Mountain of Fire (2 page)

At that time of the morning, there were a few farmers tending to their crops and they ignored the girl running through their land. Fitri ran for 20 minutes straight through the fields and when she was absolutely sure she had left the village houses far behind, she went back to the road and started running towards the crater.

She was making her way to a watchtower. The watchtower was a popular spot for tourists who came to see the Merapi. She often went there to get away from people, most recently after the disaster with Aditya's hand. Ayah had taken away her books; there was no bigger punishment for Fitri. She had been furious with her father and sulked off to her quiet place, the watchtower.

After a bit, the tar road turned into a dirt track that went further up the mountain. Even though it was a cool morning, Fitri was now sweating and breathing hard. Her plan was to get to the watchtower and make it back to school, just in time for morning classes.

Fitri stopped a few feet away from the watchtower, crouching behind a rock to make sure no one was around. There were not many trees in this part of the mountain, just scanty bushes and large boulders. She certainly did not want to run into her father and the other men from the village.

I'll be in detention for a year if Ayah catches me here when I'm supposed to be at school,
she thought to herself. She needed to know what was going on with the Merapi. Ibu had been lying to her – something was definitely wrong.

Absolutely sure that no one else was around, Fitri tentatively went up to the watchtower. It was a white and blue structure with a flight of stairs leading up to a platform, which was covered with a roof. It was built next to a huge tree. The watchtower was open on all sides with a view of the volcano and the village around it. Fitri climbed up and looked around: in the early morning light, she could see the green rice fields and a gentle mist beginning to roll off the ground. The village looked beautiful, but on the other side the smoking volcano looked dangerous.

“Hey, you stupid girl!” a voice yelled out at her from the bottom of the stairs and broke the silence.

Fitri ducked and slapped her head. Aditya! He had followed her! How did she not hear him?

“I know you are up there. What are you doing? Did the school finally expel you?” Aditya yelled out.

Another boy laughed with him. Fitri recognised the voice: it was Reza, Aditya's best friend who followed him all over the village like a puppy dog. Of course, he had to have a friend along! The stupid bully was too scared to follow her on his own.

“Yup! They must have found out you had Petuluk blood in you!” yelled out Reza.

Fitri's face became hot and red and she clenched her hands till the nails left marks on her palms. The boys had touched a raw nerve.

The Petuluk were a tribe that lived in the deepest part of the mountain, far from Fitri's village. They were almost never seen by outsiders and had many strange customs: they did not interact with any outsiders, they were forbidden to use any money, kill anything, and use electricity. They ate what they grew on the land. But the most fascinating and frightening thing about the Petuluk was that they were rumoured to have unimaginable magical powers. And because they kept these powers to themselves, and never really left their village, they were called “Those Who Are Never Seen”.

Her grandmother had left the tribe to marry her grandfather, but then returned to her family when Fitri's mother was just a little girl. She was never seen again. Everyone in the village knew this scandalous story and people still spoke of it sometimes. The fact that Agus and she had Petuluk blood in them, and looked different – they had a lighter skin colour – was just one more reason for people to whisper about them behind their backs.

“I'm going to put his whole head in the anthill the next time,” Fitri seethed. But for now, she had to think about how she was going to get out of here. She could not possibly fight both boys.

Think. Think.

She looked around hurriedly and a smile lit up her face. Sitting quietly on the tree next to the watchtower, unnoticed by the boys, was a monkey. Now the monkeys in the forest around the Merapi were not nice. Not at all. Gangs of them would often invade the village and sometimes even the fields to eat the crops.

Fitri opened her school bag and took out an eraser and flung it hard at the monkey and ducked. She heard the monkey snarl. Fitri peeked over the railing and saw that the monkey had not moved. She looked inside her bag again and took out a few pencils. She flung them and hid again. This time, the monkey let out a loud yelp and started climbing down the tree towards the boys, who were still yelling out rude things to Fitri.

A snarling monkey is a scary sight. The minute the two boys saw the monkey climbing down the tree towards them, they knew they were in trouble.

“Aaaargh!” yelled out his friend. And the two boys pelted down the mountain as if their behinds were on fire. Behind them ran the snarling monkey, baring his teeth.

Fitri laughed so hard she almost fell down the stairs. She ran down the path, and turned around to look at the volcano one more time. It was late and she had better go off to school.

THREE: MBAH EKO

Not much got done at school. Everyone was chattering away about the Merapi belching out smoke and the day seemed to whizz by. Fitri did not know that back home, things had gotten worse.

