The Great Wave of Tamarind

by Nadia Aguiar

  ‘I –’ said Penny. Elder was right. She knew nothing about Kana. And an hour ago she had never even heard of the Bloom, let alone the competition to get it. All she knew was that she wanted the Bloom – needed it – more than she had needed anything in her whole life.

  ‘I have a friend here, in Tamarind,’ she said.

  ‘And this friend, he knows you’re here?’ asked Elder.

  ‘Well … no,’ said Penny. ‘Not yet. But …’

  Elder sighed. ‘I understand that you came here hoping to help your grandmother,’ he said, his tone softening. ‘You must love her a great deal. But you don’t realize how serious this competition is for Kana – and how dangerous it can be. Being the Bloom Catcher is the greatest honour in all of Kana. Young people train for it for many years, learning about the island, honing the skills the contest calls upon. Bravery and desire aren’t enough. I’m sorry,’ he said gently. ‘Coming here was a mistake. Tonight you’ll stay here as a guest of Tontap. Once the Players depart tomorrow morning we’ll figure out how to get you back across the Blue Line and on your way home.’

  He turned to leave, the matter sorted. Penny felt her chance slipping away. She didn’t know what else she could say to convince him. She turned helplessly to Seagrape, but there was nothing the parrot could do either.

  Suddenly the yard grew darker, and Penny became aware of a breeze bowing the cane grass by the road. The air grew cold; a chill wind had plunged out of season into the sunny day. The world drew in closer, the borders of objects seemed to blur. Penny thought at first that it was her – she was dizzy from the shock and fatigue of the past night and day, from sheer disappointment. Then she realized that the others had felt the same thing. Tabba and Jebby froze where they were. Elder turned back to the yard and gazed slowly around. Seagrape growled and her feathers puffed up, the way that fur will rise on a startled cat.

  It felt like a storm was coming, but when Penny glanced up at the sky it was discordantly bright. Rooftops shone in the distance. The crisp scrawl of palm shadows still marked the sunny road. Only the yard in front of Elder’s had been transformed, sinking into a plot of shadow. Penny saw a murky puddle leaking from a rain drum, where she hadn’t noticed a puddle before. She caught a whiff of dank, rotting wood, of decaying matter. Mildew crept like evening shadows over the walls of the hut. The world within the yard felt sealed off, as if she were trapped inside one world looking out at another, and she suddenly thought that no one there could have heard her if she had shouted. Goosebumps prickled her arms and legs. The hen pecking for grain in the sand clucked in alarm and herded the tiny yellow puffs of her chicks away.

  Elder’s grizzled beard lifted in the creeping cold breeze. Penny followed his gaze across the yard, where a strange, hazy cloud hung in mid-air above the sandy, chicken-scratched earth. It was oval, about three feet at its widest. Like a greasy thumbprint on a pane of glass, it distorted what lay behind it. It was from this that the cold, dark feeling was coming, funnelling through on the strange draught. Penny saw a flash of movement, the dull shine on the matted fur of a paw.

  Then, abruptly, there was a small, crisp clunk, as though a door had shut. The blurry patch disappeared. The breeze died; Elder’s beard fell. The yard was bright again, the air clear. The normal day resumed. Sunlight prickled the leaves, the tiny chicks reappeared chirping across the road, and the silk sails diffused coloured light on to the guests in the garden, who seemed oblivious to what had happened. Seagrape’s feathers settled. The only scent was of hot grass in the sun and spices from the lunch on the other side of the hedge. The strange malaise had lasted only a moment or two, but had spooked even Elder.

  ‘Elder,’ whispered Tabba. ‘Was that …?’

  ‘It was the mandrill,’ Elder answered finally. ‘He’s gone now.’ He turned to Penny, studying her as he had not before. ‘He opened that whorl to see you,’ he said. ‘He’s curious about you. You’ll have to be careful.’

  ‘The thing that was in the air over there,’ said Penny. ‘The blurred patch. That was a whorl?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Elder. ‘A whorl, a doorway that the mandrill opens to travel between places. Usually he can’t leave his home in the Gorgonne, but before the Bloom Kana becomes more porous, and the mandrill’s free to roam wherever he pleases.’

  ‘Where did that whorl lead to?’ asked Penny.

  ‘Only the mandrill knows that,’ replied Elder.

  ‘A whorl opened at the Blue Line today,’ said Penny. ‘That’s how I got here.’

