The Island
There ain’t much to eat on the island ‘cept grubs. They all taste the same in the gizzards no matter what they look like, and they never try to escape. All you gotta do is scrape ‘em off the rocks with a knife after the tide rolls out.
I’ve got a knife. Papa gave it me when I turned ten and said “you’re old enough to go grubbin’ now, son” and that day I stayed out till the light faded and brought back nearly a full bucket of grubs. And I didn’t even eat any on the way home, ‘cept maybe a few, because they taste best fresh from the rocks.
I used to go grubbin’ every few days at least. You can cook ‘em up and they go tough, but they’re still good enough to eat and I likes ‘em better’n the spuds Papa grows in the yard.
We don’t get no fish close to the Island, prolly cos they’re smarter than the grubs and warned each other not to come. And nobody likes taking boats too far from shore for fishin, ‘cos the Island is surrounded by what Papa calls “dangerous waters”.
I s’pose a lot of what I’m writin’ down is stuff my Papa told me, mixed with what I learned myself.
The only ones who go into the water are the Raftmakers. Every now’n then a crowd gathers on the beach to watch one pushing they raft into the sea spray and jumpin’ aboard. The Raftmakers are tryna leave this place, but they mad because Papa says there ain’t no other place.
Papa says nothing leaves the Island—that everything comes back full o’ water and broken. That’s how Mama came back, bent in a way I’d never seen a person bent before. I didn’t look at her too close because I got a real bad ache in my belly that day.
Papa doesn’t let me watch the Raftmakers no more.
My best friend Luce says the Raftmakers build their rafts accordin’ to they beliefs and every one of ‘em is tryna please they gods. I don’t even know what a gods is. But if the gods is happy, the Raftmakers think they rafts will pass through the dangerous waters and sail on to Someplace Else.
I don’t know if I’d wanna go Someplace Else, but Luce reckons there’s all sorts of things to eat there that’re better’n grubs and spuds. Luce says a whole lotta things that don’t make sense and mostly I think he’s only teasin’ me.
The only thing that makes me wonder is the stuff that washes up on the beach. Mostly it’s rafts broke to pieces—stuff from the island comin’ back. But there’s also tins and bottles and dolls with no faces. And colours.
Colours are the most valuable thing on the island. The Raftmakers all want to tie colours to they rafts because they think they gods like them. But the colours don’t last. Papa says it’s because of the sea-salt air.
One day I found a yellow one day. Me’n Papa could’ve eaten different if we’d traded it for a scrawny goat, but Papa said I could keep it. “We’re lucky to have so many grubs,” Papa said and I guess he’s for sure right about that.
So I folded the yellow and kept it safe and hoped the colour would stay. Every now and then I’d take it out and me’n Luce would look at it.
My yellow was a scrap of cloth, but I don’t know nothin’ else ‘bout it. Nobody knows what the colours were. Now the yellow has faded and it’s as grey as everything else. I hate it now, but I can’t never throw it away, only in case the colour comes back.
“Colours don’t never come back,” Luce said when I told him. “It’s this place, don’t you feel it?”
I shook my head.
“I do,” said Luce defiantly. Luce did everything defiantly. “So do the ratbags.”
The ratbags are what we calls the kids who live in the Mission House with ol’ Jakarti. There’s always a place there for anybody, so nobody has to sleep outside. Which is good, ‘cos sometimes fish fall outta the sky at night.
Luce lives at the Mission House because he doesn’t have a Mama or a Papa.
“Ol’ Jakarti has a picture on the wall,” Luce told me. “I reckon it used to have a colour. I reckon Jakarti has a gods.”
“Why hasn’t he made a raft?”
“I don’t know everythin’, Kid.” Luce shrugged.
The village is down by the water. Papa said there used to be another village, but it got washed away by a real bad storm.
You can trade for pretty much anythin’ you need in the village: grubs, ropes and tools, bits o’ salvage. Sometimes the raftmakers and the salvagers fight over the things that wash up on the beach. I don’t think they belongs to anyone so it’s prolly right that they fight. Afterwards, someone goes home with a sore chin.
