Island of Fog (Book 1) (16 page)

When Lauren changed back into her human form once more, the dress closed up at the back and visibly tightened in the shoulders and around the waist. The leafy pattern returned, and the hundreds of tiny gems sparkled.

“That is
so
amazing,” Darcy said, her eyes wide.

“Wait,” Emily said, delving into one of the crates. She fished out a small wooden box and opened it. Inside was a thick pile of transparent plastic sheets cut roughly in the shape of a foot.

Darcy pulled one out between finger and thumb. It was flexible. “Is it a shoe sole? Do we put these inside our shoes?”

“What would be the point of that?” Emily said thoughtfully. On impulse she dropped one of the soles on the floor and removed one of her shoes. Then she placed her bare foot directly on the strange plastic sheet.

The sheet came alive. Although Emily’s foot was substantially bigger, the sole stretched to fit, then slowly wrapped around the contours of her heel, arch and toes. Emily squealed and began hopping around in circles, trying to dislodge the thing, but it was stuck firmly to her foot.

Hal laughed. “Smart clothes
and
smart shoes.”

They all grabbed a pair of soles, eyeing them curiously.

“Let’s all get dressed up,” Abigail said, her eyes shining.

But Robbie was puzzled. He stared at his own chosen garments, a pair of green and gray trousers with a large shirt that he could just pull on over his head without having to worry about buttons. “I wonder how it works for me,” he said. “I mean, I’m three times taller when I’m an ogre.”

“Go and try them on,” Abigail urged. “Then you’ll find out. I’m going to change too. See you all in a minute.”

They all rushed off to find suitable hiding places—behind a bush, or around the side of the generator building. Emily stayed in the lighthouse, while Dewey ducked around the back.

Hal found himself a large bush and yanked his clothes off. Should he leave his underwear on? He had to ponder this for a moment, and in the end decided he would keep them. The clothes were kind of cool looking, but they didn’t look very suitable for a cold fog! Oddly enough, after he’d dressed, he stood looking down at himself and realized that he felt comfortably warm. He should have been freezing by now, with his thin shirt, thin trousers, and bizarre transparent shoes that left the tops of his feet and toes bare . . . and yet, here he was, as warm as when he had been standing in the bright sunlight at the top of the lighthouse. To his surprise he found that his feet were warm too, as if the soles were generating heat. Even better, he barely felt the rough ground beneath. He stood on a stone to test it further, and was amazed to find it didn’t hurt in the slightest even when he put his full weight on it.

What would happen to his new clothes if he changed into a dragon? There was only one way to find out.

He scrunched up his face in concentration, as Lauren had. She had made it look
so
easy. Abigail, too—that girl could sprout wings at will!
So how was it done?
He stared at his hands for a moment, imagining the large, reptilian claws he’d grown in the woods. But just staring at his hands wasn’t enough—absolutely nothing happened. Where was that familiar itching he got when he was beginning to change? Or was that itching associated only with first-timers? Perhaps now that he’d undergone a full transformation in Black Woods, there would be no more unexpected itchy rashes or flashes of fire from his throat. Perhaps now he was in control of the dragon within him, rather than the other way round.

It was no good, though. He just couldn’t seem to change at will. He left his clothes in a neat pile and returned to the lighthouse, where Emily waited just outside. Her dress was very similar to Lauren’s, with some minor differences in pattern and color. And here came Dewey from the back of the lighthouse, wearing the same style pants and shirt as Hal.

Dewey looked pleased with himself, but wouldn’t say why. “Just wait and see,” he said with a grin.

Eventually Darcy returned with Abigail, both of them barefoot. Abigail gave a thumbs-up when she saw Hal, and immediately sprouted her wings and came buzzing over. Her dress seemed to sparkle a little more while she was flying, and the green fabric shimmered with a silvery glow. She looked more like a faerie than ever. “It works!” she called. “No more torn dresses for me!”

To demonstrate she landed just in front of Hal, turned, and retracted her delicate wings. They were still buzzing as they disappeared into her bare back, and Hal could hear a curious high-pitched whine that sounded like a mosquito. Then they were gone, and in a flash the convenient opening in the back of Abigail’s dress closed up. At the same time, her dress lost its glittering, shimmering effect, as if its energy had dissipated.

Robbie returned to join the group, and they all stood together in a circle outside the lighthouse, each clad in matching greens and grays, and each barefoot except for their curious plastic soles. They eyed one another in silence.

