After the Ashes (19 page)

Then the water disappeared, just as suddenly as it had arrived.

Brigitta and I gasped for air.

“Are you well?” I called, struggling to right myself on the branch.

She coughed and croaked,
“Ja.”

We lay heaving against the cempedak branch, taking in great gulps of air. And then, to my horror, the boiling noise came again, drowning out the sound of our heavy breathing.

“Hang on!” I screamed.

“Oh, no,” she moaned.

I fixed my arms around the tree and Brigitta's ankles once more. The water slammed into us. Did I have the strength to hold on this time? My grip loosened, and I waited for the wave to yank me off the tree, out of the jungle, and into the ocean.

No!

I wouldn't let that happen! I couldn't. I couldn't do that to Vader and Tante Greet. I forced myself to squeeze the branch as the water churned.

When at last it receded, we panted for air again.

Brigitta pushed herself into a sitting position. “That one wasn't as bad.”

I nodded, too tired to speak and only half listening to her. I strained to hear the sounds of rushing water, hoping they wouldn't come again.

Then Brigitta screamed.

“What?” I cried, popping up off my stomach.

She whimpered and pointed above us.

A shape hung in the top of the tree. “What is it?” I squinted.

“It's—it's a p-person.” She shuddered.

“Oh.” Now I could see it was clearly a person. Arms, legs, head, torso all wrapped around branches giving the body the look of some ancient beast.

Brigitta scrambled to turn around.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I want to get down,” she said, pointing to the ground about three meters below.

“What? Why?”

“I can't be in the same tree with a dead person.”

“Brigitta, we don't know if another wave is coming.”

“I don't care. I'll take my chances.” She brushed at my legs, trying to get me to move.

“You'll die,” I said forcefully. “You'll end up just like that person up there.”

As if on cue, the boiling sounds returned, and Brigitta whimpered like a scared dog before wrapping herself on the branch. I grabbed her ankles and clutched the tree yet again.

But this time, the water didn't find us.

We waited and waited and waited.

My arm ached where it had been hit. Brigitta rubbed her ankles. Tree bark had cut into one of her legs, and blood oozed down and inside her shoe. I grimaced. I hadn't meant to hurt her.

We stayed in the tree for hours. She spoke of climbing down several more times, but I would not budge.

I couldn't tell if the body above us was a man or a woman. “Who do you think that is?” I asked.

“My father. Your father. Who knows?”

I shook my head. Even at her most vulnerable, she still lashed out.

“What?” she demanded.

Why did I insist on keeping her alive? If our roles were switched, she would never have rescued me. “Nothing,” I said, and I went back to listening for the ocean.

I startled awake and clutched the branch to keep from falling. When I looked up I found Brigitta staring at me. “Are you well?” she asked.

“I'm fine.” Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes. Bark bit into my legs. Everything hurt, and I could feel a bruise on my arm. My stomach rumbled in the silence.

Silence . . .

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

“Hear what?” She scrunched up her face and pointed to her left ear. “I can't hear from this ear, remember?”

I ignored her. “No rumblings from Krakatau, no roaring ocean.”

“It's over?” she wondered.

“Perhaps.”

“We can go back home?” She clasped her hands, pleading.

“Neither one of us has a home to go back to.” Even here, farther inland, the jungle had been ripped apart like a paper diorama.

She clenched her teeth. “I didn't mean that literally. I just meant Anjer.”

“I think we should still head for the clearing.”

“Why?”

“Just in case.”

“But I want to go home,” she whined.

I placated her. “I know. I do, too.” Vader and Tante Greet would
be waiting for me. But they might also be looking for me, and they knew I would be in the jungle.

“Then we should go!” She slapped her knees.

Even though I longed to find my family, they would want me to be safe. Tante Greet had insisted I climb that tree in the churchyard. “Brigitta, I think it would be best to walk to the clearing.”

“What if I don't follow you? What if I just go back to town?”