Back from the village are the hills and that’s where me’n Papa live. At night you can see the houses glintin’ white like stars till they put they lamps out. Behind the hills is bigger hills and then the jungle. Nobody goes to the jungle ‘cos it’s full of poison.
Foolish Pete lost his leg in the jungle. He went in lookin’ for treasure, whatever that is. He took some folks with him and they formed an expedition. But none o’ the others were quite so foolish as Foolish Pete and held back when they reached the brambles.
“You alright, Pete?” they yelled into the jungle. And Foolish Pete kept on yelling back that he was alright, right up till he weren’t alright no more.
Two men tried to save him. They found him tangled in brambles and old rusted wire and they tried to pull him free and his leg came apart from his body and his guts poured out of him like black breakfast.
One o’ the men got stuck in the brambles and was ended right then. The other got scratched and that night the valleys was full of his screams. I won’t never forget that night. Luce told me the man begged them to hit his head with a rock in the end, ‘cos he din’t want to hurt no more.
Mostly nobody goes on expeditions and every day on the island is pretty much the same. If someone dies, the Chaplain rings the big bell. If a baby is born, the Chaplain rings the big bell. When the big bell rings twice in one day it usually means a Mama died when a baby came outta her. But that’s not the reason I don’t have a Mama.
My Mama left Papa for a Raftmaker.
I remember the night Mama left. Papa does too but he don’t never talk about it. Anytimes I mention Mama he says: “Your Mama was a damn fool who cared about nobody but herself,” and I think that’s mostly true, but only mostly.
Mama’s eyes were big on the night she left. I think it was the madness. Papa says the madness is when a man can’t eat taters no more.
I watched through a gap in the planks as they walked ‘round each other in circles.
“You’ll die,” Papa says to her. “You’ll leave us alone.”
Then Mama says somethin’ real scary, maybe even as scary as the screams that night ‘fore they caved that man’s head in with a rock and prolly more scary because it was about me.
“Let me take him,” Mama says and she tried to get past Papa but he stopped her with one big hand.
“No,” Papa said.
They strung Mama up on a pole near the beach. They do that with the bodies that don’t come back too broken and sometimes with the bodies that come back very broken, just so long as they hold together well enough to be strung up.
“This is what become of ye Raftmakers,” they say.
I miss Mama. Sometimes when I was little she’d let me climb onto her lap and she’d read me from her books. Mama’s books were made from goat skin and twine and they was full of little symbols called letters that made up stories if you put ‘em together. Mama taught me the letters and that’s why I can write all this down.
Papa din’t like books or letters and when Mama died he searched everywhere for her books so he could put ‘em in the fire. He yelled at me to tell him where they were. He shouted: “Those books never did nothin’ for your Mama!”
Papa found the books in the same place I kept my yellow. He burned the books and I cried and cried but I couldn’t tell if I was crying ‘cos of the books or ‘cos of Mama.
Then there were storms for a long time and fish fell out o’ the sky: flappin’ and gaspin’, eyes wide like Mama’s on the night she left. Afterwards we collected the fish and shared ‘em out. Then we all worked together, even the raftmakers, helpin’ to fix the things that were damaged by the fish.
“The only way we survive is by helpin’ each other,” Papa says.
One day when I'm chippin' grubs away from the rocks, Luce comes along and asks me if I'll help him with somethin' and so I says yes without even thinkin’. I thought maybe he needed help shiftin’ salvage or mendin’ the Mission House or runnin’ errands for the raftmakers (I din’t tell Papa when we did this). There could’ve been a hundred things he wanted my help with.
“Good,” said Luce and he smiled and then just stood there standin’ on the rocks starin’ out at the ocean with defiance in his eyes. I had a strange feelin’ about the way he looked right then, like I knew I needed to remember it. Like I had to make a picture of it in my mind and keep thinkin’ of that picture every day so I’d never forget it.
The waves crashed against the rocks, but the waves are always crashing so after a while they becomes like silence except for those times—like then—when you can suddenly hear them.
