Island of Fog (Book 1) (26 page)

The forest loomed ahead. From deep within, Hal saw tiny pin-pricks of light. Campfires? Or fireplaces within homes?

“But you’re not immune to the virus,” Abigail pointed out.

Miss Simone shook her head. “I guess I’m
partially
immune. I felt better once I changed into a mermaid. The act of transforming rejuvenates cells and microorganisms. It’s like they get to start over, fresh and new. So injuries tend to heal right away. Remember that, children—if you get hurt in an accident, just change and that might help you mend quickly.”

Hal remembered when Thomas had stuck him with needles. He had felt dizzy and sick until he’d transformed into a dragon, after which he’d felt much better.

“But,” Miss Simone said with a sigh, “our bodies grow weary as time goes by. As you get older, children, you’ll find it harder and harder to shake off illnesses and cure yourselves of cuts and bruises. It’s just nature’s way of restoring normality to what she probably thinks are biological abominations.” She turned and winked. “Otherwise we’d live forever, right?”

There was silence as the children digested this. Then Miss Simone fell in step with Hal and put a hand on his shoulder. “There’s something I need to know, Hal, but . . . I’m almost afraid to ask.”

Surprised, Hal came to a halt. “Ask me what?”

Everyone stopped. Miss Simone took a breath, leaned forward earnestly, and asked, “Did you manage to fly before we came through the hole?”

Hal slowly shook his head. “Sorry, no.”

The disappointment on Miss Simone’s face was plainly obvious. She let her hand fall to her side and stood up straight. Saying nothing, she turned and continued marching along the trail.

The children waited a minute before saying anything, watching Miss Simone walk off. Then Darcy murmured, “What’s
her
problem? I’m sure you’ll learn to fly soon, Hal.”

“She doesn’t think I’ll be able to,” Hal said softly, “now that we’ve come through the hole.”

“I don’t see why not,” Emily retorted. “What difference does it make
where
we are? I think she’s wrong about this. Hal, you know how to turn into a dragon, and you have wings, right? So it’s not like you can’t transform. You
can
transform. You just need to learn how to flap your wings a certain way and get into the air.”

There was a murmur of agreement, and they all set off after Miss Simone, who was some distance away by now. Hal hung back, deep in thought, and Abigail nudged him.

“A dragon who can’t fly,” she teased gently. “What use are you?”

“About as much use as an oversized faerie,” Hal said. “It’s one thing to be freaks, but we can’t even manage that!”

Abigail gave a wry grin. “If Miss Simone is right about this, and we really can’t complete our transformations and do the things we’re supposed to be able to do . . . well, big deal. Who cares? We’re here, Hal.
No more fog!
A new life in a new place. Forget Miss Simone, the old sourpuss.”

They finally made it to the forest. Hal glimpsed small cottages through the trees, their walls illuminated by lanterns that hung from hooks or were perched atop poles. There were one or two crackling fires in little clearings between houses, where goblins were roasting things in little pans.

“They’re nuts,” Miss Simone said, as if reading his mind.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hal said. “They seem quite sane to me.”

Abigail giggled and Robbie guffawed, but Miss Simone looked puzzled for a moment. Then Emily explained the joke, and Miss Simone smiled politely.

Instead of heading into the small village, they circled around the perimeter and walked right by it. Hal glanced at his friends. They looked just as surprised, and a little disappointed too. It was a quiet, friendly-seeming village with perhaps ten or fifteen cottages, hardly a village at all. But then again, Hal had grown up on an island with even fewer occupied houses, so to him it was just the right size. What had Miss Simone called the place? A settlement? An outpost of some kind?

“We’re not stopping?” Hal asked her.

“Not just now. We have a job to do. But we’ll be back here later.”

So they left the smell of roasted nuts behind and plunged into the dark forest. They soon came across a meandering path lit by hanging lanterns. The ground was well trodden, and scattered with a fine layer of pine needles that cushioned their footsteps. Hal’s feet, which were still bare except for the curious stick-on soles, felt a comfortable tingling, tickling sensation as he walked.

“Look at these moths,” Robbie whispered, awed at the size of them as they buzzed around the lanterns. He spotted one the size of his hand. “I saw a huge spider back there, too—its web stretched right across—”

“Robbie, stop,” Emily commanded from behind him.

