Queen Liliuokalani: Royal Prisoner (5 page)

Next time,
Felix thought.

He looked over at his sleeping sister.

“Do you know what I wish?” he said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him. Or maybe
because
he knew she couldn’t hear him.

“Hmmm,” she mumbled.

“I wish we could time travel right now.” Felix stared up at the ceiling, which was painted the color of the sky.
Blue as the sky,
he thought.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said softly. “I don’t want to be with Agatha, and I don’t want to be in Newport with Bruce Fishbaum.”

“Well,” Maisie said, surprising him, “would you like to be in a castle? With a moat and a jester and damsels in distress?”

“You heard me,” he said, half glad that she had, and half embarrassed.

Maisie was getting out of bed now, and she looked exactly the way she did when she was up to something.

“A big castle with serfs and maybe a dragon and
lords and ladies,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Felix asked.

She went over to her suitcase, which lay open in the corner. Felix watched her rooting around until she found whatever she was looking for.

“Ta-da!” Maisie said, holding out the crown.

“Where did you get that?” he asked.

“From The Treasure Chest.”

“But how—”

“Remember after that awful March Madness party?” she explained. “You found me in The Treasure Chest, right? But I had already tried to time travel by myself. I saw this and I thought that going to medieval times—you know, maybe with King Arthur and the Round Table, or someplace romantic and exciting—would make me feel better. I tried all sorts of ridiculous things to
go
.

Felix looked from his sister’s face to the crown and back again.

“Are those real jewels?” he whispered.

“I think so.”

“That crown is from The Treasure Chest, which means…,” he began.

“Yup,” Maisie said.

“Maybe there will be knights,” Felix said, climbing out of bed. “I would like to see real knights, and all their weapons and stuff.”

He reached out to take hold of one side of the crown, but Maisie pulled it closer to her.

“Wait,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

“
Now?
Can’t it wait until we get back?” Felix said, frustrated. Now that he could leave Agatha and Bruce Fishbaum and his ever-changing life behind, he wanted to get on with it.

“This is kind of important,” Maisie said.

“Fine,” Felix said, dropping back onto the bed.

“The other day, Great-Uncle Thorne found me at the doorway to The Treasure Chest.”

Felix looked at her, surprised.

“I go there sometimes to see if maybe there’s a way to get in that we haven’t figured out,” she admitted. “Anyway, he went on and on about how dumb we are, how we don’t know anything about The Treasure Chest—”

“What else is new?” Felix said, wanting her to get on with it. Already he was imagining eating big turkey drumsticks with his hands, and drinking mead—whatever mead was—while a minstrel serenaded them.

“He said that the anagram actually could help us,” Maisie said.

That got Felix’s attention. “How?”

“It can give us background,” she said.

“You mean like we would know ahead of time who we were looking for?”

She shrugged. “He didn’t really explain.”

“How do we use the anagram to get background?” Felix said, feeling prickly. He wanted to
go
.

Maisie shook her head again.

“Maybe we have to just say it or something?” Felix offered. Why hadn’t Maisie gotten the specifics? He knew how Great-Uncle Thorne could be, but still, she could have at least found out what he was talking about.

“Maybe,” Maisie said.

She held the crown out, and Felix hurried over to her and grabbed on.

“Lame demon,” they both said hesitantly.

Before they could say it again, that familiar smell of gunpowder filled the room. Then they smelled cinnamon and Christmas trees and flowers. The wind whipped around them, and they were somersaulting through time.

E
xcept this time, something was different.

Very different.

Some kids like to go on carnival rides that spin around and around. Felix was not one of those kids. In fact, he didn’t like spinning at all. So when instead of landing like they usually did, Maisie and Felix started to spin, he found himself not only frightened but also yelping. A yelling blur flew past him, a blur he thought might be his sister. But she went by too fast for him to be certain. And Felix was picking up speed, too. He thought he might be sick, that fancy chicken of Agatha’s rising into his throat. Was this what
lame demon
had done? he wondered. Sent them out of control, unable to land?

