Oracle--Fire Island

by C. W. Trisef

  * * * * *

  “Please, Mom,” Ana begged, half-conscious, “just five more minutes.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss, but the pilot’s orders are to prepare for landing.”

  Ana felt the tray table in front of her fold up. She opened her eyes in alarm just as the stewardess was returning Ana’s reclined seat to its upright position.

  “Oh, sorry,” Ana apologized as the stewardess walked away. Stretching and yawning loudly, Ana noticed her three travel partners were staring at her. “Buenos días, everyone!”

  Paige returned her eyes to the window. With fascination, she watched as the thriving metropolis of Santiago came into view. The Chilean capital sat in the center of a large, bowl-shaped valley, surrounded by towering mountains on all sides. As impressive as it was to Paige, it seemed to her a mere barrio compared to Sunken Earth.

  Their first step inside the airport reminded them that they were far away from home. Despite their good grades in Spanish class so far this year, Ana and Paige were lost linguistically.

  “Looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” Ana observed, gripping Paige by the arm. “It’s like everything’s in a different language or something.”

  “Sí,” Paige replied.

  Pauline was faring even worse than the girls, for all she recalled from her foreign language education eons ago was how to say the hardly helpful question, “Where is the library?”

  “Biblioteca,” she said aloud with pride in an attempted but terrible Spanish accent.

  “The hills with the library,” Ana said with desperation. “All I want to know is where the English bathroom is. I need to pee like a—”

  “Baño!” Paige cried. “There it is!” She pointed to a sign bearing the internationally known, though faceless, man and woman, hanging above two doorless archways.

  Recognizing the caricatures that symbolize restrooms, Ana hurried in that direction, mumbling, “I hope the ladies wear dresses here, too.”

  As the rest of the party waited for Ana just outside the bathroom, they heard a flush, followed by Ana’s exclamation, “Hey, guys, the toilet bowl water really does flush the opposite way south of the equator.”

  “That’s my girl,” Pauline sighed with amusement, just happy that no one walking by seemed to understand what the American girl in the middle stall had to say.

  Needless to say, Paige and the Coopers were relieved to have Miss Carmen as their guide.

  “Stay close to me,” the Chilean native advised them as they approached customs. “I don’t want to lose any of you.”

  Like a slithering serpent, they held hands and weaved in and out of the throngs of travelers on their trek from the international terminal to the main concourse.

  “I’ve arranged for our luggage to be brought to the hotel,” Miss Carmen explained, “so let’s pile it all here while I locate our transportation.” She pointed to a spot near the sky concierge.

  “Talk about five-star service,” Ana cheered.

  Standing on the edge of a noisy street in the warm summer air, Miss Carmen flagged down a taxi, and all four of them crammed into the backseat. Miss Carmen barked orders to the driver in Spanish, and they sped away.

  Even though Paige and the Coopers had no idea where they needed to go, they glanced at each other with puzzlement when their driver turned onto a restricted driveway and entered an extension of the tarmac. They rolled underneath the bellies of parked planes, mail jets, and sundry aeronautical vessels. Coming to a stop inside a dark hangar, Miss Carmen immediately got out of the taxi and shut the door behind her. Paige gulped, and she and Ana glared at Pauline with worry.

  “Maybe she went to get some money to pay the cab driver,” Pauline suggested, trembling.

  “Don’t you worry your little head, Pauline,” the driver said in a voice that sounded unpleasantly familiar. Turning around to face his passengers, the driver removed his shawl-like hood and hissed, “This ride’s on the house.” The girls gasped: it was Bubba.

  Her shock quickly giving way to rancor, Ana immediately punched him in the nose. Caught by surprise, the blow sent Bubba backwards into the steering wheel, whose horn bellowed for several seconds.

  “And don’t even think about asking what that was for,” she threatened.

  “Take them away,” Bubba ordered, massaging his nose.

  Like chauffeurs for criminals, a group of thugs opened the rear doors, grabbed the girls, and tied them up as if they were unruly swine.

