valerie tried to take Penny away from her a few times and when Maya refused, Valerie sulked. It made Maya furious—just because Valerie didn’t have any children of her own didn’t mean that she could have Penny. She wasn’t Penny’s mother, and she didn’t know how to take better care of her than Maya! No, Penny belonged to Maya and Simon until they found their parents again.
Maya knew they had to leave. She just wanted to make sure that the Child Stealer was long gone before they set out. But things between Valerie and Maya were growing tenser. They quarreled one morning and Valerie finally left in a huff to gather food, leaving the children behind. Pascal was not around and as soon as Valerie was gone, Maya stormed into the tree house to get the logbook. She wanted to consult the map so that she could plan their escape, but she couldn’t find it in Simon’s backpack or anywhere else. Simon was sitting on the porch, staring out across the village. Since Bongo had disappeared, he hadn’t ventured far from Valerie and Pascal’s tree house. He absently stroked Seagrape’s green feathers on the necklace Helix had given him, and Maya had to repeat his name several times before he heard her.
“Simon,” she asked. “Where’s the logbook?”
“Pascal has it,” he said.
“Pascal?”
“He wanted to see it, so I gave it to him.”
Feeling suddenly suspicious, Maya stood up and went inside. Neither Pascal nor Valerie was there, but she felt weird peering into Pascal’s study, looking at all his things. She saw the logbook at the end of his table and went to get it. It was opened to a fresh page, which Pascal had already half covered with notes about the volcano. Why on earth was he recording his notes in their logbook? One of his own notebooks was lying on the table next to the logbook and Maya opened it gingerly. What she saw made her gasp.
She turned a few more pages quickly and her mouth dropped open. Every single millimeter of each page had been written on, so many times over that it was impossible to read anything he had written, or to make any sense of it at all. Maya flipped through the rest of the book and every page was solidly blackened with ink. But this was what Pascal sat working on every single day! Was there no point to it at all? Fearful of what she would find, she closed the notebook and went to the rest of Pascal’s notebooks, which were stacked along a bench against the wall. Nervously she opened the first one. Then another. And another. They were all the same. Pascal had written over his own writing so many times that the pages were just inky darkness. He must have run out of paper years, perhaps decades, ago and that was why he had asked to see the logbook.
Maya felt a cold fear spreading through her. She knew then that if they didn’t leave soon they might never leave. With each day that passed, they would be less and less likely to go, until they had become like Valerie, kept prisoner by their fear, forever unable to reach what was most important to them. Well, Maya wouldn’t allow it.
Hands shaking a little, she turned to Rodrigo’s map. She judged that they had a two-or three-day hike ahead of them before they could reach the river again. Valerie had told them that once the Child Stealer had struck, she wouldn’t return to the same place for a long time, so with luck the children would not run into her. Piganos were a concern but they would move quickly and keep their ears open and if they heard the beasts charging they would climb the nearest tree as fast as they could. They had become quite adept tree climbers during their time in the Cloud Forest Village and she was sure that they could make their way swiftly from the ground into the safety of high branches. The same went if they heard any soldiers coming. No matter what happened to them in the jungle, they had to try to find their parents. What if Mami and Papi were looking for them this very minute? They would leave at once. She had to tell Simon.
Maya jumped, startled, when Valerie appeared in the doorway. She must have left something behind and returned to get it.
“What are you do?” she asked in a high voice.
“Pascal borrowed our logbook,” Maya said, forcing herself to sound cheerful. “I’m just taking it back. I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us, but I’m packing up our things now because we’re leaving.”
Heart hammering, Maya took the logbook back outside onto the porch and put it in Simon’s backpack. Valerie followed her out.
“Maya,” she said. “Stay.”
“We can’t,” said Maya. “We have to find our parents.”
“I must implore you,” said Valerie. “Do not go into the jungle. Maya, you are just a young girl, an enfant! You cannot take care of your brother and sister. Stay here with me and I will take care of you.”
“No!” Maya shouted. “We already have a family! We already have parents!”
Valerie looked at her sadly.
Maya turned to Simon. He had been sitting with his legs dangling between the bars of the porch but now he looked up at them for the first time.
“I like living in a tree house,” he whispered softly. “Maybe we should stay.”
Valerie watched Maya carefully. “Your parents, you must let them go, Maya,” she said. “They were lost in the storm. You must allow yourself to forget. Be happy you are here, where you are safe. Forget before, forget other things. You may stay with us, with Pascal and I. We have talked. One day, when you are older, we will build you your own houses in the trees. The Cloud Forest People will be your family. You’ll be happy, you’ll see.”
