by Nadia Aguiar
‘How will you get anywhere?’
Tabba and Jebby fielded questions with the self-conscious but self-satisfied generosity that accompanies new-found celebrity. Heads held a little higher, they resumed walking along a wide side street, the other children crowding around them.
‘We heard Kal brought her over – he opened a whorl in the Blue Line and she came through!’ said a boy who was about their age.
‘That’s not what happened,’ said Jebby irritably.
‘But, Tabba,’ said a tall, lean girl, ‘all the other Bloom Players are older. And they’re boys.’
‘There have been girls in the competition before,’ said Tabba.
‘Hardly ever,’ said the tall girl.
‘Well,’ retorted Penny. ‘There are now.’
The other children looked at Penny with a mix of curiosity and respect – after all, she was an Outsider and she had crossed the Blue Line. But they said nothing. Miraculous solo Line crossing or not, Penny realized that no one thought she had any hope of becoming the Bloom Catcher.
‘Come on,’ said a boy to Tabba and Jebby. ‘You don’t actually think you’re going to get that far, do you? It’ll be a miracle if you even make it past the first round.’
‘People are betting that you’ll come in last in the first trial,’ added another boy.
‘Actual bets?’ asked Jebby.
The other kids nodded.
This knocked the wind out of Penny, Tabba and Jebby’s sails a bit, but then Tabba said, with false jauntiness, ‘Well, everyone’s in for a surprise then, aren’t they?’
‘Hey, Jebby, what about Kal?’ asked a boy.
‘What about him?’ asked Jebby.
‘Does he know you’re in the competition now, too?’
‘I have no idea,’ answered Jebby.
‘Aren’t you …’
‘Aren’t we what?’
‘Scared of him?’ said one of the other children finally.
‘No,’ said Jebby brashly. ‘Why should we be?’
‘Because he can open whorls,’ said a boy. ‘No one else can do that. Only the mandrill.’
‘And because he made the mandrill come to Tontap,’ said another boy.
‘We don’t have proof that Kal brought the mandrill here,’ said Jebby. ‘It could have been a coincidence. The mandrill appears all over the place before the Bloom, doesn’t he? The fact that he showed up here doesn’t mean it’s because of Kal. Maybe the mandrill knew that another whorl had been opened and he was curious.’
The children stopped walking. They had gone a good distance from the square. At the end of the street, the harbour glimmered in the moonlight. Other people had been around a minute ago, but now there was a lull and the children were the only ones left. They turned round to walk back towards the square.
‘Look,’ hissed a kid. ‘Kal’s coming!’
A hush fell over the children as Kal made his way purposefully in their direction. He looked calm but angry. Penny felt her heart begin to beat faster.
Kal stopped abruptly in front of the group. He said nothing, but slowly he moved his arm through the air, like a magician drawing a silk scarf through a ring. Penny had no idea what he was doing. She glanced at Tabba and Jebby, but they shrugged and waited. The children held their breath. The youngest children cowered behind the older ones.
‘What’s he going to do?’ whispered someone.
‘Quiet – watch,’ said other voices.
Across the street from the children stood a scrappy tree, its leaves motionless in the hot night air. Suddenly a sickly stormy light shone from it. Everyone turned to face the light, even Kal, as if he had not known precisely where it was going to come from.
‘It’s a whorl,’ Tabba whispered, squinting through the leaves.
It was a whorl, a small one, smudged and bleary, lodged in a fork in one of the branches. The light that came through it was muddy, as though passing through murky water or a dirty pane of glass. Penny caught the scent of rain on the air and felt a breeze, like the first puffs in advance of a storm. Seagrape bristled on her shoulder.
‘Shhh,’ Penny whispered.
There was a silence, then she heard a very fine patter and saw misty rain blowing in the beam.
She could hardly believe what she was seeing.
The rain was only coming from the whorl, nowhere else. The rest of the street was bone dry, and the surface of the harbour was smooth, undimpled by raindrops.
