“Love you, Caity.”
“Love you too,” I say. My voice catches and I’m afraid I might cry if I’m on the phone much longer. “Give Dad a hug for me. And lock your door.”
“Excuse me?” she says.
“Bolt your door tonight. Please? For me?”
Mom laughs. “Okay, I’m walking … walking … hear that? I just bolted the door. For you.”
All I can think about is getting home to see my parents. I know that Tenzo and Uncle Li are both there and aware of what’s happening, so they could help if Barend Schlacter came back for my parents, but I still have a horrible, acidic feeling in my gut.
Just as I’m drifting off to sleep, the hotel phone rings and I bolt upright in bed and answer. Before I even say hello, I hear, “Caity, this is Bolon. You need to leave immediately.”
What time is it? What do you mean?” I say. My jaw clenches so tightly it feels like my teeth might disintegrate.
“The Fraternitas is on its way to Easter Island. You must leave the hotel until I can get to you.”
“But where do we go?”
“Not we, just you. Write a note for Alex. Tell him you had to take an earlier flight for security reasons.”
“I can’t leave Alex! He’s sharing a room with a spy.”
“I’ll handle that. You just get out of that hotel.”
I am silent.
“Caity, this is important. Get a pen. Get a piece of hotel stationery. Write the note.”
I set the phone receiver down on the table and do what he says.
“Okay, now what?” I ask. I’ve turned into a robot.
“Take only what you need, slip the note under Alex’s door, and walk down the staircase. Leave from the staircase door, not through the lobby. I will call your cell in a couple of minutes.”
I pull on some clothes, throw what I can in my backpack, and scribble a note for Alex that I wrap around my room key in case he wants to move to my room. I leave it in front of Alex’s door, knock quietly, and then run down the stairwell like Bolon told me. The staircase door leads out to the side of the hotel property, which is undeveloped. Just lots of lava rock and a path down to the sea.
As I wait for Bolon’s call I start to hear something in the distance. At first I think it may be thunder, but as it gets closer I realize it’s the fwap fwap fwap of a helicopter propeller. I try to think of all the things this could be other than the Fraternitas: Medical evacuation? Army training? Food drop?
The sound of my phone ringing startles me so badly that I bite my tongue. I should have put this thing on vibrate. “Hello?” I whisper.
“Stand with your back to the staircase door. Now walk straight to the outcropping of rocks directly ahead of you.”
“Bolon, I’m scared! It’s completely black out and I heard a helicopter a minute ago.”
“I know. Just follow my directions. Walk to the rocks.”
I walk like in a nightmare when you’re in slow motion; each step takes concentration. “Okay,” I say when I finally get there. “I’m at the rocks.”
“Do you see the big flat one? Step over it and jump down to the sand. Now look to your right—you will see a small opening, a lava tube cave. I want you to kneel down and crawl in.”
“No way! I’m not getting in a cave in the dark!”
“Caity, this is serious. Get in the cave.”
I stand for a moment contemplating what to do. In the distance I hear dogs barking.
“Caity, I can hear the hounds. I’m on my way, but they will get to you before I do …”
Tears stream down my face as I crawl into the small cave about the size of a tube on a playground, just big enough for me to get into and almost sit upright. “Okay, I’m in,” I say.
“Good, Caity. Now keep going,”
“Going? Going where?”
“There’s an extensive lava tube cave system under Easter Island. This cave will go about a quarter mile inland and then come up through the grass. I’ll have landed when you get there.”
“How do you know?” I scream. “How do you know I’m even in the right cave? I could be lost down here forever!”
“I just know, Caity. I do, I promise you that. I’ll tell you how I know later. Right now I just need you to crawl as fast as you can through that cave.”
I peek my head out of the cave to see if I could swim out into the ocean, but then I hear the dogs getting closer. I look back into the darkness of the cave and decide I have no choice.
