He didn’t even have the presence of mind to scream before he hit the water. It felt like breaking through a glass ceiling. Icy shards cut into him, cut off his air, seared his lungs. He came to the surface and gasped for breath, taking in a mouthful of seawater at the same time. He saw Corey fall, and then Ruby. She screamed until she was silenced by the water. Wiley shoved a small life raft out of the helicopter, just before the captain slid the door shut.
The Vermillion lifted up, flew over their heads and the island, then dipped below the rocks. Matt watched it disappear as he struggled to stay afloat. He slapped at the water and coughed as he swallowed a mouthful. Corey was dog-paddling frantically. Ruby was thrashing and starting to hyperventilate. None of them were strong swimmers. They’d only taken enough lessons to not drown instantly, but they wouldn’t last long, especially with their clothes and backpacks weighing them down. Matt had to keep his head together. The life raft. He swam as best he could to the small, inflatable raft and grabbed ahold of the rope. He took off his backpack and swung it over the side, then pulled the raft toward his brother and sister. Ruby went below the surface for a moment, then came back up, coughing and gasping for air. Matt grabbed her hand and forced it onto the rope. “Corey, help me get her up.”
Corey dog-paddled over to Matt, and together they hoisted Ruby up until she flopped over to the other side. “You go next,” said Matt. Corey didn’t argue. He grabbed onto the sides, and Matt pushed him from behind, using his shoulder to get him over. Once Corey was in he leaned back over to help Matt, grasping his wrists and pulling. He slipped and went under. He tried again, and this time swung his leg up and over and rolled into the raft. His legs crashed into Ruby, but she didn’t even express annoyance. She was huddled in a ball, shivering violently. Corey’s lips were blue, and his dark eyes seemed to be iced over, the usual warmth and laughter in them drained. The wind whipped and went right through Matt’s clothes, biting beneath his skin and chilling his very bones. They needed to get to that island.
There were paddles in the boat. Matt forced himself to take one and started to paddle. After a minute of struggling on his own, mostly making the boat go in circles, Ruby grabbed the other oar and they each took a side. It was slow, torturous work, especially as the ocean seemed determined to keep them away from the island, but at last they made it to the shore. They all climbed out of the raft and pulled it farther up the beach. Ruby collapsed on the sand, breathing hard. Matt’s brain finally unlocked and allowed his body to do what it had been wanting to do for a while. He fell to his hands and knees and vomited.
Corey put a hand on his back. “You okay, bro?” he asked, teeth chattering.
Matt nodded, even though he knew he wasn’t. He was dizzy. His head was pounding. He was freezing. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision, and looked around. The island looked to be just sand and rock, no life at all. He didn’t even see any birds. They must truly be in the middle of nowhere, on some forgotten island who knew when. They were hopelessly lost, but he couldn’t think about that right now. Right now they just had to survive, get dry and warm.
They removed most of their wet clothes, stripping down to their underwear, and laid them on some rocks. Hopefully the fierce wind would dry them quickly. In the meantime the wind was freezing them to death. They tipped the life raft on its side against a rock and huddled beneath it for shelter. As they tipped the boat, a few supply packets toppled out. They each contained some emergency food bars, bottles of drinking water, and a small first-aid kit. It was the barest of survival kits, it certainly wouldn’t help them survive for long, but it was better than nothing.
None of them spoke, only huddled as close together as possible to try to get warm. The only sounds were the waves crashing against the rocks and the chattering of their teeth.
After an hour or so of shivering, Matt inspected one of the survival kits a little more closely, hoping to find one of those emergency blankets or something. He didn’t find one, but the first-aid kit did contain a small packet of matches.
“I’m going to go see if I can find some wood,” said Matt.
“I’ll come with you,” said Corey, but Matt shook his head.
“Stay with Ruby.” Corey didn’t argue. He slumped back down, exhausted. All the shivering had taken its toll. Matt was tired too, and still nauseated, but he forced himself to get up. Soon it would be dark, and they’d be even colder. He needed to find some firewood now.
