I followed Adri along the edge of the sea, keeping one eye on him and the other on my wristband. I tried to catch up with him but running on sand was no joke. Eventually, Adri’s pace slowed to a jog, then a walk. My legs and lungs were grateful.
I thought back to when I’d first met him over a year ago. He could barely keep up a brisk stroll. Clearly, a lot had changed since then. Adri looked taller and stronger, with a toughness that I had not seen in him before. I wondered where the Council had kept him and what they’d done to change him like this.
“Adri!” I called out to him for the tenth time.
He ignored me completely. 38
My stomach felt like it was eating itself.
I had looked forward to this moment for so long.
Ever since Samaan Bay, it was like I’d been living in two worlds. The psychologist told my parents that it was normal for a child to withdraw after a traumatic experience, like getting lost in the forest for days. But neither she, nor they, knew the half of what I’d been through. And none of them knew about Adri. Everyone back at the village thought that he and his parents had drowned at sea. And Adri didn’t turn up to confirm my story. He’d gone back with the spiders to the Council’s headquarters to find his parents.
Back then, Da, Mum and Jake were so happy to have me back alive and in one piece, that they hadn’t asked too many questions. But now it was like there was a mountain between us, made up of everything they didn’t know – a loss I couldn’t talk about or explain.
I tried to be the fun, carefree girl they wanted me to be, but on top of everything else, I couldn’t even hug them, hold hands, or play with my brother without constant fear that one touch would send me tumbling into their memories. A gift I’d never 39even wanted.
Instead, I had to be constantly on guard, and it showed. I could see how much it hurt them to think that I didn’t want to be close.
Mum kept trying to talk with me, to get me to open up about what had happened. But how could I explain the Council to her? A secret organization of people who ran tests on children with special powers and created powerful hybrid creatures for their own ends?
She’d have thought that I was crazy for sure – that dehydration and starvation in the forest had made me hallucinate and now I believed all the visions that I’d seen. So, I kept it inside, hoping for the day when I’d see Adri again – someone who had been through it all with me and could help me tell the truth.
Only to find him and discover that the Council had wiped Adri’s memories, or at least the ones that we had made together.
I clenched my fists. Waves of rage washed over my skin.
I couldn’t let them just have him. I couldn’t let them win. Somehow, I had to reach him.
“Adri!” I called. 40
He didn’t even slow down.
I finally caught up with him.
“Hey!” I yelled.
He kept walking as if I weren’t there, but I pressed in, “If we’ve never met, how do I know that you have a scar on your right shin from when you were playing ‘Don’t touch the floor’ with kids in school and you tripped and fell on an upside-down chair? How do I know you’re originally from Chaguanas but moved to New York when you were eight. When you saw the city-lights from your plane window, you thought that Christmas had come early just for you.”
He ignored me, so I kept going.
“How do I know that you and your dad cried when Brazil lost in the World Cup? That you have a cricket bat signed by Brian Lara in a glass-case in your room?”
He picked up the pace. I jogged next to him, panting, “If we’ve never met, how do I know that your dream trip is to visit the pyramids in Giza and the ones in Kemet too?”
He cut me off with a swipe of his hand. “Listen, I get it! I’ve done the Council’s dirty work too. Get to know the target, use the information you have on them to earn their trust.” 41
I tried protesting, “No, I’m …”
“It’s not going to work, okay? I don’t have time for their games or yours,” he spat, swinging away from me.
I felt like I’d been dunked in cold water, but I couldn’t give up.
“Your parents’ names are Lila and Sarun!” I yelled. “Your dad loves books by C.L.R. James and Sam Selvon. Your mum’s favourite writer is Rumi!”
He froze and spun around toward me. I took a step back, feeling the rage rise off him like flames.
He said quietly and clearly, “So you know my parents’ names and what they like to read. Great. You think you know them? Guess what. I know where they are right now,” his voice tightened. “Trapped in a Council lab in Tasmania, on the other side of the world … in cryochambers with tubes running from their bodies.”
His eyes blazed, “Lying there, out of it, helpless, until and unless I finish this test and whatever else the Council asks me to do!” he shouted. “Got it?”
I stood there, shaking.
His eyes bored into mine. “Got it?”
I nodded. 42
He swung on his heels and took off. I followed him, fighting back tears.
I could feel him looking at me from the corners of his eyes.
Slowly, his shoulders dropped. He sighed. “Listen, Zoë you said your name was?”
“Zo,” I whispered.
“Okay Zo, I’m sorry … But even if I did know you once, it doesn’t matter right now. All I need is to get back to my life, my family. And for that, I need to get out of here as quickly as possible. If you’re really not one of their spies, then that’s what you should be focused on too.”
I hesitated, thinking of everything we’d been through together; wondering if it was all lost for good.
“Okay,” I whispered finally.
Da taught me to never give in to a bully and that’s just what the Council was.
“Small axe cut down big tree,” he’d remind me with a grin; teeth flashing through his moustache and beard.
And Mum taught me to fight smart.
“Your biggest weapon isn’t here Z,” she’d say, raising her fists after judo class. “Even though they’re good to have when you need them.” 43
“It’s here,” she’d point to my brain, “and here,” then my heart. “And in the space between.”
