*Isla*
“Mom? Dad?” I say as my parents come charging into the room. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, thank the Moon Goddess!” Mom says, ignoring my question as she practically runs across the room to Ben. She wraps her arms around him and cradles his head like he is a small child. “We were so terrified!”
Dad stays back a bit, but he has a worried look on his face as he surveys my brother and Mom.
“Mom, I’m fine,” Ben says as he struggles to get himself free of Mom’s grasp. “Seriously, you can let go.”
Mom relaxes her grip, taking him by the shoulders as tears stream down her cheeks. “When we heard you were hurt in the uprising, we were so scared. We got here as quickly as we could.”
“Thank goodness I just bought that new car,” my dad says. “We would’ve had to take the train.”
My dad doesn’t seem nearly as upset or even surprised as my mom, but then, perhaps he has always been a little more chill than she is.
My mom whirls around to look at me. “Isla!” she says in a stern voice. “What in the world were you thinking? As soon as Ben got here, you should’ve called us! He could’ve been killed, and he isn’t even supposed to be here!”
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I’m not sure what else to say. She’s got that look on her face that makes me know she’s not going to listen to anything that I say.
“You should be sorry!” she shouts at me. “I can’t believe you would act so irresponsibly! We raised you better than that, Isla. Perhaps working in the castle is having a bad influence on you. Is there some other servant around here who is making you act this way?”
“No,” I say quickly. “No, not at all, Mom. I was going to call you, but–”
“I told her not to, Mom,” Ben says quickly. “I knew you’d be mad and worried about me, but I wanted to show that I could do this, that I could come to the castle by myself, that I’m capable of it. I’m not just a sick little boy anymore.”
“But you are only fifteen!” Mom shouts. “You are a little boy, as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sick or well, Ben. This is a dangerous journey, and you should never have come here all on your own!”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Ben begins, but she doesn’t let him get much out before she’s interrupting him again.
“Why in the world didn’t you just ask us to come with you? Your father and I would’ve been happy to come with you to see Isla, if it was all right with her. We’ve been talking about coming for a visit anyway. But with everything going on at the castle, with the prisoners and the attacks in other packs, it just didn’t seem like a good time for us to be leaving Willow pack.”
“I understand, Mom,” Ben says. “I came because… I missed her so much.”
Ben is still trying to keep what we’ve discovered a secret from my parents, and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think it’s time to tell them the truth. They might be mad at us for snooping, but they can't stay that way when they’ve been keeping unbelievably important information from us, not to mention my mother point blank lied to me the other day when I asked her about where we were from.
“Mom, Ben came here to ask me some questions about where we came from,” I begin. “You should know that we are both well aware of the truth now, that we are from Maatua, that you and Dad were the queen and king. We know a lot, but we don’t know everything.”
“Isla!” It’s my dad’s voice that cuts through the room with an angry tone this time. “Why are you filling Ben’s head with such nonsense? You know that’s not true, not a word of it!”
Frustrated, I let out a loud sigh. “Dad! It is true! I have proof–in more ways than one. And, I’m going to need your help!”
“It’s not true,” Mom says, but she has a waiver in her voice that tells me she’s lying. “We’re from the south. We’re from–”
“I found Isla’s birth certificate,” Ben cuts in. “I found a lot of stuff–in the floor in your bedroom. We know that her last name isn’t really Moon. We know that she was born on the island. I have the picture of the two of you on your wedding day, and we know that it was held in Maatua.”
My mother’s mouth is left hanging agape for several moments as she tries to figure out what to say. She is shaking her head, like she wants to deny it, but how can she?
Tears begin to stream down my mom’s face. “You shouldn’t have been snooping, Benjamin.”
“I told him to,” I say, taking responsibility for the situation. “I knew that you used to hide Dad’s birthday gifts in a secret spot in your room, so I told him to look around, and he found your hiding spot.”
“But why?” Dad asks. “Why is it all so important to you? Why can’t you just accept the fact that we live in Willow pack now, and assume that everything else isn’t important?”
“We want to know the truth of where we came from for a lot of reasons, Dad, but when I was kidnapped, I almost died, and I had vivid dreams about boarding a boat in the middle of the night. I wanted to know if it was just a dream or if it was a memory.” I hoped my explanation would help them begin to see why I had gone to such great lengths to find the truth. I had a lot more to tell them, but I needed to let them process this statement first.
“I didn’t realize it was so serious, Isla,” my dad says. “You almost died?”
