Island of the Sun

by Matthew J. Kirby

  ELEANOR WOKE BEFORE HER MOM DID. SHE EASED OUT OF bed and tiptoed across the cold floor to the tiny bathroom, and then stepped into its narrow coffin of a shower. The water never really got hot, but it was warm enough that she wasn’t miserable. As she rinsed off, she thought about the dream from the previous night, and the confrontation with her mom, and planned what she might say if her mom tried to bring it up again. When she came out of the bathroom, drying her hair, her mom was already awake, standing at the window, looking outside.

  “Morning,” her mom said.

  “Morning.”

  “It’s a neat little town, isn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Eleanor. She was happy to pretend the previous night hadn’t happened if that was her mom’s plan.

  “I guess I’ll shower, too.” Her mom moved past her, into the bathroom.

  Eleanor sighed and sat down on the sofa to wait. Before her mom came back out, someone knocked at their door.

  “Who is it?” Eleanor asked.

  “It’s Julian. My dad says to tell you Amaru is already here. We’ll be down in the lobby.” He sounded grumpy, but maybe that was because he hadn’t eaten dinner the night before.

  When her mom came out of the shower and dressed, they went down together and found that Isabela had apparently heard that they had all skipped dinner the previous night, and insisted that they eat some breakfast in the restaurant. The others were already seated at a table when Eleanor and her mom walked in.

  “She says it’s on the house,” Luke said. “She seems convinced we’ll starve to death out on the water without it.”

  “I told Amaru we wanted to try diving today,” Dr. Powers said. “He said he’d get the equipment and he’ll come back for us shortly.”

  “Very well,” her mom said, taking a seat. “How did everyone sleep?”

  “Fine,” Dr. Powers said. “The boys, too.”

  “As comfortable a couch as I’ve ever tossed and turned on,” Luke said.

  “The bed wasn’t bad either,” Betty said. “What about you and Eleanor?”

  “Good,” Eleanor said, waiting to see what her mom would add, if she would bring up the dream, and Eleanor speaking in alien, with the others at the table. She really didn’t need them thinking she was even more of a freak than they did already.

  “I woke once or twice,” her mom said. “But it was okay.” She gave Eleanor a look but said nothing more.

  Isabela brought out their plates, all laden with the same thing: rice stir-fried with beans and sausage, with a fried egg on top, and hot chocolate to drink.

  “We call this calentado,” their hostess said. “Enjoy.”

  They did. Every plate at the table was empty in a matter of minutes, and then they all went to wait in the lobby for Amaru. When he returned, they walked together out into the bright morning sun and a city that seemed a bit bleary somehow. Many vendors hadn’t yet set up their stalls or opened their storefronts, and those who had did not appear alert or happy about it. It was cold, too.

  Eleanor strolled up alongside Amaru. “So how old is your son?”

  “He is two years and four months old,” Amaru said, and the smile that appeared on his face was spontaneous and genuine. “His name is Lucio, and I think he might be a devil.”

  Eleanor laughed. “I think they’re supposed to be at that age, right?”

  “Very true,” he said. “And if he were not also an angel, I don’t know what I would do with myself. Or with him. He breaks my heart and puts it back together in the same day.” He closed his mouth and looked down at the ground suddenly.

  “What is it?” Eleanor asked.

  “It’s . . . I wonder what kind of world he will have when he grows up. Your mother probably has the same thought when she looks at you.”

  “You don’t want to know what my mom thinks when she looks at me.”

  “No?”

  “We haven’t exactly been . . . getting along.”

  “But I’m sure she still loves you and would do anything for you. As I would do for Lucio.”

  Eleanor knew he was right, even if she didn’t always agree with her mom.

  Amaru led them through town, back down to the pier. Aboard his pontoon boat, Eleanor saw just four diving tanks, with suits and masks and flippers.

  “That was all I could get,” he said. “The city has suspended diving tours.”

  “Suspended?” Dr. Powers asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “The Global Energy Trust is working on something in Titicaca, and they asked us to cease our tours.”

