Despite living on an island my entire life I knew little about nautical maintenance. That kind of task didn’t come easily the way numbers and arcane symbols did. Plus, few islanders took boats out onto the ocean. The rocks were treacherous, currents too unpredictable. Only Cunningham, Ben, and sometimes Chloe’s brother, Carlson, when he helped. Cunningham's boat was old. Older than the boat that had washed up on shore. They often needed to make repairs. But I’d never paid much attention.
This boat had no obvious signs of damage. I slung off my sandals and hopped over the side. At least three inches of cool water sloshed between my toes. An old plastic pail sat in the bottom and I bailed water. It took longer than expected.
As I worked on the repetitive task, my mind relaxed. I fell into a rhythm. Every slosh of water into the sand brought me closer to my new adventure. It didn’t mean I couldn’t come back. I’d visit. I pictured myself with the boy I’d seen on the Song of the Seas. Maybe we’d have children. I mean of course we would.
We’d have a boy and a girl. No, two girls and one boy. The eldest girl would be named Priscilla, the youngest Darcy. And the boy? Daniel. I’d name him after Daniel. We’d come back and visit with gifts from the Outlands. Maybe the Outlands would be better than Marlow said. Or if they were bad, we’d endure and tell stories of survival. Possibly we’d live on the ship for good. Zipping down the giant slide into the pool and drinking pink lemonade served from silver trays. Lemonade served with lots of sugar.
Yes, that seemed a good life. Living on a ship as big as that wouldn’t be that different from living on Alabaster Island. I’d adapt, I’d fit in. So wrapped up in the fantasy, I continued to scoop when there was no water left to remove. Just a slight coating that evaporated in the cool night air. Pausing, I sat back on my haunches. That’s when a prickle traveled up my spine.
I spun around. The mermaid girl was near, watching. I felt her. I scanned the water. On my left, rocks and vegetation lay thick near the water's edge. Darkness clung to the silver, moonlit shore. Movement caught my eye.
“Hello? Are you there?” I called, my voice competing with the ocean swell. No answer. Stillness. “I won’t ask any dumb questions!” I said. Nothing but waves splashing against rocks. I turned back to the boat, uneasy.
I’d done the easy part. Now what? The boat’s keys still sat in the ignition. I hopped out to the sand. One propeller appeared damaged. Bent and mangled. My knowledge of boats was too limited to know if this was a severe problem. I didn’t need to travel far. Only far enough to get near the large ship so they could bring me on-board. In fact I wondered if I might row the boat without the engine if necessary.
I gave the boat an exploratory push. Heavier than I thought, but it might be possible. Anyway, the propellers had clearance just in case the boat started. Wishful thinking, but perhaps for a change my luck would be good.
Tapping the hull three times for luck, I leapt back in and turned the key. Nothing. Not even a small click. I got back out and continued my inspection. Down on the shadowed side, I lay on the sand to inspect the hull. It was difficult to see in the dim light, but my heart saddened at what my fingers felt. There were large gashes in several places.
One hole was bigger than an inch and there were a bunch of smaller gaps. I stood up and chewed on a hangnail. I knew they used special materials to fix fiberglass. Now I had to get some.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
At Assembly the next day, everyone except for Ben and me paired off and sat together. Some pairings were awkward. Others like Ethan and Chloe’s were harmonious. Ben’s hateful eyes seared the back of my head the entire period. But I felt hurt when my friends left immediately after assembly. Nothing will change. Yeah, sure.
Scraps whined and gave me a worried frown when I got home. “What’s wrong, girl?” I asked, scratching her favorite spot beneath her collar. Mom glanced down from the lighthouse window. I waved, and she waved back.
I headed to the fridge to grab a snack but found it emptied and turned off. Without fuel to run the generator at night we’d stopped using it after dark so as not to drain our solar batteries. But I didn’t expect to find it shut off during the day.
