Gray Wolf Island

by Tracey Neithercott

  “I followed you once,” I blurt. “Sadie had this thing about you, like you were really independent and could teach me how to be. So one day when you skipped class I followed just to see what kind of immoral or illegal things you did when you weren’t in school.”

  “But I snuck into a college lecture instead?”

  Embarrassment burns my cheeks, and I’m thankful for the dim lighting. “You knew?”

  He laughs. “You were kind of hard to miss.”

  If I wander long enough, can I find a sharp stalagmite to impale myself on? “You must have thought I was creepy. Or a stalker.”

  “I thought…” Elliot runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what I thought. I just know I thought about you.”

  I’ve never really wanted anything of my own, not when Sadie was always there wanting enough for both of us. But then I look at Elliot in the almost-dark, forearms flexing as he squeezes the base of the flashlight. Light, dark. Light dark light. Dark.

  I boldly press a finger to his collarbone. He jumps at my touch. Light.

  I’m lit from above when I step into his space, and it’s too late to go back now. My lips brush his, the barest of touches.

  “Oh,” he says against my mouth. A clatter of metal against stone. Dark.

  Elliot’s hands are in my hair, mine traveling up, up, up his arms, over his shoulders, to the back of his neck, where baby hairs prickle my fingertips.

  And it’s dark, so dark in this sunken alcove. We’re nothing but lips and breath and hands.

  Elliot pulls away and says, “You’re so beautiful.”

  “You can’t even see me,” I tell him. But of course he can. He’s been seeing me all along.

  His fingers trace the lines of my face. Part of me wants to stop him because it’s blacker than black down here and I’m afraid he’s going to poke me in the eye, but I don’t move because I like the feel of his rough fingers on my face and the sound of his voice when he says he can feel how pretty I am.

  Then I can’t take it anymore, the not kissing. I want my lips on his, but I get his eye instead, which is exactly as sexy as it sounds.

  “Missed,” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. “Try again.”

  I take my time. Maybe people who’ve had a thousand kisses can anticipate where lips hide in the dark, but I’m lost like a treasure. My hands find the sides of his face. He smiles under my palms.

  I don’t have to wonder whether my lips are in the right spot because when my nose gets close enough to brush his, Elliot says my name, and his breath on my lips tells me I’m right where I want to be. I kiss him, feeling the cold metal of his lip ring press into me. Like I wanted it to that night in the clearing when he showed me the scar in the sky. And I think I might know a bit about how it feels, filled up with stars and ripping across the universe.

  A long while later, I rest my forehead against Elliot’s and I breathe in the scents of lavender and insect repellent clinging to his T-shirt. He searches for the flashlight. Clicks it on. We squint at each other through the brightness.

  We’re staring and we’re grinning and we’re absolutely drunk on each other.

  LOOK FOR THE PLACE

  where stone stabs at sky

  and the earth sings a mourning song

  for your echo to reply.

  There are a lot of stalagmites. A lot.

  “I’d like to punch the jackhole who wrote this map.” Elliot’s lost the giddy glow he woke up with, back when we were both still high off our kiss and hopeful about the day.

  Before we spent hours looking for “the place where stone stabs at sky” and finding about a billion of them.

  “Or you could ask him where the treasure’s buried,” Anne says with a sigh. Her endless optimism is dying a slow death.

  “Maybe we’re not even looking for another slashed square,” Gabe says, exiting the cavern through a cramped tunnel. It’s single-file shuffling from here on out. “Maybe we’ll know we’ve found it when the island sings.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Elliot says.

  I punch his back. “Don’t be a jerk.”

  “How about a scary story, Anne?” Gabe asks as he leads us through the tunnel. We’re meandering all over, though Elliot’s doing his best to keep us pointed northeast so we have a chance of finding our way back.

  “I’ll tell you a story, but it’s not scary.” She clears her throat. I think it’s more to announce her impending narration than anything else. Anne does like to be listened to. “My great-grandmother used to tell me about Wildewell Boy when my brother was asleep because I loved the part where he cries out a rosebush, but Ronnie was always scared when the boy turned to dust.”

  “What do you mean he turns to dust?”