Squashed between the rocks with me grub bucket and knife, I asked Luce what he needed my help with.
“We’re going in,” Luce says.
That night I had nightmare about Foolish Pete and his leg and Papa saying “he’s a damn fool” and being served Foolish Pete’s steaming guts on a plate and Papa standin’ in the doorway lighting a cigarette, fire blazing white, and sayin’ “he’s a damn fool” and the fading of my yellow and Luce standing on the rocks and the waves crashing against the rocks and the wood breaking against the rocks and the broken bodies of the raftmakers strung up along the shore and the sound of the screams of the man scratched by the brambles and Luce sayin’ we’re going in and Papa standing in the doorway lookin’ at me and saying “damn fool” and lighting a cigarette, fire blazing white.
“Jakarti thinks I’m makin’ a raft,” Luce told me the next day as I struggled to keep pace beside him.
That scared me, ‘cos Papa said the first sign of the madness was when someone decided to leave the island. Not long after that they’d stop eatin’ taters. Sometimes the madness sent people into the water without a raft and they’d walk further and further into the water until they heads went under the waves. Sometimes they’d be found hangin’ with a rope ‘round they neck. One time, someone with the madness started cuttin’ people and they had to put him down, but Papa says that was ‘fore I was born.
I was worried Luce had the madness, but I still followed him. We went down the side of the hill where me’n Papa lived and halfway up the next. The Mission House was a little ways away, but Luce led me down a different path—one overgrown with witherin’ trees and vines. Spotted rabbits darted away from us. The rabbits with spots are no good for eatin’ and all of the rabbits on the island have spots.
The path had been ignored for a long time. Luce’s eyes had a weird gleam in ‘em and I was scared he had somethin’ even worse than the madness. I asked Luce if we could stop and rest and I asked him where we was goin’. He din’t answer.
We walked along a path that went higher and higher and then we went down into a valley, and then up and up again. By the time we reached the top my legs was hurtin’. Luce took a flask from a sack slung over his shoulder and told me to drink.
“It’s Jakarti’s,” Luce told me as he handed me the flask. “He keeps it in a box of old things he don’t use no more.”
That reminded of the crate at home where I kept my yellow and I felt sad. I wanted to go back and check on it, in case the colour had come back. But once the colour had leeched out of a thing, it never came back and rememberin’ that made me even sadder.
I handed the flask back to Luce and he stuffed it away. “Not far now,” he said and I could tell he was lyin’.
We climbed another hill and went ‘round a bend and climbed a hill even steeper than the rest. The village was gettin’ smaller and smaller below us and it felt like we was gettin’ close to the sky. Wind hissed through the long grey grass.
At the top of the hill we sat down. Together we looked down at the village. It looked strange from up so high and the view made me feel weird. I looked out at the ocean and the clouds. The waves seemed determined and the clouds seemed angry.
“Come on,” said Luce after a while. “We din’t come up here to look at all the houses.”
I stood up and brushed the dirt off my butt. I was tired from serious thinkin’ as well as serious walkin’. And then I saw the brambles.
Damn fool, Papa said in my thoughts and I saw him lighting a cigarette and the fire and the tip of the matchstick blazing so bright, but the space ‘round Papa din’t get any brighter.
“This place is dangerous,” I said to Luce. I was tryin’ sound angry, but my voice cracked.
“Only if you get pricked,” said Luce, walkin’ towards the brambles. They grew in a wild tangle so thick you couldn’t see anything through ’em ‘cept more brambles and so many deadly thorns filled with poison.
“Remember Foolish Pete?” Luce said.
“His leg came off.”
“His leg got caught in wire they says,”
“So?”
“Not brambles, Kid.” And then he grabbed me by the shoulders. It felt good to have his hands there. I din’t feel so scared when Luce had a hold of me. “Wire.”
I din’t understand and Luce could tell I din’t understand by the look on me face.
“Wire keeps people out,” Luce said and I knew he was right ‘bout that. On the hill across from where me’n Papa lived, Farmer McGuffin had strung out a bunch of wire he collected to stop his goats escapin’.
