Island of Fire

  “Oh,” Sky said. “Good.” Then she added, “Me too.” And she was silent.

  They climbed over rocks and globs of seaweed and tiny pools of water, looking for any clues that would indicate why a ship would want to come here. After a quarter of an hour they reached a long, flat piece of land with some vegetation and wet sand. Several planks of rotting wood stuck out of the dirt.

  Alex pointed to it. “Could someone have lived here once? It looks like the frame of a house.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Carina said.

  There was a rivulet coming off the side of the mountain, washing away some of the sand. Alex put his finger in it and tasted. “This is freshwater,” he mused. He didn’t understand where it could possibly have come from.

  Crow ran ahead, climbing some of the rocks to see if he could find the origin of the stream.

  “Stay close,” Sky warned.

  “I’m just going right here,” Crow said. “There’s a flat spot and a little pond.” He hopped up and looked around. Carina followed him.

  Alex frowned. He wasn’t sure they’d find any clues about ships in a place where ships couldn’t get to. He gazed around the flat area, and then went to the edge of it, where waves lapped the shore, and peered into the water.

  A fish jumped almost under his nose. “Whoa,” he said, and he stepped back, laughing at himself. It jumped again in almost the same place, which was strange, and then Alex saw it had a hook in its mouth attached to a line of fishing wire. The fish sank straight down, as if it was being pulled, and disappeared.

  He whirled around to tell the others, but before he could say anything, Carina gave a shout and Crow gasped.

  A Face in the Pool

  What’s happening?” Alex said, and he ran for the rocks where everyone else had already gathered.

  “A person!” Crow said. “I saw a person!”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t your reflection?” Sky asked him.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t his reflection. I saw it too,” Carina said. She knelt down at the edge of the shallow pool of water, stuck her arm in, and pushed the wet sand away from the bottom. Sky and Alex stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. Simber opted to watch from above.

  As Carina slid the sand to the side, she revealed the water’s bed. It wasn’t the black rock that made up almost the entire island. Not this part. The bottom of the pool was clear, like a window.

  Crow put his face near the water. “I can see down in there!” he said with a loud whisper. “There are people moving around, way down at the bottom!”

  Carina made room for Alex and Sky. It was like they were standing on top of a glass box, or a skylight on the roof of a tall building. They could look through this window and see the glass walls with fish swimming outside the sides.

  “It’s like an aquarium,” Alex said, breathless. “Only the water is on the outside, and the glass encases a dry world.” He looked up at Simber. “It’s a reverse aquarium.”

  “Look,” Sky said, pointing. “Here, on an upper level. There’s a garden.”

  “And there’s a playground at the bottom too,” Crow said. “See the little kids jumping around?”

  “It’s really light down there,” Carina mused, “so there must be more skylights like this one. And there are walkways and little rooms on this upper level too. But look—see how the volcano runs down the center of it all?”

  “That must be theirrr sourrrce of heat,” Simber said. “And the sun, I suppose.”

  The five watched the people, oblivious to the ceiling visitors in their busyness, scurry around far below.

  Alex pointed wordlessly to the floor directly beneath them as a sliding glass door opened, making a sheet of water pour into the reverse aquarium. Someone walked in through the water wearing a strange mask. The door slid shut again. All the water that had come in disappeared through a grate in the floor, none of it flowing to the floors below.

  The person was carrying a string of fish on a hook. He took his mask off and placed it on a shelf, and then walked around a corner with the fish. “That hook is his hand,” Alex said, intrigued. “He caught the fish right where I was standing, there.” He pointed.

  It was Crow who noticed the creatures. In a real aquarium attached to the reverse aquarium, Crow could just barely see things swimming around. “I can’t see what those things are, but they don’t look fish-shaped,” he reported.

  “I wonder if anyone down there can help us,” Alex said. “I suppose we could dive down and see if they notice us through the glass wall.”

  Everyone was quiet, wondering if these people were friendly, or if being seen would only get them into more trouble.

