Tales from Dargo Island: The Complete Trilogy (14 page)

Astrid and I
followed Aneela into her red-and-white palace. The place reminded me of a
red-velvet cake with frosting. The palace was crawling with soldiers and
servants, all of whom had the paint on their faces. One soldier, a young, tall
guy, walked up to Aneela and said, “The horses just arrived from the mainland,
My Lady.”

“Thank you,
Commander Rhys.” She smiled at him, maybe even blushed a little.

“Horses?” I
asked the queen.

“Ever since
Rockne’s death two weeks ago, his vehicles have been shutting down. He’s not
around to do whatever he did to power them.”

“Oh. So we’ll
have to ride horses?”

“Probably.
We’re bringing them in on the train before that fails too.”

“The train?” I
got nervous. That was my only transportation to Dallas—to my friends and
family. If it failed…

I looked at my
wrinkled hands as we walked. I’d been visiting my parents at night, so they
wouldn’t see me as an old man. My best friend, Estevan, knew of my condition.
He’d been on the island and was there the night I failed to lift Astrid’s
curse.

Astrid took one
of my hands. “Where are we going?” she asked Aneela.

“The Archives.
There may be information about those red birds.”

We went down a
staircase and into a round room. It was full of books. None of them were on
shelves and instead sat in piles on the floor. Some piles were waist-high,
others even taller.

We navigated
the maze of books until we reached a pile in a far corner. Aneela started
browsing the titles on the spines.

“Why did you
come straight to this pile?” I asked.

She looked at
me over her shoulder. “It’s the section for the wildlife on the island.”

“Oh.”

She grinned and
turned back, searching. She found one she liked and pulled it from the middle
of the pile, causing the other books to fall. She ignored them. She browsed the
pages quickly but sighed a minute later. “Nothing about red birds.”

A book fell
somewhere behind me. I walked over to it while Aneela returned to the pile
she’d browsed earlier. The book was open, and I gasped when I saw what was on
the page. “I found it!”

Astrid and
Aneela joined me as I picked up the book and showed them. It was the exact same
bird, with red wings and a very sharp, blade-like beak. The words on the page
were written in a language I couldn’t understand, but Aneela could and she
didn’t like what she read.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” Astrid
and I said together.

“The birds
belong to Dargonius.”

*
 
*
 
*

“Who’s
Dargonius?” I asked.

“He’s the one
who hid the island from the rest of the world.”

“Why is it bad
the birds are his?” Astrid asked.

Aneela took a
deep breath, flipping the book around for us. “Dargonius fled the known world
because he believed it to be corrupt and dangerous. He
hated
the world
because of its blind hatred toward his kind. He was a wizard.”

“Like Rockne?”
I asked.

“Rockne wasn’t
a real wizard. At least, that’s what he told us. He was a cast-off nature demon
who inhabited a human body. He had powers, but he wasn’t a true wizard.
Dargonius was.”

“And the real
world drove him off?” Astrid asked.

“Yes. He fled
to this island.”

“How did he get
here with the waterfall that separates us from the mainland?” I asked, thinking
of the Edge of the World. It was the biggest waterfall I’d ever seen.

“That wasn’t
there before. He put it there, and the outside world can’t see it. It does
manage to keep people away, though. Whenever they get close, they get the urge
to turn away.”

“How did the
natives react?” I asked.

“Not well. They
tried to kill him, but he fought back with magic. Then they feared him. Then
they accepted him.”

“They pretty
much had to.”

Aneela grinned
at me. “In time, they worked together to hide the island from the rest of the
world. Everything seemed fine at first. For hundreds of years, Dargonius lived
on this island, hatching a plan to get revenge on those who drove him away.”

“Hundreds of
years?” Astrid said. “The ones who drove him off had to have been dead by
then.”

“Yes, but
Dargonius’s anger was geared toward the whole world, not just those people. He
wanted to hurt everyone who didn’t live on the island. That’s when he came up
with the Dark Dream.”

“What’s that?”
I asked after she paused dramatically. Aneela had a flair for the dramatic.

“A disease,”
she said, reading from the book. “He planned to inflict his Dark Dream upon the
known world, sparing the island. This was his paradise, his home. Nothing else
mattered.”

“Did you know
about this before?” Astrid asked.

“I knew about
Dargonius—we’re all taught about him in school—but I didn’t know about the
plague he’d invented. I just read it here. This book was compiled after his
reign.”

“It’s been here
all this time and no one’s read it?” I asked, skeptical.

“Maybe my
father read it but never told me. He was murdered unexpectedly by giants mere
weeks ago, as you well remember. Maybe he never thought the plague would be
unleashed.”

“It’s unleashed
now,” I said. “He planned on using the birds to spread the disease?”

