Lost Children of the Far Islands (21 page)

Leo sang the song through twice, and then one more time. As he neared the end of the third round, his voice quieted, and then faded away.

They hung there for a moment, just breathing.

“Beautiful,” Gus said to Leo.

“Yes,” he said.

They waited for a long time. The peace that had flooded their bodies as Leo sang began to seep away as the water around them stayed flat and still and empty. Finally, Gus spoke.

“No one,” she said. “We go.”

“Scared,” Leo said.

“Yes,” said Gus.

They decided that Gus would enter the fog first and distract the creature who patrolled its boundary. Then
Leo would slip in behind her and make for the island.

Gus would follow Leo as soon as she could.

“Get Ila,” Gus said.

The two seals pressed their muzzles together briefly.

“Safe,” Leo said.

“Fast,” Gus said, and turned and swam for the wall of fog.

Leo swept his whiskers through the water one last time, looking for any kind of vibration at all to tell him that help was coming. When he felt nothing, he turned and, with a heart full of dread, followed his sister.

Gus knew what she had to do. The shark they had seen could not pass through the fog, so if she could stay close to its inner edge, she should be able to give Leo a chance to make for the island. In theory, she could pop in and out of the fog and evade her pursuer. But she had no idea if it would work. She was terribly, terribly frightened. She reminded herself that she was the fastest swimmer in the school. This form was meant for speed in the water. She could do this. She
had
to do this. Ila was depending on them. Their mother was depending on them. Gus took a deep breath at the surface, barked once at Leo, and dove.

The plan went wrong almost immediately. As soon as Gus was in the fog, she lost Leo. He was supposed to be right behind her, but she could not feel him there. She put out a questioning trill, but there was no answer. Then all thought of Leo was driven from Gus’s head
because she popped out of the fog and was immediately surrounded by the overlapping wakes of sharks. Not one shark but a crowd. The ripples from their moving bodies overwhelmed Gus’s sensitive whiskers. She froze, trying to be invisible. It worked for about five seconds. Then the sharks, all at once, charged.

Gus spun, dove, and shot out through the fog into the clear water. She could hear the frantic thrashing of the angry sharks behind her. Leo was still at the edge of the fog.

“Move,” Gus said angrily to him.

“Bad idea!”

“Only idea!” Gus trilled back at him. Her heart was pounding with terror, and she knew that if she didn’t go back into the fog right now, she never would. So, leaping forward in the water, Gus shoved Leo into the fog. He bellowed angrily at her, and she gave him a sharp bite on his flank. As he shot forward into the misty water, she followed him.

The sharks were waiting on the other side.

“Go left!” Gus called, and then she shot right, toward the mass of gray bodies, her heart pounding, her only hope that Leo would listen to her and get to the island. Just before the pack overtook her, she sensed Leo moving away off to her left and felt a great rush of relief. Then the pack was on her and she dove and twisted and swam.

Gus swam faster than she ever had in her life. Even as terror threatened to overcome her, part of her gloried in the feeling. This was what she was good at. This was what
she could do, better and faster than anyone else she knew. And perhaps better and faster than anyone in the sea. She rocketed through the water with the sharks at her back. She dodged and rolled and lunged through the fog into the open ocean, and then through the fog again into the shark-filled water, infuriating the pursuing beasts. They chased her in a frenzy, like a pack of dogs pursuing a fox who continually outwits them.

An iridescent mako shark snapped at Gus with its pointed muzzle. As she rolled out of the reach of the mako, Gus felt the ripple in the water from another shark’s snapping jaws, much too close. She dove through the curtain of fog, caught her breath, and swam back in. Another mako charged her, and her dodge sent her into a tailspin through the water. Dizzy and confused, she briefly closed her eyes to orient herself and then reopened them to see the gaping maw of the shark as it lunged for her. With a final burst of strength, Gus spun away from the mako—and directly into the massive bulk of a charging bull shark. Luckily, it was expecting her to move away from, not toward it, and so its attack went wide, but its gaping jaws caught her left flipper as it barreled past. Gus screamed in terror and pain as a thin ribbon of her blood drifted through the water.

But for some reason, even as her flipper bled into the sea, the sharks did not attack again. Instead, they began to bump her with their bodies, driving her forward, like dogs herding a sheep. A tiger shark, young enough that its stripes had not yet faded, slammed up against Gus,
sending her careening helplessly through the water. As she found her balance and tried to flee, the bull shark who had charged her earlier slammed his stout body against hers, making her ears ring and her vision go dark.

They were playing with her, she realized. They could have killed her easily by now, and yet they were merely bumping and jostling her. Then, without warning, the sharks stopped. They hung in the water, surrounding her but not coming any closer. For a wild moment, Gus thought they were going to let her go. Her sensitive whiskers, picking up the new vibration in the water, told her otherwise. The great white was coming.

Gus turned for the fog, and saw with a stab of terror that the sharks had been herding her away from the fog curtain. Because of her injured flipper, she had been swimming slightly to the left. The sharks had taken advantage of her handicap, and had herded her in that direction. Now the safety of the fog wall hung at least five hundred yards away. Much too far to outrun a hunting great white.

Leo
, Gus thought to herself.
Maybe Leo got through
. Then, with her injured flipper tucked in against her body, she turned to face the approaching monster.

Suddenly the water around Gus exploded. One minute she was hanging motionless, surrounded by waiting sharks, and the next, the water was alive with twisting silvery bodies and the chattering, yammering cries of hunting dolphins. One rammed the tiger shark nearest Gus and sent it spinning off into the deep water. The dolphin
twittered a greeting at Gus and then butted a mako, flipping it end over end.

