by Dan Jolley
The four of them filed onto the ferry and, at Brett’s suggestion, climbed up to the top level. The air was already cold, and that high up, the wind had some real teeth to it. But up top they could stand along the guardrail and get a postcard view of the city, the island ahead of them, and the water below.
Not that Brett wanted a good view of the water. Since Charlie had drowned, Brett hated the bay. The others probably thought he was trying to be brave, choosing water as his element at last night’s friendship ritual. But that’s only because they didn’t get it. They’d never get it. Not even Lily.
Brett had been the only one on that boat with Charlie. He was the only one who knew why they’d capsized.
He still couldn’t close his eyes without seeing the flash of blood that came when the mainsail crashed against Charlie’s head. The terror in Charlie’s eyes when he went under the silvery water that last time. Brett had reached for his brother. He’d tried with everything he had to save him. But Brett wasn’t strong or tough or brave enough. He wasn’t good enough.
Charlie went under and never came back up. Brett was left alone with nothing but the cold of the bay around him and the howl of his own scream in his ears.
No. Choosing water last night hadn’t been an act of bravery.
It was penance.
Even the idea of going on a boat still made him light-headed. But he had no choice—and he figured Gabe would enjoy it.
Gabe didn’t seem capable of enjoying anything, though. He looked so down, he might as well have had “I feel guilty about arguing with my uncle” tattooed across his forehead.
“I hope we can see the sea lions from the boat,” Kaz said, and when Gabe perked up, he continued. “I mean, maybe it sounds lame, but I like watching them even when they’re just napping there.”
Gabe smiled, and Lily jumped in. “Sea lions are way better than seals. I was down in Monterey one time, visiting my cousin, and we went out to the shore. There’s no beach or anything; it’s just big rocks, and I climbed out onto one of them, and suddenly there’s a seal head poking up out of the water. Just staring at me. And then I noticed another. And another.”
Gabe laughed. “They were just floating there?”
“Yeah! I don’t know if I was on their rock or what, but I counted fourteen seals, just floating there in the water, their heads sticking up, all of them giving me the hairy eyeball. It was a little creepy.”
Gabe laughed again. Brett looked away. Kaz and Lily had what you call “people skills.” They were both so nice. Kaz was a worrier, definitely, but just last week he’d given Brett his own rubber boots, right off his feet, because Brett had farther to walk in the rain. Brett had never known a more loyal friend. And Lily . . . she was so sweet to everybody. Everybody. Even him. She’d sat and talked with him for five hours straight after they all came home from the funeral and finally ended up singing some ridiculous song from a Disney movie just to cheer him up.
And all the while, Brett knew she must blame him for Charlie’s death.
Just like their parents did.
Brett’s mom and dad had never said anything like that to him, but he could tell. He saw it in their looks, heard it in their voices. They hated him for what happened to their firstborn son, and he knew Lily must hate him, too. But that was all right.
No one could hate Brett more than he hated himself.
Only one way to change that.
I’ve got to see Charlie.
That’s why he was doing all of this. Brett didn’t know if his Friend could really deliver on what he’d promised, but it was worth the risk of finding out. Passing up a chance—no matter how slim—of seeing Charlie again? That was something Brett couldn’t live with.
Careful not to let anyone see what he was doing, Brett touched the lump on a chain under his shirt: the gold signet ring he’d taken from Gabe’s uncle’s office. That was what had started all this. Not the map. Not the friendship ritual. He’d found the ring before any of that. Brett had been poking through Dr. Conway’s bedroom one evening while the rest of them played Xbox. He’d found a tiny black box hidden inside a drawer, and it—he felt cheesy saying it—“called to him.” It wasn’t like Gollum’s “preciousssss.” But he opened the box, saw gold gleaming, and before he even knew what he was doing, the ring was in his pocket.
A seagull flew past. Brett blinked at it and looked around the ferry. He felt his throat going hot; that familiar wet feeling in his eyes. He shook himself. Don’t think about being on the water, idiot. Just don’t think about it.
