by Nadia Aguiar
Maya kept her eyes out for Isabella, but never saw her. Perhaps she was back in Maracairol by now, sleeping for a few hours, worn out from her long march. But, thinking about it, Maya doubted that Isabella would be sleeping at a time like this. Maya felt as though she herself could sleep for a hundred years and wake up still in need of a nap. Somehow having her parents there again made her realize how tired she was. But she pushed aside all thoughts of weariness and walked on through the countryside and the towns.
Maya had thought that once they found their parents, everything would suddenly be okay. But it wasn’t, and she felt a new kind of fear and despair creeping over her. She was terrified that her father wasn’t going to get better. And what if they couldn’t find their way back home again? What if they were in Tamarind for the rest of their lives? Although she was with five other people, Maya did not feel safe. Around every bend in the road she expected to see Evondra astride the great jaguar, or Lorco and Senor Tecumbo coming for them, or a band of pirates chasing them with knives flashing in the sun. It didn’t matter that she had watched Evondra drown in the flood, or that Senor Tecumbo and Lorco and Port Town were far away on the other end of the island, or that the pirates had all been killed in the maelstrom. Maya felt sure that danger could be anywhere at anytime, and she jumped every time she heard a lizard rustling in the undergrowth. Her fear was so great that whenever there was a break in the trees and she had a view of the sea, in her mind’s eye she could see the fleets approaching, chasing them down. But no, a few steps farther on, the path always revealed that what she had been seeing was just the shimmer of the sun on the water. There were no boats in sight. Miserably, Maya sank deeper into her fear, and she couldn’t tell anyone. She felt like she alone was in a cold shadow. Helix looked at her from time to time, and once he walked next to her on the path and put his hand on her shoulder, but Maya barely felt it.
The road narrowed to a single, overgrown track that climbed a hill. Simon consulted the map.
“The Four Palms should be in the valley on the other side of this hill,” he said.
A vast field of tall grass rippled like a slow green ocean whenever a breeze rolled across it. At the top of the hill they set the legs of the cart down gently and stood up to catch their breath. Maya looked out hopefully, scanning the landscape for the Four Palms, but all that met the eye was a broad, low valley, undulating to another ridge far in the distance.
“There’s nothing here,” she cried in dismay. “Nothing at all!”
They gazed out before them, but there was indeed nothing in sight except for the tall green grass and the shimmering blue sky.
“We’ve come all this way for nothing,” Maya said, unable to help herself.
“No,” said Simon. “The Four Palms must be right near here. We’ve followed the map exactly.”
Helix scanned the landscape, puzzled. “Maybe that’s the problem,” he said. “It’s only a rough map. There’s no way to tell exactly where the Four Palms would be. We could be a few miles off.”
“Let’s cross the valley and look out from the next ridge,” said the children’s mother. “Maybe the Four Palms are in the next valley.”
They all looked toward the ridge in the distance. The road had gotten more and more overgrown and where they were, it had petered out almost altogether. They had been pushing the cart with their father through the tall grass, which had slowed their progress considerably.
“How about if a couple of us go ahead and see what’s there?” Helix asked.
“That’s a good idea,” said Simon. “I’ll go with you. The girls can stay here with Papi.”
Maya closed her eyes and waited, listening to the soft hum of insects in the grass. When she opened them again sometime later, Simon and Helix had reappeared. Maya knew almost at once that if they had seen the Four Palms they would have been walking faster. By this point Simon probably even would have broken out in a run. But instead his shoulders were stooped. Maya didn’t need to hear what they said next to know they were not in luck.
“It’s just rocks and hills over the ridge for miles and miles,” said Helix. “There’re no palms at all.”
The children’s mother stood up and shaded her eyes and looked out across the valley again, lines of worry crowding her eyes.
“But this has to be the right valley,” said Simon. He took out the logbook again and laid it on the ground and pored over the map.
“The map might be right about the valley and all the other things,” said Maya. “But maybe Four Palms just doesn’t exist. Maybe it really is only a myth.”
Bitterly disappointed, she walked a few steps away and looked out over the valley again. The tall green grass rustled in the wind and made a lonely sound. She sat down and closed her eyes.
“We have to think about what to do now,” she heard her mother saying.
Maya didn’t want to think of what to do now. Please, she whispered to the lonely valley and the vast sky. Please just let something work out.
Maya had been sitting there for a few minutes when she heard the flapping of wings and heard a bird squawk. Suddenly a sharp beak pulled at a strand of her hair. She jumped up in a hurry. “Ouch,” she said. Her eyes widened. There on the ground was an emerald-green parrot strutting around indignantly.
“SEAGRAPE!” Maya cried. “Helix, it’s Seagrape! Look!”
The reunion was joyful. Helix ran over and Seagrape flew up to his shoulder, making a cracking sound with her beak. Speechless, Helix rubbed her under the chin. Maya and Simon were thrilled to see her, too, and they all reached in to pet her.
“Crrrrack!” said Seagrape.
The parrot had lost some feathers but she was otherwise unharmed. The children figured that she must have been stunned in the avalanche but had somehow escaped.
