Island's End (22 page)

The closer we get to the beach, the harder our walk becomes. We clamber over many uprooted trunks and fallen tree limbs. In some places, broken branches dangle overhead, threatening to crash down any moment. And the shaking earth has carved out pits that have filled up with seawater.

“The air will be thick with mosquitoes soon,” one of the men mutters, staring at the muddy pools dotting the jungle floor.

When we step onto the beach, what I see is more frightening than even the swamp. The breeze stinks of drying seaweed, dead fish, and flesh that is already starting to rot in the heat. Rocks, broken coral, bits of wood, twisted pieces of metal torn off Ragavan’s boat, and the brightly colored buckets that were his last gifts to us lie scattered on the once-white sand.

Corpses must lie there too.

I turn my gaze away from land to the sea. The shallows are no longer clear and blue-green but muddy. Ugly specks of black and brown whirl on the foam. Pieces of the reef have been thrust up out of the water and they claw at the sky.

“Let us look for people,” I say to the men, who are also staring in horror at the misshapen beach. We pick our way across. One of the men points to a human leg sticking out of the sand. Together, he and Kara dig up the body of one of the strangers.

From farther down the beach, Natalang’s father shouts, “Another stranger is here.”

It is a torn body—all that remains of Ragavan. His body is broken in two and his intestines are hanging out. The sight makes me want to vomit, but I force myself to help carry his corpse. We lay it down near the jungle’s edge, well out of reach of the waves.

Staring at Ragavan, I feel relief and sadness mix inside me like mud and water. Despite all the problems he caused, my mind still has clear images of Ragavan helping clean Tawai’s wound on this beach and handing my little brother a box of fire twigs. As much as Maya is my friend, Tawai and Ragavan were friends. Maybe he has a son who is Tawai’s age who will grieve for him. There is so much I never knew about Ragavan and will never find out.

We continue searching the beach for human remains. Of the third stranger, we find no more than a bloated arm floating in one of the pools. One of the men finds a crushed foot and another a piece of thigh. The parts are so misshapen that we cannot tell if both were torn off the same body—or even whether they belonged to one of our people rather than another of the strangers.

After a thorough search, we find nothing else and I decide we must stop.

Kara points at the remains. “What shall we do?”

“We will bury them all in the jungle, as we bury our own people,” I reply. “Perhaps these men meant well, perhaps not. But others like them will come again. And we must treat the strangers with respect if the strangers are ever to respect us in return.”

Silently, we drag them into the jungle. We dig a great hole and cover them all with earth.

The sun is setting when we climb back uphill toward the cliffs. In the fading light, my spirit feels heavy with guilt about the deaths I did not prevent.

“I never even tried to warn the strangers about the wave,” I say to Kara. “I thought only of the tribe’s safety.”

“But you saved us all, Uido,” Kara says softly.

“Perhaps not even that,” I reply, thinking of the misshapen thigh and the crushed foot.

W
e reach the others on the cliff at dusk. Kara’s hunters have brought back fruit and berries and roots and nuts that we all share for our evening meal. Everyone has questions but I sit apart from the rest of the tribe, unwilling to answer them, though I know I must talk to them soon.

After we have eaten, I rise to explain that we must remain on the cliff until the jungle is safe enough for us to return. But just as I begin, a woman shouts, “Look! Look! They are back!”

Through the darkness I see three figures stumbling up the slope. With shouts of surprise and welcome, my people run to greet them. Ashu is limping along, his arms around his friends’ shoulders, his left leg swollen to four times its usual size. He winces with every step, but his two friends seem to have outrun the waves without getting badly hurt. They set him down and crouch together at my feet.

“Where is Natalang?” I ask, clinging to a desperate hope that she might not be gone.

“Dead.” The word bursts out of Ashu like a sob. I hear some people moan. But all I can think is that I will never again hear the sound of Natalang’s laughter bubbling out of her like foam on the sea.

“How did it happen?” Natalang’s mother wails.

“She—” Ashu’s voice breaks. “We were gathering fish together. I heard the noise of the water rushing back. We looked up and saw a blue-green wall of water coming at us. Natalang was too frightened to move. I tried to drag her away and she started running, holding tightly to my hand. But then the ground cracked into pieces in front of us. She slipped and fell and I lost her.” Ashu pulls at his hair.

“Did you see her drown?” I sense the impossible want in Natalang’s mimi’s voice. “Maybe my daughter is still alive.”

“No.” Ashu’s voice cracks. “I saw her body twisted out of shape, bleeding where her leg used to be. It was drifting far away in the water, out of reach.”

Ashu seems to crumple into himself. His friends do not dare look up at me.

The crowd around us falls quiet. I feel everyone’s eyes on me, waiting to see what I will do. Staring out at the blue ocean where Natalang’s body now lies, I feel a dull anger growl inside me like a faraway storm. For a moment, I wish Ashu were dead.

I look down at Ashu. His lips are gray as ash, his bruised skin dark as burned wood. But though his body is hurt, I sense that his spirit’s pain is far greater.

Ashu loved Natalang. And no matter what I could have done, Natalang would have stayed with him because she loved him.