To distract himself, he fingered the ring through his shirt, making out the lump of the signet, then the slim gold band. He didn’t dare take it out just then for fear Gabe would recognize it, but he’d spent enough hours staring at it to know its design by heart. Like a wheel, it was a circle divided by five spokes. Without the ring, he’d never have started having the dreams—the dreams that turned out to be all too real—and he’d never have met his Friend. He wouldn’t have gotten any of these instructions.
Without the ring, he wouldn’t have any chance of talking to Charlie again.
While Lily and Kaz kept up their chatter, which did seem to be taking Gabe’s mind off the domestic apocalypse he’d be facing when he got home, Brett reached into his backpack and, taking a deep breath, pulled out the Tablet. This time he was prepared for the rush of heat, but it wasn’t as overpowering as the first time, and his hands stayed steady. That’s when he realized that the Tablet wasn’t a solid slab of stone, but actually a kind of book sheathed in the strange, crystalline-green material. Thick, oddly durable-looking pages were bound inside it.
His Friend wanted this thing pretty badly. What’s he going to do with it? How is this going to help me see Charlie again? Brett could only imagine.
Brett would do anything to see his brother. Anything.
Gabe’s voice pulled his attention away from the Tablet’s pages. “Brett! You stole that out of Uncle Steve’s office?”
Brett could think of zero responses. He tried for a sheepish sort of grin but wasn’t sure how well he pulled it off. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did.” When Gabe just goggled at him, he went on: “This thing knocked us all out, didn’t it? I wanted to get a closer look.”
Kaz crowded over his shoulder, peering at the pages. “I’d forgotten all about it. Now that you mention it, I remember we talked about it for a second, but it totally fell out of my head. How weird is that?”
Lily came up behind Brett’s other shoulder. “I know what you mean. The whole thing in the office feels really hazy.” She frowned. “But how is that possible? It just happened.”
Brett shrugged. Since he’d met his Friend, he’d learned that nearly anything was possible.
Gabe frowned. “I just remember how angry Uncle Steve was. And still is. Jeez, this is only going to make it worse.” But he joined the others, trying to get a look at the Tablet.
Brett had never seen script like the flowing letters that filled the Tablet’s thick, slightly yellowed pages. He had no idea what any of the symbols meant—but the ink was a brilliant, shimmering blue, so vivid the letters seemed to hover above the paper. The unnerving blue danced in Brett’s eyes . . .
. . . and his gaze slid past the pages to the water rushing by below the ferry. A shiver started around his heart and spread out to the tips of his fingers and toes, all the way to the ends of every hair on his head. Brett’s hatred of water, revulsion at the mere sight of water, clanged inside his head like an alarm, and yet—
And yet . . .
Brett’s eyes widened. Shimmering blue words like waves danced between him and the water.
Beyond them, Brett saw the water. For the first time, he really saw it. The tiny curls of the waves, the perfect snow-like whitecaps, the delicate whirlpools that appeared and vanished in the ferry’s wake. And if he concentrated, focused his will with enough force, he was sure he could see the flowing, shimmering words from the Tablet inscribing themselves onto the water itself.
As if the water and the text were different voices but both singing the same song, in exquisite harmony.
“What do you think made it change from gold to green like that?” Kaz’s voice, inquisitive as ever, snapped Brett out of his trance. Kaz went on. “And we couldn’t get it open before, right? Could we?”
“Check out that funky lettering,” Gabe said, one finger hovering over the Tablet as if daring himself to touch the tip of a needle or an open flame. “I’ve never seen script like that. All sharp and angled. And how’d they get that shade of red? Looks like paint off a sports car.”
Lily and Kaz exchanged glances, both of them frowning. Lily said, “Gabe, I think you might’ve hit your head harder than we thought. That lettering isn’t red. It’s white and silver. And it’s not pointy, either. It’s kind of swirly.”
Kaz rolled his eyes. “Are we even looking at the same book? I don’t know what language that is, but all blocky like that, I wouldn’t even call it ‘script.’ Those symbols were stamped on there, like with a bunch of carved rocks or something.” When Gabe and Lily just stared blankly at him, Kaz finished with “And the ink is green. Okay, you guys are looking at me really weird. I don’t have a booger, do I?”