  ‘Kal opened it,’ said Tabba.

  Elder frowned. ‘He’s up to that again?’ He looked angry. ‘If you see him, send him to speak with me. He has to stop this before he finds himself in trouble he can’t get out of,’ he muttered.

  ‘We’re not certain it was him,’ said Jebby quickly.

  ‘Could it have been?’ asked Tabba.

  Elder paused. ‘I’m surprised he could open a whorl powerful enough to let someone cross the Blue Line,’ he said carefully. ‘But it’s happened before – that people have opened whorls before the Bloom. We believe Kal did it, the day the mandrill came to Tontap. But it’s rare – extremely rare. And dangerous.’

  Elder paused, observing Penny as though some clue about her might explain what her unexpected presence meant for Kana. But after studying her tangled ponytail, bruised shins and scuffed old backpack he shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re here,’ he admitted. ‘But there’s nothing I can do to stop you from being a Bloom Player – crossing the Blue Line is an extraordinary feat. It surely qualifies you. It’s only for your own sake that I advise you to go home now. You’re alone here and you know nothing about Kana. It may be hard for you to imagine today, but the Bloom is an extremely dangerous time.

  ‘Treacherous places lie on the other side of whorls. The change that happened in the yard just now – that was only from a small whorl, opened for a moment and then closed. But the mandrill’s power grows before the Bloom. He starts opening more and more whorls. They get bigger and stronger, and things start coming through from the places on the other side of them. Storms, floods, fires, wild animals, darkness … all manner of chaos and destruction.’

  Penny didn’t know what to think or say. It was becoming clear to her that the Bloom was no simple elixir, but was part of something much bigger and stranger, something potentially ominous. She couldn’t give up, but she had no idea at all what to do next.

  Tabba and Jebby had been whispering to each other, and now Jebby cleared his throat.

  ‘Elder,’ he said.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Elder impatiently.

  ‘Lots of Bloom Players go in teams, don’t they?’ said Jebby. ‘Even though only the person who did the feat can be the actual Bloom Catcher.’

  ‘That’s correct,’ said Elder.

  ‘Well,’ said Jebby. ‘Penny did the feat, and Tabba and I know Kana. What if the three of us go together – a team?’

  At first Penny didn’t understand what was happening. She gazed speechlessly at Tabba and Jebby. No one had been on her side for such a long time now that it hadn’t occurred to her she might not be alone.

  ‘And how will you travel?’ asked Elder briskly. ‘Your family has no animals for you to ride. Nor a boat of your own.’

  ‘We …’ said Jebby. ‘Um …’

  ‘Well?’ asked Elder.

  ‘We have a way,’ said Tabba confidently. ‘It’s just that we can’t say what it is yet.’

  Several people had come and were waiting behind the children with questions for Elder. He frowned at the garden, where his lunch was growing cold, then back at the shuffling line awaiting his attention.

  He turned to Penny.

  ‘You want to be a Bloom Player, fine,’ he said briskly. ‘But it isn’t a game. The last bad Bloom nearly destroyed Kana. If the Bloom Catcher fails, there will be suffering – terrible suffering – for a whole generation. That is why Kana needs a Bloom Catcher. The Bloom must be poured
into the Coral Basin immediately after the Great Wave.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Penny breathlessly. ‘But, if I were the Bloom Catcher … would I be able to keep a few drops of it … for my grandmother?’

  Elder nodded impatiently. ‘The Bloom Catcher has always been allowed to keep a very small amount,’ he said.

  He rapped on the door frame and the woman in the apron appeared. ‘Yellow arm sashes!’ he cried. She went inside the hut and scurried back out a moment later to hand the children three folded silk sashes, which they accepted in disbelief.

  ‘Quick,’ whispered Tabba, steering Penny off the porch.

  ‘Thank you, Elder!’ they called over their shoulders as Elder turned to address the people waiting, who were looking curiously at the children as they thundered down the stairs.

  ‘Go,’ said Jebby. ‘Before he changes his mind!’

  Penny, Tabba and Jebby dashed, ducking down sandy side streets until they were a safe distance from Elder’s hut. They stopped beneath a stand of palms to catch their breath, Tabba and Jebby beaming. Penny couldn’t quite believe what had happened. She was free to try to get the Bloom, and she wouldn’t be alone doing it. She, Tabba and Jebby were a team now. It seemed so long since she’d had friends that she’d forgotten just how much better it was than being alone. She felt lighter than she had in ages. Overwhelmed with such unexpected happiness and relief, she became suddenly shy.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t thank us,’ said Jebby. ‘We would never have been Bloom Players if you hadn’t crossed the Blue Line!’

