“I’m sinking,” he said, his voice rising in panic. “Help!”
CHAPTER 9
Though you’re faced with a beast that might want you deceased,
Never fear, for salvation is nigh.
As soon as they see her, brave Cassie O’Pia,
The deadliest monsters will fly.
(from THE BALLAD OF CASSIE O’PIA, Verse 314, Author Unknown)
Brine had done a lot of running away since she’d met Cassie. They’d run from guards and librarians and invisible snow bears. All the practice meant she was becoming quite good at it, but that fact was easily outweighed by the large, angry monster right behind her.
Ewan dragged her aside just as the monster came bursting through the trees. Everyone dived in different directions, except for Cassie, who stepped out in front of it, her cutlasses drawn.
Brine swallowed a scream as the monster lunged, sure that Cassie was going to be trampled. But Cassie slipped to one side, then jumped up behind the monster and stabbed both cutlasses at its tail. It roared and turned around impossibly fast. One of Cassie’s cutlasses was wrenched out of her grip. She kept hold of the other one and rolled backward as Trudi threw a rock. It bounced off the monster’s head, making it forget Cassie for a second.
Cassie landed flat beside Brine. “It could be worse,” she said, panting. “At least it’s not turning invisible or hypnotizing us. You want to try running again?”
“Yes, please,” said Brine.
They fled, Ewan running backward to throw knives. Branches slapped across Brine’s face, and she put her arms over her head and stumbled on. Every branch on the ground seemed to be lying in wait to trip her up, but Cassie’s firm hand on her back kept her going.
“Straight ahead,” said Cassie. “Don’t stop.” Giving Brine a final shove, she wheeled around and sprinted off away from her.
Brine crashed to a halt. “You’re going the wrong way!”
“Get to the boats!” Cassie called, still running. The monster paused for a second, swinging its head from side to side as if deciding who to attack. Cassie hurled a tree branch at it, and the monster roared and charged after her.
“Do as she says!” snapped Ewan, and he and Trudi took off in pursuit.
Brine stood frozen in shock. And then, before her scrambled thoughts could get any orders to her legs, she saw Cassie suddenly falter, flail at thin air, and then vanish into the ground.
Brine screamed. “Cassie!”
The monster appeared to hear her, and it turned its head, but then its feet hit the same patch of ground and it, too, disappeared.
Run, Brine thought furiously. Stupid legs. Run!
Somehow, she got moving again and she tore after Ewan and Trudi. Ewan put out a hand to hold her back, and she slammed straight into him. When she saw what had happened, she let out a cry.
Cassie had fallen into a pit. Large enough to hold several monsters and deep enough to keep them there. For a few awfully long seconds, Brine thought Cassie must be dead, and her vision turned hot with tears. But then she saw the pirate captain clinging to a branch sticking out near the top. The monster snarled right below her, snapping at her purple boots.
Trudi grabbed a branch off the ground and waved it around the opposite side of the pit. “Nice monster. Come to Trudi!” She threw the branch at it and reached back for another one. The monster gave a low growl and leaped at her.
Ewan leaned over the side of the pit and stretched out toward Cassie. Kneeling at the edge of the pit, Brine could only watch, and she’d never felt so useless before.
Cassie reached up and caught hold of Ewan’s hand, but at the same moment, Brine saw the monster turn and prepare to jump.
“Look out!” she cried.
The monster launched itself at Cassie’s legs with a roar. She kicked it hard in the face, and it let her go just long enough for Ewan to haul Cassie out of the way. She scrambled out of the pit and collapsed flat next to Brine. Her boots were shredded, and blood seeped through her trouser legs.
For a few seconds, no one spoke.
Cassie sat up. “Those were my best boots.”
“You’re hurt,” said Brine. Her throat felt tight and hot. Something stung the back of her neck.
“Stupid insects,” said Trudi, slapping at herself. Then she staggered.
