by Geoff Rodkey
Pembroke was yelling curses at me, demanding help. I didn’t even glance back at him.
Instead, I rolled onto my hip to get a better angle, then lowered my left foot toward the lava.
Right away, the collar began to sear my skin again.
Hold it . . . hold it . . .
I ground my teeth against the pain.
Yes!
The left foot was free of its chain. Now the right. I rolled over onto my other hip.
The mountain was rumbling beneath me. Pembroke was screaming. My left ankle was burning with pain.
I lowered my right foot toward the lava.
My leg began to shake. I couldn’t make it stop.
I pulled it back, bending the knee and letting it rest on the shale.
Deep breaths. Don’t panic.
I tried again.
The iron began to sizzle. The pain of the hot collar rose against my ankle.
I screamed. But I held on.
Then it was done and I was up, limping, hopping, both collars burning hot against my ankles.
It’ll cool. It can’t get worse.
I heard a roar of fury behind me.
“— SAVAGES!”
I turned around. Pembroke was kneeling over the hole he’d dug, halfway between me and the three-foot-wide stream of lava I had to cross to escape. I hopped in his direction, and as I got close, I saw the treasure.
It was piled into a wooden box the size of a small coffin. Pembroke had pried open the lid with his shovel head, and now he was digging frantically through loose mounds of little white seashells, searching in vain for something more.
But there wasn’t any more.
The shells were the treasure.
Thousands upon thousands of them. A fortune in Native money.
A century ago, when the Okalu still ruled the New Lands, there was no end to what those shells might have bought. You could have raised an army with them.
Even now, back in the New Lands, there were tribes who traded with them. You could get an awful lot of corn pancakes and blankets for that many shells.
But not a ship. And not an army. Nothing Pembroke wanted.
He plunged his hand into the pile and threw a fistful of shells at me like an angry toddler.
“—!”
Then he turned, reaching back behind him, and I realized too late he was going for his gun. As he brought it back around, I started to run, but I tripped and fell hard on my stomach as the pistol roared.
The shot didn’t hit me, but I kicked up so much ash when I fell that I opened my eyes into a cloud of it. I struggled to my knees, eyes burning from the ash, and the first thing I saw when my vision started to clear was Pembroke coming at me with the shovel.
I ducked and rolled, but that kicked up more ash, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut as I spluttered backward. When I opened them again, he was looming up over me, framed in a blossom of orange fire spewing into the sky behind him as he raised the shovel to bring it down on my skull.
Then he was staggering sideways, yelling in pain and surprise, and as he spun away from me, I could’ve sworn I saw a monkey straddling his head.
I lurched to my feet, woozy and confused, and I heard a screech and a yell and a clank, and then there was a monkey flying past me through the air, off the end of Pembroke’s shovel.
“CLEM!”
It was Adonis, running full speed at Pembroke, screaming vengeance for his pet, but there was more fury than brains behind the attack, and Pembroke caught my brother hard in the chest with the shovel and knocked him off his feet.
Adonis landed on his back, coughing blind in his own little cloud of ash. Pembroke started for him.
Lying near my foot was one of the big smooth rocks that had marked the treasure. I picked it up and hurled it at Pembroke’s head.
I missed. It sailed right past his nose and struck the shovel near the top of the handle just as he was cocking it back.
The shock of it threw Pembroke off just long enough for Adonis to roll out of the shovel’s range and scramble backward toward me in a cloud of ash.
I got to my feet, looking for another big rock, but the only thing within reach was Pembroke’s unloaded pistol. So I threw that.
I missed again.
As Pembroke ducked the pistol, I saw a burst of bright orange out of the corner of my eye as a fresh geyser spit up from the hillside not twenty feet above us.
Lava began to pour down the hill toward Pembroke. With all his focus on Adonis and me, he didn’t see it coming—but with just three steps along the hillside toward us, he’d be out of its path.
He raised the shovel and took the first step in our direction.
“TELL ME MORE ABOUT MY MOTHER!” I screamed.
He paused.
“What?!”
The lava was rushing toward him.
“I WANT TO KNOW THINGS!”
He snorted in disgust and began moving again. “Too late for—”
“DID YOU LOVE HER?”
The question caught him short for half a second—just enough time for the molten rock to reach his right foot, burning through his boot in an instant and unbalancing him enough that he fell sideways, right into the oncoming stream.
I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of his scream.
By the time the screaming stopped and I opened my eyes again, there was nothing left of Roger Pembroke but a cloud of vapor.
I turned to look for my brother. He was a few feet away, wailing over the motionless body of his monkey.
“Cleeeeeeem!”
CLEM WASN’T DEAD—or at least, Adonis insisted he wasn’t. My brother clutched the monkey to his chest as we ran down the mountain, leaping and dodging the rivulets of lava that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
Deadweather was melting under our feet.
Back in Port Scratch, we came across Mung wandering up the main street in a daze, holding a rag to the bloody gash behind what was left of his head.
I would have hugged him, but there wasn’t time.