Up in the lighthouse, Mom studied the scroll, a small, satisfied smile on her face. She penciled notes on a pad of paper and was so focused she didn’t look up when I entered. Mom and I were different. Nothing bothered her. My emotions flew all over the place depending which way life blew them. But no matter what happened, Mom never lost her quiet focus and good humor.
“Nothing in the fridge,” I said.
“One of the solar batteries quit. Dad went to swap it. For now, I moved everything to the root cellar. It’s nice and cool in there.”
“No sign of the supply plane?”
“Not yet,” she surveyed the expansive view from the lighthouse. “The Mayor is anxious, but it’ll work out.”
I sat next to her. The scroll was made of a translucent material with a mother pearl of sheen. Pliable but waterproof as if it were some type of plastic. The text was a series of pictograms within pictograms and tiny inscriptions that linked them together.
Each graphic incorporated angles that joined and connected on a numerical level once the angles were calculated. They formed equations that once solved became images, sounds and words. It hurt my head to look at them because I’d automatically start to translate them.
Mom worked on a section that involved how the ancient city of Lemuria was organized. In my mind’s eye, I saw a crystal matrix spinning like a wheel and people transported from one place to another instantaneously. I quickly looked away.
“What’s this relationship?” Mom asked, pointing to a series of numbers and angles.
“Movement. About connecting people from one location to another…but also…something to do with binding energies, I can’t figure out the last part,” I admitted. Mom nodded and took off her necklace. It was in the shape of a tiny octopus. She dangled it over the scroll. Its tiny jewel eyes reflected two points of light onto the scroll like tiny star constellations. She marked their position on her notepad.
But I hadn’t come to help Mom translate. Once started it would be difficult to stop. I enjoyed spending time with her, but the translating itself was tiring. Neither of us knew when to quit once we started and she’d be up here all day.
“Fascinating,” she said. “Well, that might explain how Shianne and I came to Alabaster Island.”
“I thought you came on a boat?” I realized I didn’t know how Mom had arrived here.
“No, no, not a boat,” she smiled. “A bicycle.”
I sighed and rolled by eyes. Sometimes I wasn’t sure when to believe her.
“And you’ve never left?” I asked.
“Never left once.”
“Well, except for Honey Moon Island,” I reminded her. To have had me, she must have gone there.
“No. Not even to Honey Moon Island.”
I stopped and looked at Mom hard. “But then…how was I born? I thought those babies died?” I’d been told it was impossible to conceive on Alabaster Island. And that any children who were conceived had been stillborn.
“You were the sole exception,” she said as she stopped her work and stroked my back.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you were hatched.”
I burst out laughing and after a pause, Mom joined with me.
“No really, how?” I asked again.
“Marei, you’re special. But I think you already know that.”
I did feel separate, different from everyone else in some indefinable way. But I’d thought everyone felt that.
“Mom, do you ever think…of leaving the island?”
Perhaps I expected a stronger reaction, but for several seconds she said nothing. I wasn’t certain if she heard. Just as I was about to ask again, she spoke.
“No,” she whispered.
“Do you think anyone does?”
“Why would anyone want to leave Alabaster Isla
nd?” she asked with an odd twinkle in her eye and something else…was it sarcasm? I smiled, and she smiled back. We exchanged a look between us. Maybe Mom understood.
“Shianne left,” I said. Shianne was Marlow’s wife.
“Yes but she’d had a very difficult time,” Mom said.
“But still…”
“Shianne didn’t leave in the way anyone would want to.” Mom paused. “And Marei, no one can leave the island. So if you have any friends eager to go…best to tell them: Alabaster Island remains a prison until we decode the entire scroll. A beautiful prison, but a prison nevertheless.”
“A prison?” I asked, incredulous.
Downstairs Dad clacked and clanked around downstairs muttering and swearing as he struggled with the solar battery.
“I’m going to check how your father is doing,” she said. And she stood up, leaving me sitting stunned. A prison? What did she mean? It left my mind teaming with questions, none of them good. I’d never felt trapped on Alabaster Island. But now I did. She must have known why I asked. Perhaps she’d hoped to discourage me. A horrible sense of claustrophobia descended.