Fitri could sense immediately something was wrong as she walked home from school that afternoon. She passed the town square and saw people huddled together, talking. It was a simple town square with a few food stalls and a solitary motel. Most tourists preferred to stay at the closest town and drive up to the village to see the Merapi. But some would brave a night in the village's only motel, run by cranky old Pak Irlandy, who had no teeth and was almost deaf. And was now standing in the middle of the street shouting at the top of his voice.

Fitri saw her mother and Agus standing with a few other women by a shop. Her mother carried a bag full of vegetables and looked almost frightened. Agus was fidgeting with his cleft lip, something he did when he was worried.

“Ibu!” Fitri called out, running towards them. “Is something wrong? Why is Pak Irlandy shouting?”

A small group of men, along with Ayah, were standing huddled across the road, listening intently to Pak Irlandy. Another old man stood listening and was clearly trying to calm him down. The old man, it should be explained here, was an extremely important man in the village. In fact, he was very important for all the villages around the mountainside.

He was a thin, wizened man who wore a colourful scarf around his head. Like many Javanese men, he wore a
sarong
around his waist, a cloth tied like a skirt. His skin had been burnt brown under the hot Indonesian sun and was the colour of beautiful dark teakwood. His name was Bapak Eko – which meant Sir Eko – and he was a bit of a mysterious character. Not because of the way he looked, but because of who he was and what he
did.

Bapak Eko was the Spiritual Guardian of the Merapi. Everyone addressed him as Bapak – or Pak for short – out of respect for the old man. Some called him “Mbah” which meant grandfather.

The king of Yogyakarta, the town nearest to Fitri's village, had appointed Pak Eko's family the “Keyholder of the Merapi” hundreds of years ago. Pak Eko had inherited this position from his father in 1982 and had been the Guardian of the Merapi ever since.

None of this made any sense to the kids. So most moms and dads had explained all of this in the following manner: “Pak Eko is in charge of looking after the mountain and the volcano. He is responsible for making sure that it ‘breathed but never coughed'. He is a very important person, with a very important job. You must always be respectful to him, because he knows the volcano best. Gunung Merapi and he are friends. Only he can talk to the spirits in the volcano.”

Of course, this speech was delivered with a very stern face and a wagging finger. Usually followed by “Stay away from the crater” and “Stay away from Pak Eko”.

Pak Eko lived just outside their village, a little ways up the mountain, on the outskirts of Fitri and Agus' village. But he was consulted and respected by all the villagers in the area.

People said he was about 70 years old, but no one knew for sure. He looked like something that the volcano had spit out and would one day swallow again. He smelled odd; her father said the smell was of menthol cigarettes. The Guardian disappeared for days on end – some said he went close to the hot, volcanic dome where no one else dared go. Basically, no one was quite sure of what he did and how he did it. He had no children and Fitri had often heard villagers talking among themselves about who the next Guardian of the Merapi would be.

There was not a child in the village that did not fear Pak Eko and his mysterious powers over the Merapi.

“Ibu! What's going on? Why is Ayah talking to Pak Eko?” asked Fitri.

“Fitri, something terrible happened today. Pak Irlandy was taking some of his goats up the mountain to feed. One of his goats was running across some rocks and fell into a hot mud pool.”

Fitri looked aghast. “How hot was the pool? Did it die?”

Ibu nodded. “It was boiling. Yes, the goat died.”

Mother and daughter looked quietly at each other, and then towards the smoking mountain in the distant horizon. Boiling mud pools meant the earth deep inside the volcano was getting so very hot. It was making the mud boil up and bubble.

That night Fitri had her second dream.

Fear is of many kinds. There is fear of the dark. Then there is the way your heart jumps when you hear a loud noise. But then there is another kind of fear. The kind of fear that keeps you running because if you stop to think, you are sure that you will die.

Fitri was running very fast. And she was scared, very scared. Something was running behind her but she did not dare stop to turn around. She could feel the creature's hot breath behind her and hear its low, menacing, grunting sounds.

“I have to keep moving,” Fitri muttered under her breath. “I have to keep moving or I will die.”

She seemed to be clambering down the mountain with the creature chasing behind her. She ran, falling and slipping, down the slope and skidded to a halt near a large tree. It looked like her banyan tree, the one she had been twirling under in her first dream. But the tree wasn't beautiful anymore. The leaves had disappeared and the branches were covered with a grey dust. It looked like it had died. In fact, all around her, all the trees, the grass, and the fields were covered with a grey, ash-like dust.