We fetched the oars from Pembroke’s boat and piled into the bigger longboat that Adonis and Mung had rowed in from the ship they’d been on—the one Pembroke and I had passed on our way into port.
Then we started to paddle with everything we had.
In my case, “everything” wasn’t much. I could barely lift an oar, my eyes were seeing two of everything, and my brain was so addled I didn’t really understand what was happening or how I’d wound up in a boat with Adonis and Mung and a comatose monkey.
They tried to explain it to me. The ship they’d jumped from was a patched-together salvage that had taken the field pirates the better part of a week to make seaworthy after they’d hauled it off the beach where it had been wrecked years before. They hadn’t had much choice: after the initial, minor eruption that had set the volcano raining smoke and ash over the island, they’d all run down from the plantation to Port Scratch, only to find the town deserted and the Sea Goblin—the last functional ship on Deadweather—already a mile out of the harbor.
The field pirates had put to sea as soon as they finished patching the ship together, only to pass Pembroke and me on our way in. Mung had recognized me, and he’d demanded that the field pirates come back and pick me up. They’d voted on it, and saving my life had lost by a margin of thirty-five to two.
But then Mung had persuaded them to let him go alone in one of the longboats they’d piled on the deck in case their salvage sank, and since they had extra, nobody could think of a reason to say no.
It sounded like Adonis had come along mostly out of guilt, which was an emotion I’d never known he was capable of. Clem had initially stayed behind, but once Mung and Adonis got the boat in the water, the field pirates had thrown the monkey in after them.
The
y’d started for shore, but Adonis couldn’t row fast enough for Mung’s liking, and about a quarter mile out, there’d been an argument that ended with Mung jumping from the boat and swimming the rest of the way. Which was why he’d showed up dripping wet and much sooner than Adonis, who’d seen Pembroke and me leaving town in the direction of the Devil’s Pimple while he was still rowing in.
After Adonis docked, he’d followed us up through the Valley of the Choke Plants, which was pretty easy on account of the trail I’d left by dragging the heavy chain through the brush.
It was a slightly complicated story, and a hard one to explain while rowing for your life from a volcano on the brink of an apocalyptic eruption. Which was why I was still struggling to understand even the basics of it when the volcano finally did erupt.
Adonis claims that when the ultimate explosion came, the sky went black, the ocean heaved, and we all screamed in mortal terror until the falling ash grew so thick we couldn’t open our mouths anymore. Then we floated, lost and helpless and coughing ash, until Sunrise Island appeared on the horizon, buried under its own layer of gray ash.
And when we pulled into Blisstown, the combination of pirate attack and erupting volcano had turned the rich and colorful place we used to envy into a desolate wreck that was every bit as beaten down and grim as Port Scratch ever had been.
But I don’t remember any of that. I read in a book once that bears in cold climates hibernate when winter comes and the land turns harsh, shutting their bodies down until it’s spring and life is easier again.
I think something like that must have happened to me. I’d seen more than my share of trouble, and when the eruption blotted out the sun, my body finally decided enough was enough, and that it was time to check out for a while and not come back until somebody else had fixed things, or at least swept up some of that ash.
CHAPTER 37
Happy Endings
I WOKE UP. Millicent was sitting at the edge of the bed, looking down at me.
“Oh, hel-lo,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“I love you,” I said.
She smiled her perfect smile.
“I love you, too.”
She leaned down and kissed me lightly on the lips. Then she straightened up in a hurry.
“Would you do that again?” I asked.
She frowned. “Eventually,” she said. “But not until you’ve cleaned your teeth. And eaten something with a lot of mint. Or perhaps fennel.”
She reached her hand out and brushed the hair back from my forehand. “And had a very hot bath. You’re quite smelly, you know. I’ll fetch a servant to draw the water. I can’t wait to tell the others—they’ll be so glad you’re awake.”
“How long was I out?”
“A week or more. We were quite worried at first. But then you started to snore, and talk in your sleep, and the doctor said that was a good sign, and you were probably just exhausted.”
“Have you been here the whole time? Sitting with me?”
“Every waking minute,” she said in a breathy, romantic voice.
“Really?”
She grinned, scrunching up her nose. “No. Not really. I poke my head in a couple of times a day. It was just luck I happened to be here now.”
She stood up.
“Do hurry with the bath, won’t you? Everyone’s dying to see you, but it really would be better if you were less grungy.” Her face brightened. “And it’s almost lunchtime! Are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Wonderful! You’ll see them all then. We’ll have a feast in your honor. Your uncle’s here, you know.”
“He is?”
“Yes. Arrived the other day. He’s staying with us.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “You’ll never believe it . . . but there’s a movement afoot to make him governor.”
“What?”
She laughed. “I know! It’s madness! But the whole island’s a complete mess, what with the sacking and the volcano and the mine shutting down, and people seem to think the firm hand of Commodore Longtrousers”—she rolled her eyes at the name—“is just what’s needed to set things right.