A larger body whooshed by Gus, and then another, and another. Gus saw the flash of white bellies on sleek black bodies as the creatures filled the sea around her. It was the pod of killer whales that she and Leo had heard earlier. Their cello-like singing was gone. They moved with total silence through the water, plowing through the sharks, scattering them right and left. Their target, though, was the great white. It came up through the water like a torpedo, its jaws wide, and was met by the killers. Killer whales fight like wolves, in packs, and it was a pack that descended on the great white. At least a dozen sets of jaws closed on the monster, pulling it down to the depths as they rolled it over, keeping it from defending itself. The cries of the dolphins filled the water as blood turned the sea pink. Gus was frozen with shock. One of the dolphins swam to her.

“Go! Go! Go!” it squeaked, giving Gus a sharp nudge with its beak for emphasis. A tiger shark exploded out of the water next to the dolphin, who turned with a shrill scream to meet it.

Gus needed no more encouragement. Holding her injured flipper close to her side, she shot through the water using only her body and powerful tail. She slipped by the battle unnoticed and made for the island, where she hoped Leo and Ila were waiting.

Waves carried her the final few yards. One wave threw her exhausted body up against a rocky shoreline and then
pulled her back out again. The next time a wave caught her, she rallied her strength and flopped out of the water and onto a long, low rock. She tried to move toward the shore, but the adrenaline abruptly left her bloodstream, and shaking and nauseous, she collapsed.

A small, dark seal moved awkwardly down the rock toward her, barking anxiously. It was Leo. Gus tried to answer, but she was too exhausted. She closed her eyes as the seal reached her. After a few minutes of anxious watching, Leo stretched out next to his sister. Resting his neck across her back, he closed his eyes. They had a long way to go, but for now they were alive, and it was good enough.

A wave breaking over them startled both seals into wakefulness. It was late afternoon and the slanting sun was warm, but then another wave crashed, washing them into the water.

They swam back and forth in the whitewater, searching for a way to access the island. Finally, Leo stopped in front of an outcropping of granite that had been worn by the waves into a series of blocky steps. Seals could not climb up them, but humans could. They Turned and climbed up the wet, cold rock as quickly as they could, shivering in the suddenly freezing water.

The top was wet, but at least it was out of range of the crashing waves. They sat there for a few minutes, letting the sun warm them. Leo was wearing his glasses.

“Isn’t it weird that we end up in our clothes?” Leo finally said. “Like, shouldn’t we—”

“Shh,” Gus said waving a hand at him. “Ow!” Moving
her left arm sent a bolt of pain all the way down to her fingers.

“What happened?” Leo said anxiously. “Gus, you’re bleeding!”

Gus put her right hand up to her left arm. Just below the shoulder, her shirt was ripped. The skin under the shredded material was torn and bleeding.

“I’m OK,” she said. “It’s just a bite.”

Leo’s eyes bulged and Gus couldn’t help laughing, even though her arm
did
hurt like crazy. “Just a shark bite,” she repeated, feeling slightly hysterical.

“Wow,” Leo said, looking at her with something like awe.

“Can you take a look at it?” Gus said.

Leo pulled away the cloth and peered at Gus’s arm. “Actually, it’s not that bad,” he said with obvious relief. “It’s sort of ripped up a little bit, but the bleeding’s pretty much stopped. Not bad for a shark bite.”

Gus grinned at him.

Leo tore off the rest of Gus’s sleeve, and after leaning over to soak the material in the sea, he tied it around her arm as a makeshift bandage.

“That should do it,” he said cheerfully, tying off the flowered cloth.

“How did you know that song?” Gus asked.

Leo blushed. “I sort of snuck out and read the book some more,” he admitted.

“What else did you find out?” Gus demanded. “And why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew you’d be mad,” Leo said, knowing as he spoke how weak an excuse it was. “And there wasn’t really time. You and Ila were gone all day, and then …”

His voice trailed off.
And then Ila was taken
was what he’d been going to say.

“Anyway,” Gus said quickly. “What else did you learn?”

Leo shoved his glasses up on his nose. “Well, about the battle, and the way that the Folk called for help and—By the way,” he interrupted himself, “you didn’t see a giant blue squid in there, did you?” he indicated the ocean with his head. “Or an orange dragon thingy?”

“Just sharks,” Gus said.

“Well, that’s good, anyway,” Leo said. “That must mean the other creatures were all killed off by the Folk.”

“Maybe,” Gus said. “Or maybe they just don’t like sharks.”

“Gus,” Leo said hesitantly. “I also read something else.” He told her about the curse that killing the King of the Black Lakes carried. “That’s why the Móraí said to wait for her,” he explained. “So she can be the one who kills him.”

“She’s going to sacrifice herself,” Gus said. Tears rose up in her eyes, but all she said was “I wish we’d known her sooner.”

“I do too,” Leo said.

They were both silent for a minute, watching the waves crashing and boiling below them. A particularly large one sprayed them with a fine mist. Farther out the fog hung steady and thick, blocking their view of the horizon.

Then Gus turned to look at the island, and Leo followed her gaze. Jagged granite climbed up from the water as far as they could see. If Loup Marin was a pile of rocks, this nameless island was more like a boulder field sprawled out at the base of steep, craggy cliffs. The rocks, which ranged in size from scattered chunks of granite to boulders as tall as several stacked cars, were dull gray and reddish brown, sparked here and there with shining bits of quartz. It looked as though a giant’s castle had collapsed and the island was its ruins.

At the very tops of the cliffs, they could just see pine trees.

“How are we ever going to get up there?” Gus said.

They scrambled and crawled and pulled themselves up and over for a while, trying to find a way to the cliffs. Gus’s fingers on her right hand were bleeding from scraping across the rough granite. Her left arm was mostly useless. At one point, Leo slipped and slid all the way back down to the shoreline, ripping the knees of his jeans and landing hard at the bottom.