by Nadia Aguiar
‘Jebby and I were there,’ said Tabba, drawing hard on the paddle. ‘But we didn’t really see much. Kal had gathered some people in the town square to see his feat. Elder was there. Me and Jebby. A few other kids. Most people hadn’t listened to him, though, so there weren’t that many. None of us had any idea what he was going to do. We were all standing around Kal, and suddenly a whorl appeared, right beside him. Jebby and I didn’t know what it was at first – we’d never seen one before. It was very faint, not like the one in the trees there but like a tiny cloud hovering in mid-air.’
‘What did Elder do?’ asked Penny.
‘I don’t think he could believe it at first either,’ said Tabba. ‘Kal asked Elder if it meant he would be a Bloom Player. Elder said yes, but that whorls were dangerous and he had to close it right away. Kal was so excited. He tried to close the whorl – you could tell he really was trying – but, instead of closing, the whorl started getting bigger and darker. Before it had looked like a little bright cloud on a sunny day, just sitting there, no breeze. By then it was as black as a storm cloud. The air smelled like something under a rock – mud, earthworms. Jebby started pulling me away from it.’
She paused, letting the dugout coast for a few moments. ‘That’s when the mandrill came out of the whorl. Jebby and I were already at the edge of the square by then, but we turned back long enough to see him jump out of it. He looks like a very big monkey with dark, shiny fur. He was moving so fast his face was a blur, but we saw it was brightly coloured, like a mask. Kal had been standing right next to the whorl and was knocked over when the mandrill jumped out – that’s how Kal got that bruise over his eye. Everyone started screaming and running inside to get away from the mandrill. Jebby and I ran and ran and didn’t stop until we got home. Later we found out that he wandered around the town for a little while – people hiding in their houses could hear him outside their windows. Then he went into the jungle just outside the town, climbed a tree and opened the whorl that you saw back there. He disappeared into it and didn’t come back.
‘Kal got into trouble,’ Tabba went on. ‘But Elder knew he’d only meant to open a whorl, not make the mandrill show up – Kal had been more surprised than anyone when the mandrill jumped out. And you couldn’t deny that he’d done an amazing feat – something no one else had done or could do. So he was still allowed to be a Bloom Player, but Elder made him promise not to open another whorl. I think he decided that Kal had learned his lesson – the mandrill had given him a bad scare, and had hurt him, too. As far as I know, until today he hadn’t opened another one, but who knows? Maybe he was practising secretly? A few days after the mandrill appeared, people started saying that maybe Kal had made him appear, on purpose. You know how people talk and stories get started.’
‘Where did the mandrill go when he left?’
‘Back to the Gorgonne, I guess,’ said Tabba. ‘That’s the place in the middle of Kana where he lives,’ ‘They say you can’t even see inside it; its edges are all blurred. No one knows what’s inside because no one can get in. There’s a force that pushes you back if you try to get close.’
‘It pushes you back,’ said Penny. ‘Kind of like the Blue Line does.’
‘I guess,’ said Tabba. ‘Anyway, all the mandrills used to live there. All the others are gone – he’s the last one left. He’s been around forever. He’s only able to come out right before the Bloom.’
Penny thought about the strange creature living by himself in a place he couldn’t leave, a place where no one ever went.
‘Sounds lonely,’ she said. ‘No wonder he shows up all over the place while he has the chance.’
Penny and Tabba switched places and Penny took over paddling.
‘How close did you get to it?’ asked Penny. ‘To the whorl in the tree?’
‘The next day we went to see it,’ said Tabba. ‘On the way we found the mandrill’s footprints in the mud. Five toes, deep gouges from his claws, heavy heel. We got close enough to the whorl to look right up at it from under the tree. It was brighter then; it’s faded a bit now.’
‘What would happen if you tried going through it?’ asked Penny.
‘Are you crazy?’ said Tabba, laughing. ‘No one would ever do that! Do you know what could happen to you?’
‘No,’ said Penny curiously. ‘What?’
‘You’d get sucked in and you’d disappear forever,’ replied Tabba. ‘You might even explode.’
Penny frowned. ‘How do you know that, if no one’s ever tried to go through one?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tabba. ‘But my mother says that in the last bad Bloom people used to disappear into them all the time.’
