by Nadia Aguiar
Ophalla. Element X.
The elusive element that their parents had been searching for—they were holding it in their very hands. Maya took it and turned it over. One side was craggy and covered in mossy soil, the other half was crystal clear, like gemstone, deepening in its center into a fathomless blue-green. Tiny pockets of air, like air bubbles trapped in ice, were frozen in the middle. It was cool to the touch. Maya felt some mysterious power emanating from it. She felt as if she held something living in her hand.
“If it’s so precious, we’d better keep it out of sight,” she said. “In case anyone comes.”
Penny began to fuss then and Maya turned her attention to consoling her. Simon packed up everything but the logbook. He knew it was pretty hopeless, but it was still their most likely link to their parents. He turned the pages slowly. Some things were still unexplained, like those funny shiny squiggles in the first several pages, which Simon had first noticed when they were waiting on the riverbank for a barge to come along. He scratched at them with his nail but they remained. He discovered that Pascal had written a couple of pages of his own notes, all nearly indecipherable scientific observations about the volcano near the Cloud Forest Village. Nothing that was useful to them. The only new thing that Simon discovered was that, if he angled the book slightly in the light, he could see dozens of faintly shining fingerprints spotting the pages. He showed it to Maya and they realized that the fingerprints were his, and had come from touching the ophalla stone.
The hours dragged on fruitlessly. Boredom set in. On the opposite hillside, felled trees crashed through the undergrowth, hammers rained incessantly on wood and stone, and commands were barked in different languages. Maya and Simon thought that perhaps the Child Stealer would appear and that they would be sent to work in the mines. But nothing happened. The noise of construction droned on, the day blistered with heat, and Maya and Simon did their best to amuse Penny. They knotted the necklace with Seagrape’s feathers in it and gave it to her to play with. By the time Horatio brought them fresh water and their dinner—bowls of bland, starchy gruel—Maya felt desperate.
“Please,” she begged Horatio through the bars. “Why are we here?”
At first he refused to answer. He seemed, in fact, not to have heard her at all. He was an old man with a creased, shiny head, and eyes that seemed to have sunken deep into his face. His clothes were ragged and his feet bare, his toenails rimmed with dirt.
“Please,” Maya asked again. “Why is she keeping us here?”
Just as she thought Horatio was going to leave without saying anything, he nodded toward Penny.
“Ask her,” he said. “She knows.”
Perplexed, Maya looked down at Penny, sitting in Simon’s lap. She wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her hand. Ask Penny? What could he possibly mean? Simon was puzzled, too. He stared down at Penny and then it dawned on him.
“I don’t think he means Penny,” he whispered. “He was looking at the feathers—he means Seagrape.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Maya whispered back.
“How can we ask Seagrape—she’s a parrot! And she isn’t even here . . .”
Simon shrugged helplessly. Horatio was turning to leave.
“Wait!” Maya cried. “Don’t go! Please, why is the Child Stealer keeping us here? At least tell us her name!”
Horatio paused, his back to them.
“Evondra,” he said finally.
Evondra. It was a name that seemed to come from a dark, forgotten place. It made Maya think of the insects that seethed on the clammy undersides of rocks or strange, unseen creatures that lurked in the dark caves. She repeated it in her mind and a shiver crept over her skin. Horatio walked away.
Night had fallen and pitch blackness filled the children’s world, shrinking it, and they huddled together. Questions, thick as jungle shadows, crowded around them in the Egewa prison. What had Horatio meant when he had said to ask the parrot? Who was Evondra? Why had she been frightened of the feathers? How had Helix known to give them to the children?
Penny fell asleep and Maya took the necklace gently from her and stroked the soft, green feathers. What was their secret?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Time Passes * Night Lights *
By the Fireside
A human can never be happy in a cage of any kind.