  “Miss Carmen!” Ana shouted, hoping her coach could hear her, wherever she had gone. “Miss Carmen! Watch out—there’s…”

  Ana fell silent when Miss Carmen emerged from the lowered cargo lift of the small jet not far from them inside the hangar. Her high-heeled shoes rapped the metallic lift, sending echoes of betrayal throughout the hangar. Ana stared at her with utter bewilderment.

  “Did you see the pure-blood I captured?” Bubba asked as Carmen approached the group.

  “All strapped in and ready to die,” she answered affirmatively. “Nice work, captain.” Miss Carmen twirled a lock of Bubba’s fire-red hair with her finger and then delivered a juicy kiss on his crimson lips without a trace of abashment.

  “My one native is nothing compared to your catch,” Bubba said, pulling away.

  “Oh, it was easy, really,” Miss Carmen sighed, “thanks to this one.” She kicked Ana’s foot. Then she turned to the muscle and instructed them, relative to the girls, “Put these next to the sacrifice!”

  “Sacrifice?” Paige yelped as the thugs dragged her and the Cooper women into the aircraft, Ana still enveloped in her astounded stupor.

  “I demand to know what you intend to do with us,” Pauline asserted. “This isn’t the first time you’ve tied me up, Bubba, you little wart. Mark my words, you won’t—”

  “Drug ‘em!”

  At the command, each of the girls’ menacing escorts produced a cloth and shoved it in their squirming hostages’ mouths. With each inhalation, the world turned more blurry and distorted. Finding themselves lying on the cold, hard floor of the cargo hold, they saw next to them an olive-skinned man, already unconscious. The lift rose until it shut, the engines started with a roar, and the girls’ vision went black.

  * * * * *

  “Paige!” Ana called out, awaking from her brief coma. “I just had the weirdest dream. We were riding in a taxi, and Bubba was the driver! Then he tied us up and—” She stopped upon realizing that her hands and feet were bound. “Oh,” she deduced, “so it wasn’t a dream. I hate waking up!”

  It was the rough landing that had put an end to their blackout. Sitting up to take stock of their plight, they were startled by a sudden jolt as the rear of the grounded plane began to open. They squinted as abundant sunshine poured into the cargo hold, at whose mouth several large silhouettes appeared and advanced toward them. Half blind and still enchained, the captives were hauled into some sort of crude land rover, their native counterpart wailing as if cognizant of his fate.

  On account of their blanched vision, Paige and the Coopers had to rely on their other senses for information pertaining to their new location. A hot sun baked their skin whenever the cool breeze died down. The crisp air tasted of salt, and the faint crashing of waves was heard in between the grunts and jeers of their captors. The terrain was very bumpy, and occasionally wafts of disturbed dust filtered into their nostrils.

  In no time at all, the road assumed an incline. As the view to one side had become quite dark, the girls steered their sights in that direction to finally give their eyes ample time to adjust. After a few moments, they could see that they were part of a convoy, climbing a spiraling path that wound upwards along the side of a mountain. In the other direction, ocean stretched infinitely, brilliantly reflecting the tropical sunlight.

  At length, they arrived at the summit, where the caravan stopped and became ambulatory. Bubba and Miss Carmen led the procession, with the prisoners being prodded forward behind them and a gaggle of jubilant ru
ffians bringing up the rear.

  Without any warning, the ground beneath their feet shook violently. Then a large plume of smoke shot up beside them. Everyone except the female hostages quivered and cowered with fear as if in sudden, remembered reverence to some divine, displeased deity. It was at this moment when it became unmistakably clear that they were walking along the rim of an active volcano.

  When the shaking had subsided, the group pressed on. Eventually, the prisoners were brought to a landing where a part of the crater’s cliffside extended furthest out, creating a miniature jetty much like the infamous plank of a pirate ship. Paige peered over the edge into the volcano’s throat. Through the smoke and steam, she could see a tumultuous bed of churning lava, bubbling and gurgling. It was like peeking into a stifling oven, so powerful was the heat against her face.

  “Take a seat, blondie,” Bubba hissed, grabbing Paige by the shoulder and shoving her into Ana and Pauline. Bubba then seized the man they had called “the pure-blood” and towed him toward the crater’s edge. The native, who resembled Miss Carmen’s general appearance, squirmed and struggled intensely as Bubba lugged him away. Aided by another disorienting tremor from the agitated volcano, he managed to wiggle himself free from his bonds and struck Bubba, who forsook his grip. The noble man ran for his life but could not evade the nimble guards. With a guard clutching each of his arms and legs, the near-escapee was brought back to Bubba, face to face.

