by C. W. Trisef
“I wonder what Lye intends to do with them?” he heard Miss Carmen say.
“Probably throw them in the volcano after he gets enough information out of them,” Bubba replied without remorse, “if he hasn’t already.”
“You don’t think they’ll try to escape?” Miss Carmen asked. “They’re a pretty stubborn lot, you know, especially Ana.”
“Where’re they gonna go?” Bubba put forth, matter-of-factly. “This place is an island, remember? Plus, Lye ordered our jet onboard his fleet, and the last rowboat must have taken Lionel to Lye’s ship.”
“What about us?” said Miss Carmen, skeptical of her own escape.
“Relax,” Bubba reassured, striding next to her. “There’s always the Navel Rock if we ever need to…disappear for a while.”
Ishmael heard the conversation segue to a passionate kiss. He rose to his feet, about to interrupt the romance, when Bubba said urgently, “What’s that noise?”
Ishmael froze, not aware that Bubba was referring to a strange sound coming from the excavation grounds.
“Sounds like the boys are fighting again,” Miss Carmen sighed, displeased with the disruption.
“Would you take care of them?” Bubba petitioned. “They take orders so much better when they come from you.”
“They’re not the only ones,” she said with a flirtatious smile as she slipped out of the tent.
Brandishing her beauty, Miss Carmen erupted in a flurry of sharp commands as she stalked off to restore order. Capitalizing on her absence, Ishmael snuck to the front of the tent and peeked inside to learn Bubba’s location. Without a sound, Ishmael inserted a narrow straw between the flaps of the tent door and blew into it like a spit wad.
Bubba was leaning back in a chair, with legs stretched and feet crossed on a table, when a small, needled dart came flying at him from the tent door and stuck in his neck. With sudden alertness, he yanked it out and visually inspected the vicinity, searching frantically.
Slipping a bottle of extract into his pocket, Ishmael counted off three seconds before striding through the door.
“Why, Ishmael!” Bubba greeted bubbly, the extract already doing its job. “How do you do, sir? Come, come! Sit down, sit down!” With unusual jovialness, he bid Ishmael take the seat across from him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“How did Lye know about my pack?’ Ishmael questioned, getting down to business immediately.
“Pack?” Bubba asked innocently. “Pack of what? Pack of wolves? Pack of gum? Pachyderm?”
“This pack,” Ishmael clarified, holding up his bag.
“I can’t say it rings any bells,” Bubba told truthfully, “but a fine bag it is. What is the brand, I wonder? Louis Vuitton, perchance?”
“Never mind,” Ishmael muttered, rubbing his forehead with frustration at the naiveté he had caused to come upon Bubba. Moving on, he asked, “What is this fleet that Lye has?”
“Sixty-four, top-of-the-line battle cruisers,” said Bubba cheerfully. “Counted them myself. It’s Lye’s personal armada, completely surrounding this island as we speak, poised and ready for attack should anything go awry with the prisoners, which is odd since they seem like such nice people.”
Ishmael remained silent for several seconds, digesting this frightful information. Breaking the quiet, Bubba said, his eyes glazed with gaiety, “Would you like a foot massage?”
“Maybe later,” dismissed Ishmael. “I need you to take me to the Navel Rock.”
“Hi-ho cheerio! A fieldtrip?” Bubba celebrated. “How exciting!”
“Quietly,” hushed Ishmael.
“Oh, a quiet fieldtrip,” Bubba whispered.
“Yes,” Ishmael agreed. “And let’s make it snappy.”
“Got it,” said Bubba. “A quiet, snappy fieldtrip.” As they slipped out the back of the tent, Bubba began to snap his fingers with each of his quiet steps on the grass.
“Wait a minute!” Bubba cried softly.
Adrenaline surged through Ishmael, fearing the extract had already worn off. Scrambling to prepare another dose, his heart found relief when Bubba simply asked, “Should I bring the cleats?”
From that question, Bubba confirmed what Ishmael had supposed, namely that the Navel Rock was the location of Easter Island’s time-warp.
“Yes, of course!” Ishmael breathed.
They dashed back to the tent, where, to Ishmael’s dismay, they saw Miss Carmen entering. Bubba was about to bodaciously waltz right inside, but Ishmael restrained him.
