Secrets of Tamarind Read online

  For Tim

  I must go down to the seas again …

  —John Masefield

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  Free Excerpt - Lost Island of Tamarind

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  The Watchers • Granny Pearl’s House • The PAMELA JANE • A Gloomy Illumination • “It was unmistakable”

  Simon’s school bag bounced on his back as he ran. When he reached the bend in the road he stopped and looked back. His sisters had gotten off the bus with him but they were lagging behind. With a running leap he vaulted onto the mossy boulder that sat on the verge of the road and climbed quickly to its top. From there he could see out to the choppy winter sea around Bermuda and hear the whistle of the wind. The slate gray sky was heavy with clouds and the day was already growing dark. He wished that Maya and Penny would hurry up. Recently their parents had forbidden them to walk home alone, so Simon had no choice but to wait, even though he was impatient to get to the boatyard. He and his friends had spent the past month rebuilding an old speedboat and it was almost ready to put in the water. It was all he had thought about all day as he endured the slow crawl of the hands around the big round clock at the front of the classroom.

  Through the treetops Simon could see the crisp white limestone roof of Granny Pearl’s house. Even though they had lived there for nearly four years now—and it was the only real house any of them had ever lived in—they all still called it Granny Pearl’s house. If he stood on his tiptoes he could just see the kitchen garden with parsley, thyme and the frothy green tops of carrots, and lettuce that grew crisp and cool deep inside the ice green heads. Around the side of the house was a milkweed patch where flocks of monarch butterflies massed in the summer. The house overlooked a small green cove, sheltered from the open ocean, with a narrow slip of sandy beach and a mat of rubbery sea daisies. The family’s boat, the fifty-two-foot schooner, the Pamela Jane, rocked on her mooring, her yellow hull the brightest thing on this gloomy afternoon.

  Something stirred in a nearby tree and Simon instantly thought of Helix, happier in trees than with his bare feet on the ground. But it was just a branch bobbing after a bird took flight. Their friend had disappeared so suddenly and had been gone for so many weeks now that Simon wondered if he was ever coming back.

  Maya and Penny finally appeared—Penny hopping ponderously on one foot—and Simon slid down from the boulder and went to meet them.

  “You should have waited for us,” Maya said crossly when they reached him. “What’d you need to go rushing off for?” Maya was sixteen, which meant she thought that she was in charge of Simon and Penny. Simon had just turned thirteen and he hated anyone telling him what to do, most of all Maya. Since nothing irritated her as much as being ignored, he didn’t answer and instead swung five-year-old Penny up onto his shoulders so fast that she squealed. He made up a silly song that made her giggle and began walking.

  “Frog!” Penny shouted, catching sight of a muddy-backed bullfrog on the side of the road, and she wriggled until Simon put her back on the ground.

  Maya dawdled with Penny, who was prodding the reluctant frog to hop in front of them, and Simon turned onto the shortcut, a narrow packed-sand path between the trees to Granny Pearl’s house. Old Man’s Beard hung like fog from gnarled branches. The light that managed to make it through the thick clusters of stubby palm trees and the heavy climbing creepers was dim and eerie. High in the spice trees, the wind creaked ominously, a sound that reminded Simon of the wind moaning in a ship’s rigging, but the air on the path was strangely still, as if it were sealed off from the rest of the day. He stopped to wait for his sisters and peered uneasily through the trees, trying to see if he could make out one of the watchers. The strange men were here all the time now.

  He looked back. “Hurry up!” he shouted.

  When he saw them, Maya’s scowl had fallen away and her face was lost in the hazy drift of a daydream—Maya was always daydreaming. The frog leaped into a clump of ferns and Simon, not liking the dark stretch of the path, took Penny’s hand and pulled her firmly along.

  * * *

  The house was cool when Simon came in, and the tiny television on the kitchen counter was spouting yet another news report about the mysterious glowing sea creatures that were being found dead in the waters all around the Caribbean and South America. Simon’s mother wasn’t home from the laboratory yet, but Granny Pearl was listening to the report as she chopped vegetables at the sink. Simon swooped down to give her a kiss—he had grown three inches in the past few months and he was doing a lot of swooping to low places, as well as stretching to high ones, reaching up nonchalantly to rap his knuckles on every door frame he went under.

  “How was your day?” his grandmother asked

  “Boring,” he said. “But yesterday I figured out what was wrong with the boat engine. The old fuel had thickened to varnish and the jets were clogged. I’m going to take the carbs apart and clean them—I think we can have it in the water by this weekend.” He glanced out of the window. “Are they still out there?”

  His grandmother nodded. “They’ve been lurking around all afternoon.”

  “They can’t just invade our yard,” he muttered. “Why doesn’t Papi get rid of them?”

  “Sometimes things are more complicated than they seem,” said Granny Pearl.

  Simon’s gaze fell on the television, where an old fisherman was holding up a dead octopus, its faint glow ebbing even as Simon watched. “Found it in my nets,” he said. “Second this month—I been fishing here since I was ten years old with my father, in fifty-five years I’ve never seen a thing like this before…”

  The television still babbling tinnily, Simon went to change into his old grease-stained clothes for the boatyard, hearing the screen door bang shut as Maya came in behind him. Usually these days he breezed right by his father’s study, but today he stopped and looked in.

