“Do these things have a name?” Rich asked.
Jorge smiled and shook his head.
“The ancient peoples of this region made images of many animals and the gods or spirits associated with them,” he said. “Sometimes they created hybrids: different animals combined. This is one of those. I call them pouncels,” he added, shrugging and smiling apologetically, “but that is just me.”
“You should call them, like, killer death monkeys,” said Barry.
“Pouncels,” Alex echoed musingly. “Yeah. I like that.”
“Or jungle monsters of death,” Barry continued.
“Or tapir killers?” whispered Darwen to Rich.
Their eyes met.
“The claws?” said Rich.
“Exactly like whatever left the tracks in the woods,” said Darwen as soon as the group spread out to consider the stone spheres around the site.
“But if these pouncel things are from Silbrica, then they didn’t just start coming through recently,” said Rich. “Those gold figurines are a thousand years old. If the people who made them knew what the pouncels looked like—”
“Then there has been a tear in the barrier between the two worlds for a long time,” Darwen agreed. “It was probably sealed up years ago—”
“But has come open again,” Rich concluded.
“Come open,” said Darwen, “or been ripped open on purpose.”
“By what?”
“By the Insidious Bleck,” said Darwen.
“But Mr. Peregrine keeps saying the Bleck is just an animal,” said Rich, sounding worried.
“Aye,” said Darwen, half turning to look at the former shopkeeper. “He does. But at least we know that one of the breaches or portals is on this island. And if the pouncels can get through from Silbrica, then we can go there from here. We just have to figure out how.”
As soon as Darwen recovered from the boat ride back to the tent camp, he joined the line of students progressing up to the dining shelter, as ordered by Mr. Sumners.
“It will be Jorge talking about animals,” said Chip with a showy yawn. “Something seriously lame.”
It wasn’t, but the student response was unanimously unenthusiastic. The tables were spread with notepads, pens, books, and charts.
“We’re not having classes here?!” exclaimed Mad.
“This is a fieldtrip, Miss, ahhh, Konkani,” said Mr. Sumners, “not a holiday. You are here to learn, and learning takes work. Take a seat, and I want at least, ahhh, eighteen inches between each student. This place has enough distractions as it is.”
The rest of the day was given over to forty-five-minute science lectures (botany, zoology, and marine biology) from Mr. Iverson, Spanish from Miss Martinez, history from Miss Harvey, and world studies from Mr. Peregrine, with each subject tailored to Costa Rica. As they worked Mr. Sumners hovered, watching, listening.
“What’s he even here for?” asked Darwen again.
“He’s the senior faculty member,” said Rich. “Genevieve overheard him saying that he calls the principal from Drake Bay every evening to report on how the trip is going. Apparently Principal Thompson wouldn’t have let Mr. Peregrine bring us otherwise. He has to take the boat,” he added, grinning. “Not his favorite part of the day.”
Mr. Peregrine ended the session by talking about the hunting techniques of the people who lived in the forest before the Europeans arrived. “Tomorrow,” he announced, “we will be making bows and arrows in the traditional style, and Mr. Iverson will explain the physics of how they work.”
Mr. Iverson sat up abruptly, and from the upward motion of his tufty eyebrows, Darwen felt sure this was the first he had heard of Mr. Peregrine’s lesson plan. He shrugged his acceptance but watched the world studies teacher with his head slightly to one side.
“Sit down, Mr., ahhh, Fails,” roared Mr. Sumners.
Barry had leaped to his feet and started shooting imaginary arrows at everyone in sight.
Darwen turned to look and saw Carlos and Alex apparently arguing.
“He said so,” said Alex. “You saying he’s a liar?”
“You must have misunderstood,” said Carlos.
“What?” asked Darwen.
“Oh, nothing,” said Alex. “Our friend Carlos here is saying that our school-appointed guide is a liar, that’s all.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Carlos. “I just said that he’s not from around here.”
“I asked him,” said Alex, “and he said he was from San José.”
“No way,” said Carlos. “Ask Miss Martinez. Listen to him, Alex. He’s not from anywhere in the Americas. He’s a European, from Spain. He may have lived here awhile, but you can hear it.”
Alex opened her mouth to protest, but at that moment a great ooh went up from the students.
Darwen turned and saw, fluttering haphazardly through the shrubs of the gardens beside the dining shelter, a huge butterfly. It must have been six inches across, its wings flashing with turquoise and aqua and a deep blue vibrant as the summer sky and gleaming like metal. It wove in and out of the bushes and then flew gracefully into the shelter itself, weaving and bobbing as if borne on an invisible breeze, and then, astonishingly, it settled on one of the long wooden tables.
“A blue morpho!” exclaimed Rich, fumbling for his camera.
The students flocked to the table to consider the massive and dazzling creature as it rested.
“Give it some room,” said Mr. Iverson. “Butterflies are very fragile.”
“It’s gorgeous!” exclaimed Naia.
WHAM.
A heavy book slammed down onto the butterfly. The leg and fragment of wing that stuck out never even moved.
Chip Whittley looked at what he’d done and, in the momentary shocked silence, shrugged. “What?” he said, the hint of a smirk fluttering at the corner of his mouth. “It was only a bug.”
