The Castaways

by Jessika Fleck

  “Don’t count on good ol’ Will coming to your rescue.” His mouth sets in a thin-lipped sneer. “You’re the last two Lions left. Time to join forces. Think about it.” He smacks the rock a couple of times with his palm then walks away, but stops, not glancing back. “Oh, and Olive, your haircut is…unique. Did you do that yourself, or did you let a little Lion cut it for you?” He laughs in a sigh under his breath.

  I tug my hand to place it over my head, but can’t. It’s tied behind my back.

  Duke is gone as silently as he entered.

  Lewis blows air out his nose and jerks himself into a straighter sitting position. “He’s lying. They’d have left the tree as soon as you left with the Panthers. As soon as they knew our location was compromised.”

  “I hope so.” My voice quivers.

  We stay quiet, no sounds other than the wind whistling through the cave. It makes the fire flicker and reflect off the walls in orange and yellow waves that sway in a sad, grievous dance.

  I break the silence, asking the question we both must be thinking. “Do you think it’s true?”

  Lewis shakes his head before he answers. “No. No way. I can’t let myself believe it.” He shakes his head faster. “Will is the most caring, loyal person I know. There’s just no way.”

  I shrug, a sigh escaping me. “It was a long time ago. And it would explain Duke’s hatred toward Will, toward us.”

  Lewis pushes himself up onto the rock, and I get a glimpse of the man-version, his face rigid, angry, his jaw hard. “You can’t honestly be considering this. You believe him? After he’s done nothing but try to kill us? Come on, Olive. I expected more of you.”

  Something inside my heart cramps up tight.

  His face softens. “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re right. It’s all wrong and it’s late… I think.” I roll over, assuming my position of self-loathing.

  I hear Lewis shuffle and he curls up closer but doesn’t touch me. “I’m sorry, Olive,” he whispers to my back.

  “Me, too.” I open my hand, and he nudges my palm with his knee. Before too long Lewis breathes the soft rhythms of sleep.

  My eyes heavy, I can’t stop thinking of my Will—gentle, stoically quiet, beautiful Will. Could he really be the male version of Lesley? The very thing I ran from the night I stepped onto this island?

  I can’t begin to wrap my mind around it, but I can’t totally disregard it, either.

  So, what does that say for making peace?

  The more I learn, the more clearly this becomes a lost cause.

  I’m falling.

  Will’s arms are around me, the waterfall streaming next to us. Everything moves in slow motion.

  He kisses me, things speed up, and we drop like stones.

  We hit the water with a thunderous clap.

  Our arms tangled like pretzels, he holds me down under the water. I kick and hit him, shove his chest.

  He disappears and I swim to the surface, catching my breath and climbing out of the water.

  Time passes and I’m dry, sitting in the spot where we lay that day he told me his story. There’s a mound of coconuts next to me. Shiloh sits before the pile, cutting each fruit into large white chunks.

  “Here. Eat,” she says, handing me a bowl of white flesh.

  I eat it.

  “Here. Eat.” She hands me another.

  I eat it.

  “Here. Eat.” She hands me another.

  I eat it.

  “Here. Eat.” Another.

  I eat.

  “Is your cup spilling over yet?” she asks, smirking, narrowing those mossy eyes of hers.

  “No!” I yell.

  “Here. Eat.” And she hands me a bowl the size of a tree stump overflowing with coconut meat. It’s the wooden water container from the cave-tree.

  “Where did you get this?” I ask.

  “What? They don’t need it anymore.” She laughs. “Eat.”

  I eat. Somehow I stuff in every last chunk.

  Then my cup spills over, and I puke and cough and puke some more. It’s all white and soon it takes over like someone’s poured paint on everything. The grass. The water. The trees and the sky. All white. Even Shiloh turns white and disappears into the background.

  I glance down at myself. The white has taken me, too. I’m bleached out, and can’t see my own outline. I’ve blurred into the nothingness. I no longer exist, but continue coughing and puking, filling in the last cracks with white. And I can’t breathe.

