by S.A. Bodeen
“So you think Captain Norm found it on an island?” asked Sarah.
“Maybe,” said Marco.
“But if he did,” mused Sarah, “why didn’t he open it?”
Marco shrugged. “Captain Norm seemed content with his life, don’t you think? I mean, look at the condition of his boat. Maybe he appreciated the trunk for what it was on the outside.”
Sarah frowned. “I don’t think so. He was a businessman. I mean, he didn’t even offer us a discount when we saw his boat wasn’t anything like the one in the brochure.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t have left the trunk alone because he was nice.” She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe he thought it was cursed. If he believed in mermaids, he might have believed other things too.”
“Why would he think that?” asked Marco.
“Maybe someone gave it to him, but with a warning.” She shrugged. “He obviously didn’t get into it. There had to be a reason.”
Marco stopped walking. “Do you think we should go back? What if Cash tries to open it? I don’t want her ruining it.”
Sarah’s eyes widened and she pointed ahead, to a trail that went into the dense trees. “Look.”
Marco turned. “Maybe that’s where your dad has been going.”
Sarah breathed out. “Only one way to find out.”
Marco led the way into the trees. The path was mostly dirt and not very wide, but seemed like it had been used a lot. Soon the trees thickened, shutting out some of the daylight, making it seem more like a rain forest with a cover above them.
“It’s way cooler in here,” commented Sarah.
“Yeah,” said Marco. He wondered where the bamboo was.
Sarah said, “I could whistle for Ahab. I mean, if he’s anywhere near us he’d hear and come running. Or at least bark.”
Marco shook his head. “No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He saw something shiny, half hidden in the dirt, and stooped to pick it up. A silver anchor, engraved with letters AHAB. He grinned and held it up. “Looks like we’re on the right path.” He handed it to Sarah.
Sarah squinted at the anchor. “Wait a second.”
“It’s Ahab’s. I saw it on his collar.” Marco didn’t understand why she was acting so skeptical. “Your dad must have come this way with the dog.”
Sarah shook her head. “The one Ahab has on is misspelled, with two b’s. Captain Norm told me Ahab had lost the one with the correct spelling”—she brandished the tag—“on an island.” She looked around. “They were here before. On this island.”
A soft chuffing made Marco freeze. “Did you hear that?
Sarah said, “Hear what?”
Marco lifted a finger to his lips, then jabbed it in the air to his left.
The chuffing grew louder.
Marco grabbed Sarah’s arm and pulled her behind a tree with him. His heart pounded as they crouched there, listening as the chuffing turned into a loud crunching.
“Sounds like something is eating something,” whispered Sarah.
The sound stopped. Marco put a finger to his lips. Sarah nodded.
Suddenly, there was a rush of leaves and a flash of gray. The ground shook so hard that they each grabbed a tree to keep their balance. A large something charged past them, gone before they could see what it was.
They brushed themselves off and then stepped out onto the path. “What was that?” Marco was panting, and his hands trembled.
Sarah’s face was pale. “I don’t know.” She looked one way, then the other. “I don’t even know which way it went.”
Marco scratched his head. “Do we keep going?”
“Or should we go back?” asked Sarah.
Marco sighed. They had to find John and Nacho, but what were they getting themselves into? “I don’t know.”
Sarah still had the dog tag in her hand. She pinched it between two fingers and held it up. “Should we flip for it?”
Marco nodded. “Heads we go back and just wait for them to return. Tails we keep going.”
Sarah tossed the tag and caught it, then flipped it onto the back of her wrist. She slowly lifted her hand, revealing the blank side. She raised her eyebrows. “Looks like we keep going.”
Marco swallowed, wondering what they were going to find as they headed farther into the trees.
11
Sarah followed Marco as he walked slowly along the path. She glanced furtively behind her every now and then, hoping nothing was going to creep up on them. She had no idea what had run by them, but that thing was big. Monstrous. She definitely didn’t want to encounter it on this narrow path. “Do you think we’re going the right way?”
