Gray Wolf Island

by Tracey Neithercott

  His eyebrows lower. “I saw the poem. You know what that is, right?”

  “Of course I know what that is,” I snip. I’m no good at this. I used to deal with Sadie, and Sadie used to deal with everyone else. Now I have words in my head that want to be words on my tongue. Only, my words are rough, not the pretty things Sadie tossed around.

  But I don’t need to talk about this at all. I need to turn a poem into instructions, and miles of empty darkness into a hiding place for lost treasure.

  I wander to the display cases, which house the only objects the stingy pit has coughed up since it was discovered in 1845. My breath fogs the glass as I read about a coin found in 1943. It’s not the perfect circle of the chocolate coins in the museum gift shop. It’s hardly a circle at all anymore. The right side is straight and thinner than the rest. It’s silver—I know this because everybody knows about the coin—but it’s a dull gray, not shiny like a dime.

  Elliot elbows me aside, sinks to the floor, and sticks a couple of paper clips into the lock. “Do you know who wrote it? Have you decoded it?”

  I press the plastic latch. “No.”

  I hoped he’d take a hint and drop the topic, but feeding Elliot information is a lot like tossing bread at a seagull. One piece is never enough.

  Besides, this isn’t just any information. Doris says the first word Elliot uttered was treasure, just like his father and grandfather and probably every other Thorne before them.

  I’m saved from answering by the pop of the lock and the shudder of the glass door on its metal runner. I pluck the coin from its perch, let the heavy metal cool my palm as I examine it. Its face is stamped with a worn-down crest, flanked on the right with a P and an S and on the left with an 8.

  “Piece of eight.” Elliot might not be an employee here, but he’s been hanging around the museum for so long—since Bishop Rollins died and the prospect of another hunt went with him—that he knows the exhibit like he’s being paid to.

  “Where are the other seven?”

  Elliot sighs, and it sounds like the precursor to something violent. “It’s not part of a gift set. Pieces of eight were Spanish dollars minted around the seventeenth century. They were basically a worldwide currency through the late eighteen hundreds.”

  “Could this be part of the treasure?” It doesn’t look like much, that’s for sure.

  Elliot shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s from the first treasure hunter.”

  I flip the coin to find its date: 1677. “Shouldn’t we be wearing white gloves or something?”

  “I’m a rebel, Ruby.”

  In my defense, I try very hard not to laugh. He scowls, then snatches the coin from my fist, returning it to its box.

  “You want to see something cool?” He leans against the display case, twirling an enormous knife.

  I shrug.

  Elliot crowds beside me, shoves the knife handle at me. His finger rubs at a curlicue carved into the handle. “See those words? They’re Dutch. You know what that means?”

  “A Dutch guy lost a knife on Gray Wolf Island?”

  His gaze flits to mine before returning to the intricate design. “It means this knife could have belonged to Michiel Andrieszoon, a Dutch buccaneer who visited New England in the late sixteen hundreds.”

  “So it could be his treasure,” I say.

  “Maybe.” Elliot spins the knife in his hand with the ease of someone who is used to handling sharp objects. If I’d never followed him to the lecture that day last year, I might imagine him twirling the dagger before pressing the sharp metal against someone’s throat. Instead, I picture him practicing with plastic knives in front of his bedroom mirror. “I used to think the Knights Templar buried the Ark of the Covenant there. It seemed like the coolest idea.”

  “Cooler than endless knowledge?”

  Elliot smirks again. “Seeing as I already have endless knowledge…” I roll my eyes, and he laughs. “Okay, yes, that’d be cool. But the Ark of the Covenant is at least within the realm of possibility. And even that seems farfetched.”

  I sigh. I can’t help it. “All of it seems farfetched.”

  He searches my face. “You’re hunting a treasure you don’t believe in?”

  “Yes.” I think of the book in my hands and the eighteen stanzas weighing me down. “No. I don’t know anymore.”

  “It’s real.” His words sound like both an invitation and a threat.

