Island of Shipwrecks (2 page)

“Thanks, Fox. You're a good, um, cat,” he said, which pleased Fox immensely. Alex's arms wobbled. He pushed himself up and locked his elbows, then turned gingerly to a sitting position. He coughed again and winced. “And speaking of cats, please tell me the big one is around here somewhere.”

Simber flew over from a short distance away when he heard Alex's voice. The enormous stone cheetah glanced out over
the water and narrowed his eyes. “I am. But we'rrre missing someone else.”

Alex struggled to his feet, alarmed. “Who's missing?”

“Octavia.”

Alex's breath caught. He scanned the waves. “At least she can swim.”

“Yes. But I'm not surrre wherrre we lost herrr. If it was back at the beginning . . .” Simber trailed off.

Alex wasn't at all sure how far they had traveled since their ship began the insane journey down a thunderous waterfall. When they'd reached the bottom, they'd gone screaming around a forward turn so that they were sailing upside down, and then another forward turn, climbing straight up a different waterfall, and around one final forward turn, bringing them upright again, depositing them here—wherever “here” was. It was the most frightening ride Alex had ever been on, and he wasn't sure how he'd survived it.

“Oh no,” he said softly, thinking about the highly regarded octogator being battered about in the surf. Especially since she hadn't fully recovered from her ordeal with the eel in the aquarium under the volcanic pirate island. “How will we find
her?” He rose on shaky legs and rubbed the rope burns on his wrists.

“Spike is out therrre calling forrr herrr. Hopefully she'll shoot up the waterrrfall like the ship did.” Simber was silent as his gaze swept the surface of the water, looking for the blue whale's sparkly horn, but he didn't see it. The sea grew calm, almost glassy, and the ship inexplicably moved away from the up-waterfall from whence they'd come, into the open water.

“Ah, wait a moment,” the giant stone cheetah said. His regal neck stretched upward, and his eyes narrowed. He flew higher and sampled the air with a delicate sniff. After a moment, he nodded. “Yes. Herrre comes Spike now with Octavia. She's the last one.” The frown on his face softened, and he let out a sigh of relief, which almost never happened unless things had been very, very serious.

Alex, his brain still fuzzy, wondered how long he'd been unconscious, and what else he'd missed. He strained to see the two creatures, but they were too far away for his eyes to detect. Instead he looked around as the fog in his head began to clear. The ship was in tatters. Ropes and nets still held various humans, creatures, and statues who had tied themselves
down to keep from flying about. And some members of their party were definitely broken. Captain Ahab's hand held on to the ship's wheel, but the rest of him was nowhere to be seen.

“Captain?” Alex called out.

“Aye,” came the gargly reply from the deck behind the ship's wheel, where the captain lay in six or seven pieces. “I live. My wretched existence shall waste away another day.”

“He sounds about normal,” Alex muttered, and mentally checked Captain Ahab's well-being off his list of concerns. He caught Samheed's eye. “You okay?”

Samheed was easing his way to his feet nearby as Fox chomped at the ropes around his wrists. “Ugh. Major headache.” Once freed, he staggered and grabbed the railing for support. “Where's Lani?”

Alex looked up at Simber for the answer. “And Sky?” His pulse raced when he remembered that sometime during the horrible ride he'd been holding on to her. The fear cleared his head.

“They'rrre both fine. Helping the injurrred. Everrryone is batterrred but alive thanks to Spike.” The cheetah swooped down to the water to pick up Ms. Octavia from Spike's broad back.

“Mewmewmew!” cried Kitten.

Fox began to interpret, but then glanced at Simber and closed his mouth.

Alex shook his head. “I don't know how any of us lived through that, whatever it was.” He stepped carefully to the railing and used it to steady himself. The water sparkled with the sun hanging low over it, making a pale yellow path in front of them. “Are you sure you're okay, Sam?”

Samheed nodded and limped over. “I think so.”

