Chapter Twenty-Five

Once we exit the cave, we step into an environment very similar to the one we left behind: the other side of the mountain, several stories above sea level, miles of green trees, the sparkling turquoise waters beyond.

No fruit vendors waiting to offer us cut-up pieces of pineapple. No robust forest teeming with wildlife. No civilization. Bodin couldn’t have been any more wrong. It’s hard to fault him, though, when he’s being escorted under armed guard like all of us.

But there is one major difference to the scenery. We’ve stopped near a makeshift helipad, a large rectangle of flat dirt ground that’s been cleared of any vegetation. There’s a helicopter waiting. My heart leaps. A way off this island. Could any of the other castaways have any flying skills? Can we overpower Xander and his guards and escape? How heavily is the helicopter guarded?

As if he can read my thoughts, Xander snaps handcuffs on my wrists—or at least, they feel like metal bracelets. Except they’re invisible. Nothing concrete appears to bind my wrists, but I can’t move them, just the same. Hardened wind? A weird magnetic force? No clue. But the cuffs bite into my skin as sharply as any crocodile teeth.

“It’s always the quiet ones,” he snarls right in my face. The scent of garlic intermingles with his natural bad breath, making me want to puke. If my vomit splatters all over him, so much the better. “Take your pills.” He hands me a couple of packets of brightly colored tablets. I accept them with my fingers and raise my cuffed wrists to check them. They’re the medicine that Mama needs, all right. But there’s only a two-day supply.

“But you said we could have all the medication she needs—”

“I never said for how long,” Xander interrupts, showing me his teeth once more. “Did you really think I was going to give you an infinite supply?”

I open my mouth but snap it closed. Disappointment swirls in my stomach. Rae was right. We can’t trust anything our captor says, and thus, there’s no use arguing with him. We are completely at his mercy.

“I have my eye on you,” he continues. “When you break, it won’t be anything I did, but your inherent weakness getting the best of you. I cannot wait to watch your epic defeat…at your own hands. In fact, I’m having popcorn flown in, just for the occasion.”

Right again. Witnessing our torture is pure entertainment for him.

The temptation to spit on him is strong. It’s not vomit, but at least I can generate that bodily fluid at will. But I don’t spit, and I don’t say anything. I’m stronger than my OCD. (Mama’s been telling me this for years, and I’m finally getting around to believing it.) This whole damn island is an exposure for me, so I’m building more and more resistance every day.

Xander walks down the line, cuffing the others, and then struts off, leaving us behind with his uniformed guards.

They flank us on either side, with traditional Thai krabongs—or blunt sticks used as weapons—on their shoulders and shields in front of their chests. With a few curt gestures, they usher us toward the waiting helicopter.

We clamber on, one by one—Sylvie and Rae in the middle row, and Bodin and I shoved in the back.

That’s when one of the guards standing on the helipad removes their oversize, misshapen hood and reveals a distinctly reptilian head, complete with a crocodile snout.

I gasp. “A croc-person!” The guard is human from the neck down. Human arms, human legs, human torso. It is one thing to listen to Rae and Xander refer to one, an awe-inspiring experience to witness one myself.

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” Sylvie says, twisting in her seat to speak to me, the headset squashing down her hair. “One of them brushed my forearm with a hand. It had calluses and rough skin, just like the rest of us.”

“Because they are one of us,” Bodin says. “Weren’t you listening? They were probably kidnapped by Xander, just like us, and then forced to serve him once they came into their shapeshifting ability.”

“It could be Mateo,” Rae says. She continues to face forward, not looking at any of us, but the regret comes through her voice loud and clear. “I should’ve been…nicer to him.”

Sylvie picks up her hand. “Hey. You’re doing the very best that you can. And that’s all any of us can ask for.”

The pilot climbs into his seat—another crocodile person. He doesn’t even bother with his hood. I guess their identity is no longer a secret. I sincerely hope he’s retained enough of his human brain to fly this aircraft.

“Where’s Mateo?” I call over the whirring of the helicopter blades.

“Don’t worry about him,” the pilot yells back. But while I can hear Rae over the headset, back to her badass self and grumbling about the lack of seat belts, I don’t hear the pilot’s voice in my ear, which means he must be on a different channel.

Before I can respond, the helicopter lifts into the air, leaving my stomach behind. I’m not a good flier even in the best of conditions. A choppy helicopter, piloted by a crocodile? My heart rate’s skyrocketing before we’ve cleared the mountains.

Bodin peers at me. “Your knuckles are white.”

