by Lynn Wahl
“Don’t talk about that.” He was in my face again, so close I could feel his breath on my cheek. “It was an accident.”
“I told you not to let him—“
“I said not to talk about it!” His scream broke the silence around us, sending birds screeching up from the trees across the river.
I moved back, wiping his spit off my face. “Okay, jeez. Sorry,” I muttered.
He sighed and threw his hands up. “What is it about you?” he asked. “I try to be nice and then…” he trailed off, his hands falling back to his sides.
“Then what?” I asked.
“Are all the girls like you now? So forward and blunt?”
I frowned. “You think I’m forward and blunt?” I asked. I guess I was kind of blunt. “Um…probably not all girls, but yeah, we’re pretty out there now I guess. We don’t follow orders anymore just because they come from a man, if that’s what you’re asking.” I wondered what decade the newest girl on the island came from. William probably wouldn’t remember anyway so I didn’t bother asking.
He smirked. “You follow my orders.”
I shook my head. “No I don’t.”
His smile faded. “You should. You’ll live longer.”
“Like you care,” I said. Again with my stupid tongue.
He grabbed my vest. “Don’t say that,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to die. I never wanted anyone to die.”
I resisted the urge to pull away from him. “If that’s true, then why make us fight?”
He shook his head, his hair flying around his face. “I told you. We have to stop the Captain. If we don’t, he’ll just keep killing everyone anyway.” He pulled himself together, obviously struggling to get himself under control.
“Paige, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Please just promise me you’ll do what I say.”
“If what you tell me to do makes sense, then I’ll do it. I’m not going to promise anything.”
He looked like he was going to argue, but a wild cry from the edge of the river interrupted us. The other kids had arrived at the river. They all rushed in, not pausing to take off their shoes or their clothes.
“Why are they in such a hurry?” I asked.
William shrugged. “The spiders will be out any second now. The sun’s going down.”
A cry from the across the river reached my ears over the splashing. Just reaching the water’s edge was the boy who’d fallen in the trap. He was limping and gasping for air.
“William,” I said. “He’s not going to make it.”
William looked over at the boy. He flew straight across the river, hitting the boy and lifting him into the air in one motion. As their feet left the ground, three huge black shapes erupted from the tree line.
I gasped. The spiders were the size of Shetland ponies, with shiny black legs and a body sprinkled with pink spots. Their legs clicked together as they moved to the edge of the river. A strange hissing sound floated over the water.
William landed next to me and let the boy go.
“Thanks, William,” he said. “I thought I was a goner.” He hobbled off to the fire some of the kids were working on getting started. He didn’t seem to care at all that he’d almost just been eaten.
I looked at William, but he just shrugged before settling down next to the other kids.
When Jasmine came up carrying a bowl of rice and beans, cold, but smelling of onions and pepper, I took it with a grateful sigh.
“Remember what I said,” she said. “He does this with every new girl.”
She got up and walked away, not waiting for my answer. Which was good. Because I didn’t have one. I had no idea what I felt for William. One minute he was caring and friendly, the next, a raging lunatic. I couldn’t figure him out, and wasn’t sure if I really wanted to anyway.
I needed to focus on rescuing Jake and getting back to Earth. There wasn’t any room for anything else.
Eight: Jake
The smooth click of steel claws on the floor as the wolf stalked across the room was like music to my ears. I’d figured it out, conquered the power problem, and now my creatures, three wolves, two spiders, and ten mini dragonflies, flitted, scurried, and clawed their way around the room. I’d had some of the Captain’s men brought in to help with the assembly, and now they were busily working at churning out a whole army of spiders and wolves. I was working on a larger creature shaped more like a horse to carry people through the jungle. Cars wouldn’t work, too big, and rubber wheels would be subject to thorns and tears from sharp rocks.
I’d left the power plant I’d built for the Captain hours before with directions to replace the power source every three days. The Captain’s men didn’t seem to have any problem coming up with the fairies, and the Captain already had plans to try to get them to breed in captivity. The Captain’s men were still looking for unguarded waterfalls across the island for a hydroelectric plant, but the sites were hard to secure and the fae congregated around the falls, so that was out as a potential power source for awhile.
The Captain came up and hit me on the shoulder. “You did it, boy! Didn’t I tell you that you could?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I answered. I didn’t like it when the Captain was nice. It usually meant trouble for someone.
“Have you taught my men how to use the controls?” he asked.
I nodded again. The machines were voice activated with a number of different pre-programmed commands. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about the images I’d uploaded into the creatures’ target recognition software. I had a job to do, and I still had to sleep at night after all.
“Good. Keep building them and we should be ready to go by next week.” The Captain’s eyes shone with pleasure and greed.
“Ready to do what?” I asked. I cursed myself for opening my mouth, for asking, for caring even that little bit, but I couldn’t help myself.
The Captain eyed me for a few seconds while he chewed on his mustache. Finally he shrugged.
“The fae here are deathly allergic to iron. I’ll be using your inventions to route them out with minimal casualties and optimal damage. They won’t be able to kill your little toys and one touch by one of these things will make them sick enough they’ll wish they were dead. It’s a perfect system.”
