Time Castaways #2

by Liesl Shurtliff

  Pike came and stood beside Jia. Her normally white-blond hair and pale skin were dusted with soot and ash. Matt suddenly remembered how Pike had come running after him in Yellowstone, amid all the exploding geysers, how she’d saved his compass when it fell in the lava. . . .

  “My compass!” Matt shouted, suddenly realizing that his compass was no longer in his hand. “Where is it?” He took a few steps, swayed and nearly fell. Jia caught him from behind.

  “Matt, you should sit,” said Jia.

  Matt looked all around until he saw the pitcher wedged on its side between the cushions of a bench at the back of the boat. It was mostly empty. Just a small pool of liquid rested at the bottom, and Matt could see the dark shape of his compass and the chain dangling from the lip. Matt stumbled over to it. The Kool-Aid, which had been red before, was now a dark, smoky purple. Bits of ash floated on the top and puffs of steam rose off the surface.

  Matt used his gauze-covered hand to grab on to the chain. It’ll be okay, he thought. He’d made it of strong metals that could withstand extremely hot temperatures, even lava. And he was right. The compass had not melted, but what came out of the Kool-Aid shocked him even more.

  Jia let out a gasp and covered her mouth. Everyone else gathered around, closing in on Matt and the compass.

  “What the . . . ,” Ruby began.

  “. . . beetle juice?” Corey finished.

  No one else said a word. They all just stared at Matt’s compass, or what had been his compass. It was now completely encased in a smooth layer of shiny black rock. It dangled from Matt’s hand dripping with sooty Kool-Aid, hissing softly as it let off small puffs of steam.

  “Hey, look at that!” said Chuck. “Have you ever seen such beautiful obsidian?”

  “I . . . I don’t understand,” said Matt. He looked to everyone surrounding him, hoping someone would explain. Everyone was speechless, all except Chuck.

  “It’s quite simple, really,” said Chuck. “You see, obsidian is formed when magma cools very quickly. Your compass was coated in magma and then you immediately dunked it in iced Kool-Aid. Perfect process!” Everyone looked at Chuck. “Rocks are a bit of a hobby for me,” he added.

  They all went back to staring at the compass. His mom muttered something under her breath. Matt didn’t catch it at first, but then the words somehow traveled to his brain.

  “Forged in the Fountain of Faith.”

  Those were the words that had been written in Quine’s letter, around the sketch of the Obsidian Compass.

  “What does this mean?” Corey asked. “I mean, does this mean there are two obsidian compasses?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Hudson, staring at Matt. “It means Matt’s compass is the Obsidian Compass.”

  Everyone went from staring at the dangling, steaming lump to Matt. Matt looked all around, faces that were so familiar to him, so dear, and yet they were looking at him like they’d never seen him before. Like he was some kind of alien, especially his mom. She looked more than confused or curious. She looked terrified.

  “So . . . ,” said Corey, “does this mean Matt is the real inventor of the Obsidian Compass? And not the Quine dude?”

  “It must,” said Ruby. “I mean, Matt definitely made that compass, and this appears to be the beginning of the Obsidian Compass. That’s why they reacted so powerfully to each other when they came together. Not because they’re similar, but because they’re one and the same.”

  “Psychedelic,” said Chuck.

  “But I . . . that can’t be possible,” said Matt, looking back at his compass. “The Obsidian Compass is super old. Quine made the Obsidian Compass ages ago. He gave it to Mom before I was ever born!”

  Ruby shook her head. “You’re thinking in straight lines. Remember how Mom said it’s all a web? It doesn’t matter when anyone was born or what year you made the compass. It travels through time. Quine must get the compass from you at some point in the future, maybe after you die, and then he time-travels back to Mom and gives it to her. Quine could be your great-great-grandson!”

  “Or he could be Vincent’s great-great-grandson,” said Corey. “Maybe he steals the compass from Matt.”

  “Then why would he go back in time and give the compass to Mom?” said Ruby.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s messing with us, or he needs her for some reason. To get the Aeternum! What if Matt invented that too?”

