Island of Fire (The Unwanteds) (24 page)

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.

S
ky 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.”

S
ecretary!” 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.

“I’ll begin right away,” Eva said, her voice even, though she was quite disgusted by the task, which would take a normal person more than a day to complete.

Eva set out with a driver, studying her list of Restorers, many of whom she hadn’t seen since the attack on Artimé. Most of the people on the list were Wanteds, so she directed the guard to stop at their homes, which was the likeliest place to find them in the middle of the day. Eva hurriedly approached each door and spoke to the Restorers, taking care not to expose anyone who was keeping his affiliation a secret, and asking, when appropriate, who they thought Aaron’s enemies might be. She made the rounds as the day drew on, making her last stop the home of Gondoleery Rattrapp just as the sun was disappearing over the wall.

Eva strode up the walk and glanced into the window of Gondoleery’s living quarters, noticing that the curtains were
drawn and light behind them seemed to make them glow. The curtains weren’t completely closed, and a dagger of brightness stabbed through them. Eva stopped walking and puzzled over it for a moment. And then, instead of going to the door, Eva snuck up to the window and peered in.

Her heart clutched. Gondoleery’s living quarters had been transformed into something so incredible that Eva had to turn around and look at Quill to make sure she wasn’t going senile. She turned back to the slit in the curtain and drank in the sight.

The entire room was covered in ice.

Stalactites of ice came down from the ceiling and stalagmites grew up from the floor, and all of it glowed a bright blue-white. The furniture was encased in it. And in the middle of the room, atop a chair that had bloated to twice its size due to the layers of ice that had built up on it, sat Gondoleery Rattrapp, wearing dark glasses and a patchwork coat adorned with—Eva had to look twice to make sure—chicken feathers.

Eva didn’t quite know what to make of it. How could the ice even exist in the heat of Quill? There was something vaguely familiar about it. Something that tugged at her memory. But right now, Eva had a new question on her mind.

She faithfully went to the door and knocked. She waited a few minutes and knocked again. Just as she decided that Gondoleery was going to ignore her, the door flew open.

“Oh, hello,” Gondoleery said. She now wore her regular clothing, and there was no sign of the dark glasses.

“Greetings,” Eva said. She slid over to one side of the doorway, trying to see inside the house. “Aaron wanted me to ask you if you could come to a Restorers meeting at the palace in about an hour.” She managed a glance into the living quarters and saw that it looked just like every other Wanted house in Quill. There was no ice anywhere.

Gondoleery didn’t seem anxious at all about Eva standing there, and she didn’t seem to be hiding anything either. “The Restorers?” she said with a laugh. “I thought we had disbanded.”

Eva smiled. “Seems that way, doesn’t it?” she mused. “I guess Aaron wants to see who of the former Restorers is still on his side and perhaps find out if he has any enemies.”