The glow of my cell phone is the only source of light, so I hold it in my mouth as I crawl on all fours. After a few feet I stop to see if Bolon is still there. “Bolon? You there? Bolon!” There’s no answer; the cave is blocking the signal.
I keep my front teeth on the phone keys so that the light will stay on, but it makes that horrible shrill sound, which, in the small cave, reverberates like a fire alarm. But at least the faint green glow helps me along.
I crawl on all fours as fast as I can. The bottom of the cave is mostly sand, so it doesn’t hurt too much. Thankfully the tunnel gets larger and I’m able to walk upright if I duck a little. It feels good to straighten my legs and really run. Then it gets small again, even smaller than it was at the beginning and in some places I have to scoot through on my belly.
I am somewhere underneath one of the world’s most isolated islands and only one person knows vaguely where I am. If anything happened I would never be found. Never. My stomach convulses but thankfully nothing comes out. I just dry heave.
When will this end? I try to work out in my head how long I’ve been crawling and walking so I can figure out how far I’ve gone, but between my crying and the key-tone noise, I can’t keep a train of thought going long enough to do it.
Then I hear the barking of dogs echoing in the tunnel—they sound far away but I know how fast dogs are. When I get to a really small spot, I scramble around for rocks to block the way and I’m able to make a pretty solid wall that would probably stop dogs but if there are any people with them it will have been wasted time.
The cell phone light is slowly fading and the once-shrill tone winds down like a toy with a failing battery. This sound is even more disturbing than the shrill one, with its connection to something dying. I crawl as I’ve never crawled before.
The glow gets dimmer and dimmer and dimmer until there is no light at all. It is completely black and completely silent except for the echo of my sobs and my uneven breathing. I have to slow down to feel my way through.
Then the sound of the dogs returns, distantly at first and then closer, which means that people are with them! Some sort of autopilot takes over and I get mechanical about feeling my way through. My brain turns off and my body takes over.
Finally I feel air moving; it’s subtle at first but all my senses are on hyperdrive. Nothing has ever felt so good. About twenty feet later, a sliver of grey light becomes visible. As I get closer I see a small hole in the roof of the cave.
I pull myself out of the hole and Bolon is standing there. Throwing all my weight at him, he says nothing, just puts his arm around me and holds me up as I heave and sob.
Both of us stiffen when we hear the echo of barking dogs.
Bolon puts a finger to his lips and takes my hand. We run around the mound of rocks that I just crawled out of and I see an enormous, strange-looking metal thing—it’s almost like a submarine, without propellers. Three retractable legs hold it about eight feet off the ground.
We climb up a skinny ladder and board through a hatch at the bottom. When I’m inside and Bolon is on the last rung, I finally see the dogs. Three of them are looking up into the hatch, jumping, barking, and snarling.
Once Bolon is all the way in, he pushes a button and the ladder silently retracts. Then he closes the submarine-like hatch and it becomes freakishly quiet. We’re in a small metal room with nothing but the hatch and one other door. Bolon goes to the door and says something, then the door slides open and I see a small staircase that we climb.<
br />
The staircase opens into the body of this plane, or helicopter, or whatever it is. Two men sit at the control panel in front of the only windows in the entire craft. The shorter one turns to me and says, “Please, sit and put your strap on. We are in quite a hurry.”
Bolon shows me to a seat and helps me buckle up, then sits next to me. I feel a strange roller-coaster sensation in my stomach but I don’t feel any movement or shaking and all I hear is a whirring noise. “When can we take off?” I whisper, anxious to get off this island.
“We already have,” Bolon replies. “We’re probably a thousand feet up by now.”
“What is this thing?”
“It’s called a Vim¯ana.”
“Never heard of it. Is it new?”
Bolon laughs. “No, it’s actually very, very old. Designed thousands of years ago.”
“Right, this is thousands of years old—”
“No, the plans are thousands of years old. The oldest surviving scripture in the world, the Indian Vedas, actually describe how to build these.”