I nod. “Mystica, the pack healer, was able to save me, but since then, I’ve had a lot of vivid dreams, and some of them have already been proven to be prophetic. I had to know why this keeps happening. I had to know why.”
“What sort of vivid dreams?” my father asks.
I tell him about the dream I had about Private Wylie before he died and how he ended up dying the same way that I dreamed it would be almost at the same time that I was dreaming it. I told him about the dream I had of Zabrina walking out of the water and into a trap. And I told him about the man and woman in the meadow. “That one, as far as I know, hasn’t happened yet.”
My parents look at one another, and I can’t read their expressions exactly, but I do recognize the look. They are having an internal dialogue, probably not even through the mind-link, debating whether or not to tell us something.
Eventually, my mom says, “I have those kinds of dreams, too, Isla. That’s how I knew Ben had been hurt. I called the castle, and they confirmed that he’d been injured in the uprising.”
I stare at my mother, not sure what to say. I had no idea she was also capable of having these kinds of dreams. She’s never told me that before.
“Mom, I wasn’t just injured,” Ben says, “I was dead. I died.”
“What?” my dad asks, a skeptical look on his face as he shuffles from one foot to the other. “What do you mean you died?”
“I died!” he says again. “I was dead. I had this vision…”
“You’re having them, too?” Mom looks confused. “You shouldn’t be able to.”
“Only when I was dead,” he clarifies.
“I don’t know how you can be alive now if you died,” my dad says. He seems as skeptical of the situation as Maddox is.
“Isla brought me back to life,” Ben says.
I take a deep breath. I didn’t want to get into all of that so quickly because it is so hard to believe that I was actually able to save Ben from death’s grasp, and we’ve already unloaded so much on them.
But it seems that we’re in it up to our elbows now. “I know it sounds crazy,” I say. “But… a few days ago, a baby was born here in the castle, and she wasn’t breathing. I was helping with the delivery because it was this girl I know having the baby. Anyway, when I saw that the baby wasn’t breathing, I started crying. My tears fell on her, and she started breathing. Mystica, the healer, she’s from Maatua–she says that it was my tears that saved her.”
My mom just stares at me, stunned, but my dad says, “Honey, I don’t think that crying on a baby can bring them back to life. It must’ve just been a coincidence.”
Ben says, “She saved me, too, though, Dad. I was dead, and Isla cried, but then, she also cut her hand, and her blood dripped down on my wound, and then, I started breathing again.”
Both of my parents look shocked now, but my dad still looks a bit skeptical.
Mom turns and looks at him and says, “You know why.”
“But–” Dad stutters.
“Daniel! You know why! It’s true. It’s the same reason I have the dreams that I have, the visions. Isla has the gift, and you know exactly why she has it!”
“But Constance,” he begins.
I have to cut him off, though. ”Mom, what are you talking about?”
She looks at me with tears in her eyes and says, “In Maatua, there’s a magical pool of water that can bring people back to life.”
I nod. “Mystica told us all about it.” I haven’t told them about the baby yet, and now doesn’t seem like the right time, so I don’t mention that I want to go there to have my baby–yet.
“Well, one day, we were picnicking near the pond. Your older sisters were running around chasing butterflies. I was with them, and I thought your dad was with you, but he wasn’t, and when I came back–you were gone.”
“We looked everywhere for you,” my dad says, “but it took forever to find you. When we finally caught up to where you’d crawled off to, you were bleeding.”
“You’d been bitten by a snake,” my mom says. “I saw it slithering away. It was a poisonous snake, and you were so little….”
“Your mother scooped you up and took you into that pool of water,” Dad continues.
“By the time I got you there, you weren’t breathing anymore. You were blue, and your little body was so swollen. I prayed to the Moon Goddess to spare you,” Mom says with tears rolling down her cheeks.
“And… then, you started breathing again,” Dad says.
“You were fine! Just like so many people before you, the pool saved your life.” Mom wipes at her tears.
“But none of those other people have been able to save other people who had died,” my father points out.
“That’s true,” Mom agrees, “ but Isla, you do know our true last name, don’t you?”
I nod. “Masina.”
“That’s right, and it means moon–because… you are a direct descendant from the Moon Goddess. Coupled together, I think that’s why you are able to use your powers to save lives.”
“Which means…” Ben continues, “you don’t have to go to Maatua to save him.”
My mom is puzzled as she looks between my brother and me. “Save who?”
I look from my mom to my dad and then back again before I say, “My son.”