Century #4: Dragon of Seas

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  The island of the eight immortals.

  The helicopter reaches it in just a few minutes and flies over it once: it’s small, not much bigger than a soccer stadium in hard black rock, covered with calcareous concretions, slick seaweed and shells. Glistening rivulets of dark, brackish water stream out from its jagged hollows and flow back into the sea. The frothy ocean waves crash down against its rocky sides. The island is like a giant turtle shell rising up in the middle of the sea. On the turtle’s back are strange rocks that look like spires, sticking out of it like little harpoons.

  “Sir,” the copilot says, pointing at the instruments, “the compass has gone haywire.”

  Nik Knife flies over the atoll a second time, descending even farther.

  Everyone is asking themselves the same question: how can the island rise up from and sink back down into the waves every hundred years? It’s a rare phenomenon, but not impossible. Harvey’s father could explain that in 1963, a series of volcanic eruptions off the southern coast of Iceland created Surtsey Island, which still exists today. Then there’s Ferdinandea, an island that appeared between Sicily and Pantelleria in a matter of days in 1831 and disappeared a few months later. In the Venetian Lagoon, the isles of Caltrazio, Centranica and Ammianella appear and disappear as the tides command. But none of these phantom islands have the same wild, primordial allure as Penglang: magnetic rock capable of interfering with the helicopter’s instruments. Volcanic, furious, contorted. Neither birds nor other animals are in sight; just a few fish flopping around as they try to escape the pools of water in which they’ve been trapped.

  On their third trip over the island, the chopper’s blades raise up sprays of froth. And the strange rocky formations that look like harpoons prove to be something even eerier.

  They’re statues. Ancient profiles of divinities, sovereigns, queens, heroes, giants, goddesses that have been worn away by the water, encrusted with mollusk shells, adorned with stoles and cloaks of seaweed. Statues that were carved into the island’s living rock and now, centuries later, sparkle in the sunshine, eroded and silent.

  But still standing. The statues of the immortal inhabitants of Penglang.

  “Take us down! Land!” Heremit Devil snaps at the pilot, pointing at the rocky black island, his hand trembling.

  The nine-fingered man shakes his head vigorously. “There is no room!” he replies. “Besides, the island has a strong magnetic field! The rotor is not responding as it should and—”

  “Then open the cargo door and lower me down!”

  “Sir, it is dangerous!”

  “Lower me down, I said!”

  Nik Knife points at the helicopter’s gas gauge. The tank is almost half-empty. “Another time, sir! We can come back! We do not have much fuel left. In order to make it back to Shanghai—”

  “I don’t care about getting back to Shanghai! I want to go down onto that blasted island!”

  Nik Knife consults with the copilot. “Twenty minutes, sir!” the copilot says. “Twenty minutes, no more. Then we’ll need to leave or we won’t make it back!”

  “Twenty minutes,” Heremit Devil repeats. “Fine.”

  The lord of the black skyscraper unbuckles his seat belt with shaking hands. His left eye is almost constantly shut now.

  Nik Knife leaves the commands to the copilot, slips on the backpack containing all the objects that belonged to the kids and makes his way into the rear section of the helicopter. He clips a snap hook onto Heremit Devil’s life vest and attaches it to a line that’s connected to the hoist on the Sikorsky’s belly.

  “Well, then, we will go down, sir!” he says, shouting so that he’ll be heard over the roar of the rotors. “Are you certain?”

  “Open the door!”

  A blast of ice-cold air mixed with a spray of water sweeps over the side of the helicopter. The copilot corrects their angle, passing over the island for the fourth time.

  “I will lower you down now,” Nik Knife says. “When you reach the ground, unhook yourself here and here!”

  Heremit Devil’s eyes slowly drink up the mystery of the volcanic rock. He feels ruthless euphoria running through his veins, making his temples throb and his hands go numb. A mix of panic and terror, of omnipotence and grandeur. Heremit Devil takes three steps toward the door and reaches the edge, his legs as heavy as bricks.

