The Great Wave of Tamarind Read online

  She wished the fog wasn’t so heavy so she could see where she was.

  Suddenly, up ahead, she saw a giant strobe blink on and off. Moments later came another flash, closer to her, as if someone had flicked on a spotlight and just as quickly turned it off again. Was there a boat up ahead?

  ‘Hello!’ Penny shouted. ‘Is anyone out there?’

  Through the mist she heard the sound of beating wings.

  Seagrape, feathers brilliant green and lustrous with fog, landed heavily on the bow, the boat rocking gently beneath her weight.

  ‘Seagrape!’ Penny cried, overjoyed to see her.

  The parrot had something in her beak. She squawked and it fell out, landing with a ping and rolling across the hull. Penny picked it up. A berry stone, copper-coloured, the size of a marble. She clutched it and looked all around, but the fog obliterated everything beyond the rowing-boat itself.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ she asked Seagrape urgently. ‘Which way is land?’

  Seagrape balanced on the bow as the boat settled, but gave no indication where she had come from.

  Penny opened her palm and looked at the stone. A few fibres of wine-red fruit still clung to it. It was unlike anything she knew from home. Could it … was it possible? She peered into the fog.

  Suddenly and deeply, Penny wanted to see Tamarind, wanted a glimpse of its emerald slopes, its brilliant blue water feathered in the breeze, small waves breaking whitely on its shores, to see the glossy sheen of the jungle’s canopy, hiding the dark, damp richness that lay within. She wanted to be where she had been before, with her brother and sister, where they had met Helix. She wanted with all her heart to be where Granny Pearl had sent her.

  A sideways pillar of light shot across the water nearby. It no longer looked like it could be from a ship. It was as though a door had opened in an invisible wall and light was spilling through from the other side. For an instant, Penny thought she heard another bird, but none appeared. She only had one oar left, but she picked it up and began to paddle towards the light. Just before it went out, she glimpsed a dark blue seam in the water, running into the fog in either direction.

  She knew at once what it was.

  Her heart began to pound.

  The Blue Line.

  She was at the border of Tamarind.

  A new gap appeared in the Line and again light blazed through. The gap was open for just a few seconds before sealing abruptly, creating a swell that surged towards the rowing-boat, rocking it violently, slopping water over the gunnels. Seagrape squawked and flew off the bow. Again Penny heard a strange birdcall, and for a brief second she was sure she had heard voices, too. She put on her backpack and seized the oar, then knelt at the bow and began to paddle with all her might but the gap closed again before she could get there.

  ‘Hello!’ she shouted.

  She was feeling panicky that she might be stopped here, on the edge, when she saw a flash off the rowing-boat’s starboard. She turned in time to see light pouring through another breach in the dark blue seam.

  The blaze of heat and light burned away the fog and lit the water electric blue. Instead of being pushed away, this time the Line pulled her towards it. Water poured through the gap like the tide rushing in under a bridge, lifting the rowing-boat with it. Penny saw schools of neon fish speeding around her. White birds tumbled like wheels spinning through the air. In a great gush, the rowing-boat was drawn through. Seagrape flew through a split second before the invisible door slammed shut behind them.

  The rowing-boat teetered on the crest of a swell. Penny had lost the oar and she gripped the gunnels. She was looking out over a bright vista of somewhere else entirely. The sky was hot and clear. A peacock-blue lagoon stretched before her and, in the distance beyond it, a smattering of green atolls were lit as bright and vivid as a grasshopper’s wings in the sun. Penny hung on for dear life as the boat plunged down the swell into the new world.

  She felt warm water engulfing her legs and looked down to see that the rowing-boat had taken on water and was floundering. Before she could even begin bailing, the water was up to her waist. She heard voices and looked up to see a small, swift wooden boat under a bright crimson silk sail drawing alongside her. As the rowing-boat sank beneath her, Penny reached up to the hands stretching down for her, and was hauled out of the slop and churn of the sea and on to the deck of the new boat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  New Children ✵ The Bloom ✵ The Competition ✵ No Ordinary Monkey ✵ The Whorl in the Trees

  The boat rocked on the settling sea, a fizz of bubbles popping around her hull. The rowing-boat had vanished. Penny crouched in a pool of water from her soaking wet clothes near a net full of silvery fish while two boys and a girl, all about her age, stared down at her in amazement.

