The Expeditioners and the Secret of King Triton's Lair Read online

  “We need to make a plan,” I said. “Remember what we learned in Wilderness Survival? ‘Make a plan accounting for all known facts and assessing all known assets.’”

  “Yes, sir,” Sukey said. “What’s your plan, sir?” It was the first time I’d seen her smile since we’d woken up and I couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Come on. This is serious.”

  “I know, I know. Let’s go back down to the beach and come up with this brilliant plan.”

  Thirty

  I used a stick to draw a circle in the sand and wrote “Sukit Island” underneath.

  “Sukit Island?”

  “Well, can you think of a better name?”

  “Okay, okay. Go on.”

  I drew an X on one side of the island. “Here’s where we are. The sun came up over there, so that’s east. We came from the west.” I made a long line stretching out from the other side of the island and then drew another X. “I’ve been watching the way the tide comes in. I can’t be sure, but I think the shipwreck must have been somewhere out here.”

  Sukey picked up a stick and drew another circle directly west of the X I’d made for the shipwreck. “So that must be St. Beatrice Island. Which means . . .”

  I drew another circle. “We’re definitely not on Ruby Island.”

  “We found an uncharted island?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “So if we could make a raft or a boat, we could go this way and avoid King Triton’s Lair and make our way back?” Sukey asked, drawing the route in the sand.

  “Yeah. But we can’t do anything stupid until we know we got the map right. We need to get up high. We need to be able to see more than we can see from here.”

  We both looked up at the volcano.

  “Okay,” Sukey said. “But we should wait until tomorrow morning. We don’t know what’s up there and it would be better if we don’t have to spend the night. And we should get something to eat. What about those fish Zander caught on the boat?”

  “What about them?”

  “Do you think we could catch some fish?”

  “With what? Did you bring a fishing pole I don’t know about?”

  “No, but that’s not the only way to catch fish. Doesn’t Zander catch them with spears or something?”

  “Hold on!” I dug around in a pocket of my vest and came out with the spearfishing utility M.K. had given me. “Let’s try this.”

  I held it over the surface of the water, waiting until one of the fish swam directly underneath me, and pushed the button. It took a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but finally I pulled up the spear by its wire and found a wriggling fish pierced by the tip. I caught a few more while Sukey looked for firewood.

  There wasn’t much—everything was fairly damp—but we built a little fire of the few dry palm fronds and branches we found, lighting them with my firestarter utility. “Is that M.K.’s?” Sukey asked when I took it out.

  “No, she made me my own over the summer. Zander too.”

  “Well, maybe they’re using theirs to start a fire somewhere else,” she said.

  The palm leaves didn’t burn very hot, but it was enough to cook the fish through so we could eat them. We used my knife to bone them and ate our fill. The flesh was flaky, white, and sweet.

  “This is delicious,” Sukey said. “We should catch more.”

  We caught a few more, and by the time we had cooked and eaten them, our spirits had brightened. We sat on the sand in a comfortable, exhausted silence for a long time, watching the water, feeling the sun on our faces.

  She reached up to wipe sweat off her forehead. “God, it’s hot. I’m going for a swim.”

  She ran down the beach and jumped into the water, swimming out a couple hundred yards and then racing back with a perfect crawl stroke.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” she called back.

  I hadn’t thought I’d ever want to be back in the ocean after almost drowning the day before, but it was so hot and the water looked so cool and peaceful, turquoise and still in the little bay. I stripped off my vest and shirt and boots, used the knife to cut off my leggings at the knees, and ran down to the water, diving cleanly under the surface and hovering there for a moment, feeling the lightness of my body. When I opened my eyes, I almost gulped a mouthful of seawater in my astonishment. The island was fringed by a huge reef of coral that seemed to stretch out as far as I could see, adorning the undulating waves of the ocean floor. There were amazing things under there, pink coral and green sea anemones and purple fish and turquoise starfish. I came up for air and yelled to Sukey, “Have you looked under the water? It’s incredible. It’s a huge coral reef!”

  Sukey pinched her nose and went under and I swam to meet her, pointing out striped fish and snails and coral formations and fish shaped like ribbons and huge purple crabs before we both had to go up for air again.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” I told her. “There must be at least a hundred new species. Can you imagine what’s out there, beyond the reef?”

  When we’d had enough, we lay down on the sand and stared up at the cloudless blue sky. I must have dozed off and when I woke up, the sun was low, sinking towards the horizon. Sukey was sleeping too, and when I nudged her gently, she opened her eyes, smiling at me before she remembered.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “We fell asleep. It’s getting late, though, and we’re going to need more water.” I thought of something. “Why didn’t we see any coconuts anywhere? Those are coconut palms, I’m sure of it.”

  She sat up and looked around. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not coconut season. Maybe something . . . ate them?” We exchanged a look.

  “Maybe there’s some other kind of fruit here,” I said.