“I’ll get them,” Ishmael volunteered.
“But you don’t know where they are,” Bubba pointed out.
“Then tell me.”
“Okay,” Bubba submitted. “They’re inside a nesting doll, which is standing in a clay pot, which is sitting under my cot. You’ll find the pot underneath where I lay my head. Then hatch the first four layers of dolls. Inside the fifth doll, that’s where you’ll find the cleats.” Then, with a serious face, Bubba added, “Be very careful with them.”
“The cleats?” Ishmael wondered, knowing they weren’t exceptionally fragile.
“No, the dolls!” Bubba corrected. “They’re a twelfth-generation heirloom, formed from the mortared marrow of an ancient breed of alpaca, that a dying widow bequeathed to me on the cliffs of Cusco.” Ishmael shot him a troubled stare. “Although,” Bubba continued, distraught, “I distinctly remember stealing the doll from that woman, but that doesn’t sound like me at all, now, does it?”
“Not a bit,” Ishmael concurred. “Wait here.”
“Hold on,” said Bubba. Then, holding out his fist, he requested, “Fist bump.” Ishmael obliged. “Go get ‘em!” Bubba rooted.
Ishmael gently lifted the bottom of the tent flap and peeked inside to survey the room. Miss Carmen sat on the side opposite the cot, patiently waiting for her lover to return from wherever he had gone. Ishmael rolled a small device into the center of the room. Without a sound, it released a colorless, odorless gas, but it did not spread to fill the room. Instead, it confined itself to a single layer, creating a vertical wall within the small shelter. When the wall had stretched from ceiling to floor and from side to side, it stabilized into a vaporous solid. Like a camera, Ishmael’s mirror gas had taken a photograph of the scene behind it and now was reflecting it.
Free to move around half of the room without being seen, Ishmael crawled inside and located the nesting doll inside the pot. The doll was in the shape of a woman with an unusually large bodice, which, by the fifth shell, was the perfect size in which to fit the shoes. The chore of unnesting all the dolls proved to be quite time-consuming, given the situation, and Ishmael broke into a sweat as he rushed to reassemble the doll as the mirror gas was beginning to dissipate. With jittery hands, he hastily put the doll back in the pot, which wobbled like a bowling pin when brushed by the ball. At the sound, Miss Carmen arose suspiciously and slowly stepped toward the cot. Ishmael returned to steady the pot, then hurried out of the tent just as the gas expired and Miss Carmen approached the scene, where she found all to be well.
“That was close,” Ishmael said as they galloped away, Bubba snapping his fingers rhythmically to their quick pace.
About a stone’s throw away from the camp rested the Navel Rock. Like the Intihuatana Stone and the Sacred Rocks, this time-warp on Easter Island was also peculiarly designed. There was a circular wall of jagged rocks, only a few feet in height but perhaps a dozen feet in diameter. Enclosed within this wall were five very round and smooth stones, four of which were about the size of a small watermelon and had been placed around the fifth, which was many times larger, like the cardinal directions on a weather vane. The entire ensemble stood very near an exceptionally rocky shoreline.
“Here we are,” Bubba announced, “the Navel Rock.”
“Great,” said Ishmael. “Now just put on the cleats, and we’ll be on our way.”
“I can’t do that,” Bubba disagreed pleasantly. “Lye specifically told me that no one is to l
eave the island.”
“Well, I am telling you differently,” Ishmael retorted, losing his patience.
“If you’re not willing to obey orders,” Bubba harped, “then I’m afraid I’m going to have to report you.”
“I thought it might come to this,” Ishmael mumbled calmly. He retrieved a large syringe from his pack and promptly jammed it into Bubba’s arm.
“That feels most unpleasant,” Bubba complained. Then, when the serum had been exhausted, Bubba said, “I suddenly feel very tired. I think I will take a nap.” And he slumped onto the ground.
“Finally,” Ishmael sighed, pleased by the silence. “That ought to keep him quiet for a while.”
Ishmael picked up the cleats and slipped them onto Bubba’s limp feet. Then he stepped within the stone wall of the Navel Rock and heaved Bubba inside, standing him erect so that both of his feet made contact with the ground of the time-warp. In a rapturous instant, they both disappeared.