  “Them too!” he shouts as he prepares to lower himself down the line. “I want them to come, too!”

  Nik Knife tries to protest, but the man doesn’t give him the chance. His fourth step is into thin air. Then the hoist slowly starts to lower him toward the place he’s been trying to track down for five years.

  The place others have kept secret for six thousand years.

  The moment she’s dangling in the void, her hands free, Mistral rips the gag off her mouth and breathes in the damp air, which is pungent and salty. Harvey and Sheng are already on the ground, six meters below her. Elettra is peering out of the cargo door, beside Nik Knife. Mistral breathes in hungrily as the wind stirs her hair. When she’s only a meter off the ground, Harvey and Sheng help her, unclipping the line and leaving it free to go back up to the helicopter.

  “It’s beautiful!” Sheng exclaims, his voice filled with a strange exhilaration. “It’s a beautiful island!”

  Mistral looks around, thinking the exact opposite. Penglang is dark, harsh, slimy and pummeled by waves coming from every direction. Beyond the edge of the rocks, the seafloor seems to drop straight down, becoming an abyss of black water.

  Heremit Devil is a few steps away from them, his hair blowing in the wind. His left eye shut. Hands in his pockets. His body moving awkwardly.

  He’s afraid, Mistral thinks, looking at him. For a man who’s never left his building, the sight of such a wild, primitive island must be quite a shock.

  Mistral shades her eyes with her hand and watches Elettra’s descent. A few seconds later, the Italian girl touches down and unclips herself. The kids hug, holding each other tight. They’re together again.

  Nik Knife comes down last, and the moment he reaches the ground, he checks his watch. “Eighteen minutes!” he shouts to his boss as the helicopter flies off over the open sea.

  The noise of the chopper blades fades away.

  Leaving only the wind and waves.

  And a barren island of black rock.

  “So this is the objective behind everything?” shouts the man who’s been pursuing them all this time. “A reef? Show me what we’re looking for.”

  “We don’t know what we’re looking for,” Harvey replies, the other three behind him. The four kids are standing close together, forming a sort of wall. They made it here together and they’re going to stick together to the very end.

  Heremit Devil laughs. But it’s a nervous, hollow laugh. “I don’t believe you!” he exclaims. “I don’t believe that your masters didn’t tell you what was on this island!”

  “Why don’t you tell us?” Elettra shoots back. Her hair is whirling in the wind.

  “The archeologist didn’t know!” Heremit Devil shouts.

  Nik Knife walks over to one of the statues sticking out of the rock. It looks like a man with bare legs and sandals.

  “None of them knew,” Mistral says. She turns to the others, waiting for them to back her up. “We’re the first ones to get here.”

  “I want an explanation!” Heremit threatens. “We didn’t come all this way for nothing! I want to know what gave my son his power!”

  Sheng takes a step forward, his palm raised in a peaceful gesture. “The truth is, none of us knows why everything led here, Heremit. But … maybe … maybe there’s a reason we all ended up here.”

  Sheng is right. The kids feel a vibration here on the island. It’s as if their hearts are bigger. Their heads more receptive. Their eyes sharp, their ears attentive, their noses and throats more sensitive than they’ve ever been before.

  Heremit Devil looks around suspiciously. He doesn’t feel any of these vibrations.
He only has a desperate desire to understand. To find something. To take it with him.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” he says, stepping aside. “Give me the answer I’m looking for … or I’ll leave you here.”

  The kids begin to explore the rocks.

  Apart from the statues, there’s no sign that humans have ever been on the island.

  Harvey rests his hands on the ground and listens.

  “What do you hear?”

  “The sea. And voices. They’re faint. Far away. Really far away. I … I can’t make out a single word of it.”

  Mistral continues to watch Heremit. He’s walked up to the edge of the rocks, where he lets the spray from the waves wash over him. Near him, Nik Knife is constantly checking his watch.

  “Let’s think this through,” Elettra says. “How long has it been since anyone stepped foot on this island?”

  “Our masters never made it this far.”