“Feee…liiiiix,” Maisie called, her voice warped and whirling.

“Maisie? Can you grab my hand?”

He held his hand out and his sister bumped past it. Felix saw her trying to reach him, her own hand outstretched. But just like that, she was gone again.

Palm trees seemed to fly past. And grass huts. And a man holding a large conch shell. Felix remembered something his father had told him once, a way to keep from getting seasick.
Look at the horizon. Keep your gaze on a fixed point.
Felix tried that. He stared hard at a palm tree, even as it, too, spun out of control. To his surprise, it helped. The palm tree, at least, was clear and steady.

“Feee…liiiix.”

He heard Maisie calling, and once again he held his hand out to her. This time she caught it, and hand in hand they rode the cyclone.

“Well,” she said, “
this
is fun.”

It figured that his sister would actually enjoy being caught like this, in a vortex or spiral or whatever it was.

“What’s out there?” Felix asked. “What do you see?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing?” Felix repeated. His heart started to race again. What if they had traveled so far back in time that there were no people even on earth yet? What if dinosaurs were roaming around?

“Kind of,” Maisie answered unhelpfully.

Felix could hear a sound in the distance, like people singing. No, he decided. It was just the sound of the gentle breeze. He realized he was sweating. A lot.

“It’s really hot in here,” he said.

“Ssshhh,” Maisie told him. She heard it, too. “I think there are people over there. Chanting.”

“You sure?” Felix asked cautiously. “It might be this wind.”

Around them, the wind whipped and blew. Maisie strained to listen to the sounds beyond the wind. She squinted to see what was out there.

Felix was right. It was brutally hot. Even the grass looked hot. When the people chanting came into sight, Maisie forced herself to focus. A group of half-naked men sat underneath trees or on mounds of straw. They were big men—tall and bare-chested—and though they did not look especially
dangerous, Maisie did not think it would be a good idea to find that out for certain. Some of the men smoked pipes; some scooped white stuff out of bowls and ate it. These men listened carefully to the ones chanting, especially the tallest of the onlookers, who stood under a tree slightly away from the others, his head cocked as if to listen better. Maisie could see the top of a thatched roof beyond the group of men.

“There’s a house over there,” Felix said. His voice sounded funny, like that of someone shouting down a mountain.

“More like a hut, I think,” Maisie said. “A
grass
hut,” she added, excited. Where in the world did people live in grass huts? She smiled to herself. And
when
did they live in them?

“So we must be on an island somewhere,” Felix said, disappointed. “No knights. No damsels in distress.”

“No,” Maisie said, wondering what had gone wrong. A crown should take them to a castle, shouldn’t it? Maybe they had somehow gone back to Saint Croix, back to Alexander Hamilton. But that didn’t make sense. There hadn’t been grass huts there. There hadn’t been practically-naked people.

Now she saw that there wasn’t
a
grass hut. There were lots of them scattered beneath the trees, windowless, with thatched roofs. The biggest one stood in the middle, near the men.

“It’s like a neighborhood,” she said to Felix.

Just when Felix and Maisie thought they might be caught in the tornado forever, four things seemed to happen all at the same time.

A few drops of rain fell.

A baby cried.

The men began to cheer and shout.

And the door of the big hut opened and a woman ran out, also shouting.

Everyone was pointing to the sky, ecstatic. There, stretching across the sky and seeming to drop into the distant hills, was a rainbow. Maisie had never seen one like it before. Each color glimmered in the sunlight, and for the first time ever, Maisie could actually see all seven colors, just like her kindergarten teacher had taught them: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Each of them vivid and distinct. The rainbow formed a perfect arc in the middle. It almost looked as if someone could actually walk across it like a beautiful multicolored bridge.

“What are they saying?” Felix asked.

Maisie shook her head without looking away from the rainbow.

“They’re not speaking English,” she said.