  ‘I told you I heard someone out there,’ said the girl, then she whispered, ‘Kal, did you really open a whorl?’

  One of the boys looked nervously back at the Blue Line, once again solid as a fortress, then turned back to Penny.

  ‘I …’ he said. ‘I mean … yes, I must have –’ He gazed dumbfounded at Penny.

  ‘It was a coincidence,’ said the other boy. ‘You were just messing around. No one can open the Blue Line.’

  ‘But a whorl opened and she came through,’ said the girl. ‘We saw her with our own eyes. You did, too, Jebby.’

  ‘I’m not saying I didn’t,’ said the boy. ‘I’m saying that Kal didn’t do it. He couldn’t have. Whorls open all the time before the Bloom; it doesn’t mean Kal had anything to do with this one.’

  The girl turned to Penny and shook her head. ‘An Outsider. And we found her.’

  Penny, no stranger to feeling like an outsider these days, had never felt as much like one as she did then.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked the girl.

  Penny got to her feet, looking down at her arms and legs, which no longer felt like they quite belonged to her.

  ‘I think so,’ she said.

  She was confused and afraid, but she still had her goggles and her backpack, and was reassured by the sight of Seagrape, who was ticking serenely back and forth on the starboard gunnel. Surely Seagrape wouldn’t be so calm if Penny were in danger.

  She looked past the children at the distant patch of brilliant green islands that she had first glimpsed from the other side of the Blue Line.

  ‘Am I in … Is this Tamarind?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s Tamarind up ahead,’ said the girl. ‘The northeast coast, to be exact – Kana.’

  Kana. The name jogged no memory, and the islands were still too far away for Penny to make out clearly.

  ‘How do you know where you are?’ asked the girl.

  ‘I’ve been here before,’ whispered Penny. She felt a surge of emotion as she looked towards Tamarind. She wanted to tell Granny Pearl she had been right, that the signs had been real. That she was sorry for having doubted her. Then her heart lifted: Helix was there – somewhere in Tamarind.

  She turned back to the children. ‘I’m Penny,’ she said. ‘This is Seagrape.’

  ‘I’m Tabba Silverling,’ said the girl. ‘This is my brother, Jebby. And this is Kal.’

  Tabba and Jebby were small and wiry and looked like twins. They had bright, dark eyes and hair so black it shone blue in the sunlight. Tabba’s hair was cropped at her chin and a few fish scales glimmered on her faded tunic. The boys were bare-chested and wore loose-fitting fishermen’s trousers. A carved wooden whistle hung from a string round Jebby’s neck. Kal looked a little older than the others, perhaps a year or two, and while they were lean he was heavy-set, with strength born more of size than of health. He had a yellowed bruise on his forehead, beneath a scrape that had almost healed. Tabba and Jebby seemed friendly, but Kal stood, half in the shadow of the gently luffing sail, staring at Penny suspiciously, as if now that his shock had passed he was beginning to question the wisdom of what he had called forth.

  ‘Let’s take her back near the Line,’
he said to the others.

  Penny felt a moment of horror – they weren’t just going to abandon her there, were they?

  ‘It’s too late,’ Jebby said to Kal. ‘However that whorl opened, it’s shut now.’

  They had been sailing along slowly, parallel to the Blue Line. Penny looked back to see it, a sealed band of darker blue that was already fading back into the sea. The gap she had come through – the whorl, if that’s what it was called – was no longer there. There was no sign of exactly where it had even been. There was no way back across. Home – where Penny’s parents and Granny Pearl were, where her brother and sister would be in a few days, where the Pamela Jane still lay at anchor in the peaceful cove – seemed impossibly far away. The rowing-boat was gone, and the islands in the distance were too far to swim to. Penny’s knees suddenly felt weak, and she held on to the gunnel to steady herself.

  ‘I’ll open another one – watch,’ said Kal.

  He put his hands on his temples and closed his eyes tightly, concentrating. But, when he opened his eyes a moment later and looked at the Blue Line, nothing had happened.

  ‘We need to be closer,’ he said.

