The nightmare again. The water rushed in from nowhere, from everywhere, swallowing him in an instant. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t find a way out. He was going to die—
Ruslan woke with a gasp. His heart thumped. He swung out of bed to stand in front of the second-story window, taking deep breaths of the cool night air. In the distance, beyond the shacks and houses of Ujung Karang, moonlight glittered on the sea. He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, so he sat down at his desk, turned on the light, and opened his sketchpad.
Four years ago, when he was twelve, he’d had nightmares of a monster. He’d drawn its picture, its scaly body and fanged head and barbed tail, and then ripped the monster in half. The monster never bothered his sleep again.
Perhaps if he could draw the drowning nightmare, he could banish it as well.
But he didn’t know how to draw it. He often swam in the rivers and played in the ocean waves, but this drowning water was different. He didn’t know its shape or form. All he knew was its color.
Black.
After the morning’s only customer paid his bill and left the waterfront café, Ruslan sat down at a rickety plywood table shaded by one of the palm trees. He cradled his head on his outstretched arm. His huge yawn nearly dislocated his jaw.
Why he was having such awful nightmares? Perhaps it was the sermon at the mosque the other Friday. The preacher had warned of the coming flood of God’s judgment for liars and sinners. Was it a sin to drive his father’s motor scooter without a license? Ruslan didn’t think so. One could sin against God, sure, but how could one sin against the police?
A breeze ruffled the harbor’s water, and the sun twinkled off its surface. Tiny waves lapped against the shore’s breakwater. A big tug tied to the pier released its ropes and gunned its diesel, smoke belching from its stack. Its propeller churned the low tide, stirring up black sand and muck into a dark boil. Ruslan frowned, an uneasy feeling pricking him, but the water quickly cleared to its usual murky green. He yawned again. The breeze felt good on his face. His eyes grew heavy. He’d have a quick nap, just a minute’s snooze—
“Excuse me. Ah, maaf permisi.”
Ruslan’s eyes flew open. He jerked upright, staring dumbfounded at the Western family standing before him. Father, mother, daughter, and son, their long noses red from the sun. Even the half-grown orange cat rubbing against the boy’s ankle seemed foreign. Had they emerged out of his sleep?
The big white man held an English-Indonesian dictionary in his hand. He flipped through pages with oil-smudged fingers and found what he was looking for. “Mesin rusak,” he said. Broken engine. He nodded over his shoulder at a gleaming white sailboat that had just anchored off the jetty. He flipped more pages. “Bengkel.” Mechanic’s garage.
Ruslan stood. “I speak English.” As well he should. Ever since he was four, he’d been tutored privately in English at his father’s insistence.
“You can? Great. One of the fishermen there pointed to you, said your father’s a mechanic. At least that’s what I thought he said.”
Ruslan nodded. “My father is Yusuf the mechanic.” Ruslan normally would have spent his December school break helping his father in the garage, but he had wanted to earn some money to buy a new set of paintbrushes. A friend had gotten him this temporary job at the café.
The girl stepped forward and squinted at the café’s small display fridge. She and her mother wore long wrinkled dresses, and her mother a headscarf, but the girl’s blond hair glowed in the sunlight, her scarf wadded up in her hand. She had the bluest eyes Ruslan had ever seen. The only blue eyes he’d ever seen, at least in real life and not on TV. “Hey,” she said, “they have cold Cokes right here.”
“Well, I’ll be a soda pop,” the father said. “Wonder if they have cold beer.”
“I’m sorry, no,” Ruslan said. “We are a Muslim province. We don’t sell alcohol.”
“I know. Just fantasizing. Can we have four Cokes?”
As Ruslan got out the drinks, a dozen kids gathered to gawk at the Westerners. Meulaboh, a small harbor town, didn’t get nearly as many foreign visitors as the big city of Banda Aceh with its grand mosques and golden beaches. Several other people sauntered down the breakwater to also have a look at the strangers.
The mother whispered to the girl, “Put on your scarf.”
“This stupid dress is enough. I’m drowning in sweat.”
“It’s the local custom.”
“But I’m not a local, am I? If they get offended, it’s their problem, not mine.”
“Put on your scarf.”
“Soooo barbaric.”
“Sarah. Respect their culture.”
“I put on my scarf at Banda Aceh. It’s their turn to respect my culture.”
“If you don’t put on your scarf, you go back to the boat.”