“She must have been flying around trying to find you all this time,” said Simon.
Maya felt hopeful again—perhaps finding Seagrape was a good sign. After a while Seagrape sat contentedly on Helix’s shoulder, pulling at bits of his hair with her beak, and they all turned their attention again to figuring out what to do next. A strong gust of wind swept up and flattened the grass for a moment. Seagrape took flight then, and soared down into the valley. Maya suddenly remembered the sensation of being on the Pamela Jane at sea when a strong wind would fill the sails and drive them forward through the water. The rustling of the grass sounded like the ocean to her.
Broad green wings outstretched, Seagrape flew lower, wheeling in a broad arc across the valley. Maya followed the bird with her eyes. She took a sharp breath when she saw Seagrape turn in the air, wings curved, talons thrust forward for landing, and then stop in midair. But there was nothing there. Maya couldn’t understand it. Seagrape was only a hundred yards away from where Maya stood, suspended about twenty feet off the ground. The sight of her defied all logic.
Hearing Maya shout, the others looked up and saw what she was looking at.
Seagrape lifted one leg to scratch behind her ear. She lowered her leg back down, ruffled her feathers, looked in their direction, and said, “Rrrraaaack!”
“What the—!” cried Helix.
Then Maya knew.
“She’s found them!” she cried. “Hurry, she’s found them!”
Maya began charging through the grass toward the parrot.
Shocked, the others waited for a moment and then followed her.
Maya pushed the grass aside with her hands—it grew taller than her head—and ran until she struck something hard.
“Ouch!” she cried, jumping back and rubbing her forehead. She reached out and felt around in the air and sure enough, there it was, the woody trunk of a palm tree. Invisible, but there, anyway! Maya laughed in delight and hugged it. Then, slower this time, she walked around, arms outstretched, until she had found all four trunks of the Four Palms.
The others had reached her then. Helix rested the legs of the cart on the ground.
“I don’t believe it,” he said, lookin
g up at Seagrape in amazement.
“They do exist!” cried Maya, laughing. “Rodrigo was right! Seagrape, you’re our hero!”
The children and their mother and Helix looked up at the sky. They could hear the palm fronds rustling now, a sound distinct from the rustling of the breeze through the grass. Although the palms could not be seen, the light beneath them was green and golden and played in dappled shadows over their upturned faces. Thank you, valley, Maya thought, smiling and feeling the sun on her face.
After that, it did not take long to find the entrance to the cave, which was between some large rocks concealed by the tall grass. They stood outside it and listened to the mumble of an underground stream echoing inside the chamber.
Maya watched Helix as he went to help her father to his feet. Helix wasn’t even part of their family, but he had come so far with them.
With a last glance at the bright day, Maya went first down into the darkness. The others followed. Maya’s mother held Penny in the sling and slid down to the bottom of the slope, where a gently foaming stream flowed past. On the other side of the stream was the pale round shine of the pool. That was where they had to be. Maya realized with surprise that the pool itself appeared to be lighting up the cavern with a faint blue glow. The children’s father had turned his ear to the sound of the water and was waiting.
Maya and Simon and Helix helped the children’s father across the stream while their mother waited with Penny on the other bank.
The pool lay there like a turquoise jewel, a fine mist rolling over its surface. The three children half dragged and half carried the children’s father to its edge.
There was a set of natural steps in the rocks, and Helix went carefully down them, letting the water lift the children’s father from his arms. Maya knelt to look down into the water and gasped.
The pool was tiny—only three or four people could have fit in it without bumping into one another, but it was extraordinarily deep. Maya had never seen to such a depth before. Usually even if the water in the sea was crystal clear, you could only look so far down before it became opaque. But here, through some trick of the water or light, you could see for miles down the sheer stone walls, and there was still no end in sight. Maya noticed then that the peculiar glow in the water seemed familiar, and then she realized that the walls of the pool were not stone, but ophalla. It was the ophalla that emitted its own radiance and lit the water. It was quite magnificent.
Her father was suspended in the middle of the pool and as Maya watched, the water seemed to be growing brighter. Though the mists made it hard to tell, Maya thought that his skin was glowing. The salt burns were vanishing before her very eyes. His form was changing from that of a stooped, withered old man and he was regaining his strength. She glanced at the others and saw that they had seen it, too. Was the ophalla doing this?
As they watched, the mist rising from the pool thickened and began to make the air white and eerie. The surface of the water began to bubble. The ophalla cast an intense blue radiance. Maya began to wonder if they should get their father out of the water. He was disappearing into the mist. Helix grabbed him and guided him to the side and the children lifted him out and pulled him away from the pool. They set him down gently.
“Papi,” Maya shouted over the rushing of the stream, which suddenly seemed to be flowing faster. “Papi, can you hear me?”
But he couldn’t. He seemed, in fact, to be asleep.
Up close, all of him looked healthier. His chest rose and fell with each breath. But the children couldn’t wake him. The fog was very thick over the pool now and was spreading. It had nearly reached them. It had a peculiar, metallic smell. Maya wanted to get out of the cave and back into the fresh air.