Seconds later a strong gust shook the whole tree and, with a sound like a belt snapping, a downpour was unleashed. Rain crashed down. The wind snatched leaves from the tree and whipped them through the air. Children squealed and retreated further down the street, but Penny, Tabba and Jebby only stepped back a few paces. A puddle was growing beneath the tree, and Penny recoiled when she felt the water touch her toes.
She glanced at Kal and saw him smile a dark, satisfied smile. What he’d done had been effortful and had taken his full concentration, but the hard work was over. He turned to look directly at her, leering, pleased to see he had intimidated her.
Penny knew it was irrational, but suddenly she believed that he had the power to harm them, even with just his gaze.
There was a thud, and the whorl popped shut. The wind dropped out. The rain ceased abruptly. The cloying light disappeared. Penny saw from Kal’s face that the whorl had closed without him meaning it to: he hadn’t had the strength to keep it open any longer.
The wind had stripped the tree’s leaves, blown them around and plastered them on the row of wooden housefronts along one side of the street, so that they looked a great, scaled creature just waking from slumber. Children huddled, listening to the drip-drip-drip of rain under the bare branches. Those who had been closest to the whorl were drenched. They stood there blinking rain out of their eyes.
‘Run!’ shouted a boy suddenly. ‘Before he makes the mandrill come back again!’
As the children stampeded away, the triton sounded from the square.
Telling themselves they had to be there to hear the announcement about the first trial, Penny, Tabba and Jebby turned and fled after them.
The children wove their way through the crowd and climbed a Bobea tree whose boughs overhung the square. The tree was already sagging under the weight of people who had climbed it for a better view, but the children found an empty branch and wriggled out to the end of it. Seagrape disappeared elsewhere in the tree. The shark’s tooth necklace swung forward as Penny crawled along the branch. She found a spot and settled to wait. She tried to forget what she had just seen Kal do, but her clothes were still damp, her blood buzzing through her veins.
The Council of Elders came through the crowd and assembled on the platform in the middle of the square. Elder banged his cane on the stage and, with much shushing and whispering, the clamour of the crowd was reeled in. Here and there came a cough, a sniffle, a shuffle, but the intensity of attention felt palpable, as if the air itself had gone taut.
‘Listen,’ said Elder. ‘Do you hear the sea?’
Hundreds of ears turned to the ocean. Penny closed her eyes, her legs dangling in the soft night air, and listened until she could hear the swish and churn of the waves.
‘In four days, not many miles from here, a Great Wave will rise from that sea and in it will be the Bloom,’ said Elder. His voice was rich and deep, like an incantation drawing strength from some distant, mysterious source. ‘Bloom is life for Kana.’
‘Between now and then a competition will take place,’ he went on. ‘A sometimes gruelling competition of bravery, stamina and wits. And at the end of it one person will be left, who alone will go forth fearlessly into the Great Wave to gather the Bloom – Kana’s next Bloom Catcher!’
As Elder spoke, Penny pictured the Bloom as Kal had described it that morning in the boat – the great, glassy wall of water, soaring upward from the sand, the explosion of creatures within and then the bright flares of the precious Bloom itself, bursting forth like firework
s inside the Wave. For a moment her vision was twinned with Kal’s. Goosebumps prickled her arms. She was going to be that person who strode fearlessly into the Wave. She was going to be the Bloom Catcher. A breeze rose and the branch beneath her swayed and she imagined that it was the Wave lifting her up.
She realized that Elder was still speaking.
‘Whorls have already begun to appear,’ he said. ‘The mandrill can now be out of the Gorgonne whenever he wishes. I sensed his presence myself, earlier today. If the Bloom Catcher succeeds in getting the Bloom and pouring it into the Coral Basin, then the mandrill will be forced to return to the Gorgonne, and Kana will continue in peace and prosperity, as you see it now. But if a Bloom Catcher fails to emerge from the field of Players, if the Bloom is not gathered and poured into the Coral in time, the mandrill will be free to wreak his havoc. What is on the other side of the whorls will come through, and all of what you see around you will be altered beyond recognition – or may disappear forever. Kana as we know it will cease to exist.’
