by Nadia Aguiar
Teams who had been defeated either melted away to lick their wounds or joined the festivities with gusto, indulging in food and drink in a way that no serious Bloom Player could afford – relieved, in part, to be free of the burden of continuing. Teams bragged about their exploits, their stories growing more epic with each telling: one team was chased by a belligerent reef shark, one Player had been ensnared by his own anchor line, another had dived too deep and passed out trying to reach the surface and had to be fished out by his teammates. The Players who hadn’t made it often seemed to boast more than the ones who had.
Since the children didn’t know anyone in Jaipa, the competitors they recognized seemed almost like friendly faces. They were almost happy when they saw teams they knew sporting red sashes. There were some surprises. Oarfish was out – his horse had gone lame, and by the time he reached the Blue Pits all the cubbyholes in the cliffs had been picked over and he hadn’t found a Molmer egg. Boulder Guy was out, as well, too heavy-set to be able to dive deep enough to reach a Molmer.
The children were bashfully skirting a group of victorious Players, too shy to speak to them, when the Player named Bagnorio waved them over. They recognized the Lamlo Diver there, too.
‘Hey,’ said Bagnorio. ‘You’re the kids from Tontap and the girl from the Outside, aren’t you? We didn’t see you at the Pits.’
‘We went to a different one, out on its own, near Oyster Point,’ explained Jebby.
Penny, Tabba and Jebby hovered on the outside of the group. The other Players were all older, and the children felt intimidated.
‘Were there a lot of whorls on the way out there?’ asked the Lamlo Diver.
‘We didn’t see any,’ said Jebby.
‘We saw them the way we went,’ said Bagnorio. ‘Three or four of them.’ He nodded at Grasshopper Boy, who was approaching at a leisurely stroll, a bright red sash tied to his arm. ‘He got really close to one, you know. He put his hand through it!’
Grasshopper Boy had a pleasant face, but he was always alone and didn’t seem to need anything from anyone else. He barely even carried anything with him – the sackcloth bag slung across his chest was almost empty. He was so tall and long that he looked to Penny like a shadow stretched out on the road at sundown. But he nodded agreeably when he saw the other Players and paused on their fringes.
‘You went up to one of the whorls,’ announced Bagnorio.
Again Grasshopper Boy nodded amiably.
‘Well?’ demanded the Lamlo Diver. ‘What happened?’
‘There was steam coming out of it,’ said Grasshopper Boy.
‘Then what happened?’ asked someone.
‘Nothing,’ said Grasshopper Boy. ‘The whorl disappeared. Everything was normal again.’
The fact that it was Grasshopper Boy who had spoken lent authority to his claim. Plus, other than Kal, this was the closest they’d heard of anyone getting to a whorl.
‘Did you see inside it?’ asked Bagnorio. ‘Was anything there?’
‘It was too dark to see anything,’ said Grasshopper Boy. ‘And there was too much steam. Sorry.’
Bagnorio suddenly turned to Tabba and Jebby, and said, ‘If you’re from Tontap, do you know that kid who opened a whorl and made the mandrill appear?’
‘A little,’ mumbled Jebby. ‘Not really.’
‘How did you get here from the Outside, anyway?’ Bagnorio asked Penny.
‘I was rowing near the Blue Line and a whorl appeared and I came through it,’ she said. ‘Kal was there on the other side, so I think he must have opened it. It happened so fast, and it closed right away behind me. Tabba and Jebby were there, too – they rescued me.’ She shrugged. ‘There was a lot of fog – it was hard to know how it happened. I can’t really tell you anything else.’
Embarrassed by the older kids’ attention, the children slipped away as soon as they could, leaving the others to speculate among themselves about Kal and his mysterious powers.
‘I can’t believe they knew who we were,’ whispered Tabba.
‘I don’t think anybody did know yesterday,’ said Jebby.
