by Nadia Aguiar
The chair creaked softly as Granny Pearl rocked.
‘I didn’t send you there to get anything like that for me, Penny,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know what the Bloom is. I knew you had to go back to Tamarind – that there was something you needed to do there, something for yourself. And I hoped that you’d find Helix, too, and that maybe he’d come back with you.’
Penny felt confused. ‘But …’ she said.
Granny Pearl pushed Penny’s hair behind her ear.
‘I’m an old lady, Penny,’ she said. ‘I won’t be around forever. All I want is to know that you’ll be all right when I’m not here one day. And for you to know that, too.’
Penny pressed her cheek against her grandmother’s arm, felt her soft, papery skin, the warmth from her body. In the garden crickets chirped and in the distance the sea broke over the far reefs, sounds Penny had known since she was a tiny girl. They were part of her, embedded, like Granny Pearl herself, in her deepest, oldest memories.
‘You’ll have to tell me everything tomorrow; it’s too late tonight,’ said her grandmother. ‘And I hear your parents coming out now. You can imagine how worried they’ve been. They’ve searched up and down the coast in the boat, even though they knew you weren’t there. If Maya and Simon hadn’t come home yesterday, I don’t know what they would have done.’
Voices came from the house, and Penny’s parents appeared in the doorway. They looked worried and exhausted, but when they saw Penny her father heaved a sigh of relief and her mother cried ‘Penny!’ and rushed out to greet her.
In the next moment they were all embracing her – her mother wiping away tears, her father gathering her up in a hug that lifted her feet off the ground. Maybe tomorrow she’d be in trouble; right now they were too glad to see her.
Simon and Maya had heard the commotion and hurried outside, and then they were hugging her, too. Penny hadn’t seen them in months and she squeezed them back, hard.
‘You went without us!’ said Simon.
Penny saw Maya looking at her with a sort of proud wonder – Penny had been in Tamarind so recently that its magic still hung around her. She had been there now, too, not as just an infant or a little kid, but in her own right.
‘What was it like?’ Maya asked. ‘Was it like it was before?’
‘Did you see anywhere you remembered?’ Simon asked.
It was so good to have her family all together that it was all Penny could think about. It had not been like that for a long time. Her heart felt as if it would burst.
Her mother was still fussing over her, running her hands through Penny’s hair. She tilted Penny’s face to look at her. ‘You really are in one piece, you’re sure?’ she asked.
‘Did you –’ asked Maya, but everyone was speaking at once. Penny glanced past them, down towards the cove, but didn’t see Helix. He had said not to tell them yet. She would let him come up in his own time. She began to tell them about Tamarind – about Kana and Tabba and Jebby and the mandrill and the whorls – but then she yawned, suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. She could hardly keep her eyes open.
‘It’s time for bed,’ said her mother, steering her towards the door. ‘We’ll all be able to talk in the morning.’
Simon helped Granny Pearl to her feet and everyone went inside.
Penny brushed her teeth and changed into her pyjamas. In her room she paused when she saw the empty perch in the corner, feeling an ache. She climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to her chin. Lying there, she felt different than she used to. The room was the same as it had always been, but it seemed smaller, somehow, or perhaps it was that she seemed bigger, and the room too small to contain all the new things she had felt and seen and done. Maybe Elder was right; swimming in the Bloom had changed things.
Outside, in the lane near the house, the seed pods had finished shedding. Most had blown away, only a few stray bits could be seen here and there in the grass. The leaves on the orange tree were dark green beneath the moon. The sky was clear and peaceful. The Pamela Jane lay calm on her mooring, and out beyond the cove the darkly milling sea broke softly over the far reefs.
As Penny drifted to sleep, she heard Granny Pearl shuffling softly down the hallway, heard the familiar tap of her knuckle on the door frame.
‘Goodnight, my darling,’ her grandmother whispered.
Penny was already asleep.
Granny Pearl tucked the sheet gently round Penny’s shoulders, kissed her forehead, then quietly left the room.
Helix
After Penny had run up the hill, Helix had stopped and stood amidst the dark mangroves at the edge of the cove. He looked up at the house, the windows lit and welcoming, as he remembered them. He had not seen this place in seven years.
He hadn’t known until the last minute what he would do.
‘It’s in the past,’ he had told Penny the night before the Bloom.
But the past was always a part of the present, real and vital, and when the moment came and the chance appeared – the wavering lens of the porthole burning bright in the daylight in Palmos – he had known exactly what to do. Something that Penny had said had stuck in his mind, that things had changed enough that now he could go back.
He stood on the shore of the cove and watched them all on the porch – hugging Penny, talking. They were too far away for him to see how their faces had changed, but he knew their shapes, the drift and timbre of their voices. They went indoors. Lights went out inside, but the porch light was left burning.
He was still standing there, breathing in the damp night air when he saw Maya step back outside by herself. She stood on the porch, hair tucked behind her ears, feet bare, tugging her sweater round her waist in the cool spring night, looking over the garden, where in a few weeks the cocoons would rattle softly in the breeze through the milkweed patch, and out beyond the garden to the darkly turning sea. She was right there, in front of him. Real and present. Not a memory, not a feeling in his heart. The real person. A shiver went through him.
He stepped out of the shadows on to the open beach.
She saw him. Her hands dropped to her sides and she stood very still. Then, as if a wind had picked her up and set her in flight, she began to race silently down the hill towards him.
Behind Helix, the whorl he had come through glowed dully then dissolved. The dark portholes on the Pamela Jane sank away, too, until they were invisible across the cove. The school of snappers had retired under the hull. The sea beyond the cove was dark beneath the clear night sky. Helix felt the earth solid beneath his feet, felt himself anchored firmly in the world. He began to walk up the hill towards Maya.
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful for the unflagging patience and faith of the wonderful people at Puffin, who waited far longer than planned for this book and then accepted it with sincere enthusiasm and an extraordinary degree of care and attention: Amanda Punter, Carmen McCullough, Emma Jones and Wendy Shakespeare. Lexy Bloom and Julia Holmes offered astute counsel and essential support in the earliest and foggiest days of Penny’s story, and Sarah Burnes and Caspian Dennis remained fiercely unwavering in their commitment to Tamarind. Lastly, I would like to thank my dad, who has encouraged me wholeheartedly my entire life.
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First published 2016
Text copyright © Nadia Aguiar, 2016
Wave illustration by Matt Jones;
copyright © Penguin Books Ltd, 2016
Cover Illustration by Oliver Burston
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ISBN: 978-0-141-97478-1
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