Brine blinked as the trees around her blurred and turned into a shimmering block of green. Through the haze, she saw Cassie start to her feet then fall back down, and then a pair of shapes came sweeping through the trees. Flying monsters with faces like rats and silver rings around their ankles. They shrieked and plunged into the pit, and the ground trembled with a renewed storm of roaring and screaming.
Dragons, Brine thought—they’d found their dragons.
“Peter, do something,” she said, but of course Peter wasn’t there.
The world turned black.
After all the running and shouting, it felt almost peaceful.
CHAPTER 10
The language of the eight oceans is called Oceanic. Some people speak it with strange accents, others have their own versions and dialects, but essentially it is the same wherever you go. Remember, however, that just because someone speaks your language, it doesn’t mean they are friendly.
(from ALDEBRAN BOSWELL’S BOOK OF THE WORLD)
“Peter, do something,” said Tom. His voice quavered. He was sinking fast, the sand already lapping at his knees.
Rob held Peter back. “Careful,” he warned, “or you’ll end up in there with him. Tom, there’s nothing to worry about—it’s only sinksand. We’ve all fallen in a hundred times. We’ll get you out now; just don’t move. Moving makes you sink faster.”
“I’m already sinking faster,” said Tom, but he stopped wriggling. He dug in a few pockets and found his notebook, which he threw to Peter. “Look after that. Don’t read it—it’s private.”
Only a librarian could care about a book while drowning in sinksand. Peter had no intention of reading it, but he pretended to look anyway. “What about if you die,” he joked. “Can I read it then?”
Tom’s face crimsoned. “If you read that book, I’ll come back and haunt you.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” said Peter. Something rustled nearby in the trees and he looked around nervously. Could Marfak West follow him onto the island? He hoped not, but who knew what ghosts could and couldn’t do?
“Out of the way, Peter,” said Bill. The pirate picked up a vine that was snaking across the ground by Peter’s feet and tossed it to Tom. “Here. Wrap this around your waist and hang on.”
Peter stepped back out of the way. It seemed that Rob and Bill knew what they were doing. It was almost disappointing that he wouldn’t be able to leap in and save the day.
Tom looped the vine around his waist. “Ready,” he said. Then his eyes widened. “No. Not ready. It’s hurting me! Get it off me!”
The sand thrashed as if it were alive. Bill dropped the vine with a yell. “It bit me!”
Peter stared at the blood dripping from Bill’s hand. Then he felt something crawling over his feet.
Vines. Horrible, slimy vines, all of them full of dark spines and little crimson suckers that opened and shut like hungry mouths. Some of them burrowed into the ground where Bill’s blood had dripped, writhing together as they fought over the droplets.
“Ugh!” said Peter, and tore his foot free. This was worse than spiders.
More vines slithered into the sand where Tom floundered.
“Help!” he yelled, his voice full of panic. “They’re eating me!”
Peter dragged his feet free of vines. “Keep back,” ordered Rob. “You won’t help by getting stuck as well.”
“But he’s sinking!” Peter struggled in the pirate’s grip. “I should never have left my starshell on the Onion. We always get into trouble.”
Vines snapped at his legs. Meanwhile, just two paces out of reach, Tom was waist deep in sand and a vine was trying to wrap around his neck. P
eter watched helplessly. He’d wanted to see what he could do without magic, and here was the answer. Nothing.
Tom wrenched a hand free. “Peter, catch!”
He threw something round and gray at him. Peter missed it and bent down to retrieve it. It was a rolled-up sock, or the remains of a sock. Three-quarters of it had worn away, and the remaining bits were unraveling. Peter felt the starshell even before he’d uncovered it; the magic thumped against his hand and made his skin fizz.
“I was doing some experiments,” said Tom. “Sorry. I should have asked first, but I knew you’d say no. Ow,” he added as a vine wormed into his sleeve.
Peter gripped the starshell tightly. Magic filled his hand, warm and comforting and familiar. The tight panic left him, and he drew in a breath and slowly released it. Then he raised his hand to draw the spellshape …
An arrow thudded into the ground. One of the vines holding Tom whipped away from him and fell limply onto the sand.