The children were walking quickly down the street and almost crashed right into the lumphur. It was tied up to a post. It had been bathed and its coat gleamed in the evening light. Its muzzle was deep in a bucket and the children could hear the crisp crunch of fruit in its teeth as it ate. Kal came out of a nearby food stall, carrying his dinner wrapped in a banana leaf. He stopped in his tracks when he caught sight of the children and the bright red sashes on their arms. It was hard for the children to hide their glee at his reaction. Kal gathered himself and returned to the lumphur.
‘Anyone can get lucky,’ he said.
‘There was a Brazior octopus in the Pit we were in,’ said Penny. ‘We had to fight with him to get the Molmer egg.’
She immediately regretted bragging. Wanting to impress him was a sign of weakness, and he knew it. If he was affected by the mention of the octopus, he didn’t let on.
His gaze fell on the bicycle, which the children had been wheeling along next to them. For just a second Penny saw a triumphant expression pass over his face, leaving the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth when he turned back to them.
‘Good luck on the next round,’ he said casually. He untied the lumphur and headed off down a side street.
‘Good luck to YOU the next round,’ called Tabba. ‘Did you see his face when he saw us?’ she crowed after Kal had gone. ‘He couldn’t believe we made it! Serves him right.’
‘Don’t laugh,’ said Jebby, but Penny could tell he was pleased, too.
Penny wasn’t sure how she felt. The encounter should have been more satisfying than it was. The sight of the strong, steely lumphur had once again reminded her that next to the Players’ animals, the bicycle and cart were odd and, after the day’s hard journey, increasingly worse for wear. And that funny expression that had crossed Kal’s face – what was that about?
The children were still wandering around Jaipa when night fell. One moment it was still light; the next the final glimmer was lost on the ridges and the hills had darkened around the town. Without them realizing it, the atmosphere had been changing. Other Bloom Players had been everywhere; now suddenly there were none. The Council had retired for the night, and the streets surrounding the square had emptied out as families retreated to gatherings in private gardens or to isolated campsites outside it. The people left in the town square were mostly teenagers and older Bloom Players who had not made it to the next trial, and they were growing increasingly rowdy, a strident edge creeping into their shouts and laughter.
The children began walking out of town to find a quiet spot to strike camp, wishing they had heeded Elder’s advice and found somewhere while it was still light. Outside the centre, the town was poorly lit. They wheeled the bike and cart, trying to make the tyres roll quietly on the bumpy cobblestones. Penny had only been in Tontap for a day, but very quickly it had felt safe and familiar. In the dark, Jaipa did not. Strangers’ faces weren’t clear until they passed close by. A few times they got lost in the snarl of streets. Silhouettes of the surrounding hills loomed claustrophobically. A mangy stray dog trotted after them, then another joined it, and another, following them but keeping a careful distance. Seagrape rode on the handlebars, not making a sound.
They were on a hill on the outskirts, walking along a deserted street, the strains of music and celebration from the square growing fainter, when they heard loud voices from a street up ahead. A moment later a gang of half a dozen older boys appeared round a corner, heading in the children’s direction.
‘They’re looking at the bicycle,’ whispered Penny.
‘They’ve never seen one before,’ said Tabba, trying to sound calm. ‘Of course they’re going to look.’
‘They’re too interested,’ muttered Penny.
As the boys drew closer, Penny could see that some of the boys were very big. They were stumbling a little, their voices over-loud.
/> ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Jebby, under his breath.
‘Hey,’ called a large boy, who broke away from the group and came towards them.
It was all the children needed.
Penny spun the bike round, hopped on and began pedalling. Tabba and Jebby pushed the cart until it built up some speed, then they jumped in. The older boys shouting, the dogs barking and baying behind them, the children fled, bumping wildly down a dark street on to a dirt road that led outside the town. Trees enclosed the road and in stretches it was pitch black. No one else was there.
‘Stop,’ said Jebby suddenly. ‘Go back – there’s a little path off to the left. Maybe we’ll find somewhere to camp.’
Penny turned off the main road down a narrow, rutted track and they bounced along until they reached a dead end. She squeezed the brakes and they came to a stop in the little clearing. They had escaped, but she was ashamed of the tremble in her hands. There were no lights anywhere. The ground was boggy and mosquitoes whined in the air.
