Through the Whirlpool (5 page)

“
Hold on, Kyle! You must hold on!”

He stirre
d, seemed to hear his sister. Though he did not pull himself back onto the board, he gripped harder. Jade became aware of a buzzing sound in her ears, getting steadily louder. This was what happened before you passed out. She must not! Yet still the buzzing got stronger. She resisted, struck out harder with arm and legs. The buzzing became a consistent, slapping drone. It seemed to be more intense with each wave she pushed through. She knew she was just hallucinating because she was getting tired, had no idea whether the beach was any closer. If only she could see it! Maybe she was just swimming in circles.

Then over the top of a wave she glimpsed an
aluminum hull, a small dinghy. The drone became the roar of an outboard, and a boat came alongside. Strong, adult hands were pulling Kyle up out of the water. With the movement, the metal hull swung toward her and smacked against her head. The shock left her gasping, breathing in water. She realized she had made a bad mistake… she couldn’t breathe! Couldn’t see! A fogginess enwrapped her and she began to sink into the deep green. Then a firm hand grabbed her abruptly, vice-like, under the arm. It hauled at her, pulling her toward the surface. Her head whacked the metal side again. Then she was being raised from water into air—pure, rich, clean air! But her lungs were drowned and she still could not breathe. The haze turned black, like night. The last thing she felt was her head painfully crack a third time, against the floor of the boat as she was laid down. Then everything switched off.

B
ronze tongues of flame flickered hungrily up toward the six meer-zjhur, or redfish, dangling from a sharpened stick above the fire. The smell of roasting flesh stabbed at Kreh-ursh’s stomach. He had drunk more of his potion than he knew he should. If things went well, he would have to survive on this island for at least twenty days, maybe longer. He must not waste the potion. In the canoe he had tried to be as firm as possible, but by mid-morning the rumbling in his stomach must have been audible to the entire crew. At noon, when the paddlers ceased their stroke to eat a scanty meal of dried fish and vegetables, he limited himself to a few sips. Then he fixed his concentration on an invisible point in his mind and tried to shut out the obscenely loud sounds of chewing, belching, and swallowing. In the afternoon, his stomach seemed to shrink, happily, and he did not much notice his hunger.

Now
, though, the pain was like a dagger, lacerating his insides, demanding food. He could smell it all around. Apart from fish and other seafood that must inhabit the waters of the bay in abundance, his oversensitive nostrils seduced him with the perfume of tropical fruit. He could smell maa-sheesh, the plump, fist-sized fruit with flesh the color of ocean surf and a taste of both sugar and salt that grew on the lowlands around the coast. The wind also brought the scent of baal-aarsh melons, which looked like volcanic rocks on the outside but were the most intense sunset orange within. They were chewy, tangy, full of juice, and his mouth watered at the thought of them. Then the wind briefly changed, and he was sure he could faintly detect, wafted down from the volcano’s higher slopes, the sugary-acid bite of the bluish purple zjheh-rohsh clusters, lounging on their low vines among the trees.

He finally pulled a fish impatiently from the skewer. It was agony to chew slowly and carefully, locating the many spines with his tongue and spitting them into the fire, when what he really wanted to do was wolf the flesh down as fast as he could. He managed to curb his hunger, finishing off just three of the fish. Those that remained, he wrapped in a large leaf to save for the next day.
Sea-nomad-becoming required continual exertion. He had only the potion prepared by his mother and food he had time to gather. He needed to ration himself.

Then, huddling close to the little fire in its hearth of sand, he stared into the flames, clearing his mind to begin the exercises. His eyes searched through the embers, seeking the different
colors he could find there, relaxing, tuning his concentration, emptying his mind of thought. The flames absorbed his complete attention. Little by little he began to see beyond…

The
shahiroh appeared with no warning, but not suddenly. She seemed to materialize out of the firelight on the far side of the fire. When he became aware of her, Kreh-ursh was unsure how long she had been standing there. She gave the impression of having existed since the birth of time, growing from the sand like an ancient, black-rooted loman tree. Her dark robes merged with the darkness behind her, the ceremonial mask could be a gray-silver billow of smoke frozen perversely in its horrible grimace, and her power enwrapped her like an invisible cloak. Behind the carved wood only the shining points of her eyes—glittering jewels that anchored her in time and space—and the harsh rasp of her breath through the breathing hole showed she was alive.

Immersed as he was in trance, he did
not jump up or make any outward movement. Yet his mind tensed, on guard. The shahiroh, more knowledgeable in lore and craft than the other villagers, were unpredictable and dangerous. They observed each other for long moments. He felt her probing subtly at his mind. Then she mind-spoke:

Kreh-ursh, I am glad to be your mentor for sea-nomad-becoming.

So articulate was her mind speech, so accurate, it was almost as if she were speaking directly to him in words. And her friendly tone disarmed him.

Hoh-ee, Taashou.

He recognized her despite her mask, this lean, haughty woman he had known all his life. They said she undertook sea-nomad-becoming at twelve years old, the youngest candidate the village had ever known. Her name meant “waving grass spear.”

She now reached under her robes, brought forth her clenched fist. In a scattering movement, she tossed fine green powder into the fire. It erupted. Flames leaped. Thick green-
gray smoke seethed out, the fumes clogging his throat. Heat singed his cheeks. His eyes watered. He coughed, but the smoke was already swirling thickly inside his head. His inner sight bucked and rolled, wild and unstable. Taashou’s presence was there, before him, demanding. Her eyes, two obsidian chunks, locked onto his own. All he could see were those points burrowing deep, forcing him to hold her gaze. He stared through the flames. Beyond the shining came the visions…

Tell me. Describe what you see.

There’s a jungle… rainforest… I’m walking… thick forest…

Vines and creepers fell around him, hung above. The sun
’s rays reached down through high trunks, but they produced a green, underwater light.

