Oracle--Fire Island

by C. W. Trisef

  When the prisoners had been cuffed, another grunt sent the entire party into a brisk march.

  “What’d you do that for?” Lionel quietly asked, glancing back at the pack hidden in the grass.

  “We don’t want any of those things falling into the wrong hands,” Ishmael explained with gravity.

  Like the queue to board the Ark, the entourage fell into ranks, parading two-by-two in a long, unbroken line. The soldiers looked nothing like the natives at Lake Titicaca. These men were tall and strong, with broad shoulders and sturdy legs. Their fair skin and bright features reminded Ret of the soldiers in Sunken Earth, but the resemblance stopped there, as these guards were not nearly as advanced militarily. Although their blades and battleaxes were inarguably lethal, they also had been crudely smithed. What’s more, their armor, though consisting of all the typical pieces, had been forged from a most nontraditional material—dark and claylike, as if once a sooty, bubbly plaster. It was the same pumice-like material, in fact, that composed the clamps that had been clasped over their hands

  Ret wondered if the guard had fettered him too tightly, so hot and uncomfortable did his hands feel. Suddenly, the rock around Ret’s hands began to crack like the splintering shell of a hatching egg. Smoke and sparks were expelled through the fissures, emissions from the combustion within. Chunks of fragmented rock broke away and fell to the ground, where they were trampled under the heavy feet of the advancing brigade. As if holding a firework, Ret was reminded of his very similar experience with the Intihuatana Stone.

  It was in this moment when Ret realized why the material of the clamps and armor looked familiar to him: it was the same as the rock that Mr. Coy had retrieved from Stone’s trunk and the sliver that Lionel had sent to him—the same volcanic rock that reacted with Ret’s hand.

  When the final pieces had peeled away, Ret was perplexed to find that his left hand still felt strange. During his attempt to learn the source of the poignant numbness, he discovered something shiny in his palm.

  “My scar!” he cried. “My scar!”

  “Is it illuminated?” Coy asked eagerly.

  “Yes!” Ret cheered. “Finally!”

  “Then will you take care of these guys already, Ret?” Mr. Coy appealed quietly, the guards shuffling them forward. Ret knew what he was referring to; he himself had thought to call upon his powers to level their antagonists but decided against doing so when it became clear that the guards’ objective was merely custody and not brutality.

  “Let’s see what they intend to do with us first,” Ret replied, to Mr. Coy’s displeasure.

  Still, Ret wasn’t opposed to the idea of practicing his newly-acquired firemanship skills on their less-than-hospitable captors. With a quick twirl of his finger, he spun the helmet of one of the guards in front of them until it sat on his head backwards, covering his face. Confused, the guard muttered a few grunts before setting it aright. Then Ret sent the same guard’s head crashing into that of his neighbor, who shrugged it off with a displeased grunt.

  Enjoying the show, Mr. Coy suggested, “Make him do the Macarena!”

  Obeying the whims of Ret, the guard’s arms extended in front of him as his hips caught the rhythm of the Spanish salsa. The guard next to him glared at his dancing neighbor with a look of consternation, which only grew when the backsides of the two guards in front of him erupted in flames (thanks to Ret). Hastily, the bewildered guard began swatting the guards’ burning derrieres, prompting them to turn around, only to see one of their cronies dancing. Since Ret had cut off the fuel to their posterior blaze, they, too, caught on to the groove, which spread through the entire platoon like wildfire.

  “Does anyone know what the date is?” Lionel put forth when the entertainment had died down. He was curious to know where in the past or future their most recent bout with time travel had taken them.

  “Hold on,” said Coy, “I’ll ask.” His hands bound, he stuck his head in the gap between the shoulders of the two stern guards marching in front of him. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Coy greeted politely, “but do either of you happen to know what day it is?”

  The guards moaned angrily and moved closer together to snuff out Mr. Coy.

  “Is that what you’d call the cold shoulder?” Ishmael quipped.

  “I got it,” Ret pledged, retrieving his phone from his pocket since he was the only one with a free hand. “It looks like it took us to the past, right where we left off—so back to the present, then…I guess.”

