Mountain of Fire Page 3

  Fitri nodded.

  “Now if someone came and told you that he is actually wrong, would you believe the new person?”

  Fitri shook her head.

  “Exactly. This is the same thing. People trust what they know. It takes time to change their minds. The man from the Volcanology Centre is an outsider and not Javanese. He isn’t even Indonesian. We don’t know him. Most of us have known Mbah Eko all our lives. And even if some of us believe the outsider when he says that the volcano is not safe, it is not an easy thing to leave your home,” explained Ayah.

  “I hope the Guardian is right,” Ayah continued. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  FIVE : THE TREASURE AND THE SECRET CAVE

  The bule and her father talked late into the night. The white man asked all kinds of questions about Pak Eko, and his influence on the people.

  “Why don’t the people believe us?” Pak Andersen said in an exasperated tone. “What does the Guardian of the Merapi know that we as men of science don’t?”

  Ayah tried to explain as best as he could. “We believe he can talk to the spirits in the volcano. The spirits tell him when it is time to leave. He can’t stop the eruption, but we believe that the mountain will give him enough warning. We hope and pray it only clears its throat and does not cough. If it needs to cough, it will give us enough time to leave.”

  Ayah paused. “It is a complicated relationship with the volcano, Pak Andersen. It is not always easy for outsiders to understand it.”

  Agus skulked around, staring at the bule, fascinated by his first close encounter with a foreigner. The white man peered at Agus.

  “Come here, boy. Let me have a look at you,” the bule said in his halting Bahasa, gesturing to the boy’s lip. “What’s wrong with your lip?”

  A poke from his mother sent Agus scuttling towards the white man.

  “Have you taken him to a dokter, a surgeon? This kind of thing can be fixed,” he said, examining the boy’s face.

  Ayah shook his head. “There is no rupiah, Pak. Where is the money to take the boy to a big hospital in the city?”

  “Maybe you should. I have a doctor friend in Jakarta. Maybe he can recommend someone to have a look at the boy.”

  Despite himself, Agus cast an excited look at his father’s somber face.

  “You are a great believer of science, Pak Andersen,” Ayah said. “But not all problems can be solved through science. We do not have the money to go to the city hospital. And we have bigger problems on our heads,” he said, looking at the smoking mountain.

  Ayah’s words were a harbinger of trouble. At four in the morning, the earth moved and rocks tumbled down the mountain. Fitri felt the ground moving a few split seconds before she felt her mother shaking her awake. “Fitri, Agus! Wake up! We have to leave!”

  People ran out of their homes terrified that the volcano had finally erupted. But the tremors stopped, just as suddenly as they had started. Both the bule and the policeman were trying to calm everyone down.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay! Everyone listen up. It wasn’t an eruption. Just a small tremor,” the policeman was shouting.

  Agus looked terrified. “Fitri! What about the lahars? If they start coming down, can we run fast and get away? What about Pak Eko? He is even closer to the crater.”

  Fitri did not answer because she did not want to tell him the truth. There was no way anyone could outrun lahars. They were deadly mudflows. Lahars started after a volcanic eruption and moved like liquid concrete, full of mud, rocks and debris. They moved at super speeds, faster than any man or animal could run, destroying and sinking everything in their path.

  Instead she said, “It’s okay, Agus. There is no lahar yet.”

  Pak Andersen was on his radio, talking to his office in Yogyakarta. The villagers crowded around him, worried, anxious. They had so many questions. Would it happen again? Is the volcano going to erupt? Is the lava loose? Is it flowing towards them this very minute?

  The bule shook his head. “It is the same level of danger as before.”

  He turned to Fitri’s father. “Pak Eko must let the people leave the village. The eruption could happen anytime. Speak to him again,” he urged.

  A group, along with Ayah, set off for Pak Eko’s hut to see if he was okay, and to ask him again whether they should leave, or stay for the Tapak Bisu.