Finally Abigail, her eyes dancing with excitement, spoke in hushed tones. “Okay, gang. I think we can safely say that these clothes were designed for us. They’re enchanted or something, so we can change back and forth without our ordinary clothes getting ripped and torn. Lauren and I have proved that.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Robbie said with a frown. “You two just grow wings. What happens to me when I grow three times larger? Or Hal when he turns into a dragon?”

“Well, stop asking stupid questions and show us,” Abigail said shortly. “No time like the present.”

“Yeah, but what if—” Robbie argued.

Dewey, for once, interrupted him. “It’s okay,” he said boldly. Everyone turned to him in surprise. “Look, I’ll show you.”

He had always been small, only a little shorter than Hal but of lighter build. An easy target for Fenton, the class bully. Perhaps
too
easy, which explained why Fenton normally picked on Robbie instead. At least Robbie answered back, and in doing so gave Fenton more of a reason to beat him up. Dewey, on the other hand, was normally very timid.

But not this afternoon. Now he seemed self-assured, as if he had quietly matured a few years in the space of a few hours. He was still in the same small body, but he seemed larger somehow. Dewey appeared to know it too. His eyes had a certain twinkle, his grin a new-found confidence. Hal wouldn’t have been surprised if Dewey had stood up for himself and talked back to Fenton, if Fenton were here to bait him.

Then Dewey showed them all where this new-found confidence came from. He reared backward, arching his back, and in the next instant exploded into the size and shape of a horse standing on its hind legs—short brown hair all over, long and muscular legs, jet black tail. For the briefest of moments Dewey staggered there, unbalanced, but then the horse’s front legs erupted out of his torso and kicked wildly at the air. Dewey came down heavily on all fours.

But Dewey was not a horse. As Hal and Robbie had guessed, he was a
centaur
, part horse and part human. He was all equine except that, where the familiar neck and head of a horse should be, a human torso grew instead, with human arms, shoulders, neck and head. Thick black hair flowed all the way down his back. The short brown hair that covered the centaur’s horse-like body became a finer coat of hair all across his human skin. Even his face was fuzzy, and his eyebrows were extraordinarily bushy.

Dewey’s small face had flattened out, become harder and wider, his nose flat with flared nostrils. His eyes were unchanged, but his ears stuck out from his thick mane of hair, curiously pointed at the top. With his darkened skin, his even white teeth gleamed when he grinned.

“Well, here I am,” he said proudly.

“There you are,” Hal croaked, awe-struck. He realized that he, like the others, had backed up several feet to give Dewey room to maneuver. Dewey seemed unable to keep still; he kept turning and stamping, and whipping his head around to face them. Hal had the strangest feeling he was watching a boy astride a restless horse, and perhaps Dewey felt that way too, being new to his centaur body.

“Oh! Look at his clothes!” Darcy exclaimed, pointing.

It took a moment to see them, but there they were—the trousers and shirt had somehow combined and reshaped into the form of a green-gray cloak, fastened with a sash. When Dewey turned, the cloak billowed this way and that.

“So the clothes just shape themselves around the body,” Emily said, clapping her hands together. “That’s so wonderful! But I’m not sure I can stand anymore of this body-changing today, guys. My heart is about to thump out of my chest.”

Abigail smiled up at the centaur. “I’m proud of you, Dewey. You’re . . . well, magnificent! It’s funny, but you have the
shape
of an adult horse, all solid and muscular, but you’re shorter. I wonder if that’s because you’re still young?”

Hal realized she was right. The old horses used on the farms to plow fields and pull carts were quite a bit larger. Dewey was impressive, but stood next to a real horse he was probably a couple of feet shorter. Or should that be several
hands
shorter? Hal seemed to remember his dad saying that horses were measured in hands.

Abigail tapped Hal on the shoulder. “Okay, just you left, Hal. Then that’ll be all of us except Emily and Darcy, who say they have nothing going on. Now, I happen to know Emily has
something
going on—I’ve seen it.” She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. “I wonder if we can somehow force her to change . . .”

This made Emily look very uncomfortable. “I don’t like the sound of that. I mean, what’s happening here is wonderful, but it’s also frightening. I can’t imagine changing into anything myself. And I certainly haven’t noticed anything strange. No sharp teeth, no itches, nothing.”

“Nor me,” Darcy agreed. “Absolutely nothing at all.”

“There’s also Fenton,” Robbie said. “We still don’t know what he is. I wish he’d shown up. He’s a big fat tub of lard with hardly any brains, but he’s still one of us.”

At that moment, a heavy deluge of water fell on Robbie’s head from a great height. Gasping and spluttering, he swung around, expecting someone to be standing behind him with an empty pail. But no one was there.