“Possibly. He
created them to be carriers because the creatures native to the island died as
soon as they were infected. They obviously couldn’t be carriers.”

“Those birds
were down there for a hundred years?” Astrid asked.

“It seems so.”

“Where was
Dargonius buried?” I asked Aneela.

She shook her
head. “No one knows. He just disappeared.”

“How many birds
do you think shot out of that well?”

“Nine,” she
said, smiling self-consciously. “I counted them.”

“Maybe we can
capture them all before they infect anyone else.” I shrugged.

“Hopefully.
I’ll send troops out now with nets and weapons. We can’t afford to lose any more
people; there are a little over a hundred of us now. We’re on the brink of
extinction.”

I nodded,
remembering the battle with Nalke’s small army that wiped out so many of
Aneela’s people.

I suddenly felt
a tingling in my hands and saw them becoming less wrinkled. They were returning
to their nineteen-year-old selves. Astrid was also becoming young again, her
blue hair turning red and shortening into a cute bob.

Aneela smiled.
“Welcome back, you two. It’s later than I thought if the sun is down. Come—time
to get to work.”

Though I was
glad I was back to normal, I couldn’t help remembering how much pain I’d been
in as an old man. It seemed to get worse every day. Astrid had had nineteen
years to get used to becoming old, but it had only been weeks for me. She said
she didn’t feel pain and wondered why I did.

We stood in the
grand hall of the palace with nets set up on the floor. Aneela had gathered
twenty soldiers, nearly her entire force, and told them what she wanted them to
do. She hoped the birds hadn’t migrated to this side of the island, so we were
to return to the side where we’d discovered them. I would check the well while
the soldiers searched the surrounding jungles.

Aneela wanted
the birds destroyed, seeing as they weren’t living creatures.

Even though it
was dark, the queen didn’t want to give the birds time to spread out and infect
anyone else. She made an announcement to all of Dargo to stay indoors and keep
away from any red birds. If they saw any, they were to contact the palace via
phone. There was a room dedicated to incoming calls from anywhere on the
island.

We changed into
white suits that reminded me the kind fencers wear, with helmets to match.
Every inch of our bodies was protected from the birds’ sharp beaks. We loaded
the nets, weapons and flashlights into trucks and drove back to the other side
of the island. The waves were much higher now, the spray reaching over the edge
of the cliff. The hill was soaked, the grass making squishy noises under our feet.

Astrid and I
went straight to the well. Before we could seal the opening with the wooden
planks we’d brought from the palace, I got an idea.

“What if the
birds
came
from the well?”

“We already
know they came from here,” she replied.

“I mean, what
if there’s something else down there?”

“So what?”

“Why would they
be down there?” I asked, frustrated and excited. “What if Dargonius is down
there? His body, I mean.”

“Aneela did say
no one knows what happened to him.” Astrid looked thoughtful through her mask. She
looked really good in that outfit. “We should send someone down there.”

“I’ll go. Now
that I’m not an old man anymore, I want to do something crazy.”

“What if there
are more birds down there?”

“I have the
suit to protect me.” I looked around for a large branch that could support my
weight. We’d brought rope as well, just in case. Astrid helped me carry a thick
log to the well, where I tied the rope tightly around it. I dropped the other
end into the well and crawled in after it, pressing my feet to both sides of
the well to hold myself in place.

“Are you sure
about this?” Astrid asked me.

I turned on my
flashlight. “As soon as I see something, I’ll come back up. I’ll be fine;
nothing can get me while I’m in this suit.” I tapped the chest plate, not even feeling
it.

Astrid kissed
me on the cheek. “Be careful.”

“I will.” I
started climbing down, hand over hand. I used to work out on the mainland, in
my old life, so I had a fairly strong upper body. Climbing down isn’t hard;
it’s climbing back up you have to worry about.

I’d put the
flashlight in a pocket, while Astrid shone hers down the well for me. I
immediately felt claustrophobic once I hit the halfway mark, where it was
darker. Before I knew it my feet were in water. I’d reached the bottom. The
water was knee-high and smelled awful. I pulled my flashlight out and told
Astrid I was fine.

Turning on my
light, I saw a small hole in the stone that made up the well. It looked like
only one stone had been removed. I felt under the water with my foot and hit something
that felt like the stone block. I looked through the hole and barely saw what
looked like a bunch of rocks piled up from ground to ceiling.

“I found
something!” I shouted up to Astrid.

“Want me to get
the others?”

“Yes.”

“Are you coming
back up?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Her
light beam vanished and I saw her disappear from the well’s opening. I started
pulling the blocks away from around the hole; they’d been loosened, thankfully.

