The Legend of the Rift (7 page)

S
OMEHOW THE
M
ASSA
had tapped an untraceable satellite signal through a proxy server. Communication would be possible. I had no idea what that meant, but my fingers were trembling as I sent a text to my dad. I was missing him a lot and I needed him to know I was okay.

I couldn't do it. Couldn't tell him the whole truth. He would have wanted to fly here. And that's impossible, since no one knows where “here” is. I didn't want him to worry too much. But as I gave the phone back to Aliyah, I felt so guilty. What if I never saw him again?

She seemed to be reading my mind. “You're doing the right thing, Jack,” she said.

“How do you know?” I replied. “You didn't see what I wrote.”

“You're right,” she said. “But I know you well. You and I aren't as different as you think.”

Well, that was a cheering thought.

I turned away from her and watched Cass and Marco, who were hard at work on the Loculus of Healing.

“The leg bone's connected to the hip bone,” Cass sang as he carefully moved two shards like tiny steering wheels.

“And the hip bone's connected to the neck bone . . .” Marco sang, maneuvering two more.

Sshhhink. Sshhhink.
As the pieces slid together, Eloise nearly fell over laughing at Marco. “You're leaving out a whole part of the body!”

Marco shrugged. “Abs. They're so overrated.”

I sat on the floor to join them. We each worked on a section of the Loculus, like areas of a jigsaw puzzle. Aliyah, Brother Asclepius, and the goons were all gaping at us. Asclepius had to hold on to at the edge of a table. For a doctor, I guess he fainted easily.

“Ramsay for the win—the biggest piece by far!” Marco said, holding up a section of Loculus that was curved perfectly, like the bottom of a wide bowl.

“Hey! He-e-eyy!” Cass's own large piece swept upward from underneath him and hurtled through the air like a mini UFO. With a loud snap, it attached to Marco's.

“Score!” Marco shouted. “How about you, Brother Jack?”

I was holding my section pretty far away. I figured I'd wait till I had more of it made, but hey, why not?

I held my piece out, and it instantly shot from my grip and clanked into Marco's big piece. Now the joined shape took on weirdly human form, a tiny head and huge torso that looked oddly like . . .

“Torquin!” Eloise cried out with a giggle.

“What do you think of that, Tork?” Marco looked around for Torquin, but he was nowhere to be seen. “Where is the Hulkinator, anyway?”

I caught a glimpse of the big guy out the window again. Just as before, he was perched at the edge of the jungle. Only this time, it looked like he was talking to himself. “Does he have a cell phone, too?” Cass asked.

I shook my head. “He's a little off his game ever since that explosion in Greece.”

“A little?” Marco said.

“He is not normally like this?” Brother Asclepius asked.

“There's nothing normal about Torquin,” Marco replied.

“That blast would have killed anyone else,” I explained. “I'm amazed he survived. He's been acting strange since then. He didn't used to talk to himself.”

Brother Asclepius nodded. “Let me go outside and see what I can do for him.”

As the doctor headed out the door, we went back to
work. Piece by piece, section by section, the shards fused together and took shape. Aliyah and her guards watched us with a mixture of awe and wariness.

When we were done, it looked exactly the way it had when I'd held it in New York City. But with two big problems.

“Now what?” Aliyah asked.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the original shard, the tiny one I'd been carrying since we tried using it on Fiddle.

“A baby tooth?” Eloise said.

“It's a shard,” I said. “It shrank.”

I held it up and said a silent prayer. It left my fingers and shot toward the Loculus. With a tiny click, it attached to the broken edge. The gaping hole was now a slightly less gaping hole.

Quickly I removed the shard we'd used on Marco. It, too, flew out of my fingers and attached to the other hole, filling it only partially.

“Uh-oh . . .” Eloise said.

“We could use it for Halloween,” Marco said with a sigh. “A Loculus jack-o'-lantern.”

Around me, everyone seemed to be deflating. “Is this all there is to the Loculus?” Aliyah said angrily.

“I—I guess so,” I said. “Maybe if we wait?”

“Is that your plan, for it to magically repair itself?” Aliyah demanded.

“We have plaster,” Manolo suggested.

Aliyah spun on him and he shrank back among the other guards.

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” Aliyah said. “A Loculus full of holes is not a real Loculus. And without even one Loculus, there no chance of success. Now,
remind me of why we agreed to work together
?”

“He did the best he could!” Eloise protested.

