The Island of Excess Love (7 page)

But none of it will matter without the people I love.

I call their names, one by one, but there is no answer. I stagger to my feet, dragging my sodden limbs across the sand. In the distance I see a dark shape lying prone. I don't want to see. I don't want to go over to it.

But of course I do.

It's Hex. He's flat on his back with his eyes closed and his mouth open. I throw myself on top of him and put my head to his bare, tattooed chest. I put my hands over his heart, fasten my lips to his, and try to remember how to give mouth-to-mouth. He is still. And cold. And paler than pale. I scream his name.

And then I feel a hand on my shoulder and I look up and he is standing over me, staring down at me. And at himself.

“I'm here. Pen? I thought you were … Pen?” Hex, who never cries, has tears in his eyes. “Are you okay? Your head was bleeding.”

“I'm okay. You're here.”

He falls to his knees beside me and we embrace, his warm skin crusted with dirt and salt. I'm never going to let go of him.

When we finally pull apart and look around us, the island swept with sunshine and birdsong gives me chills. Dead Hex still lies at my feet. Another hallucination? Or is this live one a figment of my imagination? No, I'm sure he's real, though I can't explain how I know.

“Where are the others?” I say.

“I don't know, baby. There must have been a shipwreck. But we're here so it couldn't have been too bad. We'll look for them. I have to show you something first.”

“No, we have to…”

“It won't take long. You need to see.”

He takes my hand and leads me up the beach to where another body is lying. A girl with long, bony limbs and ragged hair. We kneel beside her and Hex untangles the fishing net caught around her legs and brushes sand off of her face with his fingertips.

She stares at us, with darkling eyes.

I gasp.

She's me.

“Why?” I ask no one. I should know by now that there is no answer to
why
. Then I start screaming again, calling for Ez and Ash and Argos and especially for Venice. I can remember how he talked to me on the ship, helping me navigate the madness that had taken over. Merk had tied us up. I don't scream for Merk.

Hex takes me by both shoulders and makes me look at him. “We have to stay calm,” he says. “Okay?”

I nod, staring out at the water. The waves seem benign, sparking in the sunshine. I'm not used to the sight of sun on waves; the sea at home is dark as lead in the gray light. I stare, mesmerized by it. I'd forgotten how wondrous the world could be but it still doesn't make up for the fact that the rest of my loved ones are gone.

“Let's start over there, Pen, among the trees, okay? We need to find fresh water before we do anything.”

So I pull my gaze away from the waves and we go toward the trees with peeling red and green bark and shiny dark green leaves, seeking water we can drink. I hadn't noticed how thirsty I was. The sun felt good on my skin at first but my shoulders are turning red and the shade of the trees is welcome. The air smells moist and sweet and it doesn't take us long to find a small creek with blackberries growing on its banks. Hex examines the berries and when we're pretty sure they're safe we eat them by the finger-staining handful and wash them down with the creek water. It's clear and bright and refreshes us instantly. Something flashes by. A fish, which means there's definitely animal life here, probably untainted, by the looks of it, and maybe no serious predators (meaning Giants), although that might be wishful thinking.

As we're heading back toward the beach through the grove we see what appear to be two holes recently dug in the ground.

“They look like graves,” Hex says.

We stop and stare at each other. Graves? For our corpses lying on the beach? Are we meant to bury ourselves? Of all the things I've been required to do, this may be the strangest. The only reason I even consider this task, though, is that I don't really want to look for the corpses of my friends and family back on the beach. What if we find their dead bodies? Even if it's a wickedy spell, we might think it's real. I'm relieved that at least there are only two graves here.

Hex and I go back to my body and lift it carefully. We carry it back up the beach to the trees. It feels small and stiff in my arms, and I remember carrying my mother's body when I found her in Las Vegas just before she died. I can't look at this corpse's face.

