Island of Fire (The Unwanteds)

by McMann, Lisa

  She glared as Sean and Alex explored the miniature, pointing out the tubes and the giant kitchen, their mouths watering at the thought of all the food they could eat if only they had Artimé back. They stared at the black-and-white squares on the floor, but decided they weren’t really dotlike.

  A steadily growing light filled the skies, and the sleeping Unwanteds began to stir. After a few minutes, Sean yawned and stretched, saying it was his turn to sleep inside the shack on the sofa, and he wasn’t about to give up that luxury.

  After Sean was gone, Alex looked at Sky, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep. “Thanks for finding this,” he said. “I didn’t really see any dots, though. But it was a good idea.” He set the model mansion on a flat part of the roof and lay down next to it. “I’m going to try to grab an hour of sleep here before it gets hot,” he mumbled, and he closed his eyes.

  The Silent girl frowned. She watched the sunrise, the words of Mr. Today’s clue running through her head. She crawled over to the little mansion and looked inside. She didn’t see any dots either.

  Alex groaned in his sleep. The girl watched him for a moment. His clothes were ragged and dusty, his face smudged with dirt, his hair a tangled nest of dark brown curls. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell; he was finally getting some rest. Maybe it would help him think more clearly. The girl reached out a tentative hand and pushed aside a lock of his hair that had fallen in his face. And then she closed her eyes and made a wish for him to receive every good thing he needed to save his people … and himself.

  When she opened her eyes, she was struck by another thought. A thought so simple she was surprised that no one had come up with it yet. She bit her lip as she mentally reviewed the clue, and she came to the same conclusion as before. And so it was that Sky climbed down Florence with an idea and went in search of the two people who would be the most helpful to her.

  Magnify, Focus, Every One

  Alex had tried not to spend much time thinking about Samheed and Lani. Everything in front of him was desperate enough to keep him barely able to function. Thinking about them, knowing he could do nothing to save them, would only put him over the edge. He had lots to do here before he could go there, so he chose to concentrate on one thing at a time.

  But his dreams didn’t care for that logic. He fell hard into crazy dreams of them—dreams of Lani and how nice his skin felt when she touched his arm, but then she turned around and cast a nasty spell on him, forcing him to fall face-first into his soup while the walls of Quill crumbled around him. Dreams of Samheed and him working together to take down the Quill leaders with magic spells, followed by an angry Samheed shoving Alex into the glass partition in Mr. Today’s mostly secret hallway, the glass shattering and giving Alex a thousand cuts, the noise ringing out.

  He startled awake, breathing hard, and sat up, trying to get his bearings. Sweat dripped down his cheek from where it had been planted against his forearm. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, his stomach cramping from hunger and his heart aching from missing his friends. He longed for the safety of Mr. Today’s office, hidden from most of the world. Unlike here, where he was surrounded by people every second of every day.

  The song in his head started again. Follow the dots, follow the dots, follow the dots. It was more frustrating than he ever could have imagined. “Mr. Today, please,” he muttered, “please help me out here. Where are your ridiculous dots?”

  And just as he said it in such a fashion, thinking of them as Mr. Today’s dots rather than the world’s dots, it struck him like a magical glass wall to the face. “His office,” he muttered, his eyes darting left and right as he pictured it. “Dots. Mr. Today’s dots.” He scrambled to look at the miniature mansion, and lifted the roof clean off so he could stare into Mr. Today’s office unhindered.

  And there on the walls they were. Only they were the tiniest replicas of already tiny dots grouped together, so tiny they could hardly be seen, and instead the masses of dots looked like blobs. “That hideous artwork,” he whispered, remembering how he’d noticed the odd series of paintings while waiting for Mr. Today. The words rang true and sounded right and solid in his head, so he said it again, louder. “That hideous artwork. It’s the artwork! Great protuberating conch shells!”

  With a shaky hand, Alex reached into the office and tried carefully to pluck one of the dot paintings from the wall, but it was stuck fast. He pulled his hand back and looked around the room. There were five paintings with unattractive dot designs, all hanging on one wall. “Clever beast,” Alex said. “But what am I supposed to do with them?”