Felix tried to make out what language they were speaking, but the wind suddenly grew even stronger, and lifted him and Maisie again, higher and higher. It took all his strength to keep hold of his sister’s hand. Just when he thought he couldn’t hold on for another second, the wind weakened again—keeping them suspended in the middle of its vortex, but allowing them to see what lay below: a bustling seaport, full of whaling ships and sailors, more half-naked native people, and westerners dressed in high-collared shirts, long-sleeved coats, and pants or skirts.

“They must be so hot in—” Maisie began.

But she was interrupted by a long, low sound that stopped all the action below.

It came from a man in a loincloth holding a giant conch shell to his lips. He blew three times, then lowered the shell and faced the crowd.

“Aloha!” the conch blower said in a deep, loud voice.

“Aloha,” the crowd responded.

“I bring news of the birth today of an
ali‘i
, a girl born to Keohokālole, who will be
hanai
to Konia, granddaughter of Kamehameha the First, and High Chief Paki.”

“Felix!” Maisie said, squeezing her brother’s hand. “We have to pay attention. This must be the information we need.”

The conch blower continued his announcement.

“Our high chiefess, Kinau, sister of our king Kamehameha and wife of the governor of Oahu, has named the baby Liliu Loloku Walania Kamakaeha.”

A murmur spread among the Hawaiians in the crowd.

“Liliu’s birth is auspicious,” the conch blower proclaimed. “On this cloudless day, at the moment of her birth, a rainbow appeared in the sky.”

Maisie and Felix looked at each other. They were there when this royal baby was born. They had seen that rainbow.

“Liliu will be important to Hawaii,” the conch blower said proudly. “Let us rejoice in her arrival. Aloha!”

“Li-li-u,” Felix said carefully. “That must be who we have to give the crown to.”

But Maisie looked troubled. “We’re in Hawaii, right? I mean, they said
aloha
, and even I know that’s what they say in Hawaii.”

She remembered when Bitsy Beal came back from her vacation on Maui and how every time she came in or walked out of a room she said
Aloha!
She wore a purple flower behind her ear for a week, too, and a puka shell necklace.

“You’re right!” Felix said, terrified. “We’re in the wrong place! And we’re stuck in this…this…vortex, and—”

“You don’t know it’s the wrong place,” Maisie said, trying to hold on to Felix and memorize the name Liliu.

“We have a crown! There aren’t kings and queens in Hawaii!” Felix said, frustrated. “Hawaii’s a state!”

Maisie thought about what Great-Uncle Thorne had told her. The anagram could give them information and get them out of a tough spot. Did this qualify as a tough spot? she wondered.

She looked at her brother’s frightened face, and the seaport far below. Then she tried to land, to push
against the force that seemed to be holding them in place. But it was impossible to move of her own will.

“We have to say it again,” Maisie told Felix.

Felix thought again of castles and knights.

“You think that will get us out of here?” he asked hopefully.

Maisie realized she hadn’t told her brother everything Great-Uncle Thorne had said to her, and when he found out, Felix would be really mad at her. She would just have to deal with that later.

For now, she took the crown from her inside pocket, and with some effort she managed to twist her body around to face Felix.

“Hold on and say it again,” she told him.

“Lame demon,” they said again as their hands gripped the crown.

The familiar smells and sounds came, and the children began tumbling through time and space.

Then, for a nanosecond, there was nothing. No sounds. No smells. No movement.

And then, with a crash, they landed.

A
girl stared down at Felix. She had a plain face and dark hair that was parted down the middle and braided.

“Where did
you
come from?” she asked him.

Felix knew he was on a beach. He could already feel sand between his toes and hear waves crashing. The girl looked Hawaiian.
Good
, he thought.
We’re still in Hawaii.
All they needed to do was find this Liliu and give her the crown.

“I was sitting here watching
he‘e nalu
—”

The girl, seeing his confusion, pointed toward the ocean, where tiny dots bobbed in the water.

“And all of a sudden here you are,” she finished.

Her eyes brightened.

“Are you
aumakua
?” she asked eagerly.

“I…I’m Felix Robbins,” Felix answered.

He stared past the girl. Those dots on the water were coming closer, and he could see now that they were surfers, dozens of them. The waves, ten feet tall or more, curled menacingly toward shore.