  Dr. Nelson’s ear was pressed to the CB radio. With one hand he was turning the knob, listening to the series of pops and whines and static that sputtered from the speakers. With the other hand he was making notes. His beard, white since his time in the Ravaged Straits, had grown long and his skin, no longer exposed to the sun as they sailed from port to port, had faded. Frown lines deepened into grooves as he concentrated.

  A year ago, the first thing Simon would have done when he got home from school would have been to head straight to Peter Nelson’s study. All of them would have, Helix, too, but Simon always stayed the longest, telling his father about his day and sitting at the desk opposite his father’s to do his homework. He’d browse through Papi’s books, poring over the scientific illustrations. He loved the treasures on the shelves: marlin bills; exotic shells; starfish and octopus and coiled water snakes that floated in a solution in rows of big glass jars. Simon had a steady hand, and his fat
her often asked him to sketch things he saw under microscope slides. But these days his father was preoccupied, and he rarely talked to the children except to yell at them when they were too noisy.

  “Papi,” said Simon. His father didn’t hear him.

  Messy piles of coffee-stained papers teetered precariously under sea stones and open books were stacked on top of each other on almost every inch of the floor. Behind his father’s desk was a large map studded with colored drawing pins that plotted the locations of the reported sightings of dead, glowing sea life. Simon felt a sudden rush of annoyance at the shambles of his father’s office.

  “Papi!” he said, loudly this time.

  His father looked up, startled. “Simon,” he said. “Home already? What can I do for you?”

  “I just saw that someone found another glowing sea creature,” said Simon. “Did you hear about it?”

  “I did,” said his father, looking back down at his papers. “Very troubling business.”

  “What do you think is making them glow like that?” Simon asked. He had been hovering in the doorway but now he stepped inside, dropping his school bag to the ground.

  “Anything I could say now would only be speculation,” said his father. “And I’d rather not speculate.”

  Simon frowned. He wished his father would stop being so infuriatingly vague. He looked out of the window. “You know those men are still out there,” he said.

  “Yes, I’m aware,” said his father, sifting through the jumble on his desk in search of something.

  “I could help, you know,” said Simon. “We could go outside right now and tell them to get lost!”

  His father looked at him. “That would be very foolish,” he said seriously. “Those men are dangerous—it isn’t a game. Steer clear of them, Simon. I mean it.”

  “What do they want?” Simon pressed.

  When his father didn’t answer Simon changed the subject. “What about Helix?” he asked. “It’s been weeks—can’t you at least tell us where he’s gone, or when he’ll be coming back?”

  Dr. Nelson sat back, rubbing a bony knuckle over his bushy eyebrow. “I wish I did know where Helix was,” he said. “I’m worried about him. He took it upon himself to— Oh, never mind. He thinks he’s helping us.”

  “I want to help, too,” said Simon.

  “You’re too young,” said his father.

  “Helix isn’t that much older,” argued Simon.

  “Helix is different,” said his father.

  “That isn’t a good enough reason,” Simon objected in frustration. “I don’t understand why no one will tell me anything!”

  “Please, Simon,” said Papi. “I’m very busy. Was there something specific you wanted?”

  “No,” mumbled Simon. He picked up his backpack and went the rest of the way noisily to his room. He could get there now in just three long strides and—whack—one especially hard knock on the door frame.

  * * *

  When Simon got back to the kitchen his mother had returned home from the laboratory. Her lab coat hung over the back of a chair and she was helping Granny Pearl make dinner. “I’m going to the boatyard,” he told them, bending down to tie his shoelace. Maya had gone to her room and just Penny was there.

  “Can I come?” she asked.

  “Nope,” said Simon breezily.

  “I won’t say anything,” said Penny. “You won’t even know I’m there.”

  Simon shook his head.

  “Please.”

  “Hang on a minute, Simon,” said his mother as he headed out of the door. Simon knew from the tone of her voice that she was going to say something he wouldn’t like. He had almost made it. He stopped and turned around, but kept his hand on the door.

  “Those men are outside again,” she said. “I’d be happier if you stuck close to home, okay?”

  Simon’s heart plunged. He couldn’t stay at home. He hated being there these days. The only thing he really looked forward to was the boatyard. Maybe Maya was happy to sit in her room and read a book, but he had to be out. He had to be doing things.

  “But I have to go,” he said. “If I’m not there Dennis will be the one to put the last bits of the engine back together and then he’s going to act like it’s his.” It was true. That was exactly what would happen.

  Mami hesitated, frowning as she wiped her hands on a tea towel. “I’ve had a funny feeling all afternoon,” she said. “Something’s in the air. I’d like you to stick nearby—just for today.”

  When Simon opened his mouth to argue she looked at him so seriously over her glasses that he stopped. Outside the screen door, he could see his bicycle leaning against the poinciana tree in the yard. He felt the afternoon sliding away from him, like a wave being sucked back out to sea.

