Mountain of Fire (9 page)

“Wait,” Fitri said. There were too many unanswered questions floating around her head. Pak Eko knew about Taufan; he knew he would show up. How was that possible? “Taufan also said something about our grandmother. What does this have to do with her?”

“That's a long story. You should ask your parents, your mother, about her. She is a priestess in the Petuluk tribe. The two of you are a lot like her. You have her gift – her vision – and her bravery.”

Agus piped up, “You knew our Nenek?”

“Yes, I did. Lovely lady and very intelligent.”

Fitri asked, “What do you mean by her gift? What gift do we have?”

“Well, has the Merapi been telling you things?”

“I don't know... I've been having these weird dreams. They seemed so real... ” She stopped, trying to think of what she should tell the old man. Somehow, she didn't feel stupid talking about this to Pak Eko. Suddenly she felt like she could tell him anything.

“I think I saw the eruption that buried the kingdom, and then there was another dream where the forest and the village were destroyed. It was horrible.”

The old man's face looked grave. “I know. We have made peace with the mountain. It is time to leave now.”

“Leave! So the
Tapak Bisu
did not work!” Agus cried out.

“Let's hope it did and the mountain is quiet and safe again. But for now, we must leave,” he said. “When we come back, the two of you can decide whether you should continue working with the mountain.”

“What do you mean?” asked Fitri, puzzled.

“Sometimes the Merapi decides who the Guardian, the Spirit Keeper, should be. You are an intelligent girl, you do well at school. You understand the world of science. Your brother already knows many things about the Merapi. He likes the mountain. He knows it and understands it too. Together, you two could take my place. The rest is up to you. You will have to control your temper though. We can't have the Spirit Keepers of the Merapi throw people into anthills and set monkeys on them,” the old man said, his eyes twinkling.

The two children stared at each other. Had they heard Mbah correctly? Did he just say that they could be the Spirit Keepers of the Merapi?

Fitri shifted her feet uncomfortably. Was there anything this man did not know?

He wagged his finger at them and said, “We are going home. No more wandering around in the middle of the night. I have to tend to some police business.”

Dazed, tired and a bit numb from the day's events, the two children followed Pak Eko back home. As they straggled into the village, the first stirrings of panic began to hit Fitri. The two of them had broken all kinds of rules: left the house at night without permission, followed villagers on the
Tapak Bisu,
and basically got captured by a stranger. What will their parents say?

Groups of people were waiting around shop stalls, sitting on wooden benches sipping hot cups of coffee, waiting for Pak Eko to return from the ceremony. Lights came on in many darkened homes and a shimmer of anxiety went around the village.

“Pak Eko has returned from the
Tapak Bisu.”

But no one was prepared for the sight of the old man coming down the mountain and entering the town square along with two very dirty children in tow, close to 3am in the morning. Ibu, who was waiting with Ayah in the town square, yelped in shock when she saw her two children.

Pak Eko walked in and presented the children. “They have something to tell you.”

They told their parents and the villagers everything. How Agus had found the secret kingdom and how Fitri had put two and two together from the pamphlet. But she left out everything about the dreams, the bit about being Spirit Keepers, and what Taufan had said about their grandmother. That was a private conversation for her parents.

When they got to the part where Taufan had threatened the children, Ibu gave out a loud cry and hid her face in her hands, crying softly. Ayah, ashen-faced, reached out and clutched someone's shoulder as if he suddenly needed help standing.

“Where is this man now? This Taufan,” asked one of the villagers.

“The
polisi
is looking for him. He can't go far. He has been hurt in the avalanche,” Pak Eko spoke up. “The village is safe from him... but not from the Merapi.”

Instant chatter broke out from the group. The old man lifted his hands, asking for silence. He still had an important announcement to make. “We have paid our respects to the Merapi but it is time to listen to the government. We must evacuate the village and let the Merapi calm down.”

Pak Irlandy got into such a tizzy when he heard that they had to leave the village that he had a coughing fit and had to be carried home.

“But what about the kingdom? And the treasure?” asked another villager.

“There is nothing we can do about that now. These children know the location and it will still be there when we return – we can hope. We leave in the morning.” Pak Eko dismissed the group.

As the people slowly scattered and went back to their homes, an exhausted Fitri managed to catch a stray comment from a passing villager. “It is that Petuluk blood. I knew there would be trouble one day. Attracting all kinds of thugs into our village.”

“Yes, and the old man insisted on going up alone. I mean, had we been there, maybe we could have helped out with this Taufan fellow. I wonder why he did that?” responded another man.

As she walked back to her house, bone-weary, Fitri realised suddenly why Pak Eko had not allowed the group to go up to the mountain with him. He had known about the cave and had known that the villagers would see it. That smell of menthol cigarettes that day in the mountain had been Pak Eko after all. He had put himself in danger just to prevent Agus' cave from being discovered.

Agus had been right. He was an amazing man.

