by Nadia Aguiar
‘You want me to leave now?’ asked Penny. ‘But – I’m not allowed out in the rowing-boat at night.’ She looked out at the darkness. ‘Can’t I go tomorrow instead?’
‘No,’ said Granny Pearl. ‘It has to be now or you’ll miss it.’
The darkness felt palpable, pushing like velvet through the salty white screen. A breeze carried in the troubled rumble of the surf out by the far breakers. Penny looked helplessly at her grandmother.
‘Shouldn’t we tell Mami and Papi?’ she asked.
Granny Pearl shook her head.
Penny put on her raincoat in a daze. She had grown up around the water. She knew how reckless it would be to take a small rowing-boat out alone half a mile offshore on a dark, rainy night. And in the past it had taken days of sailing to reach Tamarind – how was she going to get there in a rowing-boat? It couldn’t be done.
‘What am I supposed to do in Tamarind?’ she asked weakly.
‘You’ll know when you get there,’ said Granny Pearl.
The moonlight lit the frames of her glasses like two silver pools. She reached out and touched Penny’s cheek. ‘Everything will become clear,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid, Penny.’
But it wasn’t the thought of being alone in the wobbly little rowing-boat in the dark night that frightened Penny. It was … what if nothing was out there? If she went out and found nothing, it would mean … what it would mean was unbearable. Her grandmother’s hand on Penny’s face had been dry and soft. Penny closed her eyes. She knew the faded print on Granny Pearl’s house dress so well that she could still see its pattern, could smell the comforting scent of laundry soap and mint leaves mingled in the fabric.
‘Granny Pearl,’ she said softly, afraid she might cry.
But she steadied herself. To refuse to go would be to admit that her parents were right. This was her chance to prove that the signs were real, that nothing had changed and Granny Pearl was still herself. Penny took a deep breath.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it.’
She grabbed her life jacket and backpack and opened the window. Seagrape squawked quietly once and flew into the darkness. Before she could change her mind, Penny swung her leg over the ledge and dropped down into the garden.
Helix
He was headed to see the Great Wave, somewhere on the far northeast coast of Tamarind, in Kana, a place he had never been before. For the past seven years, he had been living in a small, sleepy town with his father, a retired general who kept groves of fruit trees – row upon orderly row of citrus that supplied all the nearby towns with polemos, tanguis and tart suisallies. Helix had got to know his father for the first time in his life, and had helped him with the citrus, expanding their reach to more far-flung areas. Then a year ago his father had died unexpectedly. He’d been an old man, asleep in bed in the middle of the night – a surprisingly peaceful death for a man who had spent half his life fighting. Without a clear sense of what to do next, Helix had stayed on, tending the groves, selling the crops, but becoming increasingly lonely, dissatisfied, restless.
A few weeks ago, during an early morning inspection of the groves, he had found a trespasser sleeping under a polemo tree, clothes damp with dew, empty peels on the ground beside him. Secretly grateful to meet someone living free, off the land like he used to do, Helix shared breakfast with the man, who he learned was from the east and was on his way back there to see the Great Wave and the Bloom. As Helix listened to the roaring – and no doubt exaggerated – stories about this amazing spectacle, this wonder of the world, he began to feel as if some colour that he had forgotten was missing had suddenly been restored to the spectrum. The world suddenly seemed brighter and clearer, the things within it more sharply delineated, pulsing with life that gathered strength and seemed to propel him forward.
By the time he had returned to the house, the traveller had departed, the sun had burned off the dew and Helix knew that he would be going east. It wasn’t just curiosity. Even when his father was alive, the town had never fully felt like home. The sense that something was missing – something critical – had only grown stronger as time passed.
Helix needed a change.
So he had begun the long journey across Tamarind, through humid jungles, across mountains where the air was thin and cool, over barren deserts where any breeze that came released animal bones from shifting yellow dunes, rattling them across the scorching sand. The journey boiled life down to its simplest terms. He had only to find food and dry ground to sleep on each night. Usually he slept in the open air; on rainy nights he pitched a small tent.