‘Well, we know why no one else is camping here,’ said Tabba, smacking a mosquito from her shoulder. ‘Oh well, it’s too late to look for anywhere else.’
They set up their hammocks quietly. Seagrape settled on a branch nearby. In their little band of three, away from the crowd, the children felt better, but it was impossible to fully shake the sense of unease. Before he climbed into his hammock, Jebby stopped and turned in a circle.
‘What is it?’ whispered Tabba.
‘I have a bad feeling,’ he said quietly. Though they were alone, they all spoke in low voices. ‘Something doesn’t feel right.’
‘You have a bad feeling because those boys just scared us,’ said Tabba soothingly. ‘No one will come and bother us – or the bike – in the middle of the night. Not here.’
‘No,’ admitted Jebby. ‘I guess you’re right.’
Penny looked around. There were no whorls anywhere nearby, and no troubling feeling in the air. It felt like an ordinary place, just dark and humid and humming with mosquitoes.
‘Just to be safe, we can sleep in shifts,’ she said. ‘And we’ll tie the bike and cart to this tree here and we can sleep round it.’
The children secured the bike to the tree. Their hammocks surrounded it protectively. They set up their mosquito nets and tucked themselves in. Penny had first watch. She brought the map into her hammock with her and squinted to make out its features in the weak moonlight that filtered through the trees.
‘I don’t see the Coral Basin anywhere,’ she whispered.
‘It’s not on there,’ said Jebby. ‘I noticed that earlier.’
‘What is it anyway?’ asked Penny.
‘No idea,’ said Jebby. ‘Never heard of it before Elder said it.’
‘It’s such an important thing, you’d think it would be marked,’ said Tabba. ‘It seems like it’s a pretty thorough map otherwise.’
‘If I had to trade that whistle, we could at least have got a map with everything we need on it,’ grumbled Jebby.
Penny was straining her eyes trying to see the map in the dark, so she put it aside and lay back in her hammock. There was a narrow pool of dark sky open in the trees above them, and the stars quivered in it, like reflections trembling on water. She was reminded of the sea lights in the tidal pools in the terrace cliffs she had seen with Tabba. Was that really only yesterday? They had done so much already. The Blue Pit had been just that morning. Penny shivered at the memory. Its coldness had permeated her. Since seeing it, it had become harder to believe in the wholeness of the world. How could such lushness and life suddenly give way to … nothing? Everything suddenly seemed more fragile, less solid and permanent.
An animal cry reverberated against the hills. Penny stiffened, remembering stories the others had told her about wild animals that had slunk out of whorls at nightfall during the Bad Bloom. She lay there in her thin hammock and imagined malign presences creeping out from hidden places, prowling through the darkness. She had the sense that the world was not stable, that great shifts were happening invisibly all around her.
At one point, she thought she heard rustling at the end of the track, through the trees. Seagrape squawked sharply. Penny waited alertly, ready to wake the others. But nothing came out of the shadows, so she settled back down uneasily to wait until it was time to wake Tabba for her watch.
Helix
When he had walked into Tontap that morning, the town was empty, clean, orderly. Like a storm that had moved on, even the people who had come for the festival were mostly gone. Palm brooms scraped on stone as a few residents cleaned the streets.
He caught sight of the flag as soon as he had entered the square. It was on top of a tall pole – a message pole, common on this part of the island. A lone breeze funnelled through the buildings, opening the yellow rectangle like a sail. When he saw the green-stitched insignia of the parrot, he stopped and stood very still, shading his eyes to look up at it.
It couldn’t be.
The breeze died and the cloth fell. He decided to take a closer look. He climbed the pole and retrieved the flag and slid back down. He held it in his hands, feeling the soft, faded cotton, ran his fingers over the careful stitching of the parrot. There was no mistaking it: it was one of the ones Granny Pearl had sewn for Penny. He did not move for several minutes.
The town was sleepy. Even the scrape of brooms had ceased. It almost looked as if no one had been there at all. Orange light filtered through a flame tree, roving over the packed dirt whenever a breeze stirred the branches.
