The Floating Island (30 page)

He stood up with the sail to his back, as far forward on the prow as he could get, feeling the sea wind rustle over him, blowing the curls of his hair in every possible direction. Then, with his eyes closed, he lifted the shell into the wind.

At first he didn’t hear anything; the wind on the water was brisk, but not enough to swell the waves. A moment later, however, a soft, high pitch caught his ear, a sound that whispered of faraway places and the dance of trees in the breeze. The shell was singing a wind-song unlike any music he had ever heard before, similar to the whistle through the sculpture in Kingston, but more hollow.

He held the shell aloft until his arm got tired, then slipped it back inside his vest and stepped back into the boat to wait.

For a long time, nothing happened. The sea remained peaceful, bathed in silver light. The boat rocked gently on the waves, held in place by the ratty sail and Char’s skill at the tiller.

While they waited, the moon set, disappearing beyond the dark horizon. The beautiful silver light vanished, and now the boat was surrounded by darkness, broken only by the tiny lantern on its prow.

“Shouldn’t Seren be out by now?” Clemency asked nervously from amidships. “Maybe light from the star might help us to see.”

“It must not be midnight yet,” Ven called back from the bow. “Gregory said that was when it came out, if the sky is clear.”

“Well, it’s certainly clear tonight,” said Clem.

As if to mock her words, the wind suddenly picked up, causing the clouds in the dark sky above them to race along. The waves started to rise and swell, making the
Rescue
pitch wildly. Clemency grabbed for Ida and found that no part of her body was solid any longer.

In the distance, the area between the sea and the sky began to darken with what looked like storm clouds. The wind, which until then had been whistling a rising song that fell in a tumbling moan, began to whine, and then to howl with fury.

The waves rolled, sending the little boat pitching, the bow rising up, then plunging abruptly. Ven reeled back and clung to the mast, struggling to stand as the wind screamed around them, pelting them with icy hail.

“It’s coming!” he shouted to the others, holding up his arm before his eyes to shield them from the sting of the wind and the rain. “Hold tight!”

The spray from the wind splashed over the sides with the waves. Char let go of the tiller and scrambled forward, his bailing bucket in hand, and began tossing water over the side as fast as he could, but the rain was filling the boat faster than he could bail. Clemency helped him, shouting for Ida, but she didn’t answer.

“Just our luck,” Char grumbled, “she’s fallen overboard, and we came out here for nothin’.”

Ven kneeled, trying to steady the riggings, which were threatening to snap. He looked up at Char to see the cook’s mate staring behind him, toward the bow, his eyes as wide as the full moon had been.

“Uh, Ven?” he stammered.

“What?” Ven asked, turning to look over his shoulder.

“It’s here. Only I don’t remember it looking like that before.”

T
HE FLOATING ISLAND LOOKED LIKE THE MAW OF A GIANT SHARK
lunging out of the dark. The wind swirled all around it, churning the sea, crashing the waves against the island’s fragile coast, and causing the trees that lined its curled summit to bend in a horrific dance.

“That’s—not the way I remember it, either,” Ven said nervously.

“It looks angry,” Clemency whispered.

“Well, you might be, too, if you got called away from wherever you were goin’ in the middle of the night,” said Char, grabbing onto the side of the boat for balance.

“Are you still here, Ida?” Ven called into the shrieking wind.

“Yeah,” came a voice on the floor of the stern.

Char scooted away in surprise. “Gah! Where are you? Is it your head that’s tickling my bum?”

“My nose, actually,” said the voice.

“Ugh!”

“Hold tight to the tiller, and turn the rudder to keep aligned with the island, Char,” Ven shouted. “Clem, grab an oar and row.” He tried to hoist the sail higher, but the swirling wind caught it and dragged them across the waves, sucking them closer to the unsteady coastline, which was pitching in much the same manner as the
Rescue.

The rain began to pelt them, strafing the boat in sheets. Ven raised his eyes and saw that there was a pattern to it, currents of air that twisted like a spiral tunnel as they got closer to the island. He trimmed the sail as best as he could, struggling to keep it from falling apart, all the while calling directions to Char, so that he could steer the boat into the wind tunnel.

As they approached the dark island the noise from the wind got louder, a feverish roar that competed with the crash of the waves against the side of the
Rescue.
Ven swallowed hard when he saw the eastern tip of the island sway in the wind so violently that it lifted completely out of the sea, then splashed down again.

“Char! Hard to starboard!” he yelled as another sheet of rain blasted the boat, filling it by almost half with water. “Clem, crouch down as far as you can—er, you too, Ida, if you can hear me.”

Char leaned on the tiller, struggling to hold it in the pull of the waves.