‘But I came through one,’ said Penny. ‘That’s how I crossed the Blue Line, right?’
‘True …’ said Tabba. ‘But the mandrill didn’t open that whorl; Kal did. It’s different. You know, Jebby doesn’t believe that Kal is really doing any of these things. He thinks it’s got to be some kind of trick, or luck, or something. He thinks that whatever Kal was doing just irritated the mandrill somehow and that’s why he showed up.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Penny.
‘I think Kal is doing something,’ said Tabba. ‘I just don’t know how.’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Penny, ‘is, if the mandrill’s so dangerous to Kana, why doesn’t someone just catch him? Lock him away or something.’
Tabba laughed. ‘Impossible,’ she said. ‘No one’s ever caught him, and no one ever will. He’s too smart and too fast. All he has to do is open a whorl and disappear into it. By the time an arrow’s left a bow, he’s vanished into a whorl. He senses a net falling – zip, he’s gone. Anyway – if you tried to hurt him, he’d hurt you. If you ever do see him anywhere, you’re supposed to run for your life.’
To run for your life. Penny scanned the jungle in the distance, half expecting to see the strange creature leaning out from a high branch, peering at them out there in the tiny dugout, but they were too far from land now to have made him out clearly even if he were there.
‘Now,’ Tabba said briskly. She stood up so she could see further, and the boat rocked precariously. ‘We must be getting close. I know it’s out here somewhere …’ She shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘There!’ she cried at last, pointing. She took over from Penny and began paddling swiftly.
Penny smelled the kelp before she saw it – a briny, vegetable odour mingled in with the salt air. The Kelp Forest – or the very top of it anyway – was a vast fleece of rumpled, shining leaves swaying like a mirage on the surface of the water. Blue-footed seabirds paddled around its edges, taking flight every now and then to cruise over it on tilted wings. As they drew closer, Penny could see that what had looked like flakes of snow being buffeted about were actually small white sea-butterflies, pollinating the kelp. One alighted on her shoulder for a moment, tiny feet cold, as if a snowflake had fallen on her.
Seagrape landed on the kelp and squawked in annoyance as she began to slide through the waxy leaves. She flew to perch on the gunnel of the rowing-boat, where she picked out a glossy wet rag from her talon: a long draping leaf, dark green as spinach. Tabba guided the boat through the stalks and then stopped paddling.
The kelp pods were near the surface. Golden bubbles – tough and leathery, about the size of birthday balloons – they were attached near the tops of the kelp stalks, buoying the stalks up towards the nourishing sunlight. They could be gathered from the boat. Penny joined Tabba in cutting them free and tossing them into the hull. They were light, almost weightless, but strong and nearly impossible to pop, and they gathered in a big amber froth at the girls’ feet. Tabba broke off a few tips of kelp stalks, which poked up here and there like stiff reeds. She sharpened them with her knife. They were empty inside, like straws. Exhaling noisily, she punctured a pod with a straw, then put the straw to her lips and breathed in the oxygen from the pod.
‘You try it,’ she told Penny.
Penny took a
straw and after a few attempts punctured a rubbery pod, then drew a deep breath. The air from the pod tasted like salty, overcooked vegetables, but it was air. Each pod held several breaths’ worth.
When they had all the pods and straws they needed, they stuffed them into a fishing net and rowed towards a shoreline cliff, where tiny, lustrous orbs of sea lights were nestled in tide pools in the tiers of the cliff. The girls tied up the boat and hopped on to the rocks. They climbed nimbly and gathered the sea lights, which were lightweight as pumice and small enough to fit in their palms. The lights glowed only dimly now, but Tabba assured Penny that come nightfall they would burn brightly. When the girls had what they needed, they returned to the boat and headed to shore with their haul.
By the time they stowed the boat and hurried back to meet Jebby, the afternoon was waning and the light beneath the palms was mellow. It was hard to see Seagrape, her wings dappled with light and shadow as she coasted from branch to branch ahead of them. It was a lazy hour when no creature had to try very hard to blend in with its surroundings. Jebby was already waiting at the appointed spot in the palm grove.