“Then why aren’t they used all over?”
Bolon shrugs. “No one has ever taken them seriously. Except for Hitler’s program, of course …”
I don’t want to get deeper into Bolon’s conspiracy world. “Okay, whatever, as long as it gets me home. The bigger deal is, I almost died back there!” Now that I’m relatively safe I feel anger welling up inside me.
“But you accomplished your goal.”
“That was so not worth it—I gave some lame talk over the phone for a few minutes and now people are coming after me with helicopters and dogs?”
“You didn’t hear the results? You even affected Princeton’s sensitive PEAR equipment.”
“I heard the results; I’m just saying that those results were not worth me risking my life!”
Now the sensation in my stomach changes and seems as if we are moving sideways instead of up. Still I hear nothing but a whirring and there’s no shaking or tipping of any kind.
“I am sorry you feel this way. But understand, I did not choose your path, you did. This is what you were meant to do, I am only here to help.”
“Well, I want a different path,” I say as I cross my arms like a child.
“Let me get you some calming tea.” Bolon unbuckles his seat belt, walks over to a small galley kitchen, and returns with a glass of lukewarm tea. I’m so thirsty from crawling through the caves that I gulp down the bitter liquid as fast as I can. Then Bolon shows me how to recline my seat and spreads a blanket over me.
“What will happen to Alex?” I ask. “Will they try to hurt him?”
“He’ll be fine,” he replies, as he puts a pillow behind my head. “We dropped someone on Easter Island to escort him home.”
My eyes start to droop and I feel that subtle inner gear-shifting in my brain, like after taking allergy medicine. I know I’m about to drift off and I don’t fight it.
Later I awaken to my own voice screaming, “Mom!” My whole body is shaking like an old person. Bolon puts his hand on my shoulder, which stops the shaking. “She’s fine. Your parents are fine,” he says. “They’re being watched right now.”
I sit up and find my whole body is sore; it feels like I’ve been in a car crash.
“Do cell phones work in this thing?” I ask.
“Who do you want to call?”
“Barend Schlacter.”
“Let’s talk this through, Caity.”
“I don’t want to talk it through,” I say.
I don’t even need to dig out my sketchbook to find the number; the image of his luggage tag is etched in my brain. His phone rings seven times and then a recorded message plays in German. I can’t understand a word, but when I hear the beep I know it’s time.
“Barend Schlacter, this is your freund Caity. I’ve written a letter detailing all that I know about you and the Fraternitas Regni Occulti. I also have a binder of information that links the Fraternitas to all sorts of atrocities. All of this is at a safe and secure site. If anything happens to my parents or to me, the people holding this information will go to the media and the police and you will go down.” Before I hang up I add, “How’s that for odd and weak?”
I’ve never seen Bolon look so worried. “Caity, that is not how we prefer to handle things,” he says.
“Can we please change the subject? It’s done, and I feel a lot better.”
Bolon looks down at his hands, making me feel guilty, as if I have done something that will get him in trouble. I see the sky lighten out the front windows. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“Scotland. We’ll put you on a commuter flight that comes in at about the same time as the flight you are supposed to be on from San Francisco.”
It’s mind-blowing to think of keeping up this charade. Would my parents even believe it if I told them? Would they ever let me out of their sight again? Could I go to jail for any of this?
“You’ve done nothing wrong, Caity,” Bolon says.
“I’d like a little privacy with my thoughts, please,” I snip. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Bolon points to a small door behind us. I take my backpack, which has a change of clothes in it. When I see myself in the mirror I can’t help but laugh. I’m so dirty that I look like a soldier with a cammo-painted face.
There are real towels in the bathroom and I have to use up all of them to get presentable. I throw the clothes I am wearing away because they are beyond repair; the knees of my jeans are black and the sleeves of my shirt are frayed from crawling through the cave.
I don’t even realize we’ve been descending until I feel a slight thud on the floor.