“We're still heading west,” Alex mused. “Unless it's morning now.” He narrowed his eyes and wished for a better sense of direction. “Where are we? How do we get home? Do we have to go through that thing again to get back?”

“I doubt we'll have to go through it again,” Samheed said. “I'm pretty sure that was a scroll feature. We're on the other end now.” He rubbed the back of his throbbing head. His fingers came away sticky with blood. “Ick.”

Kitten hopped and mewed again.

Alex ignored her, completely puzzled by Samheed's words. “What do you mean, scroll feature? Other end of what?”

Samheed wiped his fingers on his shirt. “I mean it's like the
scroll feature Mr. Today turned on in Artimé whenever new Unwanteds arrived to keep them from getting lost or eaten in the jungle. I rode on it our first day, remember?”

Alex frowned. He remembered Samheed getting mad and stomping off, away from the group, but he'd never asked what had happened to him. “I didn't care much for you back then, you know.”

“Likewise,” Samheed said with a smirk. “I don't think I actually told you guys what happened. But it was sort of like what we just went through, only on a much smaller scale.”

“You mean you scrolled on a waterfall and didn't tell anybody about it? Are you joking?”

“Not a waterfall—I wasn't on water in Artimé, I was on land. It was like . . . like I got sucked down a hill that rotated, and my feet were stuck to it, so even when I was upside down, I didn't fall anywhere.” He pursed his lips. “Picture Kitten with her feet glued to the ship's wheel. If we turned it, she'd stay stuck to the wheel all the way around. It's kind of like that—I just went around, and it brought me to the other side of Artimé.”

“So . . . you're saying that we went around the
world
? And
now we're . . . where exactly?” Alex looked left and right at the vast, open sea.

Samheed shrugged. “My guess is that since we began scrolling when we were as far west as we could be, beyond the Island of Legends, we're now as far away from the Island of Legends as we possibly can be. We're . . . we're . . . east.”

“MEW. MEW. MEW.”

Everyone turned to look at Kitten, whose tiny face was furious. She pointed with her porcelain toes toward the bow of the ship.

“She says—” Fox said.

“She says,” Simber interrupted, “that Ms. Morning's seek spell came frrrom the west. Arrrtimé is that way.”

A
lex cringed. The seek spell from Claire Morning—it had come just as the ship plunged over the waterfall. He'd forgotten all about it. It could mean only one thing: Something was wrong in Artimé.

And here they were, in a broken-down ship with a broken-down captain somewhere far from home, in a part of the sea they'd never traversed before. No one knew exactly how far away they were. All they knew was that there were three islands on this side of Quill and Artimé, just like there were three on the other side. If these islands were spaced out similarly to the ones on the west side of Quill, it could take
many days for the battered ship to limp home.

As Alex contemplated, Lani's head appeared in the stairwell. “Alex,” she said, her face full of concern. “Glad you're finally awake. Got a big problem. There's a hole in the ship. We're taking on water fast. Sky suggested we try a glass spell to cover the hole.” She paused for breath. “I think it might work, but I don't know how to cast that one.”

Alex looked at Sam. “Can you do it?”

Samheed nodded. “I'll go. You figure out what to do from here.”

A moment later, Carina Holiday approached. “Alex,” she said urgently. Her pixie hair was wild, sticking up in all directions. “Sean's not doing very well.”

Alex's face lit up with concern. “Where is he?”

“Still tied to the ropes. Follow me.”

Alex hurried after Carina. When they reached Sean, whose leg had been badly broken by a giant eel on the living-crab island called Karkinos, they knelt at his side. Lani's younger brother, Henry Haluki, was there already, measuring a small amount of liquid from a vial and pouring it carefully into Sean's mouth. Sean's face twisted in pain. Sweat dotted his upper lip and forehead.

“What happened?” Alex said.

“Bumpy ride,” Sean said between short gasps of pain.

