Island of Fire

by Lisa McMann

  Eva left the palace and Aaron went again to the window, watching her go, watching the other men working and struggling below to finish their job before they collapsed.

  He was so deep in thought, he didn’t notice that a little gargoyle statue named Matilda had climbed up and out of a box in the closet and now stood very still, ear pointed at the opening in the door.

  The Gray Shack

  Sean met Alex, Simber, and Sky at the door to the mansion. Hundreds of Unwanteds celebrated beyond the entryway, spilling out of the dining room and kitchen. “Simber!” Sean exclaimed. “Man, I’m glad to see you.” But he looked more distracted than glad. He turned to Alex. “We’re missing people,” he said, getting back to business. “Meghan, Henry, Crow, Mr. Appleblossom, and dozens of others.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Meghan? She was with me when I changed the world back.”

  “Well, she’s not here now. She’s nowhere.”

  “She was standing right inside the doorway of the shack,” Alex said, alarm growing in his voice. “Henry and Crow were sleeping on the floor inside. They can’t have gone far. Did you check their rooms?”

  Sean reached out and shook Alex’s shoulders. “I’m obviously not explaining this right. Yes, we checked everywhere. They’re gone now. Everyone in the gray shack—all of them are gone. Disappeared. Wiped out.”

  Alex gaped. “What?”

  “Gone.”

  “B-b-but,” Alex sputtered, “why wouldn’t the people inside the gray shack just turn up inside the mansion once Artimé is back? It’s basically the same house, isn’t it?” The Silent girl grabbed his hand and tugged at him.

  Sean raised his voice. “They’re not here, Alex! That’s all I know. My sister is not here. I’ve been all through the place.”

  “Okay, okay,” Alex said. “I’m worried too, I’m just trying to figure it out, is all. Did you call out for her or the others?”

  “Of course I did,” Sean said, annoyed.

  “What’s shaking the mansion?” Simber growled.

  Sean turned to Simber. “I don’t feel anything shaking.”

  Sky stomped her foot and jumped up and down, waving to get their attention. She pointed up the staircase.

  “I think you ought to be paying morrre attention to the young woman,” Simber remarked.

  The girl started up the stairs, looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was coming. Simber bounded up the stairs after her, with Sean and Alex right behind. As they neared the top of the staircase, they too could feel a bit of a tremble in the floor.

  Sean and Sky stopped on the landing, the girl feeling along the wall where the mostly secret hallway was. Sean pressed his ear up against what was an open space to Alex. “It’s behind this wall,” Sean said.

  Alex gave Simber a questioning look. Simber’s eyes narrowed. He nodded at Alex, urging him to take the lead.

  “There’s a secret hallway here,” Alex said quietly to Sean and Sky. “Simber and I can see it. You guys stay here. If anything weird happens, or if we don’t come back, find Octavia and Florence. They can get in too.”

  Sean raised an eyebrow. “Well. I guess I never knew about that.” He seemed a bit put out.

  Alex smiled grimly. “Not many people can see it.” He turned to Simber. “Let’s go.”

  They entered the mostly secret hallway, leaving Sean and a very startled Silent girl watching them disappear through the wall.

  Simber and Alex both glanced to the left at the door to Mr. Today’s private chambers. They caught each other’s eye but didn’t speak. They would have to pay a visit to that room eventually, when things settled down. But now Simber stopped in front of the door across the hallway from it. “Have you everrr been in herrre?”

  Alex nodded. “Once. It’s the Museum of Large.” His memory of that visit was foggy after all he’d encountered in the past weeks.

  “Can you get in?”

  Alex thought hard. “I can . . . if I remember the spell.” He pressed his ear against the door but heard nothing, only feeling the shaking against his cheek. He racked his brains for the spell to get in. It had been so long since he’d been able to do magic, and such a long time since he’d had even a second to think about any spells other than the one to restore the world, that it took him a while to engage that part of his brain. He turned to Simber. “Can you tell what’s going on in there? What if it . . . what if it’s dangerous?”