  I wake up in full-on hyperventilation. “Hhhhh…huh. Hhhh…huh. HUHHH.” I gasp for breath. I try to sit up. I try to clutch my throat, but I can’t because my hands are tied. “Hh…huh…huh…huuh!”

  I roll over onto my stomach.

  The wind sings a sad song.

  “Olive?” Lewis’s hands are on my back.

  I scoot my legs up and tuck them underneath me, my head on the cold stone floor.

  I can’t stop wheezing in huhs.

  “It’s okay. You were dreaming,” he whispers in my ear. “Shhh…”

  “Hhhhh! Huuuh…hhh…HHHH!” Breathe, Olive. Through the nose, out the mouth, slowly.

  “Shhh,” Lewis says.

  “Whooh. Whooh,” the wind sings.

  “Hhh. Huh.” I breathe. “I’m…hhh…okay…huh.”

  Lewis’s hands are still on my back and it occurs to me they shouldn’t be. His hands should be tied behind him at his waist like mine are.

  I pull my head up. “Your…huh…hands?”

  “I worked all night.” He begins untying mine.

  “But… How?” I ask, my breathing almost back to normal.

  “Sharp spot on the rock. Doesn’t matter. Are you all right?”

  “Whooh. Whooh,” the wind sings again.

  “I’m okay. What’s that noise?” Like magic, my hands are free. I pull them in front of me and stretch. It feels amazing. “Thank you.”

  He nods. “We’ve gotta find a way out of here.”

  I quickly work to untie my feet.

  “Whooh. Whooh.”

  “That sound, Lewis. What is it?”

  My feet are free.

  We both stand.

  “Whooh. Whooh.”

  He stares into my eyes, pushing a dark pelt of hair off his forehead. “It’s the conch shell.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The Wind’s Song

  “What conch shell?” I ask, but Lewis pulls me by the hand, jerking me out into the main cavern, searching from side to side. “What shell?”

  “Shhh!” he whisper-shouts at me, yanking me back against the wall. “I’ll explain when we get out of here,” he barely says, voice shaking.

  I decide to leave it, to assume it’s nothing but a song on the wind, except I don’t want to because the pit in my stomach tells me otherwise.

  Lewis and I scoot along the wall like shadows, just a couple of flames reflecting off the fire. Soon we reach mystery tunnel number three, one we’ve never seen anyone enter or exit from.

  We have a choice: dash for the main tunnel and risk trying the cave entrance or gamble on the mystery cave right next to us.

  Lewis glances over at me, but before I can say anything, we hear Noah’s swooshing footsteps headed toward us from outside—he’s bringing our breakfast.

  Without a word, we duck into the mystery cave. But I stop dead because something brass catches my eye. On the edge of the stones surrounding the fire is one of the horns. I turn around and run full sprint toward the fire.

  “Olive!” Lewis hisses.

  I skid on the balls of my feet, grab it, then turn and run back just as Noah’s shadow comes shuffling down the main tunnel.

  “What the hell?” Lewis again hisses.

  I lift the horn to his face.

  He smiles but mixes it with a stern glare.

  We take off.

  The cave twists and turns and snags and dips and at one point we hear a faint and low, “They’re gone!”

  We run fa
ster.

  Far behind, but still too close, the sounds of footsteps stomping, the soles of shoes heavily swooshing, follow us.

  We pick up the pace even more.

  There’s a pinhole of light far ahead of us.

  We sprint toward it, slipping on loose gravel, tripping over our own feet. The pinhole gets bigger and bigger until it’s the size of an egg.

  A beach ball.

  A boulder.

  Then, blinding sun. It’s the white flash of light from my dream all over again.

  I squint, forcing my eyelids open. Keeping my sights on the ground, I take several steps forward then stop with a lurch when the ground drops away into nothing.

  Lewis flings his arm against my chest like Mom does in the car when she slams on the brakes. My toes push dirt and rock over the edge of the hanging. I nearly drop the horn but manage to salvage my grip on it as I lunge my body back, taking tentative steps away from the cliff.

  “Shit, Lewis. What do we do?” Horn hugged to my chest, I look from the drop-off to him, back to the drop-off, then to the rocks and mountain above us—all around us.

