by M H Ryan
“Just a verbal agreement is—” I started.
“No,” Sherri said. “Benji’s right. We need a ring or something.”
“I don’t—” I tried to say.
“Not a ring. That can be taken off,” Kara said and then brightened as if she had an idea. “A tattoo. Oh my God, we could all get matching tattoos.”
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” Sherri said.
“You don’t have to—” I tried to interject, but was quickly talked over. So much for being their leader.
“We should get one on our hand, something small but cool,” Kara said.
“His initials!” Benji said. “Right here, so we can always see it.” She pointed to the soft spot between thumb and finger.
“Yes!” Kara said. “We can use one of the fishing hooks for a needle, and I think I can make some ink from the charcoal. Oh my God, we’re going to have matching wife tattoos.”
The girls screamed in excitement and jumped around each other in a tight circle.
Well, that didn’t go as I expected. I was happy with the outcome, though. The girls were just as excited as I was for the commitment to each other. Whoever we came across would know that they are with me and no one else.
I gazed over to Emma, who watched from her stump as my group of girls ran off to the bags to get supplies. Whatever they had planned didn’t seem to involve me. I tapped on my shorts as I watched them and felt the stone in my pocket.
“Oh, Benji,” I said, almost forgetting about the stone I had found in the fish.
“Yes?” she said, running up to me, looking so happy.
“So when I was fishing this morning,” I said with a stifled laugh, “This is going to sound crazy, but when I was gutting a fish, I found this stone inside it.”
I held up the black stone so she could see it.
Her eyes narrowed and she moved her hand near it. She jumped back, looking shocked.
“That’s the pure evil stone, Jack. How do you have it?” Benji said loud enough that the whole camp went silent.
“I found it in one of the fish. Are you sure this is one of the stones? It looks a little different to me.”
“Yes, there is no mistaking what that is, and how can you not feel it? Why are you touching it?”
Benji ran to the leaves that we had used as plates, grabbing several before running back to me.
“I don’t feel a thing from it,” I said.
“Drop it,” Benji said.
I dropped the stone onto the green leaves and Benji wrapped the leaves around the stone. Half of me wanted the rock back. I just liked the way it looked.
“Was that the stone you were talking about at the ship?” Sherri asked.
“Yes, the very one that fell from his shorts,” Benji said.
“I don’t know if that was the same one. I mean, what are the chances of something like that happening?” I asked.
“Nearly impossible,” Benji said.
“What does it mean?” Sherri asked.
“I think it’s searching him out. I don’t know how or why, but if you could sense what is in this stone, you’d be jumping into the ocean to get away from it,” Benji said, looking terrified.
“Searching me out? It’s just a stone.”
“This is anything but a stone. You’ve seen firsthand, twice, what one of these stones can do, what they can turn into. Hell, we had one on this island. I think we need to take this one to the tar pits as well.”
“Okay, if you think it’s necessary.”
“Yeah, it’s necessary.”
“Well, let’s get the weapons made first, okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, of course, but I’m putting this on Luna. I don’t even want it on our island for a minute longer.”
Benji hurried to the boat and climbed aboard.
“Wow, she really hates that rock,” Aubrey said, standing next to me and watching Benji.
“She feels rocks differently than you or I can,” I said, as if that made perfect sense.
“Guys,” Eliza said. “The ship! It isn’t smoking anymore.”
We rushed to the shoreline and gazed out to the horizon that had been a black smear of smoke for days now. This time, a clear sky greeted us.
Cass screamed from behind us. We all spun around, and she looked as pale as I’d ever seen her. Her hands were held up in front of her, and an aluminum panel sat on the ground at her feet. She stared at it, as if it had just bit her.
I rushed to her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“It was that,” Cass said, pointing at the sheet of metal. “I felt it, Jack. I felt it.”
Chapter 25
“What do you mean, you felt it?” I asked. “Was it too hot?”
She shook her head. “No, I wanted to help clean up, so I thought I’d wash off the panel, but when I picked it up, I felt it—like it…it was kind of like…” She looked up as she struggled, then shrugged.
“It feels like you’re part of it, and its part of you?” Benji asked after rushing back from the boat.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cass said.
“Whoa, are you saying you can feel metal?” Aubrey said. “That is some straight-up Magneto kind of stuff. Can you even imagine what we could do with that superpower?”
I hadn’t even gotten to a practical use of the skill, but even a quick thought of it revealed endless possibilities.
“Can you touch it again?” I asked.
“Yeah, it didn’t hurt. It just sort of freaked me out,” Cass said.
She bent down and picked up the sheet of metal. Her eyes went wide, and her hands trembled, but she didn’t drop it this time.
“I can almost hear it,” Cass said, moving her hand around the sheet of aluminum.
“Yeah,” Benji said. “When I touch the rocks, they almost tell me what they can be. It’s how I can find the right ones for the different type of weapons I make. What is it telling you?”
“I don’t know,” Cass said. “This is kind of crazy. I mean, I sort of thought these feelings and intuitions were in you guy’s heads. But this is real. I think I can bend this.”