‘The new tyres are on,’ he said. ‘I think it’s going to work! Bellamy said to come and pick it up tonight, after Elder announces the first trial. It will be safe there until then. And Rai’s gone to find us a map. How’d you do?’ He peeked into the bags with the kelp pods and sea lights. ‘Wow – this is great!’
‘So it looks like we’re almost ready,’ said Penny happily.
‘I think so,’ said Jebby. ‘I came back through the town. There are Bloom Players everywhere. They’re all walking around in their yellow sashes already. Some of them are huge – they look really strong. Also, I ran into Sol and his sister. Someone saw us getting the sashes from Elder. People already know; that means Ma will, too. She hears everything!’
‘Great,’ groaned Tabba.
‘Come on, let’s get it over with,’ said Jebby. ‘Just don’t argue with her. Da will help smooth things over.’
‘We hope,’ muttered Tabba.
They walked through the palms and emerged in a clearing with a tidy, palm-thatched hut. A woman was raking the sand outside the door. Colourful hammocks were strung between the palms. Several small children were swinging in one of them, trying to tip out the littlest among them. When they saw Tabba, Jebby and Penny, they tumbled out and came running over. The woman dropped the rake.
‘Da – they’re here!’ she shouted.
As Tabba, Jebby and Penny approached sheepishly, Ma Silverling assumed a posture common to mothers on both sides of the Blue Line, hands on hips, glaring down at them.
‘Did you think I wouldn’t find out?’ she cried. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve got yourselves into? How many times have we told you to stay away from the Line? Who are you?’ she asked, turning to Penny. ‘Does your mother know where you are? How have you put this crazy idea into my children’s heads?’
Penny shifted her backpack with the yellow sashes in it behind her protectively. Experienced at weathering their mother’s rages, Tabba and Jebby were compliant and apologetic.
‘Don’t blame Penny,’ said Jebby soothingly. ‘It was our idea to go, Ma.’
‘You don’t have to worry,’ said Tabba. ‘We’ve spent the whole afternoon getting ready – we have everything we could possibly need for the first trial. We have a bicycle and we have kelp pods and sea lights –’
‘Kelp pods!’ Ma Silverling snorted. ‘Kelp pods! Da, I guess we don’t need to worry any more – they have kelp pods!’ she said to the man, appearing now from behind the hut.
Da Silverling was a calm, affable-looking man, unperturbed by his wife’s fury. He had been working and his skin was covered in sawdust.
‘Hi, Da,’ said Jebby.
‘Da,’ said Tabba, her eyes shining. ‘We’re going to be Bloom Players.’
‘Bloom Players!’ moaned Ma. ‘You’ve never even been out of Tontap on your own before! Da – tell them.’
‘Elder said –’ began Tabba.
‘Elder said!’ interrupted Ma, swatting away the littlest Silverling child, who was trying to climb her skirt. The other children stood around silently, staring curiously at Penny. ‘Does Elder feed you and clothe you? Who is Elder to say you can go gallivanting across the countryside?’
Da Silverling had been studying the children. Now he put a steadying hand on Ma’s shoulder.
‘I said it before,’ he said. ‘We can’t stop the Bloom.’
‘Of course we can’t stop the Bloom,’ exclaimed Ma. ‘You know that’s ridiculous. But why do they have to be involved? It’s gone wrong – it’s happened before. The whorls are dangerous.’ She turned to the children. ‘I’ve told you my grandmother’s stories about the last time there was a bad Bloom – about what happened to Kana, how people vanished into whorls and never came back. Children would be playing in a garden and suddenly a whorl would open and swallow them up. Sometimes men didn’t make it home at the end of the day – they wouldn’t see a whorl on the road right in front of them in the darkness and they’d disappear into it. And things came out of whorls, too – fires, freezes, floods, wild animals … My grandmother knew a woman who watched her child carried off into a whorl by a jaguar, right before her eyes.’
Penny glanced at Tabba and Jebby. They hadn’t told her about these stories before. She wondered if they were true, or if Ma Silverling was exaggerating, the same way her own mother would if she wanted to impress to Penny the danger of something that Penny was bent on doing.
‘Come on, Ma, those are just stories,’ said Tabba. ‘Who knows if they’re even true? No one from then is even alive any more.’
‘Things don’t usually go wrong,’ said Jebby. ‘There’ve been good Blooms since then. Every single one. Right, Da?’
