Island of Legends Page 14

  Liam’s eyes widened. He swallowed hard and passed his hand over his face. He whispered in a shaky voice, “You did it? You kept me alive?”

  She stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded. “But what matters now,” she said with urgency, “is that you do the right thing with your second chance. And I believe you will. I need you to. Before things get even more out of hand.”

  Liam reached out and put his hand on Eva’s shoulder, a look of earnest truth and respect in his deep blue eyes. “My mind and heart have left the fog of Quill. I’ll do the right thing now. I’ll help you in any way I can. You can trust me.”

  Eva shook Liam’s hand. “Then we shall ride this risky road together. We have two tracks. In the short term, Aaron seems restless and eager to do something to antagonize Artimé. I don’t know what it is yet, but he does things in haste, and he’s sure to make a mistake. And . . .” She hesitated, unsure she wanted to share such delicate information, but then went on. “Many of the leadership in Artimé are away for a time, but no one must know that. I need to keep Aaron from doing something stupid while Artimé is vulnerable.”

  Liam nodded. “And the other track . . . the long term?”

  “Yes. That’s Gondoleery. She’ll be stealthy and deliberate. But when she strikes, she’ll take us all down.”

  “Strikes? With what? What power does she have?”

  “She’ll have more power than anyone if she figures out how to use it.” Eva lost herself in memories for a few moments. She sank to sit on the steps. “I have a story to tell.”

  “Then tell it, please.”

  Eva nodded, and then began in a faraway voice. “When I was a child, I could make rain, ice, and fire.”

  “What’s ice?” Liam asked. He sat down on the step next to her.

  “Ice is frozen water, hardened like a rock, and so cold it hurts to hold it.”

  Liam wore a quizzical look, finding the explanation hard to follow, but he remained silent so she could explain.

  “Gondoleery Rattrapp could make rain, but not ice or fire. Marcus could do any elemental magic he put his mind to, but he preferred to leave the weather alone—he was so much more creative than that. And Justine couldn’t do any elemental magic at all, and not much other magic either. But she made a good bully.” Eva’s eyes narrowed, remembering.

  She went on. “When we came to Quill, and Justine—through Marcus—made the original Quillens forget our pasts, we forgot our magic. But not long ago, Marcus gave Gondoleery and me our memories back. Now Gondoleery is relearning all her magic, and I think she’s plotting to do something horrible with it. That’s why she’s got burns all over her hands. She’s already been successful at making ice—I saw it with my own eyes. And now she’s trying to figure out how to throw fire.”

  Liam stared at Eva in alarm. “That’s horrible! What is the high priest doing about it?”

  Eva pressed her lips together. “I’ve told him that something strange is going on with Gondoleery. His response is apparently to celebrate it by putting her in charge of the government.” Eva sighed in frustration. “I haven’t told him about the fire part of it yet—that was the first I’ve seen of it from her, when I was with you yesterday. Before I say anything, I want to see if she manages to do more than give herself a few burns. She couldn’t throw fire when we were children. I find it hard to believe she can master it now.”

  “Maybe Aaron asked her to be governor so he could keep an eye on her.”

  Eva shrugged. “If that’s the reason, it would be the single smartest thing that obnoxious boy has done so far. But I don’t see it. He’s too arrogant to think anybody could possibly have more power than him.”

  Liam looked troubled. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Keep your eyes open. Watch everything. Check on the vacant homes in the Necessary quadrant to see if you find anything strange happening, like the orange glowing we saw from Gondoleery’s window, or possibly blue, which would be ice. But above all, keep an eye on Aaron. Gain his trust. Do what he’s asking you to do . . . and if you can’t, fake it.”

  “And what about Gondoleery?”

  “I’m trying to keep up with her, magicwise. I need a new place to practice, because Aaron nearly caught me making ice and then melting it all with fire in Haluki’s house. But I’m changing tack after what Aaron said tonight about letting Artimé know whom they’re dealing with. I’m going to focus on him at least until Alex, Simber, and Florence get back to Artimé. Because if Aaron goes in there now to show his muscles, there’s a very good chance somebody could get hurt.”