  “That hasn’t stopped you beforrre,” Simber said. He sniffed under the door. “Something’s familiar . . . ,” he said, and then he shook his head. “But the doorrr is magically sealed. I can’t rrreally tell.”

  Alex closed his eyes and let his forehead rest against the door, trying to picture his visit to this room with Mr. Today. What was that dratted spell? He mentally ran through all the museum’s items that he could remember in case they offered a clue. The library, the pirate ship, the whale, the gray shack . . .

  “The shack,” Alex murmured. He opened his eyes and stared, unseeing, at the door. “Oh, say! The gray shack is in there,” he said, getting excited. “Whoa, wait. Let me think this through. When I was in here before, I remember seeing the gray shack, only it was behind this really awesome whale skeleton, and I didn’t go over to look at it. Do you think . . . ,” he said, and then he paused and started again. “Do you think that when Artimé disappears, all that remains on the plot of land is the gray shack, and that when Artimé exists, the shack automatically stores itself in this room?”

  “What I think is that you should open the doorrr,” Simber said dryly, but he looked relieved at Alex’s revelation. “The shaking is prrrobably a few dozen angrrry Unwanteds jumping up and down in therrre, trrrying to get ourrr attention.”

  “Probably. Phew,” Alex said. And now that the pressure was off him, the spell filtered into his brain. “Ah, that’s right. I’ve got it.” He reached for the handle and muttered, “Door number one.”

  When the door popped open, the sounds of fifty or more screaming Unwanteds pierced Alex’s ears, but none of them were jumping. Instead they ran about hysterically, being chased by an enormous mastodon statue, whose thunderous steps were doing all the shaking.

  Alex and Simber stared at the scene, and then Alex gasped and pointed. The Silent boy, Crow, hung precariously thirty feet above the floor from one of the mastodon’s gleaming tusks.

  Ol’ Tater

  Alex and Simber charged into the room and assessed the situation at top speed. “Buckets of crud! When I brought the world back to life, I think it woke up this guy,” Alex yelled over the din.

  “You think? Hey! Ol’ Taterrr!” Simber roared to get the statue’s attention, and then he turned back to Alex. “I thought Marrrcus got rrrid of him yearrrs ago.”

  “He couldn’t stand to get rid of him!”

  “Why am I not surrrprrrised?”

  Alex nearly grinned despite the situation. “Okay, let’s get the people out of here. Then you distract him and I’ll see if I can locate a spell in one of these books to . . . put him back to sleep.” He gulped.

  The two bounded over to a huddled group of Unwanteds, Alex waving and pointing to the open door, and Simber racing around the perimeter of the museum, shouting instructions and nudging Unwanteds in the proper direction. Within a few minutes, the majority of the people had made it out into the hallway safely. There were a few injured, and after Simber had flown up high enough to wrap his jaws around Crow and pull him from the mastodon’s tusk, he deftly picked up the injured ones who couldn’t make it out on their own. Just as the last Unwanted exited the museum, Alex lunged and slammed the door shut—not that the creature could get through it, at his size, of course. But Alex wasn’t taking any chances on a stray tusk or a beefy leg reaching through the opening.

  Simber raced around the museum like a kitten at play, letting the giant beast nearly catch him but getting away just in time, while Alex scrambled for the books, searching for spells that would be powerful enough to soothe this beast an
d turn him back into a nonliving statue.

  “It would’ve been nice if Mr. Today had kept this place a little more organized!” Alex shouted.

  “Orrrganized wasn’t exactly his modus operrrandi, if you know what I mean,” Simber said as he circled close to Alex.

  Alex wasn’t sure what that term meant, but he liked how it sounded and vowed to look it up just as soon as everything calmed down.

  The mastodon took a swipe at Simber and missed, tripping and falling into the whale skeleton and sending hundreds of bones flying in all directions.

  Alex ducked as a rib flew past his ear, and he yelled, “Aw, man, that’s a pity right there!”

  “You’rrre telling me!”

  “Maybe you could keep him away from the breakables, eh?”

  “Maybe I could let him crrrush you into tiny bits,” Simber replied, charging to the darkest corners of the museum where Alex hadn’t even begun to explore. The mastodon followed.

