WHEN I REACH the shore, Rowan is still there, sprawled face-down with his T-shirt soaked and sticking to his fur, and his wide, fur-topped feet bare on the sand. He must have lost his shoes when he was swimming. I have a flash of fear for him—why hasn’t he run back to the hotel?—but his warmth is still bright, and his back is heaving. I shuffle over to him on my knees, my drowned clothes streaming water with each soggy movement, and reach to touch his shoulder. He’s shaking; he’s drenched, and a cool, harsh wind blares from the sea, but I didn’t think he could get cold this easily.
“Rowan?”
He startles, and slowly turns a tear-streaked face to me. “Ada!” I see him taking in my dripping, saliva-slimed hair, my torn shirt. I sit beside him with my arms wrapped tight around my chest. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but Soraya’s suckers shredded my clothes in places. “How—getting through that underwater passage—the fence—are you—”
I’m not sure what he’s getting at. “My sister saved me. She brought me back here. And I think you know her.”
Rowan spasms again, then laboriously heaves himself up to sit cross-legged on the sand. His eyes are red, and he reaches self-consciously to smear his tears away.
“You met Soraya.” He sighs. “She’s been asking to meet you. I told her it was a terrible idea, but I thought she might not listen to me. The second I saw your face, I knew this was going to be a big problem.”
“Asking to meet me?” I say. Does she have some way of talking that I don’t know about?
Rowan’s shaking his head. His eyes look glazed, disoriented. “She saved you, though? Soraya? What—” He’s twisting himself harder now, like he can clear his mind by force. “Oh, no. Oh, Ada. You went back underground, and when you couldn’t find me you started searching the tunnel? And—you, even you didn’t see that gap in the floor somehow, and you fell into the water?”
“That’s what Gabriel is going to tell everyone,” I say. “He’s probably telling them that story right now.”
Rowan’s eyes go wide as he takes this in. “Ada!”
“And I’m going to go along with it. I’m going to repeat whatever Gabe says. I won’t tell anybody else the truth except you, Rowan. I just need someone to know, in case he tries it again.”
“He wouldn’t, though! He knows Ms. Stuart thinks—”
“Gabe thinks she’s wrong. He thinks I’m useless. And he thought maybe Soraya stole you, so he wanted to trade me to get you back. He threatened to throw me to her if I wouldn’t tell him whatever it is that you’re all so sure I know.” I’m kind of shocked by how cold my voice sounds. Relentless. “He was convinced that Soraya would murder me for him. He was being stupid. That’s not what she’s like. She grabbed me just the way he wanted, but she did it to save me from him.”
“Of course she wouldn’t actually murder you! Okay, so the first time she saw you she said some pretty upsetting things, and I guess I did tell Gabe about that, but still. She was basically in shock. How could Gabe possibly—” And then he gets it. His cheeks flush crimson. “Hey, Soraya’s kind of my sister, too. We’ve been close since we were both babies. We grew up together.”
“I’m not sure she sees it like that.”
Rowan doesn’t answer out loud, but I can read the look he fires at me: You don’t need to give me an excuse, Ada. I know you’ll never like me that way.
It seems like a good time to change the subject. “So how did you get here, Rowan? Why didn’t you wait for us? I get that swimming out of there is no problem for you, but that’s no reason to scare everybody!”
He gets a strange look on his face. The sun is totally under now, but a film of moonlight covers the two of us and glints gray on the sand. It’s a gibbous moon, fat and sleepy, balanced on the horizon.
“Would you believe me if I told you that I can’t remember? That I had a blackout and found myself here with my memory totally wiped—everything from the moment you left me?” Rowan asks.
I think about it. It sounds a lot like what happened to me after I saw the blue mouthing, They want power. The truth is we have no idea what it’s capable of doing. And what was it Gabriel said—they think I can make it help them with their project? Is that what Ophelia was so worried about? That maybe if I refused, Ms. Stuart would try to force me somehow?
“I believe you,” I tell him. “It’s no crazier than anything else that’s been happening.”
“Good,” Rowan says decidedly. He flashes me an awful smile, slow and contorted. “Because that’s what I’m going to tell everyone. Except for you. We’re going to walk back up there and lie our faces off together.”
I stare at him. “So what actually happened?”
Rowan locks his gaze on mine. “Do you really not know? Really, Ada?”
The blue. Did he see it somehow?
“I went and sat back by the pool, and it got darker and darker. And then—I felt something take hold of my hand. It was, I don’t know, not as solid as a human hand. It had kind of a sizzling feeling, like there was a lot going on inside it. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew, I knew for sure, that it was the thing Ms. Stuart has been searching for. The thing you’ve been keeping secret.” His smile looks a lot sadder now. “I’m not mad. I mean, I didn’t tell you about Soraya. I still wouldn’t want you to know about her, honestly, if it was up to me to decide. Did you see that thing in the cave when we were both there?”
