by Nadia Aguiar
The children followed Rai, picking their way between mounds of heavy fishing net and lopsided towers of crates. Tabba stubbed her toe on a wooden pole, which rolled over with a clatter. The children froze, but the old man didn’t stir.
Rai stopped in the corner, in front of something lumpy that lay hidden beneath a grimy sheet. Very quietly she began to pull back the edge of the cloth. Just as Penny caught a glimpse of rusty metal, she heard a noise across the room. Something creaked; a shoe scraped the floor. The children turned to see that the old man had woken and was sitting straight up in his chair. His wild white hair was askew and his foggy eyes were wide open, staring at them as if he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming. With a deft flick of her wrist, Rai whisked the sheet back over the bike.
‘Rai!’ the old man bellowed. ‘What’s going on here? Who are these people snooping around my stockroom while I’m sleeping? Are you stealing from me?’
‘Of course we aren’t stealing,’ said Rai with exaggerated indignation. ‘They’re Bloom Players. They wanted to see your bicycle. I already told them it was no good, but they insisted, and I didn’t think it was worth waking you.’
Sheepishly the children crossed the room and stood in front of Bellamy.
‘I’m Jebby Silverling,’ said Jebby politely. ‘This is my sister, Tabba. And this is our friend, Penny.’
‘Silverling? Your father’s the carpenter?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tabba.
‘I know who you are,’ grunted Bellamy. ‘And who’s she?’ he asked, nodding at Penny.
Rai shoved Penny forward. ‘She’s from the Outside.’
This information had an immediate effect on Bellamy. Abruptly he abandoned the tirade he had been about to launch into. He studied Penny carefully, his eyebrows working like two great caterpillars that had been disturbed.
‘The Outside?’ he asked at last. ‘Is that true?’
Penny nodded.
‘Come closer,’ he barked. ‘I can barely see you from here.’
Penny took a few steps forward, into a slow carousel of dust motes turning in the weak light. ‘My name is Penny Nelson,’ she said. She spoke loudly, since she figured the old man was likely to be partly deaf, too. ‘I’ve come to ask about your bicycle!’
‘What do you want with it?’ Bellamy asked cautiously. ‘I salvaged it myself off a wreck. That ship ran aground years before I rowed out to it, and no one had ever bothered with it. The bicycle had been underwater so long I had to hammer barnacles off it when I got it to shore.’ He leaned forward and shook a long, pale finger at her. ‘So don’t think you’ve come to lay claim to it now, after all this time!’ He settled back in the chair, like a buoy easing into stillness after a wake had passed.
‘Not claim – borrow,’ said Penny calmly, taking another small step closer. ‘We want to ask if we can borrow it for the Bloom competition.’
‘You mean – you want to take it away, out of my shop?’ Bellamy said. His impressive brows massed like cumulous clouds, seeming to expand as Penny explained how she had returned to Tamarind and what she was there to do.
‘We just need it for a few days,’ said Jebby. ‘The competition will be over then. We’d have it back to you safe and sound right after that.’
‘We would be extremely careful with it,’ added Penny.
‘Extremely careful,’ said Tabba, nodding vigorously.
‘They’re my friends,’ said Rai. ‘I can give you my word that they’d take care of it. And, if you ask me, Bellamy, the bike would be a lot better doing a few laps of Kana than rotting away in here.’
‘Well, I didn’t ask you, did I?’ muttered Bellamy.
The children were expecting a battle, but to their surprise, after a moment of hesitation, he relented.
‘Go and get the bicycle, Rai,’ he said. ‘Let our visitor take a look at it.’
Before he could change his mind, Rai quickly returned to the corner. With a flourish, she yanked the sheet clear and tossed it to the side. She smacked away some spiders, kicked aside a rope and wheeled a dusty, squeaking contraption out to the middle of the room, stopping in front of Bellamy and the children.
Penny could feel Tabba and Jebby’s awe as they gazed at it.
‘There she is,’ said Bellamy, reaching out to pat the handlebars lovingly.