He had grown up during the war in Western Tamarind, and he was happy to feel the atmosphere change as he entered the region known as Kana. It was a relief to leave behind the old scars in the landscape – the guns rusting in the grip of feverish vines, the ruins sinking into the mud – and be in a place that had not endured years of fear, a landscape not burdened by his own memories. Even on its outskirts, Kana was lush and bright. Food was plentiful. Everywhere was drooping, swishing, kinetic greenery, singing with all the life in it.
After weeks of walking, he was now only a day or two from Tontap, where he had been told the festival would begin. He was walking through an open, empty field when he saw the green smudge of a parrot in the clear blue sky. He stopped and shaded his eyes. He felt a surge of hopefulness, like he always did.
When he was a child, she used to perch beside his shoulder while he slept each night, after his mother had died. She had watched over him for years, until he’d sent her to be with the family. He still missed her company, but it comforted him to know that some part of him was still with them.
He squinted up through the glare. But as the bird neared he saw it was too small, its feathers striped with crimson. It wasn’t her.
And never will be, he told himself.
He wiped the sweat off his face with his arm and kept walking.
He had ample time to daydream as he walked, time for the silent, ephemeral churn of memory to overtake him. He recalled the little house on the cove – the sweet scent of the allamanda flowers blooming on the trellis, the green cloud of the vegetable garden and the tiny butterfly cocoons shivering in the light breeze through the milkweed patch. Another world, another life. He would have thought that the memories might have faded. Detail blurred, it was true, but only as if to clear away clutter, allowing him to feel the essence of those he missed in pure, potent form. Maya, Simon, Penny, their parents, Granny Pearl – sometimes they seemed more real to him, more present, and certainly more beloved, than most of the people in his daily life.
He remembered the last time he had seen Maya and Simon and Penny. He had dived off the port side of the Pamela Jane – he could still feel the cold shock of the water on his skin. On land he had climbed a tree and sat, hidden in the swaying foliage, his hair still wet as he watched the yellow-hulled sailing-boat vanish into the mists of the Blue Line. He had stayed in the tree long after the boat was gone and the salt had dried white on his skin. Then, without even the parrot to keep him company, he had climbed down and begun the journey to find his father. That had been seven years ago.
Feelings drifted aimlessly, changed shape, dissolved, gave way to new ones, like the cottony white clouds in the sky above him as he drew slowly closer to Tontap. He heard something and stopped to listen, ear to the air. There was a faint tremor in the earth beneath his feet, a minor perturbation in atmosphere, registered only by him and a sloth who paused a moment from his lugubrious chewing to glance curiously up at the bright blue sky. A breeze rose, cooling his face, stirring and silvering the leaves. For the first time, after many days deep in the interior of the island, he smelled salt on the air. He wasn’t far from the coast now. The breeze faded. Deciding that the disturbance he had sensed must have been nothing, he resumed walking.
CHAPTER THREE
Flags ✵ Following the Lights ✵ A Wish ✵ A Door Opens
Seagrape mumbled excitedly and flew after Penny down t
he hill. The rain had stopped; only a light patter still dripped under the trees. Pampas seed pods were strewn across the grass. Penny reached the foot of the garden, where the tiny crescent beach shone stark white in the moonlight, its crust of sand dimpled. Bobbing on the swells, the Pamela Jane’s yellow hull emitted a dull glow. The sign on her stern squeaked back and forth in the wind: CLUBHOUSE – KEEP OUT! Her portholes reflected the moonlight, perfect, deep wells into an even greater darkness. Outside the shelter of the cove, the growl of the open sea roared in Penny’s head.
She flipped over the rowing-boat and dragged it down to the water. Moonlit foam laced the surface of the water surging towards her. Beyond, the water was black. The rowing-boat seemed smaller and flimsier than usual as she stepped in. Seagrape murmured nervously on her shoulder. Penny dug in with the oars and rowed hard towards the mouth of the cove. She gazed back at the house, standing there as it always had – safe, solid, lit, warm – as she headed away from it into the darkness.