The island was not what Matt would call a tropical paradise. There were no trees that he could see, and very few plants, mostly seaweed, but he found some dry grassy stuff growing in the sand. It might at least help get a fire started, but what he really needed was wood.
The island was small, probably only a mile long and just a few city blocks wide, like a miniature version of Manhattan. Matt walked all the way to the other side and found a few pieces of driftwood. They were damp, but he picked them up anyway. A bunch of tiny crabs skittered away when he lifted the wood. If they grew desperate enough, they could eat them, he thought. He saw some small shells scattered along the shore. Maybe they could dig up some clams, or catch some fish somehow. This was as far as his survival instincts took him. He tried to think if his mom or dad had ever taught him anything that might help them now, but as far as he could remember they only taught him how to survive in the city—how to cross streets safely, to not talk to strangers, what to do if you got lost, and to never, ever take any kind of transit without a supervising adult. Well, he’d heeded all but the last, which was ultimately how he’d ended up on a barren island, where none of his parents’ lessons would be of any use. Well done, Mateo.
Matt went higher up on the island, climbing the rocks. Between a few larger rocks Matt found what he felt was no small miracle—a pile of dry wood. It was so perfect he almost thought he was hallucinating, but when he lowered himself between the rocks and brushed his hand along the wood it gave him a few splinters and he knew it was real. He started to gather some in his arms and then shouted and dropped it all. He fell back and smacked his head against a rock. There was a skull, a human one, beneath the wood. After his heart stopped hammering he laughed at himself a little. There wasn’t anything to be afraid of, was there? Whoever it was, they were clearly dead. Slowly he edged back. His heart calmed enough to allow a bit of curiosity in. He looked between some of the cracks of the wood. There looked to be a full skeleton buried beneath it all. He stood back and observed the wood more closely. It was all flat boards, some of them nailed together, and there was the hint of a shape of a boat. He could see the bow now. He removed a bit more of the wood. The skeleton was mostly buried in sand, but a bit of cloth peeked out and it looked like it was once quite colorful, but now faded from time, salt, and sun. Matt wondered if this could be one of the old crewmates from Captain Bonnaire’s time that Captain Vincent had discarded.
Matt picked up as much wood as he could carry and headed back to Corey and Ruby. He decided he wouldn’t tell them about the skeleton. It would probably make them panic. Their circumstances were desperate enough, and Matt felt the need to protect his siblings, give them as much hope as possible. Somehow they would get home. They had the raft, at least, and some supplies. He’d figure something out.
It was completely dark by the time they got a fire started. Matt used up nearly an entire packet of matches and all his patience, but finally Ruby stepped in and helped him get it going by blowing on the small embers to keep the flames burning until the wood caught fire. They piled on the wood until they had a blazing fire that was like a balm to their weary, icy bones.
The three children all stared into the flames, and as the heat started to melt away Matt’s shock, his hunger set in. They shared one of the bottles of water and an emergency calorie bar. It was dry and tasteless, but it filled their stomachs, and then their brains were able to move on to their next dilemma.
“Where do you think we are,” said Corey, still shivering. “And when?”
“I dunno,”
said Matt. “We came in a helicopter, so we can’t be too far in the past.”
“Doesn’t give us a clue as to where we are though, does it?” said Ruby.
“No, not really,” said Matt.
“Wait,” said Corey, “what about the phone?”
“What phone?” said Matt.
“Our phone? The one Mom and Dad gave us for emergencies?”
Ruby gasped and scrambled for her backpack. She pulled out soggy papers and books and finally found the phone in an inner pocket. “It doesn’t look like it got too wet,” she said hopefully. She flipped it open and miraculously it switched on.
“Oh please, oh please . . . ,” Ruby whispered, and Matt felt his hopes rise just a little until Ruby’s shoulders collapsed. She shook her head. “Nothing.” She turned the phone off, flipped it shut, and dropped it back inside her backpack.
