by Mailie Meloy
Jin Lo was impatient with the same old argument. She wanted to remind Benjamin that he had a father, a very good one, better than most. “So we swim through tunnel,” she said. “We breathe underwater.”
“But we have to consider the unfortunate side effect,” the apothecary said. “The language centers of the brain are affected.”
“We talk funny,” Jin Lo said. “This is okay. Better than naked. Agree?”
“Yes,” father and son said together.
“Okay,” she said. “So we begin.”
CHAPTER 51
Underwater
Harry and Tessel brought the Payday as close to the island as they dared, in the moonless dark of early morning. The skipper had grown dependent on Tessel as a first mate. They whispered a word or two, but barely needed to speak. The plan was to pretend to tack badly, slowing the boat, while Benjamin and his father and Jin Lo went into the water on the far side, away from the island. That way, if a lookout saw the white sail, it wouldn’t seem threatening. Charlotte said they had lots of practice tacking badly.
“You’re not abandoning us with your stolen children?” she whispered to Benjamin.
“No,” he said. He spoke in one-word sentences so they wouldn’t become scrambled, but also because he was nervous about swimming underwater without breathing.
“I fear we’re a bad influence on them,” Charlotte said. “So don’t run off for good.” She smiled, and ruffled Benjamin’s hair. “Good luck.”
“Good luck, Benjonfrum,” Efa whispered.
If there had been sun, the water might have seemed inviting, but in the dark it was inky and forbidding. Benjamin wore Harry’s swimming trunks, and a diving mask and fins they had pulled from a locker of gear. On his back was a knapsack containing their jars of provisions, wrapped carefully in his clothes and his father’s.
“Ready about,” Harry said in a normal voice, at the wheel. “Hard alee.” They began to stage their failure. The boat turned into the wind, slowed, and stalled.
Jin Lo went into the water first. She had made an underwater light, some kind of phosphorescent glow, and she had wrapped it in oilcloth to shield it from sight. She also wore a knapsack and mask and fins. But even so, she entered the water without a sound, dropping in like a knife blade.
Benjamin rolled in next, feeling the water swallow his arms and legs, trying not to think about sharks—their bumping noses, their many teeth.
His father climbed awkwardly down the swimming ladder in his mask and fins. His spectacles were in Benjamin’s knapsack, and he couldn’t see well without them.
They swam at the surface, keeping their bearings by watching the dark silhouette of the land. When they reached the island’s southern point, Jin Lo nodded and dived beneath the water. Benjamin and his father dived down after her.
Jin Lo uncovered her phosphorescent light, and they saw coral beneath the water, shaped like globes and trees and fans. Fish darted between the coral branches.
Benjamin used to win his breaststroke races at the public baths by swimming the whole length of the pool underwater. Some people said it was cheating, but it was just physics. If you broke the surface, the friction slowed you down. If you could hold your breath long enough to make use of the advantage, why shouldn’t you? But not to breathe at all was a thing he had only dreamed of. He glided through the water, following Jin Lo’s eerie yellow glow, never feeling that urgent need to take new air into his lungs or burst.
The tunnel entrance was right where the sailing guide said it would be. Jin Lo swam into it. The swell nearly shoved Benjamin into the spiky coral protecting the entrance, and he kicked away. But once they were inside the tunnel, the coral was gone. Only sponges that needed no sunlight grew on the rock walls. Jin Lo’s phosphorescence illuminated startled fish that shot away into the dark like lightning. Benjamin wondered if his father could see them without his glasses. The swell pushed them forward, and they kicked along with it, and then the surge reversed direction, and they held on to the rocky bottom to avoid being pulled back out to the open ocean.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, and Benjamin began to worry that the rumor of the pearl divers wasn’t true. He didn’t want to get stuck down here when his ability to go without breathing wore off.
At last they saw starlight above. They surfaced in the lagoon, dripping wet, like Captain Marty’s mermen. Jin Lo extinguished her light. They climbed out, then unpacked their clothes and dressed quickly in the predawn darkness. Benjamin’s father put his spectacles back on with relief.