  We hunted around the beach. We found a beautiful pink conch shell and some dead crabs and fish skeletons on the sand. There wasn’t any fruit anywhere. We’d try again tomorrow. There was only one route up the sides of the volcano that we could see, a sort of path that wound up through the ground cover, but it would be hard climbing up that slope and the jungle was pretty thick. I had a knife in my Explorer’s vest, but what we really needed was a machete. I thought of Zander cutting the path for us on the Derudan challenge back at the Academy. It seemed like a long time ago.

  My vest had a couple of thin tarps that could be used as sun shades and Sukey and I lashed them to two palm trees at the back of the beach to make a shelter.

  It would keep us protected if it rained at night and it would keep the sun off us during the day. We sat on the beach, watching the sun disappear down into the water as it washed the wispy clouds in peach and yellow light. Soon it was dusk, and the purple-black sky settled down against the dark line of the water. I switched on my vestlight and we huddled together in the cold air, not wanting to leave the beach. We listened to the little splishing sounds of fish jumping out in the shallows.

  “Well, I guess we figured out what happened to your dad’s expedition,” Sukey said. She leaned into me and the whole length of her arm felt hot, as though it was burning a mark into my skin. I didn’t want her to take it away, so I stayed very still, my back cramping.

  “And Gianni Girafalco’s ship too. And I guess we figured out why there are all those stories about sea monsters and aliens and everything. Whatever that was that brought the ship down, gas or an earthquake, well, if you didn’t know better, you’d think it was some sort of monster, wouldn’t you?”

  “Do you think anyone’s looking for us?”

  “Once BNDL realizes that we’re missing, I’m sure they’ll send someone to look for us.”

  “But how long will that be? And if they do send a boat, how will it find us?”

  “They might send an airship,” I said.

  “But you told me yourself that airships had gone down over this part of the ocean. Whatever was going on back there seems to prevent anyone from reaching or even seeing this island.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Sukey.”
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br />   “No, it’s not. We might never leave this island. Don’t you understand? We’re going to be stuck here forever. We’re going to die here, of thirst or hunger or—” She looked over her shoulder at the jungle rising up the sides of the volcano. “Something else.” She was crying now.

  “Look,” I told her. “We can’t get ahead of ourselves. Let’s just get through tonight. We’ll get some sleep. We have food and water—for a little while, at least. Tomorrow, we’ll take stock and figure out what to do.”

  “You’re right,” she said softly. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”

  “Dad always said everything looks better in the morning.”

  The sun was gone now. It was almost completely dark. “Delilah says that too.” Sukey started to get up and then she pointed at the water. “Kit—look!”

  I saw it too: lights, shining out in the darkness of the bay.

  The lights got brighter and then, in an instant, there were more. They dotted the surface of the water, moving languidly, like bubbles of air in oil.

  “It’s beautiful,” Sukey whispered. “It must be some kind of animal, something that’s bioluminescent, right?”

  “They look like jellyfish.” I watched the strange, otherworldly blobs dance in slow motion. The darker it got, the brighter they became. Pretty soon we could see that they were different colors: red and orange and purple and pink and green.

  We must have watched for an hour, even as the air grew colder and the wind moved through the palm trees behind us.

  “Whatever happens,” Sukey said, turning to look up at me, “I’m never going to forget that, as long as I live. That was amazing.”

  “Me neither.”

  We looked at each other for a long moment. I could just make out the expression on her face and I liked the way she looked at me, as though she was trying to find my eyes in the darkness, trying to figure out what I was thinking.

  “Do you think . . .” she said, turning away from me to look at the jellyfish again. “Do you think your father was here? On this island? Do you think he came here when he made the map?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know.

  “You’re sure there isn’t a code on the map? Something telling you what you’re supposed to find here? A secret message?”

  “Sukey, I’ve tried everything I can think of. Maybe you can figure it out.”

  I took off my vest and got the map out, unfolding it and spreading it on the sand. I shone my vestlight on it and Sukey leaned over to examine it.

  While she looked at it, I took off my whistle and tried playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

  “Very nice,” Sukey said. “I give up on the map, though.”

  We sat there for a few moments just looking out at the bobbing lights.

  But I was thinking. You create luck by making connections. By putting things together.

  What could I put together? What had Dad given me? The map and the whistle. So . . .

  I lay the whistle down on the map, holding my breath, then moved it back and forth a couple times, rubbing the domed surface of the turtle’s shell across the paper.

  “What are you—?”

  “Sukey,” I said, my voice shaking. “Look.”

  There were new lines and decorations across the map. They glowed in the dark, and the sea horses sprinkled across the ocean were glowing too.

  “What are those?” Sukey said. “They look like compasses.”

  “They are. They’re compass rose lines and compass roses!”

  I leaned over the map, tracing the glowing lines. “Mariners used to use them for navigation. See, the lines relate to the cardinal directions. North, south, east, and west, and the intermediate points, too. They were called wind rose lines because they corresponded to the winds they used to navigate.” I ran a finger over the glowing lines. “This is incredible. It must be some kind of bioluminescent ink that’s only revealed when it touches the whistle. I remember Zander talking once about how bioluminescence sometimes depends on the animal being near particular bacteria that react to the bacteria in the animal’s own bioluminescent ink organ. I don’t understand it, but it’s why Dad gave me the whistle. I had to put them together!”