Maya listened in horror. Forget the Pamela Jane, forget Granny Pearl in Bermuda, forget Mami and Papi, forget their lives? Never! She would not forget and she would not let her brother and sister forget either. She would not let them be like Dr. Limmermor and Rodrigo and Valerie Volcano and all the other people on Greater Tamarind who had let themselves forget. They had stayed there too long already.
Simon had been staring down at the ground below. Now he sat up, absently plucking a leaf and twirling it between his fingers and turned to Valerie.
“Can I have a house very high up, high enough to see the stars through the trees at night? With a rope swing all the way to the ground?”
Valerie smiled. “Of course, mon cherie. Anything you want for your house. After all, it will be yours.”
“I want to talk to my brother,” Maya told Valerie coldly. “Alone.”
Valerie looked at her sadly but stood up, brushing her hands off on her dress.
“You talk,” she said as she got up to leave. “You take some time to think about what is best, Maya. Best for Simon and Penny, and best for you, too, even if you can’t see it now, petite Maya.”
A hard, heavy silence sat be
tween Maya and Simon. Around them, vines dripped with orchids and the subtle, dizzying perfume drifted through the canopy.
“We have to leave,” she said in a low voice. “Even if it’s dangerous. It would be worse to stay here—stuck here, like Valerie, because we were too afraid to ever try.”
Simon wrapped his arms around his knees. He turned his head away from Maya and put his cheek on his knees and did not answer her.
She opened the logbook and turned to the map. She pointed to where they were and traced her finger on a path through the jungle, skirting the volcano and farther on, the abandoned ophalla mines, and ending back at the Nallanda River.
“We’ll go east until we reach the river again,” she said. “Then we’ll build a raft and take the river to Port Town.”
“And what happens when we get there?” Simon asked, suddenly loud. He glared at her bitterly. The force of his anger surprised Maya. “There’s nowhere here where we can get help, not really—everyone’s told us that.”
Maya faltered. What if he was right? What if help was never going to be found, and going into the jungle was just taking them into great danger? A stubborn blankness descended over Simon’s face, making it impossible for Maya to read what he was thinking. She wavered for a moment but then she knew that what ever lay ahead, they had to go meet it. There was nothing for them in the Cloud Forest Village.
“Simon,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “We can’t just stay. What about our parents? You want to be with Valerie instead of Mami?”
Simon put his chin back down on his knees and looked at the deck.
Hot tears sprang to Maya’s eyes. She shook her head.
“They’re gone, Maya,” Simon whispered. “You know they are. It was a big storm.”
Maya stared at him, shocked. She felt sick. She pinched her arm, hard, so she wouldn’t burst into tears. Simon had always been the optimist about everything, but ever since Bongo and Netti had disappeared, he hadn’t been himself. Maya could hardly bear to see him this way.
“We don’t know that!” she said.
They sat there in silence, Simon still turned away.
“Fine,” said Maya finally, getting to her feet. There was a horrible lump in her throat. “You stay here. I’m leaving tomorrow, first thing in the morning. And I’m taking Penny with me.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Oh, yeah? You’ll see when you wake up tomorrow and I’m gone.”
“You should leave Penny here,” called Simon as Maya stalked off back into the tree house. “Valerie Volcano will take care of her better than you can.”
Maya didn’t look back, but her face burned at that last comment. She had taken good care of Penny. In the house she went to Valerie’s room. Penny was lying awake in her cot, watching a hummingbird hovering in the window. Maya picked her up and squeezed her close.
“I’m sorry, Penny,” she whispered. “I’m going to get you back to Mami.”
Maya had left the logbook on the porch beside Simon and when she was gone he looked down at the map, at the blue loop of the river running through endless miles of jungle, and at the volcano, smoke pouring from its mouth. He didn’t care about the map anymore. He didn’t want to think about the rest of Tamarind, or about his parents, or about anything but staying where they were, safe in the Cloud Forest Village. Maya could do what she liked. Simon would stay with Valerie, forever if he had to. But then his eye stopped in the middle of the jungle, across which, in block capitals, at a slant going up from left to right, Rodrigo had written
ABANDONED OPHALLA MINES
Suddenly Simon knew.
He grasped the logbook in both hands and stared at the map in amazement. The mute parade of sea creatures rolling softly through its pages seemed to have voices now. The creatures seemed to smile up at him, light glittering through their bodies. He had discovered their secret.
It had been staring them in the face all along. How had he not seen it before?
Just then a tremor ran through the floor beneath his feet and a deep rumbling began in the distance. The trees themselves looked like they were trembling. A thunderstorm must be approaching. Simon ran into the tree house and met Maya in the doorway, where he practically shoved the book into her hands.
