The Flame Tree by Richard Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

to show it to me, if it’s a secret?”
    “I mean, it’s a secret thing that we’re not supposed to knowabout. But if I show you, you have to teach me how to eat grubs.”
    Rhyan laughed, the first time that Isaac could remember hearing him laugh.
    Isaac said, “It’s a pretty cool secret.”
    Rhyan glanced at his sister.
    “Let’s humor the little genius,” she said.
    They quickly finished their lunch and slipped over to the tangerine trees, Isaac leading the way. The Strangs followed single file in the humid shade to the wall. Isaac pointed. “Somebody’s made a secret gate,” he said. He undid the latch and pushed the gate open an inch.
    “Cool,” Sairah said.
    Rhyan moved in front of Isaac and opened the gate wide enough to stick his head through.
    Isaac grabbed Rhyan’s arm. “We shouldn’t go out.”
    “Who made this?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “There’s fresh oil and everything. Does your father know about this, Isaac?”
    “Nobody knows about this except whoever made it and us.”
    Rhyan tugged his arm loose and stepped through the hole. His passage created a vortex that tugged Isaac along so that before he knew it, he, too, was beyond the wall and standing in the patch of scrawny bamboo. He wasn’t breaking any rules; it just happened—one of those mysterious quantum events where you could find yourself anywhere in the universe. Sairah crowded up behind him.
    “Are there any grubs here in the bamboo you could eat?” Isaac asked.
    Rhyan, his nose wrinkled against the smell, laughed. “Sautéed in piss? You kidding?”
    Isaac persisted. “But if you found one, how would you know if it was poisonous or not?”
    Rhyan shrugged. “You bring along a sister to try it.”
    Sairah swung a fist at her brother.
    “No, really,” Isaac said.
    “First rule, if you’re allergic to shrimp or dust or chocolate, never eat any critter raw. Second rule, avoid any critter that is brilliantly colored. That’s evolution’s warning not to mess with them. Third rule, take a nibble and wait at least six hours to see what happens.”
    “Could you show me how to cook a grub sometime?”
    “Nothing to it. Fire. Grub. Eat. If you’re hungry enough, you won’t be fussy, I tell you.”
    They filed back through the gate. Rhyan latched it shut. “I wonder if we should tell somebody about this,” he said.
    “No,” Isaac said.
    “Something isn’t right about this, though. What if some Muslim fanatic leads his army through here?”
    Isaac hadn’t thought of that. He should have thought of that, he realized, as the stern visage of the Tuan Guru filled his mind. It was something to worry about, all right. “No,” he said after a moment. “Don’t tell.”
    Rhyan studied Isaac. “Okay,” he said. “You’re the one who sleeps here at night. Not us.”
     
    The day’s last class was Indonesian culture. The classroom’s overhead fans sluggishly stirred the air around twelve wooden desks. These teak desks had been made years ago by Wonobo’s finest cabinetmaker, now deceased and his business gone to plywood. They bore the markings inflicted on them by years of doodling students, the hieroglyphs of the American Academy of Wonobo, hearts and arrows and unknown initials, loops and figures. Isaac had left his own mark in the left rear desk, surreptitiously carved only last year, an all-seeing, almond-shaped eye.
    When the class had settled in their seats, Mr. Suherman stood behind his desk. He held up a book. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”
    “A Bible,” Slobert said. “New International Version.”
    “That’s right.” He held up another book, with Arabic writing on the front. “Now, can anybody tell me what this is?”
    Slobert frowned. The kids looked at one another. Isaac raised his hand. “It’s a Qur’an. The Muslim Scriptures.”
    “That’s correct. We Muslims revere the Qur’an as much as you Christians do your Bible.”
    “Yeah, but the Qur’an is wrong,” Slobert said. He