by S. S. Taylor
I shivered just thinking about it, then shook my head, trying to clear it. Of course she couldn’t hear my thoughts. I kept staring at her.
“Are you okay?” She pushed a stray curl back into her ponytail and leaned forward, peering at me quizzically.
“I got worried,” she said, talking too fast. “I didn’t know where you were. I woke up and you were gone and I thought something had happened to you. I started hiking up the volcano a bit, to see if I could find you, and I couldn’t see you anywhere.”
I found my voice then. “I’m sorry, Sukey. I went for a swim and—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She waved my explanation away. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is, well, look. Look!”
She took me by the arm and turned me around, pointing at the volcano.
Just over the top of the mountain, a black smudge against the bright blue sky, was a long, twisting tail of smoke.
She squeezed my arm so hard it hurt. “There’s someone else on the island!”
We talked in circles, trying to decide what to do. Sukey was convinced that it was Zander and M.K. and the rest of the team. I wasn’t so sure. I still felt shaken by my experience under the water. The turtle had said there was danger, but he hadn’t said what kind. We were both weak and thirsty and we didn’t really have any weapons beyond the spearfishing utility and my knife. I knew we weren’t equipped to deal with someone—or something—that wanted to do us harm.
“It could be the pirates,” I told her. “It could be Monty Brioux.”
“I don’t think it’s the pirates,” she said stubbornly.
Finally, I gave in. As the morning wore on, a mass of dark clouds moved across the sky above the island, and I knew that if we didn’t get going soon, we might not have the chance. We caught some more fish and cooked and ate them as quickly as we could, then set off up the mountain. It was hard going. The path, such as it was, ended after a few hundred yards and we had to resort to tramping through the thick undergrowth. The foliage was odd, not like a rainforest but a dense mat of trees and low bushes, all covered with white and pink flowers. I recognized their sweet, spicy scent from St. Beatrice, and for just a moment I let myself remember what it had been like, lying in the bathtub at Coleman’s, feeling the warm breeze waft through the window.
It took us much longer than we’d thought it would take to cover even a small amount of ground. By 2:30, we were only halfway up, and the face of the volcano ahead looked even steeper than the section we’d just covered. We could still see the curl of smoke on the other side.
We kept climbing. The sky got darker, and we felt the first raindrops only a few minutes before the sky opened and the rain clattered down on us, instantly soaking our clothes. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a rainstorm as loud. It pounded down out of the heavens, creating instant rivers that ran down the slope toward the sea. We tilted our heads up and opened our mouths to drink our fill of fresh, cold rain.
I pushed the button on the back of my vest that released the umbrella gadget. It kept us out of the downpour, but I found that it made it impossible to walk through the trees on the narrow path. We decided to sit down under the umbrella and eat our lunch.
I had wrapped a little bit of the cooked fish in some palm leaves and Sukey and I gobbled a quarter of what we’d brought, saving the rest for later. Dad had always said that the worst thing an Explorer could do was to consume all of his or her food or water. You never knew what might happen to change your plans, he’d say. The fish wasn’t going to be good for much longer, but I still thought we should save some.
“Do you really think it’s the pirates?” Sukey asked.
“I don’t know, Sukey. I don’t know anything. I think it’s letting up a little. We should get going.”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re acting so strange.”
I hesitated, trying to decide if I should tell her. But how would I even start? This morning, a giant telepathic turtle took me to a magical city under the sea. “I’m fine,” I said. “We should go.”
I folded the umbrella back into my vest and stood up abruptly, setting off up the trail again. The rain was now coming in slow droplets and I could hear her calling after me.
“Kit! Kit! Wait!”
I kept walking. I just wanted to get to the top of the damn volcano, but it was raining even harder and my feet kept slipping on the path.
“Kit!” Sukey called from behind me. And then I felt a hand on my arm and she was spinning me around. Rain was dripping from her hair down along the side of her jaw and she reached up to wipe it off. “Where were you this morning? You were gone for hours.” Her eyes were dark, suspicious in the low light. “Is it something to do with the Mapmakers’ Guild, something you can’t tell me? Something you don’t trust me with?”
I’d never seen her look at me like that before, her eyes hurt, guarded.
We stood there for a long moment, staring at each other, panting, the rain running down our faces. “You’ll think I’m insane,” I told her. “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m completely insane.”
“I won’t.”
So I told her.
When I was done, her eyes were wide and she was looking off into the distance, thinking.
“See? You think I’m crazy,” I said. “Or that I’m making it up. I keep wondering if I could have eaten or drunk something without knowing it—”
“You’re not crazy,” she said, still staring off into the distance.
“But it’s so strange. I mean, the thinking thing. Telepathic turtles? Who ever heard of that? It’s nutty.”
“Listen,” she whispered, her eyes meeting mine now. “I might be crazy too, but after the wreck, when we were in the water, I saw something, this sort of light and a giant head. I was so scared but as soon as I saw that light, I was okay. I knew we were going to be okay. And then I must have blacked out.”
“I think they put us into their shells and brought us to the island. There’s no other explanation.”
“But why? I don’t understand it. Why would they save us? None of the other accounts of ships sinking said anything about turtles.”