Everyone else was looking up. Hal had seen the water fall out of the fog—a thick clear stream aimed directly at Robbie’s head just as he had finished insulting Fenton. He knew instantly that the big boy was here after all. But where?

It took a moment to spot him, but there he was, clinging to the side of the lighthouse, four or five stories up, barely visible in the thick fog. How he was clinging to the smooth, rounded lighthouse wall was anybody’s guess. There was nothing to grab hold of.

But Fenton was there, stuck to the side of the tower, a dark, mysterious figure hanging upside down with stomach flattened against the wall, arms and legs spread wide. Was that a long, thin tail stretching around the curve of the wall? What
was
he?

Hal couldn’t help thinking of gargoyles, those ugly stone figures that were built into the sides of old buildings. They were supposed to direct rainwater away from rooftop gutters by way of a water spout, so it looked like the statue was spitting. It fit Fenton’s description perfectly.

As Hal pondered, he became aware that the creature’s eyes were glowing red in the fog. Fenton—and Hal was positive it was him—stared down at them, silent and menacing.

The creature hanging high off the lighthouse wall remained motionless in the bleak fog, red eyes staring down at them.

Hal felt his skin crawl. “Fenton, is that you?”

There was no answer, nor the slightest indication that the thing had even heard him. Everyone remained silent, except for Dewey, who couldn’t seem to stop himself from stamping and turning in circles like a nervous horse. The clip-clop of his hoofed feet echoed around the lighthouse grounds.

“Well, we can’t stand around here all day,” Abigail said at last, sounding irritated. “Fenton, if that’s you, then come on down and talk to us.”

“Maybe he’s chicken,” Robbie said loudly, wiping his face dry. “Man, this water stinks.”

Even Robbie’s challenge had no effect on the creature. It was like a statue stuck to the side of the lighthouse.
Just like a gargoyle
, Hal thought again.

“You know,” Abigail said, “seeing Fenton up there reminds me that time is pressing. Anyone got a watch on?”

“It’s nearly four-thirty,” Hal said.

“So what?” Darcy said. “We’re on a picnic. We can take as long as we want.”

“Yes, but Fenton’s supposed to be back home by now,” Abigail told her. She cupped a hand to the side of her mouth and shouted, “Come down here, idiot!” Clicking her tongue, she muttered, “I had hopes of blocking up the fog-hole in Black Woods before he left.”

“We still can,” Robbie said. “Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.”

Abigail considered. “Mmm. You know, we stood at the top of the lighthouse in fresh air. It seems clean now, don’t you think? So if we block up the fog-hole and all the fog goes away, we’ll have plenty of blue sky and sunshine and there’ll be no reason for
any
of us to leave the island—despite what Miss Simone wants.”

“You’re assuming,” Robbie said slowly, “that our parents
want
to stay here, even with good air.”

“Look, whatever Miss Simone has in mind for us—experiments, testing, whatever—I think our parents are only agreeing to it because they think there’s no choice. If they let Miss Simone take us back to her world, they get to leave this foggy island at last.”

There was a silence.

“That doesn’t sound right,” Hal said. “When this project was first started all those years ago, the air was just fine. Everything was sunny and bright. Our parents agreed to work with Miss Simone
before
the virus broke out, so even back then they must have been prepared to move to Miss Simone’s world eventually, once we were all old enough and starting to change. I don’t see why taking the fog away would change the way they think
now
.”

“My head hurts,” Emily said.

“Mine too,” Dewey agreed. He clip-clopped around in a full circle and then made a great effort to stand still. “Look, if Miss Simone made a pact with our parents, then our parents are morally bound to honor it.”

Everyone stared at him in surprise.

Dewey looked mildly embarrassed. “It’s, uh . . . it’s what centaurs would do.”

“Made a pact?” Abigail repeated. “Morally bound? What’s got into you?”

Emily placed her hands over her head and closed her eyes. “No, guys, I really mean my head hurts,” she said quietly. “I’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately, and this is a bad one.”

Darcy put an arm around her and peered into her face. “Do you need to sit down? You look pale.”

Abigail sighed. “Look, why don’t we talk on the way to Black Woods? We can leave our bikes. We’ll change and try out our new bodies. How about it?”

Hal could see there were some mixed feelings between his friends. He suspected the idea of Black Woods and the manticore was the cause of most of the doubt. On the other hand, despite Abigail’s flawed logic, the idea of blocking the fog-hole still appealed to him. “I don’t know why Miss Simone’s people are still pumping that fog through,” he said, “but I’m convinced the air is fresh here on the island and I can’t see why we shouldn’t block the hole.”

