Island of Fog (Book 1) (18 page)

They spent the next fifteen minutes calling for their missing friend. With the manticore safely out of the way for now, all but Fenton spread out and hunted through the undergrowth, wondering if she had been knocked unconscious in some unseen scuffle. Fenton remained in his shiny black serpentine form, creeping around in near silence, half walking and half slithering. At one point he passed by Hal a mere five feet away, and yet Hal hardly heard him; the bushes moved and a solid black reptilian body slipped by, as thick as a tree trunk. Hal caught a glimpse of a scrawny back leg, and then came the long, long tail, growing thinner and thinner until it finally ended in a point no thicker than a pencil.

“Dar-CY!” Emily yelled from somewhere nearby. She had been calling the most. “Oh, where ARE you?”

“I just can’t understand it,” Robbie said, sounding almost indignant. “How could she just
disappear?
She was sitting right there on Hal’s back, and then—
wham!
Gone.”

“Wham?” Lauren repeated. “She disappeared with a
wham?
”

“You know what I mean.”

Hal foraged under some ferns, hoping to find her lying unconscious somewhere.
Better unconscious
, he thought,
than dead
.

A sick feeling had come over him early on in the search. The woods were quiet, and it was extremely unlikely that Darcy had taken to her heels and run so far that she was out of earshot. Perhaps she had run and banged her head on a tree, and was lying dazed in a heap somewhere. Or perhaps she was so terrified that she had curled up into a ball and was refusing to utter a word of reply. Either scenario was better than the one that kept slipping into Hal’s mind. He refused to voice it, but it kept rearing up and whispering to him, telling him that the manticore had stung her too, and she had stumbled away and died.

He shuddered. Not Darcy. Not
any
of his friends.

It was strange, though, that none of them had found her. There were six of them—seven counting Fenton, if indeed he was actually looking—and they had made sure to spread out from the point they had last seen Darcy riding on Hal’s back. Wary of the manticore, they were peering under every bush and up every tree, then doubling back and searching again and again, never straying too far from each other. Fenton seemed to understand that Lauren was unable to fly this deep in the woods, and Emily had nothing to transform into, so both were vulnerable. Fenton stuck close to them like a sinister watch dog.

“Darcy!” Hal yelled, his throat dry.

There was nothing but silence in the woods.

They finally rejoined, each as somber as the next. Emily was crying.

Dewey, standing tall as a centaur, shook his head slowly. “If she ran away, then she really could be anywhere by now. She’s had time to run all the way home, I should think.”

That was an exaggeration, Hal knew, but he had to agree that Darcy could well be too far away to hear them yelling for her. “So what now? Keep looking? Leave the woods and get help?”

There was a long silence.

“I’m going to keep looking,” Emily said, wiping her eyes. “Even if it takes me all day and night. Fenton will protect me. Right, Fenton?”

Hal jumped, suddenly noticing Fenton for the first time since they’d regrouped. His black serpentine body was hanging from the tree over their heads. His tail was coiled around a branch and he hung upside down with his lizard feet planted on the tree trunk.

After some discussion they decided to split up. “Go do what you need to do,” Emily told Hal and Robbie. “Block that fog-hole you talked about. Do it quickly, and then come back and help us search.”

Abigail moved to Hal’s side. “I’ll help the boys,” she said. “Dewey, why don’t you help Emily and Lauren? You can help Fenton protect them in case . . . you know.”

With heavy hearts, Hal, Robbie and Abigail took the blankets and set off for the fog-hole. They said nothing, and Hal knew that each was wondering the same thing: Where on earth could Darcy be? Blocking the fog-hole seemed unimportant compared to finding her, yet somehow Hal knew it had to be done. And faced with the prospect of having to return to Black Woods another time, he was determined to see it through now rather than later.

They came upon the fog-hole a few minutes later. The column of thick, belching fog was utterly silent as it poured up out of the hole in the ground. Some of it puffed sideways and engulfed them, but the rest twisted and turned through the trees above.

“It’s amazing,” Abigail said, her eyes wide. “This is really where the fog comes from!”