The crowd was too youthful and their spirits too high to be sobered for long by such a grave warning. Excited whispers rose and people squeezed in close to see as, after a moment, Elder reached into a cloth bag and fished around for something. Penny and Tabba and Jebby inched further down the bough and peered through the leaves. Penny held her breath. Elder withdrew his hand and raised it over his head. Slowly he opened his fingers to reveal, in his palm, a small ivory sphere speckled with purple and orange flecks, radiant in the torchlight. Guesses about what it was fizzed through the crowd.
‘A Molmer egg,’ he boomed. ‘Players will depart from this square tomorrow morning, and it will be their task to find a Molmer egg and bring it to the next town, Jaipa, as quickly as they can. Fifty-two teams will leave here, but only the first twenty teams to reach Jaipa with an egg will advance to the next round. I warn Players not to think about sneaking off early – all competitors will be logged tomorrow morning here in Tontap, and any Player not accounted for will be disqualified.
‘Now … Players, please enjoy the rest of the night’s festivities but be ready for an early tomorrow! Good luck and may the spirit of the Bloom Festival be with you!’
A stray firecracker shattered the sky and, its invisible ties released, the crowd expanded suddenly, diffusing into the streets around the square. The babble of voices resumed, the music struck up again, and meat sizzled back on hot griddles. The branch the children were on began to bob wildly as people streamed out of the tree.
‘Do you know where we can find a … what is it – a Molmer egg?’ asked Penny, shimmying down the trunk after Tabba and Jebby.
‘The Blue Pits, I think,’ said Tabba. ‘Right, Jebby?’
‘Right,’ said Jebby. ‘Let’s go to Bellamy’s – we can look at the map there, and pick up the bicycle, too!’
The crowd thinned as the children climbed the hill towards Bellamy’s. By the time they neared the top, the streets were empty. The door to Bellamy’s shop was unlocked. The children entered and, calling quietly to him, went into the storeroom. They found him sitting in a wedge of moonlight at a table near the door to the yard.
‘Go on out,’ he said. ‘She’s all ready for you.’
The children went out of the back door into a little yard cut out of the limestone walls, bathed in moonlight. A pair of ancient mules dozed beneath a scraggly loquat tree. One opened an eye to watch the children. Seagrape had flown over the roof and landed in the tree.
In the middle of the yard, gleaming brighter and newer than Penny would have believed possible, stood the bicycle. Every last flake of rust had been sanded off, its gears greased with palm oil, its metal frame polished with beeswax. The tyres, bound with the newly cut vines, looked springy and strong. Flexible bamboo rods attached the axle of its rear wheel to the handsome wooden cart. The cart had been sanded smooth – no splinters would catch the children’s arms leaning on its edges – and painted bright yellow. It would fit two passengers snugly. Grass streamers hung from the ends of the bike’s handlebars and a breeze stirred them, giving the impression of speed even as the bike stood still.
‘Wow!’ said Penny. ‘It looks like a whole new bicycle!’
‘Give it a spin,’ said Bellamy proudly.
Penny got on and rode in a circle round the yard, starting slowly then picking up speed so that puffs of white sand spun up from beneath the tyres. It was a little big but still a good size for her, which meant that long ago Bellamy must have ridden around on it with his long legs folded up to his ears like a grasshopper. The cart rolled smoothly and willingly along behind. It balanced the bike, almost as if it were a giant tricycle, which would make it easier for Tabba and Jebby to ride, too. The brakes didn’t squeak, and the crooked axle on the front wheel had been hammered straight. The rusted bell on the handlebars had been taken apart, its pieces meticulously cleaned, and when Penny pushed it with her thumb, instead of the old hoarse croak it had emitted earlier, it trilled, clear and purposeful as a bird’s call.
‘It’s perfect,’ said Penny sincerely, stopping back in front of the others. ‘Thank you, Bellamy.’
‘Teach us how to ride it, Penny!’ said Tabba.
With Penny jogging alongside, Tabba and then Jebby took their first wobbly turns round the yard. Tabba was bolder, going faster immediately, almost crashing into the loquat tree, causing the mules to bray and shuffle a safe distance away. Jebby was more cautious, carving a few slow, precise circles before he was comfortable enough to go faster.
‘There!’ called Penny. ‘You’ve got it!’