  “A feeling,” he grumbled. “That isn’t very scientific.”

  “Not everything is,” said his mother.

  * * *

  Simon shuffled outside and flopped down on the porch steps. A perfectly good afternoon, ruined. Now what was he going to do? At this very moment he should have grease all over his hands and engine parts spread out on the ground around him. He scanned the garden but the men who had caused all the trouble were nowhere to be seen. It was all so stupid. The light was fading fast and the fact of the short winter days only sharpened the injustice.

  The dreary day reflected Simon’s thoughts.

  A cool wind rustled through the trees and rattled the Pamela Jane’s halyards, and his gaze wandered down to her. Until four years ago, Simon, Maya, and Penny had lived on her, sailing the open seas with their parents, who were marine biologists. Back then the Pamela Jane had been kept in tip-top shape: Simon and his father used to dive beneath the water and scrape the barnacles from her hull, her yellow paint was fresh, her name was proud and bold, and the waters she sailed over were sometimes four thousand fathoms deep. Each day her brilliant white sails were filled by the salty Atlantic wind.

  But now she sat there as if abandoned, chained on her mooring. Scummy sea moss waved around her in the current, making her appear to drift in and out of focus. Her paint was cracked and faded, her sails furled and her masts stark and lonely. Rust bloomed around her fittings, and underwater, chains of olive green barnacles plated her hull like armor. The wind drove seaweed in through the mouth of the cove and it floated over to become tangled in her anchor line. She looked like a neglected, sea-worn old hulk—bewitched and unlucky—destined for nowhere but the sea floor.

  And now Simon and his family were what the old salts who hung around at every port called “landlubbers.” Landlubbers—blecch! Simon missed the days when the family had sailed from port to port, never waking in the same place. But the best place they had ever been—the most exciting and the scariest—had been Tamarind, a mysterious island not on any map, where they had lost their parents in a storm, met Helix, and gone on a wild adventure to rescue their parents.

  For a long time after they returned home and moved in with Granny Pearl, Tamarind had been all the children could think or talk about. Simon, Maya, and Helix had formed the Tamarind Society. Sometimes, when she proved useful, Penny was brought along, too. They had played on the Pamela Jane or in a tree house in the garden, pretending it was in the Cloud Forest Village. Maya pretended to be Evondra or Mathilde, Simon played Rodrigo the barge captain or the pirate Captain Ademovar, Helix was always himself, and a night heron pecking for hermit crabs in the rocks of the cove would be Seagrape, Helix’s green parrot that they had left behind. No other kids ever joined in these games. Simon and Maya’s parents had made them solemnly swear never to breathe a word about Tamarind to another soul—It may be the most important secret you ever keep, Simon’s father had said—and none of them ever did.

  But time passed and Tamarind began to seem very far away. Simon could still remember the day when Maya had finally sighed and said to him, Tamarind was just something that happened to us a long time ago. She began hanging out with school friends and had little intere
st in Simon as he sat alone at the edge of the cove, stirring the water into a tiny maelstrom with a stick, like the giant Desmond had done, watching bits of twigs get sucked down into the whirlpool as the pirate fleet had on one of their last days in Tamarind. His parents told him that there was no way ever to go back to Tamarind, but sometimes, on days like this, Simon wished he were there again.

  Though they lived in the same house and shared the same family, they didn’t seem to be really together anymore. Simon’s parents acted weirder and weirder. They would never talk about Tamarind or the Red Coral Project or their old friend and colleague, Dr. Fitzsimmons, who was the reason they had ended up in Tamarind in the first place. Simon’s parents felt Dr. Fitzsimmons had betrayed them, leading them to believe the Red Coral Project was a simple scientific study, when in fact he knew it was a dangerous investigation to find the secret island. Simon’s parents had resigned from the project as soon as they had returned home, but the Red Coral had never left them alone.

  In all that time, Simon had kept the secret of Tamarind faithfully, but now his parents were keeping secrets from him … it wasn’t fair! Helix, too, had grown cagey. Before Helix disappeared a few weeks ago, Simon had several times interrupted hushed conversations between him and Simon’s father, which had ceased when Simon was noticed in the doorway.

  Though the Nelsons considered Helix part of their family—Simon considered him practically a brother—Helix in many ways remained a mystery. He perched on furniture, never getting too comfortable. Simon had never seen him really sink easily into an armchair or couch. He took school seriously and was a diligent student, though he had little obvious delight in learning, unlike Simon, who actually secretly liked many of his schoolbooks. Helix had been orphaned as a small child and brought up by an island tribe. The Nelson children met him on their first day in Tamarind, and from the moment Simon had seen him—when Helix had freed him from the carnivorous vines of the Lesser Islands—Simon had liked him. Helix had tattoos made of jungle pigments all over his skin, his hair was knotted and dirty, and he had carried a spear. In Tamarind he could disappear into the jungle and survive on his own for months at a stretch. Sometimes Simon thought the only surprising thing was that Helix had stayed with them as long as he had.