by Nadia Aguiar
The Gorgonne! The Players shuffled nervously. Penny remembered the blank patch on the map. The mandrill’s lair, the place where no one in Kana could go. She swallowed painfully.
‘Usually it’s impossible to travel into the Gorgonne, but tomorrow, the day before the Bloom, the border will open and Players may enter,’ said Elder. ‘The Gorgonne is a strange and disorientating place, a vast maze of the mandrill’s own creation. Deep inside are his secret feeding grounds. There you’ll find thousands of shells, spread all around the shores of a lake. Each shell is a spiral, clear as glass.’
When Elder had mentioned the mandrill, the other Players had glanced furtively at Kal. He betrayed nothing, staring steadily at Elder. Whether the news pleased him or frightened him, or if he knew it already, they could only guess.
‘Each team will be able to enter the Gorgonne only once,’ said Elder. ‘Anyone who leaves will not be able to get back in – the border will seal behind you. You have only a single day to find a shell and get to Palmos. After that it will be too late. The Bloom will happen whether or not a Bloom Catcher is there, but, if the Bloom isn’t captured and poured into the Coral Basin, what you’ve seen here –’ he lifted his arm to the gash of the whorl – ‘will be only the beginning.’
Except for Kal, who remained stoic, the Players seemed suddenly frailer and less sure. The dust had suddenly aged them, turning their hair grey, snuffing out the colour in their cheeks. The garden’s hedges morphed into silver walls, like a prison closing in on them.
After arranging to meet before dawn the next morning, Elder and the rest of the Council bid the Players goodnight and left. Without a word to the rest of the group, Kal quickly slipped out of the garden, too.
The rest of the Players stood there, looking at one another. They were different than they had been two days ago. Something inside each of them had been whittled down. There was no boasting, no bragging. For a brief spell, a strange camaraderie existed between them.
‘We have an uncle who lives near the Gorgonne,’ said the elder Dorado. ‘He’s told stories about people who have gone in and never come out.’
‘He said there are fires in the water there,’ offered his brother.
‘I’ve heard it’s supposed to be full of whorls,’ said Lamlo Diver. ‘Everywhere you look.’
‘I met an old couple in Palam who said the whole place is like a giant whorl itself,’ said Grasshopper Boy.
‘I guess we’ll find out tomorrow what it’s really like,’ said Tabba.
‘What do you think the mandrill will do if he finds us in there?’ asked the younger Dorado brother in a small voice.
No one knew.
‘You’re from Tontap,’ said the Lamlo Diver suddenly, looking at Tabba and Jebby. ‘You know that kid, Kal. Were you there the day he made the mandrill appear? Do you really think he did it?’
Penny, Tabba and Jebby looked at one another.
‘We don’t know if he did,’ said Jebby finally.
‘Let’s hope he didn’t,’ said Grasshopper Boy. ‘Because if it’s true that he has some power with the mandrill he’s going to have a huge advantage in the Gorgonne.’
The group contemplated this quietly.
The younger Dorado brother broke the silence. ‘Hey, where’s the parrot?’
Penny looked down at the ground.
‘Gone in a whorl,’ whispered Tabba.
The other Players looked sorry for Penny. They stood there, blinking the ceaselessly falling dust off their eyelashes. Nothing left to say, they bade each other goodnight and went their separate ways into the murky night.
The children found a sheltered place to camp on the outskirts of town.
‘We want to find the shell without the mandrill even knowing we’re there,’ said Jebby. ‘But if we do see him we need a plan. We need something to trap him in. I’m going down to the harbour to see if I can get a fishing net. We have the mosquito nets, but they won’t be strong enough. I’ll need something to barter, though.’
‘We don’t have anything left,’ said Penny.
‘Our hammocks,’ said Tabba. ‘Ma won’t be happy with us, but …’
‘And look,’ said Penny. ‘What about this, the buckle on my backpack? No one here has anything like it.’
She cut off the metal buckle with a knife, and Jebby left with it and the hammocks. Tabba stayed behind to organize their food for the next day, while Penny went to hang the final flag on the message pole. She was happy to have a task to take her mind off Seagrape.