  “Oh, good,” Mr. Coy sighed with relief. “Back at the lake, I was afraid I’d missed the season finale of my favorite soap.”

  True to its ancestral name, Easter Island really was the navel of the world—insofar as Ret could tell, of course. In every direction, the boundless belly of the Pacific Ocean stretched out of sight, its shimmering waters rolling infinitely toward the nearest inhabited landmass, more than a thousand miles away. Still, it was not exactly a small island; in fact, it was many times larger than the tiny Bahamian island of Bimini, in whose waters once rested the submerged road to Sunken Earth. Easter Island was triangular in shape, with a coastline of rough, black rocks. Hilly yet flat, the ground was covered in little more than grass and gravel.

  Coinciding with the chief’s record, Easter Island looked overwhelmingly exhausted—overused and underappreciated. A casualty of deforestation and subsequent erosion, the terrain seemed almost incapable of supporting life. There were no people—not even any animals or birds. Yet, there was ample evidence of former residents, which made the sad story of Easter Island, now all but dead, all the more tragic.

  “Heads up,” Mr. Coy announced.

  He was right—literally. Up ahead, as the company trekked deeper inland, sat a row of fifteen giant statues. They were the most bizarre objects Ret had ever seen. Instead of being the sculpted representation of some famous person or iconic creature, each of these behemoth busts simply featured a huge head on an even bigger torso. The shadow of each figure’s overhanging forehead created the illusion of eyeballs in sunken sockets. A well-defined nose protruded above small but visible lips. Then, the unusually large and rectangular head gave way to the equally square body. A pair of skinny, handless arms flanked each side, the bare chest ending in a slightly rounded belly. Stopping at the waist, the stone effigies stood in a line atop a raised pedestal, a couple feet high and long enough to accommodate a family of fifteen. Some measuring nearly three dozen feet in height, the monstrous monoliths loomed ominously above the gawking spectators they dwarfed below.

  “What are those?” Ret wondered with awe.

  “They’re called moai,” answered Lionel.

  “Relatives of yours?” Coy jabbed.

  “No,” Lionel returned definitively, “they’re the chief’s relatives. Weren’t you listening at the lake?” Mr. Coy stuck out his tongue at Lionel’s omniscience. “Actually, the chief’s lore is spot-on with modern theory. These statues,” Lionel explained, “are thought to be the deified ancestors of the people who once lived here. They believed in a sort of symbiotic relationship with their dead, which is why most of the moai stand with their backs to the sea, as the chief pointed out. They’re made out of tuff—carved right out of the hardened ash and cinders of the island’s volcanic rock. But no one really knows why they built them or how they transported them.”

  “Except for the chief,” Ret astutely observed, not a whit behind.

  “Except for the chief,” Lionel confirmed with a pleased grin.

  “So why, then, is this place called Easter Island?” Ishmael asked.

  “Because it was discovered by explorers on Easter Sunday,” Lionel educated.

  “Actually,” theorized Mr. Coy, who had been derisively flapping his mouth to imitate Lionel, the know-it-all, “it’s because those statues are really giant chocolate bunnies.”

  “That’s it!” Ret exclaimed, as if decoding a grand mystery.

  “Bunnies?” Coy questioned.

  “The moai!” Ret clapped. �
��That’s my scar!” He held out his hand for the others to confirm the scar.

  “Just as we thought all along,” Mr. Coy asserted.

  Ret shot him a disbelieving glare and stated, reminding him, “Squatting gummy bear man?” Coy smiled broadly.

  “I thought you said they were chocolate?” Ishmael asked, a little disappointed.

  The band pushed onward, passing many more collections of moai as they hiked across the island. Upon reaching a hilltop, Ret swept the landscape with a panoramic gaze and spotted hundreds of moai statues, dotting the scenery like freckles. Some were erect, others had been toppled, and scores were strewn around the quarry where they had been chiseled but abandoned en route to their destinations. Whenever they passed a moai that had fallen, Ret utilized his power over its volcanic consistency to return it to an upright position.