She moved her hands, squeezing the two sides, when near the middle a seam formed and the metal bent. She gasped and dropped the metal on the ground. It flopped to one side of the fold, looking kind of like a taco.
“Did you see that?” Cass said, and for the first time, she looked genuinely excited.
“You bent my cooking pan,” Benji said. “And how did you not feel this when you cleaned it earlier?”
“Sorry,” Cass said, looking meek. “I didn’t actually ever clean it. I just said I did.”
“Really?” Benji said, narrowing her eyes. “You lied to me about cleaning it? I cooked off of that. We could have gotten sick.”
“Benji,” I said. “And this goes for everyone—I know Cass has made mistakes but she has apologized to us and deserves a second chance. So unless she dishonors her new commitment to us, I don’t want any animosity from her previous actions. Do I make myself clear to everyone?”
“Yes,” Benji sighed. “Sorry, Cass.”
“It’s okay. I was a terrible person, and I’m happy to be having a second chance,” Cass said.
“Tell us more about the metal,” I said, steering the conversation back on topic.
“I’m not sure, at this point, but I think I can bend it. Well, I know I can bend it,” Cass said with a big smile, looking at her hands. “This is so cool.”
“Can you make a pot?” Benji asked. “I could make soups and stews. I could boil things, like the water.”
“I don’t know,” Cass said.
“Can you make a fork?” Aubrey asked. “To be honest, not a big fan of the hand eating.”
“Maybe—”
“Oh, what about the kiln?” Kara asked. “Can you make holes in it about this big and then shape it into a circle about this big?” She used her hands and arms to describe the two sizes.
“I don’t know. I just found out—
”
“Wait, I just thought of something,” Sherri said. “I’ve had this crazy idea for a while but I bet that waterfall is higher up than us, and if we had a pipe, we could run it across the forest and to our camp. We could have running water.”
The girls cheered and squealed at the idea. They jumped around, grabbing each other in excitement.
“I don’t know,” Cass said, looking distressed, but no one heard her.
I blew out a loud whistle, and the girls settled down.
“Cass found out her gift mere minutes ago. As with all our gifts, it’s going to take some time for her to know how to use it, but I agree with everyone that this is an exciting turn of events for us. The practical implementations for the use of metal can’t be understated.” I said and stood in front of a nervous looking Cass. “Cass, I think you should be studying your ability full-time from now on.”
“What does that mean?” Cass asked.
“I have an ability, and the more I push myself, the stronger I feel I get with it. So, I want you to take the couple sheets of metal we have and start practicing with them. It’s all I want you to think about.”
“I’m going to need more material,” Cass said.
I took her to the shoreline and pointed out to Tar Island and the boat docked at its shores.
“Cass, we have all the metal you can handle.”
Chapter 26
A day had passed since I had made a commitment to my women.
The girls—my wives, as they called themselves—were busy getting trying to make a tattoo ink concoction out of ash and coal. Kara swore that ink was not much more than carbon, and that with the right mixture, they could create some adequate ink. I mostly stayed out of these kinds of conversations as they implied it was up to them on how to honor the commitment we made with each other.
They were excited about it, and everyone, even Cass, seemed happy over the last day.
Cass had impressed me since our discussion; She was working hard, having a good attitude, and being a good person to the group and herself. It was as if this cloud had been pulled away from the island, and now she was a shining beacon in the group.
The other thing we did for most of the day had been making more weapons. We had spears and the arrows, but there was a new addition to the weapon family courtesy of our team slugger, Emma.
As we stood on the deck of the boat, Emma stayed near the front, holding her bat. The sunlight bounced off her sparkly bikini and the bat lay on her shoulder, as if she was ready to swing it at any moment. The handle of the bat was about standard size, but as it went down the three-foot length of the wood, it thickened to nearly the width of my leg. If that wasn’t intimidating enough, she had Benji make three spikes and used some heat and lashings to secure them to the head of the bat. It looked downright medieval.
Cass sat near the bow of the boat as we neared Tar Island. She had dove into her metal manipulation, and in a short time, her gift had grown in strength. In her hands was one of the sheets of metal we took from Danforth’s plane. She folded the sheet of metal, and I watched her as she moved in the edges, trying to work out how to make a pot for Benji. It might not have been the most urgent thing we needed, but I could tell Cass wanted to make up to Benji for the way she had been acting. Cass had been making it up to all of us. So much so that we had to make her stop working and drink so of the willow bark tea to ease her pounding headache.
Even now, she tensed, touching her temple. Cass folded the metal inward, creating something that looked more like a funnel than a bowl, with creases, uneven edges and a pointy bottom.
The trip to Tar Island had a dual purpose, and Benji held one of the reasons with a tight grip. The black stone, wrapped inside the leaves, had a one-way ticket to the bottom of the tar pit. I had a twinge of anxiety about the stone getting thrown away, and for that reason, I knew it was the right thing to do.
That stone, and maybe all the stones, had some sort of power that attracted them to me or me to them. No other explanation could be as to how that fish I caught had it in its belly. Too direct to be a coincidence. There was a greater power at play out there, perhaps this king the fish people were warning me about. They said his power reached even out here, the outskirts of this archipelago.
