Island's End (8 page)

The drumbeat softens and I hear a whisper coming from near the plant that the spiderweb hangs on. When I bend down close, wanting to hear the voice a little better, I notice how unusual the plant is. It lacks flowers, but its leaves are as brightly colored as flowers’ petals: red mottled with pink. The lower part of each leaf is shaped like the pitchers we use to store water, and the top part looks like a small lid.

I peer into one of the pitcher-shaped leaves. To my surprise, it is filled with sweet-smelling juice.

Just then, four sharp drumbeats cut into my mind.

I obey the call to return and trudge back down the path. A strong wind pushes at me, as though urging me to move faster. As soon as my feet splash into the pool again, all light disappears.

I open my eyes. It is a shock to find my body lying on the jungle floor, as though I never left.

“Well done, Uido.” Lah-ame smiles.

“I saw Biliku-waye as a tiny spider. Why did she appear in such a delicate form?”

“Whenever your own spirit feels strong, the Otherworldly spirits will not appear large or terrifying.” Lah-ame’s smile widens. “Tell me on what plant Biliku-waye hung her web for you.”

“The plant’s leaves were shaped like water pitchers and filled with a sweet-smelling juice.”

“That is the insect-eating plant,” he says. “A creature that looks like a plant but acts like an animal. Its spirit is caught between two ways of living.”

“How can a plant’s spirit be like an animal’s, Lah-ame? Plants are rooted to one place, while animals move. And there are so many other differences between them.”

“This plant traps insects. But instead of catching them with a sticky tongue like a frog, the plant has a slippery leaf. Insects are fooled into thinking the brightly colored leaves are flower petals. If they try to land on the pitcher-shaped leaf and sip the juice inside, they slide down and drown in the juice instead. The plant then eats the insects just as an animal might.”

“How do you know so much about this plant, Lah-ame? Have you seen it in the Otherworld, too?”

“It grows in this world, Uido.”

“But where, Lah-ame? I have never heard anyone speak of it, nor have I seen it myself.”

“One day you will,” Lah-ame says. “If Biliku-waye hung her web on it in your vision, it means this is your special medicine plant. You must seek out this plant and bring its healing waters back to our people.”

“When?” I ask, eager to see it again.

“Close to the end of your training.” Lah-ame lays his hand on my shoulder as if he is trying to weigh down my curiosity. “That test is still far away, Uido.”

I ask no more questions because I sense he will not answer them. But Lah-ame’s refusal to speak about the last part of my training only makes me think all the more about the strange plant until I fall asleep that night.

F
rom that day on I have hardly any time to wonder about where the insect-eating plant grows or how I must find it someday. Lah-ame keeps me busy learning new skills. I barely even have time to miss being with the rest of the tribe.

It is only at night, lying on my sleeping platform while rain slides off the banana-leaf roof, that I can think of them. I sometimes dream of being back in my tribe’s circle of warmth. But if I see or hear the strangers’ flying boats during the day, I have a terrible dream at night—of Ragavan visiting the island, cutting down our jungle and taking Tawai away in his boat. Yet when I wake, the steady downpour and the
hhhhffff
of the stormy wind comforts and reminds me that the strangers cannot land on our shores in the rainy season.

Most mornings Lah-ame and I gather plant and animal parts that have healing powers. Then we return to the shelter of our banana-leaf huts and roast or squeeze or grind what we collected to make medicines. I enjoy feeling the growing weight of my lizard-skin pouch.

In the evenings, after our meal of berries and fruit and nuts, my stomach often growls with hunger. But in the darkness, Lah-ame teaches me many things. I learn how to find and chase away the lau that cause disease by entering a person’s body and capturing the spirit; the chants an oko-jumu must say to thank the spirits for fire, good weather, and successful hunts; the rituals that celebrate birth and marriage; and all the tales of our people. He guides me farther and farther into the Otherworld with his rattle and drum. But although I learn to journey there with ease, I never again see the insect-eating plant.

Then, four moons after we parted from the rest of the tribe, Lah-ame gives me my first test. At dawn he begins to ask me about all he has taught. My voice does not falter once and I answer every question correctly. When the sky beyond the mat of branches above us grows dark, Lah-ame finally stops.

“I am pleased by how quickly you learned about healing,” he says. “Tomorrow I will teach you how to make fire.”

His praise lifts my spirit like a breeze, until I feel like I am floating above the treetops with joy. That night I dream of kindling a great orange blaze while my entire tribe watches in admiration.

The next day, Lah-ame brings me his fire tools. He places a trunk with a small hollow carved in the middle on the ground, under the shelter of his roof. I kneel beside it, as I have seen him do, and place his long fire stick inside the hollow. He helps me run the vine rope across the fire stick and shows me how to balance the stick inside the hollow while churning it with the vine rope. I am surprised how difficult it is. My palms redden and blister as the rope cuts into my skin. It takes me eight days to build up the skill and strength to move the rope fast enough while keeping the fire stick in place. By then the hollow in the trunk is as black as my hair and my palms are rough as bark. On the evening of the eighth day, I finally see a burst of gray smoke. But that is just the first step.

I learn that I must keep going after the smoke appears, until sparks finally fly, then blow on the sparks to keep them alive and feed them quickly with bark strips before the sparks go out. Next, I must use the strips to light a pile of twigs and leaves. Only when this pile is alight can I feed the blaze with large branches.

