Dragonfruit, page 22
“Someone will tell them.” The dragoners bitten by Viti would eventually be able to speak again. They would be desperate to shift the blame. “They’ll come looking for you. And your family.”
“They won’t find us,” Moa said. “Why are you helping me?”
A life for a life. He had not meant to, but Moa had saved her, sending her on a path back to Tamarind. Bringing her home. She said, “Remember me to your mother and sisters. I wish them well.”
Moa was quiet. Finally, he nodded, accepting his question would not be answered. He glanced over at Sam and lowered his voice. “I didn’t want to say anything back at the cave. Those eggs, Hanalei. They didn’t hatch on their own.”
“What do you mean?”
“The old man, he cracked them open while your prince was down in the hull. I saw.”
Her whole body went tight. “Are you certain?”
“Yeah. He took the dragons out of their shells and put them on the sand, pointing them to the water.”
“If you’re lying to me, Moa . . .”
“Why would I lie? Who is he, anyway?”
Hanalei looked toward the Sleeping Lady. Something was very wrong here. “Catamara works in the menagerie. He’s been there for years.”
“What did he do before the menagerie?”
Hanalei tried to remember what Sam had told her. She shook her head. She didn’t know.
“Huh” was all Moa said.
Hanalei had nearly forgotten. “Moa, what did Captain Bragadin do with the other egg?”
“What other egg?”
“There were three,” she told him. “We found eggshells near the lagoon at Tamarind City. The dragon was missing. What did you do with it?”
“Never saw it,” he said. Then, “I’m not lying! We harpooned the green seadragon in deep water, but didn’t kill it. We could tell by the frill that it had laid its eggs. But we couldn’t follow it back to its nest. There were too many guards near the city.”
“Then who . . . ?”
“Wasn’t us. I’m going to go,” Moa added, eyeing Sam, who was looking over the chief’s head, eyeing Moa in return. “Before your prince changes his mind. I don’t like that spider.”
Hanalei didn’t know why she said it. The words just came out. “Do you need squid?”
Moa’s brows shot up. “Gold?”
Hanalei nodded. “If you need it. Thank you for watching over him.”
Moa took one step back and then another. “Keep your squid. I can make my own way. Be careful, sister.” He turned and walked off down the beach until the night swallowed him up.
32
ROSAMIE WAITED FOR THEM BACK AT THE VILLAGE. She sat on the steps of the chief’s pavilion, a small wrapped bundle in her arms. Sam stopped in his tracks when he saw it. Beside him, Hanalei’s breath hitched.
“I kept him for you,” Rosamie said, rising. “It didn’t feel right to just . . .”
“Thank you, Lady.” Sam took the bundle in his arms, a piece of his heart wrapped in linen. There was no weight to it. Carrying Fetu felt like carrying air.
Rosamie kissed Hanalei on the cheek and left them.
Hanalei touched the linen with her fingertips. “Will you take him home?”
“No.” Sam could not bear to. “I’ll say goodbye here.”
“By the water? Fetu always liked the water.”
“By the water then.”
The village was quiet. So too was the beach. There was no longer a need for so many guards to patrol the waters. Bragadin was dead, the seadragon with him. Sam built a pyre while Hanalei sat on the sand and held Fetu close, tears falling. A part of him was glad she wept, because he could not. He could only pile log upon log, branch upon branch, and think I am sorry, my dear. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
When the pyre was large enough, Sam took Fetu from Hanalei and placed him at the very center, then used a blazing torch to set it all alight. His arm came around Hanalei’s shoulders, pulling her close, and they stood there in the dark, by the water, until the fire burned itself out.
Sam had been offered his own chamber in the chief’s pavilion. Sleep was hard to come by, and it didn’t last. It felt like he had just dropped off when he woke abruptly and heard, “It’s me, Sam. Don’t scream.”
“Jejomar?” Sam sat up, blinking in the lantern light. His cousin huddled in a corner, forehead on knees. “What’s wrong?”
Jejomar lifted his head, saying miserably, “It’s only me.”
Sam took one look, yelped, and scrambled to his feet so fast he knocked over a vase on a table. It crashed to the floor and shattered. He grabbed his knife.