  ‘Bloom Players!’ exclaimed Tabba. ‘Us – can you believe it?’

  They took out the yellow arm sashes to have a closer look at them. The silk, soft as water, was the same brilliant yellow as the Pamela Jane’s hull, which Penny believed must be a good omen. But then Jebby’s face darkened.

  ‘Put them away,’ he whispered, looking around to make sure the yellow cloth hadn’t attracted anyone’s attention. ‘We should keep this a secret for as long as possible, until we’ve got everything we need. Ma and Da are going to kill us, you know,’ he added.

  ‘So?’ said Tabba giddily. ‘Come on, Jebby – we’ve never even been that far out of Tontap! And now we’re Bloom Players!’

  But Jebby’s rush of excitement had been tempered by sobering practical matters.

  ‘We’re probably the youngest Players,’ he said. ‘And we aren’t prepared at all. The first trial is always underwater and we don’t have anything for it, let alone whatever we might need for the other trials.’

  ‘So we’ll get kelp pods and sea lights now,’ said Tabba. ‘There’s a kelp bed just past the cliff with the sea lights.’

  ‘What are kelp pods?’ asked Penny.

  ‘They’re round, hollow pods that grow in the kelp,’ explained Tabba. ‘They’re filled with air. They’ll let us breathe underwater if we have to swim very deep. And the sea lights will help us see if we have go very deep, or into a cave or something.’

  ‘More importantly,’ said Jebby, ‘how are we going to get anywhere? Elder’s right – we have no animals to ride. And I know you didn’t really have a plan when you told Elder we did.’

  ‘Well, of course I didn’t have a plan,’ said Tabba. ‘But I didn’t want him to say no.’

  ‘How is Kal going to get around?’ asked Penny, eager to contribute something.

  ‘He has a lumphur,’ said Tabba.

  ‘What’s a lumphur?’ Penny asked.

  Jebby raised his eyebrows at his sister, as if to say, She doesn’t even know what a lumphur is! Tabba paused, chewing her lip as she looked at Penny, as though she, too, were having second thoughts. Penny realized that now the first hurdle had been crossed she was of woefully little help. Kelp pods, sea lights, lumphurs – she had no idea what any of these things were or where to find them.

  ‘Is there anyone we can borrow an animal from?’ Penny asked. ‘Any animal?’

  ‘No one’s going to lend us one now,’ said Jebby. ‘The festival moves around from town to town after the Players – everyone will be using their own animals to travel.’

  ‘Well …’ said Penny. ‘What about a boat?’

  ‘Wind’s dropping out,’ said Jebby. ‘And after the first trial the rest of the competition is always inland. A boat won’t help us then. Our family doesn’t have one, anyway. That was Kal’s we were on earlier.’

  ‘Jebby!’ said Tabba, exasperated. ‘Stop just saying no to everything and think of something we can do!’

  The children were at a loss. Overhead the palms rustled, and the sound of construction echoed in the distance from the town square.

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Tabba suddenly, jumping to her feet. ‘Come with me!’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Bellamy’s ✵ Rai ✵ A Rickety Contraption ✵ ‘Miraculous things, sapsoos’ ✵ Message Pole ✵ Kal’s Feat ✵ Kelp Pods and Sealights ✵ Ma and Da Silverling ✵ ‘If the Bloom goes wrong, it won’t matter where they are’

  Penny and Jebby followed Tabba through the town as it climbed the big hill up to the edge of the jungle. Near the top, Tabba crossed the road towards a small wooden storefront.

  ‘Bellamy’s?’ Jebby asked doubtfully. ‘What are we going to do here?’

  Tabba didn’t answer. She waited for a customer carrying a parcel wrapped in banana leaves under his arm to exit, then she pushed aside the curtain and the children stepped into a hot, dim room.

  Bellamy’s was a sort of general store. Crates of potatoes and ginger root and baskets of crinkly mushrooms were stacked in the middle of the room, and musty barrels of grain and nuts stood along the back wall. Above the barrels were shelves that hosted a ragged miscellany – hand-sewn dolls, turtleshell bowls, crudely hammered fishhooks, collections of missing parts whose original purposes were mysterious. Coiled in the corner was a large ship’s rope, home to a family of darting mice. The only person there was a girl the children’s age who was sweeping behind the counter, the bristly broom vigorously scratching the wooden planks.