  “Neither did the ones before them.”

  “And we don’t know what happened before that. But we can bet nobody’s been here for at least … two hundred years?”

  “One, two, three …,” Elettra starts to count. “And seven. Seven statues. Just like …”

  “The days of the week,” Harvey says.

  “The tops,” Mistral says.

  “The Jesuit said something about eight immortals,” Sheng remembers.

  The statues are featureless figures, worn and eroded.

  Sheng studies how they’re arranged. “These four … make a sort of rectangle.”

  “With a handle … formed by these other three statues,” Elettra says, following his logic.

  “Seven statues, seven stars,” Harvey concludes. “Yeah, you’re right. The statues are positioned like Ursa Major!”

  “What does Ursa Major point to?” Elettra asks.

  “It always revolves around the North Star.”

  “Six thousand years ago, the North Star didn’t point north,” Sheng says. “Six thousand years ago, north was marked by a star in the constellation Draco.…”

  “To find the North Star, you need to triple the short side of the Dipper … in this direction. One … two …” Harvey begins to take long strides over the rocks.

  When he sees them walking away, Heremit Devil turns and motions to Nik Knife.

  “Eleven … and twelve!” Harvey exclaims, stopping between the island’s slick black stones.

  “See anything?”

  The boy looks around. Rocks, rocks, rocks. And a pool of brackish water. He sinks his hands into the icy water and finds that the stone below has a different texture.

  “Come help me!” he shouts to the others.

  Nik Knife starts running.

  The four kids kneel down and scoop out the water with their hands as fast as they can, revealing a stone circle that looks like the base of a statue. It’s a meter in diameter and thirty centimeters tall. The outer circumference of the base is protected by a copper ring. Harvey digs his foot into the rock and pries it up. Below it, carved all around the base are seven round holes.

  “It looks like a submarine hatch,” Elettra murmurs.

  “A door?” Harvey wonders.

  Sheng sits down on the wet rock. “Okay, but how do we open it?” He points at the seven holes around it. He smiles faintly, turns to Nik Knife, who’s a few paces away from them, and waves him over.

  “What do you want from him?” Elettra whispers.

  “I need the tops,” Sheng replies.

  Heremit Devil joins them, too, and Nik Knife shows him the strange round base. When the man nods, the knife thrower takes the tops out of the backpack one by one. When the tops are inserted into the round holes, they slide into place and their metal tips interlock with an ancient mechanism. Heremit personally inserts his own top, the one with the skull on it.

  Then Harvey tries pushing on the base, but nothing happens. He asks for help from the others. Even from Nik Knife.

  “C’mon!”

  “It’s moving!”

  With a groan, the stone base slides aside, revealing a complex notched mechanism that kept it clasped to the surrounding rock with an airtight seal.

  It really is a rudimentary hatch.

  And now there’s a stairway leading down into the darkness.

  The knife thrower looks at his watch and then at the helicopter, which is little more than a speck on the horizon. “Ten minutes!” he exclaims, worried.

  “CECILE?” FERNANDO MELODIA ASKS FALTERINGLY INTO THE GOLD phone at the Grand Hyatt.

  “Fernando?” Mistral’s mother asks, surprised.

  She spent a sleepless night hoping to hear from her daughter. She was expecting something more reassuring than the simple text she received after their escape from the hotel.

  Meanwhile, Cecile followed the instructions from the man with the baseball cap, that Jacob Mahler she first met in Paris. She couldn’t sleep, aware that what was going on was no longer a simple treasure hunt.

  Someone was sitting in the hotel lobby, spying on her.

  “You need to go down to the lobby,” Jacob Mahler ordered her. “Make sure you’re dressed up and that people notice you, but don’t look at anybody. Order room service. For three people. Raise your voice so others can hear you. Speak in French.”

  Cecile had to convince the man keeping tabs on her that she intended to spend the whole night in the room. Then she switched on the television in Elettra’s room, turning up the volume so it could be heard from the hallway.