  “Charlie, man, that obviously comes later on,” Gabe says. “Start at the start, Anne.”

  “It starts on the island, when the sun’s risen but the morning’s still murky. The fog was thick, so thick that the Truth-Seeker couldn’t see the bottomless pit. So thick he couldn’t see his fingers in front of his eyes. But he watched the spot where the pit should’ve been—maybe three feet to the right, where the mist seemed thinnest. Or a few yards to the left, where a black smudge marred the white fog.

  “The Truth-Seeker was staring somewhere in between the two when the ground rumbled and the fog dripped from the sky like wet paint on a tilting canvas. When the fog cleared, the Truth-Seeker saw a boy curled at the edge of the pit. His hair was made of dirt and his feet were rooted to the earth like the trunks of a tree, and when he looked at the Truth-Seeker his eyes were young buds.

  “As the boy rose from the ground, his legs became muscle and skin. He was a boy—close to being a man—but his head was as empty as the fog. The Truth-Seeker found the boy could understand him, could even communicate with him. He understood home and identity, even though he couldn’t remember his own.

  “So the Truth-Seeker took the boy from the island, from the pit that spit him out without a past, and gave him a room in his palace. The boy had a soft bed to sleep on and clothes more comfortable than the moss and leaves that clung to his body when he appeared on the island. The boy had a friend who quickly became a father, and he had the townspeople, who loved strangeness if they loved anything at all. And the boy was strange. He had no name, so they fondly called him Wildewell Boy.”

  “It would have been easier to give him a real name,” Charlie says. “Like Bob.”

  “Charlie.” I imagine Anne pinching the bridge of her nose, high between her eyes. “I can’t conceivably tell a story about a boy named Bob and still have it sound magical. It’s really not possible.”

  “Keep going,” Gabe says. “I can tell you’re getting to a good part.”

  “I am.” She clears her throat again. “Days became weeks, and weeks became months, and Wildewell Boy’s roots dug into the earth and sang that Wildewell was home. The Truth-Seeker trained him as he would his own son, teaching him about the mysterious island with the infinite hole and buried treasure. When the Truth-Seeker took his afternoon nap, Wildewell Boy would walk the path from the palace to town. There he’d listen to stories of heartache and pain. And like plants guzzle water to grow tall and strong, Wildewell Boy drank up their sorrows.

  “At night he’d visit the palace gardens and bury his long fingers in the ground. He’d weep for the townspeople, spilling their sadness into the dirt, and in the morning the gardener would find a new rosebush, as tall as a man and in full bloom. Then one day the Truth-Seeker took his last breath, and Wildewell Boy sobbed out his own grief. The garden withered and the dirt turned to dust, and the boy knew he had to leave.”

  “But what about the treasure?” Charlie asks. “Did the Truth-Seeker tell him where it was before he died?”

  “He did,” Anne says. “The Truth-Seeker’s spirit found the broken-down Wildewell Boy and with phantom fingers led him to a grand study. In the middle of the room sat an oak desk and on that desk sat an envelope and in that envelop
e were instructions for the boy. He read them, folded the note, and left the palace.”

  “What’d it say, though?”

  “Charlie,” Elliot snarls. “Shut the hell up and let her tell the story.”

  “But she didn’t tell us what it said.”

  “No more interruptions,” Anne huffs. “So, as I was saying, the boy left the palace. He took with him the Truth-Seeker’s bag and nothing else. He paddled a boat to Gray Wolf Island, which seemed to whisper his name on the wind. He paid no attention to it; he was Wildewell Boy and no one else.

  “When he arrived at the pit, the air sang with crickets and glowed with flashing fireflies. Wildewell Boy stood at the edge of the pit, and his body began to tickle. Quickly, he unwrapped the Truth-Seeker’s bag and tossed gems the size of baseballs and gold as thick as bricks down the hole. He worked fast, because the longer he stood, the more his body prickled. His clothes thinned and turned to dust. Roots grew from his feet, from his tree-trunk legs. His hair became thick as mud, and his eyes were green bulbs waiting to bloom. His body became the island, breaking apart and disintegrating into dust.”