  “They seem . . . normal,” Carina said weakly. She looked over her shoulder at Alex. “I think we have to try. We don’t have a choice.”

  Alex nodded. “I can try right here, I suppose.” He scratched his head, thinking. “No, this spot is where the guy was fishing. It didn’t look like anyone else was over there.”

  “The ship took us to a cerrrtain spot,” Simber said. “Perrrhaps forrr a rrreason.”

  “Good point,” Alex said. “Let’s go back there. And then we’ll have help from our army in case we need it.”

  While Carina, Alex, and Simber plotted, Sky stared through the glass, frowning. She nudged her brother and pointed. He turned to look, and then he gasped. Before anyone could stop him, Crow began pounding on the glass with all his might.

  Sky whipped her hair out of her eyes with her hand and stared, then grabbed Crow’s arm to stop him from pounding. “No,” she said. “We don’t want them all to see us. Watch.”

  When a woman walked on the floor nearest them, not twenty feet away, Sky leaned over the glass, stretching her shirt wide to block the sun. “Watch,” she whispered again, “I’m a cloud.” Her heart thumped.

  The woman, in a sudden shadow, looked up. She frowned, and then her mouth slacked and her orange eyes grew wide.

  Sky choked on a sob, which caused the others to turn and see what was happening. Immediately, through her tears, Sky’s hands flew through the air, speaking a language few of the others knew.

  The woman held a finger to her lips and looked all around. Alex went to Sky’s side and put his hand on her shoulder, feeling it quake. Crow simply clutched the rocks on the edge of the pool and stared, a look of agony on his face.

  Then the woman signed something very quickly and scurried away to a set of stairs. When she disappeared, Sky slumped back into Alex’s arms and sobbed.

  He pulled her to him and patted her back, unsure what to do.

  Carina knelt next to Crow. “What’s wrong?”

  Crow’s face crumbled. “That stupid creep told us she was dead!” he cried, his face hot with anger.

  “Who is that woman?” Alex whispered into Sky’s hair, though he thought he knew.

  She took a deep breath and pulled back, still clutching Alex’s shirt. “Our mother,” she said.

  Waiting

  I told her about the ship,” Sky said. She let go of Alex, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and sniffed a few times. She slid back to the edge of the glass so she could see. “She said don’t dive down. Don’t let anyone see us.”

  The others stared at her.

  “She’s going to try to find out how to disenchant the ship so we can get away, but she’s only—she’s a—” Sky pounded her forehead and took a few deep breaths, blowing them out. “Come on, Sky,” she muttered.

  Alex had never seen her so upset before.

  “She’s a slave to the pirates,” Crow said. His fiery eyes narrowed into slits.

  Carina put her hand on Crow’s shoulder, and he let her leave it there. “I’m sorry,” she said. “And I’m sorry someone told you she was dead. What a horrible thing to do.”

  “It was Queen Eagala.” He nearly spat the words out.

  Carina said nothing. She only lowered her head and rested it on her free hand, closing her eyes.

 
Simber perched on a nearby rock, not wanting to be seen through the glass. “Did yourrr motherrr say how much time the volcano stays above the surrrface?” he asked in a rare gentle voice.

  Sky shook her head. “There wasn’t time to ask. She had to hurry.”

  “That’s okay,” Alex said. “We’ll wait. And then, once we’ve got Sam and Lani, we’ll figure out how to get her out of here.” His stomach felt like he’d just swallowed a dozen lead milk shakes. One more impossible thing.

  Sky looked up at him, her bottom lip quivering.

  He read the question in her eyes. “I mean it,” he said.

  The look she gave him was enough to warm Alex through. He glanced at Carina, who was watching them curiously with a little smile. Alex bit his lip. It didn’t matter what anyone thought. He would be the same as before with Lani until Lani figured out that he was never around to hang out with anymore, which wouldn’t take long because Lani was pretty brilliant. And even if he wanted to, there was no way Alex could go running to spend all his free time with Sky after that—it would hurt Lani’s feelings and make him seem like a total flake. Not a good look for a leader. Maybe that’s why Mr. Today had stayed alone for so long.