That’s what I needed now.
Step one: get out of here alive.
Step two: get Adri back his parents and his memory. Somehow.
My thoughts ducked and whirled like a bèlè dancer. If I lost my emotional balance, I would push him further away. I couldn’t let that happen.
I looked down at the arrow on my wristband, doing my best to keep up with Adri. We were still headed in the right direction, but it also said we had about twenty minutes left. How far did we have to go? I knew the Council’s methods well enough to know that it wasn’t going to be this easy to get to the other door.
I looked to our right. The coconut plantation was huge. It seemed to stretch the whole length of the beach and go back deep into what looked like more trees. I wondered why it had been abandoned. Maybe it was beach erosion, pests, disease – the things that climate change made worse year after year.
Whatever had happened, this place was in bad shape. The coconuts weren’t green or yellow like 44they normally were … just brown, dry husks. Most of the trees had no fruit and their leaves hung down like black fringe at a funeral. Based on what Da had taught me on our camping trips, I could see heart rot and red ring disease. It didn’t look like somewhere Adri and I would find help.
How had we gotten here in the first place? Apparently, the Dragon Door was some kind of portal. I tried to wrap my head around the idea, but Adri didn’t seem fazed. Maybe he had done this kind of test before.
“So, where …” I started.
He froze.
“Shhh,” he hissed at me, looking out to sea.
I stared past him at the whitecapped waves. “What is it?”
Suddenly, he was scrambling around in his pack.
“Shield. Now!” he gasped.
What? Was he losing it? There was no way a shield could fit into these overstuffed packs. But seeing the look on his face, I slung off my rucksack and started digging around inside.
Whoosht! Whoosht!
I heard them before I saw them. Bright arrows, 45some of them as long as spears, flying through the air toward us, from the sea. I stood there, staring up like a deer in headlights, as the arrows sped straight toward me.
Thwack! Something round blocked out the sun and kept me from being pinned.
It was Adri. He was holding a shield of some kind over our heads.
“Run!” he yelled, heading for the coconut trees to the side of us.
In a daze, I turned and ran with him, stumbling over sand, brown leaves, and coconut husks. He held the shield up behind us.
Thwack! Thwack! I could hear the arrows smacking into Adri’s shield until it must have looked like a porcupine.
As we ran deeper into the plantation, I could hear rustling noises up ahead, followed by loud hisses and snaps. I pulled up short, just as Adri yanked my t-shirt and dragged me back against one of the trees.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, “We have to get out of here!”
Arrows kept thudding into the trees and sand around us. Looking closely, I could see that they 46weren’t really arrows, more like giant needles. In fact, they looked most like quills, but the strangest thing was their colour. They were white in parts, with reddish-orange, brown and black stripes like a tiger’s.
I shook my head. Arrows, quills, needles … whatever they were, they were coming from the sea. These tree trunks weren’t going to shield us for long. Despite the strange noises up ahead, we’d better move before we got stuck like kebabs.
“Wait!” Adri warned as I got ready to run, his eyes flashing at me from the coconut tree’s shadows. I had forgotten how intense his eyes were.
“There are worse things in there,” he jutted his chin toward the tangled undergrowth deep inside the plantation. It looked like a mixture of forest and swamp.
“Worse than killer arrows?” I stared at him, trying to keep my arms and legs behind the tree trunk, away from the shooting quills.
“Yup. Besides,” he panted, pointing at his wristband, “Time’s running out.”
“Oh no,” I groaned, staring down at my wristband.
Only twelve minutes left!
I’d completely forgotten about the other door. 47As per the Council’s instructions, delivered by Cap’n Peg, we had to get to that door on time, or fail the test. I didn’t want to guess what they’d do to us if we failed. Besides, Adri’s parents were at stake.
The arrow on my wristband was pointing back and to the right. We were off-course and running out of time.
“Okay then, what’s our plan?” I asked, trying to ignore the whir, zip, and thud of arrows around us.
I looked up and Adri was gone.
Panic seized my chest. I spun around wildly, arrows whizzing past my ears.
There he was, running from tree to tree, holding up his shield and dodging arrows, going further and further away.
“Wait!” I screamed.
How could he just leave me? I had a flashback to the clearing in Samaan Bay, more than a year ago, when he’d eaten poisoned berries and couldn’t move. What had I done then?
Now I knew what it was like to be left behind.
Adri dashed toward the cover of another tree. He paused and shouted over his shoulder. “The pack! Get your shield out. Keep moving.” 48
Then he was off.
The backpack …? I slung it off my shoulders with shaking hands and rummaged around past a few thermoses, some waterproof material, packets that looked like space food, and other items I didn’t have the time to explore. Deep in the bag, something round caught my eye. There! That must be it. A circular disc about the size of my hand. But that made no sense. Adri’s shield was so much bigger than this one.
I grabbed the disc and nearly jumped out of my skin. With one smooth click, it expanded into the size of a proper shield, attached to the wristband on my arm by a magnetic force. I raised my arm slowly. Now the arrow and timer were on the inside of the wristband, easy to read, with the shield attached to the outer part of my arm. The timer said that I had nine minutes left. I’d better get moving.
Adri was already out of sight.