Island's End Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  I - STRANGER DREAMS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  II - JOURNEY THROUGH THE OTHERWORLD

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  III - ACROSS A STRIP OF SEA

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  IV - ISLAND’S END

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ALSO BY

  Padma Venkatraman

  Climbing the Stairs

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS·A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.).

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd).

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd).

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi—110 017, India.

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd).

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa.

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  Copyright © 2011 by Padma Venkatraman.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-51762-8

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  To Rainer, with endless love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, heartfelt gratitude to my brother Raghu, who provided resources on shamanic healing and strengthened Uido’s spiritual journey. Second, my thanks to Thotakar, who showed me long ago that wisdom can exist without formal education.

  Several people helped make my time on the Andaman Islands meaningful: John, Paleva, Uncle Pav and the other Karens at the ANET research base; Khan Sahib, Satish, Rom, Harry and others from croc bank who shared their knowledge; Luk, Nikhil and Samir, who remain friends. Macall and Anthony conducted medical research for me; Mark and Michael confirmed my back-of-the-envelope oceanographic calculations; Leland and the Chapins sent journal articles about indigenous people. An early draft of this novel took me to the Highlights Foundation’s workshop at Chautauqua, where I found my writing family: Andy, Carolyn, Donna Jo, Eileen, Floyd, Jerry, Jo, Joelle, Kim, Lou, Marileta, Randy, Sneed, Stephen and others whose encouragement I treasure.

  In writing this novel, I had the honor to work both with Nancy Paulsen, who guided me to the island’s end, and with John Rudolph as my journey began. Thanks also to everyone else at Penguin, including but not limited to Nicole, Tim, Shauna, Susan and the rest of the editorial team at Putnam; Courtney, Eileen, Emily, Jen, Karin, Kim, Kristin, Leslie, Scottie; my agent, Barbara Markowitz; the two Ambujams; and ASTAL, the Boston Authors Club, colleagues, family, friends, librarians, neighbors, readers, teachers and bookstore personnel—too many to name here—for their support.

  Hundreds of miles east of India, in the turquoise blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, lie the Andaman Islands. For thousands of years the tropical rain forests that cover this island chain have sheltered tribal people.

  When India gained independence from Britain in 1947, laws were created to protect these native islanders and help them preserve their territory and culture. Unfortunately, these laws are not always enforced.

  Many surviving tribes now live on reservations run by settlers from the Indian mainland. But even today a few choose to maintain their ancient way of life, despite their close proximity to modern civilization. . . .

  I

  STRANGER DREAMS

  1

  My dream begins like all the others I have had about the spirits. I am at the beach on our island. A warm breeze carrying the scent of vanilla flowers caresses my bare skin. Clouds blow like white petals across a blue sky and I hear a beautiful voice singing.

  Then the song fades and a woman appears near the shore’s edge. She has a round face, soft arms and large thighs. Wondering who she is, I walk toward her. As I come closer, four more limbs grow out of her sides and her body stretches until she becomes gigantic.

  An instant later, she floats up above the earth and turns into a dazzling spider. Her eight legs spread out across the sky. Gazing up, I realize she is Biliku-waye, the most powerful of the spirits, who holds the sun and moon and stars in her web each night.

  “Go to the beach at once, Uido,” she commands. Her voice is beautiful and terrifying.

  Suddenly my dream ends and I awake.

  Even after I open my eyes, the echo of Biliku-waye’s voice is loud inside my head. The sound makes my heart thrash like the wings of a bird trying to fly for the first time. Although I have dreamed of the spirits before, none of them has asked anything of me until now. I sit up and hug my knees, trying to understand why Biliku-waye, the strongest of them all, chose to talk to me—a girl born just fifteen dry seasons ago.

  The first finger of sunlight has not yet poked through our thatched roof and my body shivers with awe in the cool darkness. I want to rush to the beach. But that would wake my sleeping family, and I keep my dreams of spirits secret from everyone except my best friend, Danna. I am scared my tribe would find me strange if they knew of my wanderings in the Otherworld. So I wait until I stop trembling and then slowly roll up my reed mat and tiptoe out of our hut. Near the entrance stands the bamboo digging stick that my little brother, Tawai, carved for me. Carrying a stick always makes me feel safer. Trying hard to remain noiseless, I stoop to pick it up, but my grass skirt rustles as I bend.

  Outside, a gray mist rises from the ground like a fallen cloud. Our village is quiet, except for the whirr of a bat’s wings as it flies into the surrounding jungle.

  A whisper breaks the stillness. “Where are you going, Uido?”

