by Nadia Aguiar
‘I still don’t like it,’ said Tabba.
‘You’ll like it when no one’s there fighting us over the last Molmer egg,’ said Jebby. ‘Agreed?’
‘Agreed,’ said Penny. The lonely Pit seemed creepy, even on the map, but Jebby was right, it was the best choice.
‘All right,’ sighed Tabba at last. ‘Me, too.’
‘We’d better get back home,’ said Jebby. He rolled up the map and shook Bellamy’s hand. ‘Bellamy, we’ll have your bicycle back safe and sound in no time.’
‘Thank you for letting us borrow it,’ said Penny.
‘Yes, thank you!’ echoed Tabba.
‘It’s an unexpected honour to be part of the Bloom at my age,’ said Bellamy graciously. ‘I’m glad you found your way to my shop.’
Penny went to get the bicycle from the yard, but before she could wheel it past Bellamy he put a large hand firmly on the handlebars and stopped the children.
‘The Bloom trials aren’t easy,’ he said. ‘Fatigue sets in, tempers fray. Make sure you stick together – it’s the only chance you’ll have.’
The children endured this sombre caution without really listening. They were on their way: they had supplies for the first trial, a shiny bicycle to convey them swiftly across Kana and a solid plan. They were on the brink of the greatest freedom any of them had ever known. Nothing could dampen their excitement.
‘We will,’ they sang dutifully.
Bellamy released his hold and the children said goodnight to him. Penny wheeled the bicycle through the stockroom and shop, past the squeaking mice, into the street.
In the open moonlight on the high, empty street, the bike glittered. The air itself seemed molten, holding everything in silvery suspense. The sounds of the celebrations in the cramped town below hummed like a distant sea, but up here it was still and serene, a final private moment before the great race that so many Players would join. Then, with Penny on the bike and Tabba and Jebby in the cart, the children rolled down the sea-stone-paved street.
The bike rode light as air on the supple sapsoo vine tyres, and soon the children were speeding down the hill. A warm river of night air poured over them, and Penny’s hair flew behind her. Seagrape nestled in the cart at Tabba’s feet. Through a break in the rooftops, Tabba pointed out the distant cliffs, studded with sea lights, where she and Penny had been that afternoon. Flowers that had been freshly picked a short time ago were crushed now and their fragrance filled the air. The children skirted the town, and soon the bike and cart rolled silently into the clearing outside the Silverlings’ hut, where Ma and Da had already taken the littlest children home to sleep. The hut was cosy, lit with an oil lamp. The door was propped open and Ma and Da were inside, Ma wrapping food in banana leaves for the children to take with them the next day. After being admired, the bike was stowed inside, away from prying eyes. The children covered it with a cloth, as lovingly as if they were tucking in a child for the night.
‘Have you ever seen a Blue Pit?’ Jebby asked his parents.
‘No,’ said Ma. ‘You children are going to see things we’ve only heard stories about.’
Da came outside with them to set up a hammock for Penny in the clearing between the palms near Tabba and Jebby’s.
‘Da – do you really think we have a chance?’ Tabba asked him.
He hesitated, then said, lightly, ‘Why not?’
Seeing Ma and Da Silverling made Penny feel a pang about her own parents. She wondered what they were doing right now. She knew they’d be worried about her, even if Granny Pearl told them she was in Tamarind. She wished she could have talked to them before she left, assured them she would be all right.
Da left, and Penny climbed into her hammock, the gauze of the mosquito net settling mistily around her. It was like being in a big, soft cloud. For a few minutes the children were quiet. Jebby had found a new piece of wood and begun whittling another whistle. Penny could hear the soft scrape of his knife. White flakes sputtered from it like pale sparks in the moonlight.
‘That thing Kal did, the storm in the tree,’ whispered Tabba.
‘What about it?’ whispered Penny.
‘It wasn’t a whorl that just, I don’t know, just sat there,’ said Tabba. ‘It was like Elder said – what was on the other side of it was coming through. That seems pretty scary, that he can do that.’