The daughter glared at her mother, who calmly returned the glare with a level gaze. Ruslan, intently watching this drama out of the corner of his eye, nearly dropped one of the Coke cans as he put them on the table. He couldn’t imagine any teenage girl in Meulaboh defying her mother like this. “Fine,” the girl snapped, and stalked back toward the jetty, where an inflatable dinghy was tied up to one of the bollards. She paused and said over her shoulder, “You don’t have to love me, Mom, but you should at least respect me as much as you do these total strangers.”
“Whoa,” the freckle-faced boy said. “Sarah’s sure in a bad mood.”
The mother gave the father a look, quickly tilting her head at the girl, telling the father to have a word with her. He grabbed a Coke off the table and strode after the girl. Catching up to her, he handed her the soda and spoke with her. She listened, rolling the icy can around her frowning, sweaty face. She shook her head. “I’m not going to wear a scarf just to keep Mom from being embarrassed,” she said loudly. Ruslan was sure she meant for her mother to overhear. “That’s so hypocritical.”
Her father said something that Ruslan didn’t fully catch, something about Christmas and family. The girl firmly shook her head. The father gave the mother a big shrug that said I tried and took his daughter out to the boat in the dinghy.
When he returned, he said to his wife, “Our darling daughter’s hardly full of Christmas cheer, is she?”
“You shouldn’t have let her have the Coke. Coddling her when she’s like this doesn’t help.”
“We’ll give her cat food for lunch.”
“Steve. That’s not funny.”
“Just trying to lighten things up. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, after all.” He paid for the drinks and asked Ruslan, “Where can we find your father?”
The narrow peninsula of Ujung Karang was a maze of streets and lanes where thousands of people lived. Ruslan’s house and his father’s attached garage were at the base of the peninsula, near the big stadium. Haji Kamarudin, a pensioner with gray hair bristling out from underneath his white skullcap, pushed through the crowd and told Ruslan he’d be honored to show the guests the way. He shook hands with the father, mother, and boy, welcoming them to Meulaboh. Ruslan knew the Haji would first detour to his own house, where he’d offer the guests coffee and cakes. He was a grand old man who always had a kind word for everyone and was curious about everything.
“Come on, Surf Cat,” the boy called out. The cat trotted off with the humans, tail high in the air.
An hour later the Westerners and the cat reappeared with Ruslan’s father Yusuf, wearing his mechanic’s gray overalls and carrying his satchel of tools. The boy kicked a scuffed soccer ball back and forth with several of the local kids. He looked to be eight or so, and his body hadn’t yet grown to match his big, clumsy feet.
Yusuf put a skinny arm around Ruslan. “My son,” he said. Yusuf had worked with Exxon in the northern oil fields for four years after the death of Ruslan’s mother, and he spoke reasonable English. “No good mechanic, very good artist. He make your picture, okay?”
“Bapa,” Ruslan muttered, feeling heat flood his cheeks, although he was pleased. Many fathers would have scolded their sons for such a worthless talent that didn’t put rice on the table, but his father was proud of him. He planned to send Ruslan to an arts college in Jakarta.
The group headed for the jetty. “Oh, man,” the boy said. “Now we gotta go back to Sarah. If she’s still in her stinky mood, can we send her to shore?”
Ruslan wished they would. Those blue eyes. He wanted to study them some more. Politely, of course. Could he capture that color on canvas, show how light filled the blue?
Yusuf fixed the engine, and the sailboat left that afternoon. Ruslan stood under the palms and watched as it motored out to sea. A rush of customers came in, demanding his attention, and when he next looked, the boat was gone, almost as if it had been swallowed up by the deep. Ruslan pondered the ocean, silvered by the late afternoon light. Although there wasn’t a storm cloud on the horizon, the ocean’s cheerfulness had turned moody, even menacing. In his imagination, the silver water slowly blackened—
“Get back to work,” his boss yelled at him.
The girl’s blue eyes wouldn’t leave him alone. That night he ate dinner by himself, as his father was busy doing another emergency repair on a truck. After dinner, he went to his bedroom and got out his pad and pencil.
A few months ago one of the town’s leading clerics had seen him sketching the face of an old woman and had ripped up the sketch. The making of images was forbidden, the cleric said, as that led to idolatry. For the first time in his life, Ruslan knew that a cleric could be wrong, and his world had cracked a little. He didn’t dare sketch in public anymore, but in private he drew anything he wanted. Like the face of this Western girl, drawn from his memory. Using his pastel chalk, he touched the eyes with blue—not the right blue, he needed oil paints for that—and put just a hint of red to her lips, smudging the chalk with a wetted finger. He taped the sketch next to the poster of Siti Nurhaliza, the teenage Malaysian pop star he had a crush on. He contemplated both poster and sketch, trying to decide which girl was prettier.