Chapter 14
The Guardian’s Gift
Although Ret dove into the volcano with confidence, he hardly knew what he was going to do next. Manipulating the ashy dirt to cushion his fall, Ret fell onto the sloping sides of the crater and slid downward on his chest like a human snowboard. Despite his ever-increasing speed, he cast mounds of earth in front of him to slow his glide as he approached the throat of the volcano, where, coming to a stop, he peered over the edge.
The scene before his eyes was one of raw power. It was a lake of lava, a viciously viscous sea of living liquid. Like a stomach, it chewed and churned its red and glowing contents, crashing against the inside of the volcano and sending geysers up its walls. Mucky bubbles, large and small, swelled and then burst, spraying globs in all directions and sounding like a witch’s brew. The steamy air was stifling, almost suffocating, even worse than Tybee’s most humid, summer days. A bright orange color bathed the entire view, resembling the innermost coals of a fire. It was a staggering sight to take in, one truly beyond description.
Yet, Ret was puzzled by the volcano’s misleading character. On the outside, this smoking heap of earth was not much more than an ordinary hill; but, despite such lack of external evidence, on the inside raged a phenomenal storm of unpredictable behavior. Ret wondered how anything could keep such vast and uncontainable power so bottled up. Of course, he knew it was in a volcano’s nature to erupt from time to time, but why? And why so spontaneously, so impulsively, so destructively? Such was not a pleasant way of life, Ret reasoned, and he was grateful that no traits of volcanism coincided with humanism.
Most intense of all, however, was the immense heat. It seemed as though every particle had been supercharged by the pervasive warmth, glowing and pulsating. Ret could feel the heat as it boiled his blood and broiled his skin, but there was no pain; on the contrary, it energized and empowered him. He marveled at how hot it had to be in order for rock to exist in a fluid state. In fact, the molten material reminded him of Sunken Earth, when the grains of salt melted from exposure to the energy that was harvested from the soil.
For several minutes, Ret lay at the rim of the throat, contemplating such a miraculous creation. Unlike a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, as impressive as those modern marvels can be, this wonder of the natural world had not been forged by any human hands. It was purely a product of the earth—an ocean of magma that had leaked from the planet’s pressurized core and exploded to the surface. But why did it ever think to do that? Does Mother Nature squeeze some volcano-making into her schedule whenever there’s a lull between meetings? Better yet, where does such power come from? Like the nuclear reactor at the power plant or the electric generator at Coy Manor or even the solar-powered battery of Coy’s hot-air balloon, from what source do the planets find their energy? Ret wanted to know because he could feel it in every fiber of his body.
And so, with only one thing to do, Ret jumped in the lava. It did not feel hot to him, and neither his skin nor his hair—not even his clothes—got singed in the least degree. In fact, the lava washed away from him like oil amid water, clean and hydrophobic. At times, it seemed as though he was swimming in paint, sinking only slowly, as if caught in quicksand. He swished his hand across the surface, creating waves and swells according to his own will and pleasure.
Not long after his dive, in fact, the level of the lava began to go down. Ret’s very presence, it seemed, had a profoundly calming effect on the volcano. The lava stopped spewing and spitting and, instead, started draining, slowly exposing more and more of the charred walls. It was by no means a fast withdrawal, but the volcanic liquid was lowering nonetheless.
Ret paddled to the side of the core and rotated his hand in a swirling motion. He transformed the lake into a stationary whirlpool, with a tornado-like funnel growing in the center. Since there were no obvious paths to continue his journey, Ret hoped to uncover the way he should go by learning what avenues the volcano’s long throat had to offer. With the vortex growing ever deeper, he swam to its edge and looked down to see a bottomless shaft, which actually grew wider the further it plunged into the earth. All along the sides of this vertical chamber were gaping holes, as you might expect to see after drilling through a sponge. Upon closer examination, these cavities were actually cavernous tunnels, each beginning at the volcano’s throat. Like the cilia that line the respiratory tract, the lava tubes projected into the shaft and whisked away any lava that happened to pass through them.