“Let’s get it done,” Hal said shortly. He studied the branches lying across the hole. These were the few that he and Robbie had managed during their first visit. How long ago that seemed now! “Robbie, we need your ogre strength.”

Robbie didn’t need to be told twice. He frowned, stared at the ground, and suddenly grew to three times his normal height. The transformation was instantaneous and silent, and Hal felt a pang of envy. Everyone but him seemed able to change at will now.

Robbie stomped over to a tree and reached up to the nearest branch. The branch was thicker than Hal’s leg, but the ogre simply snapped it off with one hard wrench. He dragged it over to the fog-hole, and Hal and Abigail jumped out of the way as the trailing end of the branch swept by, littering the ground with leaves and the remnants of an old birds’ nest. Robbie heaved the branch unceremoniously over the hole and, without delay, returned to find another suitable limb to snap off.

After a couple more branches had been laid across the hole, Hal decided there was enough of a framework to support the blankets. He and Abigail unfolded and draped them over the branches. When all four blankets were in place, completely covering the hole, they pinned them down around the edges with stones. Just for good measure, in case a gust of wind should happen by, Hal instructed Robbie to throw on a couple more smaller branches, and then the three of them scooped dirt and soggy leaves on top. They stood back to admire their handiwork.

How quickly they had accomplished their task! With Robbie’s ogre strength, laying branches had been easy, and the blankets neatly finished the job. Hal half expected the blankets to rise up with the force of the fog trying to get out, but they didn’t even ripple. The fog had been cut off without any effort.

Already the air seemed clearer where they stood. The fog no longer billowed and puffed out of the hole at them, and no longer poured up through the trees. How long would it be before the fog lifted from the island? An hour? Half a day? Would it be clear before dusk, or would they have to wait until morning to see a blue sky?

“Well,” Abigail said, dusting off her hands, “I guess that’s done. We should go and look for Darcy again.”

“Okay,” Hal agreed. “Come on, Robbie. Job’s done.”

Robbie returned to his human form and the three of them set off back through the woods. On the way, Hal wondered aloud where the fog actually
came
from, and what was producing it.

“Do you think the fog-hole could be one of these ‘holes’ Miss Simone was talking about? Do you think it leads to Elsewhere?”

The idea was intriguing, and Abigail glanced back as if she wanted to go and investigate. “We could climb down into the hole,” she said, “and follow the tunnel. We might come out in Miss Simone’s world.”

But the suggestion was meant lightly. Not one of them relished the idea of following a tunnel filled with fog! Hal wasn’t sure whether that much concentrated fog would cause breathing difficulties, but he was sure it would be a difficult, if not impossible journey through unknown territory.

“That tunnel could narrow to the size of a rabbit warren,” he said, “or it might be too steep to climb down. Maybe one day we can have a better look, but right now we need to find Darcy.”

They regrouped once more in the exact spot where Thomas had attacked them.
Not Thomas anymore
, Hal corrected himself.
The manticore. Thomas is long gone.

Emily looked forlorn, and she sat on a log with Lauren, staring at her dirty feet. Dewey had finally reverted to his human form, and he looked smaller than he ever did. He stood behind the two girls, shuffling his feet. Fenton, still in his serpentine body, loitered in the bushes. His head and body were motionless, his feet planted firmly in the dirt. Only his tail gave a sign of life where it flicked slowly back and forth.

“She’s dead,” Emily said miserably. “I can’t believe it. She’s actually dead.”

“Don’t be silly,” Hal said. “You don’t know anything of the sort. She’s around somewhere, you’ll see. Just not
here
, that’s all. We’ll find her. The question is, should we go and get help, or continue looking ourselves?”

“It must be getting late,” Dewey said, sounding nervous. “Does anyone know what time it is?”

“My watch broke,” Hal said.

“Look at the state of my feet,” Abigail murmured. “All this tramping around in the woods without proper shoes . . .”

“At least you can fly,” Emily said, still staring at her own feet. “All of you can change except Darcy and me. And now Darcy’s dead, and I’m—” She broke off and her hands flew to her face. The sobs came good and hard now, and Lauren tried to comfort her with an arm around her shoulders.

