Island of Legends (The Unwanteds) (5 page)

Alex looked past Samheed at the girl on the bed and gasped.

It was Sky.

S
everal hours later, outside the palace, the High Priest Aaron took in one last glimpse of the sea, slid the final block into the hole in the wall, and stepped back. He wiped his bloody knuckles on his pants, and then dabbed the sweat on his forehead with his sleeve. “There,” he said, surveying his work and trying not to think about what was happening in Artimé right about now. He needed to get moving on securing the other weak wall in Quill, though he knew there was no way to do it now while there was likely a battle in progress over there. For some ridiculous reason, Aaron’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

He stepped back and drew a keen eye over the wall. It wasn’t perfect, and it needed some patching, but he wondered if anyone far away could tell there had once been an opening in this spot. He concluded that it looked reasonably like the rest of the wall from a distance. Close up, one could see a few narrow slits and holes at eye level, through which tiny breezes blew. Aaron could just barely make out bits of the sea through them if he stood close, but it couldn’t be helped. He frowned at the bloody scrapes on his hands, which stung, and turned to go into the palace.

At the entrance to the cold, gray structure stood Eva Fathom, arms crossed over her chest, watching Aaron.

“Secretary,” Aaron muttered, using the name she’d gone by for fifty years. He didn’t need her nosing around or asking questions right now.

“Welcome back,” she replied. She didn’t move from the doorway. “Where’ve you been?”

Aaron stopped in front of her. “It’s none of your business. Excuse me,” he said. “I have a lot to do today.” He stood several inches taller than the curled old woman, but that didn’t keep Aaron from being a bit apprehensive around her. He was never
sure if he could fully trust her, and the two occasionally butted heads. Still, she had been Secretary to the High Priest Justine for decades before the ruler’s untimely death, and Aaron was Justine’s most fervent fan. Surely the former high priest had had good reason to trust Secretary. Aaron just hadn’t figured out what that reason was yet.

The woman stepped aside to let Aaron in. She followed him up to his office. “How shall I assist you today?” she asked when Aaron sat down at his desk.

Aaron studied her through narrowed eyes. “Aren’t you going to ask about the hole in the wall?”

Secretary’s voice was smooth. “You’ll tell me eventually if there is something you need me to know about it, High Priest.”

“So you didn’t see those big—those big jalopies on the sea?”

The woman hesitated, puzzled. “You mean ships?” she asked.

“Whatever they are. A dozen of them. Headed to Artimé.”

“Oh dear.” A frown passed over her face. “You should send guards over to stand in the entrance to Quill and keep intruders out. It’s wide open these days, isn’t it?”

“Good idea. Why don’t you tell them to get over there.”

Eva stepped outside the office to take care of the orders. While she was gone, Aaron picked up a dull pencil and drew a very crooked triangle on a piece of paper, for the sheer reason that he could now that he was high priest. Besides, the distraction helped him think. He drew some other shapes too. Rectangles, like the sails of the ships. Before he knew it, he was drawing lines to connect them.

Secretary cleared her throat. She’d returned, unheard.

Abruptly, Aaron stopped drawing and looked up. He set down the pencil. “We need more than guards. We need to wall in the entrance to Quill,” he said. “Immediately. We—
Haluki
allowed Quill to be vulnerable for too long.”

Secretary’s brow furrowed, the wrinkles in her forehead deepening such that they resembled tree bark.

Before she could speak, Aaron lifted a hand. “Don’t even begin to argue with me,” he warned. “It’s my duty to keep Quill safe, and that is what I shall do. We’ll need a team of Necessaries to get to work immediately—and
not
my father this time, please.” He gave the woman a sour look, as if his father’s visit to the palace had been her fault.

“But—” Secretary began.

“Ut-tut-tut!” Aaron replied. “What did I say?”

Eva Fathom closed her icy lips.

Aaron watched her face, suddenly wondering what she was going to say but too proud to ask her now.

“Very well.” She nodded. As she turned to carry out Aaron’s wishes, her face wore the smuggest smile Aaron had ever seen.

Somewhere deep inside him, Aaron began to panic.

A
lex rushed to Sky’s side just as Henry came running.

“Is she breathing?” Alex cried. “Is she dead? She can’t be dead!”

Henry was silent as he checked over Sky. After a moment he looked around frantically and shouted, “Ms. Morning!” He turned to Samheed and squeaked, “For Jim’s sake, get Alex out of here. He’s making me nervous.”

Samheed pulled Alex out of the way. Alex, numb, could do nothing but watch as Henry and Ms. Morning worked feverishly over the girl. A thousand memories pummeled his brain:
Sky and Crow unconscious on the raft. Sky finally waking up on that fateful day. Sky inching away and spitting water in Alex’s face. Sky stoic and silent on the roof as Alex cried. Sky bringing him the model of the mansion, helping Alex figure out how to get Artimé back. Sky on the pirate ship’s stairway, startling Alex with a kiss. And Sky on a raft once more, determined to save her mother.

“She’s not breathing,” Alex heard somebody say.

