The Cornucopia was a pretty big sailboat, with vast triangular sails pulling at a mast that seemed to go up a long way. Grace was pretty big herself, a seafaring sort of woman with salt-bleached blond hair and a face that had seen a few storms.
She had no crew at the moment, so Stefan had been drafted. On her orders he raced back and forth, cranking this and hauling that and tying off something else, all resulting in the boat moving pretty fast toward the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Golden Gate Bridge is like the Eiffel Tower in that both are very well-known, no surprises, but both are still very cool. It’s a suspension bridge, which means that the road part basically hangs from wires. The wires hang from massive cables, which are in turn sort of draped over two very tall towers.
Some people think those wires and that cable are just there for show. They aren’t. If you started cutting those wires, or worse yet, one of the two cables, the road and the cars on it would go plunging many feet down into the swift current of the Golden Gate.
Mack thought uneasily about this as the boat passed beneath the bridge. It was both big and fragile, somehow. You could imagine some giant with a giant pair of scissors cutting through those wires.
Mack was unfortunately very good at imagining terrible things. It was probably related to his many phobias. Imagination is great, but it can also torture you.
The deck of the boat was already tilted but it heeled over much farther once they passed beyond the shelter of the bay. It was pitched now almost like a roof.
“One hand for yourself and one for the boat!” Grace yelled as Charlie and Sylvie slid like out-of- control skateboarders. Then, “Stefan! Take up the slack in that line.”
It was a beautiful thing, Mack realized: a beautiful boat in a beautiful place under a beautiful blue sky dotted with scudding white clouds.
In fact it might be the most beautiful place he’d ever been. This fact just filled him with longing for home. He missed his mom and dad even if they didn’t realize he was gone. He missed his boring teachers, and even more the good teachers. He missed lying around playing games online. He missed being dragged to Target to buy underwear or whatever.
None of that was ever going to happen to him again, he thought. His life was permanently messed up. Even if he somehow survived, he would always be Mack of the Magnifica.
Would he end up like Grimluk? Would he live on and on somehow? End up in some cave somewhere talking via bright chrome toilet objects to some kid in the distant future?
Sylvie came and stood beside him as he stared pensively toward the rising volcano with its plume of ash.
“What are you thinking?” Sylvie asked him.
“Me?” His first instinct was to deny that he was thinking at all. But that wouldn’t do. “I’m thinking that one way or the other we’re finally getting to the end.”
Sylvie nodded thoughtfully. “Life? Or death? Victory or failure?”
“Yeah, all that.”
“It is a beautiful day to die,” she said.
Mack sighed. “Kind of early though. I mean, in terms of life. Twelve years old isn’t supposed to be the end.”
“Death is welcome only to those in unendurable pain,” Sylvie said.
Which sounded very profound to Mack, but not very comforting. “If I die, it means I’ll never go to college. Or have a job. Or eat caviar. Not that caviar sounds all that great, but everyone should taste it before they die, right?”
Sylvie moved beside him and put her arm around his waist, which left him no real choice but to do the same to her. She felt very small. It suddenly occurred to him that she would also very likely die, and that somehow seemed outrageous to him. It made him mad.
This wasn’t just about Mack MacAvoy, it was about these friends of his. And his whole family back home in Sedona. All his old friends.
Also people he kind of knew but didn’t really know, like people on TV shows and in movies and pop stars and all.
And then there were the billions of people he didn’t know, and didn’t even “kind of” know—all those people all around the world who were just minding their own business, eating lentils and driving their kids to school and doing their jobs.
“Is there not one special thing you would miss, Mack?” Sylvie asked him.
Her head was turned toward him now, and frankly she was unusually close. Closer than she had ever been before. Closer than any girl—or boy for that matter—had ever been before.
“Um . . . ,” Mack said, and suddenly found he had a hard time swallowing properly.
“Is there not one thing you will miss above all others?” Sylvie asked, and her voice was breathy and kind of unsteady and her eyes were very big and he could actually feel the vibration of her heart beating.
He thought frantically. What did she mean? Was she talking about food? Was she talking about the next Avengers sequel that he might never see?
He didn’t have the answer, but he had a feeling that maybe he did, or maybe he would if his brain was working right, which it obviously wasn’t, so instead of saying, “Toaster Strudel?” which was one thing he would really, really miss, he said:
“Errr, uhhh . . .”
Sylvie’s eyes closed. And she touched her lips to his.
They were extremely, extremely, extremely soft lips. Extremely.
And then she released him and walked away, swaggering just a bit.
Five minutes later Mack remembered to breathe.
And then he muttered, “Well, I didn’t know I was going to miss that most. But now I do.”
“Land ho!” Grace yelled.
It was not the volcano; they weren’t quite there yet, although the sky was darkening with ash. It was the rising ridge of gray-and-tan stone. It was a low wall beside the boat now, getting taller as the boat blew on toward the volcano.
“Here!” Mack yelled. “This will do.”
Grace ordered Stefan to drop the sails, and speed fell away. As they slowed, the choppiness of the waves became more pronounced. Mack could feel the beginnings of seasickness.
“Here, guys,” he said to the others. “Any nearer to the volcano and we’d have to climb up the side of a cliff.”
“We can use Vargran to—” Jarrah said.
But Mack shook his head. “Vargran is our only weapon. We only use the enlightened puissance when we absolutely need to. We’ll jump.”
Well, that proved easier in theory than it was in reality. Try jumping from a heaving boat onto a wave-washed boulder. Only Jarrah and Stefan made it without a bruise or a dunking.
Mack very nearly drowned but was rescued by Stefan and propped up on what was clearly a living, growing stone road that ran from the volcano toward the city. It would be mere hours before the road stretched all the way.
Mack knew what was coming then. Or at least some of what was coming then.
There were news helicopters in the air thwack-thwacking around shooting video of the volcano but also now of the gaggle of nine kids.
There were other aircraft as well. Two Air National Guard jets roared by overhead. A military drone circled slowly. And of course Mack could guess that up in orbit satellites aimed their cameras down at the impossible sight.
“What’s the plan, boss?” It was Jarrah. She had to shout to be heard over the crashing waves, the low groan of growing rock, and the eggbeater helicopters.
“The plan?” Mack wondered aloud. He considered it, painfully aware that all eyes were on him. “Gandalf on the bridge in Khazad-dûm.”
Everyone but Dietmar stared blankly. The German boy actually smiled. He had gotten the reference.
“The Pale Queen,” Mack said, “shall not pass.”