Her footsteps were silent in the deep dust as she crossed the square. More dust roiled palely in the dark night sky. It tickled her nose as she climbed. It felt so strange not to have Seagrape with her. She hung the flag at the top of the pole and slid back down.
She looked up at it. That was it. There were none left. The insignia of the parrot slowly disappeared beneath the dust. She pictured the others still hanging in the last towns, already fading, the cloth stiffening, seams fraying in the elements. She made a wish.
Seagrape, please be OK.
And then another.
And please, Helix – please see these flags and find me.
Penny returned to find that Tabba had been busy. She had wrapped food for the next day in banana leaves and found herbs to make ointment for their blistered feet. She had also gathered some hollow wooden sticks to whittle into arrows, in case they were forced to defend themselves.
‘And look what I found,’ she said. She opened a banana leaf to reveal a clutch of red natal plums. ‘Monkeys love them, and since the mandrill is a monkey we can use them as bait if we need to trap him.’
Jebby returned with a net.
‘It’s made of spiderpod silk,’ he said, pleased with his acquisition. ‘It’s strong, but lightweight and nearly invisible.’
Plums and a fishing net helped to restore a degree of cosy cheer among them. Penny even managed to convince herself that Seagrape was all right, just somewhere far away, and that she was already on her way back to them. The children felt satisfied that they were as prepared as they could be. They had only what they could carry on their backs, and each item had been chosen carefully and wisely. The spiderpod silk net was light as air. Their sharp wooden arrows were strong but hollow. They would carry only a single meal with them, and their canteens were only half full, to be replenished at streams along the way. The only extra thing they were taking was Bellamy’s bicycle bell, which they planned to return to him after the competition.
They took out the map to decide on the best route for the morning, and found a footpath that would take them to the edge of the Gorgonne in a few hours. On the map, the Gorgonne was a featureless, amorphous mass in the middle of Kana, as if left blank to give their imagination free and fearful reign to fill the space. Penny remembered the octopus in the Blue Pit. Now it seemed like child’s play. The mandrill was a much bigger monster. And tomorrow, from barely even wanting to say his name a few days ago, the children would be going in search of him.
They decided there was no point in keeping watch that night. Except the net, which Jebby folded and used as a pillow to keep safe, they had nothing left to steal. The scent of the tart natal plums that Tabba had found wafted through the campsite. Without the hammocks, they had to lie on the hard ground and, despite their fatigue, none of them fell straight to sleep. They lay still and listened to the howl of wild animals deeper in the jungle.
‘Ma and Da and Tontap seem so far away,’ whispered Tabba. ‘I know you’ve come all the way from the Outside, Penny, but I can’t help thinking … tomorrow will be the longest Jebby and I have ever been away from home, and the furthest we’ve ever been.’
‘We can’t let ourselves get scared,’ said Jebby. ‘We’ll be all right.’ But his voice sounded hollow in the darkness.
‘Of course we will,’ said Penny bravely, wanting to cheer up Tabba. ‘We’ve made it this far.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jebby. ‘Now, who knows what tomorrow’s going to
be like? We should get all the rest we can.’
‘OK, shhh,’ said Tabba. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Jebby.
‘Goodnight,’ whispered Penny.
She closed her eyes. Granny Pearl had felt so distant for so long, for longer than just these past few days Penny had been gone, but the Bloom would bring her closer again.
She imagined Seagrape, perhaps somewhere very far away but safe and flying fast, on her way back to Penny. All Penny could hope was that a new whorl would open and her friend would be released. She pulled her shirt over her mouth so she wouldn’t breathe in the dust and waited for sleep.
Over Santori the yellow flag waved, and the threadbare parrot flew without rest, like static in the dark sky.
Helix
He sat in the dark in the hills above Santori. He had not bothered with a fire or a real meal. It was very late when he had approached Santori and seen the giant whorl and the town beneath it blanketed in dust. Until now the Bloom had been only a thrilling prospect. The fate of Kana had not concerned him. Now he saw that the dangers he had heard about on the road, the whorls and the mysterious creature, the mandrill, were real and imminent.