ELEVEN : THE EVACUATION

LINES of buses waited at the village entrance the next morning. Every home had been asked to pack just a few necessary belongings to take along to the camp. It was sad and heart-wrenching to leave their homes. But there was no choice in the matter. Pak Andersen had returned to the village with the news that the Merapi's danger was now at level four – the highest volcano alert level in Indonesia.

Families that had domestic animals, goats and cows turned them loose in the forest, hoping that they would not starve – and survive whatever was coming.

Fitri and Agus had reluctantly boarded a bus. Together with their parents and other villagers, they arrived at makeshift shelters provided by the government.

And so for over a month, the village folks lived in these large structures made out of bamboo, shared by more than one family. Everyone hated it. People longed to go back to their homes. Sometimes a few men would go back to the village to check whether their rice crops were okay and whether their animals were still alive.

But the discomfort of being in a strange place was partly overcome by the big news about the secret kingdom. A strange kingdom, destroyed by the Merapi's eruption thousands of years ago, had been found near their village! A team arrived from the National Museum and spoke to the children. The two had to repeat the story again and again.

“So you just saw the crack in the earth and went in?” asked one of the archaeologists from the museum.

“Yes, I could see the steps leading down,” replied Agus.

“Did you use any tools to scrape the Ganesha statue's head?” asked another person worriedly. “You could have damaged it.”

“No, we just used our bare hands to uncover enough to make out the long trunk. The entire body is still buried in the ground,” answered Agus, watching the crowd – desperately trying to listen in from the window – from the corner of his eye.

“Do you have ANY idea, kid, the importance of what you have discovered? People have been looking for this civilisation for years!”

Agus grinned gleefully.

He was a hero. People who had never spoken to him now called out to him and patted him on the back.

One day, he was sitting around watching some boys make a human pyramid outside his hut, feeling left out as usual.

Suddenly one of the older boys called out to him, “Hey, Agus! Do you want to help? You are small enough to climb to the top.”

Agus stared at the boy, shocked, excited and pleased beyond words. They had never included him in their games before.

They had never called him by his name before.

He nodded excitedly.

“Go, Agus, go!” yelled out Reza, the boy who had terrorised Fitri at the watchtower not long ago.

Fitri and her mother watched from the steps of the makeshift hut. They clapped and laughed as Agus clambered to the top.

Fitri looked at her mother's relaxed face and decided she would bring up the conversation about her grandmother. She had never discussed it with her. The children and Pak Eko, in some sort of silent agreement, had left out all references to Priestess Aini in their story about Taufan that night. The villagers knew that Taufan was Petuluk, but they had not heard a word about how their grandmother was now an important priestess in the tribe.

She waited till Agus got back, took a deep breath, and told her mother everything.

“What does your Ibu have to do with all of this?” asked Fitri.

Ibu sighed. She knew she would have to tell her children one day. Perhaps the time had come. Ibu went to her tiny bundle of things she had taken with her when leaving the house, and took out a diary.

The pages were faded, worn with age, but the writing was clear, written in a strong hand.

“This was written by your grandmother. My father gave it to me when I was much older. She wrote everything in this diary during the time she was in our village, after leaving her tribe.”

“How old were you, Ibu, when she left and went back?” asked Agus.

“Six,” Ibu said. “I barely remember her.”

Agus tried to picture what it would be like if his mother left them. He decided he did not want to think about that at all.

Ibu continued, “She wrote about why she left her people and why she went back. She could not stay away. She missed her people too much. She could not adjust to the way of life here. The Petuluk, you know, don't even have electricity. Besides, she felt... different. Like she had to do something back home. Something she was needed for.”

Ibu paused, staring at the pages.

“The last few entries are about the two of you,” Ibu said. “She talks of two grandchildren. The girl would be like her, would have her ability to connect with nature, to understand things. The boy would have something wrong with him but be gifted with a special connection with the Merapi and be ‘quick-footed' on its slopes. Then she writes that one day, the two of you would find something ‘valuable' and bring good fortune to the village.”

“How could she possibly know that, Ibu?” Fitri asked.

“Well... she had a strange gift, my father said. She always seemed to know things. The Petuluk people are often like that. That's why people think they are strange. I think people in our village must have thought that too. Maybe that's why she could not fit in and didn't like it.”

Fitri was quiet. She still hadn't told her mother about the dreams, but now was the time. The old woman she had seen sitting under the tree in her dream – that must have been her grandmother. She told her mother everything from the beginning, the twirling under the tree, the “monster” chasing her and the eruption.

Ibu listened quietly, but did not seem very surprised. “Yes, the tree fits,” she said thoughtfully.

“What do you mean?” Fitri asked. “Is it a particular tree I was dreaming about?” “I'm not sure. But the banyan is a sacred tree for our people. I think it is special for the Petuluk also. I have heard some stories about a special place in the mountains where the priests go to understand things. But no one is sure, because no one has actually been there.”

Fitri asked the question she had been waiting to ask, “Will we ever meet her?”