Hex speaks to me softly the whole way. “I don't understand this, Pen, but it seems like what we're supposed to do, don't you think? Like, let's pretend we're in a story or a dream. In the epics the burial of the dead is a very important, sacred thing.”

But even in
The Aeneid
they didn't have to bury themselves.

We lay my body in the grave and go back to get Hex. He doesn't weigh much more than I do. I try to keep my eyes on the live Hex as we carry the dead one to his final resting place. The two dead versions of us lie there and I don't feel like crying; I don't feel anything, except the same desire to get out of here and go home. What kind of spell is this? What weird magic? And what is it supposed to be telling us? That we must leave our old selves behind? What are we meant to learn from it all?

We shove dirt over our corpses and pat it down and then Hex breaks off sprigs, from a bush covered in white flowers that look like the lace of a bridal dress, and sticks one on top of each mound.

“What should I say?” he asks.

“Here lie Hex and Pen, warriors, storytellers, survivors, friends, and lovers. May their souls be reborn to do good and restore this planet,” I say, surprising myself. Since when do I hope to restore this planet? It's too big a task, and now Venice and Ez and Ash are gone. If we don't find them I'll be lucky if I can restore my own heart.

Hex takes my hand and we run back to the beach. We go down to the water and search among the rocks. Something is lodged in the sand and I recognize the open mouth and staring eyes of the wooden horse from our ship's prow. Severed like this it resembles the skull of an actual horse. That doesn't bode well. There must have been a serious shipwreck.

I put my face in my hands, wanting to make all of this go away. “How do we not give up?”

“Because we have no other choice?”

*   *   *

In the dark space between my palms I see colors emerge and then shatter into fragments like bits of stained glass. Then the colors re-form into images. I see Venice holding Argos, standing with Ez and Ash. They are in a room where waterfalls splash down rock walls into shallow pools. Ash is singing and Ez is sketching. A young man is seated on a flower-covered dais in front of my brother and my friends. The smoke of incense partially occludes him but I see that his eyes are wide spaced, pale, and strange. He wears a crown of antlers, decorated with flowers, on his head.

*   *   *

“They're okay,” I say. “Hex, they're okay. I see them.” Usually my visions are of the more distant past but I'm pretty sure this one is something that just happened. Weirdly, the man looks like the one in the vision I had of the black quartz island.

I describe what I've seen to Hex.

He puts his arm around my shoulder. He doesn't question these things.

“Can you tell where?”

I shake my head, no. The vision is gone.

“Let's get some more to eat, and some rest,” Hex says. “Then we'll look for them.”

He and I head back to the stream with the fishing net we removed from my corpse. Hex holds it; I don't like the idea of touching something that was wrapped around my dead body.

We stand in the water and Hex swishes the net around; it's easy to catch fish. They're small and silvery and, I think, more trusting than they should be. Hex rubs two sticks together to ignite a spark and builds a fire. Then we clean and cook the fish on sticks and eat them. I'm not disgusted at all, although I never liked the idea of killing and eating an animal before. Hunger wins every battle, though. The fish taste fresh, moist, and clean.

“We should bathe now,” Hex suggests. He pulls off his shirt and jeans and slips into the deepest part of the water, a pool beneath a small waterfall.

I look down at myself; I hadn't even noticed what a mess I am. My clothes are torn and when I take them off there are bruises all over my arms and legs. When I get in the water Hex uses his fingers to gently clean away the dried blood on my head. As soon as he touches me I feel like myself again. I lean against his shoulder in the water and gaze up. Sun sparkles through the leaves and the air smells of berries and flowers. It doesn't seem right to relax when so much is uncertain. But my sore, tingling muscles are beginning to unknot in the water and I let myself close my eyes.

“What happened on that ship?” I ask Hex. “How long were we there?”

“Maybe a day or two? I don't know.”

“You didn't recognize me.”

He's quiet so I open my eyes and look at him. He's scowling. “What did I do?”