“Of course, that’s provided they can persuade him to take the job,” she continued. “He says he’s retired. Keeps going on about his gardening. It’s rather strange. Anyway . . .”
She started for the door.
“I’ll tell Mother to hold lunch until you can join us. And I’ll make sure there’s jelly bread. But do hurry—I mean, if you’re up for it.”
“I am. Definitely.”
“Smashing! Can’t wait to get you on the croquet field. No one else is any competition. Kira’s bored to tears by it. Guts keeps breaking the mallets. And your brother’s abysmal. Plus he cheats.”
“My brother’s here, too?”
“Of course. And I have to say, he’s been on his absolute best behavior. Although that’s not actually saying much, is it?”
“Is Mung okay?”
She smiled. “Mung’s such a dear. He’s been by twice to see you. And it’s quite a long walk from the mine, you know.”
“The mine? What’s he doing up there?”
“You don’t . . . ? Oh, right—how could you know? It’s actually worked out quite nicely. You see, to rebuild Blisstown, we need money. To get money, we need to run the silver mine. To run the silver mine, we need men willing to work it. And at the moment, the only ones who’ll do the job are the field pirates from your old plantation. The good news for them is, it pays a lot better than picking ugly fruit.”
“Just make sure they don’t spend the money on rum,” I warned her. “Or weapons.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “See, it’s issues like this that make me think your uncle might be just the man to run things for a while.” She clapped her hands. “Right, then. Any more questions? Or should I see about your bath?”
I thought for a moment. “Just one—did the monkey pull through?”
“You mean Clem?” Millicent sighed. “He did. But I don’t know how much longer he’s going to last around here. Mother’s at her wit’s end with him—he’s extremely disagreeable, and he poops on absolutely everything.”
LUNCH WAS WONDERFUL. So was the rest of the day. And the day after that. And the week after that. And the month after that.
For the longest time, life was perfect.
Well, not perfect exactly. There were still ashes from the volcano all over the place. Even weeks later, I was still finding them in my ears whenever I washed up, and in my handkerchief when I blew my nose. Which was often, because the tiny bits of ash in the air caused no end of sneezing.
Even after the worst of the mess had been cleaned up, Blisstown—with its wrecked forts and burned-out buildings—continued to look like a face with half its teeth knocked out. The fancy clothes and fine furniture were slow to return to the shops, and the rich folk who used to strut down Heavenly Road seemed to have lost most of their swagger.
To my surprise, my uncle actually wound up taking the job as governor. He didn’t seem thrilled about coming out of retirement, and he swore to quit the minute Sunrise could take care of itself. But in the meantime, he was exactly what the island needed. Now that the workers in the silver mine actually had to be paid, and were a lot fewer in number—not to mention that field pirates were nobody’s idea of dependable employees—money didn’t flow through town as effortlessly as it had when Pembroke was around. And most of it had to be pledged to fixing what was broken, so there wasn’t much left over for anyone to get rich.
That made a few of the formerly well-off folks on Sunrise almost irrationally angry, and the squabbles would have been endless if my uncle hadn’t been around to occasionally remind everyone in his calm but terrifying voice that if they didn’t get along with each other and stop being so greedy, they’d have to answer to him.
It was dull, mostly thankless work, especially compared with captaining a pirate ship. But he seemed to like it, or at least be amused by it. When he came back to Cloud Manor at night, he’d tell Mrs. Pembroke stories about the more ridiculous-acting townspeople that made them both laugh until they were red in the face.
As far as I could tell, they enjoyed each other’s company quite a bit.
That was definitely true of the rest of us. Guts, Kira, Millicent, and I spent our days sleeping late, eating well, playing croquet, and exploring the island.
Early on, we took a hike to the summit of Mount Majestic and wound up stumbling on the last unspoiled patch of land within a hundred miles. It was a hillside meadow, just above the timberline and nestled in the shadow of an almost vertical outcropping on the eastern face, exactly opposite Deadweather—so it had somehow managed to escape the rain of ash. There were a good five acres of lush green field up there, bursting with wildflowers.
Even better, we were the only ones who knew about it, except for one contented-looking mule we found munching wildflowers. He looked as surprised to see us as we were to see him.
“Smack!” Millicent yelled. “Don’t you dare eat all those flowers!”
He couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. There were too many of them. We took turns scratching his nose, and at the end of the day, he followed us home and wound up making a place for himself among the livestock at Cloud Manor.
We took him with us every time we went back to the meadow, which was often. We’d bring a picnic, then lounge on the grass and watch the clouds float by while Guts played guitar. I couldn’t imagine a happier, more peaceful place on earth than that meadow.
It was even pleasant when Adonis came with us.
He was around a lot at the beginning. We did our best to be nice to him, and he did his best not to act like a bully or an oaf. But it was always a bit of a struggle. And he usually had Clem in tow, who didn’t get along with anybody. Eventually, Mrs. Pembroke’s patience with the monkey wore out, and she gently but firmly banished Clem to an unused outbuilding. After that, Adonis wound up spending a good bit of his time down there, and the rest of it working for my uncle.