Before him was someone with his own face and Jejomar’s voice. Not someone who looked like him. It was his face exactly. It was his clothing. The same tunic he had given Jejomar earlier, he realized. Sam pointed his knife, his heart pounding.
The door crashed open, and Hanalei burst into the chamber. Behind her came Liko, Bayani, Rosamie, William, the chief, Lady Umere, everyone. Half the village was in his chamber, in their nightclothes, gaping as they looked from one face to the next.
Hanalei was the first to recover. “Put the knife down, Sam. It’s Jejomar.” She looked at the version of Sam standing with his back pressed up against the wall, terrified. “Jejomar?” she asked, uncertainly.
He nodded, and Hanalei said, “I think . . . he took the first dragonfruit. Back at the lagoon. Did you?”
Jejomar nodded again.
Sam’s flesh threatened to creep right off his bones. He lowered the knife. “What is happening here?”
With everyone looking on, Jejomar stammered out an explanation. When the green seadragon had attacked them by the lagoon, he had fled. That part Sam had witnessed himself. But then Jejomar had spotted the blue dragon leaving the cave and slipping into the water with two pink eggs in its pouch. Naturally, Jejomar had wondered about the third egg. In the old tales, there were always three. He had gone into the cave and found the solitary dragonfruit left behind. He had broken it open, killed the seadragon, ate parts of it, and made a wish. The rest he carried home. Which had not been difficult, it was like holding a small child. His mother had been horrified, frightened that the queen would learn what Jejomar had done: stolen an egg meant for Princess Oliana. She had sent the servants away so they would not see when she burned what remained of the dragon.
Sam’s mind reeled. He thought of his aunt Chesa standing by an open fire. What were you burning, Auntie?
It was Hanalei who asked his cousin, “What did you wish for?”
Jejomar could not look at anyone, least of all Sam. “I didn’t want to be me anymore,” he said in a low voice. “A nobody. Never doing anything right. I wanted to be . . . like Samahti. I wanted to be just like him.”
Sam said, “You watched me try to find it. For ten years. And when you have the chance to help, you take it for yourself? Jejomar. My mother is dying.”
Jejomar slid to the floor. William stepped forward, then stopped, looking distressed and helpless as Jejomar wept into his hands. It was the only sound in the chamber, until Chief Umere stepped forward. “Prince Samahti, what do you wish to do here? This is clearly a family matter—”
“It is not.” Sam turned to Bayani. “Take him back to Tamarind. At first light. It’s not a family matter. This is the queen’s business.”
“Yes, Prince Samahti.”
“No!” Jejomar’s head snapped up. “Please, Sam. The queen means Lord Isko. You have to help me—”
“Stop.” Sam still held his knife. Very carefully, he set it on a table and stepped away. He headed for the door without looking at his cousin. “We’re not boys anymore, Jejomar. Help yourself.”
Sam stayed on the beach until morning. He could not afford to wallow. Despair would not help his mother. But it tempted him. How vast the Nominomi was. How easy it would be to walk into her waters and swim and swim and never stop.
Viti bit his hand.
He snatched it away, hissing. The spider went tumbling through the air; when she landed on the sand, she was the size of a small dog.
They glowered at one another, and Sam felt his heart crack. One marking left. “You’re not safe with me,” he said.
Viti bared her fangs, and Sam stepped back quickly. Her bites hurt.
“I don’t know what to do, Vitimahana,” he confessed, using her given name, one he had not spoken aloud since he was a small boy. “I am not wise enough. The dragonfruit was our last chance, and I’m not even certain it would have helped us in the end.”
The spider crawled around him, placing herself between Sam and the sea.
“I wasn’t going to . . .” He trailed off, listening to the waves rolling in, the birds singing, the village behind him rising from its sleep. Life marched on, even with a broken heart. “Let’s walk” he decided.
He could feel others watching as he paced along the beach, a dog-sized Viti by his side. No one approached. Except, eventually, Hanalei.
She was dressed for travel. Hat on her head. Boots on her feet. A tiny seadragon inked along her chin. Her eyes were red from weeping. It wasn’t his heart alone that had broken.