I rubbed my eyes. Pain and exhaustion coursed through me. Hadn't I done what I set out to do? Hadn't I helped Brigitta? Hadn't I kept her safe? Krakatau was silent now. If she wanted to go back to Anjer, who was I to stop her? “Do you know the way?” I asked.

She drooped. “No.” Her voice a miserable sob.

Would it be too much to insist she go with me? Perhaps she would be better off in Anjer. I had no idea whether the clearing was any safer. It was just a gut feeling I had. But what if the wave had reached there, too? Maybe we should go our separate ways.

“That way.” I pointed toward home. “Go that way, and you'll reach Anjer.”

Her eyes brightened.

“It shouldn't take that long,” I said. “We didn't walk very far before the wave hit. You'll be on your own, though. I'm going to the clearing.”

She nodded.

My hands and arms hurt so much it made gripping the tree difficult as I climbed down. It felt like a hammer had been bashing my fingers. I had never been in such pain.

When I reached the ground, I guided Brigitta, telling her where to put her hands and feet. She leaned her head against the tree and took a deep breath. “I never want to climb another tree as long as I live.”

I flexed my fingers and stared at the ground. “Well . . . I suppose . . .”

“Ja,”
she said, brushing off the front of her blouse.

“Be careful.”

“And you.” She offered me her hand. Surprised, I took it. “
Dank u,”
she said.

With an awkward shake, we split apart. She followed my directions toward Anjer, and I headed for the clearing.

I hoped I did the right thing letting her go off on her own. “Keep her safe,” I whispered aloud. Then I added, “Keep me safe, too.”

Downed trees crisscrossed the ground. My strength was gone. I couldn't climb over the ones in my path, so I walked around them. It made my route longer, but it didn't matter. The sky was still gray. Ash still fell.

By myself it was much harder to keep going. I needed a reason. Vader and Tante Greet were behind me, back in Anjer, and now Brigitta was heading that way. I knew I needed to reach the clearing, that I needed to move, but I could not take one more step. Even Mr. Charles Darwin couldn't help.

So I sat on the ground, leaned against a fallen tree, held my head in my hands and thought, just as Vader taught me. Maybe I
didn't
need to go to the clearing. After all, Krakatau was silent. Then again, if it started rumbling again, the clearing was farther inland. It was certainly safer.

I simply could not make a decision. I stood up again, looked around, and found my distance vision was even worse than before. My eyes were tired, too. I rubbed them yet again, hoping an answer would present itself by the time I opened them.

Instead, a scream ripped through the ravaged jungle.

I knew that voice. I ran toward the sound and found Brigitta hanging from a low tamarind branch. She'd managed to hoist her chest over the branch, but her legs dangled, and she was scrambling to pull them up.

At the base of the tree stood a lone, growling dhole. The hair on its back was raised. Whenever Brigitta's legs fell from the tree, it jumped.

“Help!” Brigitta called.

I wanted to tell her to be quiet, but I couldn't let the angry dhole
know I was there. Where was the rest of the pack? I scanned the area but didn't see anything.

Picking up a stick from the ground, an idea formed. Those dholes I had seen weeks ago hadn't barked, so my imitating a large dog wouldn't be much of a threat. But that strange cluck? I could copy that.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,” I whispered until I was confident it sounded like the noise I remembered. With a deep breath, I did it louder. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.”

The dhole looked in my direction, and I launched the stick. It flew in a high arc and bounced off a downed tree before landing. The dhole took off after it.

“Help!” Brigitta cried.

“I'm coming!” I hurried to the tree.

Brigitta was dangling a little over a meter off the ground when her grip slipped and she dropped back over the branch. I leaped to stop her slide, but when she stood before me, safely on the ground, I could see the front of her dress had shredded like cabbage.

Brigitta didn't seem to notice. Clutching me in a tight hug, she sobbed.
“Dank u, dank u, dank u.”