Not that it mattered. Siti lived in a different world, and as for the Western girl, he’d never see her again in his life.
His father knocked on his door. He’d showered and had changed out of his gray overalls into a sarong. “Is everything okay?”
“Why?”
“You look tired. How are things at the coffee shop?”
“I know one thing now, Bapa. I don’t want to work for other people. I want to be my own boss, have people work for me.”
“It’s good to have a job first, though,” his father responded. “That way when you’re boss you know what it’s like to be an employee.”
Ruslan hesitated. “Bapa, last week I borrowed your motor scooter without asking. I’m sorry.”
His father seemed startled. Then he laughed. “Did you borrow my helmet, too?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Always wear a helmet. Listen, I’m going to be up early before dawn prayers to go work on the Pertamina oil tanker. I’ll be home very late.”
Before Ruslan went to bed, he gazed out the window. In the outer harbor, the oil tanker was placidly at anchor, the ship big enough to cast a moon shadow on the water. The single cloud in the sky fell across the moon, and the sea darkened, obscuring the tanker. A shivery feeling raced from Ruslan’s neck down to his arms. Then the cloud moved off, the light returned, and the ship reappeared in the night’s sparkling sea.
Sarah was asleep in her forward cabin, dreaming she was back home celebrating her sixteenth birthday with friends in a deliciously cold, air-conditioned mall when a pounding on the door woke her. It was already morning, with a warm blue sky pressing against the porthole’s glass. Despite the cabin’s whirring fan, sweat filmed her skin.
Another bang on the door. It was her brother, Peter. “Sarah, Sarah, wake up.”
“Shut up! Go away!”
“Surf Cat’s climbed up the mast and won’t come down.”
Sarah groaned and put her pillow over her head.
Why, oh why, had she let her dad talk her into this crazy idea for a family vacation? So far the chartered sailboat cruise from Malaysia to Bali had hardly been the grand adventure he had promised. All she’d done was stew in the heat and squabble with her brother and fight with her mother about everything, from the water rationing to the use of the satellite phone to call her friends. And then, to top it all, yesterday morning’s big blowup about the stupid head scarf. On Christmas Day, no less, spent in some grotty, filthy town because of a broken engine. She and her mom still weren’t speaking to each other.
Peter pounded on the door again. “Something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but Surf Cat’s real scared.”
Surf Cat was Peter’s new pet, a half-grown kitten he’d rescued from a gutter at the Malaysia marina where they’d started the trip. Sarah lifted her pillow. From high above, she could hear Surf Cat’s agitated meowing. This wasn’t the cat’s usual begging for food or a rub. She glanced out the porthole. They’d already anchored here the other day, before the engine had broken, necessitating the detour. The bay’s pastel water, the empty golden beach, and the hilly green jungle looked the same. The fullmoon tide had washed away part of the sand castle she and her brother had built in the shade of an overhanging tree. Building a sand castle for entertainment! If only her friends could have seen her.
Meow, meow, meow. God, that cat sure had big lungs.
Sarah pulled on a T-shirt over the black bikini bottoms she’d slept in and opened the door to Peter’s scrawny, worried face.
“You are so annoying,” she said, “that if a T. rex ate you, it would have indigestion for a week.”
“You got to help me get Surf Cat down.”
“Can I use the bathroom first?”
“It’s called a head.”
“It’s still a bathroom.”
“But Surf Cat—”
“Shut. Up. Go try a can of tuna.”
In the tiny bathroom, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She studied her nails. They needed a manicure. New polish, too. She’d do that later. The day’s big event. Give her something to look forward to.
She exited the bathroom. The stupid cat was still meowing. She sidled through the Dreamcatcher’scramped saloon and galley. The door to the master cabin was partially open, and she could see her mom and dad sprawled on the bed, sound asleep. After they had left the town’s harbor, her parents had decided to postpone Christmas dinner for a day, but they’d gotten into the Christmas wine. They rarely drank more than a glass or two, but they’d polished off a bottle on the sunset sail back to the island, and then another bottle after they had anchored, followed by a cognac nightcap.
Up on deck, Peter held up an open can of tuna fish, trying to tempt Surf Cat down from the mast. The orange kitten squatted precariously on one of the upper rungs, mewing nonstop. How on earth had it managed to climb so high?
“Come on, Surf Cat, this is real tuna. Human tuna.” Peter tossed a chunk up into the air. “Yum, yum. Come on down. You can have the whole can.”