  Alex felt his face growing warm with all the staring. “Look,” he said, “is that her coming back?”

  But it was someone else—a woman in an enormous, flouncy, feathery dress. At least Alex had turned the attention away from him. He got to his feet and stretched out a cramp in his leg, then went to join Simber, who had found a place to perch on a cliff above. “I don’t know what else to do but wait,” Alex said. “Do you?”

  Simber sampled the air. “Florrrence knows we’rrre herrre. She can send Rrrufus if they need us. I don’t think therrre’s anything else we can do.”

  Alex’s stomach growled. “We should have eaten breakfast.”

  Simber yawned and closed his eyes. Alex shrugged and sat down, leaning against the beast.

  Carina, Crow, and Sky waited by the pool of water.

  All of them desperately hoped the volcano would remain above the surface.

  Crow’s harsh whisper startled Alex awake. He scrambled down the rocks as Sky spoke with her hands at top speed, and then he peered over the edge and watched the woman hold up a piece of paper with strange words on it.

  “Memorize it!” Sky said. “Hurry!”

  “I’ll take the last line,” Alex said.

  “I’ve got the third,” Carina said.

  “First,” Crow said.

  “Second,” Sky said.

  They all stared, trying to think of tricks that would help them remember the strange words. Alex suddenly remembered that he had his notepad with him, and he pulled it from his pocket. He tapped it, making a pencil drop out of nowhere. He began scribbling the words. Too soon, the woman snatched the paper down and shoved it in her meager peasant dress.

  They each recited their lines, and Alex wrote down the words, correcting the spelling as the others told him to. When he finished, he held the notepad facedown just above the water.

  Sky’s mother squinted, trying to see it, and then she nodded and began speaking to Sky once again. Sky replied, and they went back and forth for several seconds, almost as if they were arguing.

  Then Sky gasped. Her mother whipped around. A rugged man in a billowy shirt with gold bars on the shoulders approached her. She shook her head vehemently, but he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away. The last thing Alex saw was Sky’s mother turning back and mouthing the word “Go.”

  Sky held her fingers to her lips and sent a kiss, but it was too late. Her mother didn’t see it.

  The Death Enchantment

  Sky scrambled down the rocks with the others right behind her, and she told them everything as they hopped back onto Simber and headed to the ship.

  “She said the pirate ships are ancient and enchanted with a lost language, the original language of their owners, which is why we can’t understand what it’s whispering,” Sky explained. “My mother said this saying is carved into the wall of the volcano, and she’s seen her master disenchant ships before when they’ve returned to the lagoon. I guess when someone dies aboard the ship, the ship immediately whispers its wishes to turn back home, and steers itself there.”

  “Weird,” Alex remarked. “It must have run aground on our island as the sailors were dying. It never had a chance to go home.”

  “So it’s been whispering ever since,” Carina mused. “Yes, as I recall, Mr. Today thought the sailors might be able to be revived, and he tried, but it was too late.”

  “Did your mother say anything else?”

  Sky was silent for a minute. And then she said in a softer voice, “Mother said we should go quickly and never come back. There’s no way to save her.” She bit her lip hard. “Everyone from the outside who has tried to get in has drowned.”

  Alex looked at her, feeling a rush of courage. “Then we’ll have to figure out how not to drown.”

  Sky looked down. “You mean it,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. But we’re not prepared today. We’ll have to come back. After.”

  “Of course,” she whispered. “After we get the others home safely.”

  Home, Alex thought. She called it home.

  The conversation weighed heavily on all of them as Simber dropped the four aboard the ship. As he did so, the volcano rumbled and a belch of flames shot from its mouth. Bits of glowing lava dropped down and sizzled in the lagoon, and a small glob landed on the ship’s deck. Sean jumped to attention and stamped the fire out.