  Over an hour passed and Fitri huddled under a warm blanket in the doorstep of her house, shivering in the cold early morning air, watching the nervous excitement outside. People were waiting for the group) to return from Pak Eko’s hut.

  “Psst, Fitri, I have something to show you,” Agus popped up, whispering to her. She realised she had not seen him after the earthquake. In all the excitement, Agus had gone missing.

  “Why is your face so dirty, you monkey? Ibu had better not see you now.” She touched his shirt. “Are you wet? How did you get wet?”

  “I followed Ayah to Pak Eko’s hut, to see what he would say.”

  His sister was about to yell at him, but something in his face stopped her. “When the earth moved... something, something is there, Fitri,” he almost whispered to her.

  “What do you mean something is there? Are you making up stories again? Like the last time you thought you saw a big bear in the mountain? We don’t have any bears here,” Fitri snapped at him.

  “No, no, Fitri, I promise. This is something else,” he said excitedly. “Something is there in the ground.”

  Fitri found it impossible to soothe the agitated boy, so she told him she would spank him if he was making up stories to annoy her, and reluctantly agreed to follow him.

  They ran up the mountain till they reached the watchtower. At this point, Agus should have taken the road that led back to the Guardian’s hut, just as he had done yesterday. Instead, curiosity had gotten the better of him and, on impulse, he took the other road and went up towards the government sign-post that read “Berbahaya”.

  It was deathly quiet.

  “That’s it, Agus. We can’t go on anymore. It’s too dangerous,” his sister said looking around nervously.

  “It’s only a little way further,” Agus said.

  Fitri stood there, refusing to move.

  “Just a bit further, Fitri. Come on! Not near the dome!” Agus said urgently. “Come on!”

  It was times like this that she thought her little brother was braver than her. Agus led her on the path till they came to a section of the mountain with a small stream. Just across the stream, the path became rocky with paved stones and the road led further up. There were large stones scattered over the stream to help people cross over. Agus jumped from stone to stone like a goat, splashing his already-wet shirt, crossed to the other side and came to a halt.

  “Look,” said Agus, pointing a little to the left.

  At first, Fitri saw nothing. She was focusing on the smell around her – rotten eggs! Just like Ayah had said.

  The early morning light was still faint and she did not know this part of the mountain well. Then she saw it. The earthquake had cracked open a large crevice in the ground. Through it, going into the ground, she could see...

  “Steps! These are steps!”

  “Yes, I told you something is here,” said Agus, looking very pleased with himself.

  The steps seemed to disappear into a hole. Both kids looked in but pitch darkness stared back at them.

  “Should we go down?” Agus asked.

  “Are you out of your mind? What if it collapses on our heads!”

  “Just a quick peek. Pleeeease!” he begged with clasped hands.

  Fitri knew she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help herself. “Okay, okay, Agus, just a quick peek.”

  The sun was rising now and a faint light had started filtering down into the hole. The two children held hands and slowly went down the steps, counting as they went. “One, two, three...”

  The rocky wall on either side felt cool and reassuring against their hands. They couldn’t
really see where they were going.

  At the tenth step they felt flat ground. Fitri held Agus’ hand and stopped, not sure of what lay ahead. But Agus pushed past her before she could stop him. He stopped, staring at a hollow space enclosed by a wall.

  “Agus, wait. Don’t go any further,” Fitri pulled him back by his shoulder.

  “There is no place to go. It’s just a blank wall.”

  He stared around him at the small cave-like space. Then something on the floor caught his eye, something was stuck in the mud, something shining. Agus went down on his hands and knees and started digging. It looked like a...

  “Knife! It looks like the handle of a knife,” exclaimed Fitri.

  “That’s what I thought! I told you something was there in the ground!” Agus said triumphantly.

  By now Fitri had forgotten her initial fear about going into the hole. She enthusiastically joined Agus who was digging on the ground with his bare hands. Agus yelped in excitement. He had found something else! A gold coin!