  ‘You’d better be careful,’ said Tabba darkly. ‘Or the mandrill will show up right on the deck of this boat.’

  ‘Forget it, Kal,’ said Jebby. ‘She’ll have to come home with us.’

  ‘Two against one,’ Tabba said firmly when Kal protested. ‘We’re taking her to shore.’

  There was no doubt in Penny’s mind that if Kal had been on his own he would have left her here. But Jebby turned the tiller to starboard and the boat tacked. The boom swung neatly across and the crosswind caught the sail, then the boat settled into an easy, steady run towards the islands.

  ‘After we get to shore, you’re on your own,’ Kal told Penny.

  He took the tiller from Jebby, who let him, and settled in the cockpit. Seagrape flew ahead, and Tabba and Jebby joined Penny on the port rail.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Tabba whispered. She smiled at Penny. ‘You’re lucky,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You’re here just in time for the Bloom, and you came through the Line in the right place! Our town, Tontap, is just behind those hills. Everything starts there tonight. People come from all over Kana – from all over Tamarind! – to see the Bloom, but I never heard of anyone coming from the Outside before!’

  ‘What’s the Bloom?’ asked Penny cautiously. Her hair had begun to dry stiffly in the wind, and she pushed a stray strand behind her ear.

  Kal snorted. Tabba and Jebby ignored him.

  ‘It will be in the Great Wave, four days from now,’ said Jebby. ‘It only happens once a generation. There’s a competition to be the Bloom Catcher – the one who will go out to the Wave to get the Bloom.’

  ‘The kids in the competition are called Bloom Players,’ said Tabba. ‘They’re mostly thirteen or fourteen – no one can be older than that or they’ll be too big for the Wave. There are three trials, and the Player who passes them all becomes the Bloom Catcher. No one knows what the first trial is yet. It won’t be announced until tonight, and the Players don’t leave until tomorrow morning. Jebby and I are going to Palmos to see the Bloom at the end. There’s a big stone amphitheatre in the valley and everyone watches from there. We’re just going to watch, of course – Kal’s actually a Bloom Player.’

  ‘Wave,’ muttered Kal from the stern. ‘Like it’s some ordinary wave. It’s a wall of water.’

  Tabba and Jebby seemed eager to talk, and Penny had been about to ask another question, but Kal wielded peculiar authority in the group and made her feel nervous. The Bloom – whatever it was – was clearly very important, and it seemed wise to keep the extent of her ignorance a secret. In the hull, the fish were still, their molten scales like empty armour.

  ‘The Bloom only happens in one place, Palmos,’ said Kal, looking coldly at Penny. ‘There’s an ancient stone dial in the valley there. That’s how everyone knows when the Bloom is going to happen. Before the Bloom starts, the tide goes out, out, out – way further than it ever does, ever – and all the water gets sucked up into this enormous wave. A towering wall of water. You can see straight into it; it’s like glass. That’s where the Bloom happens.’

  Kal fell into sullen silence. The wind hummed in the sails and made Penny feel cold in her damp clothes. The children waited.

  ‘Well,’ said Jebby grudgingly. ‘You’ve started, so you may as well tell the whole thing.’

  Kal sighed. After a moment he continued, as if he was doing them a favour.

  ‘On the morning of the Wave, thousands of people wait in the hills all around Palmos,’ he said. ‘At exactly the right moment, the Bloom Catcher starts to walk out to the Wave. He walks, every step sure and steady, even though he’s looking up at this wave so huge that he’s the only one in all of Kana brave enough to just walk up to it like that.’

  The wind whistled softly over the sea, breaking its surface into a confusion of dazzling panes. No one interrupted Kal, and he dropped his voice, making the children lean in towards him.

  ‘Everything is silent,’ he said. ‘No one rustles. No birds chirp. The only thing that moves is the Bloom Catcher. He walks all the way out to the bottom of the Wave … and then … he dives in!’

  Kal lunged forward a few inches and Penny recoiled, nearly slipping off the gunnel. She winced as she felt a splinter slide into her palm, but she kept her gaze steadily on Kal’s.