Suddenly, getting back across the stream was looking much harder than it had been coming the other way. The white mist that had been rising in the air over the pool got too heavy and collapsed on itself and rolled across toward the children. The light from the pool grew brighter and brighter, and the white fog was dazzling.
They got to the stream’s edge and started making their way across it. A dull roar had started—it sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep inside the earth. They scrambled as fast as they could, half swimming, half running through the water.
“Hurry!” Helix urged.
But before they could reach the other side, the roar grew suddenly terrifyingly loud. Maya looked over her shoulder to see a geyser shoot out from the ophalla pool. The water filled the cave, rushing toward the children. Maya felt herself being lifted up—her feet could no longer touch the streambed! Though they tried desperately to hang on to one another, the force of the water wrenched them apart. Maya caught a final glimpse of her mother’s face just before another wall of water struck and then she was hurtling into the dark tunnel.
CHAPTER FIFTY
The End?
Maya held on to her father for as long as she could before the water tore him away. She felt the current tugging at her feet and she was sucked underwater. Though she struggled, she couldn’t fight her way back to the surface. Her lungs burned and felt as if they would explode. The water bore her on and then it lifted her and with a few kicks she burst to the surface, gasping. Her wet hair was pasted over her eyes, but she could just make out a cave with high ceilings, like a cathedral, and a tiny pinprick of daylight like stars far above them. She heard someone gasp beside her, but as she tried to turn to see who it was, the current suddenly swept her along and she was in darkness again, going dizzyingly fast. She felt one of the other’s legs bash against her own as he slipped past her, but though she reached for whoever it was, she only grasped the frothy bubbles on the surface of the water. She called for everyone, and for a while she heard shouts echoing around her—some of them sounded like they were far ahead of her, some behind—but the cave walls were slick and she couldn’t grab on to anything to stop herself, nor swim against the current, and after a while she didn’t hear them anymore. It had all gone horribly wrong. This was not how it was supposed to be. She had lost everyone. Even had her father been conscious, he was too weak for this current. Simon was too small to struggle against it. What had her mother and Penny done when they had seen the river sweep the others away? And where was Helix?
Maya started crying at one point, but when her head slipped under and she got water up her nose she stopped and allowed herself to turn numb. Her arms and legs felt frozen. In the darkness, without Simon and Penny to take care of, she felt her will begin to slip away. She rode like a rag doll on the surface of the water, as the river sped her along, dragging her legs this way and that. Sometimes her ankles knocked against the cave walls, but the coldness dulled the pain. It had all been useless: the morning after the storm when she and Simon had decided to sail the Pamela Jane, discovering Greater Tamarind, meeting everyone they had met there, finding Simon and Penny after they had been separated, being reunited with their mother, carrying the note that had helped begin the Peace March, escaping from the pirates, rescuing their father—that had been worst of all. To see her dear father nearly blind and deaf, his hair turned white and his body ravaged and frail, all because he had tried to save them. What had been the point of any of it? Maya’s heart was broken; she felt it aching inside her chest.
Then she heard something deep down in her, muffled through her black thoughts. Swim, the voice said. Just swim. Maya put her head above water and gulped in a breath of air before she put her head back down and began to kick furiously. She went along like this for a stretch, then the river that had seemed to be carrying her deeper into the earth suddenly lifted. The walls widened and after a few turns, she could smell salt in the air. Gradually the tunnel lightened and the top of the water turned white with surf. All of a sudden she was shot out into the daylight. The unexpected brightness blinded her for a moment, and when she opened her eyes and turned around, she could see the receding black mouth of the cave in the base of a steep green cliff. The current was carrying her away from it and she
saw she was moving parallel to a strip of white beach with stooped palms. How beautiful, she thought. Without thinking further, she began to swim diagonally to the shore.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
On the Sea Again * Swapping Stories * Lingering
Mysteries * A. Well-Known Island * “Life should
always be an adventure”
As she drew closer to the beach, Maya saw a person standing there. With amazement she realized that it was her father. His back was straight and strong, his eyes were bright, but his hair was still white. It was long and streamed behind him.
He strode into the water and lifted her and carried her onto the sand. She clung to him.
“It’s all right, Maya Maginot,” he said as he hugged her. “I’m back now.”
Maya closed her eyes and clung to him, hardly able to believe he was real.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” her father said. “You two are the last ones.”
Then behind her she heard splashing and turned to see Helix swimming to the shore.
“Helix!” she cried.
Then Maya saw the rest of her family, higher up on the shore. Simon was running down to meet her, feet silent in the sand, her mother and Penny following behind him. Simon hurled himself at her, nearly knocking her over, and then the family embraced. They were all there—Maya, Simon, Penny, their mother and father—and their father was seeing them and talking to them and his arm around Maya’s shoulders was healthy and strong. Maya’s heart was bursting. She thought she had never felt so happy in all her life as she did in that moment. The sea, the shore, the loamy gloom of the jungle above the beach, and the cloudless sweep of sky all seemed to fade away and there was nothing but the warm cocoon of her family, safe and together.