…looking for…

He examined the trees. He was searching for something. Here were trees as wide as two or three men lying end to end, as tall as the great canoe placed upright, even taller. Yet he was not looking for these. He had to find a single trunk, the one right for him, the one that would be his own. He walked through trees, trees and trees, vaguely tracing a large circle, keeping the upslope of the volcano on his right—for he was in the forest on Zjhuud-geh. Suddenly he saw it—his tree—a taat-eh trunk about his own age. It was slim and straight, its branches not spreading from the trunk until high above his head, possibly two, three times his own height. He knew it was the one he should select. Mentally, he tried to mark its position.

Explain.

I have found my tree.

Continue.

The scene shifted, and he was skimming across ocean waves, clipping white tops in a brisk breeze. Then he dived into the depths:

Underwater… Shah, the sea…

Green sunlight slanted through the waves in sharp bars. Then all kinds of sea life was writhing nearby: shoals of the ever-present kree-eh refracting every rainbow color through the translucent water; groups of lilac rruush-oh billowing dreamily; a sinuous Shah-skur rolling its beige and cream coils along the sandy bottom; even a majestic taa-zjhur gliding along, its purple and gold hide flashing in the sunlight. He showed all this to Taashou.

All at once the marine life disappeared. Cloud covered the scene
, and he was again on the surface, but now it was calm. The water felt hard and heavy like molten metal.

Describe.

It is… No… It can’t be...

Describe.

He was looking down into the water. It was not possible. Trance during initiation gifted visions of possible future pathways, yet this was unreal. If he was seeing what he thought he saw, it could no longer be a glimpse into his own future or any other reality, but a creature from the realm of pure myth.

J
ade was feeling fragile despite Dr. Bilges having given her the all-clear. She must have been out for a bare few minutes, because when she came to—vomiting over the gunwale—even though the pot-bellied old fisherman in the stern was nearly shaking his tiny outboard off its mountings, they were still a good five hundred yards from the beach. Her mother had her arms tightly around her waist, squeezing her, making her vomit up all the water she had swallowed. She spent the rest of the journey to the beach coughing herself stupid and puking over the side while Joan went and held Kyle. Her brother had barely been conscious when they pulled him into the boat. Face, limbs, and body were plastered with the dark sludge, the color of a bruise. Added to that, the smell of it was revolting: a strange blend of rotting things and vinegar… and something else, like turpentine. Kyle was trembling and shaking, seeming to get continuously weaker in Joan’s arms.

Jade
saw all this in glimpses every time she raised her head. Her nausea was back in force. She felt as if she were reliving her dream. Blotches of red, blue, orange, yellow, pink, and white exploded before her eyes, and a black mist hovered at the edges of her vision, threatening to drag her down again into unconsciousness. Through the haze, she noticed her mother’s cell phone lying in a puddle of water in the bottom of the boat. It was still open, as if she had dropped it in the middle of a conversation to do something else. Jade picked it up, but the screen was dead.

As they neared the shore, the old fisherman aimed his boat straight at the beach. Through luck, or experience, he managed to catch a perfect wave
, and they surfed in with a speed and skill that Jade had to admire. As the aluminum hull rasped onto the concrete boat ramp, Patrick—Jade and Kyle’s stepfather—was there, reaching over the side. He scooped Kyle up in one swift movement and began running up the beach, yelling over his shoulder at Joan to help Jade. A small crowd had gathered and were staring at them as if they were aliens come down from a distant planet. Rena and her mates, Screwdriver and the Head, were standing off to one side.

“
What happened, Weasel? Go out over your depth? Oughta remember to wear your water-wings next time.”

Jerks! Jade thought, but she needed all her strength to keep walking, supported by
her mother and the fisherman.

Joan paused
, however, and said, “What’s your problem? My daughter has just saved her brother’s life. While you, when it came to the crunch, for all your puff and big words, were about as much use as an origami manual on a building site.”

Rena stopped smiling. She turned and stomped off down the beach, her two cronies in tow.

Patrick’s car was parked, or rather ploughed into the soft sand, beside the boat ramp. For one long moment she doubted they would get free. The wheels spun and spat sand before they gripped and revved back onto firm tarmac. It took them less than five minutes to reach Dr. Bilges’ surgery, just a couple of rooms built onto the side of his house near the village center. Jade and Kyle had been coming here since they were tiny, so the flagstone path down past the rose garden brought back every childhood misadventure. Mrs. Cotild, the nurse—generously built, generous with sweets when they were good, but with her tongue when they were not—opened the door.

“
Lordy! What happened to the poor laddie? Get him in here quick. Come on, bring him straight through.”

Patrick laid Kyle onto
the examination table in the surgery.

Jade was shunted onto a chair in the corner. Bilges blew his metallic, disinfectant breath acro
ss her.

“
Let’s have a look. Been playing the heroine again, have you?”

“
No, I just…”

“
Drink this down—in one. That’s it.”

The milky liquid tasted of chalk.
Mrs. Cotild laid a hand on her shoulder.

“
Right, come along with me, lassie. We haven’t finished with you yet.”

She followed
the nurse through a door into the doctor’s house, along a hall to his bathroom.

“
Don’t go scraping any of that goo onto the doctor’s walls, hear me? Okay, kit off and under that shower.”

Jade scrubbed at her body, using a vomit-smelling soap Mrs
. Cotild had left her. The sludge stained her arms, legs, even her neck. Even after she managed to scrape off the rubbery substance, which coagulated in the plughole, her skin was left discolored by a repugnant tinge. When she returned, dressed in shorts and a sweater of the doctor’s, Mrs. Cotild thrust a cup of hot soup into her hands and wrapped her in a blanket.