There was an explosion of outrage from the other students, and Alex flew at him, fists balled.
Chip’s composure evaporated, but he moved too slowly to dodge her first punch. He stumbled back against one of the tables, and she was on him, arms flailing. Chip cried out in shock, and within moments Mr. Sumners was dragging Alex away, giving her a warning stare when she looked poised to attack again. For once, she didn’t speak, but her eyes were bright with angry tears.
“Don’t move,” said Mr. Sumners, pointing squarely into her face, “or I’ll have you on the next plane home.”
“And him?” said Mr. Iverson.
The science teacher’s face was white and hard, quite unlike his usual expression. He was furious.
“What about him?” asked Mr. Sumners.
“What do you propose we do with this boy?” said Mr. Iverson, his voice trembling with the effort of not shouting.
Chip looked hot in the face, and he was watching Alex warily, but a hint of the smirk remained. He shot Nathan a glance.
“What Mr. Whittley did is no excuse for such an assault.”
“No excuse?” repeated Mr. Iverson, his voice colder than ever. “I think Miss O’Connor’s anger perfectly understandable. If I were not a man of considerable self-control—”
“You’d do what?” asked Mr. Sumners, pouncing on the remark.
There was a sudden, tense silence. Mr. Iverson lowered his eyes and said nothing. The students watched, riveted. Taking the silence for a kind of apology, Mr. Sumners nodded, smiling mirthlessly.
“I think what Mr. Iverson meant to say,” said Mr. Peregrine, stepping forward suddenly, “is that people of violence, people who have no appreciation for life or beauty, people who think the destruction of what others value is a source of amusement, cannot be reasoned with. They can, perhaps, be taught, but they do not want to be. They are the worst kind of thu
gs and will grow up—if they show such tendencies as children—to be the worst kind of adults.”
This extraordinary speech produced almost as much shock and bewilderment as Chip’s destruction of the butterfly had, but from the looks being leveled at Chip by the other students, there weren’t many who disagreed with it, and Darwen felt a rush of pride in Mr. Peregrine.
“If Hillside stands for anything,” he continued, “it is that such behavior cannot be permitted. I recommend in the strongest possible terms that this matter be raised with Principal Thompson so that he may determine if Mr. Whittley should be allowed to remain on the trip.”
For a moment Mr. Sumners said nothing, just looked from Mr. Iverson to Mr. Peregrine and back as if they had started speaking Swahili, then he curtly nodded and turned to Chip. “Clean it up,” he said, nodding at the table.
Chip sighed and reached for the book, but Alex stepped forward again.
“No,” she said.
Sumners tensed, poised to block her if she attacked again, but she just said, “I don’t want him to touch it.” Sumners hesitated, then nodded slowly. Chip shrugged and turned his back to them, shooting a grin at Nathan as he did so. Alex moved slowly forward, took the book in both hands, and lifted it carefully. She set it down, and for a moment everyone but Chip looked at the broken remains of the once magnificent butterfly. Naia turned quickly away, her face in her hands, and Genevieve Reddock muttered, “Oh no.”
Saying nothing, Alex tentatively lifted the butterfly by its wings, then, cradling it in her open hands, walked toward the bushes over which it had flown. She held it in front of her chest as if she was part of a ceremony, and wordlessly the students followed her.
She moved down into the tent camp, selected a sunny spot beneath a tall palm, and dropped to a crouch. She seemed uncertain where to lay the insect down, and Darwen hurried forward. He brushed some stones away from the surface of the ground and then dug his fingers into the dirt as she sat quite still beside him, hands outstretched. Darwen scooped a shallow grave out of the soft earth and waited as Alex laid the butterfly inside it. Between them they covered the vivid blue with the dirt and stood up.
The other students had been clustered around them in silence, but once the butterfly was buried, the spell broke almost immediately. They looked suddenly embarrassed and uncertain of what they were doing, and seconds later they dispersed. Chip, Nathan, and Barry had not come down but were watching, blank-faced, from the dining shelter where the teachers also stood, saying nothing.
“Come on,” said Darwen.
Alex, who had been staring up at Chip, her face expressionless, nodded. Rich glowered at the ground and muttered as they walked down to the shore, where they sat in silence, watching the sky soften as the afternoon turned to evening. Darwen wanted to talk about the gold figurine and its links to the creatures that he was sure had brought down the tapir, but the time didn’t feel right.
At dinner they sat as far from Nathan, Chip, and Barry as was possible and avoided their eyes. Once Barry waggled his arms in what was clearly supposed to be an impression of a wounded butterfly, but no one laughed, and Rich shot him such a murderous look that he abandoned the joke and went back to his food, grumbling.
As darkness fell and the students picked their way to the bathrooms in a trail of bobbing flashlights, Darwen, Rich, and Alex sat alone in the dining shelter listening to the sounds of the waves below and looking at the stars. Rich was telling them about the constellations.
“But there’s still a polestar, see?” he was saying, “because we’re just north of the equator and—”
“I miss my dog,” said Alex.
“Excuse me?” said Rich.
“I’m just saying,” said Alex. “I miss Sasha.”