They fell silent again, staring blankly at the fire. Matt could feel that they were all thinking the same things. How were they going to get home? Would they ever see their parents again? And then Ruby gave voice to the worst fear of all.
“Are we going to die here?” she asked in a small voice.
“No,” said Matt, though the image of the skeleton crept into his mind. He shook it off. They couldn’t think like that, though he knew their situation was dire. Matt had inspected the emergency supplies already. They had only enough food and water for them all to survive for a few days, a week at most, if they stretched. Matt could sense Corey and Ruby sinking into despair and he couldn’t let that happen. He was the oldest. He was an optimist. Hope was key. It was up to him to keep it alive.
“Remember the time when Mom and Dad forgot to pick us up from school?” Matt asked.
“I thought something horrible had happened,” said Ruby. “I thought we were orphans.”
“Me too,” said Corey.
Matt had felt the same, like they were completely alone in the world. And none of them thought to go back inside the school to call. They didn’t have the cell phone then. So they waited and waited in front of the school, until it was nearly dark and they were all shivering with cold. It was March and still quite chilly, but they hadn’t brought jackets. Matt’s mind had been racing about what they would do, where they would go. Would they have to live in an alley? Sleep in a dumpster when it rained or snowed? Would they have to beg on the streets for their food? Then one of the teachers came out. She stopped short when she saw them and exclaimed, “Oh! What are you still doing here?”
She took them to the office and called their parents. Their mom came within ten minutes, mortified and nearly in tears. It turned out that she had simply mixed up her days and thought their dad was supposed to get them. Mrs. Hudson felt so guilty she took them out for hamburgers and milkshakes, which actually gave Matt a stomachache, but he didn’t care. It tasted amazing, and he was so relieved he wasn’t an orphan.
“Let’s just think of it like that,” said Matt. “It all seems hopeless, like we’re going to be stranded here forever, but we’ll find something, think of something, that will get us out. We just have to take this one step at a time.”
Their clothes finally dried enough that they could put them back on. Matt added a bit more wood to the fire, and they all lay back in the sand, wiggling around to try to smooth out the lumps and get comfortable. It was almost impossible, but they didn’t have the energy to complain about it.
“Maybe Mom and Dad will find us,” said Ruby sleepily. “I mean, they have to know how to time-travel, don’t they? At least Dad does.”
“Or the captain might come back for us,” said Corey. “Once Dad gives him what he wants.”
“Will he, though?” said Ruby.
“Of course he will,” said Corey. “Dad would never leave us here, no matter what. Mom would chop off his head with one of her swords.”
“True,” said Ruby.
Matt didn’t say anything. He decided that his father had some explaining to do once they got home . . . if they ever got home. But they had to get home somehow. His future self is supposed to travel back in time to help the captain. That was proof of survival. But Matt was very confused on that point, maybe even more than after he’d read his father’s letter. Why was Matt helping Captain Vincent in the future when the captain was so obviously against them? Is it a ruse, or is his future self actually on the captain’s side?
What makes you think your father is the noble one in this situation? Matt shivered as the captain’s words ran through his mind. What if his dad wasn’t the good guy? No. He couldn’t believe that. Whatever his dad had taken from the captain, he had good reason.
Matt added more wood to the fire then rummaged through his backpack, searching in vain for anything that might help them. Everything was wet and mostly ruined, his schoolbooks and papers, his notebook with his drawings of the compass, the ink faded and smeared. He found a copy of El León, La Bruja y El Ropero. He’d forgotten that he’d borrowed it from Wiley’s library to keep up on his Spanish. He opened it and set it near the fire to let the pages dry. In a way Matt thought they were a little like Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter. They had gone through a sort of portal, and, like Edmund at least, had been hoodwinked and betrayed by someone who acted as a friend. If only they had a great talking lion on their side, or some magical gifts to fight evil. If only they could get back home simply by stepping through a wardrobe.
“Good night, Matt,” muttered Ruby.