Alone, I took the chance to peek through the telescope. But the island sat quiet today. It was a hot day after lunch and people rested indoors. Only the docks saw activity: Cunningham and Ben landed their boat filled with two large buckets full of freshly caught fish. I knew what we’d be having for dinner. Surprise, surprise. Good thing fish was my favorite food. But after my conversation with my mom, I viewed everything through a new lens. Now a shadow lay across the sunlit island; a black gauze obscuring the tropical sunshine.
When I came downstairs Mom was with Dad in their bedroom, door shut. I overheard the low murmur of voices but couldn’t make out words. At their door, I held my breath and placed my ear against the cool wood. My eyes rested on the small, oak side table that sat directly outside their door. On it rested a photo of my grandmother, the only picture Mom had. Black and white, Grandma sat on an old bicycle in front of a fountain somewhere in Europe, enigmatic half-smile on her face. I’d never met her. She died before I was born. I wondered what she’d have thought about life on Alabaster Island.
I pressed my ear to the door harder. It was a thick and well made and I couldn’t overhear much. But they talked about Marlow and Shianne. Something about letting sleeping dogs lie. I heard my name. Then they stopped speaking. I dashed away and had just entered my room when Dad opened the door.
Shianne had disappeared years ago. I’d never met her. But Marlow seemed certain she’d return. If she’d left, so could I. Mom called Alabaster Island a prison? Well, then I would escape. I needed to fix the boat. But without the right materials it would be impossible.
Whenever I got stymied by the scroll, I’d learned that the best thing to do was send my mind hunting in an opposite direction. If I got stuck on a triangular rune, I’d place my attention on a torus or lemniscate. If the hieroglyphic curlicues of a pictograph stymied me, I’d concentrate on the minute vibrations hidden in the empty spaces between symbols. What had I overlooked with the boat? If Mayor Marlow didn’t have the tools, then who did?
I scrunched my eyes together and winced. Ben. Yes, Ben and his Dad had a kit. I’d witnessed them pull their fiberglass boat in for repairs countless times. Of course I hadn’t considered this solution. Ben was the last person I wanted to ask for assistance.
But without a fiberglass repair kit, and no knowledge of boat repair even if I found one, I had to be realistic. I needed help. I couldn’t ask Ben’s Dad, Cunningham. He’d tell Marlow and my parents. It all came down to Ben.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Standing outside Ben’s house, a concrete building with a freshly painted green door, I hesitated. It could go one of two ways. Ben might rat me out in the hope that I’d be punished so severely that he wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore. But the only time I’d seen someone locked away was when Eleanor had a nervous breakdown and Mayor Marlow felt she was a threat to herself.
I’d likely face severe punishment, but if Ben wanted a permanent solution, his best bet was to help me leave. Now I needed to convince him. First, I took a deep breath, then knocked. Ben's mom, Amelia, answered. She held a giant knife in her left hand. Grey and brown hair poked out from a faded blue and white striped bandana. The odor of fish guts wafted from the house and I swallowed hard.
“Marei! Come in, come in.”
“I can’t stay, I was just looking for Ben—”
“Nonsense, I’ve been wanting to talk.”
She put the knife down and wiped her pudgy hands on her apron as she ushered me inside. Most of the houses were similar but Ben’s house was an exception. It had a larger kitchen and a giant covered area in the back where hundreds of fish hung smoking above a fire that never got extinguished.
“Do you have your dress for Honeymoon Island yet?”
“No. We don’t have our date yet.”
“Still, your mom must have something picked out?”
It had been the farthest thing from my mind. But I hadn’t even answered before she rushed me into her bedroom. She took me by the shoulders and stood me in front of an old mirror leaning in the corner. From the looks of it, they’d found it floating in the ocean after a storm. The wood had warped and cracked and the mirror as well. Thirty or forty large fissures ran along the sides. But the center was smooth and flat. I’d lost weight in the last week and had circles beneath my eyes from lack of sleep.