‘I wasn’t sure before,’ said Jebby. ‘But I agree now that Kal’s opening whorls.’ He stopped whittling. ‘But you know what else I think? That whorl out at the Line today – I don’t think he opened it. I think you did, Penny. And Kal knows it. And he’s scared of you. So he’s trying to make you scared of him. That’s why he let everyone see him open a whorl tonight – it wasn’t to show everyone else, it was to show you.’
‘I couldn’t have done it,’ said Penny. ‘How would I open a whorl? I have no idea how it happened.’
‘Well, I’m not so sure Kal does either,’ said Jebby. ‘Or not so much of an idea as he wants us to think. That’s all I’m saying. But we should be careful around him anyway.’
‘You’d all better get some sleep before tomorrow!’ Ma hissed from the doorway to the hut.
‘She’s right,’ whispered Jebby.
Penny heard a snap as Jebby folded his knife and put it away. The fall of wood shavings ceased. A few minutes later, Ma stopped bustling around, then the oil lamp was blown out. The palms creaked as Ma and Da got into their hammocks on the other side of the hut. Penny lay there quietly. She told herself that Kal didn’t matter. He was no more important in the competition than anyone else, even her. Within minutes, Tabba and Jebby were breathing evenly, already asleep, but Penny lay awake. It seemed hard to believe that at this time just yesterday she hadn’t even met Tabba and Jebby. Already she felt like she had known them forever.
An animal growled from a distant hillside, and Penny stiffened. She lay there listening to the intermittent strange cries of animals, the beasts of burden that the Players would ride into the first trial. They had been invisible throughout the evening, tied up in the trees around Tontap. Now the darkness amplified their sounds – grunts, screeches, roars, warning growls and restless snorts – and mingled them with the crackle of campfires and the odd human voice that travelled across the water. One of the little Silverling children coughed in his sleep.
It was the first time Penny had stopped all day, her thoughts free to wander. Home felt very far away. If she had been there right now, her family would probably have already had dinner and would almost be finished cleaning up the kitchen. She closed her eyes and thought of the scent of oranges in the garden, of the cove dark and luminous and the Pamela Jane at rest on her anchor, of the yellow glow of the living-room lamp illuminating the tiny print of the marine science journal her father would soon sit down to read, of the pipes wheezing in the walls as her grandmother got ready for bed. Suddenly Penny’s chest felt tight and a lump lodged in her throat, and she wished fervently that she could be home, even just for a few minutes. Then she made herself stop that train of thought. She had to concentrate only on getting the Bloom; it was all that mattered. She could go home after it was done. She touched the shark’s tooth necklace, cool against her neck.
Penny whistled softly to Seagrape, who flew down from the palms. She lifted the mosquito net so the parrot could slip under it. Seagrape perched on Penny’s knee.
‘Tomorrow we’re leaving to start to get the Bloom for Granny Pearl,’ Penny murmured. ‘Then we can go back home and everything can go back to the way that it was.’
The parrot did not corroborate or comfort, but kept silent vigil as Penny finally drifted off to sleep. Some miles down the coast, in the small cleft of a bay, the sea gently milled the shore, waiting in the darkness for the Bloom.
Helix
Halfway down the hill to Tontap, he had stopped.
He wasn’t ready to be caught up in the thick of a boisterous and celebratory crowd, not after being alone for so many days. He needed twine to repair h
is backpack, but he would wait until late the next morning, after the Bloom Players and the crowds had left.
He turned round and headed back up into the hills. He found somewhere far enough away that it was peaceful and struck camp. He built a fire and warmed the last of the cassava bread from his bag and ate, wriggling his bare toes in the dirt. Soft dark flutters of moths brushed the air. Lights twinkled in the town far below. On the breeze he heard the murmur of music and voices, indistinct but comforting and pleasantly melancholy to listen to from so far away. He was glad to be on his own. He should bathe before he got too near other humans, anyway.
After he had eaten, he lay on his back, the smoke from his fire keeping the insects at bay as he gazed up at the constellations. They had different names on the Outside. The others had taught them to him, lying in the backyard, or on the deck of the Pamela Jane at anchor in the cove, bundled up in sweaters on cold clear winter nights. Orion, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, Taurus, Perseus, Cepheus, Pisces and Andromeda, Maya’s favourite, though he couldn’t remember why. The fire crackled. He dozed, hovering in the intertidal zone between consciousness and sleep.