‘Wow,’ breathed Jebby. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I’m curious, young lady – is it a very good one?’ Bellamy asked Penny.
Penny paused. It was as if the bicycle had wheeled out of the past, from a time Penny knew only from books. It was ancient, probably eighty years old at least. She had only ever seen such an old model in fuzzy black-and-white photographs. Her heart had sunk when Rai had unveiled it. Spots of rust grew like ruddy lichen on its frame. The worst were the tyres, though. Age and humidity had rotted them to a few shreds of what looked like bark clinging to the banged-up metal rims, from which rose a whiff of decayed vegetation that permeated the stale air in the room. Both axles had squawked and squealed the whole time that Rai had wheeled it over to them. A small cart was attached to the rear axle by two shafts. It was lopsided, scratched, its interior netted with cobwebs. A brown spider cowered in a corner of it. It looked as though the weight of a sunbeam might cause it to crumble to dust.
But it was all they had. She swallowed.
‘Yes,’ she said decisively. ‘It’s an excellent bicycle. Maybe the best of this model that I’ve ever seen.’
‘I knew it was a good one,’ said Bellamy, satisfied. ‘I suppose there are a lot of them on the Outside?’ he asked eagerly. ‘That’s something I’d like to see. I used to love the feel of the wind in my face, the burn in my legs. Weather never bothered me. The bicycle never needed to stop or drink water or rest for the night. I went all over Kana on her, as far as Andusay! Well, try it, young lady – see if it still runs.’
Penny took it from Rai and rolled it forwards and backwards. To her surprise the brakes still worked. The axles screeched, but it was nothing a little grease couldn’t fix. She could see the dents where the barnacles had been, but when she dug at a spot of rust with her thumb she found that it was superficial: the frame was solid. Even the leather seat was still intact. Impressed by her knowledge of the unfamiliar machine, the others watched with almost reverent respect as she examined it.
‘The problem is the tyres,’ she said at last. ‘The rubber’s worn away; only the frames are left. And without tyres I’d be afraid to even sit on it right now in case the frame bends.’
‘That’s easily fixed,’ said Bellamy. His defensiveness upon being startled awake had fully dissolved, and his excitement about having his prized possession called into action for the Bloom was growing. He had anticipated the problem with the tyres and was gleefully ready with its solution.
‘Sapsoo vines!’ he said. ‘There were only scraps of the original tyres left when I got it off the wreck. I tried everything I could think as an alternative. Finally it was sapsoo vines that worked.’
He peeled off a piece of a vine from the frame, and held it up in the muddy light that filtered in through the dirty window.
‘Miraculous things, sapsoos,’ he said. ‘Remarkably fast growing – you could cut one from the tree then plant the cutting days later, and it would grow almost before your eyes. Even this may have some life in it, believe it or not, if it had a little water.’
He rubbed the chalky strip between his fingers and Penny watched it crumble and fall to the floor like ash.
‘It doesn’t look like there’s any life left in it,’ whispered Rai.
‘In any case,’ said Bellamy. ‘We need new ones. You can find them in the sapsoo grove over the ridge above Tontap. You’ll have to climb a tree for them. Get the young, spongy ones – they give the smoothest ride. It’ll be like floating along on a cloud. Bring me some of those and we’ll be in business.’
‘So … we can borrow it?’ asked Jebby.
‘What use is it to me any more?’ sa
id Bellamy. Now that his mind was made up, he was generous and jovial. ‘It deserves to be used for what it was made for, not mouldering away in here. The Bloom has called it into service for Kana! Rai! Reach me that palm oil from off the shelf, then close up the shop!’
The room was suddenly buzzing with high spirits and goodwill, and the children chattered excitedly, thanking Bellamy. Everyone reached out to pat the cool metal of the bike.
‘Why don’t I get the sapsoo vines and come back to work on the bicycle with Bellamy,’ Jebby asked Penny and Tabba. ‘And you two go and get the kelp pods and the sea lights? We can meet in the palm grove on the way home when we’re done.’