I thought for a moment. “I blew the whistle as the ship was going down. I was trying to get someone’s attention, but maybe the turtles heard it and somehow they knew that—well, that I was meant to find the city.”
Sukey watched me. Finally she said, “And they saved us. They brought us here.” The rain was running down her face and I wanted to reach up and brush it from her eyes, from her cheeks. But I didn’t touch her. She smiled at me, a smile I’d come to know so well I could see it when she wasn’t there. “If you’ve gone crazy, then I have too.”
Thirty-five
The last hour was the hardest climbing yet, but it finally stopped raining as we approached the top of the volcano. The clouds blew quickly across the horizon, followed by blue skies. I could finally see the trees in front of me start to fall away and I knew we were nearing the top.
Panting, my vest and cutoffs still wet from the downpour, I stumbled out onto a little plateau.
“What is it?” Sukey called from behind me. “What do you see?”
We had come out into a clearing the size of a football field, the ground covered with the flowering bushes that filled the air with that wonderful scent. It ran right up to the edge of a steep cliff.
Far below we could see a beach. The water was pristine and the contours of the coral reef fringing the island were clear from above.
Sukey caught up to me and took in the view. The sun was dropping down toward the water, filling the sky with rosy smudges. It wouldn’t be light for much longer. The golden clouds looked lit from within, shot through with the sun’s rays. I felt like we’d walked into some Italian painter’s idea of heaven.
I could see the ocean in every direction I turned. Not a bit of land to be seen anywhere.
We were all alone—except for whoever was down there, at the source of the plume of smoke curling up towa
rd the sky.
“I think it’s them,” Sukey said as she held her hands over the little fire we’d managed to get going in the low brush. I’d been worried about setting the whole mountain on fire, but everything was still so wet from the rain that there wasn’t any danger of that. The fire we did get going was pretty pathetic, but we sat very close to it and warmed our hands and faces.
“It might be, but we shouldn’t get our hopes up,” I told her. “Think of how it’s going to feel if we get down there and it’s not them.” My voice caught a little and she turned to look at me.
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry, Kit.”
The fire sputtered and a weak spark floated up toward the star-filled black of the night sky, disappearing among the bright points of white.
I tucked my vest under my head, pulling the reflective blanket I’d taken out of one of the pockets around my shoulders.
“Look at all those stars,” Sukey said. “Think of how many people out there are looking up at these same stars. “We’re just two of them. We hardly matter, when you think of it that way. If we never get off this island, how many people are going to actually care about me?”
“I would care,” I said.
Sukey laughed. “You idiot, if I don’t get off this island, you’re not getting off either.”
“Right.”
“Kit, you’re not mad, are you? I just meant . . . It’s true. Whatever happens to me is probably going to happen to you.”
Embarrassed, I threw another wet branch on to the fire. “We should go to sleep,” I said.
As soon as the sun was up, we started back down the other side of the mountain, making our way quickly down a narrow, muddy path toward the source of the smoke. The plume was much smaller, as though the fire had gone out overnight, but a thin line of gray still snaked its way up toward the wispy white cloud cover.
“We’ll stop when we get about halfway down,” I said. “We need to figure out who it is before we get too close. If they’re dangerous, we need to be close enough to the top so we can run.”
It wasn’t more than an hour before I whispered, “Okay, let’s stop here.” We could smell the smoke in the air and I thought I heard a faraway murmur of voices. We stood very still for a moment, just listening.
“Did you hear that?” I asked, taking out my spyglass and switching on the sound utility. I pointed it in the general direction of the smoke and listened. All I could hear was a rhythmic banging sound, as though someone was swinging a large metal object at a rock. I didn’t like the sound of it. Other than that, I could only hear the waves, amplified by Dad’s gadget.
“What is that?” Sukey asked, listening to the banging over the spyglass.
“I don’t know. I’m going to get closer and see if I can see anything more. The trees are too dense here. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“Why should I wait here? I’ll go down with you.”
“But what if something happens to me? At least this way you can head back to the other beach.”
“All right.” But she looked annoyed.
I made my way down the path, going slowly and quietly as I could. Finally, I came to a little promontory and trudged through to the end of the thick vegetation. I was looking down onto a little beach. I could only see one end of it. The smoke was coming from the other end, but I could see that someone—or something—had been digging in the sand. There was a very large hole in the center of the stretch of beach.
I leaned out as far as I could and directed the spyglass down toward the beach. All I could hear was the same rhythmic banging sound. Nothing else.
I decided to go a little farther along the path and see if I could see the other end of the beach. I had only walked a couple of yards, though, when I heard a piercing scream from behind me.
Sukey.
I turned and ran back toward where I’d left her.
But I didn’t have to go far. She’d followed me and I found her slumped against a tree just before the promontory. Wrapped around her neck was a huge, green eel, just like the ones we’d seen coming out of the ocean, but much, much larger. It was speckled and nearly six feet long. She was gasping for breath, but the eel was only squeezing tighter and tighter.
I got the knife out of my vest and started stabbing the eel, but it didn’t seem bothered at all, and I could see from her face that Sukey was having trouble breathing. The eel was hissing and baring its sharp teeth at us, switching its tail back and forth.