So it was that the seven of them returned to the broken lighthouse gates. Dressed in their ‘smart’ clothes, as Hal called them, they were ready and eager to try out their alternate identities on a journey across the island. Black Woods lay forty-five minutes away on foot . . . only they weren’t all going on foot.

They stuffed their ordinary clothes, shoes and all, into their backpacks and organized themselves. Abigail and Lauren would fly, of course, but they felt they were unable to carry passengers very far. Dewey offered to take a passenger on his back, so Emily, with her headache, gratefully accepted that seat after first grabbing hers and Dewey’s backpacks and all four blankets.

“Ooh, Dewey,” Emily said, as soon as she had mounted. “I hope you don’t throw me off.” She tentatively put her hands on his waist.

Hal knew what was coming next. Either he or Robbie was expected to transform and carry Darcy, who would otherwise have to walk. “I don’t even know how to change!” Hal said. “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

“Try,” Abigail said shortly. She reached for her backpack and buzzed away, taking the lead. “Come on, gang. To Black Woods!”

Like the sound of an umbrella opening, Lauren changed in a flash and spread her wings. Then she launched herself after Abigail. Her method of taking off wasn’t as simple as Abigail’s; she had to bend her knees and jump, and it seemed a bit of a struggle to get off the ground. But, once airborne, she soared past Abigail effortlessly. However, the fog dampened her flight; she could clear small thickets easily, but had to skirt around taller trees. Hal suspected she’d end up taking a number of detours on her way to Black Woods, choosing open fields even if it meant going a longer way around.

Lauren had completely forgotten her backpack, which was stuffed with her hastily retrieved clothes. Robbie went to get it for her. His own backpack had fallen open and almost spilled its contents, so he quickly shoved everything back in—the thickest sandwich Hal had ever seen, a few cookies, an apple, and a bottle of water.

Dewey looked almost apologetically at Hal, Robbie, and Darcy, then kicked himself into action and galloped away, plunging through a thicket and disappearing into the fog. Emily gave a squeal as they went, but it was difficult to tell if it was a squeal of excitement or terror.

Robbie turned to Hal. “Okay, I think I get how to change. Lauren whispered it to me earlier. She said the trick is not to try and think too hard about turning into something else. She said to imagine you’re
already
something else, and act like you
know
it. She said that if I want to knock a door down, I should just go and punch it, and then I’d find that I was already an ogre.”

“Sounds easy,” Hal said doubtfully. “Show me.”

As Hal and Darcy watched intently, Robbie walked over to the buckled lighthouse gates and stared at them. He closed his eyes. Then he opened them and, in one swift movement, he punched one of the gates hard.

In the next moment he was yelling and holding his hand, doubled up with pain.

“Guess that didn’t work,” Darcy said, trying to stifle a giggle.

Robbie, red-faced and clutching his hand, glared at her. In a fit of anger he lashed out at the gate with his foot—and in the blink of an eye he was an ogre, fifteen feet tall and a mass of shaggy hair and muscle. The gate flew off its hinges and scraped across the paved ground, taking part of the stone wall with it.

“Well, I guess it
sort
of worked,” Hal told Darcy. She giggled again.

Robbie turned to them and gave a massive shrug. Even with his vastly different features, Hal could tell Robbie’s anger had left him as quickly as it had come. The monster made a rumbling sound and turned to leave.

“Hey,” Hal called. “Don’t forget your bag. And Lauren’s.”

Robbie looked blankly at the two backpacks, then picked them up by the straps. He tucked them into his belt, and at this, Hal did a double-take. Robbie’s ‘smart’ clothes had transformed into a thick green belt, tied with a strange, complicated knot.

Finally, Robbie stomped away with backpacks dangling from his belt. He crashed through the nearby thicket as Dewey had done, and when he was out of sight, Hal listened as his friend demolished anything that stood in his path. The cracking and crunching and snapping slowly receded.

“Well, just you and me,” Darcy said. She forced a smile. “You know, we can just walk if you prefer—if you can’t turn into a . . . a dragon.”

Hal felt useless. He picked up his backpack and handed Darcy’s to her. “Yeah, let’s walk a bit. I might be able to change as we go, but there’s no point standing around while I try and figure it out.”

So they walked, following Robbie’s trail. At least it was a clear path! Bushes were either pulled up and tossed aside, or completely flattened. There was even a small tree that Robbie hadn’t bothered stepping around—he’d simply shoved it sideways and now it lay there, roots exposed and clods of dirt strewn everywhere.