The villagers fighting the Vietminh had taught them how to crawl on their bellies, silent and unseen. Benjamin was better at it than his father was. His father was pushing forty, after all. Jin Lo moved like she’d been a jungle fighter all her life.
When they reached the villa’s wire fence, Jin Lo warned them against touching it. It gave off an electrical buzz. Benjamin brought out their jar of Alkahest and poured it on a section of the steel wire. It wasn’t actual Alkahest, the universal solvent the old alchemists had sought—it wouldn’t dissolve gold. But it was effective enough to be given the name. Benjamin knocked away what remained of the corroded wire with the glass jar.
They climbed through the hole in the fence. Benjamin’s father brushed his leg against the electrified wire and swore softly under his breath, a thing Benjamin had almost never heard him do. His meaning was clear even though his consonants were still mixed up from the underwater breathing.
They slipped into the densest greenery near the main house, looking for a place to hide. Dawn was breaking, and at this latitude the sun came up fast. They found a kitchen garden, planted in neat rows, surrounded by fruit trees and trellised vines. They crouched there, hidden from the house and from the grounds as the sky lightened.
Benjamin’s father looked round the garden. After a moment, he said, “The hardener gere is a mood gan.”
“What?” Benjamin whispered.
“Good,” his father said, and then he paused. “Man.” He paused again. “He’ll help.” Alliteration made the sentence come out clear.
Benjamin looked at the neat rows of plants, which told him nothing. He was suspicious of the idea that a garden could reveal that the gardener was a good man. He looked to Jin Lo, who shrugged. They had no other evidence to go on. So when a skinny youth came outside with a watering can, Jin Lo grabbed him, covering his mouth before he could call out, and pulled him into the fruit trees.
Benjamin looked into the kid’s frightened eyes and prepared himself for one-word communication. In a low voice, he said, “Janie.” The kid stared at him. “Safe?” Benjamin asked.
The kid’s eyebrows knitted together.
“Benjamin,” Benjamin said, pointing to himself. He waited a safe length of time, then gestured to his father and Jin Lo. “Friends.” He waited. “Janie.”
The kid nodded, in spite of how little they seemed like his friends. Jin Lo carefully took her hand away from his mouth, and he didn’t shout for help. “I am Osman,” he said, in low, precise, accented English. “Janie is locked in the mine.”
“Locked?” Benjamin asked.
“In a cage.”
“Exits?” Benjamin asked.
“Two.”
“Where?”
“One near the miners’ houses. One near the sea.”
“Guards?”
“Yes,” the kid said. He was quick. Benjamin liked him. “Near the houses, but not always by the sea.”
CHAPTER 52
Alkahest
From her cage beneath the earth, Janie talked to the miners whenever they came by. Mostly they ignored her. At the villa, she hadn’t wanted to talk to anyone. But at least people had talked to her. She realized now that there was companionship even in ignoring people, and she missed it.
One of the miners brought her a small blanket, and another a pillow, and that made her cage a little more comfortable. She told them that the radiation would poison them slowly, and that they outnumbered the guards three to one. Bu
t they hurried away, their faces full of mistrust. She guessed they had children to feed, in the houses built over the mine. She could hear her father saying, “Now you’re a labor organizer, Janie?”
Out of boredom and frustration, she strained to reach a rock outside her cage, bruising her shoulder against the bars. When she had the rock, she struck it against the heavy padlock, but it was hopeless. It crumbled against the steel.
She heard footsteps and hid the remains of the rock behind her, but it was only Osman, with a guard. She grabbed the bars. “Osman! You have to help me! I’m going crazy in here!”
“I have food,” he said. He thrust a waxed-paper package through the bars of the cage, into her hand. Then he set a bottle of lemonade on the floor. He looked uncomfortable.
“I don’t want a sandwich!” she said.
“It is important to eat,” Osman said, looking her in the eye and nodding to emphasize his words. “Not drink but eat.”