With a crash the mast fell over, narrowly missing Clemency, and covering all of them with the ragged sail.

The
Rescue
pitched, then shot forward, spinning wildly in the wind, caught in the tunnel of air currents that were churning around the Floating Island. The sound of muffled screams from beneath the sail was drowned out in the crashing of the waves.

With a thud, the
Rescue
ran aground, coming to a jolting halt.

For a moment, there was no movement from within the battered boat.

Then, slowly, the canvas sail began to bump in places, lift in some and fall in others, as the companions struggled to come out from under it.

Finally Clemency, the tallest of them, let out a growl of frustration.

“Stop moving!” she ordered. When the sail ceased bumping she stood up, like the center pole in a tent, and threw the sail off her head and shoulders onto the sand of the island’s beach.

Ven climbed out of the
Rescue
and detached the lantern from the boat’s prow, remarkably still lit.

“Char, toss out the anchor,” he said, holding the lantern aloft in the wet air. “Ida, are you still here?”

Nothing but the wind, distant and moaning now, answered him.

“Ida?”

Clemency and Char took up the call. “Ida? Ida!
Ida!
”

The sound caught the wind and was echoed back to them in a moaning wail.

Ida! Ida! Ida!

“Here,” said a weak voice low to the ground. Ven held up the lantern, but saw nothing. He set the lantern down and drew out his jack-rule, extending the lens and peering in the direction from which the voice had come. The image he saw through the glass horrified him.

Pinned beneath the boat was the clear white outline of a girl.

“Oh, man!” Ven exclaimed. “Come on, she’s crushed under the
Rescue.
Together, now—heave it off of her!”

Quickly they rolled the boat off of the invisible Ida, who, to Ven’s surprise, stood up easily and shook the sand from herself.
I suppose there is something to be said for wasting away,
Ven thought.
It’s sort of hard to hurt a body that’s not there.
He folded the jack-rule, tucked it carefully back in his pocket, and started across the beach and up the twisted, translucent mountain where the wind made its home.

“Ida—we can’t see you at all now, so stay between Clem and Char,” he called over his shoulder. There was no answer, but a moment later he heard a loud
ooof!
from the cook’s mate. Char went flying and planted his face in the blowing sand of the beach.

“I guess that means she’s here,” Clemency said to Ven. She offered Char her hand and pulled him up, then switched places with him.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this, Ven?” Char said through his teeth as they headed up the mountain.

“Rover’s box—bones—she shut it,” Ven answered, not turning around as he climbed.

“Oh, right,” mumbled Char.

Up the spiraling sides of the dark mountain they climbed, the wind rattling through the trees all around them.

After what seemed like forever, they finally reached the summit of the shell-shaped mountain. They hurried inside to escape the bitter wind, which had left their skin stinging from its bite.

The inner tunnel of the hollow mountain was even darker than the sea had been. Ven held tight to the lantern, trying not to wince at the large shadows it cast in the trees above. The smell of wet earth filled his nostrils, along with the smell of dread.
We shouldn’t have come,
he thought, walking carefully along the downward curve as the mountain curled, the trees and plants thinning until they were gone.
I knew it was wrong when Whiting wanted to call the island, but I didn’t think twice about doing it myself.

He remembered what McLean had said about it again.
Something that powerful should only be sought out in a matter of life and death,
the Singer had told him. The thought made him feel only a little bit better.

They continued down into the belly of the mountain, single-file, listening to all the voices on the wind. When they came to the place Ven thought the wind from Vaarn blew, he called a quick hello to his mother, hoping she might hear.

Finally, in the total darkness at the bottom of the mountain, they stopped beside the tiny silver spring of Living Water in the rich green glen of lichen and moss.

In that place, all the noise from the echo chamber above died away, leaving only the soothing sound of the water’s song. Ven bent down beside the stream and gestured to the darkness behind him, in the hope that Ida was still with them.

“Drink,” he said. “Just a little; you only need a few drops.”

All the sound in the cave around them seemed to die down to a gentle whisper. Clemency and Char watched in silence, holding their breath.

In the middle of the tiny spring a ripple appeared, as if a hand had been slipped into it and a palmful of water removed. Ven’s eyes were fixed on the area in front of him, searching for any sign of Ida.

Across the stream from him the air seemed to move, then to shimmer. Slowly, like a spyglass coming into focus, Ida’s outline appeared, followed in degrees by the rest of her, filling in colors one by one, her body becoming visible, solid.

Real
again.

As soon as Ida had solidified completely, Clemency burst into happy tears. She turned to Ven and hugged him joyfully, released him and turned to Char, who hugged her back. Char turned to Ida, his arms open wide, but the expression on her face caused him to spin back around and hug Clem again.