  As he lay on his stomach, peering into Mr. Today’s office, he heard a noise at the edge of the roof. Sky, Crow, and Henry Haluki clambered up. Sky had a wide grin on her face and pointed to Henry.

  “Hi, guys,” Alex said. “I don’t have time for games now—I think I—” He stopped speaking when he saw the Silent girl’s fiery glare. “I mean … ”

  “Alex,” Henry said, “Sky figured out part of your clue! And I’m the only one who can help you.” He grinned slyly. “Magnify. Because remember I have this?” From his trouser pocket he pulled his magnifying glass, one of the few items that had transported unharmed from Artimé when the world disappeared, because it had been in Henry’s pocket during that time. It had been handy for starting fires. And now it was going to be even more useful.

  Alex’s jaw slacked. But Henry kept talking.

  “I didn’t think about it when we thought the dots were islands, because obviously,” he said with a bit of a swagger, “this glass can’t work from so far away. But Sky thought there was more to this little mansion. So do you want me to start magnifying things?”

  Alex stared at the magnifying glass, and then he looked at the Silent girl. He felt the corners of his lips tug into a wispy smile as he processed the news. “Just before you got here, I figured out where the dots are,” he said. He shook his head. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier. The clue is totally literal. The dots aren’t islands or stars or trees. They’re dots! They’re actual pictures of dots!” He pointed at the office wall. “And you guys just figured out the next part.” He grinned like a maniac.

  Henry reluctantly handed over the magnifying glass. “I guess you know what you’re looking for.”

  Alex took it and gripped the boy’s shoulder. “This is all thanks to you, Henry.” He looked up at Sky and winked. She blushed. Alex held the magnifying glass up and leaned toward the first painting, his hands still quivering. He moved the glass until he could see the dots just as he remembered them. And then he blinked. “Okay,” he said. “I magnified. I focused. And … I see dots.” He looked over at the others. “Now what?”

  The two Silents and Henry looked at one another and back at Alex. All three shrugged. “Aren’t there any clues?” Henry asked.

  “I don’t see any. I just see dots.”

  “Well, try the next one.”

  Alex looked at the next painting the same way. Again he saw dots and nothing more. He moved on to the next, and the next, until he had magnified and focused on all of them. “They’re all just dots,” he said. “They aren’t in the shape of anything. They’re just random.”

  “Let me see,” Henry said. “Maybe you’re doing it wrong.” He grabbed the glass and peered into it.

  “Yeah,” Alex said sarcastically, “you’re probably right. You have to really know how to use one of those things.”

  Sky laughed, her shoulders shaking. Alex made a face at her, then reluctantly laughed too.

  Henry went through the same procedure as Alex, growing more and more perturbed. “There’s nothing there,” he declared after a while.

  “Thanks a lot, Aristotle,” Alex said.

  Henry proceeded to magnify everything else in Mr. Today’s office and in all the other rooms and hallways—the floors, walls, ceilings, staircases, and even statues. It took him well over a quarter of an hour to declare that there were no clues whatsoever hidden in the m
iniature mansion.

  Crow poked Henry in the ribs. He looked bored. He pointed to the shack and raised an eyebrow.

  Henry shrugged and nodded.

  “Can I hold on to your magnifying glass for a bit?” Alex asked.

  Henry considered the request, looking doubtful, but then Sky clasped her hands around Henry’s and offered up a pleading smile. “Oh, all right,” he said. He gave it to Alex. “Don’t break it.”

  “Yes, boss,” Alex said, rumpling the younger boy’s hair, and then he pretended to drop it.

  Henry glared, but then Crow tugged at his shirt, and off they went, Crow signing rapidly to his sister, to which she nodded her approval. And Alex and Sky were alone once more.