Suddenly finding himself with innumerable pathways, Ret didn’t waste any time. He stretched himself out and started swimming down the side of the swirling lava. As he passed by the first few rows of lava tubes, he glanced inside but found each of them to be dark and empty, insofar as he could observe. For many strokes, he encountered more of the same; in fact, no matter how deep he descended, the prospects never brightened, and neither did the lighting, for things had grown darker and dimmer until all that lit Ret’s path was a faint gleam not unlike that of dying embers.
At this point, Ret extended his left hand and used the glow of his scar to light the way. Though perhaps on account of his ever-darkening surroundings, Ret’s moai man scar seemed to shine more brightly with every passing moment. Although he had initially made his descent in a spiraled trail, he now felt a familiar, magnetic pull attracting his scar and altering his route. He had little idea where it intended to take him, and whenever he apparently veered off course, he could feel the unseen connection drawing him back on track. He passed scores of tubes before his scar led him into a certain one whose mouth was smaller than all the others. Climbing inside the cave’s entrance, Ret turned and shined his scar down into the apparently never-ending shaft. He could see neither the bottom nor any other tubes.
Ret set to walking. At first, the lava tube was scarcely taller than he was, but it became roomier with every step. Aided solely by the vibrant illumination of his scar, he made his way through the mostly straight corridor. The rounded walls bore evidence of the varying heights and lengths of former lava flows, telling a geological story like the layered sides of a canyon. His footsteps echoed against the hard rock, although there were puddles of fresh and cooling lava strewn along the floor. At times, it seemed to Ret as though he was passing through the abandoned track of an underground subway, while at other times, given the dark and warm atmosphere, he felt more like a piece of excrement passing through an intestine.
In time, Ret arrived at what appeared to be a dead end. Shining his scar along the edges of the impassable wall, however, he came to the conclusion that it was, in fact, a giant boulder. Although it plugged the tube with cork-like perfection, the stone’s aggregate makeup was totally different from that of the surrounding rock; it did not look volcanic at all. While entertaining the idea of turning back and trying a different tube, Ret glanced at the base of the boulder and noticed that the residual lava was dripping into a sort of drain underneath it.
Undeterred by the impasse, Ret placed his hands on the boulder and prepared for it to combust. But
it neither sparked nor fumed; in fact, it didn’t do anything. It apparently was not volcanic after all. With a shrug of his shoulders, he reached to the back burner and summoned his power over earth, pushing the giant rock forward until he had uncovered the drain in the floor enough for him to slip inside.
The lava tube had become a waterslide of sorts, with Ret gliding down a curvy pipeline, made slick by years of lava flow. It was a suspenseful ride, whose thrill was enhanced by its unknown destination. Though moving along at a fair clip, the chute quickly ended, flush with the ground, causing Ret to briefly hydroplane on puddles of lava like a cat hurtling on its belly across a waxed floor.
Rising to his feet, Ret took one sweeping look around and stood in awe at the ceaseless wonders of Fire Island. He now found himself in an enormous cavern of cosmic proportions. Simply stated, it was a continuation of the volcano; indeed, it was the rest of it. If what he had descended earlier was the throat, then this was the belly. It was in the shape of a trapezoidal beaker, the kind Ret had used in science class, with a very broad bottom and an exceptionally narrow neck. Far below him was a boundless ocean of lava. It was so expansive that what he had seen before in the upper reaches of the volcano now seemed but a mere raindrop. Since he could not see the end of it in any direction, Ret considered its vastness akin to that of Sunken Earth.
Ret was standing quite close to what must have been the ceiling of this gargantuan, underground cavity, perched on a rocky ledge that hung from the top, without support from anything below it, like the chunks of frost that accumulate on the inside roof of a freezer. With a plain as long as a football field, it connected with a similar and equally large and stalactitical structure hanging not far away. But it was the center of this runway that intrigued Ret the most.
From the moment he saw it, Ret knew he had finally found the hiding place of the fire element. It was but a small, single flame, flickering like a pilot light. At least, that’s what it looked like, for Ret stood a considerable distance away from the coveted element. It was located in the center of this prairie-like plain on an earthen island that was surrounded by a moat of air. Indeed, it was floating in mid air! But unlike their reed-made counterparts on the waters of Lake Titicaca, this suspended island was totally unreachable: there was no bridge; no convenient zip line; and to jump was totally out of the question, even for Ret.