  ‘Suddenly the Bloom starts bursting out everywhere in the water,’ said Kal, raising his voice, sweeping his arm through the air to mirror the grand scale of the Bloom. ‘Like dozens of fires underwater, lighting everything up. Every creature from miles around shows up. The water is crammed with shoals of fish, flocks of birds diving in, sharks appearing out of nowhere, turtles, octopus – everything – all there to feed on the Bloom. It’s total chaos.’

  Kal had begun by trying to frighten her, Penny knew, but his vision of the Bloom was more powerful than his desire to impress her, and he seemed to have forgotten that anyone was even there.

  ‘But the Bloom Catcher isn’t scared,’ he continued in a low voice. ‘He’s strong. He can hold his breath underwater for longer than anyone else. He swims and gathers some of the Bloom. When he has everything he needs, he steps out of the Wave and walks – he walks, he never runs or looks behind him – and gets back to shore just before the water comes tumbling down. But by then he has the Bloom. He’s the only one, in all of Kana – in all of Tamarind – who has it. He pours it in the Coral Basin to save Kana, and everyone knows who he is. Even people outside Kana hear about him. He’s the most powerful person anywhere.’

  Kal’s story had woven a spell over them and it took a moment for anyone to speak. Penny realized she had been holding her breath. They had strayed slightly and now Kal corrected their course so they were once again heading towards land. The islands were closer now and appeared larger. A steady sea breeze rippled the foliage, making the hills shimmer like a mirage rising up from the sea. Clouds soaked the peaks, shadows darkened the dreamy slopes, and the whole place faded in and out behind a thick salt haze.

  ‘Well,’ said Tabba at last. ‘At least we think that’s what happens. We’ve never seen it. A Bloom only comes once a generation. We weren’t even alive the last time there was one.’

  ‘It’s what happens,’ said Kal. ‘Believe me.’

  ‘Stop pretending you know so much!’ cried Jebby in exasperation. ‘I don’t care what else you’ve done, Kal. When it comes to the Bloom, you’re just like us – you’ve never seen it either. And you don’t know that you’ll even make it past the first trial, let alone the second two! The Bloom Catcher could be anyone.’

  ‘It can’t be anyone,’ said Kal quietly. He kept his gaze on the land now, hand firmly on the tiller.

  Penny’s curiosity was swiftly growing greater than her fear of Kal.

  ‘What is the Bloom?’ she asked. ‘It happens in the Wave, but what is it?’

  The
children paused.

  ‘I know that each bit is very, very tiny,’ said Jebby. ‘It looks like glowing sand stirred up in the current. So bright it hurts your eyes.’

  ‘No,’ said Kal. ‘It looks more like blue-green fires. But underwater.’

  ‘Most people say it looks like turquoise clouds of pollen that burst open,’ said Tabba.

  ‘But what does it do?’ asked Penny, eager to find out before the children began arguing among themselves. ‘Why does everyone want it?’

  ‘The Bloom is the biggest, most powerful thing, ever, that one person can have,’ said Kal. ‘There’s nothing else like it.’

  ‘It keeps Kana safe,’ said Tabba. ‘From the whorls and the mandrill. When it’s poured into the Coral Basin, all the whorls that opened before the Bloom close, and the mandrill is forced to go back to the Gorgonne.’

  ‘But the Bloom Catcher is allowed to keep a tiny bit for himself,’ said Jebby. ‘They say it makes him strong and wise and helps him live a long time.’

  ‘The Bloom is just …’ said Tabba, struggling to explain. ‘Ma and Da say it’s … life.’

  Penny’s heart began to race. She tried to sound calm.

  ‘Could the Bloom Catcher give the Bloom to someone else?’ she asked. ‘You said it makes the Bloom Catcher strong and helps him live a long time … If someone were sick or old and they were given the Bloom, would it help them?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Tabba. ‘I mean, if it works for the Bloom Catcher, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for someone else, too, right?’

  The children kept talking, but Penny was no longer paying attention.

  Warmth spread throughout her whole body. She didn’t know how she would do what she had to do, or how she could return home again after, but she knew one thing: Granny Pearl wasn’t crazy. What she had been talking about was real. She must have known about the Bloom and had sent Penny to Tamarind to get it – the thing that would make her well again and restore everything at home to the way it used to be.