Marco didn’t turn around, but said, “I don’t even know what the right way is.”
Sarah said, “The right way is the way that will find my dad and Nacho and Ahab.” Thinking of the dog made her wonder about Captain Norm. Obviously he had been to this island before. Was this the island he meant to take them to? “Do you think that…”
Marco called back over his shoulder, “What?”
“If this is the island Captain Norm meant to take us to, it would be on his float plan or whatever, right?” Sarah stumbled over a root and caught herself before she fell.
“Yeah, I guess,” said Marco.
“So someone should be coming to rescue us, right?” She hoped Marco agreed, because it would make her feel better.
But his shoulders went up and down. “The whole thing seems sketchy to me. Like the regular rules of the world don’t apply.”
Sarah didn’t say anything else as she kept on following him. She gazed around the area, checking for any signs that her dad might have come that way. Then Marco stopped and she ran right into him, hitting her mouth on his shoulder. “Ow.” She put a hand up to her lip.
He set a hand on a tree to keep his balance and looked at her. “You okay?”
She moved her hand and pointed at her lip. “Am I bleeding?”
Marco squinted at where she pointed. “Don’t think so. But check that out.” He looked ahead of him.
The end of the path split into a V.
“Which way?” she asked.
Marco put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I have no clue.”
Sarah heard something. “Do you hear that?” The sound she strained to hear grew louder and louder, until there was no doubt.
“Yeah, I hear it.” Marco tilted his head to the side a bit and scrunched up his forehead. “Is that…?”
“Birds,” said Sarah. “It totally sounds like birds.” She brushed by Marco and headed down the left-hand trail, toward the cacophony of sharp squawks and piercing whistles and singsong-ish tweets.
Marco called after her, “Hey, slow down! I think we should be careful.”
But Sarah kept going, moving as fast as she could along the trail, dodging tree branches and pushing aside vines.
Marco was only a few steps behind her. “Sarah, wait! Please slow down!”
But Sarah didn’t want to slow down. Her heart pounded, sure that her dad must have come the same way, heard the same noises she was hearing now. The path grew lighter, and she began to jog toward the opening, thinking that her dad could be just ahead, waiting for her and—
The ground suddenly disappeared from under her. She was falling.
Sarah screamed and clutched for a tree limb. Her hand scraped down the rough surface until it hit a notch. She reached up her other hand and clung to the branch, hanging there by outstretched arms, dangling over nothing but empty air. “Marco!’ she screeched.
“Hang on!” Marco appeared on the edge of the cliff. His eyes were huge and his mouth hung open. His gaze went down, down, down, then snapped back up to her. “Whatever you do, do not look down.”
Sarah twisted her head to the side and looked down. She screamed again.
“I told you not to look down!” yelled Marco.
Sarah was a few feet off the abrupt edge of a rocky cliff, with the closest ground more than fifty feet below. “He
lp!”
“Hang on,” said Marco. He gingerly sidestepped to the edge, then got a grip on a thick tree branch with one hand as he reached out the other. “Just go hand over hand, see if you can move sideways.”
Sarah scrunched her eyes shut. Her heart was pounding out of her chest as she panted, struggling to hang on. “I can’t! I can’t!”
“Sarah! Look at me.”
His voice was so forceful that she had to do as he said. Marco held out his free hand as far as it would go, which was about three feet from Sarah. “You can do this. You only have to go this far, then I’ll grab you, okay?”
She started to look down.
He yelled, “And quit looking down!”
Her gaze snapped back to him.
Marco nodded, his brown eyes huge. “That’s it. Just keep looking at me.” His face was red. He wiped some sweat off his forehead, then rubbed his hand on his shorts. “Okay, so just do what I tell you. Take your right hand and slide it over to your left hand.”
“Okay.” Sarah grunted as she slid her hand.
“Now slide your left hand over toward me as much as you can.”