“There’s buildings in there, Kid. I’ve seen ‘em. Big blocks o’ stone. There’s gotta be somethin’ special in there, else why would they want to keep people out?”
I wondered if the madness was catching and then I asked: “Do you think there’s treasure?”
“Maybe somethin’ even better than treasure,” said Luce. “Maybe there’s a way off the island.”
It was impossible. Nobody left the island by goin’ into the jungle. Unless you counted dyin’ as leavin’, which I s’pose is one way of lookin’ at things.
“Whatever’s in there we’re gonna find it,” said Luce. “You and me, Kid.”
I stared at the brambles. They made scary faces lookin’ out at us. Getting through them was impossible.
Luce grabbed my hand and we passed two piles of salvage that had been dumped on the hilltop. Luce shrugged when I asked him about ’em. We went up another hill and the wind howled and blew my hair into my face.
“There,” Luce pointed. At first all I saw was another pile o’ salvage heaped against the brambles, but it din’t look like anything.
“I’m not buildin’ a raft,” says Luce. “I’m buildin’ a bridge.”
Now I knew for sure that Luce had the madness as I realised the pile of scrap was arranged to make ramp leadin’ up into the brambles. The ramp was built from almost every type o’ salvage I could imagine: ropes and pipes and bricks, doors and tin sheets and wooden planks and more.
Luce looked at me and he must’ve been able to tell what I was thinkin’ because straight away he grinned and went to the ramp. Then he stomped on it as hard as he could and it wobbled but din’t fall apart. “Close your mouth, Kid.” He said.
When I got home that night Papa was very mad. I could tell because his sleeves were rolled up.
“What’ve you’n that ratbag Luce been doing?”
“Nothin’,” I said, not really knowin’ what to say. I was too tired to say much and the bridge was mine and Luce’s secret. If anyone else knew ‘bout it I was sure it would fall to pieces.
Papa din’t look at me but sat down and drank from a dark bottle. His voice cracked when he spoke. “I knew this would happen,” he said and drank some more. “I knew you was gonna end up like her.”
I knew I reminded him of Mama, but that weren’t my fault. Suddenly my arms felt prickly and there were tears in my eyes and I felt a way I’d never felt before.
I shouted at Papa: “Ain’t my fault Mama left,” I said. “Maybe it was because of you!”
“Get out,” said Papa. His voice was a low grumble.
“Me’n Luce are buildin’ a raft,” I lied. “We’re buildin’ a raft and we’re gonna get away from this place and the grubs and the taters and ‘specially from you!”
Papa grabbed me by the arm and I kept screamin’ as he dragged me to the door and threw me outside. The door slammed behind me. I had dust in my mouth and blood on my knees.
I could have gone to old Jakarti’s. He wouldn’t have asked any questions. Instead I just sat in the dark and cried.
I reckon I musta fell asleep ‘gainst the side of the house, ‘cos suddenly it was real early and the sky was turning dark grey. Papa opened the door and went past without even lookin’ at me, but I’m pretty sure he knew I was there because I sniffed real loud.
I helped Luce build his bridge.
The brambles made me so afraid I couldn’t barely breathe whenever I went close to them. Luce kept tellin’ me to relax, but I was barely brave enough to even step onto the ramp.
Once, Luce rolled down the ramp and pretended he’d been pricked by the brambles and I started screamin’ till he started laughing and then I hit him and he hit me back but they weren’t hard hits.
My arms and shoulders ached at first, but it was a good ache. After a while I stopped thinkin’ and just enjoyed how it felt to be doin’ something. I din’t think about Papa.
We needed more salvage and Luce showed me where we could get it. We went for a walk and found a long grassy slope. Below us was the ruins of a village that must’ve been the one destroyed ‘fore I was born.
“Even the Raftmakers think it’s cursed,” Luce told me.
I could see grooves in the grass and the dirt where Luce had been haulin’ scrap. I din’t know how he’d done it on his own but I s’pose when someone’s real determined they find a way.
Me’n Luce went down into the ruins. It was hard for me to think this place had been an actual village. A time ‘fore I was born was impossible to think of.