Carina reached for Sean's hand, and he gripped it tightly. “It's his leg, obviously,” she said. “He's having almost as much pain now as when he broke it.”

Alex pressed his lips together. “What do we do?” he asked Henry.

Henry held the bottle of medicine to the light, frowned, and put it into his pocket. He moved to examine the makeshift splint the Unwanteds had made for Sean's leg. “Every move this ship makes,” Henry said with grave authority, “feels like a knife stabbing his leg. We have to set it again.”

“No,” Sean whispered. His eyelids fluttered, but the medicine was beginning to work. “Hurts . . . so much . . .” He closed his eyes.

Henry looked at Alex. “And then we have to get him home.”

Alex nodded. “As soon as we can figure out how to do that, we'll be on our way.”

“No,” Carina said. “He needs to go right away.”

Alex frowned. “Look, I know he's in pain, but there's no way to turn this ship into a speedboat. We have a leak, Captain Ahab is in pieces, and Ms. Octavia is—”

“Alex,” Henry interrupted. “You don't understand. We're almost out of medicine.”

Alex sat back. “What? How could that be? I thought you brought a lot.”

“We had plenty for a trip to rescue Sky's mother,” Henry said, sounding a little defensive. “But then we kept going, and we used two whole bottles on Lhasa before Kitten brought her back to life. And Sean's been taking it regularly for days. Even after all of that, we would have been fine, except we lost the medical bag when we went over the waterfall. So all I have left is what was in my pocket.” Henry, who was quite young for having such excellent healing abilities, blinked hard, as if he were trying not to cry. “I should have hung on to the bag better.”

Carina patted his shoulder. “You did just fine.”

“Yes, and you saved one bottle, which Sean desperately needed,” Alex reassured him. “I understand—I'm not blaming you for anything. I was just surprised.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out, thinking hard about how to handle things. “How long do we have?”

“I've got a few drops left in this bottle,” said Henry. “Not
enough for a full dose when this wears off, but it'll help him get through the rest of today.”

“Oh boy,” Alex muttered. He doubted there was a way they could get home in several days, much less by nightfall.

“And we need to set his leg now, while he won't feel it as much.”

Alex blew out a heavy, frustrated breath. Setting Sean's leg had been bad enough the first time. He looked around and saw a slightly bedraggled Ms. Octavia coming toward them, almost appearing to float through the air on her many tentacles. Alex waved her over.

Henry filled her in on the plan and explained how they were going to do it. Ms. Octavia wound two tentacles around Sean's leg and Alex held Sean's upper body steady. At Henry's command, Ms. Octavia pulled while Henry and Carina set the leg. Sean cried out in his sleep. Once the leg was set, Alex rushed over to help Carina replace the splint and secure it.

When Henry and Carina no longer needed him, Alex slipped away to assess their situation, beckoning Ms. Octavia to join him. “I need you to fix Captain Ahab as soon as possible,” he said. “We're out of medicine. We need to get Sean home.”

“Do we know where we are?” she asked. “How far is home?”

Alex shook his head. “I don't know for sure. We think we're at the easternmost end of the world. But all we know for sure is the direction that Ms. Morning's seek spell came from.”

“So the seek spell doesn't require us to go back the way we came, around the world?” asked Ms. Octavia.

“Thankfully, no,” Alex replied. “It must have rerouted once we made it through the waterfalls. It was gone when I woke up, but Kitten saw it before it faded away.”

“Well that's good, but we're still a long way from Artimé, and the ship is barely moving. What will we do with Sean in the meantime? He'll need something for the pain.”

Alex looked up at the top of the battered mast, where six squirrelicorns rested. “I was thinking maybe the squirrelicorns could . . . you know, take him. Back home.”

The two looked at each other—once teacher and student, now peers solving a dilemma. After a moment Ms. Octavia shook her alligator head. “The squirrelicorns aren't like Simber—they can't fly indefinitely. We don't know what's out there or if there's any place for them to land if they need to rest.”