“I don’t want to eat! I want out!”
“It is important,” he said. Then he was gone, back up the tunnel with the guard.
Janie almost hurled the sandwich after them in frustration. Instead, she put it down with the lemonade and turned away in disgust. She didn’t want food. She didn’t want lemonade. She wanted out of this place. She curled up in the corner of the cage, wrapping herself in the little blanket and clutching the pillow to her ears to block out the noise of the mine.
CHAPTER 53
Camouflage
Benjamin waited under a tarp in the jeep, outside the mine’s main entrance, while Osman delivered the sandwich and the bottle to Janie. He had asked to be smuggled into the mine, but Osman said it was impossible. There were too many people watching and spying. But Osman had to pick up a shipment of food at the pier, and he could hide one person in the jeep and leave him near the sea entrance to the mine. Benjamin insisted that he should go: Jin Lo and his father were both wounded, and he was strong. After a brief standoff, his father agreed, and stayed hidden with Jin Lo in the garden.
It was stifling under the tarp, and Benjamin barely dared to breathe. Finally the cook returned. “So?” Benjamin whispered.
The engine started. “It’s a terrible place, the mine,” Osman said.
“But she’s all right?”
“She’s all right.”
“Did she understand?”
“I think so.” He backed up the jeep. “The guard was there. I couldn’t talk.”
Benjamin felt mad with frustration. The jeep headed down a steep hill, taking sharp, slow turns.
“Get out now,” Osman said quietly.
Benjamin slipped out from beneath the tarp and hid himself in the thick tropical undergrowth. The jeep continued down another turn to the pier. Osman called to a uniformed guard, who helped him load a stack of boxes into the jeep and cover them with the tarp. Then the guard climbed into the jeep beside Osman and they drove away, back up the switchbacks cut in the steep hill. Benjamin flattened his body to the ground as they passed.
He was alone, and could survey the pier built out into the ocean. A motorboat was docked alongside it. He guessed there must be a channel dredged in the reef, for boats to come in. He looked for the mine entrance, but saw only trees and the rocky hillside. He moved closer.
Slowly it all came into focus. It was like looking at an optical illusion. A wide door in the hillside had been painted to look like the rocks surrounding it. It was expertly done. A canopy of trees hung over everything, hiding the door from the water.
Janie was inside there somewhere. She should have been able to escape her cage by now. He moved closer, staying low.
He was still thinking about how to get into the mine when strong hands seized his arms on either side. He tried to break free, but two guards in camouflage uniforms, complete with brush on their helmets, held him tight.
CHAPTER 54
Aloha ‘Oe
Pip had never been in an airplane before, and at first he found it delightful. He stared out the window at the clouds below and imagined falling into them, as into soft, white cotton. Angelica Lowell’s father flew the plane himself. Angelica had a stack of American movie magazines, and Pip flipped through them twice, forward and backward. She didn’t play chess, so he played against himself on a little travel set.
He had called Angelica in New York and pitched the idea to her as an island vacation, with the possibility of meeting royalty. Her father did anything she wanted, but he was also keen to test the capabilities of his new plane, which had been fitted with extra fuel tanks for longer distances. It had been shockingly easy to get them to go.
When they landed to refuel in Hawaii, Pip leaped off the plane, full of restless energy from being cooped up so long. Even on the airstrip, the air had the most incredible smell. It was sweet and warm and lush. Angelica noticed it, too.
“Why can’t we just stay here?” she asked.
“Too many people,” Pip said. “Where we’re going, it’s much more exclusive.”
“But I like it here,” Angelica said, gazing at the banks of flowers growing up the airport walls.
“We’re going to a private island,” Pip said. “Empty beaches!”
“I don’t want an empty beach,” Angelica said. “I want to see people. And I’ve run out of magazines.”
“So we’ll stay here,” her father said.
“No!” Pip cried. “We’ll get more magazines!”
But Mr. Lowell was already talking to someone, arranging to keep his plane at the airport.
