by Adam Gidwitz
He looked back out the window. The plane dipped violently again.
Elliot screamed, “No!”
“It’s okay,” Uchenna reassured him. “We’re not crashing. Yet.”
“It’s not that,” Elliot replied.
“Then what?”
Elliot pointed at his shoes.
Jersey had thrown up all over them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Uchenna found a grease-stained rag behind their seats, and now Elliot was gingerly using it to get vomit off his shoes. Thankfully, Jersey was very small, so there was only a little bit. But it was still incredibly gross.
“It’s very nutty,” said Elliot.
“Everything we do with Professor Fauna is nutty,” said Uchenna.
“I’m talking about the—” Elliot looked up from his shoes to see Uchenna grinning at him. “Oh,” he said. “Very funny.”
“It is probably because I feed him so many almond bars!” Professor Fauna added. Elliot’s stomach lurched.
And then, Uchenna began to hum.
“No,” said Elliot. “Not about this! Please . . .”
But Uchenna was already singing in the style of an old-fashioned crooner.
“The way to Cuba is bumpy,
And little Jersey is blue!
He throws up something quite lumpy
All over Elliot’s shoes!”
Elliot was still scraping puke off his laces. “Can I just say that I hated that one?”
Uchenna snickered.
“Shall we return to the business at hand?” Professor Fauna said. He squinted into the bright clouds as the plane continued to dance. “This sea serpent is referred to as the Madre de aguas.”
“The . . . Mother of Waters?” said Uchenna.
“Muy bien. They say that without the Madre de aguas, the Mother of Waters, there would be no fresh water anywhere in Cuba.” Professor Fauna scoffed. “Now, to me, saying that the fresh water of an entire island depends on one creature sounds like magic. And, as you know, the creatures of myth and legend are not magic. They are creatures. But . . . they often have evolutionary mutations that can seem like magic.”
“What evolutionary mutation could possibly control the fresh water of an entire island?” Elliot asked.
“I do not know. Perhaps it purifies the water by passing it through its gills? Or perhaps it draws the fresh water up from the aquifer somehow?”
Jersey was clawing at the compartment of the backpack where his almond bars were kept. “No!” Elliot said to him. “Under no circumstances, Jersey.” Jersey began whining plaintively. “Not a chance, you little puke-Devil!”
Professor Fauna went on. “Many islands in the Caribbean tell stories of the Madre de aguas, and she goes by many names and takes many forms. But of course, this makes sense. There are many different peoples in the Caribbean, so of course they would talk about the Madre de aguas in different ways! Anyway, in Cuba people all over the island used to talk of the enormous serpent living in their wells and their ponds, wherever there was fresh water. But lately fewer and fewer people have seen the Madre de aguas. It could be there were once many Madres de aguas in Cuba and only one survives today, or it could be that there was only ever one, moving between different bodies of water, but today she hides herself from all but a few human eyes. I do not know. What I also do not know is this: Where is the Madre de aguas of Cuba now? Rosa was one of the people who the Madre de aguas still visited, and she has not seen the serpent for some weeks.”
Professor Fauna suddenly pointed through the windshield. “There!” he exclaimed. “The Miami airport! This is where we are meeting Yoenis, Rosa’s son.”
Uchenna and Elliot looked out of the window. Peeking through heavy clouds were the runways and parking lots of a huge airport.
“Wait, you’re going to land at an airport?” said Uchenna. “That’s a first. We usually just plow into trees or a cliff or something.”
“Do you have clearance to land at the Miami airport?” Elliot asked. “I’m pretty sure you need official permission or somethin—AHHH!”
A gigantic commercial passenger jet buzzed just above their heads. The Phoenix bobbed and weaved in the enormous power of the jet’s wake. Professor Fauna wrestled with the plane’s controls. Which seemed to do nothing. The plane dipped, nose down, toward the tarmac.
“Goodness gracious!” Elliot screamed.
The plane was screaming, too, the wind ripping past its wings.
And then, at the last second, the yoke finally responded to Professor Fauna’s entreaties, the plane leveled off, and the wheels touched down on the tarmac at a distant end of the runway, far from the main terminals and commercial jets.
They rolled to a stop.
“I think I am getting better at this!” Professor Fauna exclaimed.
Jersey smiled at him. Then he put his little blue head between Elliot’s legs.
“NO!” Elliot cried, and Jersey puked on his shoes again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Standing on the tarmac by a chain-link fence, at the very far end of the Miami airport runway, was a tall young man with thick black hair. He was surrounded by more than a dozen suitcases. He waved at the professor.
“Yoenis!” Professor Fauna cried. He looked back at Elliot and Uchenna. “This is our friend!”
“Uh . . . ,” said Uchenna, staring out the window, “does he think those bags will all fit in the Phoenix?”
Elliot had returned to cleaning Jersey Devil vomit from his shoes. He looked up and out the window to see a man standing amidst an island of bags.
Professor Fauna stopped the plane, threw his door open, and hopped out. The warm, humid Florida air hit Uchenna. She clambered down and followed Professor Fauna over to the man with the suitcases.
“¡Yoenis! ¿Qué tal estás?”
