Her skin was blue white and very cold except for the swollen red skin of her neck, where the thorny band was sewn, but her eyelids fluttered and she breathed shallowly. She focused on Alex for a second and tried to speak, but couldn’t make a sound. Her fingers brushed past her throat and her face twisted up, lips quivering, tears leaking from her eyes in a silent chest-heaving sob.
Alex stared. And then he sprang to his feet. “Simber!” he shouted, leaning over the boat’s edge and cupping his mouth. “Simber!” He scrambled around the boat to find towels, wrapping Meghan in them and giving her a pillow. Her eyes were closed now, and she didn’t open them when Alex shook her arm. He stood again to shout the cheetah’s name, but this time saw him coming.
The cheetah glided in and landed with his back paws precariously on the side railing of the boat, still flapping his wings to keep the majority of his weight from capsizing them all, but being careful not to touch the water. His eyes were eagle-sharp, his teeth bared. “What’s happened to herrr? Wherrre’d she come frrrom?” he growled.
Alex, now fighting the wind from Simber’s wings, shielded his face’he’d been accidentally knocked about by those wings before, and it wasn’t fun, so he was cautious. “She was in the water, clinging to the ladder. I didn’t know she was there until she splashed. She can’t talk. They’” He choked up a little. Whoever “they” was Alex didn’t know, which made it even more frightening. “They put that horrible metal thing on her neck.” His own face threatened to twist up in emotion, but he gripped the captain’s seatback, trying to control it. “I haven’t seen Lani or Samheed.” He dug his fingernails into the cushion and closed his eyes a moment, trying to compose himself. He was supposed to be in charge. And people in charge can’t buckle. He knew he had to take his personal pain out of it for now and focus on what to do next. He took a deep breath and let it out. Then he looked at Simber, his face serious. “Did you see anything on the island?”
Simber nodded grimly. “Yes. Not Samheed orrr Lani, but I saw two natives with the necklaces made of thorrrns. I chased them until they disappearrred into a hole in the grrround, much smallerrr than I could get into.” He looked at Meghan and then at Alex.
“A hole in the ground?” Alex echoed. He didn’t have time to contemplate that right now’he knew he had another decision to make. But this one was beyond his ability. “Simber . . .” He stared at Meghan’s limp body and looked up at Simber again. “I need your help,” he said.
“I’m always herrre,” he said softly.
Alex scanned the island once more, desperate to see Lani or Samheed. “It’s going to be dark soon. Meghan’s freezing’the water here is much colder than it is at Artimé. I don’t know if she’s injured more than just the neck thing, or what. She’s . . . She won’t wake up.”
Simber nodded and waited.
“So . . . you’re sure there’s no sign of Sam and Lani?” Alex knew, of course, that Simber wouldn’t have lied about it. He just had to get himself to accept that his friends were missing . . . and quite possibly worse off than Meghan. He couldn’t bear to take it all in.
“I’m sorrry. No sign. No scent. And, of courrrse, no sound.”
Alex looked down at Meghan. “We need to leave them here . . . don’t we.” It wasn’t really a question.
Simber’s eyes softened. “Yes, Alex.”
Alex blew out a breath and nodded. “Okay.” That was the help he needed. “We need to save the one we know we can save.” Hurriedly he grabbed more dry towels from the stack he’d found and began rewrapping Meghan in them.
“That’s rrright.”
Alex looked at the almost-setting sun, and then peered in the direction of Artimé. His heart pounded and he sat upright, leaning forward, squinting and worrying. “I can’t see home.”
“I can,” Simber said. “We’ll go togetherrr, as always.”
Alex gave one last fleeting glance over his shoulder at the silent island, and then released the anchor spell and situated himself behind the wheel of the boat, straining his eyes to read the instructions in the dimming light. He started the boat and looked up at Simber. “Lead the way. Full speed.”
“If we hurrry, we’ll make it by darrrk,” Simber said. He looked down at Alex. “I won’t leave you.”
Alex nodded. With a powerful flap, Simber rose and headed east toward home.
“Hang on, Meg,” Alex whispered as he powered the boat to full speed. “You’ll be safe soon.” He clenched his hands around the steering wheel and followed Simber. He didn’t look back again.
The Dark and Quiet Place
After the screaming came the silence, and then the burning eye drops, which were not nearly as bad as the thorny necklace surgery, but the drops still stung ferociously and made Lani blind. She ached everywhere. They brought her somewhere cool and dry, and left her there, free of ropes or tethers. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t feel like moving.
She had heard Samheed’s cries for a while not far away, but she was too weak, too blind to even attempt to find him. And then Sam, like Meghan, and like herself, had gone silent without warning when the sharp device was connected in place. There was nothing to be heard after that.
Later she felt a slight breeze, as if someone or something moved past her, and she swung her arms out weakly, but they didn’t connect with anything but air. She crawled around, shaking with pain and weakness and fear, until the panic inside her finally shuddered its way out of her body. But no one who cared would ever see it.