  “Sheesh,” Alex said, eyeing the volcano. “Let’s get out of here.” Alex and the others placed their hands on the ship’s railing. He nodded to Sky. “You want to do it?”

  She looked startled. “Me?”

  “Why not?”

  “Just hurrry, please,” Simber said from the shoal. “We’rrre still in grrrave dangerrr.”

  Sky nodded. “Okay.” She read the words in a slightly faltering voice, not knowing if she had the accent right. When she finished, they all craned their necks and strained their ears, listening to the whispers.

  When nothing happened, Alex nudged her. “It’s okay. Try again.” He knew more than anybody that things didn’t always work right the first time.

  Sky took a deep breath, and she and Alex shared a quick, private smile. She had to remember to breathe too sometimes. And then she read the words once more, louder this time.

  Everyone waited.

  After a moment, the ship’s whispers grew faint, and soon they were gone completely. With a startling snap, the sails flew up and the anchor chain groaned as it wound itself. The Artiméans cheered.

  “Captain Ahab!” Alex shouted. “The ship is now yours. Can you get us out of here?”

  “Blast my skull!” came the muffled reply.

  The ship’s sails had already picked up the breeze, and the vessel began to move as the captain clumped to the wheel. He shouted orders to some statues he’d trained on the sails, and with help from Florence and Simber, they managed to turn the ship around, moving nimbly around the shoal as if the captain had done it a million times before.

  When they were on the open water once again, Alex grabbed a few sandwiches from below and brought them to the upper deck. He found Sky, Crow, and Henry at the stern, glumly watching Pirate Island grow smaller.

  “Sandwich?” he asked, holding them out.

  “Thanks,” they said, each taking one. Alex sat next to Henry.

  The four ate together in silence, with Simber, as always, overhead.

  “I’m really sorry about your mother being there,” Alex said. He knew he could never understand what they were feeling because his experience with his mother was so different, so . . . clinical. But he thought she might feel something like he had when Mr. Today died. That overwhelming pain and grief. He knew a sandwich couldn’t fix it. And he knew he really couldn’t make it better for them. It was going to be hard no matter what. But he also
knew that when he was having his darkest moments, Sky was there, and Alex would try to be there for her too.

  Sky picked at her sandwich, not really eating it. Crow took a bite and chewed it forever before he could swallow it.

  Alex looked at Henry, who had lost his mother, and he just shook his head. “So much stupid grief,” he muttered. “Every day brings another broken heart.” He stood up abruptly, a little embarrassed at his poetic sentiment, but no one seemed to think it was a silly thing to say. Alex gave each of his friends a quick squeeze on the shoulder, and walked through the crowd to the bow, feeling completely beside himself. As he stood there, wind in his hair, he realized how much he ached to make something again—something creative. Something useful. Something beautiful or meaningful. It seemed like forever since he’d had a chance to just sit and create something.

  He thought about Mr. Today and the Museum of Large. How the old mage had worked out his private thoughts by fixing up this ship, and how he’d created so many amazing creatures and statues. “If we ever make it home,” he said to the wind, “I’m going to build something beautiful.”

  Gondoleery Rising

  Secretary!” Aaron barked.

  Eva Fathom rushed to Aaron’s office, finding him standing at the window yet again, staring out at the water. “Yes, High Priest Aaron?”

  Aaron turned slightly toward her, acknowledging her presence but not taking his eyes off the sea. “Who are my enemies?” he asked.

  Eva’s eyes widened. She hesitated, not sure what Aaron wanted to hear. “Artimé, of course,” she said.

  Aaron scowled. “Here in Quill, I mean.”

  “You have none that I know of,” Eva said smoothly.

  “Of course I do. Every leader has enemies. I need you to find out who mine are, and then round up the Restorers for a meeting here at the palace this evening.” Aaron picked his teeth with a thin stick he kept in his breast pocket.