The next few days passed in a tedious blur. Maya and Simon listened to the sounds of construction throughout the long, monotonous crawl of hours. It was hot and steamy and the insects were relentless. After she begged, Horatio brought moss so that Maya could change Penny’s diapers. She made sure that the baby was bathed properly once a day, but there was never enough water for her and Simon to wash, too. Occasionally, instead of Horatio, different children brought them their meals and, though they looked at them with bright, curious eyes, none ever dared to speak. If Maya or Simon said anything, the child dropped his or her eyes and hurried away quickly.
Maya’s thoughts returned often to what would have happened if they had gone with Helix, instead of waiting for the barge that morning. She wondered who he was, where he lived, what his life was like. She thought of how he had cautioned them repeatedly not to go into the jungle. Had he known about this place?
Occasionally the ugly red monkeys would show up and taunt them, throwing pebbles and bits of twigs and the pits of fruit into the Egewa prison. Penny was terrified of the monkeys and would always weep inconsolably, until finally Maya would cover her eyes whenever she heard them coming. Once, to their horror, the children heard sudden, bloodcurdling screaming coming from the courtyard, which stopped as suddenly as it began.
evening brought with it no relief, only new voracious insects and frightening noises of unseen predators in the undergrowth. They slept lightly and uncomfortably, rocks digging into their backs. Maya woke up one night and saw a jaguar leap fluidly down from the branches of a tree, Evondra astride its broad, muscular back, a dark form that looked like a sleeping child slung across the cat’s neck. The low orange glow of the jaguar and the silhouettes of its passengers faded into the jungle, back toward the courtyard gardens, and Maya drifted uneasily back to sleep.
They did make one heartening discovery, however. One night, from the corner of her eye, Maya saw a light flashing from a window of the ark. It was not an ordinary light, but more of a white glow. Her heart quickened—she knew that sequence of short and long flashes! She rummaged in Simon’s backpack for the ophalla stone. Cupping it in her hands, she made the same code that she had used to signal to Netti with fireflies on nights in the Cloud Forest Village. Could it possibly be Netti? She waited, holding her breath, and then from the ark came an answering sequence of light and dark—the same sequence that Netti had used to say “sleep well, and see you in the morning.” Maya’s eyes filled with tears. She was sure it was Netti, and if Netti was there, Bongo would be with her. Horrible as it was to know that their friends were the Child Stealer’s prisoners, too, it was a comfort that they were nearby. Each night after that, when Horatio had left, the Egewa prison and the ark would communicate with the light from ophalla stones, giving each other a small glimmer of cheer in an otherwise cheerless place.
Every day they were trapped in the Egewa prison was a day lost in the search for their parents. The decision to go to the ophalla mines now seemed foolish and dangerous, and Maya regretted trying to solve a mystery that didn’t seem like it would bring them any closer to her parents at all. She and Simon were sure now that their parents knew nothing about the ophalla mines.
The children barraged Horatio with questions each time they saw him, but he ignored them. Then Maya had the idea that perhaps if they could get him to like them somehow, he would be more likely to help, or at least reveal some clue that would let them find a way out of there. Simon thought it was a good idea. After he had given them dinner, Horatio had begun lighting a fire outside the Egewa prison to roast ticano nuts. So when he arrived that night, they began to tell him a
bout the Pamela Jane and about the storm that had separated them from their parents.
Horatio leaned over and stirred the fire, and the flames leaped up, but still he didn’t acknowledge them.
Maya and Simon did not give up. Each night when Horatio came, the children told stories about their life at sea. It helped to pass the time, and reminded Maya and Simon of who they were and what life beyond the prison was like.
They described friendly schools of dolphins who would travel alongside the boat for weeks, riding the waves off the bow; the bioluminescent creatures that shimmered in the water at nighttime; the swordfish, twelve feet long, that had leaped over the deck of the Pamela Jane one afternoon. In talking about it, Maya realized how deeply she loved the ocean. She believed that, though he pretended not to listen to them, Horatio enjoyed the stories, and that’s why he came back each night.