I try to relax my interlaced fingers. “These cuffs make it hard to grip anything else.”

He holds my gaze for a full minute before he nods toward the large square windows. We’re high in the sky, as impossibly blue as the sea below, with only a few wisps of clouds to mar the expanse.

“Every bit of knowledge gives us more power,” Bodin says. “For example, now we know there’s a helicopter on the island. Which means we’ve got a potential getaway vehicle.”

“He’s right,” Rae says, pressing her face against the window. “And here, we’ve got the advantage of a bird’s-eye view. Quick, people, tell me what you see.”

I twist toward the window, imitating her position, though I don’t press my face against the glass. Although smudged and most certainly dirty, it allows us a view of the entire island.

Just as Bodin predicted, the island is bisected by a mountain. The green vegetation of the undulating slopes sparkles like emeralds, lined on either side by white sand beaches.

“I see a waterfall. Looks romantic,” Sylvie says wryly. “Maybe I’ll bring Elizabeth back some day.”

“Look!” I point at the peak of the mountain, where a hut with a thatched roof is perched. A ribbon of smoke floats out of the chimney. “That must be where Xander lives. More importantly, it looks just like the huts that Bodin pointed out to me—”

“Which means we’re definitely still in Thailand,” Bodin concludes. “Even if Xander wants us to believe otherwise.”

“And there!” Rae says. “See underneath the hut, where there’s glimpses of concrete? There’s a whole damn compound there. This operation is more complex than we know. We never stood a chance.”

Bodin presses his lips together. That’s when I remember: it was his idea to attempt to traverse the mountain in the west. But he shouldn’t feel badly. We pushed him into a leadership role and forced him to make a decision.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, taking the initiative. Being brave. “There’s no way you—or any of us, really—could’ve known.”

He smiles at me gratefully.

A feeling inside me surges up, all bubbly and effervescent. This, I realize, is how it feels to be courageous—and to reap its rewards.

…

The helicopter touches down on the beach, and our fellow castaways emerge from the palm trees, shading their eyes from the sand that the blades have kicked up. I automatically count them. Lola and Preston. Khun Anita and Kit. Elizabeth. Eduardo. But where is Mama?

I scan the tree line—and there she is. Bringing up the rear, ’cause she’s not as fast as the others. In fact, she’s hobbling, using a spindly, twisted branch as a walking stick. Her frail body is nearly bent in two.

Hot tears stab at my chest, my throat, my eyes. She’s deteriorated so much in the short time we’ve been gone. Although the blades are still rotating, I fling open the hatch door and hop onto the sand.

“Alaia, wait!” Bodin calls, but I don’t listen. Because Mama is right there, within my reach. And with Mama, everything will be okay again.

I sprint in her direction, kicking up even more sand than the helicopter, but at least I have the wherewithal to slow down as I approach, so that I don’t knock her over.

As soon as I reach her, I throw my arms around her. Or at least I fling my cuffed wrists up and over her head. It makes for a cumbersome hug, since I’m basically squeezing her between the vise of my arms, but she’s been so skinny since she started chemo, it hardly matters.

“I’m back. I’ve missed you so much. How are you?” The words tumble out of my mouth, one after the other, giving her no chance to respond. “I have your pills. Here. Take them now. Do you have water?” I remove my arms from around her body and try to reach into my backpack, where I’d stuffed the precious packets of pills, but the cuffs make my hands clumsy. Instead, I turn my back so that Mama can get them out herself. “Take them, Mama. You’ll feel better as soon as you do.”

She digs out the pills and swallows them dry. “Better save some of your words,” she says, her voice low and brittle, as though it—along with her body—is in danger of breaking in two. “Someone’s waiting to see you. He just got back half an hour before you.”

I look past Mama to the main shelter, where a figure sits on the bamboo platform. Mateo! My heart leaps. His clothes are a little stretched out—no doubt because a crocodile had been wearing them—but he’s fully human from his legs to his torso, from his fingers to his head.

I let out a whoop and run to him. “Mateo. You’re unharmed. Uninjured.” I stand there awkwardly for a moment. This feels like a situation where I should hug him, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Instead, I sit next to him on the platform.

“For now.” He scans my face. “Did Xander explain to you…the nature of my ability?”

“You turn…into…a crocodile?” I say haltingly.

He nods. “With the moon every night and in times of stress. I’ve already made the transformation once. It’s creepy in there, in the mind of a crocodile.” His eyes are glued to my face, as though searching for a sign of revulsion. “I’m still me, but I’m overwhelmed by the instincts of a reptile. It’s like trying to think in the middle of an ear-splitting concert.”