  “What about us?” Eleanor asked.

  Amaru winked. “We’ll be careful.”

  The boat pulled away from the dock and back onto the lake, its water a fluid and faceted gem in the morning sun. The return trip to Isla del Sol seemed to take longer than the trip to Copabanana had the previous night. Perhaps that was because Eleanor felt both anxious and eager. Rather than sit along the side of the boat, under its canopy, she stood at its bow, hands on the front rail, trying to sense the humming of the Concentrator. She felt nothing yet, but it was difficult with the engines roaring behind her, and the rush of the waves and water against the boat.

  Twenty minutes out from the dock, they reached the island’s first spit of land and continued along its length, past a few ruins both smaller than the Chin-kana and not as old in appearance, the central mountain ridge rising up behind them in grassy terraces.

  Eventually, they swung around a rocky, jagged point and pulled into the same bay as the day before, the one beneath the Titikala rock. Amaru steered the boat back to the docks and tied them off. No sign of the G.E.T., and they seemed to be the only ones on this part of the lake and island.

  “Okay,” he said. “Who will dive first?”

  “I will,” Eleanor said.

  “As will I,” her mother said.

  “So we can take one more,” Amaru said, looking around.

  “I’d rather not,” Betty said.

  “I’ll go,” Julian said, just a breath before Finn, who seemed about to say the same thing.

  “Neither of you are going without me,” Dr. Powers said. “Your mother would kill me.”

  “You’re going to worry about that now?” Finn said.

  Eleanor laughed at that, as did her mom and Betty.

  Then Luke stepped forward. “I’ll go.”

  “Good,” Amaru said. “We will start with a quick lesson in the shallow water, and then we go down deeper to a submerged temple. Many tourists enjoy seeing it.”

  Eleanor wondered if that meant they were as unlikely to find anything there as they had been up on the island.

  “Is this really safe?” Betty asked.

  “Yes,” Amaru said. “Some people say you need scuba certification, but for this dive . . .” He shook his head. “We won’t go too deep.”

  They helped him take all the diving equipment off the boat, along the pier, to the lake’s shore where the waves slapped the rocks. Eleanor had never been particularly frightened of water but also hadn’t had many opportunities to go swimming. Here, staring at the impenetrable surface of the cold lake, her breathing sharpened, her heartbeat kicked up, and the altitude magnified the effects of her fear on her body.

  “Let’s put on your suits,” Amaru said.

  Eleanor swallowed and turned away from the lake toward their guide.

  He explained that the suits he had for them were dry suits. “Wet suits are not warm enough. The deep lake water is below fifty degrees at all times.”

  Then he gave them each a thermal undersuit, which they took turns changing into using the privacy of the boat, before helping them each get into their outer suits. Eleanor took the smallest, which Amaru said would work even though it was a bit large on her. Its shell was made of blue rubber and smelled like it, with tight seals at the ankles, wrists, and neck. It was cumbersome to wear, particularly at her elbows and knees, where it was harder to bend, but she felt instantly warm inside it. After that, they pul
led on neoprene gloves, boots, and hoods, then strapped their flippers to their feet.

  “Here is a flashlight for each of you,” Amaru said. “Now, your diving tanks.”

  He helped each of them put on the backpacks that carried their diving cylinders, held to their bodies by a complicated set of straps that went over their shoulders and around their waists and legs.

  “It’s heavy,” Eleanor said, shifting the weight, her rubber suit squeaking.

  “About as heavy as you were riding on my back at three years old,” her mom said.

  Next, Amaru helped them put on their face masks and the breathing apparatus he called a regulator. It went into Eleanor’s mouth, stretching her lips.

  Amaru then turned on the air in their tanks. “Breathe,” he said. “Through your mouth, not your nose.”

  Eleanor’s mask covered her nose, so she couldn’t breathe out of it, and she quickly got used to the stale-tasting air coming out of the hose into her mouth.