  I jump like a startled cricket. Tawai stares up at me, his eyes shining with curiosity. Looking at my little brother is like seeing my reflection in a pool, although he is still a child who has lived through just ten dry seasons. His face is as thin and dark as mine, his curls as black and thick. We are both as skinny as twigs, although Mimi feeds us her share of fatty meat whenever she can.

  “Why are you up so early?” I demand.

  �
��You woke me when you picked up your stick,” Tawai says.

  “You hear well.” I pull gently at his earlobe with a teasing hand.

  “Where are you going?” Tawai repeats.

  “The beach.”

  “Can I come along?” he asks. For a moment I wonder if I should go alone but I hate refusing him, especially when he sounds so eager.

  I nod and Tawai grins, looking as delighted as a monkey biting into a persimmon. He points at the mist. “The skink spirit must have had a big fire last night. Look how much smoke he has blown down from the sky!”

  It does not matter that we cannot see very far ahead. The path from our village to the beach where we launch our fishing boats runs east through a short stretch of jungle. My little brother and I have walked it so often that we could find our way there even on a moonless night. Tawai’s bow and arrows bounce with every step he takes, and his bone necklace rattles softly. But I tug nervously at my own chauga-ta and pray that the ancestors whose bones I wear will help me do whatever Biliku-waye wants.

  Soon, the moist undergrowth of the jungle floor gives way to sand that prickles beneath my feet. Tawai almost leaps out of the cover of the trees, but I pull him back.

  “Wait.” My belly clenches like a fist.

  “Why?”

  “I—I—something feels different.” Biliku-waye’s command did not sound like a warning, yet my spirit is uneasy. I sense a change in breeze, as if bad weather is approaching.

  “Let go!” Tawai tries to wriggle free.

  Still I grip his bony shoulder. The mist is lifting, and staring up the beach to our left, I see nothing but white sand curving into blue water like a crescent moon. To our right, the beach is empty, except for a few crabs scuttling between our canoes and coconut trees. Everything looks the way it always does. As I gaze at the waves twisting along the shore, I feel foolish about my caution. We, the En-ge, are the only people on this island—there is no reason to fear danger.

  I am about to let go of Tawai when I hear a voice.

  Be watchful.

  “Tawai, did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  I place my finger on his lips to quiet him and listen intently. But it is silent again except for the whisper of the surf.

  “Look!” Tawai points to something bobbing on the water far to our right.

  His hand reaches for mine. We run along the narrowing stretch of sand to get a better look.

  “Maybe evil spirits sent it?” Tawai’s voice trembles.

  I pull him down onto the sand with me. We hide behind a tall clump of grass.

  Lah-ame, our spiritual guide, has told us about people who live on other islands—giants with brown or white skin who travel in boats made of metal. From our cliff top, I have seen the gleam of these boats. And children are often frightened by the drone of the strangers’ flying boats, which have wings that never flap as they soar above the jungle, straight and fast—the way this thing is moving toward us now.

  “It is a boat,” I whisper to Tawai. “Built by strangers from another island.”

  A faint growl that is not of our world carries across the water as the boat comes closer. I stare at it in wonder. Sometimes pieces of metal wash up on our shores. The elders of our tribe say the strangers make tools from it, and our hunters put it on the tips of their arrowheads because it is harder and sharper than bone. But although metal is heavy as a rock, some magic keeps this metal boat from sinking.

  The growl fades as the boat comes to a stop outside our coral reef. I see three men standing on it. Even the shortest man is at least an elbow-length taller than my father, who is the chief hunter and the strongest of the En-ge men. The strangers wear something that is soft enough to puff up in the wind. It covers their bodies, leaving only their arms and legs bare.

  Suddenly, a gray glow lights up around the tallest man’s head. The skin on my arms grows tight and bumpy with horror. In Lah-ame’s stories, a gray aura only surrounds the heads of lau: evil white spirits who live in the ocean and bring disease. But as I continue to stare at him, the glow disappears and I wonder if I imagined it.

  Together we watch the men lower a small canoe into the water. They climb in and row ashore.

  I want to call out to the rest of the tribe and tell them strangers are approaching our island. But the shock of seeing one of Lah-ame’s stories come alive makes my voice stick in my throat.

  Two of the men stay by their canoe. But the tall one whose head was surrounded by the gray light walks up the sand. A thick mat of hair grows under his long nose, across his cheeks and over his chin. As he comes closer, I see that his legs and even his arms are hairy.

  From Lah-ame’s stories, I know that a stranger arriving on someone else’s shores must shout a request for peace and wait for an answer. But this man is striding up our beach as though it belongs to his people. His rudeness upsets me.