  Alex sighed heavily. “We’re back to having nothing.” He wiped sweat off his forehead with his sleeve, and then he looked over his shoulder at Warbler Island. His recent dreams had him thinking of his friends more urgently than ever. After a minute, he turned back to the girl and squeezed his eyes shut to stop them from burning, pressing his fingers into the corners as if that would hide the defeat in them. He shook his head and whispered into his hands, “I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

  Patience

  After the wave of emotion passed, Alex looked up at Sky. “Sorry about that,” he said with a crooked smile. “Apparently you’re the one who always gets to see the real me.” After a moment he hung his head. “Sorry I didn’t take you seriously at first. That was not very cool of me.”

  The Silent girl’s lips twitched. She moved closer and took Alex’s hand, and for a moment he forgot to breathe. Without thinking, he brushed a finger across her cheek, wiping away a smudge of dust. “You’re pretty … awesome,” he said. Saying it made him feel like a dolt, but she didn’t laugh. She blinked and looked down as the blush rose to her cheeks. He didn’t know why she made him feel so weird. Maybe because she seemed to understand so well all the anxiety he was feeling, all the responsibility. And all the pain, too. Whatever it was about her, it was starting to make him act like a total dork. Maybe it was because he liked her both as a friend and as a girl. Kind of like Lani, only this girl was …

  His eyes sprang open, and he pulled his hand from hers. What was he doing? What would Meghan think if she saw him holding hands with Sky? How could he do that when Lani was out there somewhere, probably suffering? A couple days ago he didn’t even know this girl’s name!

  He scrambled to pick up the magnifying glass. “Uhhh … here,” Alex said, shoving it at her. “You want to try?”

  She looked startled for a moment, and perhaps a bit annoyed, but then nodded and took it. Kneeling, she magnified one of the pictures. Then another, and another, concentrating harder on each one, but nothing came of it. Finally, on the fourth picture, she really looked at the dots. Was there something they weren’t seeing? She gazed at the picture for several moments, looking at the pattern of the colors, the various sizes of the dots. Some were open circles, and some were solid, filled in. She let her mind wander and kept her gaze unwavering. And then she reeled back and almost dropped the glass.

  “What? What is it? Did you see something?” Alex gripped her shoulder, nothing but business now.

  She nodded. She tried to trace what she had seen on the palm of her hand, but gave up and instead waved Alex to slide in next to her, which he did. She held up a finger, squeezed his shoulders, and wiped a hand across his furrowed brow, trying to tell him to relax. She breathed in and out, then tapped his chest so he would do it too.

  “Okay, okay. I get it. I need to be calm. I was watching you, you know.”

  Sky nodded and held up the glass to the fourth painting. She pointed two fingers to her eyes, then to the painting, encircling it to indicate he should focus on the big picture, not just the center of it.

  “Got it,” he said. He took a deep breath, let it out, and gazed calmly at the picture. He let his eyes blur just slightly as he looked at the dots. He noticed they were all different sizes, and some were a solid color while others were just rings. He stared and stared, and when the girl next to him shifted and her shoulder brushed against his, he stopped thinking about how important it was to get this clue and started thinking about what it would feel like to kiss a girl on the lips, not that he ever would, but maybe someday, and then he wondered if she thought he was cute, even though he was really a mess after weeks of cleaning up in seawater, and then without even realizing it, before his very eyes, the dots began to shimmer and move.

  Alex was so startled that he gasped and stopped relaxing, and the dots went back the way they were. “Bricks and mortar!” he cried. “Something almost happened.” He focused again.

  The girl gripped his knee, excited, and that was enough to distract poor Alex in such a way that the dots began to shimmer and move again very soon. He stayed very still, and within seconds all the purple dots had moved to form letters, and the letters solidified and popped out from the painting one at a time, kind of like a 3-D door when you finally get it right. It was almost as if Alex could reach out and grab the letter blocks. But the most hopeful and exciting thing happened when the letters stopped popping, because they twirled around like they were dancing, and they rearranged themselves until the letters spelled a word.

  And that word was “BREATHE.”

  The Sun Also Rises

  On the cool stone floor of their prison, Samheed and Lani huddled together to try to sleep.