I looked for a stick I could use to pry the eel away when suddenly, a whir of black went by my head and I heard a loud squawk. Eel! Eel!
I looked up in astonishment.
Pucci attacked the eel with his metal talons, squawking Eel, Eel! again, as Zander, holding a sword and followed by Joyce, came crashing through the underbrush.
“Did someone say eel?”
Thirty-six
I was so astonished to see Zander alive that I barely noticed he had put the sword on the ground, dropped to his knees, and started humming, in a low, steady voice, in the vicinity of the eel’s head. Even more remarkably, he was stroking it along its back. But then I saw Sukey’s eyes roll back and heard her gurgle as she fought for breath.
“Zander, it’s killing her!” I shouted.
“Don’t worry,” Joyce called back. “He knows what he’s doing.”
Already, I could see that the eel’s constricting muscles had loosened. It let go of Sukey and started moving away, and then it slithered off into the bushes.
Sukey took a couple of long, ragged breaths. Then she struggled to her feet and hugged Zander fiercely around his neck, gasping, “You’re alive!” I hugged him too, and Pucci flew around our heads, squawking alive, alive! We hugged Joyce and then Zander again, dancing around as Pucci squawked and chortled from my shoulder.
Sukey was still breathing hard and rubbing her neck but she seemed to be okay.
“Is M.K. all right? What about everyone else?” I asked.
“She’s fine. Everyone’s fine. I’m sure they’re wondering what happened to Joyce and me. I don’t know if they heard the scream from down on the beach.” Zander was bare-chested, wearing only his Explorer’s vest and leggings. He was very tan and he had a piece of his T-shirt tied around his forehead. Joyce had ripped the sleeves off her blouse and was wearing her green bandanna tied around her head pirate-style.
“What did you do to that eel?” I asked Zander.
“Oh,” he said. “I just sang to him.”
“Sang to him?”
“Yeah, we discovered it the first night on the island. Those things are everywhere. There are vegetarian ones that just eat the coconuts at night, but these guys are nasty. I’d been thinking about our old friend Petunia and then I remembered something I’d learned about this new species of island boa constrictors in the South Pacific. They hate low tones. All you have to do is hum at ’em and they get away as fast as they can. Who knew it might work for constrictor eels as well? I’m glad to see you two, I’ll tell you that. But come on down to the beach. We’ll show you the camp.” He picked up the sword, tucked it into one of the loops at the bottom of the Explorer’s vest, and put an arm around Sukey, who was still taking deep, rasping breaths, as we started down the path toward the beach.
They had all made it off the Fair Beatrice before she sank, Zander and Joyce told us. M.K., keeping her head about her, had remembered the inflatable raft in her vest, and she’d deployed it just as they’d all abandoned ship. It had been a tight squeeze, but they’d fit Zander, Joyce, M.K., Kemal, and the Nackleys into the raft. Then she’d rowed over to retrieve Amy. The submersible had floated free of the stern. Her boilers had been damaged and wouldn’t run, but she was buoyant, and they had tied her to the raft and paddled away from the site of the shipwreck.
“We looked for you as long as we could,” Zander said. “But the water was still bubbling and boiling away and we needed to get out of there. It was so dark. Leo Nackley hurt his leg in the wreck, but he had
us take turns paddling and sleeping through the night, and early the next morning, we saw this island. We managed to get Amy ashore on some rocks and then we explored a bit and found a sandy beach nearby. That’s where we set up camp.”
“Where did you find the sword?” I knew I’d never seen the jewel-encrusted scabbard and sword before.
“On the beach,” Zander said. “There was a bunch of stuff, pieces of a wooden boat, some old silver cups and pottery. At first we thought there might be someone else on the island, but the stuff is pretty old. Maybe it was from one of the shipwrecks.”
“The raft made it?” Sukey asked. “So we have a boat?” I could see the hope flash in her eyes.
Joyce shook her head. “It was ripped by a piece of the ship. By the time we got here, we were having to bail her constantly to stay afloat. Besides, Lazlo’s dad doesn’t think she’s big enough, even if we could repair her. The seas are too rough and it’s a long way to St. Beatrice. He says we’re better off staying here and waiting to be rescued by BNDL.” A worried look crossed her face. “I sent Njamba out with a note tied to her leg yesterday.”
“Joyce was awfully brave about it,” Zander said, glancing her way. “Pucci couldn’t make the long flight over water, but we think Njamba can do it. We figure it might take her a couple of days to reach St. Beatrice. M.K.’s been working away on Amy’s engines to see if she can get them going again, though she probably doesn’t have the range, and we just decided that Kemal and I are going to climb the volcano tomorrow.”
We told them about how we had ended up on the other end of the island—minus the part about the psychic turtles—and about what we’d learned of our location at the top of the volcano.
“There’s nothing around. We’re all alone out here in the middle of the sea,” I said. Zander searched my face, trying to figure out if I’d figured out anything about the map, but of course he couldn’t ask in front of Joyce.
“I’m really happy to see you,” he said to Sukey, slinging an arm around her shoulders again and pulling her in for another hug. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Suke.”