Then the outgoing tide caught the rowing-boat, and for the next stretch it took her full concentration to navigate through high reefs and craggy rocks rustling with crabs. The oars clicked rhythmically in the oarlocks, and after a few minutes she passed the black anvil rock that she and Granny Pearl used to swim to each morning. As she rowed, the peculiar joy of being alone in a small boat on the ocean at night – the thrill of slightly perilous freedom – overtook her.
When she reached the outer boiler reefs, she stopped and let the rowing-boat drift. A flashlight had been tucked in the outside pocket of her backpack. She clicked it on and searched the water with it until she found the crooked cut, like a crease in plush black velvet, leading out to deeper water. A violent snow of fry massed in the turquoise beam. And then there it was – the great, mustard-yellow globe of brain coral, a bright yellow orb, like the cold ghost of a sun sunk long ago.
‘That’s it,’ she whispered to Seagrape. ‘Now we just have to wait. Something will happen.’ The parrot grumbled and ruffled her feathers, staring hard into the darkness.
There was a light but messy chop in the water and the boat rocked gently from side to side. The scent of chimney smoke and spice trees hung on the land breeze, but from the low vantage of the boat the island kept dropping from sight behind the black swells. In the other direction, towards open water, only the barest distinction existed between the dark sea and dark sky. Now that she had stopped rowing, Penny felt the chilly night air creeping through her clothes. She shivered. Waves sloshed against the hull and the minutes ticked past. How waiting there, so close to shore, was supposed get her to Tamarind, she had no idea. Seagrape sat stoically on the bow.
When the boat wandered on the current, Penny rowed just enough to stay near the coral. The rest of the time, she drew her legs to her chest and sat as close to the centre of the boat as she could, trying not to think about bold, blunt-nosed sharks knocking into the hull, or a tentacle rearing up, meaty and cold, snatching her out of the boat, dragging her and the boat under with a woody crunch, a noisy slurp, before she even had time to make a peep.
She remembered the backpack, and to distract herself she opened it. Granny Pearl must have prepared everything earlier that day.
A canteen of water. A sandwich. An apple. Penny’s heart sank a bit when she realized that her grandmother thought she might have to wait out there long enough that she would get hungry. But she hadn’t had dinner, so she began to eat the sandwich. She rummaged deeper. Her bathing suit, Simon’s old penknife and compass. The final thing in the bag made Penny stop. A slow prickle of dread crept through her.
She took out a small yellow flag and held it up in the moonlight. A sunny yellow rectangle with a green parrot stitched into the middle of it, wings spread in flight. Two others, almost identical, were crushed in the bottom of the bag. Granny Pearl had sewn them for Penny long ago. Helix had helped her create a secret code with them – a flag upside down on an allspice tree meant that Simon was home, two flags midway up the old cedar meant that Penny and Maya were out on the boat, and so on. Later Penny and Angela had used them when they had played pirates, hoisting them up the mast of the Pamela Jane, letting them flutter from the branches of the conquered orange grove.
The flags belonged in games, in make-believe.
What sort of mission would require something used in a game?
No mission would.
No real one, anyway.
Only one invented by an old woman whose mind was wandering.
Penny sat there numbly. The parrots on the flags were faded and frayed, their threads loose, as if the birds were losing feathers. A school of tiny fish jumped nearby, startling her. Penny could almost feel the shock of the cool night air on their scales during their brief, breathless flight. They chattered down and there was only the chilly silence again.
The flashlight beam had been growing gradually weaker. Now it died altogether. Instantly the moon reflected off the surface of the water, black and bright as oil, sealing away what lay beneath. As if cast loose when the flashlight died, the boat was being swiftly ferried along by the current. When Penny looked back towards land, she was alarmed by how far she was from where she had started. The lights of land had shrunk to intermittent twinkles.