The bay grabbed Brett’s attention, and he pushed his friends’ voices aside. Though it sang to him, he didn’t like the water. There was something tempting in the strange words that filled its every swell and whirl, but he also saw Charlie’s face disappearing under its waves, his brother’s mouth open in one last scream.
Brett wanted to get off this boat and back onto land. The ferry was going fast, but he wanted to go faster. As far as he was concerned, they couldn’t get to Alcatraz soon enough. Faster, he thought, staring at the swirls of glyphs churning just below the cold surface. Faster. The bay drew him in again, and when he stared at it just right, the script beneath the surface coalesced into a single symbol. Round and flowing and . . . and powerful. Brett knew it. He could feel its power.
Trying to cement this glyph in his mind, Brett traced the symbol in the air with his finger, and almost dropped the Tablet in shock when the symbol appeared in the air where he’d traced it, lingering there as if he’d written on the wind itself, first blazing in a searing blue, then darkening into a deep, brilliant gold.
Faster.
There was a surge of pure velocity. Brett’s neck whiplashed at the unexpected speed. He tumbled to the deck with everyone else as a sudden wave lifted the ferry and sent it hurtling toward the rocky shore.
4
The ferry lurched so fast and so hard, for a second Gabe thought the deck had come up and hit him square on the side of the head. Only when he started sliding across it did he realize he’d lost his balance and fallen.
Panicked, trying his best not to scream, Gabe managed to grab one of the railing’s posts and held on tight. The ferry had tilted sharply toward its bow, and as passengers slid and flailed and screamed around them, it rocketed toward the shore ahead as if fired out of a cannon.
But even as the speed of the ferry registered in Gabe’s mind, everything around him slowed to a crawl. A middle-aged man in a business suit tumbled past, feet barely touching the deck, but Gabe could read the time of day on the man’s wristwatch. Even, if he squinted, what brand of watch it was.
Lily had grabbed hold of the railing a few feet in front of Gabe, her dark hair rippling in the rushing wind, and Gabe could feel, could almost see, each and every current of air, every tendril and wisp of that wind as individual entities.
Beneath him, Gabe heard the grinding of each tooth on every gear as the captain threw the ferry into reverse. He felt the surging mechanical energy—the fire—of the engine as it was pushed to its limit. This impossible awareness, this knowledge of the world around him, sank right through the boat’s hull and plunged into the icy depths of the bay. Freezing water currents slid across his skin, shivering and twitching with the tiny disturbances of swimming fish. Startled, Gabe forced himself to look up into the sky, but then his gaze was drawn like a magnet to the sun, blazing white-hot in the east. Gabe was suddenly overwhelmed by the heat. It couldn’t have been more than sixty degrees on the bay—it never got really hot in San Francisco—but Gabe felt as if flames were searing his skin. The sun was burning his eyes, but he was having trouble looking away, too. He’d never noticed how beautiful the sun was before. How powerful . . .
He felt so small, so tiny and insignificant, a single particle in the vast mosaic that made up the planet. And yet he was a part of it, just as he realized it was a part of him. His mind felt raw, peeled open and restructured, and tears squeezed out of his eyes as he marveled at the majesty of it all.
But just as fragments of a dream disappear on waking, that vast, beautiful, terrible knowledge fled, and Gabe was just himself again, a frightened boy clinging for dear life to a runaway ferry. The rocky shore of the island loomed ahead of them, promising a grinding, painful death, and silently Gabe said, Stop. Stop. Stop!
Next to him, Lily stood, let go of the railing, and threw up her arms as if to shield her face from impact . . . and a roaring, gale-force wind sprang up and slammed straight into the ferry’s prow. The few passengers who’d made it back to their unsteady feet tumbled to the deck again. Gabe had to grab on even more tightly—for just that moment he felt as if he’d stuck his head into a wind tunnel—but Lily stood there, holding on to nothing, arms up in that defensive posture, solid as an ancient oak tree.
She stayed that way as the ferry slowed and fishtailed to one side. Only when it bumped to a stop against the dock did she lower her arms.