  » » « «

  Eva Fathom and Liam Healy talked long into the night, Eva filling him in on the original plan she’d had with Marcus and how everything had gone wrong. Liam was brimming with questions, but there were two that pestered him most, and finally he asked, “How do you know so much about what’s happening in Artimé? Don’t you have a daughter there?”

  Eva shook her head. “That’s one secret I need to keep for now.”

  Liam nodded and was silent, too scared to ask the question that had plagued him all the time he’d languished in the Ancients Sector. He was well aware that he didn’t deserve to know the answer. But the guilt never let up, and his mind never let go. Is Claire okay?

  A Sighting

  By morning, word spread that Florence had been seen but no one had been able to tell if she was alive or dead. All the Artiméans could do while the island was underwater was go over their newly revised plan and wait for the volcano to surface again.

  Alex laid down the logic. “We can’t release the creatures and rescue Florence until after we have Sky and Crow’s mother, or else the pirates will know we’re here and it’ll ruin everything. So we’ve got to get Copper first, and then immediately be ready to break into the aquarium and get Florence. Simber,” Alex said, not looking at him, “I may need you to break the glass skylight. We’ll try the route through the fishing hatch first, of course. Obviously, we don’t want the whole population to drown if the volcano sinks and water starts pouring in the hole, but hopefully I’d have time to repair it with a glass spell before they’d go down again.”

  “I can brrreak glass, as you well know.”

  Alex frowned. He knew, all right. Simber had had to shatter a glass wall spell in Justine’s palace once, long ago. “Well, good. Is everybody clear on the plan?”

  They were clear.

  “Let’s take the ship out a little farther, Captain,” Alex said. “And batten down the hatches, or whatever. We’re going to have another giant wave when the island comes up.”

  The Captain gave the order to nobody in particular. Sean and Lani took over the battening, and soon everyone was making sure their things were secure. “At least this time we can all swim,” Sean said.

  “I’m still climbing up the ropes,” Sky muttered. She was a bit on edge due to all the waiting. It was hard, wondering whether her mother was even alive, not to mention where she could possibly be in that . . . that giant terrarium. Add in Alex’s recent weird behavior, and it was enough to unsettle anybody.

  She stood with Crow at the back of the ship, staring in the direction of where the island should be, as Ahab maneuvered the ship away. Alex joined them.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m just checking in. Are you guys doing all right?” He kept his eyes trained on Crow, only flitting to Sky for a split second now and then.

  Crow shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Sky gave Alex a grim smile and lied. “I guess.” They were quiet for a moment. “What if she never passes underneath that skylight again?”

  There were so many what-ifs. Alex had a lot of ideas about what to do. Dangerous ones. He didn’t want to have to carry any of them out. Now he met Sky’s gaze. “We’ll find her,” he said, and he meant it. “We’ll man the other skylights too, now that we know where they are. We’re not leaving here until we have your mother with us.”

  Sky looked up at Alex, her eyes glistening. Maybe she had
imagined the growing distance between them. She popped up on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on Alex’s cheek.

  He closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain, and then smiled, but when he lifted his lids again, the distance was back in his eyes.

  » » « «

  They slept in shifts throughout the day, watching. Waiting. Talking. Playing games to pass the time. Sleeping some more. Henry taught Crow, Sean, and Fox about the different ingredients he used in his medicines. Lani pulled the wrinkled, ragged-edged paper from her bag once more, smoothed it, and studied it for hours before she got tired of it and put it away. Sky kept to herself.

  It wasn’t long before every one of them went from eager to on edge. They tried not to let the close quarters and anxiety lead to arguing and short tempers, but it didn’t always work. Alex and Simber’s short bits of communication remained strained. And during the quiet times when Alex allowed himself to get lost in his thoughts, he worried quite a bit that things would never be the same between him and the stone cheetah, and that their relationship was permanently damaged. It was painful, but it also made him mad, like he wanted to punch somebody in the face. Worse, he didn’t know how to fix it, and that scared him. A lot.