My friend is gone, without a proper burial. The only way I can honor Natalang’s spirit is to forgive the man she loved.

My people have formed a great ring around me. I sense they are waiting for me to act, to teach, to guide.

A breeze cools my forehead.

“You are welcome back,” I say slowly. Then I tend to my brother and his friends. Kneeling next to Ashu, I untie my medicine bundle. I tell all three boys to lie down. Into their foreheads, I rub drops of the insect-eating plants’ healing juice to lighten their spirits.

Next, I attend to their bodies. When I am done applying medicines, I ask the men to bring me wood and several lengths of vine. Using pieces of wood, we make crutches and a splint for Ashu. With Kara’s help, I straighten Ashu’s broken bone, then set and bind it using the vine rope.

After I am done, I make way for everyone else to greet the survivors. Most of the tribe presses close around them, weeping and laughing. It is a strange reunion, joy mixing with sorrow like waves from different directions crashing into one another. Only Natalang’s family sits apart.

Ashu’s fingers twist through his hair and his body jerks with sobs.

“Uido,” he says. “I need to go to Natalang’s family.” With my help, he limps over to them. Bending down awkwardly before her parents, he says, “I am sorry.”

Natalang’s mimi looks up at us. Her eyelids are swollen and her face is wet. But she opens her arms and pulls me onto her lap. “You were her friends,” she says, her voice small and tired. “She loved you both.”

We stay with her as the gloom of dusk deepens into the black depths of night. Then she lets us go and rocks back and forth in her husband’s arms.

The tribe mourns Natalang’s death long into the night.

As the moon begins to travel down the sky again, I go from person to person and embrace each of them. And imagining myself inside my spirit animal’s eight-armed body, I pull some of the grief and shock out of their spirits and into my own. One by one, my people fall asleep on the bare ground.

Then I let my tired body sink into Danna’s arms, but my spirit swims restlessly in and out of sleep. My mind is heavy with sadness and guilt. The five deaths weigh it down like great rocks—Natalang’s most of all.

While moonlight still shines over the watery edges of our island, I leave Danna’s side and crawl up the tall rock, slow as a snail. Reaching the top, I call out to my spirit animal.

Together, we dive into the protection of an underwater cave. There the weight of my grief feels lighter and she helps me push it slowly away.

At dawn, my spirit animal forces me out of the cave and gently up through the water. When we reach the surface, I pour out more of my grief and watch it flow like blood into the ocean. Then I land on the rock again. But now my back is as straight as a spear, strong enough to carry what remains of our sadness.

I
reach Danna’s side just as he is waking up.

“Look,” he says to me, pointing up at the sky.

In the distance, I see a black dot that, like Ragavan’s boat, is growing so fast that it must be from the strangers’ world. As the dot comes closer to our island, a terrible noise shakes the sky.

“A flying boat!” one of the elders shouts, but it is not the fish-shaped kind we have seen before. This one is fat and its wings whir in a circle above it.

It drops lower and lower, hovering closer to us than any flying boat has ever dared, making a loud
ka-tek-tektek
noise as though it is chopping the sky. I see some hunters grab their bows and aim their arrows at it, while children cower on the ground.

But the strangers’ magic no longer scares me, because I know it is not more powerful than ours—just different. Looking up at the flying boat, I recognize the familiar shape of a woman sitting inside.

“They are friends,” I say, once it has passed and I can make myself heard. We watch the flying boat land on a bare patch of ground farther away on the cliff. Maya jumps out and runs across the rocky earth toward us.

Tawai shouts, “This is the woman who healed me.”

“Uido.” Maya flings her arms around me. “I am afraid all En-ge die.”

Hearing her speak our language, my people murmur with amazement.

“We survived,” I tell Maya. “All but one of us.”

“Uido warned us to flee,” Danna says. “She knew the ocean would try to eat the island.”

“But—” Maya breaks off.

“You knew, surely?” Tawai says.

“How, Uido?” Maya’s face shows her confusion. “How you can know such thing?”

“You must have known,” Tawai says. “Your world is full of magic.”

My tribe presses in closer, eager to hear Maya’s reply.

“No.” She shakes her head. “We do not know wave is coming.” For a few moments, she chokes up. “Many people in my tribe die. More than all En-ge. Many, many hundreds.”

I hear cries of shock from the crowd. “Uncle Paleva?” I ask.

Her lip trembles, but she bites it and then says, “He is hurt. Badly. Soon, he dies. I do not want to come here. I want to stay with my uncle. But he says I must go. Find En-ge. Help you.”

Maya covers her face with her hands, as though tears are something to be ashamed of. I put my arm around her, but she does not sob. Wiping her tears away with the back of her hand, she asks, “How we can help you?” She points to the flying boat. “We bring food and medicines. What we can do?”

“We do not need your help,” I say gently. “It is enough that you have come to offer it. Go back and tell your uncle we are well, so that his spirit will enter the Otherworld happy.”

Maya gazes down at the jungle, where fallen trees lie like scattered twigs, and at the beach, where coral has washed up like broken bones. “Your village is gone?”