  ‘Are you here to rub it in?’ she grumbled. ‘I’ve been stuck here all day – I’m missing everything! He says we won’t close while people keep coming in. But every time I think we’re done someone else shows up, needing something that they could have bought just as easily yesterday! Tell me, I’m desperate – what’s going on out there?’ She swept the last bit of dust under a basket with feeling, then looked up and noticed Penny. ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘This is Penny, from the Outside,’ said Tabba. ‘Penny, this is our friend, Rai.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Penny from the Outside?’ asked Rai suspiciously, putting aside the broom. ‘I saw you just last night; you didn’t know anyone from the Outside then – what’s going on?’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Tabba. Then she took out the yellow arm sashes and pushed them across the counter.

  ‘What do you have those for?’ Rai asked incredulously, picking one up, rubbing the yellow silk between her fingers.

  ‘Shhhh!’ Tabba leaned over to whisper to Rai. ‘We don’t want Bellamy to hear yet.’

  ‘Jeez, Tabba, you could have asked me to go!’ said Rai enviously. She looked at Penny, sizing her up. ‘Oh, Ma never would have let me anyway. I can’t believe yours is letting you.’ She paused. ‘Wait … Are you telling me she doesn’t know?’ She whistled. ‘Good luck to you.’

  ‘We’ll worry about Ma later,’ said Tabba. ‘Right now we need to find a way to get around Kana; that’s why we’re here.’

  ‘What can I do?’ asked Rai. ‘You know my family only has the one mule, and my parents are going to be using it to travel around for the festival. And those two Bellamy has in the back are ancient – they wouldn’t make it out of the yard.’ She frowned. ‘Oh …’ she said slowly, but suddenly she looked interested.

  ‘What?’ asked Jebby warily. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘But you saw it; it’s falling apart,’ said Rai. ‘And we never figured it o
ut, anyway.’

  ‘But Penny could,’ said Tabba. ‘It’s from the Outside, isn’t it? I bet she’d know. And if it needs a little work to fix it up we could do that, too.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Jebby demanded. ‘Tabba, what have you been up to?’

  ‘Bellamy has this thing,’ said Rai, turning to Jebby. ‘He got it off an old wreck, a ship from the Outside. It has two wheels and a seat in the middle. I showed it to Tabba before and we tried to ride it.’

  ‘You mean a bicycle?’ asked Penny.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what Bellamy calls it,’ said Rai. ‘So, you know what it is?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Penny. ‘I have one at home.’

  ‘See?’ said Tabba triumphantly. ‘I told you she’d know.’

  ‘Are there really no bicycles here?’ asked Penny.

  Rai sniffed. ‘This is the only one I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘But three of us couldn’t go on one bike,’ said Penny.

  ‘There’s a cart, too, a little one, that he built to go at the back of it,’ said Rai. ‘He used it to carry stuff when he was a trader.’

  ‘Will you talk to him for us?’ asked Tabba excitedly. ‘Ask him if we can borrow it?’

  ‘If Bellamy ever said yes to anything I wouldn’t still be here today,’ said Rai. She sighed. ‘Come on, Tabba, you know I’d help you if I could.’ She glanced at the curtained doorway behind the counter. ‘Look,’ she said at last. ‘He’s napping right now. Why don’t you just come in and take a look at it?’ She nodded to Penny. ‘It’s really old. She might see it and say it’s no good. But if it is, then she should talk to him herself. He loves anything to do with the Outside.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tabba. ‘Let’s see it.’

  Tiptoeing, the children followed her through a rough curtain into a room at the rear of the store.

  It took Penny’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dim, mossy light that filtered in from a single window, overgrown with plants, in the opposite corner. It was a storeroom: bins and barrels and boxes were piled everywhere, a jumble of odds and ends poking out of them. The window looked over a small dirt yard built into the stone hillside. Slouched in a deep chair in the dusty light in the far corner was a white-haired old man, fast asleep. His eyes were shut, his breathing even, the handkerchief that covered his face luffing with each inhalation and exhalation. His legs were very long, so that, even though he was sitting, his knees were a long way from the chair.