Cassie, Peter thought. His hand dropped, his whole body shaking. Cassie had come looking for them and found them just in time.
“It’s my fault,” he began as the branches parted. “I wanted—”
The words shriveled and died in his throat. It wasn’t Cassie who stepped out of the trees, but a girl. Dark-skinned and crinkly-haired—she looked a bit like Brine. An older, scowlier version of Brine, with a bow in one hand, a long knife in the other, and a rope coiled around her waist.
“Who…?” said Peter. He couldn’t speak. He wheezed air into his lungs and pushed the starshell into his pocket, embarrassingly aware that his cheeks were flaming hot.
The girl ignored him and stabbed her knife into the ground several times. The vines hissed like snakes and a couple of them darted at her, but she stamped on them and they withdrew into the ground. In a moment Tom was free. The girl threw him her rope. Tom caught it and flopped flat on his face as she pulled. He burbled something unintelligible, his face full of sand, and then his legs came free with a sound like a ship tearing away from octopus suckers. He collapsed onto solid ground, groaning loudly.
“Are you hurt?” asked Bill.
“No, just squashed and stung and covered in sand. Which tastes horrible, by the way.”
“Well, that’s why people don’t normally eat sand,” said Peter. He held his hand out to the girl. “Thank you. I’m Peter. These are my friends, Bill, Rob, and Tom.”
The girl looked at his outstretched hand as if she was wondering whether to shake it or cut it off.
Maybe she didn’t speak Oceanic, Peter thought. He jabbed himself in the chest. “Peter. Me Peee-ter.”
She sighed and started to coil up her rope. “I heard you the first time,” she said. “I’m Stella. You’re from the ship, aren’t you? What’s wrong with your skin?”
“My skin?” Alarm mingled with embarrassment. Had the starshell started corroding him? He looked at his hands and couldn’t see anything wrong.
“It’s white,” said Stella. “Are you ill?”
Tom got up. “No one comes here, remember. They’re all afraid of falling off the edge of the world.” He combed sand out of his hair with his fingers and addressed Stella. “Lots of people have white skin where we come from.”
Stella peered at him. “Really? Why?”
Peter’s cheeks smarted. Cassie would have handled this differently. Cassie would have made some joke, and she and Stella would be laughing together already like they were long-lost friends.
Stella kicked the end of a vine. “These are sandvines. They grow around sinksand. They wait until something falls in and then they go for you. When you’re sinking, it’s normal to grab for anything you can, but once the vines get hold of you they won’t let go. They pull you under the sand so you drown and then they eat you—slowly.”
Tom looked green under his coating of drying sand. “Um, thanks for pulling me out.”
“Next time, aim for the ground where they’re rooted,” said Stella. “They root themselves into anything, even stone, but the roots never go deep and if you cut them, the vines die.”
“Next time, I think I won’t walk into sinksand,” said Tom.
Stella nodded. “That would work, too.”
Tom pushed his hair back and started emptying sand out of his pockets. If they waited for him to finish, they’d be here all day, Peter thought. “We should go back to the boats,” he said. “Before the others find us gone—or anything else tries to kill us.”
Stella turned to look at the trees. “There are more of you? I wondered what disturbed the dinosaurs.”
Peter didn’t know the word, but it didn’t sound good. “Are dinosaurs like dragons?”
The girl gave a snort of laughter. “No, because dinosaurs are real and dragons are just a story.”
Tom stared back at the sinksand. Rob and Bill made a show of studying the trees around them.
“Maybe they’re just hiding,” suggested Bill after a pause.
Stella rolled her eyes. “How have you people managed to stay alive this long?”
“Luck,” said Peter. He shook his head. He wasn’t giving up on dragons yet. They’d all been so sure they would find dragons here—even Ewan, who didn’t usually believe in something until it was trying to eat him. “Who else lives here?” he asked. Maybe they could talk to someone older, someone who remembered them.
“There’s the village. And the castle, but you don’t want to go there. That’s all. Nobody goes far from home because it’s dangerous. I’m not really supposed to be out here now.”