New, clear-eyed dread spread through her. It had been foolish to come out here like this. The current was against her, and getting back to shore was going to be a long, hard haul. Hands shaking, she had just slipped the oars back in the oarlocks when Seagrape squawked loudly, a warning.
Penny noticed a light further out to sea. It was riding low, like the remnant of a shooting star that had landed in the water.
It was too far away to tell what it was, but her heart quickened. Was this what Granny Pearl had sent her out there for?
To reach it, Penny would have to leave the last of the reefs and venture a short distance into the open ocean. She hesitated, glancing back towards land, then began to row towards the glow. She rowed cautiously at first, and then harder, but each time she saw the light it was a little further away, bobbing on the swells like a floating lantern. Finally it dropped behind a swell and didn’t appear again.
Penny looked about and saw another glimmer, this one off starboard. She turned and rowed as powerfully as she could, and this time she kept the light in her sights and drew alongside it.
She looked down upon a large jellyfish, grazing the surface, the moonlight reflecting off its pale, diaphanous bubble. Bioluminscent tentacles drifted dreamily down into the deep. A few small fish, stung to death, hung suspended stiffly in the tangle.
Several other jellyfish glided up ahead, a small fleet of ghostly night travellers, passing silently by. What looked like fine electrical filaments emitted a buzz of pinkish light within their bubbles. Penny had never seen anything like them before and rowed slowly to keep pace. Had Granny Pearl meant for her to find them? What was she supposed to do now?
Absorbed by the strange creatures, Penny was oblivious to the thickening clouds moving in, snuffing out the stars one by one. The jellyfish floated on ahead and began to spread out, scattering faster than Penny could keep up with.
When the last of them drifted from sight, Penny found herself in pitch blackness. She looked all around frantically, but the lights of land were gone. It was like a low, opaque roof had closed over the sea and the rowing-boat was drifting inside a closed vault, into which a great, rushing, jetting darkness spilled. She couldn’t even see her own hands in front of her. All that was left was the sound of her ragged breathing, whistling a little in fear. In the panic of sudden blindness she reached for Seagrape, relieved to feel the parrot’s silky feathers and warm, small body.
With every fibre of her being, she wished that she had never left home, that she was still in her cosy room getting ready for bed, her parents and grandmother just down the hall. Fear shocked her into clarity, and she reasoned that, without any other markers to orientate her, her best chance of returning to land was to row against the current that had broug
ht her here. She turned the boat round and began to row. Her back and arms soon ached, but she was too afraid to stop. If she rested for just a moment, the boat drifted rapidly back, losing sea it had cost her so much effort to gain. She forced herself not to cry and settled into a numbing, thoughtless, interminable rhythm.
Some time later, she jerked awake.
She must have only fallen asleep for an instant or two, so exhausted that her chin had nodded forward on to her chest, but an oar had slipped from her hand. She searched the surrounding water, but it was gone. It took all her strength to pull the remaining one into the hull, as though it were made of iron and not wood. She lashed it to the gunnels so it wouldn’t get lost if a wave tipped the boat in the night. Exhausted and cold, she lay down in the hull, pulling her knees up to her chest, resting her cheek on her backpack. She drew Seagrape close.
‘They’ll find us in the morning,’ she said.
Penny had no idea how much time had passed, but when she woke she instantly had the feeling that she was somewhere very different from where she had begun. There was no sign of Seagrape. She was alone in the boat. The night was over, but the daylight was muffled by fog that hung thick as cotton in the air. She yawned and it filled her mouth. It was like being in an aeroplane up in the clouds, except that she could still hear the gurgle of water against the rowing-boat’s hull. She was stiff from sleeping on hard planks and her stomach growled.
‘Seagrape!’ she called. Her voice echoed back to her, as if it had bounced off a mountainside.
Something was pinching her. She reached up to find that her goggles were still on her forehead. She felt unduly comforted by the discovery of this small, precious thing from home. She shifted them a bit and rubbed the indentation they had left in her skin. Helix’s shark’s tooth necklace was still round her neck, too.