After five minutes of silent passage through the forest, walking in single file along the narrow path and ducking occasionally to avoid the hanging lanterns, they came at last to the end of the trail. Here it was curiously foggy, and they could hear a huffing, wheezing sound, accompanied by a constant rattle and
click
, rattle and
click
. It was a curious, rhythmic sound, obviously a machine of some kind.

They rounded a tall thicket and came suddenly upon a strange sight. Here a sheer rock face loomed over them, disappearing into the foggy night sky. It seemed completely out of place in the heart of a forest, but Hal realized, as he looked around, that in fact the forest ran right up to the foot of one of the mountains.

But it wasn’t the rocky wall that was strange, nor the mouth of a cave that yawned dark and wide, roughly twenty feet across. What was strange stood directly before the cave: a complicated, rickety contraption made of wooden beams and metal rods, standing four times Hal’s height and just as wide, with wobbly cogs and wheels and greasy pulleys that turned continuously, pulling around chains that crisscrossed here and there. That was the rattle and
click
sound. The huffing and wheezing was caused by a gigantic set of bellows that expanded slowly and then squeezed flat, then expanded again . . . as if it were breathing. On top of these sounds was the hum of an engine that whistled and hissed and puffed out steam.

The children were enthralled. “It’s like music,” Emily said, delighted. “Listen to it—
huff click whirr, rattle fizz pop
. It’s like—”

“It doesn’t pop,” Darcy said, laughing. “And it’s more like
rattle click hiss, whirr puff bang
.”

“But what’s it for?” Lauren asked.

“I know,” Robbie said suddenly. His eyes were shining as he glanced around. “We’ve been walking for, what?—forty-five minutes or more? That’s how long it takes us to get from the lighthouse to Black Woods. I don’t know if this forest is like an alternate version of Black Woods, but the point is, if we were back on the island, we’d be at the fog-hole by now.”

The fog-hole.

Hal blinked, and his mouth dropped open.
Of course!
He edged closer, first checking to see if that was okay with Miss Simone. She simply nodded, stepped aside, and waved him past. Hal hurried over to the machine, his friends falling over themselves to catch up.

At the far side of the machine, facing the rock wall and pointing directly into the mouth of the cave, fog squeezed out of the huge bellows. The thick, silent substance poured into the darkness and disappeared as the machine rattled and huffed and whistled.

But the fog wasn’t just confined to the cave. It swirled and drifted up the side of the mountain too.

The machine gave an alarming creaking sound, and Hal turned to see a greasy, sweaty goblin scowl and whack something with a hefty wrench. The creak eased at once, and the goblin muttered something that was completely drowned out by the small, noisy engine. He didn’t appear to know he had visitors.

“It’s been running for thirteen years,” Miss Simone said from behind them. “Sometimes it breaks down, and then the engineers rush about like mad trying to fix it. Sometimes they do major maintenance work, bringing in a smaller version of the machine to keep the fog going while this beast is shut down for a while. But for the most part, it’s been running non-stop since before you were born.”

She pointed out various leather pouches that were hung on the side. Each had a tube running out of the bottom, evidently supplying some kind of liquid to the inner-workings of the machine.

“That large bag there contains a special formula that filters the air and makes it safe. It has a slow, cumulative effect, which is why I said it would take a week to make the island safe again. This other, smaller bag is for creating pockets of vacuum in the air. That’s what dampens your flight.” She glanced at Hal with a raised eyebrow. “For those of you who can fly, I mean.”

Hal decided to ignore the remark. “What’s that lever for?” he said, pointing.

“That’s just a speed control. It speeds the machine up. When there’s a storm over the island, the fog gets blown around and we have to speed up the machine to pump more through. Better to be safe than sorry.”

She stepped around the machine and waved at the engineer, who was bent over the engine with a scowl on his face, intent on an oily chain that spun smoothly around a set of cogs. The goblin didn’t see Miss Simone at all, so she tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped, straightened up, and nodded in greeting. Then he spotted the children and stared at them, his eyes first narrowing with suspicion, then growing wide with surprise. The wrench fell out of his hand.

