I awoke to pain in so many places on my body that I wasn’t sure where one ache began and another ended. Eventually, I was able to separate out the throbbing in my head from the stinging on my shins from the rawness on my hands on the sand beneath me.
“Ow.” I wasn’t sure if I said it out loud.
“Kit?” My eyes were already open, I think, but it took a minute for the dark blur to resolve itself into Sukey’s face, red and panicked. The images came back to me slowly: the churning water, the Fair Beatrice lurching and twisting, the feeling of sinking through the cold water. The strange dream of the yellow light in the water.
I squinted up at her. The sun beat down on us from overhead.
When I took a breath I could feel a deep ache in my lungs, as though I’d inhaled fire.
I pushed Sukey aside, got up on my knees, and looked around.
An expanse of beach, palm trees. An island.
I looked down at my vest. Dad’s whistle still hung around my neck and my vest was still slightly inflated. I scanned the beach, then looked behind us at a high, cone-shaped mountain. Its ridged sides rose steeply toward the sky, the black soil covered with thick, green vegetation. The jungle ran almost down to the beach, which was ringed by palm trees and some kind of low-growing plant blooming with white flowers. We were all alone.
Sukey looked terrible, her face bright red, her hair a mass of tangles, her flightsuit torn and dirty, and a long scratch bisected her forehead. I was willing to bet I didn’t look much better. I could feel grit in my mouth and eyes. I probably looked like M.K. after she’d been working on an engine.
I jumped up, searching the beach, trying to ignore my headache. “They’re not here,” Sukey said, reading my mind. “A least not on this part of the beach. But they could be on the other side. They could have been rescued.”
I felt a hard ball of fear rise in my throat and tears spring into my eyes.
“I know,” she said, following me and reaching out to touch my hand. She was crying too.
I took a deep breath. “Maybe they got into the lifeboats. Maybe they got into Amy and saved themselves.”
We leaned together, Sukey’s arm around my shoulders. My head still hurt, but not as badly as it had when I’d first come to. I was thirsty, though. I knew that we needed to put away our fears about Zander and M.K. and the others for a bit and figure out how we were going to survive.
“We’ll find them,” I said. “But first we need to figure out where we are.”
“Could it be Ruby Island?”
I checked the chronograph utility embedded in my vest. I was glad to see it was still working and I wound it, silently thanking Dad for his superior craftsmanship. “I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s nearly noon. We went down around, what 2:30, 3:00 a.m.? I don’t think there’s any way we could have ended up all the way back at Ruby Island. It’s too far.”
The sand beneath us was black and rough. “It’s a volcanic island, anyway,” I said, picking up a handful of sand and letting it fall through my fingers. “As if that giant volcano over there didn’t already tell us that.” Suddenly I remembered the maps, and I stripped off my vest. Sukey watched as I hurriedly unzipped the pocket and stuck a hand down inside to feel the paper. “They’re okay.” The waterproof lining had done its job and kept the maps and the key to the secret room dry and safe. The rest of my gadgets seemed to have survived too. I focused my spyglass on the horizon and searched for any sign of land or ship, but all I could see was the brilliant turquoise water, stretching out in every direction.
“Your whistle made it,” Sukey said, pointing at the whistle.
I told her about the Explorer giving it to me. “He said it was a good-luck charm. But Dad never would have said that. So he must have wanted me to have it for some other reason.” I put it to my lips and blew, covering different holes with my fingers to make different notes. “I’m just too dumb to figure it out.”
“Thank God he made your vest inflatable,” Sukey said. “I think it must have saved our lives.”
“That means that Zander and M.K.’s vests inflated too,” I said. “Maybe they made it. Maybe they were able to help the others.”
“I hope so.” Sukey looked worried.
We walked down the beach until the sand disappeared. We couldn’t get around the cliff of ropy, black volcanic rock. There didn’t seem to be anywhere else to land on the island. The beach where we had washed ashore appeared to be the only inlet on the island. But of course we couldn’t know that until we’d climbed high enough to see over the top of the volcano.
“We’re lucky,” I said. “Anywhere else and we’d have been crushed against those rocks. But somehow, we washed up at the one place we could . . . I still don’t understand how we made it here.”
A strange look came over her face. “It must have been the tides. They must have just washed us up. I’ve heard of it happening before. But what was that last night?” she asked. “Was it a storm?”
“It didn’t seem like a storm. It was like it was coming from underneath the water.”
“Girafalco’s Trench?” she said.
“Maybe.”
“We need fresh water.” Sukey said with a crack in her voice. “I’m really thirsty.”
“We should split up and see what we can find. Sometimes islands like this have hidden springs or even streams.” I wasn’t sure that was even true, but I wanted to make her feel better.
“I don’t want to split up,” she said in a small voice, looking towards the dense jungle. “We don’t know what’s out there.”
I was glad she’d said it. “Okay. You’re right. Let’s stay together.”
“What about coconuts?”
“That’s a good idea.” I searched the ground underneath the palms, but there wasn’t any fruit that I could see.
“No coconuts, but look.” Under the trees were a bunch of palm leaves that seemed to have come down in a high wind. “It must have rained not too long ago.” There was still a little bit of water collected on some of the leaves and Sukey and I dropped to our knees and drank as much as we could before she said, “We should save some. Put the other leaves over it so it won’t evaporate as fast.”
But we were so thirsty we couldn’t stop ourselves from drinking all of it. When we were done, we went back to the shoreline, feeling a little better.
“We need to make a plan,” I said. “Remember what we learned in Wilderness Survival? ‘Make a plan accounting for all known facts and assessing all known assets.’”
“Yes, sir,” Sukey said. “What’s your plan, sir?” It was the first time I’d seen her smile since we’d woken up and I couldn’t help smiling back.
“Come on. This is serious.”
“I know, I know. Let’s go back down to the beach and come up with this brilliant plan.”