As I walked closer to the Loculus, I heard sounds of a scuffle outside—muffled shouts and rustlings of leaves. I glanced out the window. Brother Asclepius, with a
hypodermic needle in his hand, was scrabbling backward. Grunting like a caged animal, Torquin stomped toward him across the scrubby soil. “Torquin!” I shouted. “Stop that!”

“I—I'll be okay,” Brother Asclepius shouted, not too convincingly.

“I'm getting a migraine,” Aliyah said. “Guards, get that oaf!”

The room emptied. Marco was the first one out, then the guards, Eloise and Cass last. I turned to follow them, but something kept me in the room. It began as a soft buzz, like an insect had crawled inside me through the ear. The sound grew, slowly, droning and changing pitch.

I knew I had to help Torquin. But as irritating as the sound was, I couldn't stop listening. I glanced outside the window. The Massa guards had put themselves between Torquin and Brother Asclepius. But Torquin was on his knees now, head in hands, muttering.

I didn't know what he was doing, or what was going on in that head, but at least there was no fighting. And that was good.

The sound was drawing me to the broken Loculus. Like a distant orchestra of players bowing on damaged violins, on tin cans and barbed wire. I had heard this before—in the center of the volcano, near the remains of the Seven Wonders, and every time we got near a Loculus. It had a different tune every time, but it was always the Song of the Heptakiklos.

The Loculus began pulsating. The hole's ragged edges were smoothing out, growing inward, closing the gap.

Running to the window, I shouted: “Get up here—now. Something's happening!”

Aliyah immediately shouted to the guards, and they came running. So did Marco, Cass, Eloise, and Torquin.

I backed into the room. The Loculus began to rock back and forth. It lifted from the ground, spinning in place. The two holes, not much smaller than before, spat beacons of blue-white light around the room like lasers.

“Jack?” came Cass's voice from the door.

He was behind me. They were all behind me now.

“What the—?” Aliyah whispered.

Aliyah's goons closed ranks in front of her, forcing her to the door for protection. But they didn't get far before a thunderous boom threw us all backward.

My feet left the ground and my vision went white. For a moment I was aware of floating through the room, blinded by the light. Then my back smashed against the wall so hard that it knocked the wind out of me.

I collapsed to the floor, catching my breath. As my sight returned, I tried to sit upright but the pain in my lower back was intense. So I eased myself upward slowly, trying not to groan. Cass was helping his sister off the floor and Aliyah was cursing at her guards, who had fallen on top of her. Brother Asclepius was scrambling to his feet, and I could hear Torquin's heavy breathing somewhere.

But at the moment all I cared about was in the center of the room. The broken sphere was now a softly glowing orb, its dirt color now a sapphire blue. Waves of turquoise and indigo flowed like oceans inside, washing against the smooth, perfect surface. It was exactly as I remembered this Loculus of Healing, before I'd thrown it under the train.

“Welcome back,” I whispered.

Aliyah's guards were now trying to help her to her feet. She stood, gawping like everyone else at the bright sphere. As I rose, I realized how hard I'd fallen. I felt like someone had clamped a vise to the base of my spine. I tried to walk normally to the Loculus but instead I hobbled like an old man.

“I don't remember it looking so cool,” Marco said.

“Everything gets a little grimy in New York,” Cass replied. “The question is, does it work?”

Reaching out, I placed my hand on the surface. Where my palm made contact, the swirls inside the Loculus began to gather. They formed a kind of cloudy image of my hand, neither gas nor liquid but somewhere in between. The blob swelled and darkened until it finally turned to black. Then, with a barely audible pop, it detached from the surface and shot into the center of the Loculus like a comet. I pulled my hand back and watched as the black blob was absorbed into the blue swirl, like a drop of ink into the ocean.

Whatever had been clenching my back released. I
straightened out slowly. No pain. I moved left and right. I did a couple of dance moves.

“Well, that's awkward,” Eloise said.

“Did you see what just happened?” I said.

“The Loculus of Healing made you dance?” she replied.

They couldn't tell I was hurt. Or they'd been too busy looking at the Loculus to notice. But I could see a flash of recognition in Torquin's red, squinty eyes.

He was sweating badly. He had been looking worse and worse since he'd arrived back on the island. The burn marks on his arms looked like a botched tattoo job done by an angry orangutan, and his scalp was red from where his hair had been burned off.

I touched the Loculus again and reached out to Torquin with my other hand. “Torquin, let's get you back to normal—or as normal as a Torquin can be. . . .”