“But why?” I asked. I didn’t think about blood and death. I’d created these things because I could and because they were beautiful.
“I’ve got plans for this island, boy. Plans that you’re going to help me achieve. This place is a goldmine of opportunity. What do you think the politicians and businessmen of Earth would do if they could see this place? If they could come here on vacation instead of the tropics? What would happen if I could supply some of Earth’s greatest minds with an unlimited supply of fairy dust? I’ll be the one to do it, and I’ll be a rich, rich man while I live here forever in comfort. Once the Fae are gone, there’s nothing to stop me from building resorts all over the island and harvesting as much dust as I can get my hands on.”
I didn’t say anything. It sounded awful. I’d seen the island on our trip to the power station, and it was a beautiful place: wild, untamed, absolutely pristine except for the small village on the beach near where the ship sat in the harbor. The Captain wanted to turn it into a resort. The thought made me sick, but I couldn’t do anything about it. If I wanted to stay here and keep building, I’d have to do it for the Captain. The Fae couldn’t get me the steel and iron I needed to build my inventions, and they would never let me capture their little cousins to power my inventions. From what I’d seen, the Captain had the only way off the island and back to Earth, so all the computers, metals, and technology I needed had to come through the Captain. I’d already asked why he just didn’t bring through tanks, but having to disassemble them and then put them back together wasn’t very efficient. He needed me. This went through my brain as quick as lightening, so I grinned.
“Sounds like a good plan, sir,” I said.
The Captain nodded and gestured at the machines. “They’re beautiful. Just what I wanted. You want to come see how they do?”
I hesitated, torn between wanting to see my inventions in action, and not wanting to see them tearing into living flesh. Finally, I shook my head. “No, I’ll stay and keep building. I want to finish the horse as soon as I can and start it on the assembly line. The island’s too big to be walking around everywhere.”
The Captain smiled and hit me on the shoulder again. “That’s my boy! Good thinking.” He pointed at the men where they stood with the machines they’d be running and pointed to the door.
I watched them go, still marveling over the smooth action of the spiders and the skulking grace of the wolves. So beautiful. So efficient. I put all thoughts of what that efficiency would be used for out of my head and went back to work.
Nine: Paige
“Oh my God! What is wrong with you?” I looked up from where I sat in a puddle of mud and river water. The water was cold, and I’d landed right on a rock with my tailbone. William stood over me, a smile twisting his lips.
“Got to keep you ready for anything,” he said. “Come with me.” He walked away.
I sat there, sputtering, until Jasmine came up with a chunk of meat on a stick and shoved it in my face. “Here. You’ll have to eat on the way. William’s in a hurry.”
I almost swatted the food out of Jasmine’s hands but then thought better of it and took it instead. The meat was hot, and I was hungry after yesterday’s hike and small dinner.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Jasmine shrugged. “William didn’t tell me,” she said.
I scowled and threw the empty stick in the fire as I walked by and stomped over to William where he stood waiting for me by the river. I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. He returned my stare with a small quirk of his lips. He picked me up and flew across the river, dropping me as soon as we were on the other side. He dashed ahead, disappearing into the trees.
I cursed and looked back, not wanting to leave the relative safety of the group of kids.
“Paige! Come on.” William’s voice called from the trees.
I sighed and trudged down the path. William was waiting for me a few hundred yards into the forest. He was eating a piece of fruit and flicked the remains at me as I walked up.
“You’re slow,” he said. “I’m not going to wait for you. If you don’t keep up, I’ll leave you here in the jungle.”
“Right,” I said. “Seems like a good way to keep me alive.”
He frowned. “Whatever. Let’s go.” He took off, walking so fast that I had to almost run to keep up. After only a few minutes my calves were burning and my bare feet felt like someone was smashing them with a sledgehammer.
“Where are we going?” I gasped out in between breathes.
William didn’t turn around. “Pyro reminded me that cutting only one of the lines won’t stop whatever the Captain’s planning. I need your help to destroy whatever new machine the Captain’s built.”
I stumbled to a halt. “What? No! Are you insane?”
He turned back on me, eyes narrowed in anger. “You said you’d do what I said.”
“No. I said I’d do what you said if it made sense. This is dangerous.”
William smiled, but the expression lacked any amusement at all. “Fine. I’ll just leave your friend Jake to rot with the Captain.”
I was so shocked, it felt like he’d punched me in the belly. “So what, you’re going to rescue him? You’re blackmailing me?”
He looked confused and then just shrugged. “Help me and I’ll help you try to get your friend back. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” I said.
“Good. Then let’s go.” He turned and started walking off. This time he gave up any pretense at all of walking and floated a few inches off the ground.
I wanted to just sit down and take a nap, but William’s offer was too hard to resist. I wasn’t sure why he was offering now when he’d been so against it before, but I wasn’t going to argue. I scurried after him in time to catch a piece of fruit he threw at me. I ate it and settled down to a long walk. I was sore and bruised from the hike the day before, but at least it wasn’t raining. When we stopped outside a large clearing, my feet were blistered and I was covered in bug bites.
William was unsympathetic. “The lines go into that building.” He pointed with a mud spattered, muscled arm.