  Suddenly, the volcano rumbled yet again. The same reverential attitude fell over the audience. The quaking lasted much longer this time. When it concluded, Bubba stuck his bruised face within inches of his prisoner.

  “The good news is you ought to appease the volcano just long enough until our more worthy sacrifice arrives,” Bubba sneered, glancing at the girls to make sure they had heard his words, which pertained to them in part. “The bad news is,” he continued, glaring at the native with pure hatred, “I won’t have a reason to sacrifice any more of your kind—or what’s left of it,” he smirked, “you miserable—”

  The brave native spat in Bubba’s face.

  After a few unnerving moments, Bubba spoke up. “You know, I was only going to enslave the rest of your race,” he said, wiping his fuming face, “but now, thanks to you, I think I’ll keep killing them until they’re extinct! Throw him in!” Amid blood-curdling shrieks from the doomed and ritualistic chants from the goons, Bubba’s minions heaved their human sacrifice over the edge to his death. The girls looked on in speechless terror as the volcano belched a plume of smoke and then became still.

  “Well, we’ve had quite the change in travel plans, haven’t we?” said Miss Carmen pleasantly, striding up to the girls. “I forgot to tell you about our connecting flight to beautiful Easter Island—or, as we like to call it, Fire Island. Silly me!”

  She reached inside Ana’s pocket and retrieved her cell phone without any resistance. Searching through the list of contacts, she found the name she was looking for and initiated a call.

  “Now then,” said Miss Carmen, turning the dialing phone to face the girls, “which one of you would like to inform Ret?”

  Chapter 11

  The Belly of the Lake

  It was like something out of a movie. As soon as Ret slipped both of his feet into the stone shoes, the world became one great blur. While Ret, Lionel, Mr. Coy, and Ishmael stood motionless, the entire earth flashed before their eyes as its motion was expedited exponentially. Like an accelerated flipbook, the sky alternated between day and night multiple times, while the indiscernible terrain shifted back and forth from land to sea even more frequently. It seemed, in a very literal sense, the shoes had flipped the fast-forward switch on the reel of time.

  After only a few seconds, the world resumed its normal pace. The four men took a moment to regain their bearings, each having been thrown a bit off balance from their high-speed voyage. They were facing a landscape of rolling hills, brown and dusty with scant vegetation. A warm sun combined with brisk air to create one of those confusing climates in which the body flirts with perspiration. Ret was about to write it off as a terribly bland place when he turned around and discovered an enormous lake in their immediate vicinity. Startled by such an unexpected sight, Ret took a few steps backwards. Suddenly remembering he was still wearing the shoes and realizing they were now moveable, Ret’s footing floundered, and he fell to the ground.

  “These were obviously not made for walking,” Ret concluded as he removed the shoes from his feet. Though they slipped off very easily, their long and thick spikes created a platform that would have presented trouble for even a life-long wearer of high-heeled shoes.

  “Let me carry those for you, sir,” Ishmael volunteered, graciously securing the bulky shoes in his pack.

  “Thanks, Ishmael,” said Ret, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. “So where are we?”

  “I can answer that,” Mr. Coy promised proudly. He whipped out his cell phone, pressed a few buttons, and held it up toward the sky. After a brief pause, he lowered the device and glared at it. Obviously unsatisfied, he repeated these steps. Still unhappy, he waved his phone all around, apparently searching for a signal. “Lousy service,” he grumbled, still gesticulating like a chorister.

  Finally, he cheered, “Aha! My satellite navigator says we are still in Peru, right next to—ah, yes,” he smiled, “right next to Lake Titicaca.” He chuckled, “You never forget a name like that.”

  Lionel, who had yet to say a word, was visibly engrossed in thought, trying to find a rational explanation for the unique form of travel in which they had just participated. At Mr. Coy’s pronouncement of their new location, Lionel took out his own phone. With a quizzical look yet urgent voice, he asked, “Coy, what date do you have?”