  “But . . . I didn’t,” said Matt.

  “Not yet,” said Corey, “but sometime in the future.”

  Matt tried to sort everything in his pounding head. Quine, the compass, the Aeternum, the letter. Himself.

  A sacrifice must be . . .

  Bring Mateo . . .

  He looked up at his parents. His mom flinched a little when he looked her in the eyes, and Matt felt his chest hollow out. She knew, had always known all of this, ever since she’d read that letter from Quine. She knew about him before she’d ever adopted him, knew he was the real inventor of the compass, that he had something to do with the Aeternum. And she’d never told him any of it. Matt’s stomach churned. He felt bile rising to his throat. He closed his eyes and pushed it down.

  “How did you find me?” Matt asked. “In Yellowstone, I mean. How did you know where and when to go without the map?”

  “Corey figured it out!” said Ruby.

  Corey grinned sheepishly. “It was an accident. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “Oh yes,” said Ruby. “Total accident. We never would have found you on purpose.” She grinned at Matt.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s quite a tale,” said his dad. “But let’s sit, shall we? I’m feeling woozy.”

  “And thirsty,” said Chuck. “Let me make us all another jug of Kool-Aid. Cherry or grape?”

  They all sat on the deck of Blossom, cups of cherry Kool-Aid in hand, drifting aimlessly on the water in Nowhere in No Time. The sky was a clear blue, the air perfectly warm, only a gentle breeze. Matt sipped his Kool-Aid as he listened with rapt attention as his family and all the crew, each of them talking over the other, told all that had happened after he’d been kidnapped by Captain Vincent. It sounded like an exhausting, chaotic whirlwind. As soon as the Vermillion had disappeared, they’d raced Corey to a hospital, jumping over a hundred years in order to get him more modern treatment.

  “Otherwise they might have just cut his arm off,” said Annie. She insisted on coming along, for which they were all grateful as she was able to describe to the doctors in great detail what kind of gun had shot Corey, and the range and angle of the shot. Luckily his wound had not been life-threatening. He’d been shot in the upper arm. The doctors said the bullet had narrowly missed a major artery. Even so, the bone had been fractured, and he had to undergo surgery. He would likely have nerve damage, and there was always the risk of infection, especially when such an old gun had been used. Doctors put him on a series of antibiotics and monitored him closely for several days. They of course asked a lot of questions, to which Annie also readily supplied the answers. She told them she was a gun collector and the kids had gotten into one of her safes while visiting and, well . . . accidents happen. It must have been a common enough story because the doctors didn’t question further, though she did get a sound scolding about gun safety. This rankled Annie, and she grumbled loudly that someone needed to teach Brocco about gun safety and grooming.

  At the same time, they were all in a rage over Matt.

  “Mom went berserk,” said Ruby.

  “I was perfectly rational!” said Mrs. Hudson. “All things considered.”

  As soon as she knew Corey would be okay, she left using Matt’s compass, traveling anywhere and everywhere she could think Vincent might have taken him. She searched for days, but popped in and out of the hospital every few minutes, according to Ruby. She hopped back and forth in time, switching between fretting over Corey and frantically searching for Matt. Matt could tell just by their voices and the bags beneath their eyes that both h
is parents had been driven to the brink of insanity. His dad’s entire body tensed every time his mom mentioned traveling to find Matt. Matt could only imagine how torturous it had been to watch his wife run off and time-travel without him, not knowing the risks she might face or if she would ever return. They had all been through a lot. He could almost see the frayed edges of their minds and hearts.

  Mrs. Hudson searched for Matt until she had exhausted herself to the point where she could hardly stand. She’d traveled the world over, centuries and millennia, trying to find any trace of the Vermillion after it had left Chicago. In a final act of mad desperation, she’d even gone back to the Chicago World’s Fair, just before Matt had been taken. It was a huge risk in more ways than one, they all knew. It was exactly the kind of thing she’d warned them against, but it was her last hope.