  “So what do the lines mean? Were they supposed to show us how to get to King Triton’s Lair?”

  “Maybe.” I studied the lines and decorations for a long time, but I couldn’t make any sense of them. I could feel Sukey waiting beside me.

  “Kit?” she said finally.

  “I don’t know! Obviously he went to a lot of trouble to keep it secret. You can only see them in the dark. You can only see them when they’re in contact with the whistle. He made sure no one would find it by accident. But why? What’s the code? It’s so frustrating!” I felt like throwing something.

  “We’ve got to be missing something,” Sukey said. “Did you try substituting letters or numbers for the little pictures? Maybe just the ones with the invisible ink.”

  “Of course I did! I told you I did. That’s the simplest code there is!”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’m just trying to help.”

  I picked up the whistle and looked at it. Then I held the map close to my face, studying the luminescent lines. “It’s a whistle, Sukey. It activates the ink but it’s also a whistle. Obviously he wants me to play it, but what should I play?”

  Sukey just stared at me, confused.

  I traced the wind rose lines carefully with a finger. There were five compass roses, five horizontal lines. And all along those lines . . .

  “The sea horses!” I shouted, jumping up and pulling her up with me.

  “What about them?”

  I grabbed Sukey’s hand, squeezing it, and laughed. “The sea horses are notes! I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. It’s a musical code. He’s telling us how to play the whistle!”

  Thirty-one

  “I can’t believe we didn’t see it,” Sukey said, pointing to the little sea horses distributed across the blue ocean, some on the horizontal lines and some in between them. “Five compass roses. Five lines in a musical staff. It’s a piece of music.”

  I was already trying it out, blowing through the mouthpiece and pressing my fingers over the little holes. “Coleman said that each one is different. You can play different tunes by covering the holes, like a flute or a recorder. It must make a song. Maybe the song is the message to us. Anyway, we’ll figure that part out.” I blew. “It’s not really coming back. What note is that?”

  “Give me that,” Sukey said impatiently. “We have to figure out what key it’s in so we’ll know how to play the music.” She covered all the holes and blew. “That’s the lowest note. It’s D. So now let me see the map. She covered one hole and blew again. “B,” she said. She covered two holes. “A. That’s E.” In a couple of minutes she’d figured out how to play the whistle. “All right. So the song goes like this.”

  She played it.

  “Does that sound familiar?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not even really a song, is it?”

  “Here, you try.” She handed it to me and I played the little sequence of notes. “Nope, doesn’t sound familiar to me either.”

  I played it a few more times, but now I was pretty sure I’d never heard it before.

  I felt suddenly dejected. I was so sure I’d had it.

  “That has to be it, though,” Sukey said. “That has to be the code on the map.”

  “But if I can’t figure out what the song is,” I said. “What good does it do me?”

  “We’ll get it. We’re just so tired. Our brains aren’t working right.” She sounded exhausted. Already, the lines and notes on the map were fading and I put the map back in the pocket of my vest and the whistle back around my neck.

  We sat there silently, staring out at the ocean, when Sukey said, “Kit? Is there something down there? On the sand?”

  “What do you mean?” I stood up and looked down toward the shoreline. It took a couple
of seconds to see what she meant. Something was moving on the sand.

  “It looks like a fish,” I said.

  “It’s coming up on the beach, though.” Sukey backed up a little, looking alarmed. “It’s . . . slithering. That’s not a fish.”

  Whatever it was, it was hard to see in the darkness, but when I turned on my vestlight, I saw that the things were wriggling up all over the beach, lots of them, coming out of the water and moving from side to side like snakes. Except they weren’t snakes.

  Sukey scrambled backward as they came toward us, struggling to climb to her feet.

  I couldn’t stop staring at the strange creatures. There were about a hundred of them, writhing along the sand. They were each about two feet long, slimy, shiny black, with a sharp red fin running along the tops of their heads to their backs. They twisted and turned, their muscular bodies rippling over the sand. I stood transfixed until one got so close that I could see its mouthful of sharp white teeth, and I came to my senses.

  “They’re eels,” I said. “Hundreds of them. And they’re coming up the beach! Run!”

  We sprinted up the beach, the beam from my vestlight bobbling on the sand, and found our shelter, climbing in and pressing our backs against the trees. I dug through the pockets of my vest, coming out with a knife and the spearfishing tool. I handed the knife to Sukey and held the spearfishing utility out in front of me, ready to shoot the first eel that came over the threshold.

  “I can’t look, I can’t look,” Sukey whispered. “Are they coming? Are they coming?” She was hiding behind me, trying to burrow into the tree.

  “Uh . . .” The truth was that I didn’t want to look either. I was terrified. But I pointed my vestlight out at the darkness. They moved in a wriggling mass. I could hear the wet sound of them slithering up the beach, but they weren’t coming our way. They were heading for the trees.

  “I think they’re climbing,” I whispered, poking my head out of the shelter. “I think they’re climbing . . . up the trees.”

  The eels were climbing, like tree snakes, and pretty soon we heard a crunching sound coming from the tops of the palms.