‘The last bad Bloom was a long time ago; it’s true,’ said Da Silverling, who looked cautious but not fearful. He turned to Ma. ‘This is a new Bloom,’ he said calmly. ‘And it’s called them.’
‘Called them?’ Ma laughed. ‘Called them – since breakfast?’
The children stood quietly and pretended not to hear as Ma and Da dropped their voices.
‘If the Bloom goes wrong, it won’t matter where they are,’ said Da soberly. ‘We know that. They have an amazing opportunity right now, one they won’t have again. The next time the Bloom comes around, they’ll be grown. So, now … they’ll see a little more of Kana, they’ll learn a few things, someone will get the Bloom, and then they’ll be home safe and sound.’
Ma shook her head miserably. The kelp pods glowed dully; the scent of sea moss rose from the basket and expanded in the pink evening air. Ma looked at Da, Tabba, Jebby and the little children gathered round her feet. Seagrape perched on Penny’s shoulder as the seconds ticked slowly by. One of the little children hugged Tabba’s leg and grinned up at her. She wiped his nose and patted his head. Ma reached down and drew her smallest child to her, pressing her cheek against the baby’s face. Penny saw that she had given in. The baby wriggled free and began crawling after a beetle trundling across the dirt. Ma tucked Tabba’s hair behind her ear, brushed sand off Jebby’s shoulder. She shrugged helplessly.
Tabba and Jebby were trying not to smile, which Penny knew from her own mother could provoke an abrupt reversal of ground that had been won.
‘We can go?’ asked Jebby.
‘It’s done, isn’t it?’ Ma asked stiffly. ‘What does a mother matter when it comes to the Bloom?’
‘Ma! Thank you!’ cried Tabba, throwing her arms round her. ‘You’ll see – we’ll be OK!’
‘Enough wasting time!’ said Ma. ‘I still have things to do because certain people disappeared all day and left me high and dry on the busiest day of the year!’ Enlivened by anger once more, she turned on her heel and marched back towards the house.
‘She’ll be all right,’ Tabba whispered to Penny. ‘She never stays mad for long. She’s too busy. Da, thank you – you’ll see; it’s going to be great.�
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However, with Ma gone, Da was newly stern. ‘It isn’t a game,’ he said gravely. ‘If the Bloom goes wrong, there’s not going to be anything we can do to protect you. Do you understand?’
Penny wondered what he meant exactly. Surely Ma Silverling’s stories were just that – stories, weren’t they? And Tabba was smiling, and so was Jebby.
‘Yes, Da,’ said Tabba, beaming at him.
‘I don’t think you do understand,’ said Da, shaking his head. ‘Now –’ he went on in a lighter tone – ‘I suggest you stay out of your mother’s hair until it’s time to leave for the square!’
Penny, Tabba and Jebby retreated a short distance from the hut. The three littlest Silverling children followed them, staring at Penny.
‘Go on!’ Tabba said, shooing them away. ‘She’s from the Outside – she doesn’t need you pestering her!’
The little ones hung back and watched as Tabba and Penny used rough leaves to scour the sea moss off the sea lights so they would burn brightly. They wrapped the burnished globes in wet banana leaves and placed them in a basket, covering the top with a cloth to keep the light hidden when night came. The kelp pods were secured in a fine-mesh fishing net. Penny watched Jebby deftly fashion weight belts out of rope, which they would need if they had to descend to any depth with the buoyant kelp pods. Tabba foraged for berries and bark, which she ground into a paste in case they got blisters, and Jebby returned with three spears he had borrowed from Da Silverling. After watching how Jebby did it, Penny began sharpening one of the blades against a stone. She felt a thrill. Spears. They needed spears for what they were going to do. She thought about Helix – this was exactly the kind of stuff he used to do in Tamarind.
When everything was ready, the children laid their precious objects on the sandy ground between them and gazed at the collection. Along with the kelp pods, kelp straws, sea lights and spears, they had knives, fishing line, mosquito nets and ointment for blisters. Tabba and Jebby had simple sackcloth packs, and Penny had her backpack. To the offerings on the ground, Penny added the contents of her bag: Simon’s compass, her goggles and the remaining faded yellow flags, the third one of which was already hanging on the pole in the square.