  Nobody speaks for a long moment; then Charlie says, “It was a good story, Anne. Even if it wasn’t scary.”

  “I like how he was created out of nothing but he was so important to the townspeople.” Gabe shoots Anne a smile over his shoulder. “And I like the way you told it. Like you were reading from a book.”

  Elliot pauses, turns around. “Did he ever learn the truth?”

  “He was never searching for the truth,” Anne says, holding his gaze. “But yeah, he found it. That’s why he was able to disappear.”

  The air is stale.

  It’s the first thing I notice when we enter the small cavern, and I can’t help but think we’re the first people to stand in this chamber in a long, long while. Something about that makes me feel impossibly small.

  “Magic,” Anne whispers, body swaying into Charlie.

  I feel it, too. It’s the same otherness I felt in the center of the Star Stones, only this time I’m light and floaty.

  We fan out, searching for the slashed square. The whole while, I’m listening. For a mourning song. For an echo. For the island to whisper we’re in the right place. But beneath the scuffling of feet, there’s a whole lot of silence.

  In the center of the chamber stand two stalagmites, squat structures with pointed heads. They look less like rock than columns made of dripped candle wax. I check and recheck, but neither is marked by the symbol.

  I press my palm against the cool surface of the taller column. Let the cave’s dizzying magic course through my body. I’m light enough to float to the ceiling, to the sky, to space.

  “You okay there, Anna Banana?”

  That snaps me out of my daze. I turn to find Charlie leading Anne to the center of the cave. “Too much magic,” she says.

  “Or low blood sugar,” Elliot says, rolling his eyes. “How about those cookies, Gabe?”

  Gabe stumbles his way to the group, digs around in his pack. He tosses each of us a cookie, flinging Charlie’s so far off the mark it lands in a cloud of dirt. We laugh like it’s the funniest thing we’ve ever seen, and it really is.

  Charlie wipes it on his shirt before taking a bite.

  “When you’re rich on pirate treasure, you should open a bakery,” Elliot says, catching a string of caramel before it sticks to his chin. “Or maybe I’ll use my share to hire you as my personal chef.”

  “Like you could afford me.” Gabe laughs so long it turns into a cough.

  “What’ll you do with the treasure, Ruby?” Anne lowers her head to Charlie’s shoulder.

  I open my mouth, but I have no answer. For all I’ve thought about the treasure in the past week and a half, I’ve never considered what I might do with it. My mind was stuck on the finding, on Sadie’s final wish. “I have no idea.”

  “My aunt and uncle need money to send my cousins to college,” Charlie says from beside me. Or maybe he’s on the ground. It’s so hard to tell with the magic swirling my mind. “I want you to give my share to them.”

  “Shut up, Charlie,” Elliot growls. “Give it to them yourself.”

  No one wants to think longer about Charlie being too dead to deliver the treasure, so we start imagining the most ludicrous ways to spend our money. “I’m going to buy a candy store. Not for me. For Ronnie,” Anne says, and we all groan. “He loves candy, so I’ll buy a store full of it and never let him in.” I can tell she’s proud of herself, so I grin extra wide.

  “I’m going to buy a motorcycle.” To his credit, Elliot says it with a straight face.

  “Stop trying to make the bad-boy thing happen.” I try to punch his shoulder, but I’m too tired from our endless hours of stalagmite exploration to really commit. Elliot captures my hand in his, opens my fist, and slides his fingers between mine.

  “I’ll buy you a black leather jacket with my portion,” Gabe says. This sends him into another fit of laugh-coughing.

  Charlie’s heavy-lidded eyes fix on Elliot. “I’ll use some of mine to bail you out of jail.”

  “I hate you all,” Elliot says with real menace, then kisses the top of my head.

  If I could record this moment, I’d save it somewhere safe so I could watch it on repeat again and again. So I could forever feel like this—like I’ve swallowed the sky and everything in it.

  But that all changes in an instant. In a breath.

  Between the time Anne inhales and stops breathing altogether.

  There’s a tightness in my chest, and it feels a lot like panic. If the room would stop spinning, I could double-check. Make sure Anne’s chest is rising. Make sure she’s just asleep.