This was not why he had fled, though.
In the town, he had been close enough to see the third flag hanging from the message pole. He had already found the second in Jaipa earlier that day: proof that Penny was here. And, if Penny was here, it meant Maya and Simon could be, too. He had asked around in Jaipa, but people only talked about one young girl here from the Outside. Still, it didn’t mean the others weren’t here, too.
He had walked on and found the third flag, as he had expected.
He had retrieved it, but then before he knew it he was back up in the hills. He couldn’t see them. And he couldn’t be seen by them. Not like this, not now.
So much time had gone by – it might be a mistake to see any of them again. It might be best – safest – to leave them as they existed in his mind. To see them now, to hear anything real about them, would be to dispel the people he had carried with him all this time. And … Maya could still be angry at his choice, at how he had left without even saying goodbye – he still felt guilty about it.
He’d been having a conversation with Maya in his head for years now; he was always in conversation with her. But who knew what she was like any more, or if she even thought of him? Seeing the real person again might prove how futile and foolish his thoughts about her were and mean that he would have to put her – and all of them – out of his mind for good. They would evaporate. It was too much to risk.
It was crazy that he was there in Kana at all. He should have been at home in Western Tamarind. If he hadn’t happened to stumble upon the man in the citrus grove who’d told him about the Bloom, if he hadn’t been so bored and eager for something fresh, if his father had not died, he would not have been here to see the flags. He would have been none the wiser that they had been left for him. Whatever happened to Kana would happen without his knowing. That something so important could have come down to dumb luck, to chance – or, to take an opposing view, that there were forces outside himself of which he was ignorant but which still acted on him – both of these thoughts disturbed him, left him feeling agitated and confused.
He was so lost in his own thoughts that he heard the parrot screech before he saw her, flying low towards him in the moonlight. Before he could even stand, she had landed on his shoulder. She mumbled softly and pushed her head against his cheek.
She had first sat on his shoulder when he was a young boy and his mother had sent her to watch over him before she had died. He knew her better than he knew most people. He closed his eyes, grateful that the darkness hid his tears. The seven years since they had been together felt like nothing, as if he had last seen her just that morning.
‘I wondered when you’d find me,’ he whispered.
He looked, but no one was with her. The hillside was quiet.
‘Have you come by yourself?’ he asked.
Behind her, dust seeped from the whorl, suspended like the tail of a meteor bearing down on the valley.
With a quiet squawk, Seagrape flew from his shoulder. He knew she wanted him to follow her.
As he watched, a small whorl opened in mid-air in front of him. It rippled, reflecting the moonlight like a patch of satiny black sea. He hesitated. The parrot circled, waiting for him. There was something she needed him to do.
‘Are you taking me to Penny?’ he asked.
She didn’t answer, but he knew she wouldn’t put him in danger – not anything he couldn’t handle, anyway – so he started walking towards the whorl. With one last flap of her wings, the parrot disappeared into it.
Helix followed her into the darkness.
CHAPTER NINE
Departure at Dawn ✵ Unexpected News ✵ ‘He’ll find YOU!’ ✵ Looming Like a Great Green Cloud ✵ The Third Trial ✵ Inside the Gorgonne
Seagrape had not returned by morning. The children whistled for her as they broke camp in the shadows. It was very early, not yet dawn, and the sky had barely begun to lighten. The whorl loomed like a strange, unwelcome planet over the valley. The dust had stopped falling from it some time in the night, but a layer coated everything, absorbing sound. The air was heavy and still.
The Council of Elders had arranged for the Bloom Players to meet on a side road leading out of Santori. The other Players were just arriving when the children got there. Unlike the mornings of the other trials, there was no fanfare, no one but the Council to see them off. They would slip away secretly, before the town rose. Few words were exchanged. The stakes were higher this time around, and everyone had drawn inward.