“Oh no,” he whispered, leaning heavily against the door frame of the hospital wing. “No. No.” He wanted to scream it. He couldn’t bear to lose her. Not now. Not after everything. He gripped his robe—the robe that Sky had hemmed for him so it wouldn’t drag on the floor. He stood on his tiptoes, trying to see around the crowd of nurses, trying to see her face. If only he could see her face. . . . “Sky!” he screamed. “Your mother—you have to breathe! We need to save your mother!” Several in the room turned to look at him, their faces growing scared.

“Alex,” Samheed said, his voice wretched. He gripped Alex’s arm tighter. “Pull it together, man.”

“Sky!” Alex yelled again, and then he stopped and shot Samheed a wild look. “Where’s Crow?”

Samheed shrugged, helpless. “I don’t know. I saw him, I mean . . . I think he’s fine.”

“Do you think she’s . . . ?”

“I don’t know, Al.”

Alex knew that he should try to find Crow, let him know his sister was hurt. Or dying. Or . . . dead. But he couldn’t move. His feet were cemented to the floor. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

More and more Artiméans rushed in carrying injured humans and creatures, filling up the beds.

“What are they doing to her?” Alex asked.

“It’s hard to tell,” Samheed said.

“She can’t die. Not after everything.”

Samheed looked on with Alex and nodded. “I know. It’s not right.”

Just then there was a flurry of activity at Sky’s side.

“Roll her on her side!” Ms. Morning shouted. “Quickly!”

Alex strained to see what was happening. “Sky, please!” he cried out as his insides ached and trembled. Samheed didn’t try to quiet him.

After a moment of stillness, there was another burst of
movement. Henry lifted something in the air and shouted in triumph, “Okay, Sky—now breathe!”

Another agonizing moment passed. And then Alex thought he heard a hoarse cough.

“Atta girl,” Ms. Morning said. “That’s it. Get it all out.”

Before Alex’s eyes, Sky sat up, coughing and hacking, sucking in air.

A cheer arose. Alex broke free from Samheed’s grasp and ran to her bedside, squeezing past the people who surrounded her. She coughed a bit more, and when she stopped, Alex spoke her name. “Sky?”

She turned, seeing him for the first time, and smiled weakly. “Hey.”

Alex flung his arms around her. There was nothing that could possibly feel better right now than her dirt-covered cheek on his, and her ragged breath against his neck.

W
hile Sky was left to spend a few hours recovering in the hospital ward with the dozens of other injured, Alex and Samheed found Lani and Meghan at the shore hard at work. They and several others had all the people of Warbler lined up and shackled to keep them contained until Artimé could figure out what to do with them.

Simber and a bunch of squirrelicorns flew out over the water behind the fleet, plucking up any additional Warblerans who were falling off the sides of the ships as their spells wore off. They brought them to the shore, where Meghan took over,
stripping them of their weapons, shackling their wrists, and walking them over to the others.

Almost all the newcomers were children, and they looked scared. Their ages varied, but most looked around ten or eleven, like Henry and Crow. Some a little older. They pleaded with their orange eyes. Others cried silently or looked at the ground. None of them made a sound, of course.

Alex looked them over carefully, not yet sure what he was going to do with them. They seemed harmless enough. He glanced over his shoulder at Meghan. “See if you can find Crow and ask him to come here, will you? He may still be in the library.”

“Be right back.” Meghan took off for the mansion.

Alex turned back to the silent prisoners. “Well, here you all are,” he mused. “Abandoned.” They didn’t look like criminals at all. “Look,” he said matter-of-factly, “when you surprised us by parachuting in, we didn’t know what we were facing. We cast some spells on you to keep the situation under control, but none of them were painful. Looking back, I now understand that somebody probably strapped a parachute to you and put you in a catapult, and you maybe didn’t have any say in
that. But the reason I’m angry with you is that once you got here, you attacked us with knives and you hurt people. You did that all on your own. And I’m wondering why you’d do such a thing. Did we hurt
you
in some way when we went to Warbler to rescue our friends?”

Several Warbler children burst into silent tears. Alex couldn’t look at them. He had to figure out if there was evil in these children. He needed to know if they felt bad about what they did, and if he could trust them not to hurt anyone else. He took his time studying each face. By the time he had looked at them all, the entire group had dissolved into remorse.

Alex softened. “Listen, guys. We do things a little differently in Artimé.” His voice grew kind. “You see, we found ourselves here because we were Unwanted and Purged from our society in Quill, which lies beyond that wall.” He paused as the children of Warbler lifted their heads to look where he was pointing. “It appears your ruler has used you and left you for dead,” he said. “Which I guess makes you Unwanted too.”

A girl in the front row raised her shackled hands to her lips. A boy behind her touched her elbow. Another girl gazed across the water at the retreating ships, lip quivering.

Suddenly Alex realized they didn’t understand. To him, now, being Unwanted was a good thing. But the term still held its nasty bite to the children before him, stuck in this precarious position. “First,” he said hastily, “I want you to know that we consider Unwanted people to be very special. But I know—it feels terrible.” He nodded solemnly and wondered about these children’s parents. Did they know they’d be losing their children today? And were they as okay with it as Alex’s parents were? Maybe these children actually wanted to go back to Warbler.