I thought on the meaning of that meeting, and the fact one of them was willing to die to give me that information. Unfortunately, the knowledge they gave me just confused the situation even more. For one, how the hell did these kinds of beings exist on earth? They were sentient beings. This conversation had started a heated debate among the group last night.
Emma seemed to stick with the theory that this was some kind of “other” place. A purgatory or some other mystical realm outside of earthly bounds.
Sherri felt this was a place lost to the world and just needed to be discovered. She guessed the king might have some influence over flight patterns and boat paths, leaving this place undiscovered except for the few that fall into it by chance.
Eliza had a different view, being born on these islands. This was just home, and our world sounded like more of a mystery to her than this one. Half the time, I suspected she didn’t believe the things we told her about the civilization we came from.
Kara went more in line with Emma and thought that we were transported here by the storm we hit. That some higher power, whether it be aliens or some wormhole, sent us here out of sync with each other and plopped us on different islands like sprinkled cheese over pizza.
The other girls were undecided or agreeing with one or more of the theories. I wasn’t sure, but Kara’s somehow felt like the best answer. I doubted the king had power over the world, otherwise, why would he stay in this place? The idea of a purgatory kind of place landed in Kara’s idea box of being transported, but that would be by a celestial being and suggested that we were most likely dead. I couldn’t imagine a god sending us here with so few others, and there was a major hole in that idea. Rebecca Brown.
My captain had been here and then back, only to find her way back here again, taking us all along for the ride. I had spent months with Rebecca, transporting passengers around the islands, taking groups out for a simple joy ride, or business people trying to have some kind of retreat. During those months, she didn’t hide from me the fact that she was searching the ocean for something. She did hide what she was looking for though.
The other thing I knew was that Rebecca had no idea where it was. She just kept looking at the horizon from the wheelhouse, sometimes wasting half a day or more of the passengers’ time with journeys into the ocean. I had to field most of the complaints with stories of bad weather or rogue waves or even pirates.
I gazed up at the ship that I had once thought was hers.
“This place smells as bad as a microwaved dog fart,” Emma said, holding her nose.
“Meh, it doesn’t bother me,” Benji said, smiling at the big ship we were approaching.
The smell, much like burning rubber or fresh asphalt, wasn’t that offensive to me either. The thing I didn’t like was the island itself. It was a place that just felt wrong.
“You think that this place could be what Yin Island will eventually turn into?” I wondered out loud, looking at the dead island oozing black goo from the top of the small hill.
The view from our side allowed for only a glimpse of the black pool at the top of the island. On the other side, a black tar river, nearly as wide as the island, slowly poured itself into the ocean, clumping up as the cool water hardened it. I had found Moshe on the edge of the tar river and rescued her. It was one of the reasons that we left her back on the island again. That, and she didn’t seem to want to go. Benji said it was the stone, but I think it was the idea I implanted in her to protect the chickens. Ever since then, she hadn’t left their sides.
“That’s an interesting theory,” Kara said, looking at the island in disgust. “I can already tell this is a bad place. I don’t even want to touch it.”
“I bet a stone like this cou
ld make any place some kind of horrible,” Benji said, holding on to the leaves like a loaded diaper.
“Who knows?” Sherri said. “This island could have been like ours at one point, and then someone like shadow man comes in and ruins it.”
When the ship hit the island, it ran partially onshore and leaned to one side. The ship had been burning for the better part of a week, and most of it was now covered in black soot.
I thought about Mario a lot as well. He implied the stones were preparing this place for something, though I wasn’t sure what. I glanced up at the ship and then to the bridge. We had left Mario’s body up there. The windows to the bridge were now broken out and the interior was pitch black. It appeared the fire traveled up through the windows like smokestacks. If any remnants of his body remained up there, I’d be surprised.
“Let’s close the sails up and go in with paddles. There is a ladder on the back side,” I said.
The girls moved into action, pulling on ropes and yanking down the two sails. Cass fumbled around, trying to find a place she could help, but after a minute, it had been done. She sighed and gazed at the massive, metal ship.
“This is where you rescued me?” Cass asked, as if seeing the ship for the first time.
“Yeah, up on the bridge,” I said, pointing.
“Hold it here for a second,” Benji said, pulling out an arrow.
She wrapped the leaves holding the stone around the arrow and tied it off with some fiber stripped from a tree. She set the arrow in the string and pulled back, holding it there while she adjusted her aim. Then she let go and the arrow flew in a rainbow-like arch. The arrow landed right on top of the hill, sinking into the black goo and disappearing from our view.
“Good riddance,” Benji said. “And if there are any stones left in this ship, you aren’t allowed near them.”
“Okay, no problem,” I said. “And Benji, that was one hell of a shot.”
“I know.” She breathed on her fingernails and rubbed them on her shoulder, looking proud.
The girls paddled, and I steered to the back of the boat. There were a few holes where the fire had broken through, most likely vent pipes that had melted. I wanted to see the port side of the ship.