He was in the kitchen at Granny Pearl’s house. Granny Pearl was standing at the sink filling a pot with water. She carried it briskly to the stove and turned on a gas burner. He heard the click- click-click and the tiny roar as the orange flame caught. Rain pattered on the window over the sink, and outside he could see the Pamela Jane glowing yellow through the rain that blurred the surface of the cove, but inside it was dry and cosy. He could hear everything – the bump of cupboard doors, the whistle of the kettle, the tap of rain on the windowpanes.
Distracted by a cracking sound from the corner, he looked across the room and saw Penny. She was three, maybe four years old, in the corner where she often used to sit, listening to the vague hum of adult conversation but lost in her own world. She was feeding almonds one by one to Seagrape, who was sitting on the floor beside her, tail feathers brushing the cool tiles each time she reached up for a nut.
He looked around the room and then his heart began to beat faster.
There she was.
Maya sat at the kitchen table, leaning in concentration over a book. She was doing homework. The pale winter light glowed on her long hair and the cuffs of her old sweater hung loosely round her wrists.
She was saying something. Helix could only hear a murmur, a dull buzz. The memory was imprecise, molten at the edges. The actual words, the actual world all this had happened in, were gone. This was just an echo. He watched Maya put her homework aside. She was the brightest thing in the room. Every other part of the room was slightly hazy; only Maya was in focus. She was the source of the radiance. She looked up at him and smiled, and a feeling washed over him powerfully and completely, a feeling of warmth, of peace, of safety. Of love, pure and overwhelming. His heart felt as if it were filling up too fast and would overflow.
Helix rolled over and his foot touched the embers of the campfire. It jolted him awake and he sat up. Instantly the kitchen and the younger versions of Maya, Granny Pearl, Penny and himself vanished. It took him a moment to remember where he was.
He was alone on the hillside in the soft night air. Tontap glittered far below. He could still hear the sounds of the celebration drifting up over the trees.
He took a deep breath. No dream should feel so real.
Tomorrow he would join the crowds. He’d been on his own too long.
PART II
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
The First Trial ✵ Yellow Sashes ✵ A Thunderous Zoo ✵ ‘That’s a lumphur’ ✵ Better than One Hundred Summer Holidays ✵ Sapsoos in the Breeze ✵ A New Whistle
The day was still fresh and new when Penny woke. She wrestled her way out from under her mosquito net and swung her legs over the side of the hammock, wriggling her bare toes in the cool sand. There wasn’t even a flicker of breeze. Boats sat motionless on their moorings, and the highest palms were so still they looked like they had been painted on the sky. All that moved was the dazzling creep of the sun across the water, and ivory birds that swooped for fish in the calm shallows, only their wingtips blue, as if they had soaked up the colour from the sea. Seagrape had ducked out from under the mosquito net some time in the night and was now preening herself vigorously on a nearby branch, her dewy feathers spread out to dry. Tabba and Jebby had woken, too, and were climbing out of their hammocks.
‘Good morning!’ called Tabba. ‘It’s really happening – I can hardly believe it!’
The children hurried to take down their hammocks and stuff them into their waiting backpacks. Worn out from their late night at the festival, Tabba and Jebby’s little brothers and sisters were still sleeping, but Ma and Da Silverling were awake and the door of the hut was propped open with a coconut.
‘Good morning, Bloom Players!’ said Da when they went inside.
‘You need food in your stomachs,’ said Ma, pushing warm sweet bread into their hands. ‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she said when they protested. ‘You have time – eat! I’ve packed a few extra things for you. There are dumplings and tapai for your lunch today. Eat that first. Everything else will keep. Get what you can in the towns – Bloom Players will be given food; just show your sashes at the stalls. Keep what I’ve given you for when you really need it.’
She placed a basket of food wrapped in banana leaves into the cart. Everything else was already packed – the sharpened spears, the net of kelp pods and the basket of sea lights, whose light burned softly through the wet rag that covered them.