  “Take full breaths,” Amaru said. “That is very important, especially at this altitude.” As they grew accustomed to the regulators, he put on his own equipment, and when he was finished, he watched them for a moment longer. His mask was different from theirs and covered his whole face. “Good,” he said, his voice now coming through an earpiece in Eleanor’s mask, sounding like a radio in the next room. “Are we ready to go into the water?”

  With the regulator in her mouth, Eleanor couldn’t say a word, but she gave a thumbs-up, and they all waddled forward, clumsy as penguins, lifting their knees and their flippered feet high. When Eleanor reached the water, she hesitated a moment and then took her first step into it.

  She couldn’t feel the water’s coldness, but she could sense its pressure against her suit, like hands climbing up her legs, and then her waist, with each step ahead.

  “Stop there,” Amaru said. “Now, lower yourself into the water. Go slow. I want you to put your head under the surface. But try to keep your breathing normal.”

  Eleanor bent at her knees and waist, letting the water’s hands climb up the rest of her, surrounding her up to her neck. Then she dunked her head under. And stopped breathing. She couldn’t help it. Through her mask, she could see the ground clearly beneath them, her mom next to her, bubbles rising up from around her face. But it was hard for Eleanor to override the instinct to not, under any circumstances, take a breath underwater. Moments went by. She felt a light-headedness setting in, and a burning urge in her lungs to gasp, which she finally did, involuntarily. But that seemed to get her over the threshold, and afterward, she found she could breathe normally. The hiss of the air through her regulator sounded loud in her ears, but over it she could still hear Amaru.

  “Very good,” he said. “Let’s stay here for a few minutes. Try moving around. Swim.”

  Now that Eleanor’s body had accepted that she could breathe underwater, she felt ready to go. She kicked her flippers and swam forward, into deeper water, and dove downward to the rocky, weedy bottom, where she pirouetted using her arms and looked back up at her mom. Both she and Luke were slowly stretching and kicking, moving about like whales.

  Eleanor pushed off toward them, slowed by the drag of her suit, but found the sensation thrilling. She was weightless. She was flying. Up, down, left, right, any direction she chose.

  “Good,” Amaru said. “You are all doing very well. Give me an okay sign if you feel ready to go down to the temple.”

  Eleanor formed a circle with her thumb and index finger and looked right through it at him. Her mom and Luke gave the same sign.

  “Okay,” Amaru said. “I will go slowly. Stay with me.”

  He spun in the water and kicked his flippers, swimming with his arms trailing at his sides. Eleanor adopted the same posture and worked to make the scissors movement of her legs smooth and even. Her mom swam up alongside her, and they shared a smile with their eyes and a thumbs-up.

  A short distance on, the bottom of the lake plunged away from them into darker water, and Amaru switched on his flashlight and guided them down into it. The fear Eleanor had first experienced at the lakeshore returned, an irrational and insistent dread that felt the same as a fear of snakes, or of spiders. Some deep warning painted on the walls in the caveman part of her brain.

  Movement at the edge of her eye caused her to flinch, but she realized it was only a brownish fish, and not a very large one. She kept her eyes on Amaru and the blade of his flashlight and made sure her mom stayed in her peripheral vision, which was limited by the edges of the diving mask. Before long, the tunnel of her vision and the narrow reach of her own flashlight tightened her claustrophobia, even as the pressure on her ears mounted.

  “We’re over sixty feet deep now,” Amaru said. “The temple is close.”

  Eleanor strained to see ahead into the murk. Then she tried to shift her awareness and listen for the hum of the Concentrator, wondering if at any moment she would see its dark outline loom out of the depths like black coral. She even stopped breathing for a couple of moments to find a space of silence in which to focus.

  “You okay, Eleanor?” Amaru asked, looking back toward her.

  She nodded and inhaled.

  “Try to keep your breathing even,” he said. “Very important at this altitude.”

  She gave him a thumbs-up.

  They resumed their dive, and a moment later, among the chaotic contours of rock and grasses along the bottom, Eleanor spotted a straight line, part of a large stone wall carved at right angles, taller than Uncle Luke, and half again as wide, stretching off into the depths.

  “You see that?” Amaru asked. “It goes on for two thousand feet.”