  She tried to board the Vermillion before everything happened, so she’d be there when Matt was taken and could escape with him after he threw her the compass. She hoped it would be a smooth enough meeting of timelines, and it almost worked, except the compass had somehow backfired on her, and she been thrown back to the hospital, again without Matt.

  “That was a low point,” said Chuck. “Boy, we thought you were a goner for sure.”

  “What happened then?” said Matt. Though he appreciated knowing everything that had happened while they’d been separated, what he really wanted to know was how they finally found him.

  “We fought a lot,” said Ruby.

  “We didn’t fight,” said Mrs. Hudson. “We discussed.”

  Corey and Ruby both snorted. “We fought,” said Corey. “I got discharged from the hospital, and then no one could agree on what we should do next. Stay in Chicago. Go back to New York. Split up. Stick together . . .”

  And though Corey didn’t say it out loud, Matt guessed there had been an argument over whether they would fight to find him, or let go. Move on. Cut your losses. He didn’t want to guess who had been on what side of the argument. He preferred to just skip to the part where they found him.

  “So what happened?” Matt asked. “How did you find me?”

  Ruby started to say something, but Corey put a hand over her mouth. “I get to tell this part!” He pulled out a pack of pink gum from his pocket. “Second magic ingredient!”

  “Huh?” said Matt.

  “One of the nurses gave Corey a pack of bubble gum before he left,” said Ruby. “Of course he shoved half the pack in his mouth right away.”

  “Yeah,” said Corey, “I was blowing bubbles the size of my face!”

  “And then he was blowing them in my face,” said Ruby.

  “And Mom was like, ‘Corey, cut that out!’ And she swiped one of my bubbles with the compass and then the compass started going haywire, and Blossom started up, and before we knew what was going on we exploded out of Old Faithful! It was epic.”

  “Terrifying is what it was,” said Chuck, shivering a little. “Scared the beetle juice out of me. And then everything was exploding all around us. Then I thought we were goners.”

  “So the bubble gum . . . made the compass travel to Vincent?”

  “To the other compass,” said Ruby. “Or the same compass. It’s like it created some kind of magnetic charge or something.”

  “You know,” said Jia. “In a weird way this makes complete sense. You know how I always use peanut butter and bubble gum for repairs on the Vermillion? Something about the combination of gum and peanut butter just helps everything stick together. It must have had a similar effect on Matt’s compass, except it wanted to go right toward the Obsidian Compass, and then it became the Obsidian Compass.”

  Matt’s mind was swirling. Everything that had happened, that he had learned in the last day, buzzed around him like a busy beehive, everything humming and constantly in motion.

  “What about Vincent?” Matt asked. “If our compasses are one and the same, shouldn’t he be able to find us here?”

  “I don’t think so,” said his mom. “This place always seemed to be a void where no one else could follow.”

  “I never could see the Vermillion on my map when your mom came here,” said his dad. “It would just disappear.”

  “And I don’t think Vincent would come after us now anyway,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Not after what happened in Yellowstone. He knows it’s too dangerous. I think we’re safe.”

  “For now,” said Tui. “That man has many tricks up his big sleeves. We will have to prepare to face him again.”

  “You should have let me shoot him when I had the chance,” said Annie, grinding her teeth at Tui.

  “And risk killing Rubbana?” said Tui.

  “There was no risk,” said Annie. “I had him. I could have put an end to this whole mess.”

  “Yes,” said Tui, her voice sickly sweet. “Little Miss Sure Shot never misses.”

  “That’s enough,” snapped Mrs. Hudson. “This argument will get us nowhere.”

  “We’re already nowhere,” said Annie. “And we have no way of getting out, do we?”

  Matt looked down at his compass, or his lump of obsidian, rather. He couldn’t fathom how it was ever going to work again. All the dials had been coated in magma, hardened to obsidian. He couldn’t even turn them. But if it really was the Obsidian Compass, and he was the inventor, then somehow he would get it to work again, right?