Gabe wondered exactly what he had just seen.
“What just happened?” Kaz asked as he and Brett got to their feet. Other passengers around them did the same, some sort of wobbly, many grabbing on to rails and other people to steady themselves. Kaz shook his head. “What was that?”
With some effort, Gabe let go of the railing. Brett stood behind Kaz, the Tablet still in his grip but apparently forgotten. Lily hadn’t moved. She just stood there staring at her hands as if wondering what the strange, wiggly objects at the ends of her wrists were.
Gabe swallowed hard. “Rogue wave? Maybe? Brett, are you okay?”
“Fine. I’m . . . fine.” Brett’s eyes finally focused, and he swiveled his head to look up at the huge, blocky barracks looming above them.
“Was that weird enough for you, Brett?” Kaz asked. “Can we go back now?”
“Are you kidding?” Gabe couldn’t have said exactly why, but now that the bizarre crisis seemed to be over, something about arriving at the island filled him with energy and excitement. Suddenly he couldn’t wait to get off the ferry and start exploring. “We’re here! Come on, come on. Let’s go!”
“But do you think we have to, like, fill out a report or something?” Kaz asked. “And what if we have whiplash? Or concussions? You guys, do my pupils look dilated?”
“First that thing in your uncle’s office, and now this,” Lily said, shaking her head. “I didn’t think we’d ever top last night’s field trip, but so far it’s a close call.”
“And we haven’t even gone inside yet!” Gabe said.
After a park ranger came and apologized for the unforeseen events with the ferry, and apologized again, and hinted sort of broadly that it would be great if no one decided to sue the National Park Service, Gabe ushered his friends off the ferry and onto the dock. His eyes stayed wide as they climbed higher and higher on the island. A glance over his shoulder showed him the bay stretching away from the docks, and the distant city sprawled and gleaming across the hillsides.
Ahead of them, a perky guide led part of the group who’d been on their ferry on a tour. She chattered away at them about the island’s history—how it was named La Isla de los Alcatraces, or “Island of the Pelicans,” by the Spanish in 1775, and how “Alcatraces” became “Alcatraz.” She also mentioned how the Native Americans who lived in the area stayed away from the island because they believed it to be cursed.
“Great,” Kaz muttered. “Just what we need.”
“That ferry ride felt plenty cursed to me,” Lily said. She glanced back down the steep hill to the wharf, frowning.
Staying on the edge of the tour group, they moved past the fire-gutted husk of the former Officers’ Club and the island’s lighthouse. “The oldest lighthouse on the West Coast!” the tour guide chirped. The guide also mentioned how, when the US military decided to establish a fort there, they found the island covered with a layer of bird poop, thanks to the countless numbers of birds that nested here. “They even called it ‘Guano Island’!” She paused for laughter, and Gabe thought she’d be waiting for quite a long time.
Gabe looked around at his friends but saw Kaz at the back of the group, standing still and staring at the ground. “Kaz? You all right?”
Kaz lifted one foot, then the other, and looked up at Gabe. “Guys? Does the ground feel sort of . . . buzzy to you?”
Lily came back to join them. “Buzzy?”
Kaz nodded. “Like, sort of vibrate-y. It comes and goes, sort of regular, like . . . I don’t know.”
Lily cocked an eyebrow at Kaz. “What, like machinery? There could be some big engine running around here. Maybe you’re feeling that?”
Kaz shook his head, clearly troubled. “No, it feels more like . . . snoring?”
Gabe echoed Kaz: “Snoring?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I just feel something is all.”
Lily said, “Brett, do you feel anything?” She looked around but saw that her brother was standing about thirty feet away, staring at a blank wall. “Hey! Hermano! What’re you doing?”
Brett shook his head and walked over. “Sorry. Daydreaming. What?”
Gabe said, “Kaz thinks he can feel some sort of vibration in the ground. Said it was like something snoring.”
“Snoring,” Brett repeated, in his “I’m going to give you endless crap about this” voice.
Kaz sighed.
Lily knelt and put both hands on the ground. She shook her head. “I don’t feel anything. Sorry.”