  I push away from the case of ancient finds, away from Elliot and the interest written all over his face. I poke at a miniature model of Gray Wolf Island that stands on a pedestal in the center of the circular room. Stick my pinky finger down the pit.

  He bites his lip, right where a silver hoop sinks into soft flesh. “Let me see the map.”

  It feels wrong to share. Right now, this search is between me and Sadie, held together with a fragile string that bridges life and death. If I open the book, if I let Elliot look, his knowing will make him a part of it.

  Still, I find myself approaching the display case. I think about Sadie on the warm summer day when the air smelled like tuberose and sea salt and how it was just her and me and a promise. Then I think about discussing the treasure, which wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined.

  It’s strange how someone can so hate loneliness and cling to it all the same.

  My fingers shake as I find the poem, as I slide the book across the glass case. Elliot’s eyes devour the words. When he’s done, he looks at me. Looks through me, mind on an island or down a deep ditch.

  “We’re going to find the treasure.” His mouth kicks up into a genuine grin, but I don’t join in.

  “No. No, no, no. There’s no we, Elliot Thorne. There’s me, the girl who’s going to find the treasure for her sister. And there’s you, the Wildewell Historical Society and Museum volunteer, who’s going to tell me everything he knows about Gray Wolf Island.”

  “I don’t volunteer here.” The poem must have scrambled Elliot’s brain because he has this dazed look on his face, like maybe he climbed through a portal and found everyone speaking another language or walking on the ceiling.

  “So you know nothing about the island?” This, I know, is false. There are people who know a little about a lot of things. Elliot knows a lot about a lot.

  Elliot launches himself onto the display case. His boots bang out a violent beat against the wood. “You can’t just use me for my brain.”

  I want to tell him that people use people all the time and that being used for your mind is infinitely better than being used for something else, but I just raise an eyebrow and wait.

  “I have needs, Ruby.”

  “You can’t just use me for my body.”

  Elliot’s jaw unclenches, and though he still looks stern, I can tell he’s fighting a smile. “Forget your body. I want in on the hunt.”

  “No, this is something I have to do alone. I’ll share the treasure with you, though.” This is incredibly generous of me, especially since I’ll be doing the hard part in traipsing across the island. But Sadie never said I had to keep the treasure, just that I had to find it.

  Elliot tugs at his hair. “What the hell’s the point of a treasure you don’t have to search for?”

  I slap Treasure Island shut, return it to my bag. “I’ll see you around, Elliot.”

  I turn for the door, but he yanks me back. Elliot’s face is stone, but his Adam’s apple gives away his nervousness. It bobs and bobs in his throat before he speaks. “The poem—you’ll need my help to decode it,” he says, but he means so much more.

  Elliot is brilliant with words. Piercings, tattoos, and a new wardrobe can’t change that. Mrs. Thorne is a linguist. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I do know that Bishop Rollins hired her to translate the strange symbols covering the northern Star Stone.

  More than that, I remember how Elliot used to be: a know-it-all who’d go to war over incorrect word usage or blabber on about the etymology of a term you really didn’t care about. So if a
nyone could decipher the map in the poem, it’d be the boy who wields knowledge like a battle-ax.

  But he’s a Thorne. “You’d want to do things your way and do them yourself, and a few days later this would be your expedition, not mine.”

  “Please,” he says, and his voice is hoarse with desire. I know the feeling, have since I found the book yesterday. Sometimes I think I can feel the cool waters that pool fifty feet down the hole, the cruel slap of the wild wind that attacks Gray Wolf Island but leaves Wildewell alone.

  So I say the only thing I can say. I say yes.

  It’s dark when I wake. The smell of dirt assaults me.

  It may be daybreak. Maybe nightfall.

  My mouth tastes like dirt.

  Where am I?

  Who am I?

  That last one sends a shock through my system. I jump to my feet. The world goes topsy-turvy, and I stumble forward a few steps before it rights itself.

  Up. Down. Those I know.