The girls agreed, and the children said goodbye to Bellamy, then shuttled back out to the front room of the shop, where Seagrape had been helping herself to seeds from the bins along the back wall.
‘Glutton,’ Penny whispered, picking up the bird and putting her on her shoulder.
‘Sorry that you’re stuck here,’ said Tabba as Rai got the key to unlock the door for them.
‘He’s in a good mood now; he’ll let me go soon,’ said Rai affably. ‘Anyway, I don’t mind helping with this – it’s the closest I’ll get to really being part of the Bloom!’
She opened the door and the children stepped out on to the bustling street.
‘Hey,’ Rai said suddenly from the doorway. ‘I just thought – does Kal know you’re Bloom Players?’
‘No,’ said Tabba merrily over her shoulder. ‘But he’ll find out soon enough!’
Jebby left to get the sapsoo vines, and Penny and Tabba headed for the far side of Tontap where Tabba said there was a dugout that could take them out to the kelp beds. It seemed wise to keep the fact that they were Bloom Players a secret for as long as possible, so they avoided main streets and ducked through mossy channels of back alleys until they were safely in the jungle just outside the town, where they trotted quickly along a thin hunting trail.
‘Not that anything in Tontap is a secret for long,’ said Tabba.
Muted golden light spilled from the high canopy. Small whiskered monkeys jibbered as they groomed themselves, and the ceaseless murmur of birds underpinned the hot, humid air. Shimmering processions of leafcutter ants marched up and down the trunks, waving their tiny flags. Penny saw sloths hanging upside down, napping their lives away. They were the only creatures in Tontap who didn’t seem caught up in the excitement of the festival. Seagrape flew in front of them, the light dappling her wings.
‘You told Elder you had a friend here,’ said Tabba. ‘How do you know someone from Tamarind?’
‘I’ve been here before,’ explained Penny. ‘Not Kana, another part of Tamarind.’ She found herself describing how her family had been to Tamarind, and how Helix had come into their lives. She hadn’t talked to anyone so freely in a long time, but it didn’t feel strange. Tabba was easy company.
‘Helix is great,’ Penny said. ‘I bet you’d like him. He used to be a hunter. He can climb to the top of a tree in, like, ten seconds flat. His hair is really messy. And he hates wearing shoes – I remember that. The only time he would ever wear them when he lived with us was when he went to school.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Tabba.
‘Somewhere in Western Tamarind, I guess,’ said Penny. ‘That’s where he lived.’
Penny’s memory of Tamarind was not dim; on the contrary it was the most vivid memory she had, but the things she remembered were not the most useful things when it came to questions of basic geography. She could conjure in a heartbeat an afternoon that she had leaned against Maya as they had travelled down a river, the comfort of her cheek resting on her sister’s shoulder, hear as clear as day her brother’s voice as he had pointed out the funny blue birds that had filled the bushes all along the shores, but her sense of geography was slippery, and any attempt to pinpoint where that river was on a map ended in fog.
‘Western Tamarind is ages away,’ said Tabba. ‘But people come from all over for the Bloom Festival. Even from Western Tamarind. Maybe he’ll be here. Though if he’s coming, maybe it won’t be until later in the competition, right before the Wave. That’s what a lot of people do.’
Something occurred to Penny. It was obvious, but somehow she’d never really thought about it before. She had been five years old the last time she’d seen Helix – he might not recognize her now. And maybe she wouldn’t even recognize him any more. Who knew how he had changed in the past seven years?
Seagrape had flown on and was waiting for them on a branch up ahead. When the girls reached her, they paused to catch their breath.