“You all right?” Ven asked Ida, who was staring all around her in wonder. The thin girl nodded. “Good. We had best get out of—”

Before he could finish his thought, the ground beneath him rumbled.

“What was that?” Char asked nervously. Ven shook his head, but it happened again, this time causing dust and gravel from the walls of the shell mountain to crumble and fall to the floor of the cave around them.

The Floating Island shuddered. In the tunnel above, Ven could hear the sound of trees cracking and rocks sliding.

“Ven—?” Clemency said, her voice trembling. “What’s happening?”

Before Ven could answer, the island shuddered again, this time rocking more violently.

“We’ve unbalanced it,” he said, trying to keep from panicking. “Oliver was very specific about the need to keep the place in balance, to not take anything that belonged to the wind.” His forehead furrowed in realization, and he winced as if in pain. “Blast! I forgot! Oliver brought something with him, a type of water he said was as rare and special as the Living Water, that came from a well that the wind couldn’t reach. It was a
trade.
Of course! We should have brought something to trade for the water, but I didn’t.”

Dust rained down on their heads from the mountaintop above.

“Do we have anything we can use to trade?” Clemency asked desperately. “The place appears to be crumbling. I don’t know if we can even make it up out of the cave, let alone back to the boat or to Kingston, if we don’t set it right and balance it again.”

“All I have is a jack-rule and a seashell,” said Ven, his voice tight and high as he patted his pockets, trying to summon forth something he didn’t remember. “Somehow I don’t think that will do it.”

Beneath them the ground trembled.

Char covered his head as a cloud of dust and grit fell down from the twisted tunnel above. “We’re gonna be buried here,” he said anxiously. “There’s no way we’ll make it—”

The ground stopped rumbling, the tunnel stopped moving. The last remaining grains of dust fell. Then silence returned again.

“It’s stopped,” Clemency said in wonder. “Amazing! How did it balance again? We didn’t have anything to trade or—”

She fell silent at the sight that the two boys had already witnessed, joining them in awe.

At the edge of the spring Ida was sitting, staring into the silver pool of water as if it were a mirror. Tears from her eyes were flowing down her cheeks, making their way into the spongy moss at the side of the little well.

Balancing it.

For a long time the other three sat and watched her, unable to speak or move. Ven shook his head in wonder.
The captain traded the island some water from an ancient well that was as rare as the Living Water,
he thought as Ida ran the back of her sleeve roughly over her face and scowled at them.
Ida’s tears served as a substitute. They must be as rare, then, too. I bet this is the only time in her life she’s ever cried.

The newly solid girl stood up abruptly.

“Let’s go, Polywog,” she said, but her tone was not as unpleasant as usual. It was clear to Ven that the Living Water had done more than restore her visibility, but what that effect was, he could not tell. He contented himself with following Ida and the others back up the winding passageway to the air and the trees and the voices and the wind.

When they reached the top of the mountain, the darkness of night was just beginning to fade, giving way to a flat gray that would linger for a few hours until dawn. They scurried down the mountainside, laughing out loud, singing and shouting along with the voices on the wind, past the trees that still were cloaked in night, past the hats and kites and shirts that hung in them, all the way down to the waterfront where they stopped, stunned.

Their boat was not on the shore where they left it.

“I told you to drop the anchor,” Ven said tersely to Char.

“I did! I did drop the anchor!” Char protested. “Wedged it into the sand myself!”

“Then where’s the boat?” Ven demanded.

Clemency pointed off shore. “There,” she said despondently.

The
Rescue
was floating in the middle of the sea, about a hundred yards off the coast of the island.

“Well,
now
what are we gonna do?” asked Char, hysteria building in his voice until it topped out in a squeak.

“We can swim,” Ven offered. Clem and Char shook their heads.

“That’s the middle of the bloody
sea,
Ven,” Char said. “It’s gonna keep drifting; we’d never catch it.”

“We can try to signal another boat,” Clemency suggested. “Once dawn comes, the ships heading for the harbor will start coming in.”

“Yes, but we will be somewhere on the other side of the world,” Ven said gloomily. “This is a
floating
island, remember? It travels wherever the wind takes it.”

“We can try to find a way to steer it,” Char put in. “Maybe if we go back down into the mountain tunnel—”

“Or we can wait for the boat to come back,” said Ida.

Ven let out a short, harsh laugh that sounded a little like a bark while the other two rolled their eyes or sighed.

“What makes you think it’s going to come back, Ida?” he asked as calmly as he could.

“The fact that it
is,
” Ida said smugly. She pointed out to sea.