“You were angry at me. You said something about me not taking care of my child properly. Getting high. Like you thought I was your mom.”

Hex tosses his head so droplets fling off of the tips of his slick black hair. “I'm sorry.”

“You didn't know it was me. It's okay.”

“I don't know what's going on. Who is casting these spells or whatever they are. We need to try and find the others.”

I nod. “And then we have to find a way to get home,” I say.

Hex looks down at me, cocks his head, raises his eyebrows. “I'm not sure it's that simple, Pen.”

I decide not to ask him what he means. I just want to find the others and leave. There might be fish and berries and fresh water, but there are too many signs of danger. If burying your own body isn't a bad omen, what is? And besides, how do we know that any of this is real? If our corpses weren't real, then maybe this whole island is a hallucination of some kind.

If I were home, I would never leave the pink house again, even if Giants tried to chase me away. I wonder if the house is there anymore or if Bull went back and wrecked it in his rage. I think about my art prints on the ceiling of my room, Ez's paintings, our books, our vegetable garden. It might all be gone.

After we've bathed we dress in our filthy clothes. I wanted to wash them but they wouldn't have dried in time and we both feel vulnerable enough without having to walk around naked.

We go back to explore the woods a little more, following the stream. The trees form a canopy over our heads and pink and white orchids grow up the trunks and hang from the branches. The ground is bright green with moss and the rocks glimmer, crystalline, in the sunshine. We hear birds; it's unmistakable, and I even think I see a squirrel dart by.

When the air starts to cool we follow the stream back to our camp. As we're collecting wood I hear Hex shout my name and I run to his side.

“‘I saw an uncanny thing, which horrifies me to speak of.

From the first sapling that I tore up, its roots dissevered,

There oozed out, drop by drop, a flow of black blood

Fouling the earth with its stains. My whole frame shook in a palsy

Of chilly fear, and my veins were ice-bound.'”

“What? What are you…?”

He holds up a branch coated in a sticky dark substance. “It's in
The Aeneid
.”

Again.

I back away from what I don't want to believe. “Bleeding wood.”

“Yes. It's a sign we should bury someone.”

In the book it was because Polydorus, the son of the Trojan king Priam, had been killed and the blood signified that Aeneas must give Polydorus a proper burial.

I turn away, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice, but the thought of the dripping branch makes it difficult. “There's no one else to bury.”

“Not yet,” Hex says.

I turn back to him. He holds the branch up again but there's no sign of the blood anymore. “Something nasty is going on, isn't it?” After the Earth Shaker,
The Odyssey
had at least provided us with some clues, served as a sort of guide. The parallels with
The Aeneid
are less clear, perhaps a testament to the ever-growing chaos of the world around us.

If stories are no longer our salvation we have even less hope than before.

We build another fire from branches that do not bleed and make our bed on the moss among the roots of a tree. I try to tell Hex that one of us should stay awake, keep watch—what if some other plant decides to hemorrhage in the night—but I'm too tired and sleep is welcome. As a goddess.

 

8

 

THE FLOWER CRADLE

 

T
HREE CREATURES ARE STANDING
over me and Hex.

They are young women with long hair and skin that shimmers wetly in the sunlight. Their breasts, legs, and feet are bare and they wear silk scarves tied around their hips. But they're not ordinary women. Colorful layers of feathers grow from their shoulders and the webbing of wings that are attached on the undersides of their arms. It's like a work by Viktor Vasnetsov, a Russian painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The painting I'm reminded of depicts two women, one fair, one dark, with the bodies and wings and talons of birds. They are perched in a tree, singing siren songs.

“Why have you come here?” the black-haired and feathered creature before me asks.

“Our ship crashed on this island,” I say as Hex and I clamber to our feet, using each other for support.

Her golden eyes flash. “You must come with us.”

The three of them lift their arms in unison, a flare of color and a shwoosh of wind as their shoulders seem to dislocate and wings fan open; I move closer to Hex.