  I hear the voice again. Make him leave.

  Leaping out from behind the clump of grass, I shout, “I am the daughter of the chief hunter of the En-ge!”

  The man’s jaw drops. I wait for him to ask for peace as he should. Instead, he stares at me.

  Holding my digging stick above my head as though it were a spear, I cry, “Go away! Leave our island!”

  Following my lead, Tawai jumps up. He pulls an arrow out of his quiver and aims it at the stranger.

  The man turns and runs back down to the water. I shake my stick and chase him, shouting our worst insults, “You long-nose! You sunken-eyed one!”

  Tawai is close behind, echoing me. "Ngig choronga-lanta! Ngig panamaya!”

  Together, the three men shove their canoe into the waves. Their oars slap the water as they row across the reef toward their metal boat and climb back on. We hear a faint growl again. But as their boat moves away from our island, the noise quickly fades. I can hardly believe how fast they go—faster than ten strong men paddling a canoe with all their might.

  “We must warn the others,” I tell Tawai. But neither he nor I can take our eyes off the strangers’ boat. We stand ankle-deep in water, watching until the boat shrinks to the size of a coconut and the blue waves throw it out of sight.

  Yet soon enough, our silence is broken by the sound of distant footsteps. Our cries have woken the sleeping tribe.

  2

  The first person to reach us is my best friend, Danna, his broad fist clenched around his spear. Seeing him arrive, I feel warm with relief.

  “Uido! Tawai! Are you all right?” he asks. His usually smiling mouth is a tense line.

  “Giant men were here!” Tawai says.

  “Who?” Danna looks up and down the sand.

  “We chased them away,” Tawai boasts.

  Danna shakes his head and looks at me. “What happened, Uido?”

  “Three strangers came here in a metal boat,” I reply. “They were brown as clay and covered with straight black hair.” My voice shakes as I remember the frightening gray aura around the tallest man’s head.

  Our parents come rushing down the beach, followed by others of our tribe. Mimi’s long legs carry her slightly ahead of Kara’s short ones.

  “We are both all right,” I say to them.

  Slowly, Kara lowers his bow and slings it across his back. “What happened?”

  “I frightened three strangers off the beach this morning!” Tawai brags. “They were twice my size but scared of me.”

  Others of our tribe gather around us. My older brother, Ashu, is at the edge of the crowd, but I can see his neck sticking out far above his shoulders like a heron’s.

  Tawai tells the story, only he makes it sound as though the boat’s faint growl woke him up and I followed him to the beach. He confuses everyone enough that no one asks me why we were on the beach so early.

  Kara addresses the tribe. “Someone must stay here and warn us if the strangers return,” he says. “Our island is too rocky for them to land anywhere else. This is the only place a boat can come ashore.”

 
; “I can keep watch,” Ashu says.

  “I will stay and help,” Tawai offers. “I know how to scare them.”

  “You are a child,” Ashu says. “Go back to the village and play with the other little boys.”

  Mimi glares at Ashu. “Speak kindly to your brother.”

  Kara tries to make peace. “Tawai, we have not had lizard meat for a while and you are becoming such a good hunter. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes!” Tawai says. “We are going to hunt a lizard, a big monitor lizard. My Kara and I, my Kara and I.” He runs around Kara, twittering like a parakeet.

  “Mimi, shall I go gathering now?” I say. I want to leave the beach quickly, before someone asks me awkward questions. She nods and blows her breath across my face in our gesture of parting.

  Danna walks back up the beach with me, away from the rest of the tribe. As soon as we are out of earshot, I burst out, “Last night I had the strangest dream. Biliku-waye appeared and ordered me to go to the beach. That is why I was here so early.”

  “Biliku-waye?” he says. “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. I saw her in both her forms—as a woman and as a spider. Her voice was so powerful it terrified me. And later, on the beach, I heard a voice speaking—as clearly as you are talking to me now—but Tawai could not hear it.”

  Danna says nothing.

  “Do you not believe me?” I ask.

  “Of course I do.” He squeezes my hand gently.

  “There is something else I could not say in front of the others,” I continue. “On the beach this morning, I saw an aura shining around the tallest man’s head. Like the one that surrounds evil white lau in Lah-ame’s stories. For a moment I was scared he was a disease-carrying spirit, but the glow faded very quickly. Is it not strange?”

  “I think it is important, not strange,” Danna says. “Too important for you to keep your dreams secret any longer. Until now, the spirits only sang to you, and you felt nothing but joy when you were in their world. But last night was different. You must go to Lah-ame at once and tell him you saw Biliku-waye.”