To the left the tide rolled across flat sand and reached almost to the very edge of the ruins. Luce told me that sometimes the water went over the entire village so you could only see bits of wall sticking up.
Luce found a sheet of metal and started to pull it free. Maybe once part of a roof. I went to help him, movin’ slowly through the ruined village.
Then I screamed so loud as my foot came down on somethin’ that cracked and crumbled. The rib cage fell away from my shoe. A skull and spine stared up at me. I scrambled away, knocking over bricks as I went.
Luce caught me, appearin’ from nowhere. “Sorry,” he said and I could tell he meant it.
I was beginnin’ to think the stories was right and this place was cursed and maybe me’n Luce shouldn’t be here at all.
“Gimme a hand,” Luce said. “I can’t drag this up by myself.”
So I helped Luce drag the tin sheet up the hill, bein’ extra careful to avoid the sharp edges. We knew that cuttin’ ourselves on old metal would be almost as bad as gettin’ pricked by the brambles. After what seemed like a week of draggin’ we reached the top of the hill and dropped the metal beside the rest of the scrap.
I fell over and looked at the sky. Luce made a fire and dragged over a log that was big enough to lean against. He handed me a small hard brick of goat cheese. “It’s all I have left,” Luce said. “Tomorrow you can collect some grubs and get us some water. There’s plenty of rocks for grubbin’ and a tank down there that still runs clear.”
I wondered if Papa was worried about me.
I woke up and the fire was burnin’ low. Luce must’ve kept it goin’ through the night.
“Mornin’ Kid,” he says to me. We couldn’t ignore the sound of our tummies. “The tide is out. Want to go fetch us somethin’ to eat?”
“I thought you hated grubs,” I said.
“Ain’t got much choice,” said Luce. “But I bet there’s all kindsa things to eat in there.”
He pointed at the jungle and his eyes sparkled.
I strapped the flask to my waist where it hung next to me knife and picked two metal buckets from the pile o’ scrap. Then I started towards the cursed village like I weren’t even a bit scared.
I din’t walk across the beach cos I could see jagged things stickin’ outta the sand that were prolly washed-away bits of the village. There were rocks that I could climb over and there was plenty of grubs.
I squashed down between the rocks and for a while there was only the tink-tink of me knife and the roar of the ocean.
When I climbed back to the top of the hill Luce was sitting under a little shanty house he’d started buildin’ from a few sheets of tin and some pipes he’d dug into the ground to hold ‘em up.
We boiled the grubs in sea-water. Eating ‘em made us thirsty and we drank almost all the water from the flask. Was obvious that Luce couldn’t have kept buildin’ on his own and I wondered if he might have chosen anyone else to help him.
But he din’t, he chose me.
One day when Luce was up on the bridge and out o’ sight he starts yellin’. “Kid, you gotta get up here!”
I started up the ramp but it wobbled and I couldn’t go no further. Luce kept on shoutin’ and so I dropped to all fours and crawled up with my teeth clenched.
Only when I reached the top of the ramp did I realise the extent of Luce’s madness. Anywhere the brambles threatened to poke through the bridge Luce had added more scrap, such that he hadn’t built a bridge but an entire raft of tilted walls and floors that rose and fell across the jungle.
“You did it!” Luce called to me. “Now get over here!”
I stood up and took a few steps with me arms held out in front of me. I tried not to think about the brambles. As I came closer to Luce I could sense his excitement.
“Look,” Luce gripped me under the arms and stood me up straight. “Look!”
And finally I sees what he’s been tellin’ me ‘bout this whole time—a wire fence all tangled in brambles and beyond the fence, square stone buildings. The wire had mostly kept the brambles from reachin’ the buildings and they sat on flat dirt with paths between them.
All of a sudden I felt dizzy and the next thing I know I’m layin’ on solid ground beside the fire. Luce is sittin’ with me and he’s grinnin’ and he says: “You had me worried, Kid. You plain fell over.”