  It was with a common feeling of dread that the group reacted to a sudden shaking of the ground. Though the quaking lasted but a few seconds, the guards faltered with fear while their hostages were forced to no longer ignore a menacing monster: the island’s enormous volcano. It was truly a mammoth volcano, its magnitude perhaps compounded by the petite size of the island. Towering above the sea, it dominated the crown of the island’s triangular shape. As tall as it was wide, its barren slopes bore evidence of frequent rockslides. From its mouth fumed wispy plumes of smoke, harbingers of impending pyroclastic flow. It seemed to seethe with energy and breathe with power.

  But the volcano was every bit as foreboding as it was majestic. It had come to be a representation of pure terror—a symbol of certain death by compulsory means. To look into its swirling steam was to look into the shroud that befogged the eyes of the lake people. Yet, it was not the fountain of fire itself that those island dwellers feared, at whose base they had lived in peace for generations. No, their horror found its genesis in the flames of passion, lit and fanned by the men with flaming hair. It was the unflinching desires of these wicked men—their willingness to sacrifice anything (and anyone) but their own will—that had cursed the volcano and plagued a society. Fire Island teemed not with the bones of dead men but with the mistakes of marked men, who, trembling at every tremor, seemed grimly aware that, in the last, their uncooled passion would erupt in their own doom.

  “Would you mind giving me a hand?” Mr. Coy importuned Ret, holding out his bound wrists. By sheer mind power, Ret engaged Mr. Coy’s stone cuffs in combustion until they completed disintegrated. “Thanks.” Then, reaching into his pocket, Mr. Coy added, “You might need this.”

  Mr. Coy rolled the Oracle into Ret’s promptly-cupped hands. It took him a bit by surprise, suddenly seeing an object that meant so much to him despite such minimal interaction with it. Just by holding it, the ethereal sphere filled Ret with joy—a mixture of peaceful assurance and energizing hope—a feeling that contrasted starkly against the gruesome backdrop of the volcano. Here was a thing, so small and unassuming, that nevertheless dictated others’ destinies and fueled Ret’s aspirations. And yet, it did not enforce its designs on anyone or anything; rather, it waited—it tarried—until the season and the setting and the souls were right. In his innocent vigor, Ret reflected, he had tried his mightiest to speed things up, racking his brain and exhausting his strength to find the elements and fill the Oracle. But, like an elusive butterfly, only when he had calmed his tenacious mind and stilled his overzealous heart, did the fluttering gem alight upon him.

  “Good luck in there,” said Coy supportively, motioning to the volcano. Ret looked at Mr. Coy’s undaunted face. The braveness of his tempered smile transferred to Ret’s bosom as the possibility of finding the next element inside the volcano’s core became certain reality. For a moment, Ret wished Mr. Coy could accompany him on whatever lie ahead but knew that was out of the question.

  Unbeknownst to the two of them, Lionel had not taken his eyes off the Oracle ever since it was unveiled by Mr. Coy. Given how stubbornly Mr. Coy had refused to show the artifact to Lionel when he and Ret visited the Manor (or the fence, at least) a few months ago, Lionel postulated that he might never see the most intriguing piece of the growing equation. No wonder his face now beamed with elation, his eyes wide and lit like a child in a toy store. Undoubtedly spurred by the inquisitive and scientific side of him, Lionel ogled the orb with full-blown envy, not unlike his appearance during the queasy climax of Ret’s tour of the power plant on that same day.

  Meanwhile, Ishmael was staring at Lionel as ardently as Lionel was the Oracle. Lionel’s preoccupied, open-mouthed, and almost worshipful glaring caused Ishmael to feel very uncomfortable. As if personally threatened, Ishmael made a mental note to always view Lionel through a lens of suspicion.

  In time, their route across the island merged with the volcano’s trail, whose end would take them to the summit. After only a few hundred yards, the entire party was joined by perspiration and panting, so steep was the path that scaled the slopes. Onward and upward they climbed, pausing only to take cover during rumblings from the volcano’s viscera.

  “You don’t look so hot,” Mr. Coy commented, visually assessing Lionel’s abnormal condition.

  “Phew!” Lionel yelled during his brief pause between breaths, wiping his shirt sleeve across his sweat-laden forehead. “This adventure is aging me!” It was no lie: he looked tired and weak, his voice wheezy and steps wobbly. Skin pale and eyes flushed, his exhaustion seemed to bring out the gray in his otherwise dark hair. “I suppose all those days at the office are starting to catch up with me.”