‘I wonder …’ mused Tabba. ‘You said Seagrape used to belong to Helix. Do you think that she could find him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Penny. Seagrape was not a pet, like a dutiful dog, anxious to please its master. She was not a pet at all, in fact. She had been given a task years ago – to watch over Penny – and she had done that faithfully. She had stoically born indignities – being dressed in doll’s clothes or enlisted in boisterous games of pirates – out of secret fondness for Penny, or duty to Helix, but she remained deliberately private, as observant and inscrutable as a servant. She had moments of genuine affection, of course: when Penny was very young and frightened of thunderstorms at night, Seagrape would come and perch beside her on the edge of her bed, and Penny knew that Seagrape loved Granny Pearl as much as she herself did. Penny had long believed that the parrot could talk but chose not to, either out of pure stubbornness or – Penny imagined – in fidelity to some secret vow. In her old age she was increasingly stubborn and cantankerous. Who knew what she really thought about anything? Now that she was back in her home after many years away, Penny wasn’t sure what to expect.
‘Seagrape,’ said Penny. ‘Do you know how to find Helix? Can you find him?’
The light caught the oily sheen in the bird’s feathers. She cocked her head, her sage, crafty eye unblinking. Penny sighed.
‘She only ever does things when she feels like it,’ she said.
‘I have a better idea,’ said Tabba. ‘There’s a message pole in every town in Kana where people leave notes for other people. Why don’t we stop at the pole in the square and leave something for your friend? He won’t be expecting anything, so he won’t check it, but if you can think of something he’ll recognize, something obvious near the top, maybe he’ll see it.’
Penny was about to say that she didn’t know what she could leave, when it struck her.
‘The yellow flags,’ she murmured. ‘How on earth did Granny Pearl know I would need them?’ She stopped in the middle of the path. ‘I have these flags that my grandmother made,’ she said excitedly. ‘We used to play this game with them when I was little. If Helix saw them, he’d know right away that I was here. It’s a great idea, Tabba! Thank you.’
Pleased, Tabba led her on a quick detour back into the town to the square, where in a corner was a tall, skinny wooden pole, a repurposed ship’s mast, which stood twenty feet high. Pinned to it were hundreds of notes on leaves and scraps of fabric, fluttering and rustling in the breeze. From a distance it looked like a great and raggedy flock of butterflies had settled on it.
When they reached it, Penny saw there were evenly spaced pegs on the sides so people could climb to the top. Holding a flag in her teeth, she ascended quickly, as if scaling the mast of the Pamela Jane. She shook out the flag and secured it firmly to the top of the pole, where a high breeze lifted it and held it gently aloft so that the stitched green parrot appeared to be in flight. The sun shone through the thin fabric. If Helix were here, he wouldn’t be able to miss it. Penny looked over the town. More and more people were arriving in Tontap each hour, and the streets around the square were clogged with the newcomers. She climbed back down, and she and Tabba escaped the crowd as quickly as they could.
Tabba recovered the dugout from its hiding place beneath a stack of fallen palm fronds on a desolate patch of the coast facing the sea, far from the town and harbour. So
on she and Penny were heading out towards the kelp forest.
The sky was hot, the water deep blue. Seagrape flew ahead of them. Tabba took the first turn paddling. Penny looked back at the green silhouette of the island. Every now and then she had the feeling that her senses were failing her. There was a chameleon quality to the landscape, something amorphous and protean. She saw the same shimmery smudge that she had seen when she had first sailed into Kana. It had not moved.
‘It’s started to fade; it was much brighter at first,’ said Tabba, who saw what Penny was gazing at.
‘Why is it still there?’ Penny asked. ‘The ones at Elder’s and at the Blue Line were only open for a few seconds.’
‘Some close right away; some stay open and fade gradually,’ said Tabba. ‘They say that if it’s a bad Bloom the whorls never close. More and more just keep opening, and everything keeps getting worse and worse. But no one alive really remembers the last bad Bloom. Even the very oldest people alive now would have only been small children.’
Penny remembered the menacing feeling that had infiltrated Elder’s yard, how the world had warped, a dark wash come over it. She squinted at the shore. This whorl didn’t seem dangerous at all. It appeared blameless and dreamy, like the shimmer of heat in the distance on a drowsy summer day.
‘It looks harmless,’ she said.
‘I agree,’ said Tabba. ‘It looks harmless. And maybe some of them are. But that’s the one the mandrill left through, the day that he came to Tontap.’
‘Were you there?’ asked Penny. ‘Did you see him?’