Surf Cat ignored the offering and clawed up another rung, almost losing his footing.
Sarah looked uneasily around her at the sea and the island. Tiger Island, it was called. The guidebook said there was still a small herd of wild elephants living in the jungle, but it reassured readers that a Dutch hunter had killed the last remaining tiger seventy years ago. How could anybody know for sure, though? Maybe Surf Cat had spotted one. Maybe a tiger was eyeing her tasty, sun-toasted flesh from behind the dense wall of jungle, which seemed just a hop, skip, and a pounce away. Could tigers swim?
“I guess I’ll have to climb up and get you,” Peter announced to Surf Cat. He slipped into his sneakers and began to climb the metal rungs.
A loud trumpeting broke the jungle’s morning quiet. Sarah spun and caught sight of two adult elephants and a juvenile running up a ravine on their stumpy legs. Monkeys began screeching, racing through treetops to higher ground. Across the bay, hundreds of birds exploded out of the jungle. All kinds of birds, small black swallows, big white storky ones, green parrots, all squawking and chirping and cawing.
The hoarse voice of Sarah’s father rose out the master cabin’s open hatch. “Good God, who’s stirred up the zoo?”
For a moment everything seemed to quiet down. Even Surf Cat stopped meowing.
Then there came a dull but powerful thud, which Sarah not only heard but also felt in her bones, as though a primal sound had risen from a deep place in the earth. The bay’s placid water bay erupted in shivering, swirling patterns. The clear depths turned instantly cloudy. A tremendous force slammed into the sailboat’s hull. The Dreamcatcher shuddered violently, rocking with a hard jerk on its anchor chain. The dinghy tied off to the side broke its line with a whip-snap. Sarah went sprawling onto the deck. Peter, reaching out a hand for Surf Cat, twirled around the mast and nearly fell before catching hold of a rung again. Surf Cat managed to hang on with his claws.
Sarah’s father rocketed out of the hatch, wearing only his boxers. “What the hell?” he said, looking around him. He glanced up at the mast. “Peter! Get down from there!”
Peter climbed down, Surf Cat cradled in one arm.
Sarah’s mother poked her head up from the hatch. Her hair was a complete mess, but her bleary eyes were clearing quickly. “What’s all the commotion?”
The boat shuddered with another jolt. Across the bay, the top half of a steep cliff broke away and tumbled in a cloud of dust. Boulders rolled off a ridge and plowed into the lower jungle.
“I’ll be a Richter,” Sarah’s father said in awe. “It’s an earthquake, a big one. I think we’d better get out of here.”
Sarah’s mouth went dry. Her heart kicked against her ribs. But they were safe, weren’t they? After all, there was no ground underneath to crack open, and there was nothing to fall down on top of them.
“Hey, the dinghy’s loose,” Peter said, pointing to it as it swiftly drifted away.
Sarah’s father dove into the water and swam after the inflatable with long, urgent strokes. He had to row hard to get back to the Dreamcatcher, putting his back into it, digging deep with the oar paddles. “That’s one hell of a current,” he said as he tied the dinghy off to the stern. “Let’s get going.”
In the cockpit, he turned the ignition switch. From below came a horrible whirring sound. The engine wouldn’t catch. He crawled into the engine room with a flashlight as Sarah watched from the hatchway, biting her lip hard. Hurry hurry hurry.
“Starter’s broken off its mounting,” he said. “We’ll have to sail out.”
From up top came Peter’s excited cry. “Hey, the reef’s drying up! There’s fish flopping around!”
Sarah’s father jerked his head, banging it against a deck beam. He roared, “Betty, get the anchor up. Sarah, go help your mother.”
Peter was already up on the bow helping their mother, who was still in her nightie. The anchor winch’s electric motor whined as it hoisted the clanking chain. Sarah untied the main sail cover with trembling fingers. Something was very, very wrong. Behind them live coral that yesterday had been underwater even during low tide now rose out of the surface, anemones and soft grasses drooped and wilted. A school of minnows flopped around one brain coral head like a silvery cloud.
Sarah’s father hoisted the sail. He always remained calm in an emergency, and his actions were smooth and deliberate, but Sarah had never seen his jaw so rigid. A blood vessel pulsed in his neck. The sail caught the slight offshore breeze, and the Dreamcatcher began to inch forward toward the open sea.
Hurry hurry hurry.
Coral heads appeared out of the water all around them. Sarah’s father had anchored the boat in the good holding ground of a deep sandy hole. Now the bowl of water was rapidly draining through crevasses in the reef. The Dreamcatcher was trapped.