I started getting’ used to the bridge. Soon I was steppin’ across the pieces o’ scrap like I weren’t even scared at all, even though I was. Sometimes we’d drop something and it would get stuck in the brambles and we’d leave it there. These pieces were like markers trackin’ our progress.
“There’s gotta be somethin’ good in there,” said Luce said and I started to believe him.
“Treasure,” I says, still wondering what exactly treasure might be. I thought of my yellow and wondered if it was still folded at the bottom of the crate in Papa’s house. I wish I’d gone back to get it.
We slowed down as the bridge reached closer to the wire and the buildings.
“This is where it gets dangerous, Kid,” Luce says as we chewed on grubs. They was tough and din’t taste so good. “One mistake now and we fall into those brambles. We gotta lay down the last pieces just right,” his face looked serious in the firelight.
I couldn’t stop thinking ‘bout what we might find inside those buildings. “Maybe it’s where they make the dolls without faces,” I says one night.
“They had faces once,” said Luce. “Why’d they make dolls without faces for?”
“Well, what do you think is in there?”
“Dunno,” said Luce and somehow the space around him grew darker. I stirred the fire but it din’t help.
“Anythin’,” he said after a while.
I din’t understand then, but I do now.
The last few pieces fell into place. The bridge was startin’ to lean towards the buildings. In the end it happened by mistake while Luce was partway down, loopin’ some rope through a metal hook. Somehow he managed to tie off the rope and land on his feet. His backpack landed a few paces away from him.
Luce stood there for a minute without movin’. The bridge creaked and wobbled ‘neath me. Luce started dancin’ back and forth on the dirt. In my memories I can still see him dancin’, but it feels so long ago. Even then it felt like I was lookin’ at a memory.
“Jump, Kid!” Luce yelled as I realised I was slippin’.
I knew I was gonna fall into the brambles and die, screamin’ and bloody and Luce would just looked at me and shrug. He only shrugged and that hurt my feelin’s real bad even though it din’t happen for real and only in my head.
Then Luce was holding me, hugging me close while me body shook from head to toes. I hugged him back.
“We made it, Kid,” he said to me. “We’re inside.”
We went up to the stone buildings and touched ‘em. They were not like anythin’ else on the island. The stone was rough and thick, weather-beaten but solid. These big stone blocks had been here a long time. Maybe forever.
Some o’ the blocks had metal doors that would not open. Luce threw himself against them and I could see the frustration on his face, but I was too scared to say anythin’.
Eventually we found a way in. One of the doors was tilted to one side, exposin’ a little triangle of darkness big enough for us to fit through. There were cracks on the wall beside the door.
Luce hauled himself up. “Come on,” he says, his voice muffled.
I climbed up through the hole and fell into darkness. There was a clicking sound and Luce raised a wind-up lantern above his head, another of Jakarti’s relics. We looked around the room, which was empty. Luce kicked the dust and I sneezed.
“Here,” he said and thrust the lantern into my hands. “Wind it up if it gets dark.”
Luce dropped to his knees and started scratchin’ at the floor and I thought this was it—this was where the madness finally takes him. But then I sees the edge of a stone slab in the floor, obscured by the sand and the dust. The slab was cracked in the middle and Luce slipped his fingers beneath the broken pieces. The stone clinked and thudded as it fell apart into deeper darkness.
“Are you coming?” Luce asked and slid his leg into the hole without hesitatin’. I don’t know how he did that. I glanced back at the triangle of light where we’d come through and then I followed Luce down the hole.
We were in a dark, featureless corridor with a door at the end that we went through. Luce turned in circles, lighting up each of the walls. There was metal lockers ‘gainst one of the walls and things that looked a little like Mama’s books but fell to dust as soon as I touched ‘em. There was tables with boxes on ‘em that were connected by wire to other, smaller boxes.
We sifted through the junk in the half-light of the lantern. We found boards with metal clasps and strange chairs. There was drawers full of dust and more boxes and small hard things that clicked and clacked when we pressed on them. Luce held up a metal bar that stayed in shape when he bent it into a curve. There was so many empty boxes.