“So you really haven’t noticed any physical changes?” Hal asked as they walked.

Darcy shrugged. “None.” She played with her blond hair for a moment, pulling it neatly into a ponytail and feeling for the scrunchy in her pocket before realizing that her clothes were jammed into her backpack. She let her hair flop down again and they walked in silence for a while longer. Then: “We forgot about Fenton. Was he still up the lighthouse when we left?”

“Can’t say I noticed,” Hal said, trying to remember.

“Well, I hope he doesn’t go all weird on us. You said Thomas tried to kill you? Do you think that’s because he was a vicious animal and it was his natural instinct?”

“No,” Hal said, shaking his head firmly. “I’m certain we all know who we are after we’ve changed. I know
I
do. None of us would ever try to kill one another. Thomas . . . well, he’s been a manticore for six years, probably living in a forest somewhere in Miss Simone’s land. He might have, you know . . . gone crazy.”

“Maybe Fenton has, too,” Darcy said quietly, her face white.

A short while later, Hal stopped. He put down his backpack and went to stand in a clear spot away from Darcy.

“What are you doing?” she asked him.

Hal closed his eyes and cleared his mind. He wasn’t Hal the short human boy; he was Hal the dragon. He knew that when he opened his eyes, Darcy would be staring at him in amazement.
This journey is much faster as a dragon
, he thought.
I can already feel the wind rushing through my wings as I run. See? I’m a
—

He snapped his eyes open.

Disappointed, he sighed. “This isn’t easy,” he said to Darcy. “Why do the girls make it look so easy? Even Dewey made it look easy.”

“I think the problem is that you don’t really believe you’ve changed,” Darcy said. “You tell yourself you have, but
pretending
you believe it is not the same as
actually
believing it. I think it’ll get easier for you, but at the moment you’re not convincing yourself properly.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

Then, Hal blew his cheeks out. “Well, maybe you’re right. But how do I make myself believe?”

“You don’t. You can’t
make
yourself believe. That’s the point. You either believe, or you don’t.” Darcy thought for a moment. “That’s why you changed when the manticore was about to kill you. Instinct took over. Instinct doesn’t have time to question whether you believe something or not—it just takes over and does what needs to be done. Right now there’s no natural instinct needed, so the only way you’re going to change is to really
believe
you can change. Like Robbie—he didn’t believe properly when he first punched that gate, but then he got angry and went to kick it, and in his fit of anger he truly imagined that gate flying through the air—he knew he would kick it off the hinges, and he did.”

She paused for breath, and looked almost surprised at herself.

Hal nodded slowly. “That all makes sense,” he said. He eyed her curiously. “How come you figured all that out when you can’t even change yourself?”

Darcy shrugged. “Come on, let’s keep moving.”

They walked for another fifteen or twenty minutes, according to Hal’s watch. He realized that he would have broken the strap if he’d changed into a dragon earlier. He made a point to take it off before his next attempt.

They had walked in a gentle arc, heading inward for a while, through clumps of wood and over fields, but now they were heading back out toward the sea. The distant sound of waves could be heard, and eventually they arrived at what Hal considered a very familiar part of the cliff.

“This is where Miss Simone took a dive,” he said, gesturing. “Black Woods isn’t much farther.”

He found a plastic bottle in the grass and stopped to pick it up. It had Robbie’s name scrawled on it. Plastic bottles were in short supply on the island and it had been careless of Robbie to drop it, not to mention irresponsible. “Litterbug,” Hal muttered, sliding the bottle into his backpack. The stern voices of his parents echoed at the back of his mind:
Who’s going to pick up our trash if we don’t?

Hal and Darcy decided to eat while they walked, munching on sandwiches and apples as they picked their way through the long grass. No doubt the others had arrived at Black Woods long before and were sitting around having their picnic. Hal hated being the one to hold them up, but he felt that if he put too much pressure on himself to transform, it would only get more and more difficult.

They came across a hilly, rocky patch. Hal and Darcy stopped. It was in this same spread of harsh terrain that Abigail had carried Hal through the air, coming from the opposite direction after their adventure in the woods. He remembered that walking on these vicious, jagged rocks was almost impossible with bare feet.

Except now they had cushioned smart soles!

“Well, let’s put these things to the test,” Hal said, stepping up onto the rock. “But be careful.”

Darcy was already jumping up and stamping on the rock. “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s like wearing shoes. I can jump and skip and—OW!”

“Told you,” Hal said.