Miss Simone smiled at him. “The children are here now,” she said above the noise. “You can shut it down.”

The goblin turned his stare on her. “Shut it down?” he repeated in a deep, throaty voice.

“Yes. Shut it down.”

The goblin continued to stare, astonishment plastered across his gnarled face. Then he gave a huge shrug and turned to the noisy engine. After a moment’s hesitation he reached out, flicked three switches, and pulled a lever down with a sharp yank.

The engine sputtered and died. The machine kept going almost as though it hadn’t noticed it had been switched off, but without power it began to slow down. Its wobbly wheels and chains squeaked and rattled to a gradual stop, and its bellows wheezed slower and slower until, finally, they gave out and expired. Something came undone and fell off with a clang.

Then the machine was still.

One by one, the children turned back to the cave entrance. The fog had already stopped belching, and the air around them became still as the fog slowly lifted.

The goblin mopped his forehead and sat on a small chair, from which a lantern hung. “Can’t believe it,” he grumbled, gazing at the silent machine. “Never thought I’d see the day . . .”

“Noticed anything unusual lately?” Miss Simone asked him.

The goblin nodded, frowning. “Fog’s spitting back out. Like there’s a blockage, see? Remember that roof-fall last year? How the fog backed up on us?”

“I remember,” Miss Simone said, nodding. “Well, the vent is blocked again, for sure. The children did it.”

The goblin nodded, and spat on the ground. “Explains everything,” he complained, gesturing to the drifting fog. “Kids.”

Miss Simone grinned. “Don’t mind him,” she whispered to the children.

“’Course, there was an incident a few days ago,” the goblin said quietly, looking embarrassed. “Maybe a week ago. Can’t remember. Anyway, someone clubbed me.” He rubbed the back of his head. “When I came to, I didn’t notice anything unusual, ’cept the footprints.”

“Footprints?” Miss Simone said, frowning.

“Harpies,” the goblin muttered. He spat in disgust.

Miss Simone was perplexed. “And?”

“And nothing. Nothing was taken, nothing was broken. Just prints, that’s all.”

“They wouldn’t have come here and knocked you out for no reason,” Miss Simone said grimly. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“Nothing to tell,” the goblin said, sounding a little sulky now. “They didn’t break the machine this time. They didn’t try stuffing up the cave. They didn’t do nothing.”

Hal snapped his fingers. “Thomas! Don’t you see? The first time Abigail and I met Thomas, he told us he’d woken up in Black Woods and didn’t know how he’d got there. He was lost.”

“He was
kidnapped
,” Miss Simone said, nodding. “Yes, the harpies would have known about him; they’re always snooping and spying on us. Of course they know all about the shapeshifter program. Everybody in the land does. I suppose they thought it would be funny to dump a manticore on the island and see if it picked off any of the subjects.” She thumped one of the supports of the fog machine, her eyes flashing angrily. The goblin backed away, looking wary, and Hal wondered, not for the first time, exactly what Miss Simone was capable of when she got angry.

After a moment she calmed a little. “I wonder if they knew it was Thomas himself they had kidnapped.”

The goblin snorted. “There aren’t many manticores around this area. Maybe he’s the only one they could find close by. You can’t get much nastier than a manticore, ’cept for a dragon, and no-one’s gonna mess with those. Ogres are too big to fit in the tunnel.” The goblin nodded. “Makes sense.”

Miss Simone still looked cross. “Well, children, now we have something important to do. You see, this tunnel is our best route through to the island, and we’re not finished there yet. We need to clear the tunnel and make it safe so we can pass back and forth, fetching animals and whatever possessions your parents want to hang on to. That is, once we re-start the fog machine tomorrow. A foggy island is a safe island.”

The goblin groaned. “You mean we’re not done with the machine yet?”

“No. But we’ll leave it switched off for the night until we get that blockage removed. Tomorrow we switch it back on. Then we wait a week for the island to re-fog before we venture back.” She paused. “But in the meantime, tonight, we need some of you immune youngsters to go through that tunnel and clear the vent of any obstruction, and catch young Thomas while you’re at it.”

“
Catch
Thomas?” Robbie exclaimed.

“What with—butterfly nets?” Abigail snapped.