We went through another door into another empty corridor. Here we stepped carefully through the darkness. The floor was lumpy and crackled where our feet came down. At the end of the corridor was a flight of stairs leadin’ down even further.
“We should go back,” I whispered. I don’t know why I whispered, but my voice was loud in the silence. Luce started down the stairs and as I watched the light bobbing away from me I quickly followed.
At the base of the stairs we found a large room that our light could not fill. There was tables in regular rows and each one was covered in more o’ those boxes and wires. Some of the boxes were dented, like they had been broken on purpose. Luce picked something up and held it in front of the light, casting a strange glow over a picture of somethin’ we couldn’t make out.
There were plastic things that rattled when I shook them and squishy things that felt sticky on my fingers. There were strangely shaped bricks and blocks and on the walls there were panels and levers and more things that clicked and clacked as we fumbled with them.
Luce found somethin’ that was connected to the wall by a coiled cord. The object broke in two and Luce tossed it aside. Beyond all the tables and the junk was a wall where the light touched somethin’ I recognised.
“Luce,” I said and as Luce shone the lantern on the wall I could plainly see the shapes of letters forming words.
“They look like Jakarti’s poster,” Luce said and for the first time I realised Luce din’t know words like I did. I dunno why I thought he would. Papa was right—words were useless in a place like this.
“Hold still,” I told Luce. It was hard to think, ‘specially with the light swaying back and forth. I snatched the lantern from Luce ‘fore he could even complain and held it up so I could study the letters more closely.
It weren’t easy, puttin’ the words together. The shapes din’t exactly match the ones I knew. I stood holdin’ the lantern, speakin’ nonsense, while Luce grumbled ’n’ paced where the light met the darkness.
There was the sound of drippin’ water in the distance, or maybe that was just the sound of me own head as I tried to make sense of the shapes on the wall. I remembered Mama spellin’ them out to me and teachin’ me the sounds the letters made and like some sorta of magic, the words on the wall began to make sense.
“There is…” I started.
“There is… nothing,” I read, my voice growin’ louder. “There is nothing of value here.”
I repeated the sentence a few times till Luce grabbed the lantern back and said: “I get it, Kid.”
“There is nothing of value here,” I said.
“I get it,” Luce snarled.
So I stopped sayin’ the words out loud but they kept on goin’ in my head. Readin’ reminded me of Mama, I hadn’t even seen words since Papa threw her books in the fire. And the fact I could do somethin’ Luce couldn’t was a sort of power I’d never felt before.
I was shaking.
“Maybe that’s what they want us to think,” said Luce.
The lantern lit only the edges of everythin’. The room seemed not real, like a make-believe, or a dream or a nightmare. Somewhere, I knew Papa was strikin’ a match and callin’ us fools and there was somethin’ different about Luce.
Luce kicked something that went clatterin’ across the floor and came to rest against another door, this one blocked by a stack of tables and chairs. Luce placed the lantern on one of the tables and began shifting aside the junk.
“Come on,” he said and we stepped into another long corridor.
It was very dark. The walls closed in around us and the sphere of light began to fade. Rapidly, almost like he was scared, Luce wound up the lantern and the light grew brighter, but only a little.
We walked together in our little circle of light until my foot hit somethin’ and I cried out from the shock of it. Luce leaned down to pick it up and held it out in front of the light.
It was some horrible face with bulgin’ eyes and two noses with holes in. Not a face but… a mask? The idea of putting somethin’ like that over me head made me shudder. I wondered who had built all this. Were they like us? Luce quickly tossed the mask into the darkness where one of us was sure to trip over it on our way out.
And suddenly: light blazed from the ceiling.
If the lights had all come on at once we might’ve gone blind. Every few moments another light buzzed and went bright all the way down the long corridor. And there was somethin’ else—some sort o’ sound like wind rattling metal.
At the end of the tunnel was a door that was different to the others. This one was big and heavy and had a hole near the top you could look through. There was a wheel set into the door. And on the wall beside it, a sign with more words on. My eyes hurt but I blinked away the tears and tried to read the sign.
“Danger,” I said to Luce. I knew that word right away.