“It’s on the notch!” Sarah said.
“You’ll have to lift it a little.”
Sarah held her breath, sure she would lose her grip. But her hand slid over the notch, toward the cliff and Marco and safety. She breathed out.
“Now slide your right hand over to the other one.”
Sarah inched her way over, all the while feeling her arms and shoulders begin to burn. She had set the pull-up record for girls at her school, but hanging from a bar with a mat a few feet underneath was an entirely different thing from hanging off a cliff. The lower half of her body dangled, and she tried to hold it steady. “I can’t hold on anymore.”
“Yes you can! Sarah, look at me.” Marco held out his hand.
Only a foot remained of the gap between them, and Sarah continued to painstakingly slide one hand, then the other. Tears blurred her vision. Unable to wipe them away, she felt them dripping down her face.
“That’s it,” said Marco. “You got this. Almost there!”
Sarah slid one more time and looked up.
Marco’s hand was right there. “Okay, on three you’re going to reach out your left hand to me as you try and push away with your right arm, okay?”
Sarah couldn’t even nod, but managed to squeak out an okay.
“One,” said Marco. “Two. Three!”
Sarah didn’t move. She was frozen.
Marco let out a heavy breath. “You have to let go or it won’t work.”
“I’m scared!” she yelled.
“Either we do this now or you hang there until you get too tired to hold on.”
“Fine!”
“Okay,” said Marco. “On three. One. Two. Three!”
With a cry, Sarah pushed off with her right arm as she let go and reached out with her left. She felt the squeeze as Marco’s hand clamped down on her wrist. Her right hand let go of the branch, and she was falling. She screamed, but then another strong hand joined the first around her left wrist, and she felt like her entire hand was being wrenched off as she hung by Marco’s grip, her knees bumping against the side of the cliff.
“Climb!” he yelled.
She put her left foot on a slight protrusion in the cliff and felt herself rise a bit. She found another for her right foot, and then suddenly she was up, her head and shoulders above the edge of the cliff.
Marco had ahold of her wrist with both his hands, and his feet were propped against a tree trunk, leaning back as he held on to her. His face was contorted and he grunted as he tried to pull her up.
She bent a leg and got it over the edge, then let him pull her the rest of the way up. She landed facedown. Safe.
Sarah lay there for a moment, panting into the dirt. When she finally caught her breath, she lifted her head. Marco leaned back against the tree trunk, rubbing his hands.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “You?”
She sat up, then scooted farther away from the edge of the cliff. Her palms were red and scraped, as were her knees, but otherwise she seemed to be in one piece.
They sat in silence for a few minutes as she gently blew on her palms to help the stinging. She let out a deep breath and said, “I think you just saved my life.”
He shrugged. “I figure I would have gotten in a lot of trouble if I’d let you fall off a cliff. Not exactly stepbrother of the year.”
She grinned. “Well, thanks.”
Suddenly, Marco’s eyes narrowed and he pointed behind her.
She whirled in time to see a red bird fly in front of them, even with the edge of the cliff, so she could get a good look at it. Four wings. No beak. Mouth full of teeth. She gasped. “Your bird!”
Marco crawled over to the edge with her and they lay shoulder to shoulder on their bellies, heads at the cliff’s edge, staring downward.
Sarah sucked in a breath, unable to speak as she took in the sights and sounds coming up from the open valley below.
Marco asked exactly what she was thinking, “Where in the world are we?”
12
Marco was still breathing hard from his rescue of Sarah; his heart raced, maybe from the exertion, or maybe from what he saw from their perch high on the cliff.
A green valley spread below them, bordered on three sides by steep, rocky walls. The far end, about half a mile away, seemed to narrow and open onto the beach, but Marco couldn’t tell for sure. Down deep, he wasn’t sure if any of what he was seeing was even real.