That made five of them, Peter thought. They should start a club.
“Why are you here, then?” asked Tom. He sneezed. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Stella regarded him coolly. “It’s none of your business.”
It was so much the sort of thing that Brine would say that Peter grinned. He kicked a vine out of the way and stepped back from it as it squirmed. Now that he knew how to handle them, they didn’t seem so bad. “If the village is the only place on the island with people, the others may have already found it. Or the village will have found them. Given how Cassie and Ewan normally charge about attracting attention.” He turned to Stella and smiled. Cassie was always smiling at people, and it seemed to work for her. “I think you should take us to the village. We’ll tell you all about our home, and you can tell us about dinosaurs and dragons.”
“What makes you think I want to hear about your home?” asked Stella.
Peter kept smiling. Stella dropped her gaze and blew out a sigh. “I suppose you can come if you like. If your friends have been causing trouble, Marapi will have noticed.”
“Who’s Marapi?” asked Peter, but Stella was already walking away. Peter glanced at the others, but they all seemed to be waiting for him to decide. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be in charge, but someone had to do it, so he shrugged and followed.
CHAPTER 11
There are some things you cannot plan for. Being taken captive by hostile islanders, for example. If you find yourself in that situation, the best you can do is try to stay alive. Alive, you can always do something later. Being dead tends to cut down on your options.
(from BRINE SEABORNE’S BOOK OF PLANS)
Brine wondered how the world had managed to turn itself sideways. She’d only just opened her eyes, so she knew she must be lying down, but the sky was made of brown dirt, and something narrow dug into the whole length of her back and made her hands hurt. She blinked a few times and, gradually, the world put itself back together and resembled something approaching reality.
The reality didn’t look good. Brine wasn’t lying, but standing, tied fast to some kind of pole or post, and her head was hanging forward, so all she could see was the ground between her feet. Her mouth tasted of dirt. What had happened? She remembered running through the jungle with a monster on her heels, but then it all got muddled. Cassie had fallen, and then …
“Dragons!” Brine shouted and jerked her head up, smacking it into the p
ost behind her. She heard people laughing as her vision swam. She shut her eyes, then tried opening them again slowly.
People in a semicircle around her. People with skin as dark as her own, which caused Brine’s heart to lift—until she saw their spears, and the way they watched her as if they were waiting to throw them at her. A pile of knives and cutlasses lay on the ground—the pirates’ weapons. Brine turned her head carefully from side to side and saw Cassie, Ewan, and Trudi, all tied to posts. Weaponless but alive. They wouldn’t be tied up if they weren’t alive. Relief came bubbling out of her.
“Cassie,” she whispered.
Cassie lifted her head a fraction but didn’t answer. Brine wasn’t sure she’d even heard her. She cast her gaze past the people to the circle of huts and the high wall that circled them. The wall looked like it had been built out of tree trunks, and it was far too high for Brine to climb even if she could break free and run, which she doubted.
But then she saw the dragons. Four of them were perched on rooftops, watching her. But they were as unlike Boswell as Brine could imagine. Boswell’s scales were a shifting mix of green and silver, like the sea, but these dragons were dull gray, the color of wet clay, and their faces were far too long, ending in curved beaks. Part dragon, part bat, part bird.
While she was looking, the crowd around Brine parted, and a woman walked through. Her left eye was missing, replaced by an angry red scar that ran diagonally from the middle of her forehead to the ragged remains of her ear. Despite this, she stood straight-backed and didn’t take her one-eyed gaze off Brine, ignoring the shuffling and muttering that came from behind her.
Brine’s mind scrambled for a plan, failed to find one, and then gave up working altogether. “Are those dragons?” Of all the questions she could ask upon regaining consciousness tied to a stake, that was probably not the most useful.
The woman smiled and the people around her murmured. Brine wasn’t sure whether it was in surprise that she could speak or anticipation at the prospect of killing her.
The Journey to Dragon Island Page 6