  Fitri sat back on her haunches to think. Agus had clearly stumbled on something important. But what could it be? Why would there be pieces of treasure buried in the mountain? As she sat there thinking, her eyes wandered to a section of the wall. She looked at it and then looked again. That particular section did not look like mud. Instead, it looked like rock and stone.

  Fitri crawled over to the wall and touched it. Yes, this definitely felt like stone. She scratched off the mud and the green moss-like growth with her bare hands as best as she could.

  “Agus, here! Help me with this. There is something jutting out here.”

  Both children dug at it with their bare hands for what seemed like ages. Forgetting that they were in an unsafe place, forgetting an earthquake had hit the village barely a few hours ago, forgetting that the roof could collapse on their heads. They dug at it with loose pieces of rock and stone, until the thing in the wall began to take some shape.

  It looked like the trunk of an elephant!

  Agus was jumping up and down with excitement, but Fitri fell silent. Her face had become white, like she had swallowed a particularly nasty bug. She felt like she couldn’t breathe and grabbed Agus. “Let’s get out of here, Agus. I don’t feel so good.”

  “Leave now? Why? Maybe there are more things here. We just got started, Fitri.”

  “Later, Agus! We need to get out of here. We don’t know whether the roof is stable. What if we get buried here?”

  Agus reluctantly looked at the knife and the gold coin on the floor. “Shall we show this to Ibu and Ayah?”

  Fitri hesitated. “No. Leave it, Agus, for now. We can come back later. Let’s go before Ibu, Ayah know we are missing. They will be worried.”

  Fitri dragged her brother up the steps. She had not told her brother the real reason for dragging him out of there. Something about the elephant head had seemed familiar.

  How could it be familiar? she thought. That’s so ridiculous.

  But she could not shake off the feeling that there was a memory somehow, buried deep in her head. If only she could remember what she was supposed to remember!

  There was magic at play, in a place far away from the Merapi, that helped Fitri with these answers.

  SIX : THE SACRED GROVE AND THE LOST KINGDOM

  One week before the Tapak Bisu

  The houses of the Petuluk village were not scattered randomly but followed a linear path up a mountain road. The huts were simple structures, built on stilts, and made of bamboo and had attap roofs. Quite unlike the brick homes in Fitri’s village. There were no wires, no nails holding together the huts. Just bamboo and twine. There was no electricity in the village. The Petuluk lived in the most inaccessible and deepest part of the forest. There were about 50 huts in the village.

  It was early evening and a single file of people, dressed in white, were crossing over a bridge. The bridge too was built of bamboo sticks and twine, and looked like someone had thrown a bunch of sticks in the air and then tied them together in a haphazard, criss-cross fashion.

  These priests were the elite of the Petuluk tribe, the most important people in the tribe. Among them was a tiny, petite woman, with a colourful shawl thrown across her shoulder: Fitri and Agus’ grandmother, Nenek Aini or Priestess Aini as she was known in her tribe. They were on their way to the temple, the most sacred place of all in Petuluk land – the Sacred Grove. Only these priests were allowed into the grove.

  At the end of the bridge, there began a climb along a stone path. The stone felt cold and damp against their feet; many in the group were not wearing any slippers, including Priestess Aini. But she felt no discomfort. The soles of her feet were hard and weathered like tough leather and she walked steadily up the path.

  The group reached a clearing in the forest. This sacred place of the Petuluk was a grove of waringin trees, or banyan trees. The trees were standing close in some sort of circle and looked like their roots and hanging vines were entwined together. Branches hung to the ground and had taken roots and formed entirely new trunks.

  This place was the life force of the Petuluk. This grove told the Petuluk priests things about the future that only they could comprehend.

  The priests gathered around in the grove and started a soft chant. As the priests chanted, the leaves on the ground started to shift and move around like in a gentle wind. As the chanting picked up in rhythm and got louder, the leaves started to move rapidly, till the massive trunks of the banyan trees were covered entirely by a whirling mass of red, orange and green leaves.