Sam stopped pacing. He brushed a hand along her cheek. “Did you sleep?”
“As much as you.”
No sleep for either of them. Sam looked past her. “Did he leave?”
“Yes. William went with him.”
Unsurprising. The friendship between Jejomar and the Esperanzan had grown quickly. “Do you think I was too harsh?”
“No,” Hanalei said, but only after a long pause.
Sam stepped away and flung himself onto the sand. “Your no means yes.”
“What Jejomar did was bad.” Hanalei settled beside him. “But, Sam, he’ll pay for it the rest of his life. With his guilt. And with his face. He’ll never be himself again.”
“Don’t ask me to feel sorry for him, Hanalei. Every wish demands a—”
Hanalei, who had coaxed a smaller Viti onto her hand, looked up at his silence. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Every wish demands a price,” Sam said slowly. “How does the rest of it go? I only ever remember the last part.”
He had her attention. Hanalei said, “In the old tales, it is written that the egg of a seadragon, dragonfruit, holds within it the power to undo a person’s greatest sorrow. An unwanted marriage, a painful illness, an unpaid debt . . . gone. But as with all things that promise the moon and the stars and offer hope when hope has gone, the tale comes with a warning. Every wish demands a price.”
“Every Nominomi child knows about dragonfruit,” Sam said. “We’ve always known it. Why would the gods give us that knowledge, and then punish us for using it?”
Hanalei tilted her head. So did the small dragon on her chin. They were thinking. “What if they didn’t give it to us?” Hanalei posed a question of her own. “In the old tales . . . It could have been written by anyone.”
“You’re saying we were never supposed to know about it in the first place?”
“It makes a strange sort of sense.” Hanalei placed Viti on his knee and dusted the sand from her fingers. “Penina told me once that when we take something from the seadragon god, he takes something in return. He gets angry when we steal from him. So he punishes us. He would not have been the one to go around telling everyone about magic dragonfruit. Perhaps someone, a long time ago, spilled his secrets.”
Sam’s heart pounded. His belly was in knots. “What if there is no theft?”
“What do you mean?”
“Hanalei, what if the egg itself is safe? Or what’s in the egg?”
They looked at one another.
“A new seadragon,” Hanalei said.
“Yes.”
Hanalei held out her arm. Her marking had moved on from her chin. They watched her wind herself around Hanalei’s arm, from shoulder to wrist. Sam had not appreciated the beauty of this animal last night, when the world had felt like it was ending. Hanalei said, “I have a new seadragon. We share the same blood.”
33
“YOU WILL HURT HER,” SAM’S GRANDMOTHER SAID. “You will hurt yourself.”
Hanalei stood at the foot of Princess Oliana’s bed, beside Sam. They were both weary, covered in travel dust. It would have been swifter for them to return home on Hanalei’s seadragon, but they had worried about the city guards. They would need to be warned first, about Hanalei’s rare, extraordinary marking, in case they shot first and asked questions later. Instead, Sam and Hanalei had raced their kandayos back to Tamarind City at a punishing speed. The others had been left behind.
“Your Grace,” Hanalei said, “the last thing your daughter did was try to protect me. I would like to help if I can.” She showed the queen her hands, covered in dragonscale scars. “To me, a cut is nothing. Truly. Please let me try.”
His grandmother took up her usual chair beside the bed. She wore a dress of emerald green, a yellow plumeria in her hair. Viti sat upon her shoulder. Ringed fingers drummed along the bedside table, then stopped. “Isko? What do you think?”
Lord Isko hobbled over with his walking stick. The wound to his leg was healing far too slowly for his liking. “First, whatever we decide, we cannot speak of it outside this chamber. Ever. Otherwise, Hanalei will be in danger for the remainder of her life. A target for kidnappers, for anyone who thinks her blood might be of use to them.”
“Agreed,” Sam said.
His grandmother dipped her head. “Agreed.”
“Thank you, Lord Isko,” Hanalei said.