  And then there was Sky. Alex kept having to push her face from his mind. He couldn’t deal with those feelings on top of everything else. And he couldn’t mess this up. He wouldn’t. Being mage, performing a successful mission—it was way more important than anything.

  When Pirate Island finally came shooting up out of the water and it blew its stack, everyone jumped into action. The wave came on strong, and Captain Ahab steered the ship into it. The wall of water hit them, washing a few of them overboard despite their preparations, but Simber plucked them out of the water as usual, and other than a few bumps and bruises, everyone was all right. Even Captain Ahab managed to keep his wooden leg, which gave the statue nothing to moan about afterward, so the entire course of events went along rather ho-hummedly.

  For the next length of time, they watched the fiery lava sputter and hiss in the water as Captain Ahab brought them a bit closer to the island. When the volcano stopped steaming and it appeared safe to go ashore, the team disembarked. This time, knowing there would be warning tremors when the island was about to sink, Alex ordered small groups to the other skylights they’d found, and he assigned Sky, Crow, and Carina each with a different group so they’d have a better chance of spotting Copper.

  Just as dusk was falling, a shout rang out. Sky, Fox, Ms. Octavia, and Alex scrambled to their feet. A second later, Simber came soaring toward them and landed. They hopped onto his back as he explained.

  “Crrrow spotted herrr,” he said. “She hasn’t noticed them yet.”

  Sky nearly leaped from Simber’s back as he was still attempting to land. She joined her brother. “Where?” she demanded.

  “There, with the brown dress. She’s carrying a bucket and a mop. See?”

  Sky strained against the daylight just as the interior lights of the underwater island began to turn on. “I see her!” she cried. “Oh, that’s her, all right.” She rubbed Crow’s back. “She’s alive! Good job, Crow. We can’t let her out of our sight.”

  Octavia and Fox took a good look at the woman. “We’ll head back to our skylight,” Octavia said, “so we can watch if she visits that side of the island.”

  “Sim, will you take me to the third skylight?” Alex asked. “I can recognize her now.”

  Simber nodded brusquely and Alex climbed on. They traveled to the third spot in silence.

  Alex slid off and joined the small group that huddled there, filling them in on what was happening. “Have the squirrelicorns come out here,” he said to Simber, “and post them two per skylight so they can spread the word if we have to act fast. And they can help get us back to the ship if the island sinks.”

  Soon six squirrelicorns could be seen circling their posts, while everyone else remained still and on the watch for Copper.

  From time to time, when there were few pirates moving about, Alex’s glance moved to the distant glass cage where the sea creatures were kept. Florence lay in the same position as before, unmoving. Alex’s gut twisted.

  As the evening progressed, colorfully dressed pirates emerged through the set of large doors on the upper floor and mingled with each other, leaning over the sides of the walkway and looking out at the sea creatures in the glass cage. Or they appeared briefly, barking out orders to other, younger pirates or to the few in drab brown clothing like Copper. Not one of them looked up at the skylights, but the Artiméans were also careful not to attract any attention.

  Although Lani gasped once, and nearly fell onto the glass when she was observing two pirates talking to one another as they unrolled a scroll and studied it.

  “What is it?” Samheed asked. “Did something happen?”

  Lani stared at the scene below. “That scroll—those two pirates are looking at it. The drawing on it looks . . . interesting. Like maybe I’ve seen something like it before.”

  “Oh, brother,” Samheed said. “You’re supposed to be watching Copper, remember?”

  Lani scowled and didn’t respond. She strained her eyes to get a better look, but just then one of the pirates glanced around, so she had to duck to keep from being seen. When she dared to look again, they had gone down to the lower floor. They opened a glass display case near the stairs, unrolled the scroll, and pinned it inside. Then they closed the case once more and looked down into it at their drawing.

  “What are they doing?” she whispered.

  Samheed turned to look at her. “Will you focus, please?”