Yoenis smiled and embraced the professor, and they kissed each other on one cheek. Then he turned to Uchenna and Elliot. “These must be Elliot and Uchenna,” he said, and shook both their hands very seriously. “I’m Yoenis.”
Uchenna tried to smile at him, but she was distracted by all the bags. There were so many suitcases and bags around Yoenis’s feet that she thought he must have disobeyed every public announcement ever made and agreed to watch the suitcases of every other passenger at the Miami airport. They couldn’t all belong to him.
“I see you’re looking at my luggage,” Yoenis said. “I’ll have to rearrange some things, but don’t worry. It’ll all fit.”
“Um . . . I hope this isn’t rude,” said Uchenna, “but there is no chance that will all fit in the Phoenix.”
“Even if it did, I’m pretty sure planes have weight limits,” Elliot added. “For safety.” He glanced back at the Phoenix, where Jersey was peeking through a small round window. He seemed to be staring at Yoenis’s baggage, too.
“Don’t worry about my stuff. Any Cuban who goes home knows how to pack a lot in a little space. I wish we didn’t have to. But we do.”
“Why?” Uchenna asked.
Yoenis bent over and started to open some of the bags. “Hold this open for me,” Yoenis said, handing Elliot a large Ziploc and pouring a bottle of vitamins into it. “It’s a long story. Basically, it’s hard for Cubans to get all the things they need. The Cuban government makes it tough. And then, the US government goes and makes it even harder by imposing an embargo.” While he was talking, Yoenis pulled out more vitamins, several bags of powdered milk, nuts, dried fruit, and a big box of dried soup.
“Between the Cuban and US governments, my mother can’t get the basic things she needs to live. Milk, meat, medicine, machinery.” Yoenis explained. “Ya tú sabes. Those in power are always making the lives of regular people miserable. Anyway, whenever a Cuban American goes back to Cuba to see his family, he pretty much always brings a few things.”
Elliot
gestured at the bags. “A few things?”
“My man,” Yoenis chuckled darkly, “this is nada. You should see what I bring when I fly commercial.”
Yoenis turned his focus to packing, and Uchenna started gazing around the Miami airport. Suddenly, she muttered, “Unbelievable!” She pointed to a large airplane hangar at the end of the runway. A large cargo plane was being loaded. The plane was silver, but the wings and tail were painted black, and on the tail was a snakelike S. Uchenna groaned. “They are everywhere.”
Elliot came next to her and shaded his eyes from the Miami sun. “Seriously. They take multinational corporation to a ridiculous extreme.”
“Who’s that?” Yoenis asked, shoving a pair of sneakers into a crevice about the size of a single sock.
Professor Fauna passed him another pair of sneakers, which Yoenis somehow shoved into the same space, and said, “The Schmoke Brothers. Billionaire industrialists. Collectors of mythical creatures. Villains of the lowest order.”
“More powerful rich guys,” Yoenis replied, “exploiting the world, its people, its animals, its resources. No surprise.” Then he straightened up. “But someone was talking about these Schmokes recently . . . ,” Yoenis said. He tapped his chin, trying to remember what he’d heard.
Elliot squinted. “Can you see what they’re loading?”
“Looks like black barrels?” Uchenna said. “What do you think is in them?”
Elliot shrugged. “Pure evil, probably.”
Yoenis laughed out loud at that. “Elliot, I like you.” Elliot grinned. Then Yoenis stood up and dusted off his hands. Elliot and Uchenna looked around. Their mouths fell open. There was a single suitcase sitting at his feet.
“Are you kidding me?” Elliot exclaimed.
“What?” said Yoenis. “I told you that Cubans know how to pack.”
“That thing must be dense as a black hole,” Elliot said.
Yoenis shrugged and picked it up and hefted it toward the Phoenix. Professor Fauna held a door open for him, and he threw the bag in the back. “Next stop,” announced the professor, “¡Cubita la bella!”
CHAPTER SIX
The clouds around Cuba were even darker and more intense than they had been in New Jersey. The Phoenix bounced and jerked through them. Jersey looked bluer than usual. Elliot stuck his finger in his little face. “Don’t you dare . . .”
“It really looks like it’s going to rain,” Uchenna murmured, staring out the windows.
“It’s looked like this for months,” said Yoenis. “And it just won’t.”
“The news says there’s a twenty-five percent chance,” Elliot told him.
“The Cuban weather reports have been saying that for months, too. If only it would. This drought is killing Cuba’s crops, and the tourist hotels are limiting water for showers—if this goes on, we’ll have no crops and no money from tourism. That means everyone’s going to be starving.”
Uchenna looked at Yoenis. “What you’re saying is, we have to find the Madre de aguas.”
“You said it, little sister.”
Professor Fauna steered the Phoenix below the cloud line, and they began circling Havana, a dense city of tall buildings, built around a crescent bay and a wide river. Sunlight filtered through the low clouds.
“Looks a little like Heaven, doesn’t it?” Yoenis said.
“I was just thinking that,” agreed Uchenna.
“And it could be,” Yoenis said. “If the people were ever able to take power. But to more immediate business: ¿Dónde vas a aterrizar, Profesor?”