Stunned, I gave her an awkward pat on the back. “He's gone. The dhole's gone.”

Pulling herself away from me, she wiped her eyes. “Which way is the clearing?”

I was taken aback by Brigitta's change of heart, but I pointed wordlessly toward the clearing.

“Lead the way,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

“Are you certain?” I asked.

She nodded and brushed absently at the mud on her blouse. As she did, she finally saw the ripped linen under her collarbone. “Well, I always wanted some décolletage,” she giggled.

I gaped at her in wonder.

“Don't look like a fish, Katrien. You can be such a prude.”

My jaw snapped shut, and I blinked.

“Are we going to the clearing or aren't we?” she asked.

I set off deeper into the jungle and she followed me. There was something I needed to say.

“I wasn't being a prude,” I said.

“What?”

Her ear. I forgot. Louder, I repeated, “I wasn't being a prude.”

“Oh, no?”

“No.” I faced her. “I was just amazed you made a joke about your blouse. I expected you to cry even more.”

“You really don't know me, Katrien.” She limped closer. “You only think you do.”

“Really?” I arched my eyebrows. “You think I don't know you?”

“I know you don't.”

“Tell me one thing about yourself that I don't know. One thing.” I folded my arms across my chest and waited.

She sniffed. “Last year I read that book you're always reading. That Darwin book.”

I gasped. “You aren't telling me you read
On the Origin of Species
.”

She nodded.

“By Mr. Charles Darwin?”

“Is there another book by him?” She placed her hands on her hips.

Vader only had that one. “You read a book about science?”

“Ja,”
she growled. “Try to wrap your mind around the idea that I am not stupid.”

“What did you—” I stopped. Did I want her opinion? Would it matter? It wouldn't change how I felt . . . would it?

But she knew what I was going to ask. “What did I think?” She tapped her lips. “I thought it was an interesting idea, but in the end, I didn't believe him.”

“How can you not believe him? He lays out his evidence so clearly.”

She shrugged. “I just didn't. Why haven't we seen evidence of natural selection at work?”

“Because it's a subtle process that takes years!” I exclaimed. “He explains that.
‘As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short and slow steps.'
Don't you see?”

She stared at me with her mouth hanging open. “You have it memorized?”

I blushed. “Not the whole thing. Only sentences I particularly enjoy.”

“Is that what those weird things you're always saying are from? Darwin's book? Good grief, Katrien. You need to get a hobby.”

“I have—”

She held up a finger to stop me. “I mean a hobby that does not involve Darwin.”

I glared at her before stomping off, infuriated.

“Wait,” she called, and hobbled after me. My fury ebbed slightly when I saw her limping. I must have pinned her ankles tighter to the tree than I realized.

Our progress was also hampered by the changed landscape. The waves had uprooted trees and tossed them about like matchsticks. Giant fig trees that had been growing for centuries and that I once used as landmarks were gone. I hoped we were headed in the right direction.

“Waaaah!”

Brigitta and I stopped when a strange cry burst forth from somewhere nearby.

“Is that—is that a baby?” she asked.

“Waaaah!”

“It sounds like it,” I said.

“Hello!” she called. “Where are you?”

“Waaaah!”

I pointed to the right. “I think it's over there.”

We followed the crying until we reached an uprooted tamarind tree that leaned at a strange angle, supported by its branches. Trapped under those branches was a young boy, crying and struggling to break free.

“We have to help him,” Brigitta said.

“Of course we do,” I responded.

“We're going to help you,” she told the boy, who looked native and probably couldn't understand a word she said.

I positioned myself near a branch. “I'm going to try to lift it. You pull him out.”

She nodded and squatted on the ground, ready to grab the boy.

Taking a deep breath, I whispered, “One, two, three,” and pulled with every ounce of strength I had left. “Uuunnh.” The branch was heavier than I imagined. “Hurry, Brigitta.”

“I need a bit more room.”