Finally, after a night spent describing the eccentric migration patterns of silver lobsters, Maya leaned as close to the bars of the prison as she dared—the sap glowed dangerously in the firelight—and in a low, pleading voice, again asked Horatio who Evondra was and why all the children were in the camp— and why she and Simon and Penny were being kept in the Egewa prison.
Horatio said nothing for a minute. Maya ground her teeth in frustration, expecting that he would snuff out the fire and leave and once again they would have learned nothing.
But then he spoke. “Why would anyone want to hear such a story?” he muttered bitterly. A stick snapped in the fire and a tiny shower of orange sparks flew up and were snuffed out in the moist air.
Maya spoke cautiously in hopes that if she wasn’t too demanding he would stay there long enough to answer her. “Please,” she whispered. “Why are we here?”
The darkness seemed to close in all around them, and the firelight flickered on Horatio’s face. He stared into the flames for a few minutes before he spoke.
“She didn’t start out this way,” he said softly. Then he took a breath and began.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Evondra’s Story * Ophalla Cities *
Dark Women * Evil in the Jungle *
Ruling the Stone
In Tamarind those who are gifted with fine voices are considered special,” Horatio told them. “In legends of long ago, it was the power of a songstress’s voice that was said to keep Tamarind safe from invaders from afar and awaken the healing powers inside ophalla.
“In ancient Tamarind, there were cities built from ophalla—one of these cities was supposed to be located here, deep in the Nero Jungle. At the heart of each city was an outdoor opera house, built to look like a magnificent shell, where a songstress would sing, summoning the power of ophalla. In time the cities were destroyed by wars or natural disasters. For hundreds of years they were gone and forgotten. People believed that all of the ophalla had been mined already—there was none left. All that remained were a few pieces in old churches and the homes of wealthy men. Here and there, you could sometimes find small fragments that had been made into jewelry and ornaments and talismans. But the ophalla cities lived on only in stories passed down through the generations.
“Then, just fifty years ago, ophalla was rediscovered in the mountains that divided North and South Tamarind. There was a mad rush for it. At that time, Tamarind was ruled by the Council of Old Families. Evondra was the last child of one of these families. She was raised in the luxury typical of the Old Families. She was born in a grand house on the top of a hill on the coast. Every window had a view to the sea. There were dozens of servants. Evondra’s mother had a beautiful voice—crystal clear—and people from the town used to walk up the hill and sit outside the gates just to hear her sing. She used to put Evondra in a cradle in the garden and sing to her. Evondra’s parents adored her. They built a small zoo right there on the grounds, and they filled it with jaguars and giant snakes and peacocks, just for her. Naturally, she became a very spoiled child. She had a brush and comb made of pearl, and a little white pony with a snakeskin saddle, and a private tutor who lived at the villa and gave her singing lessons each day. Evondra was a wicked and mischievous child. But she turned out to have a voice that surpassed even her mother’s. She could hold people spellbound with it.
“Fighting had begun in the mountains, but it had yet to reach the coast and most of Tamarind still enjoyed peace and prosperity. At first Evondra’s father had made a great profit from the ophalla trade. He even decided to rebuild one of the ancient cities, deep in the Nero Jungle, in the oldest part of Tamarind. It was to be a symbol of his family’s power and wealth, and link the ancient traditions of Tamarind with the present. At its center would be the opera house, in which his daughter would sing. If things had been allowed to proceed as they had been, Evondra would probably have grown up and become a spoiled young woman with a beautiful voice and that would have been the end of it.
“But instead . . .” Horatio paused, looking into the fire. “The war broke out. All stories become sad here.
“Evondra’s father continued with his mad plan to build the opera house in the Nero Jungle. He ordered great blocks of ophalla to be quarried to build the shell. The stage was to be made from the wood of rare trees hundreds of years old. He hired women in the towns to sew heavy red velvet curtains with tassels threaded with real gold. I could go on and on telling you about his crazy plans for his opera house. Two men died, crushed while carrying blocks of ophalla through the jungle, and others perished on the construction site. Everyone said he was crazy.