“Good night, Ruby.”
“Don’t even say good night to me,” mumbled Corey.
Matt laughed a little. “Good night, Corey.”
“Night-night, knuckleheads,” said Corey, and then a few moments later, “I’m sorry I got on the train.”
“It’s not your fault,” said Matt.
“It is,” said Corey. “You know it is.”
“We know,” said Ruby in a sleepy voice. “We forgive you.”
“Really?” said Corey.
In answer, Ruby put her fist in the air. Corey met her fist with his own and Matt did the same, making their three-way fist bump.
Corey and Ruby drifted off to sleep within minutes, but Matt stayed awake for quite a while, his mind going in hopeless circles. He anxiously rubbed at his bracelet. Even if they could get off this island, they had nowhere to go, no one to take care of them. Even if their parents were alive at this time, coming in contact with either of them would surely cause some kind of ripple or glitch in the space-time continuum. They could cause a real disaster, maybe even cancel out their own existence.
No, the only way to get home was to time-travel, and in order to do that they needed the Obsidian Compass and the Vermillion. But both were gone, probably hundreds of years and thousands of miles away by now.
Matt slept fitfully that night. He had dreams about the compass. He was turning the dials in the direction of home, but every time they began to travel, just as he could see the New York City skyline, they were yanked back to Nowhere in No Time, sudden and violent. It was like he was on a merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, and every time he tried to jump off, he got whipped back on the ride.
Matt woke to a cold shock rushing up his legs. He sat up abruptly and scrambled up higher on the beach. The tide had come in. He looked around for Corey and Ruby in a panic, fearing that they’d been carried away in the water before waking, but they were safe. They were sleeping a little higher than him, parallel to the water, so it just missed them. Ruby was curled up in a ball, her face covered with the hoodie. Corey was sprawled out on his back with an arm over his eyes. They both looked completely exhausted.
Matt looked out over the waves and his heart sank to his stomach. The life raft was bobbing upside down at least twenty feet from the beach, and their food, water, and supplies were nowhere to be seen. Matt rushed out into the water and dove toward the life raft. He swam as hard as he could, which wasn’t very fast at all, but he managed to reach the life raft. He grabbed ahold of the rope and began to tug it back to shore. When he
at last reached the shore he was completely out of breath and his head began to throb dully at his temples. Corey and Ruby were still asleep, which annoyed him for some reason. For a brief moment he thought about kicking water or sand in their faces to wake them up, then immediately chastised himself for feeling so harshly. It wasn’t their fault, but if they woke to find they had no food or drinking water they’d be every bit as grumpy as Matt felt.
He searched the shoreline for any of their supplies, hoping some of it might be floating on the surface somewhere or buried in the sand. After searching for about twenty minutes he found one of the water bottles just beneath the ocean, wedged between two rocks, and the packet of matches floating on the surface. He also found one of his shoes half buried in sand beneath the water, but he didn’t see the other anywhere. Well, one shoe wasn’t much good to him. The water was the only essential thing, but one water bottle . . . They wouldn’t last long with that.
He set the bottle of water and matches on a rock above the place where they’d slept. Corey and Ruby were still fast asleep, and he didn’t want to sit still and wait for them to wake up. He decided to go for a walk. He’d dry quicker anyway. He’d go collect more firewood.
When he reached the boat he started to pull the wood and got several splinters. The sun rose fully in the sky as he worked and beat down on his head and shoulders. By the time he collected as much wood as he could carry his head was pounding. He was probably dehydrated. He’d have a big long gulp of the water when he returned. He selfishly contemplated drinking it all and telling Corey and Ruby that all the water had floated away. He walked back toward the camp, scraping his bare feet on the rocks, which only darkened his mood further.
When he reached the campsite with his arms full of wood, Ruby and Corey were awake and they were shouting. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were definitely upset. Ruby was crying, and Corey was holding one of Matt’s wet shoes. Finally they both looked up and saw Matt.
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