  The man in the woods, who had been following the priests, could now hear the chanting. But he could not see anything. He grew impatient. “I need to know what’s going on. I know these priests know where the treasure is,” he muttered to himself.

  He crept towards the clearing, keeping low, trying to get closer to the circle of priests. In his insane greed, he forgot the cardinal rule of Petuluk people: only the priests were allowed into the grove. As he crept forward and crossed over into the grove, the leaves stopped twirling and fell to the ground.

  A huge cracking sound cut through the stillness of the forest. The man creeping along the ground looked up to see a huge tree breaking into half and falling towards him. He leapt away just in time and the tree came crashing down, missing him by a foot.

  His face white with fear, he turned and half-ran, half-crawled away from the clearing.

  “Stupid priests and their stupid powers. But I will not be defeated! No! If they won’t let me into the grove, I’ll pay that old woman’s grandkids a visit. Yes! That’s what I’ll do!”

  Back in the clearing, the priests had stopped the chanting and were listening to the racket around them.

  The group looked at Priestess Aini. One of the priests spoke up. “It must be that troublemaker Taufan trying to get into the grove. What should we do?”

  “Nothing. He can’t come in here. He will try but he will fail. We should get back to the ritual. It is important that Fitri has her third dream and remembers everything,” she said.

  But even as she went back to her chanting, her brow became furrowed with worry. Taufan would not let it go. She was worried sick about what he would do. Even though she had never seen her grandchildren and probably never would, they were still her blood, and not a day went by when she did not think of what they were like.

  She pushed these thoughts out of her head. “I need to concentrate. I can’t let anything distract me.” She took a deep breath and went back to the chanting.

  Far away, asleep in their beds, Fitri and Agus had no idea of the trouble heading their way. They slept soundly, exhausted by the day’s events, oblivious to the fact that someone called Taufan had left the Petuluk village and was making his way towards them.

  That night Fitri had her third dream.

  This time, Fitri was not in the dream. She was watching it from the outside. She saw the tree again, and the forest. It looked just as it had in the previous dream, barren and grey.<
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  Then, she saw the Merapi erupt in such a forceful way that the top of the mountain just came off. What a sight it was! She saw the lahars, the mudflows, begin. She wanted to scream to her family and to all the people in her village, “Run, Run! The Merapi has erupted!”

  But wait a minute! This was not her village. The buildings looked different. The homes looked different. They seemed to be made of large stones. In the middle of this place, she saw a building, rising tall amongst everything else. It had a stone wall around it. In the middle of what looked like a courtyard was a statue with the face of an elephant and the body of a man.

  All around, the building had intricate, detailed carvings of people. The carvings seemed to be telling a story. But these people were dressed differently, and looked very unusual. Not at all like the people in her village.

  Then she watched in horror as all the ash, the mud and rocks from the Merapi came down on this place and started burying it. She saw the houses vanish; she saw the beautiful building with the stone carvings vanish. And she saw the statue of the elephant god sink out of sight.

  The entire city had sunk into the mud. Just like that.

  She woke up with her heart hammering in her head, and turned to her brother shaking him. “I know what it is! Agus, Agus, wake up.”

  Agus mumbled in his sleep and she shook her brother awake. “I know what that place is.”

  That had his attention. He was wide awake immediately. “The place... our cave in the mountain? You know what it is?”

  Fitri knelt below her bed and dragged out a trunk as quietly as possible. She grabbed a torch – switching on the lights would wake up her parents.

  “Agus, here. Hold the torch.”

  She dug out an old, tattered bag and put her hand in, searching for something. Fitri pulled out what looked like an old, crumpled and faded piece of paper, and started to read, muttering to herself. Agus sat there trying to be patient, but dying to snatch the piece of paper from her.

  “What, Fitri? What are you reading?” he shook her shoulder impatiently. She finished reading it and then told her brother what she had finally remembered.