“That other island is too far,” Angelica said.
“But what about Janie?” Pip asked.
She frowned. “What about Janie?”
“Well, she might be on the island. That’s all.”
“Oh, then we’re definitely staying here,” Angelica said, heading after her father.
Pip wondered if he could steal another plane. But what was he supposed to do, pilot it himself?
Mr. Lowell ushered them both into a cab outside the airport, and kept saying how much he liked this place as they drove past palm trees on their way to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
Angelica glowed, having gotten her way as usual.
“I’ve seen so much of the world because of you, sweetheart,” her father said. “Without you, I would have just stayed home.”
Pip wanted to throw up. It was a hazard he should have anticipated. He’d tied his fortune to a girl who got her way in all things, but he had counted on her way being his way. He’d forgotten that she might change her mind.
So Janie was going to have to hang on a little bit longer, that was all.
CHAPTER 55
Another Ghost
Jin Lo lay on her stomach in the kitchen garden, looking out at the villa’s vast lawn and the white cottages, wondering why the place gave her a bad feeling. Something about it felt corrupted, corrupting. She was trying to decipher the feeling when a golf cart came in through the gate. A man strode out of one of the cottages, in khaki pants and a white shirt. He was tall and thin with an unhurried lope. The way he walked was familiar.
“Look at this man,” she whispered.
Marcus Burrows, who had been studying the cook’s garden, crawled awkwardly over to peer out. The men in the golf cart wore camouflage, and one of them pushed a prisoner out of the cart. The prisoner’s hands were bound behind his back and he had a shirt over his head, blindfolding him. One of the guards pulled it off, and Jin Lo saw Benjamin’s sandy disheveled hair, his eyes wild and blinking and disoriented. His nose was bleeding; someone had hit him.
Marcus Burrows started to leap up, but Jin Lo grabbed his arm and held tight. “Stay,” she whispered.
“Hullo, Benjamin,” the tall man said. His voice was British and military and lazy all at the same time, and his hands were in his pockets. “You’re looking rough.”
“Mr. Danby,” Benjamin said, and Jin Lo understood why the man was familiar. She had seen him in Nova Zembla climbing out of a helicopter.
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br /> “What took you so long?” Danby asked. “Feels like weeks we’ve been kicking around here, waiting.”
“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Benjamin said sarcastically.
“Where’s your old dad?” Danby drawled. He looked around, as if expecting to see Marcus Burrows come waltzing out from behind a tree.
And the amazing thing was that Marcus Burrows did. He stood up and walked out of their hiding place, even as Jin Lo grabbed frantically at his pant cuff. It was the most foolish thing she had ever seen anyone do.
“Let my son go!” he called to the guards.
They all turned to look at this strange apparition.
“No!” Benjamin cried when he saw his father.
But the apothecary kept walking. “I’m the one you want,” he said, in a commanding voice. “Take me instead.”
CHAPTER 56
The Miller’s Daughter
Magnusson came out of the villa with his arms wide in welcome. He was ruddy-faced with white-blond hair, and his smile was so broad and happy that his blue eyes disappeared into the folds of his cheeks. Benjamin wanted to spit at him, but he didn’t. Someone had to have some self-control, if his father was going to do insane things like surrendering to their enemies. Everything had happened too fast, and it clouded Benjamin’s brain with emotion—seeing Danby alive, watching his father walk absurdly across the lawn, and meeting Magnusson. He had to think rationally and figure out what to do next.
They crossed the island again in the jeep and went down the elevator into the mine, which was hot and dirty and suffocating. Benjamin’s fingers had gone numb from having his hands tied behind his back. Guards walked on either side of his father. They walked past tunnels that seemed to descend into the depths of the earth, but Benjamin didn’t see Janie.
Magnusson unlocked a heavy steel door, and they passed into an underground space that was surprisingly clean and cool and ventilated, with a concrete floor and white walls. “Welcome to our mill,” Magnusson said, sounding pleased with himself.