As soon as I’d
made a hole big enough for me, I crawled through, hands first, since the ground
on the other side of the well was level. I stood on my hands for a few seconds
until I could get me feet through the hole.

I stood and
looked at the rock pile again. There was a gap, and I could see a door behind
it. It was made of rotted wood that had holes of its own. The birds must have
pecked their way out. I pulled some rocks away from the pile and pushed on the
door, but it was locked. I reached through one of the holes closest to the
handle, feeling a lock on the other side. I pulled it and the door opened a
crack.

I turned back
to the well, wondering if I should wait for the others.

Then I decided
not to. I crawled through the gap I’d made and went through the door.

The first thing
I noticed was the smell and wondered if there was a dead body in here. The beam
of my flashlight barely helped; I could only see a few feet in front of me. The
darkness in this room seemed deeper than normal and felt like a physical
weight.

I caught a
glimpse of a table to my right. I walked over to it, keeping the light on the
floor so I wouldn’t trip over anything. I got to the table sooner than I
thought I would and nearly bumped it. There were scrolls and bowls spread
about. The smell wasn’t coming from here, though.

“Don’t touch
anything!” Aneela screamed behind me. I knocked over a bowl in shock, spilling
crap on the floor.

She was
standing in the broken door with Astrid and three soldiers. She crossed the
room quickly, pulling me away from the table.

“What are you
doing down here?” I asked. She was wearing the same protective suit as me, but
I couldn’t imagine her climbing down the rope. Call me chauvinistic.

“Astrid told me
what you were doing so I rushed over. We tried calling you from the top of the
well, but you clearly didn’t hear us.”

“I really
didn’t.”

She looked at
the stuff on the table, at the spilled bowl on the floor. “This must’ve been
Dargonius’s chamber, where he created the plague.”

We backed away
from the bowl. “Is that it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,
but don’t touch it, all the same.”

Astrid joined
us and we shined our lights around the room. With all three beams, it was a
little easier to see through the thick darkness.

“The birds
must’ve been trapped in here,” Astrid said.

“The door over
there has holes in it,” I said. “The well is cracked, with loose stones. One of
the stones was already out of place. It must’ve been set up that way, by
Dargonius, so he could come and go as he pleased.”

“Sounds like
the ingredients for disaster,” Aneela said.

“Did you find
any birds?” I asked her.

“No. It’s too
dark. I think we’ll be all right until morning. Everyone’s staying indoors.”

“Except us,” I
joked.

“Speaking of
which, we should get out of here. The waves are rising.” Aneela looked at
Astrid. “Maybe you can talk to your father about those.”

“I’ll try.”

I shined my
light around one more time. “There has to be something down here. Otherwise, we
came here for nothing. I don’t climb down ropes for nothing. What’s that
smell?”

Aneela turned
to her soldiers. “Grab some of these scrolls and bring them with us to the
palace. I don’t think the plague is spread through the air or by touch.”

“The bartender
said he got pecked a week ago,” I said. “It takes a while to kill, at least.”

“Hopefully
there’s a cure in the scrolls,” Astrid said.

She and Aneela
walked out the door as the guards gathered the scrolls from the table. Just
before I could leave, I saw something shiny on the floor. Well, it wasn’t on
the floor so much as in the hands of a dead body. I jumped in shock and was about
to call Aneela back, but she was already gone.

The shiny thing
was a crystal the size and shape of an egg. I read a lot, dabbling in different
genres, and I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know a crystal is usually
important. The body must’ve thought so, too, the way it was clutching it. The
body was pretty much skin and bone, with the ragged remains of clothing. I took
the crystal.

At the palace,
we went over the scrolls and found nothing but the instructions for creating
the birds. According to the scrolls, the birds were alive and dead at the same
time. They had organs but didn’t breathe or eat. Creepy.

I showed Aneela
the crystal, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. She decided to keep it
along with the scrolls until more could be learned from it. I didn’t argue.

When we got
home, we were met by a couple of neighbors—Champagne and Victor. Champagne, an
old woman who liked to dress like a much younger one, had the power to read and
affect people’s emotions; Victor was a dwarf, with a long red beard he liked to
twist around his index finger.

I told them
about the birds and asked if they knew anything about Dargonius. They knew as
much as everyone else on the island.

We played card
games and drank (sodas for Astrid and me, alcohol for the adults), and called
it a night. None of us wanted to abuse Aneela’s curfew too much.

The next
morning, when I woke up, I felt something was wrong. I knew I was an old man
again, but I was in a lot of pain. More pain than I’d felt in weeks, since the
curse began.

I left my room
and walked down the hall to Astrid’s room. I knocked and she opened the door.
She wore her age gracefully.

“Astrid,” I
said to her, “something’s wrong.”