  “When it’s cold like this, I bet it’s nighttime,” Samheed tapped into Lani’s hand, but she didn’t answer. She was already asleep. Samheed uttered a silent sigh. He was uncomfortable with Lani’s head resting on his upper arm, treating it as a pillow, and he debated whether he could slide his arm out without disturbing her or letting go of her hand. They were tethered by a promise. Their hands weren’t tied together by anything but fear of the other being snatched away. They didn’t know who could see them or if someone—or a whole roomful of people—might even be standing a few feet away. It was a creepy feeling. Samheed shivered and tried to stop thinking about it.

  Soon enough Sam knew he had to either pull his arm out from under Lani’s head or lose a limb due to lack of circulation, so he nudged Lani and yanked his arm away, stopping in time to catch her head in his hand. He set her head gently on the stone floor and freed his fingers from her hair, then instinctively smoothed it away from her face, knowing how much it tickled his own nose when she flung it about. He found the most comfortable position under the circumstances and took a fresh grasp of Lani’s fingers while he waited for the numbness in his arm to subside. Eventually his lids drooped, and he slept too.

  When Lani awoke, she didn’t bother to open her eyes—what was the point? Instead she readjusted her grip on Samheed’s hand and rolled to her side, pushing her back against his to try to warm it. Under different circumstances, she might delight in holding a boy’s hand for an extended period of time, even if it wasn’t Alex, because it was a new feeling, and Lani was nothing if not an explorer of new things. But there came a time when enough was enough, and after what must have been many days, even weeks, she was so tired of holding Samheed’s hand that she sometimes squeezed it very hard to try and get some of her frustrations out.

  The crazy thing was that Sam, who was such a hothead when she first met him, didn’t seem to mind. He let it happen, knowing there was no other way to express emotions in their mute world. He’d squeeze back, but not like one might expect Samheed to squeeze when angry, so it never hurt Lani. Something had changed in him since his early days in Artimé. He’d grown mellower. Lani liked that. She liked it a lot.

  She sniffed deeply, trying to determine if anyone had brought food recently. Smelling nothing, she scooted over, rolled to her back, and slowly let her eyelids open.

  She frowned. And then she sat up. She craned her neck, squinting, turning her head all around, and frowned again. And then she pounded Samheed’s arm.

  Her heart raced, and she pounded him again, and then be
gan to tap into his hand, “Wake up! I think … ”

  He didn’t move, so she pounded him harder until he moved and sat up.

  She began again. “Something’s different. Can you”—she paused, not quite sure—“see? A little bit?”

  Samheed turned his head about, and Lani almost thought she saw a shadow, or a silhouette of his face. “I can see you!” she tapped. “Sam!”

  “No,” he tapped. “I can’t.” He turned toward her, but she couldn’t make out his features at all. He was just an outline, black on dark gray. A moment passed. “Nothing,” he tapped slowly. “Are you sure?”

  Lani strained her eyes, and the usual blackness was definitely gray now. She could see Samheed’s profile, and a blob not far away—the bucket of water. “It’s very faint,” she tapped. “Gray instead of black. Outlines. The bucket.” She turned toward him. “I’ll touch your nose,” she said, and reached out toward the line where gray became black along his profile and the tip of his nose was apparent. Her finger landed on it, and she could feel him breathe in surprise.

  “I … ,” he began to tap, and shook his head. His heart twisted as he yearned to see anything, but all was still black. “Still nothing,” he finally tapped.

  In wonder, just barely able to see the outline of him, Lani guided her finger down his nose, across his cheek, and then she squeezed his shoulder. Tears jumped to her eyes as the world lightened before her at the slowest possible pace. “I can see you,” her lips mouthed, but she didn’t tap it. Instead she tapped, “I’m sorry.”

  Samheed was still for a moment, and Lani watched him bring his free hand to his bowed head. She could almost feel his longing. Then he dropped his hand to his lap, deadweight, and tapped, “Tell me everything you see. And—” He stopped.

  Lani waited. “And?”

  Samheed turned his blind eyes toward her. She could see the outline of his body, feel his breath on her bare arm, his hand on her knee. Slowly, softly, he tapped, “Please don’t leave me.”

  Together, Apart