The professor was squinting down at the busy, crowded city. “I don’t know. I don’t usually make it to the point in the flight where we have to decide to land.”
“How about an airport?” said Elliot. “That was a really nice change!”
Professor Fauna pointed to a wide stretch of road right next to the bay. Waves crashed up on black rocks, spraying pedestrians who were walking beside a stone seawall. “What about there?”
“That’s the roadway along the seawall, the malecón,” said Yoenis. “It’s pretty busy, especially during the day. . . .”
But Professor Fauna was already aiming the Phoenix directly toward it.
“Um, Professor,” said Yoenis. “This isn’t a good idea.”
Professor Fauna seemed not to be listening.
“Professor!” Uchenna tried to get his attention, too.
“Professor!” Elliot cried.
Horns were honking and people were yelling.
Professor Fauna’s tongue was sticking out of his mouth. He was concentrating as hard as he could. The malecón was approaching fast.
Yoenis covered his eyes. Uchenna covered her eyes. Jersey climbed onto Elliot’s face and covered his eyes for him.
Professor Fauna started screaming.
The wheels touched the roadway.
“I did it!” Professor Fauna screamed.
“¡Así se hace!” cried Yoenis. “Now slow down!”
But the Phoenix was not slowing down.
“Mito, use the brakes!”
“What brakes?!” Professor Fauna shouted.
The Phoenix hit the wall that ran between the roadway and Havana Bay. And suddenly, the Phoenix was spinning like a wheel, wing over wing. Everyone was screaming.
They hit the water. Hard.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Out, out, out!” shouted Professor Fauna.
He pushed open the doors before they were submerged, and soon Uchenna, Elliot, Professor Fauna, and Yoenis were swimming in the water of Havana Bay.
“We’re alive!” Uchenna crowed. She looked around. “Right? You’re all alive?”
“I’m alive!” said Professor Fauna, treading water. “Yoenis, are you alive?”
Yoenis was holding on to a wing of the Phoenix. “I’m alive! Elliot, are you alive?”
Elliot burst up through the surface, coughing and spitting.
“He’s alive!” Uchenna shouted. “But . . . where’s Jersey?”
Just then, Jersey popped out of the water, too, in an eruption of red wings and tiny coughs. He flapped his away above the waves and then landed on Elliot’s head. “Hey! Jersey! Come on, treading water is hard enough!”
“Ugh!” Uchenna spat. “Do not drink the water!”
“I wouldn’t,” said Yoenis, his head bobbing above the small waves. “Havana’s waste gets dumped in the bay. Look—there’s a sewage drain.” He nodded at a small pipe that was protruding from the malecón. Dirty water was pouring out of it into the bay. Then Yoenis tried to climb up on the Phoenix’s wing. When his back was to the drain, a small creature stuck its head out of the pipe.
“What is that?” Uchenna exclaimed, kicking hard with her legs to keep her head above the oily, fishy water.
“Looks like some kinda lizard?” said Elliot. “Or fish? Or footless amphibian? I can’t tell from here.” His head sunk beneath the surface of the water, and when he came back up, he was shouting, “Oh, the water is in my mouth! Oh, it’s in my mouth, get it out!”
The little creature raised its head. It was blue-green, with a body like a snake’s. It appeared to have ornate horns on its head. And even from a distance they could see its eyes—a shining midnight blue. Suddenly, it slid out of the sewage pipe and slipped into the water of the bay, and then it was gone beneath the waves.
“What was that?” Uchenna said.
Yoenis, half up on the plane’s wing, turned toward the sewage pipe again. “What was what?”
Professor Fauna was swimming around like he was enjoying himself. But Uchenna and Elliot were treading water and looking at one another. “That thing was weird,” said Uchenna.
“Yeah,” agreed Elliot. “That was definitely not any creature I’m familiar with. It looked like a snake crossed with a bull crossed with a—”
“Uh, Elliot?” said Uchenna.
“I see it, Uchenna!” Elliot replied. “Swim for your lives!”
They both started swimming toward the Phoenix as fast as they could.
There was a roar of water behind them.
Everyone was screaming.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sharp horns pierced the surface of the water, and then a scaly head emerged, and finally two sparkling, midnight-blue eyes.
It was the same head and face they had seen in the sewage spout. But now it was enormous.
The creature rose up out of the water. Its neck and body were as wide as the base of a palm tree. It was a sea serpent—a humungous, terrifying sea serpent—and it rose in a coiling spiral until it towered above the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society.
“Is that . . . ?” Professor Fauna whispered, his voice a blend of fear and excitement.
“That’s the Madre de aguas,” Yoenis whispered back. “My mom’s friend from her fuentecita. I knew she could change sizes, but I’ve never seen anything like this. . . .”
The giant sea serpent gnashed her teeth, each one like a terrible fishhook, curving and sharp and large enough to hook a great white shark. The Madre de aguas’s purple tongue twisted in the air.
And then she began to swim toward the Phoenix . . . which the members of the Unicorn Rescue Society were still clinging to desperately.
“This is bad,” said Elliot.