When I come out of the bathroom, Bolon is standing right there waiting for me. “I’ve been in touch with Easter Island, and Alex is safely on his flight home,” he says. “Donald was on pain medication and could not be woken. We’ve arranged for his ticket to be extended.”
I squeeze Bolon’s hands and thank him. This information relieves me even more than I thought it would.
“We must go now. Our car is waiting.”
Once outside, I see that we’ve landed in a desolate little valley. When we get a few feet away from the Vim¯ana, I turn around to get a good look in the daylight. Copper colored and shaped like a cigar, it’s definitely not like any aircraft I’ve ever seen. “Do people think this is a UFO?” I ask.
“Most of the time,” Bolon replies. “That is why we try to use it only for emergencies when great speed is necessary.”
“Well, thanks for coming to get me,” I say. “I’m sorry if I was rude.”
We drive over a big hill and see a small town in the distance. Bolon points to the airstrip to one side of the town. “That’s where you’ll fly out of,” he says.
As we make our way down, Bolon tells me how proud he and The Council are of my work. I try to take it in but now that a day has passed it doesn’t register that it was me out there talking. It seems like some hazy dream.
When Bolon drops me off at the airport and gives me a hug, I want to stay mad at him but for some reason it’s hard. Maybe I’m having that reaction where people start to love their captors.
“I’ll be in touch with further instructions,” Bolon says.
Is he insane? There will be no further instructions! I am out.
I shake my head, take his worn, soft hand in mine, and say, “Goodbye Bolon, take care of yourself,” like this is the last time we will see each other. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know this is not true; the look on his face tells me he knows this, too.
The short flight on the small plane seems rickety and terrifying after the smooth ride on the Vim¯ana. When we land in Edinburgh and I’m able to turn my phone back on I see a new text message from a strange number. Nervously, I open it, not sure what I’ll find. It says, SAFE IN SF, HM SOON. DON’T RTURN TXT, USING STRNGRS PHONE. AC
I don’t realize I say, “Oh, thank God!” out loud until I see the person next to
me try to read the text.
When the plane door opens I rush out and try to get through security as quickly as possible. I run to my parents and we all hug for a long time.
“Welcome home, kiddo.” Dad says.
I don’t know if Breidablik is my home, but right now I don’t care. At least we’re all safe.
“Let’s head down to pick up your luggage,” Mom says.
The truth is, my rolly suitcase is back in Easter Island, along with Dad’s satellite phone. I couldn’t take it with me when I had to evacuate. “Oh … you know what? I didn’t feel like lugging all that stuff back, so I left it with Justine. I just brought my laptop with me.”
“Smart girl,” Mom says, kissing my forehead.
They suggest we stay over in Edinburgh and do some sightseeing, but I tell them I’m anxious to get back to the castle and sleep in my own bed. We make it to the station just in time to catch the early evening train.
After a good meal in the dining car, we go to our connected sleeping cabins where the couches have already been made into beds. I slip into a T-shirt of Dad’s, triple-check that both our outer doors are locked, and use my backpack to prop open the door that connects our cabins. Then I drift peacefully off to sleep watching my parents read by the dim light above their bed.
In the morning we disembark the train and wait in the Land Rover for the first ferry to arrive; a few minutes later we see it chugging toward us. It’s chilly on the water, so my parents stay in the car. I get out and stand at the front of the boat with the wind blowing my dirty curls into dreadlocks. As the Isle of Huracan comes into view I cannot help but yell, “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder!” But my voice is no match for the sea, and the wind and the waves steal the sound of the words right out of my mouth.
The early morning sun glowing pink on the horizon makes for a beautiful sight. Taking a deep breath of the misty morning sea air, I try to box up the comfort I feel at this moment, safely back together with my parents. Like a squirrel burying a nut for the winter, I store this feeling deep inside—I sense that I will need that comfort not so very long from now. Things are expected of me. I have only just begun.
The Daykeeper's Grimoire Page 27