He knew the flag had been left for him and he knew who had left it.
What was she doing here? Were the others here with her? Was everything all right?
He tucked the flag into the leather satchel slung over his shoulder. Dazed, he forgot the twine to fix his backpack and continued on the road out of town in the direction of Jaipa.
The road was no longer clogged with people and carts, and soon the confused shuffle of footprints and tracks ebbed. He felt as though he were in a dream. The pack on his back was light, an afterthought. He barely noticed the broken strap. As he walked, the edge of the yellow flag, dusty, faded from the sun, stuck out of the top, like a flower that had suddenly blossomed.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Bad Start ✵ A Strange Scent ✵ New Whorl in the Night ✵ Zamzee Beetle ✵ A Reluctant Plan
The next morning got off to a bad start. In spite of the children’s fears, the camp in the little clearing had been undisturbed in the night – dew was the only thing that had touched the bicycle. But the children had slept poorly because of the watches, and they couldn’t stop yawning as they untied their hammocks and packed to leave in semi-darkness. Penny was stiff from the dampness. An insect had sneaked inside her mosquito net and feasted on her ankles, which she had soon scratched until they bled. All three of them were short-tempered and irritable. Even Seagrape seemed to have absorbed their bad mood. When Penny offered her arm, she refused, grousing softly and shuffling away down the branch she had slept on.
‘If that’s how you want to be,’ muttered Penny. She swiped dew off the bike with her shirt and swung her backpack into the cart. She was about to get on the bike when Jebby stepped in front of her and took the handlebars. Annoyed, she joined Tabba in the cart.
Jebby pedalled down the narrow path they had come along in the dark the night before. Seagrape joined them, riding on the back of the cart. Halfway down the path they wrinkled their noses.
‘Ugh,’ said Tabba. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘It’s like rotten potatoes,’ said Penny.
‘I think it’s coming from the puddle up there,’ said Jebby.
Up ahead was a small, cloudy puddle that stretched all the way across the path. Jebby slowed down so the girls wouldn’t get splashed.
‘I think I remember a puddle being there last night,’ said Tabba, frowning as she looked down at it. ‘But that odour definitely wasn’t here. But it’s familiar … I’ve smelled
it before. Hurry up, Jebby – let’s get away from it!’
Jebby pedalled faster. Beyond the puddle the air cleared, and they turned off the path on to the road into town. Gratefully, Penny breathed in the fragrance of damp earth and opening flowers. The first warming rays burned off the mist, and the purple silhouettes of the hills lightened around them.
Before they even reached Jaipa’s town square, she saw the message pole, high above the rooftops, and on it the flag she had staked there the night before, its faded rectangle hanging limply. She felt deeply low for a moment, but was distracted when Tabba pointed to the other side of the square.
Perched brazenly on a thatched roof overhanging the square was a whorl. It was round, like a ball that had rolled down the roof and stopped, improbably, on the edge, where it balanced precariously. Nothing came from it, and there was nothing to see inside it, just the sheen on its surface as the sun came up over the town. The fact that it meant the mandrill had prowled the streets while the town slept seemed more a cause for excitement than fear as people clustered around to see it.
The remaining Bloom Players were arriving and the children found themselves shuttled across the square. Spirits were high, but there was a new edge, a nervous energy that circulated the whittled-down field. Those who remained were the fastest, the strongest, the ones in possession of the finest animals, the ones who most wanted to win. The bicycle threaded squeakily through the crowd, narrowly avoiding getting trampled. Penny knew they were on the fringes of this group of the toughest and the best, but she was undeterred: they’d come this far, and she had every intention of making it past this next trial, too. She was eager for it to start.
She searched for Kal in the crowd. When she finally glimpsed him, astride the lumphur, she saw that he had been watching them. He immediately turned and disappeared amidst the people and animals. Something about how intently he had been observing them struck her as strange, but she didn’t have time to reflect on it for long because once again the children found themselves at the rear of the pack of Bloom Players as the Council of Elders prepared to announce the second trial.