  But the cavern’s still a swirl.

  And Anne doesn’t sleep.

  “Anne.” My voice is a low rasp, but it’s enough for Charlie. He shakes her, hard, then harder. I can’t stand to look at the terror on his face, so I grip her hand and tug. Her body slides down Charlie’s and onto the ground.

  “You guys get the backpacks,” I say, pulling Anne from his grasp. He barely puts up a fight.

  My steps are shaky. My hands slick with sweat.

  I worry about stones on the ground scraping Anne’s bare skin. I worry about thunking her skull into a stalagmite. But more than that, I worry about being too slow.

  My mind’s a muzzy mess, brain sliding all over the place. Still, I don’t stop. I drag her across the cave, out through the small opening, into the dark tunnel. I drag her another few yards just to be safe.

  Then I drop to the ground. My body’s beating hummingbird fast. I suck lungfuls of air, and it tastes like the cool spray of water on a sweltering day.

  I drag myself to Anne. My first instinct is to do CPR, but I doubt whatever’s in my lungs will revive her. “Breathe,” I say. My lungs scream, but I say it again. “Breathe.”

  A scuffing of shoes. The sound of labored breathing. And then the boys spill out of the cave. They crawl down the tunnel until they’re by my side, a riot of sounds: coughing, wheezing, gasping for air.

  They’re sick and they’re hurt but they’re so blatantly alive.

  We huddle around Anne. I try not to play What If, but what if? What if all I’ll ever get with Anne is a week? What if I never get to tell her that she’s all the things she fears about herself and that they make her extraordinary? What if we never get the chance for a forever friendship?

  But then Charlie is shaking me. He’s pressing my palm to Anne’s chest, right where his was resting. And it’s shallow, so shallow, but her chest is rising.

  I rest her head in my lap, knock the pebbles and dirt from her hair. And I wait.

  As I do, I catch a sound, faint beneath our raspy breaths.

  Rushing water.

  The humming wind.

  There’s something about the sound…

  “It wasn’t magic,” Elliot says, shattering my concentration. He’s lying with his head on his backpack. “I’d bet anythin
g that was some sort of noxious gas. That chamber’s pretty closed off aside from the small entrance. It’s not absurd to think it got trapped in there.”

  “Yes, it is,” Gabe says. “It’d escape and you know it. This was the island. And it’s going to kill us if Ruby doesn’t tell the truth.”

  “This isn’t her fault,” Elliot says.

  “Thanks,” I say. “But could we not do the fighting while I’m trying to have a breakthrough?”

  That’s when Anne decides to have her own sort of breakthrough. With a whimper, she’s awake.

  The four of us jerk our heads in Anne’s direction. She heaves herself off my lap and presses her back to the tunnel wall. She releases a round of dry, wheezy coughs.

  “I’m really, really glad you’re alive.” It’s about all I can say right now. Even Charlie is lost for words, staring at her like she’s the dead come back to life.

  “So, what’s the breakthrough?” The look on Elliot’s face is so eager I’m almost afraid he’s going to shake the words out of me.

  Anne turns to Charlie. “It’s like I didn’t almost die.”

  I grit my teeth. “I said I was trying to have a breakthrough, and aside from that you’re being very rude to Anne.”

  “It would have been ruder to care about the breakthrough before we knew she was alive.” Elliot’s wearing a very self-satisfied smile. It’s my least favorite of all his faces.

  I close my eyes and listen for the sounds. There—like low notes from a flute and brushes on a drum.

  It’s a windblown melody.

  It’s a watery lament.

  “Oh.” I draw out the wait as I draw out my smile. “It’s musical.”

  Elliot’s a gash of light against dark as he listens to the sound coming from the end of the tunnel. He leans around Charlie, lays a loud kiss on my cheek. “You’re a genius.” His gaze lifts, and his grin grows impossibly wide. “We’ve seen a million places where ‘stone stabs at sky.’ And now the earth’s singing a mourning song.”

  “We need an echo.” Elliot’s standing atop a tall rock, hands on his hips like some kind of superhero. His chest heaves, and sweat runs down the side of his face.