Hal refused to believe Darcy was dead. Still, her disappearance was a mystery. He wondered if he should turn into a dragon again, and track Darcy using his nostrils, much as a dog might. He should have done that before, now that he thought about it, but having lived all his life without such a keen olfactory sense, it was easy to forget he had one.

It wasn’t too late though. “Hey, guys, I think I’m going to turn into a dragon and see if—”

“Oh, my head,” Darcy said, sitting up. “I have a lump the size of a stone.”

As everyone stared at her in disbelief, she parted her disheveled hair and fingered the bump on her head. Then she frowned. “Why are you all looking at me like that?”

Everyone was speechless. Hal rubbed his eyes and looked again. Yes, she was really there! Darcy O’Tanner was sitting there in the dirt right before them, only she looked different. Although human, her skin was a curious mixture of colors that blended in so well with the surrounding bushes that she was difficult to see. Her face was a mottled green-brown shade, her hair much the same, and the top half of her dress seemed to be the color of a rotten log that lay behind her. Her hands, placed in the dirt as she leaned back, were the exact same shade—a dark blackish-brown that spread all the way up her arms and faded to pale green near her shoulders. As for her legs, at first Hal thought she was buried in dirt and leaves up to the waist, as her legs seemed to be missing. But then she drew her knees up and Hal could see the outline of her legs even though they were all but transparent.

The curious thing was that the color of her skin and dress
changed
as she moved, continually blending in with the surrounding area. No, Hal corrected himself, not just the surrounding area, but the
background
. He wasn’t sure what the others were seeing, but from his own point of view, it was as though he could see right through her. That log behind her, for instance—it seemed to be painted onto her dress and part of her arm. And yet he knew without asking that the others were seeing a different effect, for they were looking at her from a different angle.

Darcy’s camouflage was perfect, so perfect that she had been lying here unconscious all this time and none of them had seen her.

“Oh—!” Darcy said, holding her hands in front of her face. She stared down at her legs. “I—what—”

Now that he knew she was there, Hal could see her quite plainly, transparent or not. But, he realized, it was only because she was awake and moving. When she remained still for even a split second, the camouflage was so perfect that she blended completely into her surroundings and simply vanished from sight.

Emily found her voice at last and threw herself at her friend. “Oh, Darcy, we thought you were dead! We thought you’d been eaten by the manticore! We’ve been looking for you for absolutely ages!”

As the others gathered around her, Darcy climbed unsteadily to her feet and held on to Emily for support. “I remember the manticore coming out of the bushes,” she said. “I was sitting on Hal’s back, and he jumped and I lost my balance. I slipped off into the dirt. The next thing I knew—” She shuddered and closed her eyes, then tried again. “The next thing I knew, the manticore was standing over me, and I saw his big nasty face swinging round to look at me.”

“And then?” Robbie asked.

“And then . . . and then I just wished I was invisible,” Darcy said, frowning. “And it worked. The manticore stood there for a second or two, looking around, inches from my face, and it
couldn’t see me
. Then it leapt away.”

She stared at her hands once more. From where he stood, Hal could almost see right through her hands to her face. He blinked, unable to focus properly on her.
Not so much transparent as translucent
, he thought. Her face and hair seemed solid enough and he could make out her familiar features quite clearly, and yet at the same time the tree that stood right behind her showed in half her face, as if someone had painted a line from her forehead to her chin and shaded one half the color of bark. It was unsettling. Hal found himself blinking constantly. When he looked around, he noticed that all the others were too.

“Then,” Darcy said, fingering the bump on her head again, “I went to sit up and got hit by something heavy. I think it was Hal’s tail, but I’m not sure. I went out like a light. That’s all I remember, until I woke up just now.”

“So you’ve been lying here all this time,” Abigail said in an awed tone, shaking her head. “What a defense mechanism!”

“What does this mean?” Dewey asked in a small voice. Now that he was back in human form, he seemed diminutive in both size and personality. “What exactly
is
Darcy?”

Everyone stared at her. She stared down at herself.

“Well,” Abigail said slowly, “she might be some sort of wood nymph.”