I jumped when Amelia reappeared holding a long, frilly dress sagging on an old wooden hangar. She placed it against me. It smelled of twenty years worth of must and tropical mildew.
“Yes! It will fit.” She turned me to the mirror. The yellowing frills matched my yellowing skin. Hideous.
“I wasn’t always this plump. As thin as a reed when I was your age. Enjoy it while you can m’dear. Nothing lasts forever!”
I sneezed. Yes, and the dress proved that.
“I’ll air it out in the sun,” she apologized.
“Have you seen Ben?” I asked. “It’s important. I need to talk to him.”
“He’s not at the dock?”
I shook my head.
“Well maybe—”
There was a bang and footsteps of people entering followed by the sound of his father’s voice. He lectured Ben on some aspect of fishing.
“I’m glad you two are finally hitting it off,” Amelia whispered as she pulled me out into the kitchen. Ben’s large nostrils flared when he saw me. As if the only thing worse to smell than a bucket of fish guts was me.
“What’s she doing here?” Ben said.
Ben’s Dad cuffed him hard on the back of his head. “That’s no way to talk to your betrothed. Get sense into you boy!”
“We need to talk,” I said to Ben. “Alone.” Ben folded his thick arms while Amelia scurried to her husband and whispered something in his ear. We weren’t supposed to spend time alone until our trip to Honey Moon Island. Hopefully we’d be the last couple scheduled which might push it back at least three weeks, maybe longer. But everyone knew all was not well in this couple’s paradise so I figured they'd make an exception. And I was right.
“Don’t wanna talk,” Ben grumbled.
“You two talk, sort things out. We’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” Amelia grabbed Cunningham’s hand and led him out the door, closing it gently behind her.
“What?” Ben snarled as soon as the door shut.
“I think I figured out something good for both of us. But I’ll need your help.”
“Forget it.” Ben crossed to the fire and rammed the poker into the flaming wood. Embers exploded up the chimney. I grabbed his arm. For a moment we both eyed the hot, red poker and I could read his thoughts. But he dropped it, shook off my hand and turned away.
“Listen, I hate this as much as you do. But there may be a way out,” I said.
“I’ve asked. There’s no way out. We’re stuck with each other forever.” His lower lip shivered. Whether w
ith sadness or anger I couldn’t tell.
“There might be,” I said. “But, I’ll need your help.”
For a minute a spark of interest appeared, but then his face went blank.
“In seven days we leave for Honeymoon Island,” he said.
“Seven days? They gave us our date?” I asked dumbly. I'd hoped for more time.
He nodded. “So how ‘bout that plan of yours?”
“I…I think I can if—”
“Here’s the plan,” he interrupted. “When we’re on Honeymoon Island, you can sleep in the dirt outdoors.” He walked to the bathroom and slammed the door. A glass fell and broke somewhere in the adjacent room.
“Ben? Ben?” Cunningham knocked and then entered the kitchen blushing. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“We’re finished,” I said, dodging past. Outside, down at the dock, a crowd had gathered.
“Ben, plane’s landing. Git your butt out here!” Cunningham shouted behind me.
Off shore in the distance, a plane approached the island. Even from here, obviously something was wrong with the little aircraft. Its right wing listed toward the ocean and it flew low to the water. Puffs of black smoke spewed from its engine and it splashed down far from the dock. Well, at least our supplies had arrived.
We received six shipments per year. At one time, deliveries came by ship, but the jagged rocks surrounding the island meant increased expense and shuttling items on smaller boats. Mayor Marlow bought a small cargo plane and hired an Outlands pilot; a man and his obnoxious teen son. They either weren’t allowed to mix with us or didn’t want to. They stayed near the docks overnight and left first thing the following morning.
This time it seemed they’d be here for longer. I watched as Ben ran to the docks with Cunningham. They got in their boat and zoomed out to meet the seaplane. This was worth seeing up close.
* * *
Cunningham and Ben towed the airplane through the rocks toward the dock. Their boat wasn’t very powerful and it took awhile. I stood next to Edward and his father Carlos, a tall man with one leg shorter than the other.
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