Oof. I landed on my hands and knees in a pile of sand. Someone rushed past me, almost knocking me flat.
“Hey!” I protested, struggling to my feet.
The person had their back to me. They were tall with wavy black hair, wearing muddy cargo pants and a grubby t-shirt that might once have been forest green, with a mottled brown rucksack on their shoulders, like the one on the sand by my feet.
Mr. Yancy must have tossed this pack in with me. I ground my teeth. How could he abandon me without so much as a heads up? Most importantly, where was I and how did I get out?
The person in front of me was banging and 30pushing on the door I’d just come through, but it was already shut tight.
“H-how …?” I stammered, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
The door stood in the middle of a pile of sand, without a wall or other support to hold it up. I tried to catch my breath as the person in front of me kept fighting to break it open.
The door, double doors in fact, stood inside of an arched frame covered in an intricate pattern of circles and stars. At the front of each door was a golden handle shaped like a dragon from Persian stories: a curling, snake-like creature with many legs and wings, a fierce face with curved horns, flaming eyes and a wide-open mouth filled with sharp teeth.
But that wasn’t all.
I looked around in shock. Somehow, we were on a long stretch of deserted beach. To my right was the sea, wild and windswept, stretching out to a distant horizon. To my left was yellow-brown sand, lined with what seemed like an old coconut plantation running the length of the beach, as far as the eye could see.
The plantation seemed to be abandoned. I couldn’t see any houses or buildings; just rows and 31rows of coconut trees that had seen better days. Mangrove and forest had probably been cleared to make this plantation. Now the sea was eroding the land at top-speed. Some trees had fallen across the beach, left with only their leafless trunks and tangled roots sticking into the air. Those that were still standing were bent and twisted by the wind into painful shapes.
My head whirred. Where was Dragon Hall, the rooms, the house I’d just been in? Where was Mr. Yancy? There were no good answers. I inhaled a chest-full of salty air.
“Hey!” I shouted at the person who still had their back to me, yanking and pulling at the locked door. I stumbled toward them, then froze. With a crack like lightning, right in front of my eyes, the door started fading from the bottom up. In seconds, it was gone, leaving nothing but sand and the stranger beating on air.
Finally, they were still. Their arms dropped to their sides; head sunk forward. Then slowly, they turned around.
I screamed.
“Adri!” 32
I was staring into the face of my long-lost friend.
“How do you know my name?” he snarled at me, dropping back into a martial arts stance.
“Wait, what? Adri, it’s me, Zo!”
I wasn’t ready to fight anyone, least of all him.
He stared at me blankly. “Whoever you are, whatever they’ve sent you to do, stay away from me. I’m getting out of here, no matter what.”
“You hear that!” he yelled into the sky, startling a flock of pelicans on a distant rock and sending a blue crab scuttling into its hole. “I’m getting out of here! You just keep up your end of the deal!”
“What deal? Adri …?”
He was already stamping away from me.
After everything we’d been through last year – lost in a forest on the other side of the island, chased by monstrous creatures, kidnapped, webbed, and worse, he really had no idea who I was?
I stood there, shock crawling over my skin.
An image popped into my head of the memory-stick that Ms. K had nearly used to zap away my memories of Samaan Bay.
This was the Council’s work. They had wiped Adri’s memories of me, and who knew what else. 33
Something sour burned my throat. Taking Adri’s parents, threatening us, experimenting on us like rats. Now this.
I stumbled after him as fast as I could. “Adri, wait! Please.”
“Eh-hem. Excuse you, Girlie. Like you forgetting something?” A voice cut in, stopping us both in our tracks.
The voice was hoarse and rolling like a pirate’s. It was also uncomfortably close.
I looked down to see a gold band clasped around my wrist. Mr. Yancy must have put it on as he chucked me through the door. Now, sticking out of the wristband like a picture from a projector, was a talking, moving image of Cap’n Peg, the spider I’d first met in Samaan Bay.
She was just as hairy and ornery as I remembered, sporting a red polka dot headscarf, two black eye-patches, and a robotic telescope eye clicking in and out of her head. Her one good eye was giving me an extra-scornful look.
“Hmmph, you older now Girlie,” she observed. “Any wiser?”
“Wh …” I stared at the projection, trying to 34form words.
“I guess not!”
Her harsh laughter filled the air like seagulls. The image of Cap’n Peg moved, talked, and cackled above my wrist. I tugged on the band, but it didn’t budge. Adri wore one that looked exactly like mine, with the same image of Cap’n Peg playing above it. He seemed irritated, but not surprised.
“You again Peg,” he snapped. “Well, out with it! What do they have to say?”
“Eh eh! Check yourself little boy. Is Cap’n to you. We didn’t pitch marbles together!”
Adri growled. Clearly, he had met Cap’n Peg since having his memory wiped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how.
Cap’n Peg steupsed. She rolled her robotic eye. “Lil’ boy, I don’t work for you.”
“Can you help us?” I whispered.
The spiders had helped me before, but that was a secret that needed to stay between us.
Cap’n Peg cut me off quickly, “Listen. The Bosses say you have one hour to get to the other door. After that, you fail this round and you …” she jabbed her silver mechanical leg with all its gears and joints 35in Adri’s direction, “know what that means … You could kiss seeing your parents,” she smacked loudly, “goodbye!”
I felt sick. So, the Council still had Adri’s parents.
Somehow, they’d convinced him that if he survived their tests, they’d let him see his family again.
“Adri,” I stepped toward him, “don’t believe them.”
He ignored me completely.
“Fine!” he shouted at Cap’n Peg. “Get to it! Where’s the other door?”
“Watch your tone with me Mister!” she puffed up. “Can’t even see what in front your face.”
Our wristbands started beeping. I looked down to see 60:00 start counting down and next to it, an arrow, pointing to my right, along the curved edge of the sea. Without another word, Adri rushed off in the direction of the arrow.
“Adri, wait!” I turned to go after him.
“Stop! Girlie,” Cap’n Peg barked as though she were shouting orders on a ship. “You need your pack. Unless you planning not to eat or drink for the rest of the test.”
Okay. So, they’d given us supplies. How kind.
I grabbed the rucksack and slung it over my 36shoulders, dashing after Adri who was running at full speed. I could no longer see Cap’n Peg’s image above his wrist, but she was still beaming from mine. Apparently, she wasn’t quite done with me yet.
“Girlie, I told you this before and I telling you again,” she aimed her telescopic eye at me, snapping the pincers at the end of her metallic leg. “Watch yourself! That boy don’t know you from Adam now. And cockroach have no business in fowl party.”
With that, she was gone, leaving behind the smooth gold wristband on my arm. It said 59:35 now, with a flashing arrow next to it, pointing in the direction in which Adri was running, as if his parents’ lives depended on it.