He licks his lips, which are humanly pink. “The other crocs tell me that with practice, I’ll learn how to delay the transformation and even partially shift, so that I’m less susceptible to the moon and other forces. Of course, they also tell me that with every transformation, I’ll lose more and more of my humanity. Sooner or later, I’ll cease to be Mateo at all. I’ll be just another one of Xander’s employees, with only enough humanity to execute his will.”

“How long do you have?” I ask in a small voice.

“A few weeks. Maybe a month or two, if I’m lucky.” He pauses, uncertainty warring in his eyes. “Lola says it doesn’t matter. That my situation doesn’t change her feelings. But how is that possible? Why would she want to start a relationship with a crocodile?”

“Give it a chance,” I say sympathetically. “It’s early days yet. We’ve been on this island for—what? Four days. And we’ve been away half of that time. Just let…nature take its course.”

The words seem wrong, somehow. They’re the ones that I would give a friend back home. But we’re not home. We’re on a twisted island, trying to survive, where one day feels like a lifetime and four days is an eternity. Given the uncertainty of our futures, I don’t blame Mateo for wanting to lock down his relationship status.

“Thanks, Alaia.” He ducks his head. “Do you think I’m a freak?”

“Of course not!” I exclaim. “We’re going through some weird stuff. Like, you-couldn’t-make-this-up kind of bizarre. But you’ll always be my friend.”

The others start trooping back into camp. Sylvie and Elizabeth’s arms are linked together. Rae and Lola chatter nonstop, copious amounts of flowers falling out of Lola’s mouth and drifting away in the breeze. Preston lopes behind them, silent because his mouth is once more a pinhole. Sylvie and Rae’s hands are free, so the pilot must’ve dismantled their cuffs.

I twist my own wrists. Better go see the pilot, too, to get mine off.

As I stand to go search for the pilot, Rae punches Preston playfully in the arm. And—I kid you not—his cheeks flame fire red. Has he learned humility since we’ve been away? Or has Rae’s distance made his heart grow fonder? Talk about bizarre. They’d make an interesting couple, but stranger things have happened on this island.

I trudge toward the beach as Eduardo and Kit resume their places on a court marked with lines of ash. The hoop has been constructed out of twisted-up bamboo, and a coconut stands in for the ball.

They begin to play. Eduardo is probably a decade older than Kit, bigger and more muscular, and yet Kit seems to have the edge on him. The kid’s got bounce. With his soaring height, he makes dunking the coconut look easy.

But there’s more. I stop short and gape.

Kit seems to be working with the nature around him. He’ll toss the ball to a pile of sticks, which passes the ball back to him. He shoots the coconut into a tree branch, which knocks it through the hoop.

“What on earth?” I ask.

“Kit manifested his ability while we were away,” Mateo says, his eyes lighting up. He’s so full of life, brimming with wonder. It’s almost unthinkable that all of that will be lost in a few short weeks. “He can transport his soul from vessel to vessel. According to your mom, he should be able to transfer it to both sentient and non-sentient objects—a monkey, a naga, a pile of gold. Anything goes. But no animals or gold here, so he hasn’t been able to try.”

“Are you saying that’s Kit passing the ball to himself? And not, say, a pile of sticks?”

“Yep.” He bobs his head up and down.

“Amazing.” I look back at the game, where Kit has just scored his fourth bucket on Eduardo. The ability suits him to a T…but not everyone’s ability does. Take Mateo, for example. What reason does he have to shapeshift into a reptile? It doesn’t make any sense.

A thunderous whirring fills the air, and the helicopter rises above the tree line, whipping the hair out of our faces.

The chopper’s leaving? But…but…

I run as fast as I can, through the trees and onto the beach. The leaves slap my face, my shoes sink into sand, but I don’t notice. My full attention is on the helicopter getting smaller and farther away with every second.

Presumably with the pilot driving it.

Bodin’s the only person left on the beach.

“I tried to stop him,” he says wryly. “But he said that Xander expected him back. And he took the tool to dismantle the ‘windcuffs’ with him. That’s what he called them, anyway.”

So, they are made out of wind. But that’s not the biggest reveal at this moment. I look down at my wrists, held unnaturally close together.

“Oops,” I say sheepishly. “I guess I was a little too excited to see my mom.”

Bodin arches an eyebrow. “Were those extra few seconds really worth it?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I say, even as I know I’ll be regretting my actions in a couple of short hours.