“Then a full-scale rebellion broke out in the North. The South thought they could quash the rebellion quickly, but it began to spread. Before long Tamarind was in civil war. Evondra’s father’s new ophalla city was attacked and destroyed and the ophalla was stolen and dispersed across the island. The town on the coast where Evondra’s family lived was under siege. Her mother became gravely ill. Because of the blockades, no medicine could reach her in time and she died. Evondra’s father nearly lost his mind with grief.”
The fire was ebbing and Horatio prodded it with a stick, sending up a shower of sparks, and waited until the flames, which had risen higher, settled again before he spoke.
“One night, not long after her mother died, grief-stricken, when a regiment was just outside her town, Evondra cut her hair short and put on boy’s clothes and she ran away and joined them. For a long time her father would only believe that she had been kidnapped. He hired his own men and sent them out after her. But Evondra was too clever for them and she was never caught. She became a great fighter for the South before it was even discovered that she was a girl. And when it was discovered—well, you can imagine the stir it caused. People everywhere talked about it—it was the beginning of the legend.
“But her father, poor man, was heartbroken when he finally had to admit that she had run away on her own and was not coming back. He wasn’t yet an old man but his wife had died and now without his daughter, he lost all will to live. He died during a siege. In time, as the old leaders of the North and South were slain, the war descended into pure chaos. By then Evondra had lost everything. Her family, her old life. She had killed so many already and had been witness to such carnage—you cannot see so much death and remain untouched. Something snapped in her mind. She became a mercenary—she fought for whichever side paid her more. She was a menace. She terrorized people on both coasts and she attacked traders and raided jungle settlements. Soon neither side would have anything to do with her and she became a pariah.
“But Evondra had spent so long in the jungle that she was an expert in it. It didn’t matter that both sides had orders to kill her if they caught her, she knew how to survive on her own. She could walk barefoot alone through the deepest jungle for months—and often did. She knew all the secrets of the ancient tribes. Which plants are medicinal. How to hunt, where to find freshwater. When people came after her, she disappeared deep into the heart of the Nero Jungle. When she was younger, when she had first joined the soldiers and began to see more of
life outside her family’s home, Evondra had dabbled in the Dark Arts. In those days it had been just to play pranks on the other soldiers in her regiment. But later, when she went into hiding she found one of the Dark Women.
“The Dark Women are the only ones who know the old arts, who know the secrets of ophalla. They live in hiding, far from the towns and villages. There are never more than three or four in Tamarind at a time. But Evondra found one of these women as she was dying, and she convinced her to pass down some of her secrets before she died. Through traders and soldiers, rumor reached the coast that Evondra had begun bewitching animals. People said she rode a jaguar and she kept an entourage of monkeys. They said she had returned to her father’s ophalla city and was living in the ruins.
“Who knows how the idea occurred to her? In my heart I hope that the first children she captured were an accident. Perhaps she didn’t hunt them, perhaps they were lost in the jungle and she found them and before she could do anything else she had thought of it. Children to rebuild her father’s city. Child slaves. Children make the best ophalla miners. They’re small so they can fit in tiny tunnels, and they can drag the carts on their hands and knees through even the narrowest passageways. And children are easy to control.
“After the first two children, more followed. She hunted them. Like animals. Years have passed. For years now children have been rebuilding the ancient opera house. Many have died, but she always finds more. Yes, that’s what you hear every day, the sound of the opera house being rebuilt.”
“But why?” Maya whispered. “Why rebuild it?”
“Because whoever sung the old songs in the ancient opera houses ruled the very stone that Tamarind is built on,” said Horatio. “The songstress called forth the power inside the stone. Very few know anymore what ophalla’s power truly is, but in the old legends, it is both wondrous and terrifying. Before she died, the old woman told Evondra some secret, which she has been waiting to use until the opera house is ready. It’s almost finished now, and when it is, there will be a concert and something will happen to the ophalla—I don’t know what, but it will be something terrible.”