I skipped over the shapes I din’t understand. “This is the middle of danger,” I said.
Luce rolled his eyes
“This danger is…” I said. I couldn’t read the last word.
Luce’s eyes were shining under the bright lights and I felt the urge to do somethin’ real weird then, but I din’t and instead pushed Luce away and said: “We should go.”
“There’s treasure behind this door, Kid,” Luce said. His eyes were watering from the dust and the bright lights and tears were runnin’ down his cheeks. I’m sure he wasn’t crying ‘cos I’d never seen Luce cry. “These messages are just some sorta test,” he said.
I din’t believe him, but I believed in him, which is almost the same thing.
And then the lights in the ceiling began to pop and fizzle out. Each light left smudges on our eyes. Luce wound up the lantern. The light it cast was weak.
Luce was goin’ in no matter what I said.
There is nothing of value here.
Luce swung the door open and stepped into that vast darkness. The sound of his footsteps changed. He was walking on a metal floor with small holes in it and a railing at the edge.
This is the middle of danger.
I followed him. The wall was smooth and curved and the walkway curved with it. Even in darkness I could tell the room was bigger than anything I could imagine. The light from the lantern showed only the metal walkway ‘neath our feet and a little bit of the wall.
This danger is…
A great void loomed beneath us. Luce reached into his pocket and took out a dried grub. He flicked it into the darkness and we waited to hear it hit the bottom.
We heard no sound ‘cept for the platform creakin’. Luce grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back through the doorway ‘fore I knew what was happening. He pushed me into the corridor and I hit the ground hard. The walkway collapsed and plunged into the darkness with a loud metallic scream.
From below came a sound like a breath—maybe the groan of some restin’ creature we had woken up. A jagged line of light appeared in the darkness below, like the floor was breakin’ apart. The cracks of light spread and quickly became so bright we had to look away.
“Luce…” I said and this time I din’t need to say no more.
We leaned against the door to block out the light. The door clunked into place but light still shone through its little window, makin’ weird shadows in the corridor.
Like spotted rabbits we ran and leaped and bounced back through the rooms and tunnels. Luce helped me through the door at the top and scrambled after me.
It was dark outside and we headed for the bridge. I couldn’t tell if the ground was shakin’ or if it was only me own legs.
We climbed the rope that Luce had tied and hauled ourselves over the brambles. We stomped across the bridge and it wobbled and creaked. We leapt from the ramp and rolled across the grass.
The sky was loud. A storm was circlin’. From the top of the hill we could see clouds churnin’. The moon winked in and out of existence behind the clouds, makin’ huge shadows on the hill.
Luce groaned and I turned to see him on his knees.
“Luce?”
“I got pricked,” Luce said. He was holdin’ both hands against his side. I told him to knock it off. But when he took his hands away I saw where the brambles had torn his clothes. The wound shone darkly in the moonlight.
I caught him as he slumped over and I held him in my arms. He wouldn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on the ocean.
“Look…” he said through clenched teeth.
“I’ll take you to Jakarti,” I said. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Look!” Luce said and thumped my chest so’s that I would look over my shoulder.
In the distance, above the shifting sea, I saw red.
I was cryin’ and Luce was laughin’. He squeezed my hand so tight it hurt and said: “I told ya, Kid.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The red sparkled and glowed and for the first time I knew for sure there was Someplace Else. It was more than just a colour. It was more than I had ever known.
The red went blurry as my eyes overflowed. I blinked the tears away. Luce was twitchin’, I could see the reflection of the red in his eyes.
“Luce…” I didn’t know what to say.
“Kid…” he said back at me.
His hands fumbled at my waist and it took me a second to realise he was reachin’ for me knife. He put the knife into my hands and folded his own around them. Then he pulled our hands toward him and he screamed.
Everyone on the island must have heard him. Warm, black blood spilled over my hands and the knife fell on the grass. Luce’s mouth was movin’ and I leaned in close and he whispered somethin’ in my ear. Then his body went limp and I started screamin’ because Luce couldn’t scream anymore.
The madness had me. I understood it now.
When I looked back, the red was gone.