The children ate quickly and wheeled the bicycle and cart outside. It was the first time they had taken a good look at the bicycle in daylight. They gazed proudly at it, gleaming splendidly in the sunlight.
‘I think it looks pretty great,’ said Jebby.
The children remembered the yellow sashes and fumbled as they tried to tie them on their arms. The silk was cool against their skin. When Ma helped them, Penny noticed her fingers trembling.
‘Now, you listen to me,’ she said. ‘The competition is a free-for-all – all sorts of lunatics come in from all over the place. Keep your wits about you and stick together. Steer clear of Kal. I don’t trust that boy – I don’t care if he is from Tontap. And don’t do anything too dangerous!’
‘OK, Ma,’ said Tabba obediently.
‘We won’t,’ said Jebby impatiently, looking past his parents towards the town, where the sounds of animals and people were coming through the trees. ‘But come on, Ma – we’re going to be the last ones there if we don’t go now!’
‘We’ll be in Tontap until Palmos,’ said Da. ‘Come back if you need to.’
‘We won’t need to,’ said Jebby confidently. ‘We’ll see you in Palmos in a few days.’
The triton sounded, a low bellow over the water and through the palms.
Penny, Tabba and Jebby froze and looked at each other – this was it. A deep thrill spread through them. Penny worried the knot with her fingers, making sure the sash was tied securely.
‘That’s the triton,’ said Tabba. ‘We have to get to the square! Goodbye, Ma! Goodbye, Da!’
‘Goodbye and good luck!’ called Da, putting his arm round Ma and pulling her to him. ‘We’ll come to wave you off!’
The children had agreed that Penny would be the first one to ride the bike. She hopped on, while Tabba and Jebby piled into the cart behind her. The littlest Silverling children struggled out of their hammocks, still bleary with sleep. Dazed, they trotted down the road after the bicycle, then stopped and waved furiously as Penny, Tabba and Jebby turned the bend through the palms.
The bike glided along effortlessly. The sapsoo-vine tyres absorbed the shocks of pebbles and potholes, the brakes were responsive, and the cart cornered easily. The children overtook a team of three Bloom Players astride a serene ivory water-ox, whose long, polished horns gleamed like burnished metal in the sunlight and whose back was as wide as a raft. The young men’s legs dangled down, bumpi
ng gently against the creature’s sides. Penny, Tabba and Jebby nodded to the other team and slid through the cool blue shadow cast by the animal.
They passed the street where Kal had whipped up the strange storm the night before. The tree stood stark and barren. A few people had gathered to see the shock of its suddenly nude limbs, ornate knots and burls revealed for the first time, and to remark on the damp jade shadow of the walls, scaly as snakeskin, where its torn leaves had dried overnight. Seagrape flew through two empty branches, into a chunk of raw blue sky, and the children cycled past.
As they drew closer to the square, the crowd thickened, but people saw their yellow sashes and opened a path for them, ogling the strange bicycle as it coasted by. Seagrape perched regally on the handlebars, sleek feathers resplendent in the morning sun, and for a moment the little green cart seemed less like a cart and more like a chariot. Penny took a deep, happy breath. It was good to be a Bloom Player, fresh on the first morning of the first trial of the competition! She pedalled with zeal round a corner and into the square.
Only then did she have her first moment of true doubt. She squeezed the brakes too quickly to avoid barrelling into a hippo-like creature so solid that the bike’s metal would have crumpled upon contact with it, and the bike fishtailed in the sand. When Penny regained her balance, she kept pedalling slowly, gazing around in astonishment.
The square had been transformed into a bizarre, thunderous zoo, a crush of snorting, stomping, braying beasts and their riders. The creatures were fantastical relations of animals Penny knew on the Outside: stout, broad-barrelled pigs with barbarously spiked tails; sleek, graceful gazelles with single horns for shearing through the undergrowth; feathered, flightless creatures with four legs and curved canines. The sheer number and variety of creatures struck even Tabba and Jebby speechless. Amidst them, too, were ordinary mules, shaggy and docile, furred ears flicked back in dismay at the commotion.