“There you are!” Sukey called. I looked up and saw her running down the beach toward me. “Where were you? Did you go swimming?”
“I—I—I—” I stammered. I looked behind me to make sure the turtle wasn’t still there, but the water was calm, smooth as glass. We were alone. I stood speechless. She looked sunburned, her freckles not as stark as they usually were against the now-pink skin of her cheeks and nose. I was shaken. My legs were weak. I was worried I was going to pass out. I wanted to tell her about the turtle, but I didn’t even know where to begin and my brain was racing. The turtle’s thoughts had made their way into my brain and mine had made their way to his. Could it happen again? Did Sukey know what I was thinking? Would I be able to hear her thoughts? Had she been able to hear what I was thinking last night as I’d held her on the beach?
I shivered just thinking about it, then shook my head, trying to clear it. Of course she couldn’t hear my thoughts. I kept staring at her.
“Are you okay?” She pushed a stray curl back into her ponytail and leaned forward, peering at me quizzically.
“I got worried,” she said, talking too fast. “I didn’t know where you were. I woke up and you were gone and I thought something had happened to you. I started hiking up the volcano a bit, to see if I could find you, and I couldn’t see you anywhere.”
I found my voice then. “I’m sorry, Sukey. I went for a swim and—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” She waved my explanation away. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is, well, look. Look!”
She took me by the arm and turned me around, pointing at the volcano.
Just over the top of the mountain, a black smudge against the bright blue sky, was a long, twisting tail of smoke.
She squeezed my arm so hard it hurt. “There’s someone else on the island!”
We talked in circles, trying to decide what to do. Sukey was convinced that it was Zander and M.K. and the rest of the team. I wasn’t so sure. I still felt shaken by my experience under the water. The turtle had said there was danger, but he hadn’t said what kind. We were both weak and thirsty and we didn’t really have any weapons beyond the spearfishing utility and my knife. I knew we weren’t equipped to deal with someone—or something—that wanted to do us harm.
“It could be the pirates,” I told her. “It could be Monty Brioux.”
“I don’t think it’s the pirates,” she said stubbornly.
Finally, I gave in. As the morning wore on, a mass of dark clouds moved across the sky above the island, and I knew that if we didn’t get going soon, we might not have the chance. We caught some more fish and cooked and ate them as quickly as we could, then set off up the mountain. It was hard going. The path, such as it was, ended after a few hundred yards and we had to resort to tramping through the thick undergrowth. The foliage was odd, not like a rainforest but a dense mat of trees and low bushes, all covered with white and pink flowers. I recognized their sweet, spicy scent from St. Beatrice, and for just a moment I let myself remember what it had been like, lying in the bathtub at Coleman’s, feeling the warm breeze waft through the window.
It took us much longer than we’d thought it would take to cover even a small amount of ground. By 2:30, we were only halfway up, and the face of the volcano ahead looked even steeper than the section we’d just covered. We could still see the curl of smoke on the other side.
We kept climbing. The sky got darker, and we felt the first raindrops only a few minutes before the sky opened and the rain clattered down on us, instantly soaking our clothes. I didn’t think I’d ever heard a rainstorm as loud. It pounded down out of the heavens, creating instant rivers that ran down the slope toward the sea. We tilted our heads up and opened our mouths to drink our fill of fresh, cold rain.
I pushed the button on the back of my vest that released the umbrella gadget. It kept us out of the downpour, but I found that it made it impossible to walk through the trees on the narrow path. We decided to sit down under the umbrella and eat our lunch.
I had wrapped a little bit of the cooked fish in some palm leaves and Sukey and I gobbled a quarter of what we’d brought, saving the rest for later. Dad had always said that the worst thing an Explorer could do was to consume all of his or her food or water. You never knew what might happen to change your plans, he’d say. The fish wasn’t going to be good for much longer, but I still thought we should save some.
“Do you really think it’s the pirates?” Sukey asked.
“I don’t know, Sukey. I don’t know anything. I think it’s letting up a little. We should get going.”
“What’s wrong with you? You’re acting so strange.”
I hesitated, trying to decide if I should tell her. But how would I even start? This morning, a giant telepathic turtle took me to a magical city under the sea. “I’m fine,” I said. “We should go.”
I folded the umbrella back into my vest and stood up abruptly, setting off up the trail again. The rain was now coming in slow droplets and I could hear her calling after me.
“Kit! Kit! Wait!”
I kept walking. I just wanted to get to the top of the damn volcano, but it was raining even harder and my feet kept slipping on the path.
“Kit!” Sukey called from behind me. And then I felt a hand on my arm and she was spinning me around. Rain was dripping from her hair down along the side of her jaw and she reached up to wipe it off. “Where were you this morning? You were gone for hours.” Her eyes were dark, suspicious in the low light. “Is it something to do with the Mapmakers’ Guild, something you can’t tell me? Something you don’t trust me with?”
I’d never seen her look at me like that before, her eyes hurt, guarded.
We stood there for a long moment, staring at each other, panting, the rain running down our faces. “You’ll think I’m insane,” I told her. “If I tell you, you’ll think I’m completely insane.”
“I won’t.”
So I told her.
When I was done, her eyes were wide and she was looking off into the distance, thinking.
“See? You think I’m crazy,” I said. “Or that I’m making it up. I keep wondering if I could have eaten or drunk something without knowing it—”
“You’re not crazy,” she said, still staring off into the distance.
“But it’s so strange. I mean, the thinking thing. Telepathic turtles? Who ever heard of that? It’s nutty.”
“Listen,” she whispered, her eyes meeting mine now. “I might be crazy too, but after the wreck, when we were in the water, I saw something, this sort of light and a giant head. I was so scared but as soon as I saw that light, I was okay. I knew we were going to be okay. And then I must have blacked out.”
“I think they put us into their shells and brought us to the island. There’s no other explanation.”
“But why? I don’t understand it. Why would they save us? None of the other accounts of ships sinking said anything about turtles.”
I thought for a moment. “I blew the whistle as the ship was going down. I was trying to get someone’s attention, but maybe the turtles heard it and somehow they knew that—well, that I was meant to find the city.”
Sukey watched me. Finally she said, “And they saved us. They brought us here.” The rain was running down her face and I wanted to reach up and brush it from her eyes, from her cheeks. But I didn’t touch her. She smiled at me, a smile I’d come to know so well I could see it when she wasn’t there. “If you’ve gone crazy, then I have too.”