  I scan my body. Injury-free and covered in a layer of dirt. There’s a lot of that around here—packed dirt, upturned dirt. Beyond that, a small shack, some shovels sticking out of the earth. To my right, there’s a white cross. Straight ahead’s a cluster of construction equipment. And behind me is the most massive hole I’ve ever seen.

  Or maybe not. I wouldn’t remember.

  I peer down the hole. A bunch of black and no help at all. I chuck a rock down there and wait for the crack against stone or plop into water, but nothing.

  I try the shack. Empty and locked. I don’t have keys, so it must not be mine.

  Who the hell am I?

  The question’s even more annoying than the more pressing “Where the hell am I?”

  I decide to focus on that even though the only way I’ll find out is by walking. Luckily, I’m wearing sneakers. I pick a direction by shutting my eyes, spinning in a tight circle, then walking in the direction I’m facing when my eyes open.

  So I’ve learned one new thing about myself: I’m a complete idiot.

  It’s green. Up, down, wherever I look there’s green, green, and more green.

  Green grass. Green trees. Green moss.

  It’s boring, but more than that, it’s not helpful. I need street signs.

  Unless the green is the clue. Could I be in Ireland? That sounds green.

  Maybe I’m Irish. “Maybe I’m Irish,” I repeat, out loud this time so I can hear my accent. American.

  Useless information. So what if I’m American? I could be an American lost in China for all this godforsaken wilderness is telling me.

  More trees, a river. Grass, flowers, blah, blah, blah. I’m not really stopping to smell the roses here. I’m looking for two things and two things only: signs and people. It’s probably an idiot move, but I already established I was an idiot back at that hole.

  Hours pass. I estimate it’s about eight in the morning.

  I can remember how to tell time from the position of the sun, but I can’t remember anything about my life. It’s really an unfair trade-off.

  Giant flies bite my legs. I squash one on my shorts.

  The land pitches downward, and my thighs ache with keeping me upright. Halfway between standing and rolling down the steep hill, I smell it. Briny, fishy, salty air.

  When the trees clear, I stand on an overhang and view the beach below.

  “I live on the beach,” I say, testing. It doesn’t feel true and it doesn’t feel false.

  I scan the shore. Jagged rocks. Yellow sand. Deep blue sea.

  There’s a dock. And bobbing by its side is a boat.

  It’s spring going on summer. That’s another fact I’ve picked up sometime between waking up beside that hole and reaching the beach. It was warm before sunrise, and now it’s sweltering.

  I wipe my sweaty brow with the back of my hand. Almost there.

  The boat practically glows in the sun. I have no idea if it’s nice or anything, but it looks nice. Real shiny.

  “Hello?” Water crashing into the shore shushes my shout. “Anyone there?”

  The dock creaks underfoot. It’s rickety, maybe dangerously so. I study the water lapping its legs.

  Can I swim?

  I’d like to think that if I couldn’t swim, some kind of innate fear would wash over me. My brain’s way of saying, “Get off the dock before you drown.”

  Then again, my brain hasn’t been so good to me today.

  I listen to the whap, whap, whap of wind around sailcloth. Kick the side of the boat with the tip of my shoe and ask, “Are you mine?”

  “Son, if the Gold Bug were yours, she’d kick you right back for that.”

  There’s a man behind me. He’s older than me, but by how much I don’t know. I haven’t exactly seen myself. At any rate, I feel a lot younger than he looks.

  I wait for a reaction. Relieved hug. Questioning look.

  His weather-beaten face gives away nothing.

  The man tosses a bag onto the boat. Runs a finger along the hull, right where I kicked it. I think it’s to make me feel bad. Honestly, though, I can’t feel much worse than I did waking up without a past and trekking across this stupid green land.

  The man looks over his shoulder at me. “You stealing my boat, boy?”

  Boy. So I must be pretty young. If the ocean weren’t so active here, I’d peek over the edge of this dock for a glimpse of my face. “Do you know me?”

  “You come with the Belfast crew to help at the dig?”

  “We’re in Ireland?” This is doubly surprising, because the old man has an American accent, too.