Darwen reached over and put a hand on her shoulder, and Rich, who had been about to say something, nodded sympathetically.
“How am I supposed to go after Luis if we can’t find the portals?” said Darwen suddenly.
“I was talking about the stars,” said Rich, miffed.
“I know,” said Darwen, who had been watching a pair of hermit crabs scurrying softly through the grass. “Sorry. But I know the portals are here. I can almost feel them. There has to be one on the island, but where? We’ve been to the dig site, and we’ve trekked through the jungle—”
“Rainforest,” corrected Rich.
“Rainforest,” said Darwen, “and I thought we’d see a big iron gateway like the one Greyling built at Hillside last year. Or we’d see something like that little stove in the janitor’s basement, you know? The one that was a tiny portal that they used for passing all the stuff they stole from us. But we’ve seen nothing, and so far as we can tell, neither has anybody else.”
“It’s a big jungle,” said Alex.
“Rainforest,” said Rich.
“Whatever,” said Alex and Darwen together.
“It can’t be random,” said Darwen, shaking his head. “If those gold figurines are the same as the things that are wandering the jungle—rainforest,” he corrected himself before Rich could get the word out, “then they’ve been coming here for centuries. But if it’s just a tear in the barrier between worlds, why doesn’t the council know exactly where it is?”
He moved his foot toward a rock that hopped slowly into the darkness. It was another of the large brownish toads that cropped up all over the camp. Darwen winced.
“I know that building a hotel here would be bad,” he said, a little defensively, “destructive to the environment and, you know . . .”
“Exploitative,” suggested Alex.
“All that,” said Darwen. “But it would be really nice to be able to go to bed for a night—just one night—without worrying what might already be in the tent when we get there.”
Rich was about to respond when they heard the first shot.
There was no question that the bang that had suddenly torn through the jungle night, sending the birds squawking and the monkeys howling, was anything other than a gunshot. There were no cars to backfire, no construction workers with heavy equipment, nothing else that could create the hard, short crack and the two others that followed.
Somebody was shooting.
Darwen had never heard a real gunshot before. It wasn’t quite what he had expected—it was tighter and flatter than the booming cannon he had heard in movies and without the electric fizz and roar of Weazen’s blaster. Still, he ducked instinctively.
A fourth shot.
Then silence.
Moments later, the camp was a chaos of flashlights, whirling and stabbing into the night around the tents. The quiet was rent by a confusion of voices: teachers, guides, and camp workers, but mostly the Hillside students.
“What was that?” shouted Carlos.
“Is someone hurt?” faltered Genevieve.
“That was a shotgun!” called Barry gleefully.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Rich quietly, almost to himself. “It was a rifle.”
“You can tell the difference?” asked Darwen.
“I live on a farm,” he replied absently, listening to the night, eyes closed as if he was trying to strain out the babbling excitement around him.
“Oh yeah,” said Alex, appearing on the path beside them. “This is exactly what my mom had in mind when she agreed to this trip. Snakes and toads and getting shot at. Awesome. But at least we’ll be safe in our hotel rooms—oh wait, no, we’re in tents, which means we’re all gonna die horribly—”
“Hillside students!” bellowed a voice.
It was Mr. Sumners in striped pajamas and a belted bathrobe with what looked like a shower cap on his head.
“Students, make your way up to the dining shelter. Quickly and quietly, please. Don’t run, Mr. Fails!”
“What do they want us up there for?” as
ked Darwen.
“To make sure we’re all still alive,” said Rich.
“Oh yeah,” Alex mused. “When my mom gets my first postcard, they’re gonna need to sedate her until I get home. Dear Mom, didn’t get eaten by sharks today, but did get shot at. Wish you were here. With a house. And a tank. Yours, Alex.”
“Quiet, everyone,” said Mr. Iverson, who was still dressed. “Sit at the tables so we can do a head count.”
Miss Harvey bustled among them, pointing as she counted.
“Thirteen, fourteen,” she muttered. “Fourteen. We’re missing two.”
Simon Agu emerged from under the table grinning broadly.
“Fifteen,” she said. “Sit down properly, Mr. Agu. This is no time for jokes. Who else is missing?”
The students looked around.
“No one, ma’am,” said Rich. “You must have miscounted.”
She started again but came to the same number. “Fifteen,” she said. “Who is not here?”
“I think you counted me twice,” said Barry Fails.
“No, Barry, I didn’t,” said Miss Harvey crisply, “and if I had, we’d be missing two people, wouldn’t we?”
“Oh,” said Barry. “Right.”
“Where is Mr. Cabrera?” said Mr. Iverson, peering around the tables.
“Who?” asked Barry.
“Gabriel!” Rich exclaimed, aghast, turning to Darwen. “He just . . . slipped my mind. We’re sharing a tent, and we completely forgot him.”
In the awkward silence that ensued, the students shone their flashlights into the gardens below.
“We should check the tent,” said Darwen to Rich.
“Us?” said Rich, looking apprehensively into the darkness.
“Us,” said Darwen with a finality he didn’t really feel. “Miss Harvey, we’ll be right back.”
Darwen Arkwright and the Insidious Bleck Page 14