  In a debonair tone, Coy responded, “Oh, she’s a real fox: brown hair, hazel eyes; not the sharpest tool in the shed, but certainly the shiniest, if you know what I—”

  “No,” Lionel interrupted, “I mean what do you have for the date?”

  “Well,” Coy carried on, “I thought we’d start with a nice candlelit dinner and then maybe catch a flick.” Not amused, Lionel stared at the ground with strained patience. “It’s the twenty-sixth,” Coy groaned, finally answering the original question. “Lighten up, you stiff.”

  “Well soak me in brine and call me a pickle,” Lionel said, his face lighting up with awe. “I think we just experienced time travel!” The claim was greeted with stares of disbelief.

  “How do you figure?” Ishmael queried.

  “Instead of us coming here,” Lionel postulated, “here came to us!” His listeners’ puzzled looks requested explanation. “Think about it: we didn’t move an inch, right?” The others nodded in agreement. “But everything else moved, right?” Again, nods. “That’s because the earth is constantly in motion. It revolves around the sun while rotating about its axis while tilting back and forth—all at the same time. If we were to stand still in a vacuum, the earth would roll right along without us, which is precisely what just happened. The spot in the universe where we’re standing right now is the exact same spot where the Intihuatana Stone at Machu Picchu was just a few days ago.”

  “So it’s like a time-warp!” Ret deduced.

  “Yes, and it’s absolutely brilliant!” Lionel gloried, brimming with wonder now. “Of course, I have no idea how it was done—how we defied gravity or how time sped up—but still, we’re here, aren’t we?” That was a fact no one could dispute. “Now the question is why did the earth bring us here?”

  During the next few moments of pensive silence that followed, Mr. Coy, scratching his head and rubbing his stomach, asked, “So who’s got the pickle?”

  Lionel brought up an excellent point: while wondering the how would certainly lead to thought-provoking theories, to ponder instead the why would hopefully reveal life-changing truths. Why, of all places, were they sent to this place? Despite the list of unknowns, Ret took comfort in the bolstered likelihood that they had been on the rig
ht track all along. Now, the task was to ensure no deviation. He glanced at his scar; there was no sensation, as he half expected, and yet, as a result of the application of Lionel’s recent counsel, the same could be said of his leveling temper. Time travel, Ret concluded, ought to be proof enough.

  Just then, they heard rustling in the nearby brush. Ret’s heart jumped with both excitement and apprehension. Something had stirred within a patch of dense shrubbery and, now having mistakenly brought attention to itself, fell silent. Mr. Coy exchanged a soundless glance with Ishmael, as did Ret with Lionel. With suspended breath, the four of them slowly crept toward the bush in question, whose noiselessness screamed as loudly as sirens.

  Suddenly, a man jumped out from behind the brush. Without a word, he raced away from the quartet, who recoiled defensively at the emergence of a swift-footed person. Immediately, they engaged the runaway in hot pursuit, with Ret quickly taking the lead.

  “Wait!” Ret called out. “Don’t leave!”

  The fugitive flew down the hillside, headed straight for the lake. Reaching the water’s edge, he hopped into a small boat and frantically began paddling away from shore.

  “Wait!” Ret tried again. “Come back!” But the man persisted.

  Not willing to be outrun, Ret zoomed down the hillside. As he approached the lake, he leapt onto a wet rock and manipulated it to become a sort of trampoline, launching him forward. He soared well beyond the gentle waves lapping the shore and fell into the fleeing boat.

  Scared beyond his wits, the man forsook his failed flight by boat and prepared to abandon ship. Just before his dive, Ret caught hold of his leg and prevented his escape. The trembling man scrambled, rocking the boat violently, but Ret retained his grip.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ret coaxed, with a voice as soothing as balm. “I won’t hurt you. I’m your friend.”

  With a face still stricken with terror, the man ceased his unruliness and stared timidly at Ret. He saw in Ret’s eyes proof of the truthfulness of his words. Then, looking at Ret more closely, a feeling of relief washed over the man, as if he had initially mistaken Ret for someone else. With lingering caution, he picked up his oar and started to row further into the lake.