  “Well, there’s always that,” Alex muttered, flipping pages.

  Ten more minutes of tireless chasing had gone by before Alex happened upon a thin book called Tater. He whipped through the pages outlining diet, likes and dislikes, and disposition issues, all the way to the end, where his eyes alighted on the one spell that might actually do him some good. It was a song spell called “Nighty-Night, Tater,” so he knew it was probably the right one. He studied it carefully, still not totally comfortable using spells without components to go with them—he never knew what to do with his hands.

  Once he’d memorized it, he tossed the book over his shoulder and snuck between the enormous museum items to try to give himself a good angle. “Lead him back to this empty spot!” he shouted to Simber.

  Simber did it, and when the mastodon was in the general area where Alex wanted him, Alex began to sing a little lullaby. It was undoubtedly the dumbest, most embarrassing song Alex had ever sung, but what choice did he have? He was glad almost no one was there to hear it. He took a deep breath and sang:

  “Tater boy, Tater boy,

  Too much sadness, no repeats.

  I am sorry, more than sorry,

  But it’s time for you to sleep.”

  When Alex finished, the giant mastodon statue froze in place, and everything was quiet again.

  Simber harrumphed a few times, trying not to laugh.

  “Knock it off,” Alex muttered, and then hoped Simber hadn’t heard him. “This place is trashed,” he said as he met up with the cat at the door. “We’ll have to come back here and clean it later.” He reached for the handle. “Door number one.” The door opened to the hallway, and approximately fifty pairs of eyes met their gaze.

  “Oh,” Alex said, surprised. “Hello. I thought you’d have headed down by now.” He saw that the injured among them were feeling better now that the danger had passed, and everyone was sitting up. Henry snuck through a space between two adults. “We’re still trapped,” he announced. “Walled in over here, glass wall here.” He tapped it to prove the predicament. “How’d you find us, anyway? And where are we?” The crowd murmured its concerns.

  Alex’s lips parted, but he didn’t quite know what to say. They couldn’t see out to where Sean stood on the other side of the wall. How was he going to get them all out of here if they couldn’t go through the opening to the balcony? He caught sight of Meghan just then, and he was relieved to see her acting completely fine. She had her arm around Crow, who looked more scared of Simber than he’d been of the mastodon. After all, he’d seen neither before today, and had been inside the mouth of only one of them.

  “Well,” Alex said, scrambling to sound calm, “I can at least give you a little more room to stretch out. He pointed to the clear wall and muttered, “Glass.” The wall shimmered to the ground and disappeared. “Okay,” he said, turning back to the Unwanteds. “You can move to the end now, but please stay in the hallway. Don’t go into any of the side rooms, okay? I’ll get you some water from the kitchenette and move you out of here just as soon as I can figure out how to open up that wall.”

  Alex had no idea how to do that, or if it was even possible. He didn’t know if there actually was a specific spell on this hallway at all—he’d always thought it just took a certain kind of magical ability to see it. Mr. Today had never made it visible or invisible to anyone as far as Alex knew. Eva Fathom had been able to get in on her own. And when Lani and Meg couldn’t get in for the magical weapons meeting, Mr. Today had moved the meeting to the lawn—he hadn’t tried to rig it so they could get in. But what about Simber? He didn’t do magic, but maybe Mr. Today had created him with the ability to see the secret hallway.

  “I’m not sure I can fix this,” Alex murmured to Simber as the people spread out down the entire length of the hallway and sat leaning against the wall.

  “You don’t have a choice,” Simber muttered back.

  Alex, facing yet another obstacle and feeling extremely hungry and thirsty himself, gripped his head and let out a frustrated groan. He headed down the hall toward the kitchenette across from Mr. Today’s office, Unwanteds lining the hallway all the way to the end, where the big picture window was. And just when Alex was trying to figure out how to tell the Unwanteds that he didn’t know how to get them out of there without putting them all back into the gray shack and somehow shutting down the world all over again, a small voice in the doorway of the kitchenette uttered a single word. The voice belonged to Henry, and the word he said was “Dad?”