  Cecile waited a whole night without sleeping. She kept up the ruse the next day: breakfast for three from room service. Lunch. She went down to the reception desk to order it, and when she was heading back upstairs, she tried to peek through the elevator doors to observe the other guests sitting in the lobby, reading the paper. She hoped to discover which of them might be the mysterious spy they had to avoid.

  These are the thoughts whirling through Cecile’s mind the moment she recognizes Fernando’s voice.

  “Are you all right, Cecile?” Elettra’s father asks her.

  “Yes, of course. Where are you?”

  “Below you.”

  A wave of relief sweeps over the young perfume designer’s face.

  “I’m in the lobby,” the man specifies.

  Fernando is there, in Shanghai, just a few floors away. “What are you doing in the lobby?”

  “I came to help you. How are things going? The kids?”

  “Come upstairs. Room four-oh-five.”

  Minutes later, to their own surprise, Cecile Blanchard and Fernando Melodia are in each other’s arms. Fernando tells her he made the mistake of taking the world’s fastest train, spending almost two hours to reach the Grand Hyatt. He hasn’t made a reservation and there aren’t any rooms available. But he’s planning on sleeping in Elettra’s room next door.

  “We’ve had problems,” Cecile finally says. She tells him about the man called Jacob Mahler and his escape with the girls.

  “A guy about this tall … with gray hair?” Fernando asks, still holding Cecile in his arms, with less and less embarrassment.

  “You know him?”

  “I fought him,” he replies with understandable exaggeration.

  His words have an instant effect: Cecile feels she has a real man beside her and buries her face even deeper into Fernando’s sweater.

  “I haven’t held anyone like this,” he suddenly says, “since Elettra’s mother passed away.”

  These words also have an instant effect: Cecile pulls away from him and comes up with a series of nonexistent problems and unnecessary justifications. “Oh, Fernando, I’m sorry, it’s just that I—I didn’t mean to, but—but I don’t really know what—”

  Then she opens her eyes wide, surprised.

  Fernando Melodia is kissing her.

  Then they tell each other everything they have to tell, from the discovery of the golden patterns in the Veil of Isis to Aunt Irene’s role in the whole situation. Behind the river,
the sun sets, if it ever came out, and the rain dies down.

  The two parents check their cell phones. No calls. No messages.

  “Maybe we should go out,” Fernando suggests.

  She’s at a loss. “What if the kids call?”

  “Then they call. They’re called mobile phones because they’re mobile.”

  “Mahler said we were being watched, and that we might be followed.”

  Fernando takes Cecile’s hands in his own and squeezes them gently. “Let’s let them follow us, then.”

  * * *

  After changing their minds a hundred times, Fernando and Cecile decide to leave on foot.

  They step out onto the damp sidewalk the moment the streetlights and signs begin to light up. They walk along the river and past shops, turn down a side street and walk back up the blocks among the skyscrapers, their necks craned skyward. They watch as helicopters scan the streets with their big, white searchlights. They see police cars pass by, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Their hearts in their mouths and knots in their stomachs, they follow them.

  They enter Century Park at seven forty-five, a quarter of an hour before the gates will be closed for the night.

  On the other end of the park, helicopters are circling around a black glass and steel skyscraper and another nearby building, whose top floor is engulfed in smoke.

  “A fire. Or a gas leak,” Fernando guesses. He doesn’t realize it, but he’s staring at Jacob Mahler’s former home.

  He has no way of knowing that someone from Heremit Devil’s security team opened a door that was better left shut.

  The two stand there for a long time, staring at the lights and listening to the helicopters.

  “What did you say?” Cecile asks him.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  She looks around and asks, “Down where?”

  “Down where what?”

  “Didn’t you say ‘Down here’?”

  “No, I didn’t say anything.…”

  Then Fernando also hears someone shouting. It’s a distant voice, but it sounds so close. And it’s asking for help. In Italian, of all things.

  “Help! Can anybody hear me? Help! I’m down here! Down here!” the stranger shouts with a desperate tone.