After four more days of trying and failing, Lah-ame says, “Remember, everything has a spirit. To create fire, you must bring together the power of the trees’ spirits and use this along with the strength of your own spirit and body.”

Before trying again, I pray softly to the trees from which the firewood came. Then I churn the fire stick in the hollow with my vine rope. When I see the first sparks, I reach for a handful of bark strips as usual. But this time, instead of worrying about whether they will catch, I imagine my spirit as a steady light, pulling the sparks toward the bark strips.

As soon as the strips are alight, I use them to set fire to a pile of twigs nearby. While I stoke the blaze with more twigs and branches, Lah-ame puts the hollowed-out trunk, vine rope and fire stick away. Soon my fire is not just crackling but roaring.

As I watch my fire grow larger, my spirit swells with a feeling of triumph. Although my back and arms ache from days of hunching over the fire tools, I wish my tribe were here to dance with me around the flames I built.

“Have you not forgotten something?” Lah-ame says.

“Have I?” I ask.

Lah-ame rises and says a prayer of thanks to Pulug-ame, who gave the gift of fire to our ancestors. Ashamed that I forgot to thank him myself, I bow my head and repeat the words after Lah-ame. We sit on the warm earth, close to the fire.

“Uido, I, too, was overjoyed the first time I made fire,” Lah-ame says. “I made the same mistake you did. It is only natural. But the more dangerous mistake even an older oko-jumu may repeat is to enjoy one’s power too much.”

“Sorry,” I mumble.

For a long time, Lah-ame squeezes my temples, until my heady pride at making the fire drains out of me. “A fire like the one you just made has the power to warm us, light up our nights and cook our food. But if left unguarded, it can leap into a rage and burn down a village. And just as you learn to control the fire’s power by tending to it with skill and respect, so must you watch yourself, Uido. Spirits may use their powers to punish and destroy; we must not. If you become oko-jumu someday, your every act and decision must be for the tribe’s good.”

“I will remember, Lah-ame.” I stare into the flames and hug my knees to my chest. After days of churning the fire stick with a vine rope, my arm muscles bulge out like a young man’s.

“Your training is nearly complete,” Lah-ame says.

“Not already?” I say.

Lah-ame smiles at my surprise.

“Tomorrow we will start making a canoe, to help you with the final test that awaits.”

“A canoe?” This confuses me. “Is it not far too stormy to go out on the ocean for another two moons at least?”

Lah-ame points to the west. “You will need to canoe up the stream and search the swamp until you find your insect-eating plant.”

“It grows in the swamp?” I try to keep my voice from shaking. I cannot believe Lah-ame will send me there. I was about ten seasons old when Kara and three of his best hunters left to see what was in the western part of our island. Only one of his hunters returned with him.

They told of walking west until they came to a place where the mud stank of dead leaves. There they found crocodiles: creatures three times as long as a grown man, with teeth sharper than a shark’s. These
duku-ta
hid in the mud, pretending to be dead tree trunks, until a man came near enough for them to gulp down. Kara killed the crocodile that ate two of our men and carried it back. But though its giant body fed the entire tribe, Kara warned us all to keep far away from the swamp and he never went there again.

“Once your canoe is made, I will take you to the swamp,” Lah-ame says. “But you must journey through it alone. The insect-eating plant’s waters will carry special healing powers in your hands, and you will need these waters to heal. It also holds a message to help you guide the tribe into the future, a message that you might only understand long after you complete your journey.”

That evening, I hardly taste the food we eat. Even with the fire I built dancing in front of me and my medicine bag at my waist, I feel unprepared for such a test. Although the crackling flames warm my skin, my spirit remains cold with horror. Lah-ame stays close by until I leave for my own hut, but we find nothing more to say and his presence no longer comforts me.

T
hat night, I am unable to rest on my sleeping platform. My body feels as tense as a tightly pulled bowstring. I twist and untwist my medicine bag’s drawstring between my fingers, wondering if the tribe’s warm breath will ever stroke my cheeks again. I long to feel Mimi’s and Tawai’s arms around me and hear Danna say I will survive whatever lies ahead.

It would help me so much to even glimpse them from a distance. Perhaps I could try to see them in spirit at least, using my power to journey through the Otherworld.

Lah-ame is fast asleep. Except for my spirit’s wanderings in dreams, he has always been near me when I entered the Otherworld. I remember his warning after my dream of snakes not to send my spirit away from my body without his guidance until my training was complete. But I must search with my spirit for my tribe’s communal hut tonight, because I cannot bear my loneliness any longer.

I slip out into the jungle. As soon as I am out of Lah-ame’s sight, I lie on the moist earth facing east and close my eyes. Listening to the wind rattling the leaves overhead and raindrops drumming on the jungle floor, I send my spirit into the Otherworld.

Behind my closed eyes, I see a light twinkling like a firefly in the trees. I drift over the moist earth toward it. It leads me to a moonlit clearing, where I see a huge banana-leaf hut with a roof sloping low to the ground and no walls. Moving closer, I see my entire tribe asleep inside. Family groups are huddled together on the many wooden platforms. Natalang’s thighs wobble as she turns on her side, next to her mimi. The tips of Danna’s mouth are turned up as though he is having a good dream.