  Eleanor marveled at it as they swam along it, and soon they reached a wide flight of stone steps cutting through it. Amaru turned them upward, and at the top of the stairway they reached a flat terrace of paving stones.

  “This is the temple platform,” Amaru said, planting his feet on the ground as if standing on dry land. “It is six hundred and fifty feet long, and it is much older than the Inca. They don’t know who made it. There is a statue ahead. Come.”

  They followed him along the terrace, its even surface broken only by the occasional lake weed sprouting from the cracks between the stones. Eleanor wished she could see the whole of it, instead of just the small span their flashlights could illuminate. As they swam on, deeper into the complex, Eleanor thought perhaps she could feel something, down in her stomach. The hum. But then a face leaped at her out of the dark water, and she recoiled, thrashing in the water.

  “It is only a statue,” Amaru said. “Try to be calm.”

  Eleanor settled herself and saw that it was a statue, a face jutting out of a second wall made of stones cut with astonishing precision. The face was highly stylized, with bulging eyes, a prominent brow, and a long nose, and Eleanor felt foolish for reacting to it the way she had. It was actually one of many faces carved in the wall, each one unique.

  Amaru led them up a second stairway to an even higher terrace, and here they found the monolithic figure of a man twice as tall as Eleanor. His features were square, his arms and legs mere lines carved from a thick column of stone.

  “We do not know the name of this god,” Amaru said.

  The statue stared off into the lake with blank eyes, lifeless and forgotten, in that way more like bone than stone. As Eleanor studied it, she tried to imagine the people who had once worshipped here at this temple. How long ago had that been? Eleanor’s mind cast back through time, trying to imagine that place, now immersed, above the surface of the lake. This temple was buried, just as Amarok’s village had been buried, silent in their graves. That is, until the Concentrator had awoken them . . .

  Eleanor slowed her breathing, quieting the hiss of air in her ears, and closed her eyes, searching, listening, reaching.

  There it was.

  She felt the hum again, stronger than it had been at the base of the temple. She could sense its direction.

  “Are we
ready to return to the surface?” Amaru asked.

  Eleanor shook her head. She had no way of speaking to the others, so she tapped her mom’s shoulder to get her attention. Then she stretched her arms up like tree branches and pointed in the direction from which she felt the hum. Her mom and Luke both nodded, having apparently understood what the gestures meant. But Amaru did not.

  When Eleanor kicked forward, past the statue, in the direction of the Concentrator, he said, “Wait, stop, where are you going?”

  They could not answer, of course, and the three of them simply kept swimming.

  “Please,” he said. “Stay with me. It is dangerous.”

  But Eleanor ignored him. This was what she had come for, and she wasn’t turning back.

  CHAPTER

  12

  THE UNDENIABLE AND FAMILIAR HUM GREW STRONGER AS Eleanor let herself be drawn toward it. Her legs were tired from kicking her flippers, and she wished her flashlight could reach farther. The temple complex through which she swam had begun to feel haunted, the faces and statues its ghosts. Her mom and Luke stayed by her side, while an anxious-sounding Amaru swam slightly ahead, looking back at them, holding his hands out like a crossing guard.

  “Please!” he said. “Stop! We must go up.”

  Eleanor felt bad for him, but there wasn’t any way to explain the situation. She could only press on, and there wasn’t really anything he could do about it.

  The hum of the Concentrator shook her by the bones. She felt it in her teeth. She could almost see it rippling the water, and even distorting and bending the light from her flashlight. She followed it to the edge of the temple terrace, where the carved stones met a slope of rock. She guessed they stood at the roots of the Isla del Sol some distance away and above them. The humming called her upward, so she swam up the rocky incline.

  “Yes,” Amaru said. “This is good. Let’s go up.”

  But Eleanor wasn’t going all the way to the surface. Instead, the hum led her toward a large, anvil-shaped boulder that jutted out from the mountain just above them. Beneath it lay a shadow her flashlight could not fully scatter, a dark opening into the ground. She pointed at it, and her mom and Luke nodded.