  After the initial shock and excitement had worn off and everyone started to settle down, Matt finally had a chance to introduce Jia to his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Hudson both warmly embraced Jia, thanking her for all she’d done and sacrificed to help their family, to which she blushed and told them she was happy to help. Pike remained her usual quiet self, but Mrs. Hudson patted her on the head and told her thank you too.

  That evening, Chuck cooked everyone a meal of ramen noodles with bits of beef jerky. Corey and Ruby caught up with Jia, each of them exchanging stories.

  Matt kept glancing at his mom. Every now and then she’d catch his eye, then quickly look away.

  Matt’s mind went in loops and spirals. He kept going over and over everything that had happened. His compass turning to obsidian. Quine’s letter. The Aeternum. Words and letters swirled in his brain, pieces of a puzzle. He turned them over and shifted them around, trying to fit it all together.

  Forged in the Fountain of Faith

  A sacrifice must be . . .

  Bring Mateo . . .

  His mom whispered something to his dad. He whispered something back. Neither of them approached him, and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or upset at this. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to them, but why wouldn’t they want to talk to him? He wasn’t the one who had lied.

  They all slept above deck that night, snuggled up in Chuck’s crocheted blankets, lying beneath the starry sky. Blossom gently rocked back and forth as the water lapped against the side of the bus-boat, lulling them all to sleep. It almost felt like “old times” to Matt. He knew they hadn’t been on the Vermillion that long ago, but it felt like years and years that they’d been parted from Jia.

  As exhausted as he was from everything that had happened, Matt had difficulty sleeping. Maybe it had something to do with Chuck’s growling snores or Corey kicking him in his sleep. Or maybe it was simply that his brain would not turn off. He felt for his compass—the Obsidian Compass—beneath his shirt. It was cool now. He rotated it over and over in his hands.

  A strange sound made Matt sit up. He looked around. Corey and Ruby slept on either side of him. Jia was directly above his head, sleeping on her side, her hands beneath her cheek. Pike was curled up next to her, cuddling her rope like a teddy bear. Tui slept on one of the hard benches. Annie was curled up with her gun against the side of the boat. His dad and Chuck were both snoring on the bow. His mom was the only one who wasn’t asleep. She was standing at the very back of Blossom.

  Matt took a breath. He needed to talk to her, get things out in the open. He couldn’t live with the tightness in his chest. He most certainly couldn�
��t sleep.

  He climbed over all the sleeping bodies, careful not to step on anyone. His mom didn’t even look at him as he came and stood beside her. She just looked out at the water, sparkling like polished obsidian.

  “I always loved coming to this place,” she said. “It felt like stepping outside of the world, leaving it all behind for just a while. It always helped me to gather my thoughts.”

  Matt definitely needed a gathering of his thoughts. “Vincent showed me the letter from Quine,” he finally said.

  Mrs. Hudson nodded, still not looking at him. “I figured he would.”

  “Why didn’t you show me?”

  “Because,” she said. “I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t. I don’t know the repercussions of everything that’s happened, nor can I predict what will happen, so I thought, why lay that burden on my son? Why worry him with things that we can’t possibly understand?”

  “Like the part where it says I’m supposed to be sacrificed?”

  Mrs. Hudson finally turned to Matt, staring at him with her dark, intelligent eyes. “We don’t know if that’s what it means,” she said. “Remember it’s not complete. Sometimes having partial information is more dangerous than having none. And anyway, it could be a lie. It’s just a poem, after all.”

  Matt could tell by his mom’s voice that she didn’t really believe that.

  Matt reached into his back pocket and pulled out the adoption paper Captain Vincent had given him. “And what about this?” He held out the paper. His mom took it, squinting at it in the dim starlight. Matt could not see her expression too well, but he heard her take in a sharp breath.

  “You always said I was named after Dad,” said Matt.

  “You were,” she said, “in a roundabout way.”

  “How can you say that? I had already been named!” He pointed to the paper. It was a struggle to keep from shouting.