  His features screw up in a way that makes him look both refined and mocking. “Not my new assistant, that’s for sure.” He laughs. “Ireland.”

  “It is green.”

  “Course it’s green. It’s spring.”

  My head starts pounding, probably from too little memory. “Look, I don’t know anything about anything except pointless things like the sun, so could you just tell me where we are?”

  “Gray Wolf Island,” he says.

  “Okay, but where is Gray Wolf Island?”

  “Off the coast of Maine.” The man squints at me. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I flop onto the dock, not even caring that I might fall into the water and maybe drown. “I woke up next to this massive hole, and I have nothing in my head. Not a fucking thing.”

  “Don’t curse,” says the man.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shakes his head. “You look young, but…You have an ID on you?”

  It didn’t even occur to me to check for a license—more proof I was either born stupid or had it knocked into my head when my memory was knocked out.

  I fumble through my pockets. All empty.

  My shoulders droop.

  “C’mon,” the man says, hopping aboard the boat like he’s a kid or something. Nimble and quick. I follow him. Not much else I can do. “We’ll take you around town, see if any of the tourists might have lost you.”

  I close my eyes as he works the boat. The insides of my eyelids go red in the sun.

  Who am I?

  Who am I?

  Who am I?

  “Nameless Boy,” he calls. I open my eyes to a salty sea breeze. Water splashes my cheeks as the boat speeds along. “Never did introduce myself. I’m Mr. Rollins at the dig site, but you can call me Bishop.”

  Thorne Manor sits grandly on a stretch of green set apart from the larger, more modern homes on the street. Weathered stone gives the home an unrefined look, but the widow’s walk atop the roof elevates its status, as if the Thornes need another way to stand above us all.

  The imperious attitude of past Thornes had less to do with intellectual aptitude, as it does with Elliot, and more to do with a very old shoe. Harry Thorne, who heard the island’s call all the way from California, spent five long years digging in that pit before its walls coughed up a worn leather shoe. That was 1876, and though no Thorne has unearthed an artifact since, they like to think
they could.

  I follow a walkway as it curves around the side of the house. With a connecting stone wall crumbling down a rocky crag and into the shore, Thorne Manor appears fused with the beach, as if the house itself is trying to sneak closer to the island.

  Elliot answers the door less than a minute after I ring the bell. His dark hair is in disarray, the longer top section nearly standing on end. He runs a hand through it. “I was worried you weren’t going to come.”

  “I’m here,” I say, but I almost wasn’t. I had second thoughts about our partnership a dozen times last night, my mind flipping back and forth like a girl plucking petals from a flower. He can help me. He can help me not. He can help me…And that’s what I decided. As much as I want this experience to be about me and Sadie, about me finally atoning for what I did, I need help.

  “Elliot, who was— Oh, hello.” Mrs. Thorne is a giant of a woman, nearly a head above my five-foot-eight frame. Her smile is warm and weepy, the same smile she’s worn every day since Elliot’s dad took that gun to his face. She reaches a skeletal hand toward him, but he shoots her a glare and she snaps it back.

  Elliot shoulders past his mother. “C’mon, Ruby. We have a lot to do.”

  I glance between mother and son. The tension in the foyer is as heavy as a grown man. “Nice to meet you,” I tell Mrs. Thorne with a smile.

  She nods, scurries away.

  Elliot is all stiff shoulders and silence as we walk upstairs and to his room. Heavy boot meets blond wood, and his door flies open. It clatters against the wall and shakes his shelves.

  I notice Charlie first, almost too late. My shoe nearly crunches his fingers into the floor, where his lanky body is contorted like the chalk outline of a dead boy. It’s as angelic as Charles Kim has ever appeared.

  Elliot kicks his side. “Quit playing dead,” he says. “It’s disturbing.”

  The spell is broken when Charlie’s eyes shoot open and his face takes on a familiar impish appearance. In a swift motion, he jumps up—he’s always jumping: over things, onto things, off things—only to flop back down on a beanbag chair, where he sits like a crumpled piece of paper.