  Touch and Go

  Henry ran into the kitchenette, Alex right behind him. Gunnar Haluki’s limp body spilled out of the corner tube onto the floor. His hands were tied behind his back, and his ankles were tied together too. His eyes were nearly closed, his face thin and drawn, his lips parched, and his gray hair ragged and unkempt. His clothes were ripped and ruined, and they hung loosely on him. It wasn’t clear how long he’d been lying there or where he’d come from.

  The boys kneeled down beside the former high priest. “Simber, we need healers!” Alex called out. Simber loped down the center of the hall and, to the Unwanteds, seemed to disappear through the solid wall at the end.

  “Dad?” Henry said again, pulling his father’s sleeve. “Dad. Can you hear me?” Like a natural, Henry checked his father’s vitals while Alex untied the man and rolled him onto his back. Murmurs wafted through the group of Unwanteds as people expressed cautious joy that the good man was alive and here with them. Henry glanced at them when he heard the kind words, and he smiled gratefully as he worked. He got up and poured some water into a cup as Simber returned.

  “None of the nurrrses can get in,” he said, “but I know Gunnarrr can get out. Shall I take him thrrrough to them on my back?”

  “Great idea. Good thinking, Simber,” Alex said. He and a few of the others helped hoist Gunnar onto the giant stone cheetah’s back.

  “But what about me?” Henry said. “I need to stay with him.”

  His lip quivered enough to make Alex hesitate, but in the end, Alex knew what was best.

  “I’m sorry, little guy,” Alex said. He kneeled next to the boy. “Now that Artimé is back, the nurses can help him way better than we can. And we need him to get help right away.” He glanced at Simber. “Did you happen to notice if the hospital wing is still in place?”

  “I did, and it is, just as it was beforrre.”

  Finally one thing is working out right, Alex thought. “Good. Okay, Henry, give your dad some encouragement, and then off he goes.”

  Henry leaned down and spoke softly in his father’s ear. Then he patted his father’s shoulder and stepped out of the way, his face a facade of bravery. Simber carried Gunnar carefully down the hallway so he wouldn’t slip off. They disappeared through the wall, and all was quiet.

  The Unwanteds’ faces were troubled. High Priest Haluki had been good to them. And they certainly didn’t want to see young Henry lose the last remaining member of his family.

  A few of the people went over to Henry to offer hi
m comfort and distraction, while Alex assigned others to pass out water and some of Mr. Today’s favorite cookies, which he found in the cupboard. When everyone was busy, Alex returned to the kitchenette and approached the tube to see if he could send something up from the main kitchen.

  Don’t ever use that tube, Mr. Today had once told Alex. It goes to Haluki’s house and other nasty places.

  “Like where?” Alex muttered to himself. He hesitated, and then stepped toward it. Without setting foot inside, he poked his head in so he could see the mini blackboard and the controls. But instead of the destination descriptions he was used to seeing in all the other tubes—lounge, library, dining, and room service—this one had only numbers with no explanations to go with them.

  Alex pressed his fingers to his throbbing temples. Everything was happening all at once. He couldn’t seem to catch a break. He had to focus now on getting the people out of this hallway. But how?

  A cool hand touched his arm, and he turned to see that it was Meghan. She smiled at him, but there was a question in her eyes. He knew the look well enough.

  “I’m okay,” he said, and then the words flooded out. “There are just so many crazy things happening. I don’t even know how to get everybody out of here. And Haluki . . . he obviously escaped, but how? And I feel so bad about not trying to rescue him before, you know? But how could we?”

  Meghan nodded.

  “I mean, I had no idea he’d been treated like this. And wow,” he said, shaking his head, “we just barely had enough energy to keep ourselves alive. How could we possibly go rescue him, too? It’s all so much . . . it’s too much. But did you look at him? I feel terrible.”

  Meghan reached her arms around her friend and hugged him.

  Just then Simber bounded down the hallway and stopped at the open door to the kitchenette. “Alex,” he said, “Gunnarrr spoke.”

  “Oh, good,” Alex breathed. Maybe the man had looked worse off than he really was.