  Lucky for Lionel, they reached the summit a few minutes later. Ret had just helped Lionel sit down to catch his breath when he heard someone shout his name.

  “Ret!”

  He knew the voice. He turned around to find Paige, next to Pauline and Ana, a little further along the rim of the volcano’s crater. They were still tied up, but newfound hope seemed to rejuvenate Paige at the sight of Ret. He was relieved to see the girls, especially Paige, and any lingering feelings of prior misunderstanding melted away immediately.

  Rather instinctively, Ret started to run to the girls but was impeded when a pair of swords lunged in front of him, crossing impassably with a sharp clang.

  “Cool it, lover boy,” Miss Carmen ridiculed, appearing on the other side of the swords. Then Bubba stepped next to her.

  “Remember me?” he sneered. “We’re glad you could join our little party so quickly.” Apparently, Miss Carmen had placed her call to Ret via Ana’s phone just moments earlier.

  Not amused, Ret demanded, “What do you want with us?”

  “We want you,” Miss Carmen answered, as if speaking to a child, “to jump in here.” She strode over to the edge of the volcano’s rim and pointed into the smoking crater.

  “Jump?” Ret gulped. “In there?”

  “Jump, dive, cannonball—whatever you want to do,” Bubba sighed impatiently, “just as long as you get in there.”

  “And, once I’m down there,” said Ret, “then what do I do?”

  “Well, if you don’t die instantly from the searing heat,” said Bubba casually, “feel free to swim around—you know, do a couple laps, practice your backstroke, whatever floats your boat.”

  “So you need me to…die?” Ret wanted to clarify.

  “This island’s only big enough for one man with bright-colored hair,” Miss Carmen hissed poisonously, giving Bubba a kiss, “and I prefer redheads.”

  As if mulling over the proposition put forth by his enemies, Ret became enveloped in thought. He cast his eyes about the setting: the girls held hostage in front of him, with the men held prisoner behind him; his antagonistic couple beguiling him, surrounded by the listless guards waiting to be told what to do; the volatile volcano at his side. Amid such disorder, Ret enjoyed a brief moment of clarity. Besides the stifling heat, Ret could feel the immense power of the raging fire within the volcano’s core. With swelling confidence and inflamed resolve, he could feel the element near. He sensed the volcano wanted him to retrieve it and
would provide a way to that end. Although unsure how, he at least knew what he needed to do.

  “Okay,” Ret said brightly, complying with the terms.

  “Really?” asked Bubba incredulously.

  Then Ret stipulated, “Under one condition: you free my friends—all of them—,” he added with emphasis, “as soon as I jump in.”

  “Done!” Miss Carmen gloried. “Prepare the sacrifice!”

  “No, Ret!” Paige screamed.

  “They can’t be trusted!” yelled Pauline.

  Guards began to escort Ret to the plank-like platform, which extended beyond the rim in the fashion of a short pier. With the guards preoccupied, Mr. Coy and Ishmael hurried over to the girls to comfort them.

  “It’s okay,” Mr. Coy reassured them.

  “Okay? Okay?” Pauline balked. “Ret’s about to jump inside an active volcano, and it’s okay?”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Mr. Coy persisted. “Trust him.”

  Ret could hear his kin’s frantic conversation as the guards hauled him ever closer to the edge of the rim. Glancing over his shoulder, with his hands behind his back, he flashed his gleaming scar in their direction, hoping it would quiet their fears.

  Registering the scar, Pauline observed cynically, “So my boy’s fate now depends on this Oracle stuff, does it?”

  “Then it’s a good thing I trust it,” Paige responded, leaning lovingly into the arm of the frenzied mother.

  Despite her whimpering, Pauline remained quiet for several moments, calmed by Paige’s confidence as they watched Ret prepare for his plunge. Then, noticing how Mr. Coy was the only one not enchained, Pauline asked, “Why aren’t you tied up?”

  The beans spilled, a nearby guard promptly came and secured a fresh clamp over Mr. Coy’s hands once again.

  “Thanks,” said Coy sarcastically, further straining an already stressed relationship.