Jebby sped up, showing off. The bike fishtailed and almost tipped over. He steadied himself, then got off and left the bike standing securely in the shafts of the cart and joined the others.
The children sat down with Bellamy at the table in the doorway, and Penny retrieved the map from her bag.
‘The first trial is to bring back a Molmer egg from the bottom of a Blue Pit,’ Tabba told Bellamy.
‘Not at the bottom,’ said Bellamy quickly. He looked alarmed. ‘You’d never make it all the way down to the bottom of a Blue Pit, let alone back up – far too deep.’ He gave a short, dry laugh. ‘You’ll find that out quickly enough.’
‘Oh,’ said Tabba, abashed.
‘They’ll be in the cave walls, part way down,’ said Bellamy as Penny fiddled with the string that tied the map together. ‘Molmers lived in the Blue Pits before the last bad Bloom – they looked like giant lobsters, with huge purple shells and claws that could dig through stone. They carved cubbyholes – small caves, really – in the sheer walls of the Pits and laid their eggs there. I remember being a boy and hearing old people telling stories about how the Molmers used to come up and float around on the surface sometimes in the spring – they were as big as rowing-boats. It was rare to catch one, but, when people did, it could feed several families for a week. In those times the Pits were teeming with life – they were big fishing grounds. Then the bad Bloom happened and the Molmers went extinct, along with a lot of other creatures. The pits have been barren ever since, and the Molmer eggs that are still down there have turned to stone.’
Penny unfurled the map and Jebby pinned down its corners with stones from the yard. The children leaned in, elbows on the table, and pored over it.
Penny’s gaze roved over blue fingers of inlets scattered with jade atolls, luxurious green jungles whose borders were etched with coconut plantations, towns with strange and musical names marked with tiny stars. The whole place was threaded and crosshatched with roads and paths, except for a blank expanse that weighted the middle of the map – the Gorgonne, where Tabba said the mandrill lived. Unlike the rest of the map, which was finely detailed, it was featureless, its depths uncharted.
Penny kept looking and located Tontap on the northeast coast amidst a smattering of tiny islands. Then her heart quickened as further north, in a half-moon cleft on the coast, she found Palmos, where the Great Wave would rise. The waters around it were painte
d a bright, swimmy, promising blue. That was where the Bloom would happen and where – if they were lucky – they would be in a few short days from now. She took a shivery breath.
Then she realized that the others were looking not at Palmos but at several dark splotches shadowing the water to its east.
‘There they are,’ said Tabba, pointing. ‘The Blue Pits.’
The Pits were not blue, but appeared black, like inkblots – mistakes – and Penny felt a tug of foreboding. Most of them were close together; only one was out on its own.
Jebby chewed his lip. ‘Everyone is probably going to head to those,’ he said, indicating the main cluster. ‘They’re closest, and they’re all together so there will be lots to choose from. But it looks like it’s dense jungle all along that part of the coast – I don’t see any real roads. Players on animals will be fine, but I don’t think the bike could do it.’
‘You’re right,’ said Bellamy. ‘Past a certain point there are really only hunting trails out to that part of the coast.’
Penny’s gaze wandered across the map. ‘What about this one?’ she asked, pointing to the stray blot further west, at the end of a narrow, broken peninsula. ‘The one by itself. Off, what’s it called – Oyster Point. It looks like there’s a clear road out there at least. It’s further away, but we can cover ground quickly. And from there it’s not far to Jaipa.’
The children contemplated the solitary Blue Pit.
‘It just looks lonely,’ said Tabba. She put her hands in her lap, as though she didn’t want to risk touching the Pit, even on the map.
‘Bellamy, you used to go all over Kana,’ said Jebby. ‘What do you think?’
‘In terms of getting there, on the bike, yes, the Pit off Oyster Point makes the most sense,’ he said carefully. ‘But you’ll find it … desolate. A long time ago it was a bustling fishing town, but it was one of the areas worst hit by the last bad Bloom. Some places never came back, you know – they’re just dead zones. The Pit there is an empty, dark place.’
Jebby frowned as he studied the map. ‘But what choice do we really have?’ he asked.