I looked where he was pointing and felt a nasty shock. Beyond the outer ring of trees around the clearing, the undergrowth was trampled. The trees were splintered and broken. It looked like they were left where they’d fallen. At the center of the cleared space sat a newish looking stone building. The hardware on top of the building made it look like a power substation. I knew enough to know that that’s what it was but not enough to figure out how to destroy it. I decided to keep that info to myself. When William began to creep towards the building from the back, I followed, clumsy and awkward on my sore feet.
When we rounded the corner of the building and came upon two guards armed with black rifles, William didn’t hesitate. His sword was a silver blur in the air. Before I could turn away or stop him, the guards lay slumped at the door. A fine spray of blood painted the stone behind them. I stared at the dead men, my heart leaping and cartwheeling in my chest. They hadn’t even had a chance to fire their weapons.
“You killed them,” I said. The words fell like bricks out of my mouth into the silence.
William didn’t look at me, just pushed through the door behind the guards. His cry of surprise brought me rushing inside after him. In a cage in the center of the room lay what look liked hundreds of fairies. They were all emaciated, their wings shriveled and cracked against their pale, naked limbs. The cage was hooked up to lines that disappeared into the ceiling and hummed with power.
“Help me,” William said.
At the sound of his voice, a few of the fairies stirred. Their weak, mewling cries of pain made me sick to my stomach, but I grabbed William’s arm. “Don’t touch the cage,” I said.
He shook me off but didn’t reach out to touch the metal. He stared at the trapped fairies with rage. “I’m not leaving until they’re freed,” he hissed at me.
I nodded, trying to think. There had to be something in the metal itself that was pulling energy from the fairies. If I could just stretch the bars of the cage out, I should be able to pull the fairies out. Before I could chicken out, I shoved my staff through the bars and threw my weight into it. When the metal gave out with a soft squeal, I nearly fell on my face. Whatever the material was, it wasn’t steel. The fairies that were still well enough to fly streamed out of the box. The others crawled onto William’s outstretched hand and clung like shipwreck survivors. When all of the living fairies were out, the bottom of the cage was still drifted with bodies.
William stared at them, his face pale and set. When he snatched the staff away from me with one hand and began beating the cage and the connecting wires, I stepped back and didn’t say anything. The fairies clinging to his other arm were keening, and the others that had flown out came and clung to William’s hair and shoulders until he was wearing a living blanket of little blue and green and yellow fairies. He was screaming so loudly it hurt my ears in the small space.
While he destroyed as much of the machine as he could, I looked around the building. When I spotted a box of colored pencils and a pad of graph paper sitting on a table off in the corner, the sweat on my skin turned to ice water. I approached the table slowly, already knowing what I’d find. In the colored pencil box, only the red and blue pencil showed any use. The graph paper tablet was full of schematics, all neatly labeled and notated in Jake’s cramped, precise handwriting. The last page with writing on it contained an illustration of the cage behind me. The fairies in the cage were rendered as stick figures with frowny faces.
Before William could come up behind me and ask what I was doing, I shoved t
he tablet down the front of my pants. On an afterthought, I dropped the colored pencils in too. I hoped William wouldn’t notice the square outline across the front of my thighs, but when I turned around again, William was gone.
With a curse, I dashed out of the building after him only to see him disappearing over the treetops. I screamed at him to wait and sprinted back towards where we’d entered the clearing. Desperate, I searched the ground for some sign of the path we’d used, but beyond a faint scuff on the leaves, there was no trail. He’d left me and night was coming. I’d helped him, and he’d abandoned me in the middle of the jungle. One minute he wanted to keep me alive and make out with me, and the next he just disappeared.
“Jerk,” I said. The sound of my voice was the only noise in the clearing. Panicked and unsure what to do, I went back to the building and shut the door behind me. Maybe William would come back and fly me to safety. I should stay here where he could find me.
Yes, and maybe I’ll wake up and realize this was all a crazy, awful dream. I wandered around the small building, eyes on the wire mesh over the windows up near the ceiling. I tried not to imagine the spiders tearing through the screen to get at me and failed. Finally, exhausted, I sank back against the wall to wait for night.
A soft moan of sound woke me up a little later. Moonlight painted the inside of the concrete building a pale, silvery gray. I imagined scrabbling legs and clicking fangs in the deep shadows pooled in the corner, but when the moan came again, I pushed myself to my feet and tiptoed over to the broken cage. With gentle fingers, I pushed aside the drift of stiff, brittle bodies until I found the source of the noise. The fairy, smaller than the rest and colored a very dark purple, clung to my fingers with her hands and feet. The creature shuddered and cried out in pain as I pulled her free.
“Oh, you poor thing. I’m sorry,” I said as I brought the fairy over to the table where I’d found Jake’s tablet. The fairy huddled on the bare wood, one wing broken and hanging, both legs tucked up against her chest. I plucked at the shirt I wore under my vest, and finding a hole, ripped off a piece of material to cover the shivering fairy. I sat there, staring at the injured creature and felt like crying. I couldn’t imagine Jake being any part of this cruel torture, but I’d seen the proof of it. I pulled the tablet out, squinting to read it in the pale moonlight.