“Ophalla!” he shouted. “I figured it out! It’s ophalla!”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Ophalla is what’s making the creatures in the water glow!” Simon cried.
Ophalla. Maya’s thoughts began to swirl. All at once the world began to darken and the rumbling grew louder.
“Rodrigo told us ophalla was a bluish-white stone,” said Simon. “That glowed. All the creatures Mami and Papi were finding, they have ophalla in them! It’s in the water somehow.”
Maya felt a flash of recognition. In her mind’s eye she saw the luminescent octopus again, the one her parents had culled from the sea, and the multitudes of others like it she had seen in the tide pools that night with Helix. There were the turtle eggs that glowed, too, and the jungle fireflies, and who knew what else in Tamarind? Was the same thing causing all of them to glow? Her father’s voice returned to her again from the last day in St. Alban’s. From deep in an equatorial jungle . . . What had he said after that? It was there, just out of her reach. . . . Something about a river . . . What was it? Then she remembered. It’s most likely that the mineral is being carried downriver and that’s how it’s entering the sea. . . .
“It’s coming from the abandoned ophalla mines,” said Maya, stepping forward and peering at the map. “Particles could have washed down the river into the sea around Tamarind. . . .”
“And somehow it got into the creatures in the Tamarind Sea,” said Simon. The throaty growl of the storm sounded closer now.
“Some of those animals were getting through the Blue Line into the outside ocean, our ocean,” Maya continued.
“And that’s what Mami and Papi were finding,” said Simon. “Except they didn’t know what was causing the animals to glow—that’s what they were trying to figure out. What it was and where it was from. That’s what all the notes and drawings in the logbook were about!”
“But we do know,” said Maya. She looked back at the map, at the words ABANDONED OPHALLA MINES sitting on a stretch of rocky jungle marked by Rodrigo.
“They don’t look very far from here,” she said. “Probably just a few days’ walk.”
The two children looked at each other, their faces pale. They were both thinking the same thing: If they found what their parents had been searching for, it might somehow help lead them to their parents. The possibility filled Simon with new hope. Maybe they were closer than they had imagined to filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle.
They would go to the abandoned ophalla mines.
While they had been talking, the light had dimmed further and now it was nearly dark. The children became aware that there was a frenzy of activity happening around them in the Cloud Forest Village. Simon detected the scent of ash in the air and he realized something else.
“It isn’t a storm!” he cried. “It’s the volcano!”
Maya’s heart skipped a beat.
“We have to get out of here now,” she said.
Pascal had been on the ground when the rumbling started but now he appeared on the rope ladder and stepped onto the porch. His great gray eyebrows bristled over his eyes, which shone in the sudden dusk that had descended over the jungle. He looked wild. Soft gray ash had begun to fall from the sky, trickling soundlessly down through the leaves and coating them in a fine silver film. Pascal reached his hands out, palms upward, catching the ash and rubbing it between his fingers. Then he shouted joyfully.
“The big dark! It has come!” He turned and hurried into the tree house.
A fine silt of ash was covering the surface of the jungle, turning it gray. Like a furnace, the volcano was pumping out thick black smoke that choked the sun. As the children watched, the jungle grew dimmer. It was like
the twilight before a very great storm. Across the Cloud Forest Village, people were sealing their windows and door frames with leaves and strips of bark to keep out the ash.
Valerie came running back over the footbridge to the tree house.
“Hurry, children!” she cried. “The day has come! The volcano will erupt!”
She ran into the tree house, calling for Pascal, and emerged a moment later with a small suitcase. It was so ancient that the strap broke, rotted through from the humidity, and Valerie and Pascal’s few faded possessions, kept there in preparation for this moment, spilled out onto the deck.
“No matter,” she said. “No matter, no matter. Soon there will be new things. Soon we will go back home. We will go to the coast, a boat will find us!”
Maya had never seen Valerie like this before. She was terrified and excited at the same time. Her cheeks were crimson and her eyes were luminous, as if she had a fever.
“Let me carry the baby,” she said.
“No!” said Maya, turning her body so that Valerie couldn’t reach Penny. Valerie ran back inside, chattering to Pascal. Copper instruments clattered.
“We just have to go,” said Maya, and Simon nodded.
“Wait!” called Valerie as the children began to climb down the tree. “I am coming with you. Pascal, he will follow!” She hesitated, looking down at the children, her eyes large with fear.
First Simon and then Maya—holding Penny tightly—climbed down the rope to the ground. A fine layer of ash covered the bark and the tops of the leaves and the ferns and the caps of mushrooms that grew in the hollows of the tree’s trunk. The air was thick with it. Valerie came after them, but halfway down, she froze. Her face was pale and her hands were trembling.