  “We climb,” he says, a new confidence behind those timid, dark eyes.

  I shake my head, hyperventilation churning in my lungs, closing in on my chest, the brass horn now as heavy as an anchor, which won’t do for this great feat before us. But I’m not climbing, so it’s fine.

  Lewis puts both his hands on my shoulders. “You can do this.” He stares into me like Will has so many times, connecting to something deeper. “Don’t look down. We’re just playing around…like we’re on the beach…climbing rocks.” He shrugs, his tone all nonchalant and breezy.

  “On the beach,” I repeat, surveying the jagged crags jutting up behind us.

  He makes to take the horn from me, but I snatch it back, slipping the thinner end, mouthpiece first, down the back of my shirt and tying the flowy bottom of my tunic into a knot so it doesn’t slip out.

  Lewis’s eyes are wide, and he glances from the knot in my shirt to the horn-shaped bump on my back, and back up to my face.

  “Yes, a simple day at the beach.” He grabs my hand. “Shall we?” And he smiles as if we really are playing around on the beach.

  I nod, the hyperventilation monster in my throat, waiting to make its move.

  We turn and face the mountain.

  The Panthers’ shouts grow louder, closer.

  “Follow me. Put your feet and hands where I put mine.”

  I nod again, my voice paralyzed.

  Lewis scales rock after rock.

  I follow.

  One hand here.

  One foot there.

  Up. Up. And up even higher.

  Don’t look down. Don’t look down.

  Of course, I look down.

  And freeze.

  Everything is suddenly below us and all the world’s water surrounds us. I get lightheaded. Dizzy. I was never one for heights. Or water.

  The horn in my shirt is five times its normal size when hanging off a cliff and I regret my decision of not leaving it behind. My fingers dig into the side of the mountain so my nails break against the rock. I’m on the side of an effing mountain!

  Short bursts of breath leak out my mouth in wheezes. The monster.

  No.

  “Huh. Hhhh. Huh.”

  No.

  “You okay?” Lewis calls down to me.

  “Hhh. Huh. No, I can’t do it!” Tears burn and prick my eyes.

  “Yes, you can! The beach, remember?”

  The beach. Just the beach.

  “Okay. Hhh. Okay.” I start moving again, the jagged stone before me blurring from the water in my eyes, helping my imagination along. Rocks on the beach…

  “We’re almost to a flatter area. Then we’ll climb down the other side. Just hold on. You can do this,” Lewis coaxes.

  “You can do this, Olive,” a nasty voice mocks. “Oh my God. Total déjà vu!” Shiloh shouts. “This is how Annabel fell!” She laughs. I listen but continue climbing. “Don’t slip, Lions.”

  God, I hate her so much.

  My foot skids, raining rocky dust down onto them.

  “Whoa, careful there,” she taunts me. “You’re on the top of a mountain. One bad step and you’re fish food. Just like your friend.”

  “Shut up! You pushed her off!” Lewis yells down.

  “Don’t listen to her, Lewis. She’s messing with us,” I say.

  “Oh, come on. We aren’t that cruel. Annabel tried to escape. Sadly, she wasn’t successful. We aren’t monsters.”

  Monsters…

  “You are liars,” Lewis says from the top where a sort of valley in the rocks forms.

  I’m almost there. Almost to him. Shiloh, as much as I hate her, seems to have distracted me and pulled me out of my panic.

  Lewis reaches his hand out to grab mine.

  “Whooh. Whooh.” The song. It sounds from the other side of the mountain. So close.

  Far below, Panther footsteps skid and take off back through the tunnel.

  Lewis takes my hand. I stare into his dark eyes. “What’s the shell mean?” My voice hitches with the last word.

  He sighs and helps heave me up over the side. We both breathe heavily. Him, a normal heavy. Me, a part-hyperventilating heavy.

  Lewis clutches my hands, his expression part strong, part terrified. “The last time I heard the shell was after we found Annabel’s body.”

  “No…” The word sneaks out of my mouth, along with a gasp and a whimper.