I can’t answer that. Can I answer that? “I saw it. It was curled up around those kimes in the pool. Like it was cuddling them.”
“The same blue thing you started telling Gabe and Ophelia about. After those creeps knocked you out.”
He’s not lilting it like a question. He’s announcing it like he’s known all along.
“Yes.” My heart speeds into a twitchy, unsure beat. I’m probably making a huge mistake by admitting this to anyone.
“So why didn’t you tell Ms. Stuart the truth?”
“The blue didn’t want me to.”
I expect Rowan to argue, but he nods. “I kind of got that message, too. I don’t know how, though. Or why. But it felt like everything it was showing me was just for me, and it wanted me to keep my mouth shut. Anyway, it took me by the hand, and I felt like I had to trust it. I felt like it was someone I’d missed for a long time without knowing it, if that makes sense. So I let it lead me away, even though it was so dark that I was completely blind. And the really crazy thing? When I put out my other hand, I touched water. Water was floating ahead of me in this wobbly cloud. I could stick my fingers right in, and it was full of swimming animals. Those tadpole kimes, Ada.”
I’m the one nodding now. “The tadpoles were gone when Gabe and I went down there.”
“Yeah. I have no idea where they are now. I bet your blue thing knew more people were coming and it wanted to move them somewhere safer.”
There’s a pause while I think about that. There’s something in what Rowan is saying that makes me feel like I’d rather not talk about this anymore. “Why would it care about protecting them? Rowan, look, everybody’s scared out of their minds about you. We should go up.”
“We have to figure this out first. I mean, don’t you have any ideas about what that blue thing is? We know it’s intelligent, and we know it went out of its way to protect those tadpole kimes. It seems like it cares about us, too. So, think: something that’s at least as smart as we are, and that worries about different species—what does that sound like to you?”
I think of the blue turning itself into a rolling mass of animal parts, all mixed up together. It was trying to communicate something by doing that.
Voices float down from the top of the hill. I look up, and there’s a cluster of bodies up there. They’re just starting to make their way down the slope. I guess Rowan is right: whatever we have to tell each other, we’d better say now. I still don’t like it, though—and I’m not quite ready to tell him about the blue shape-shifting in the woods, even though I’m pretty sure that’s something he’d be excited to learn.
“But, Rowan, if the blue led you away on purpose, where was it taking you?”
His lips pinch a little; he’s probably annoyed that I asked a new question instead of answering his.
“It wanted to show me something.” That sounds familiar. “There are caves leading off from that underwater tunnel, Ada. It tugged on me until I jumped down into the crack in the floor, just trusting it that there was water down there, and that I’d find a way out, because I still couldn’t see anything. It took me on—I guess you’d call it a tour. I’m probably the only one of us who could’ve stayed under long enough for it to do that.”
It doesn’t make any sense, but panic rushes through me the way it did in the woods that time—right before I turned and ran frantically from the blue as it gibbered its silent words at me. Ada, darling. They want power.
“How could you see anything? If it was pitch-dark—”
“The caves weren’t dark, is the thing. Just the passage. The caves were blazing, and it was all so insanely beautiful. Some kind of bioluminescence was everywhere, all over the walls. Green and blue and white stars living on the rocks. And the whole time I was thinking how I could never show it to you—that you would drown—but that you’d see it in ways nobody else ever could. That wasn’t all that was in there, either. Not—not even close. Ada, listen, I think I know what the blue thing is trying to tell us.”
I open my mouth to ask the question he’s expecting: what? But the truth is that I don’t want to know. Not right now, anyway. I’m beyond exhausted, and all at once the cold wind sucking on my drenched clothes is getting to me. I feel shaky and feverish.
But then I’m saved from asking him anything, because some of the kids heading down the hill catch sight of us and start hollering. “Is that Rowan? Rowan! Rowan! And who’s with him? It looks like—but Gabe said—how could she have gotten here? Rowan! Ada! Is that you?”
Rowan shoots me a rueful look and stands up. “It’s us! We’re right here!”
“But Gabe said Ada fell into a chasm! He said she vanished!”
“She did. Soraya rescued her.” I wish Rowan hadn’t told them that part, but realistically there’s no other explanation that would work. “She’s kind of stunned, but she’s fine.”
“Ada!” Ophelia screams. “I was so, so, so upset! I couldn’t believe you were gone!” There’s a stampede of running feet on the slope above us, and then Ophelia launches herself off the ragged shelf where the grass drops sharply to the sand. Her wings thrum into an opal blur, and she sails twenty yards through the air, her body lifting in a long arc across the night, and lands on me in a squealing tangle. “Oh, gross. What’s that all over your hair?”
And then we’re both half laughing and half crying, and I’m shocked by how relieved I feel to be back with her—and by how relieved I am that she cares.
Besides, what she did just now? That looked to me like more than just hovering. It wasn’t all that far, maybe, but it was a lot farther and higher than I’ve ever seen her go before.
Ophelia almost flew.