His uncle regarded her for a long moment, but the cutting comment Sam half expected never came. His uncle bowed his head. “You are welcome, Lady.” He turned away from Hanalei’s startled expression and addressed the queen. “Second, Your Grace. Why do you worry about a cut to her hand? It would also be nothing to her.”
“And if it does not heal?” his grandmother countered. “If it continues to bleed away? It is not a normal sickness. There is no physician to tell us what is safe to do and what is not.” She allowed her words to settle. “Samahtitamah, what is your opinion?”
“I defer to you, Mai Mai.”
“No, grandson, in this I defer to you.” Her expression softened. “You are not a boy anymore. She is your mother.”
And she had been asleep for far too long. Sam did not hesitate. “She would hate this limbo. We have to try.”
Sam did it himself. He cut Hanalei’s palm first, and then his mother’s. Hanalei held her hand over his mother’s cut, watching as blood dripped and mingled. The blood of a new seadragon. Not stolen. Given freely. He wrapped Hanalei’s hand in fresh bandaging as Lord Isko tended to his mother.
And then they waited.
From morning until noon, into the darkest night. Hanalei fell asleep at the foot of the bed. His grandmother dozed in her chair. Lord Isko snored in his. Only Sam stayed awake, keeping vigil, and so it happened that he was the only one who saw when his mother’s eyes opened at last, near dawn.
34
THE ANIMAL KEEPER, CATAMARA, WAS NEVER SEEN again. A boat was sent into the Sleeping Lady to bring him back to the village. But there was no sign of him there, and there was no sign of the dead seadragon. No one could explain what had happened. But many months later, as Princess Oliana, Sam, and Hanalei strolled through the gardens, the princess asked Hanalei if she recalled the last meal they had shared together, all those years ago. She had been testing young Hanalei’s knowledge of the various gods. Like the trickster goddess, Kalama, and Olifat, the father of all the sea gods. Like his son, Taga, god of seadragons. Over the last thousand years, Taga had been known by many other names. Sometimes Hehu, sometimes Satawal, and sometimes, though very rarely . . .
“Catamara,” Hanalei said, stopping in the middle of the pathway.
“Yes,” Princess Oliana answered. A shoulder lifted. “A coincidence perhaps.”
Sam and Hanalei looked at one another. Do you think the gods still listen to us, Hanalei? he had asked.
Sometimes they do.
Mostly they don’t. I’m coming to realize.
Sam had been wrong. Ten years of waiting. But they did listen.
Not all of Captain Bragadin’s dragoners perished in the Sleeping Lady. The ones at Chief Umere’s supper had survived. Viti’s bite had not killed them, though they did suffer painful episodes for the rest of their lives, however long or short those lives were. They never faced judgment on Tamarind. Which meant they did not have to answer for the kidnapping of thirty village children or the murder of a beloved royal marking. Instead, Queen Maga’lahi honored a request by the Esperanzan king through his ambassador. She turned the dragoners over to him. They would be shipped to Esperanza to answer for different crimes: the deaths of the king’s mother and youngest son. A harsh decision, perhaps, on her part. To punish the crew for a dead captain’s crimes. Queen Maga’lahi cared little. She washed her hands of the Anemone and everyone on it.
Sam found Jejomar in the pavilion of history and song, where the memories were kept.
The building sat on the far edge of the palace complex, separated from other offices by a copse of flame trees. The kingfishers were abundant today; they flitted from branch to branch, singing and chirping, delighting in the sunlight that broke through the tree cover. He climbed the front steps and went inside. A memory keeper worked at a front table, surrounded by great stacks of parchment and soundcatchers. Mara was one of the newer archivists, having taken over from her grandfather. She glanced up when Sam entered, her expression puzzled.
“Where did you go? I didn’t even see you leave.” Sam did not answer, and Mara’s eyes widened. She looked behind her, where an identical figure sat at the very back table. He had set his work aside the moment Sam walked in.
The memory keeper scrambled to her feet and bowed. “Prince Samahti, apologies . . .”
“No need. It’s strange for all of us. How is your grandfather?”
“Bored,” Mara replied promptly, with a laugh. “And trying to steal this position back from me. He’s not used to all the free hours.”