Penny sneaked a glance at Kal. For the first time at the start of a trial, she thought that he looked tired and a bit scared. He studiously avoided looking at the children. His soles were painted with a rubbery paste to cushion them, and he flexed his ankles, bobbing silently on his toes on the foggy road. The Lamlo Diver’s buffalo’s chin was wet from drinking at a nearby stream. The Dorado brothers’ horses were keen and edgy. Their glossy flanks shone in the milky light, and they pawed the ground, their knees neatly bandaged. The night’s dampness had turned the dust from the whorl into a gritty glue that weighed down the leaves of all the trees, shifting everything into a lower register than it had been the previous day.
When the elders gave the signal, the teams disbanded. The horses disappeared in a golden blur and the buffalo thundered behind them. Kal vanished into the trees. Penny and Tabba and Jebby dodged on to a shortcut through the jungle before joining a path heading north. It would take a couple of hours to reach the Gorgonne, and Jebby kept out the map and compass to refer to every now and then.
They felt strangely free on foot. The bicycle and cart would have been a bumpy, miserable ride on the narrow, rutted track. However, they knew that the other teams were ahead of them so they walked as fast as they could. To conserve energy they seldom spoke. The ointment Tabba had made dulled the sting of their blisters, but their legs were still weary.
Dust covered everything for a few miles outside of Santori before it finally began to thin. The day was overcast, and even when the sun was fully up the trees never really shrugged off the shadows. Fields and jungle lay under the pall of a sullen, marbled sky. Penny looked up often, always hoping to see Seagrape. But, even if she had somehow escaped, Penny wasn’t sure if the parrot would know how to find her again.
The children passed no one all morning. Most people were already converging on Palmos, miles to the north. Few people had reason – or the desire – to pass this close to the Gorgonne. The path felt ever more desolate, so the children were startled when they heard hoofbeats and saw a man on a shaggy donkey hurrying at a jolting trot towards them. They waited apprehensively as he approached, instantly wary of anyone who would choose to travel so near the most feared place in Kana. When the man saw their arm sashes, he hailed the children as someone alone at sea for days might quicken at the
sight of a fellow ship.
‘Have you heard?’ he shouted.
‘Heard what?’ Jebby called back.
‘The mandrill’s kicking everyone out!’ said the man as he pulled up beside them. ‘Lamlo and Grasshopper Boy were the first to go!’
‘What do you mean they’re out?’ asked Jebby.
‘Out of the competition!’ exclaimed the man. His beard was filthy, and mud was caked on his broken shoes. ‘The mandrill chased them right out of the Gorgonne! Lamlo ended up miles away – he said it was like he had been dropped through a trapdoor. People who saw him said he was scared witless, shaking like a leaf. And Grasshopper Boy was found trussed up on a raft floating out of the Gorgonne near Manalmo. He had to be fished out of the river and cut free. The mandrill caught him and tied him with the same ropes Grasshopper brought to capture him with! As if ropes or nets could ever catch that old devil! They tried to go back in, but the Gorgonne rejected them. They’d get close and it would push them back. One chance – one chance only! They’re on their way to Palmos now.’
‘How have you heard all this already?’ asked Jebby after the children had got over their surprise.
The man blew his nose on a dirty rag he retrieved from his pocket.
‘I heard it in Nalloma, a few miles back,’ he said. ‘It’s all true – I spoke to people who had seen Lamlo with their own eyes.’
‘What about the Dorado brothers?’ Penny asked. ‘Or Kal, from Tontap?’
‘No word,’ replied the man, stuffing the rag back in his pocket. ‘They may be out already for all I know. Or the brothers will be. The boy from Tontap has conjured up the mandrill before – he knows a few of his tricks. He’ll be all right in there.’
He looked at the children and his eyes glittered like flakes of gold in a dingy stream.
‘If I were you, I’d turn right round and run straight to Palmos,’ he said. ‘That’s the mandrill’s country you’re heading for right now. He’s lived in there for years, making hiding places, laying traps. People who’ve stumbled in there have never been heard from again. You’ll be lucky if he kicks you out!’