  Charlie.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Lions Vs. Panthers

  It can’t be Charlie.

  No.

  It just can’t.

  I won’t allow it.

  I clutch my necklace.

  Because I know it is.

  As much as I want to roll back down the mountain, I force myself to walk. One foot after the other.

  Climb over that rock.

  Squeeze through those huge boulders.

  Duck under the rock that looks like a sharp knife on its side.

  The farther we go, the louder the yelling gets.

  We speed up.

  The jagged indent along the ridge of the mountain descends until we hit the spot where we’ll have to climb back down.

  It’s a total drop-off. Right over the entrance to the cave we just fled. And also, the location of all of the commotion.

  Before I can gather my thoughts on how to get us out of this, a loud boom shakes the earth below us.

  Lewis and I drop onto all fours.

  We scoot to the edge of the cliff and peek over the side.

  Near a line of boulders is a black circle singed into the ground, smoke coming off it.

  The only Panthers I see are Duke and Shiloh, and I assume they’re who set off the explosion. They stand to the side of the entrance and, based on the yelling and swearing, the others must be right inside the opening. Across the way, heads poke out from behind the large gathering of rocks.

  Will.

  Tilly and Bug.

  And a curly blond mop of hair. Charlie. My chest creases in on itself in relief.

  “Oh my God. Thank goodness,” I whisper, glancing at Lewis from the corner of my eyes. They all wear war paint: black lines and symbols on their arms and faces.

  Lewis stares ahead. “Where’s Jude?”

  Jude?

  I forgot about Jude.

  Jude’s there.

  Of course, he’s there.

  He’d never let them come up here…

  No.

  Not. Without. Him.

  I shake my head.

  “He’d be here,” Lewis says. The finality in his words erases that relief in my chest, slicing the creases into sharp thorns.

  Tears fill my eyes, immersing everything before me under water. The last Jude knew of me was what a traitor I was. Poor Bug and Charlie. Poor Tilly.

  Lewis sniffs.

  I wipe my eyes.

  “This is
over!” Will yells, stepping out from behind the rocks, spear at the ready. He’s shirtless. Black charcoal marks his chest in the smeared outline of a lion’s mane.

  The hyena whoops. The Wildling joins in.

  “They need us,” Lewis says. He crawls to the side and is half gone before I realize he’s climbing down. I look from Lewis to Will.

  Will’s face hardens. “Release Lewis and Olive.”

  “Or what?” Shiloh says. “Besides, Olive is with us now, remember?”

  Will’s eyes fall, but he shakes his head no.

  Duke arches his back so his ribs show and whoops some more. He has red stripes under his eyes today. I don’t want to know what he used to paint them. “Your Lions are defecting, Will. They know who’s stronger. Anyone else want to join?”

  Bug, Charlie, and Tilly stare daggers at him.

  “Ah. You run a tight ship. Olive was smart to get out when she could.”

  “I did not join you!” I hear myself shout and I’m standing, leaning over the edge of the cliff, holding onto a rock.

  Will’s eyes widen.

  The other Panthers come out of the cave and look up.

  Tommy goes to light one of the mini bombs, but Henry grabs his wrist until he drops it.

  “You’ll blow the entrance in!”

  Tommy curses.

  I glance at Will.

  His eye bounces from me to Duke, to Tommy and his mini bomb, to Lewis, who runs toward him. Once Lewis reaches them, he stands next to Will. Tilly hands him a spear. She holds one herself, black rings drawn up and down her bare arms. Then she eyes Bug and Charlie who duck behind the boulders.

  I make my way to the place where Lewis climbed down.

  You can do this, Olive. You can do this.

  Your family needs you.

  You climbed up. You can climb back down.

  One foot and one hand at a time, I begin the descent, a good thirty-foot drop.

  I don’t think about it. I think about Will. He’s here. Charlie’s here. Bug and Tilly.

  But Jude’s not.

  No. My hand slips.

  I gasp, hyperventilation bubbling up.

  Charlie. Charlie’s alive.

  And Will… I’ve got the horn for him, just like I promised myself I would.

  Though he’s not who I thought he was. I don’t think.