Creatures filled the valley—birds and animals—but types he’d never seen anywhere. He watched a red bird like the one he’d seen fly past. A smaller, purple one buzzed like a bee as it swooped up and over them, coming close and hovering just a foot in front of them. Instead of feathers, the bird’s tail end brandished a yellow-and-black-striped stinger.
“I hate bees!” Sarah scrambled up on her knees.
“Stay still,” whispered Marco.
Sarah froze.
The bird buzzed closer, until it was inches from Sarah’s face. Sarah sucked in a breath and scrunched her eyes shut. The bird darted to the side a few feet, then back in front of Sarah.
Marco wondered whether he should try and shoo it away. But then he took another look at the stinger and just crossed his fingers that it would leave on its own. After a few more seconds, the thing seemed to lose interest and flew away, probably in search of something better.
“It’s gone,” said Marco.
Sarah blew out the breath she’d been holding. “Did you see that bird? It had a stinger!”
“I know,” said Marco.
“Look!” Sarah pointed across the valley. Smugly, she said, “My kangaroo.”
Marco watched as the kangaroo hopped, the large lion’s paws not seeming to slow it down. “Whoa.” His gaze drifted to another animal not far from it. With thick gray skin like armor and a blocky, muscular rear end, it resembled a rhino from the back. “A rhino!”
Then the creature turned to the side and revealed its profile.
“Not a rhino,” said Sarah.
Instead of a horn on its snout, the horn came out of its forehead.
“It’s like a … a … rhinocorn,” said Sarah.
Marco whispered, “How is that possible?”
“How is that bird with the stinger possible? Or that kangaroo?” Sarah said. “This is like the Island of Misfit Toys. Only they’re animals.”
“I wish Nacho could see this,” said Marco.
“He would probably know the answer to all of this,” said Sarah.
Marco grinned at her. “Probably.” He turned back to watch the rhinocorn graze. “There must be a way down there. If that was what ran past us on the path, there must be a fast way down there.”
As they watched, a large black cat with an odd tuft of scarlet hair on its chin lowered itself to the ground behind a large rock. The feline’s red tail began
swishing as it stared at a squirrel with a beaver’s tail. “Some of those things look hungry,” said Sarah. “I do not want to go down there.”
Marco gestured into the open space in front of them. “Well, we can’t go any farther this way.”
Sarah said, “Let’s go back to the V in the path and take the other way.”
“Okay,” said Marco. He hoped they would find a way to get down to the valley. He wasn’t sure what would happen once they got there, but he felt that it might put them closer to finding his brother and Sarah’s dad.
“But I’m not going down there. I mean, if the path looks like it starts leading toward those things, I’m not going.” Sarah looked like she was about to cry again.
Marco nodded. Reluctantly, he left his perch and followed Sarah back down the path. After being in the bright sun at the edge of the cliff, Marco found the light under the cover of the trees especially dim. He looked around, wary for any other creatures that may have found their way into the trees.
Sarah asked, “Do you think those animals have something to do with the Curator?”
“Maybe,” replied Marco. But he hoped they would not find out the answer anytime soon. They reached the V. “This is it,” said Marco. He rubbed his cheek on his shoulder to soak up some of the sweat on his face. He took a long, lingering look at the path they’d taken from their camp.
Sarah followed his gaze and said, “We could go back to the beach. Maybe they made it back and are wondering where we are.” She sounded more optimistic than he felt. “Dad’s probably mad that we came looking for him.”
Marco pulled a bottle of water out of the canvas bag and handed it to Sarah, then pulled out another. Without thinking, he put the bottle to his face, hoping to cool off; he was disappointed to find the plastic just as hot as he was. Would he ever drink cold water again? He unscrewed the top and took a long, unpleasantly warm swig. At least it was wet. He stuffed the bottle back in the bag. “Ready?”
Sarah nodded. “You first.”
That path looked much the same as the first, except that they seemed to be descending the entire time. The area grew lighter more quickly than it had on the other path. Soon, they emerged from the trees, facing a rock wall that rose about fifty feet above them.