  Lani felt like arguing—she was definitely focused. But not on Copper. Reluctantly she held her tongue. “I guess it was nothing,” she said.

  Copper stayed in view below, scrubbing the wood-plank walkway near a young man who was washing the glass walls. For the most part, the pirates ignored them.

  Eventually the top level of the underwater island quieted, and more people made their way down the stairs. On the lower floor, they went individually through smaller doors.

  “It looks like the upper floor is where some of them work, and the lower floor is where they live,” Alex noted. “Plus, there’s a stairway that goes down another flight.” He couldn’t see anything down there.

  Soon Copper stood up straight and stretched, wiping her forehead with her sleeve. She signaled to the window washer, using Warbleran sign language.

  “Do you think he’s from Warbler too?” Ms. Octavia asked.

  “Yes,” said Fox. “I’m sure of it.”

  Alex couldn’t help but glance at Simber to see the cat’s reaction, but when Simber did the same to Alex, both quickly looked away. Alex frowned and concentrated on Copper and the man below.

  The man nodded. The two of them packed up their cleaning supplies and made their way down a sweeping spiral staircase to the terrarium floor, where the pirates had gone. But Copper and the man kept going down the stairs to the floor below that. Soon their heads disappeared from sight.

  When Alex heard a sound behind him, he looked up. It was Sky and Lani.

  “Alex,” Lani said, “we need a meeting. You, me, Henry, Sky, and Ms. Octavia. Sky has an idea.”

  Sky’s Plan

  I noticed something interesting about the pirates,” Lani began. “Henry noticed it too. They look like us.”

  Alex knit his brow. “Like us?” He didn’t understand. “You mean like Unwanteds? I didn’t know we had a look.”

  “No,” Lani said. “Like Henry and me. Most of them have our skin color, and, well, they just look like us.”

  “A lot of the kids down there have straight black hair, like Lani and me,” Henry explained. “And many of the pirates we can see have blue eyes, like us. You know what I mean? Like they could be in our family.”

  “Okay . . . ,” Alex said, still unsure why they needed to have a meeting about this. “Do you think you have relatives here too, who need rescuing? Is that what yo
u’re saying?” If so, Alex was getting a bit tired of this rescue game.

  “I—” Lani started to say, then paused, considering Alex’s question for a moment. “Well, I don’t know about that, but I just noticed the resemblance, and I said something to Sky about it. And she came up with a remarkable plan. Tell him, Sky.”

  Sky’s orange eyes lit up. “Well, I was thinking, if Lani and Henry were willing, and if you didn’t think it was too dangerous, that maybe they could go inside disguised as some of the people who live here. They could find my mother and explain who they are, and then plot an escape out the fishing hatch.”

  Alex pondered the idea. “Yes,” he said slowly, “and they could help her with the underwater part. I’ve been very worried about that—I assume your mother is like other Warblerans and never learned to swim?”

  “Right. She can’t,” Sky said. She flashed a grateful smile at Alex.

  “Henry and I can take her right through it and swim her to the surface fast,” Lani said. “She’ll be fine, right, Henry?”

  Henry nodded.

  “But how are you going to get inside?” Ms. Octavia asked. “You’ll be soaking wet if you just dive down and go in. The pirates use waterproof suits and helmets when they go out to fish. I’ve been watching.”

  “I’m going to sneak in through the hatch and borrow them,” Sky said. Her voice held an edge to it, as if daring Alex to say no.

  Alex stared at the water, lost in thought. He didn’t say no. He thought it was a great idea, actually. “Fine. I’ll go with you. We’ll get two suits in one trip—that’ll be the best way.”

  “But then there’s the matter of our clothes,” Lani said. “Once we get in there and get the suits off, we won’t look like pirates. Our clothing will make us stand out.”

  “I can sew,” Sky said. “I did it all the time on Warbler. We’ve got to have some clothes packed on the ship that I can fashion into something similar to what the pirates wear—bright, solid-colored shirts, gray or black pants. It won’t be hard once we have the materials to work with.”