Island of Fire

She held the miniature mansion that she’d found the first day, a replica of the true mansion, and she handed it to him with pride.

“Oh!” Alex grinned and took it, careful not to tip it. “Did I ever show you this?” he asked Sean. “Sky found it our first day here inside a cupboard in the shack. I think it’s a model that Mr. Today made as he was planning what Artimé would look like. Can’t you just picture him sculpting this little miniature mansion and dreaming about creating it?”

Sean squinted in the dark. “Sweet,” he said under his breath. He looked into the windows, opened and closed the doors. “There’s a mini Florence and a mini Simber,” he said with a hint of glee in his voice. “And look! A platyprot wandering the hallway. This is the best toy ever.”

The Silent girl waved her hand in front of their faces. They looked up. She stared at them as if they were stupid, then pointed to the mini mansion. She tapped the air several times and shrugged.

“Dots? Oh! Now we can see if there are any dots. I get it.” Alex smiled at Sky. “Good idea.” He said it almost like it was a silly thought. Like the girl had made a big deal out of nothing.

She glared as Sean and Alex explored the miniature, pointing out the tubes and the giant kitchen, their mouths watering at the thought of all the food they could eat if only they had Artimé back. They stared at the black-and-white squares on the floor, but decided they weren’t really dotlike.

A steadily growing light filled the skies, and the sleeping Unwanteds began to stir. After a few minutes, Sean yawned and stretched, saying it was his turn to sleep inside the shack on the sofa, and he wasn’t about to give up that luxury.

After Sean was gone, Alex looked at Sky, his eyelids heavy from lack of sleep. “Thanks for finding this,” he said. “I didn’t really see any dots, though. But it was a good idea.” He set the model mansion on a flat part of the roof and lay down next to it. “I’m going to try to grab an hour of sleep here before it gets hot,” he mumbled, and he closed his eyes.

The Silent girl frowned. She watched the sunrise, the words of Mr. Today’s clue running through her head. She crawled over to the little mansion and looked inside. She didn’t see any dots either.

Alex groaned in his sleep. The girl watched him for a moment. His clothes were ragged and dusty, his face smudged with dirt, his hair a tangled nest of dark brown curls. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell; he was finally getting some rest. Maybe it would help him think more clearly. The girl reached out a tentative hand and pushed aside a lock of his hair that had fallen in his face. And then she closed her eyes and made a wish for him to receive every good thing he needed to save his people . . . and himself.

When she opened her eyes, she was struck by another thought. A thought so simple she was surprised that no one had come up with it yet. She bit her lip as she mentally reviewed the clue, and she came to the same conclusion as before. And so it was that Sky climbed down Florence with an idea and went in search of the two people who would be the most helpful to her.

Magnify, Focus, Every One

Alex had tried not to spend much time thinking about Samheed and Lani. Everything in front of him was desperate enough to keep him barely able to function. Thinking about them, knowing he could do nothing to save them, would only put him over the edge. He had things to do here before he could go there, so he chose to concentrate on one thing at a time. But his dreams didn’t care for that logic. He fell hard into crazy dreams of them—dreams of Lani and how nice his skin felt when she touched his arm, but then she turned around and cast a nasty spell on him, forcing him to fall face-first into his soup while the walls of Quill crumbled around him. Dreams of Samheed and him working together to take down the Quill leaders with magic spells, followed by an angry Samheed shoving Alex into the glass partition in Mr. Today’s mostly secret hallway, the glass shattering and giving Alex a thousand cuts, the noise ringing out.

He startled awake, breathing hard, and sat up, trying to get his bearings. Sweat dripped down his cheek from where it had been planted against his forearm. He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, his stomach cramping from hunger and his heart aching from missing his friends. He longed for the safety of Mr. Today’s office, hidden from most of the world. Unlike here, where he was surrounded by people every second of every day.

The song in his head started again. Follow the dots, follow the dots, follow the dots. It was more frustrating than he ever could have imagined. “Mr. Today, please,” he muttered, “please help me out here. Where are your ridiculous dots?”

And just as he said it in such a fashion, thinking of them as Mr. Today’s dots rather than the world’s dots, it struck him like a magical glass wall to the face. “His office,” he muttered, his eyes darting left and right as he pictured it. “Dots. Mr. Today’s dots.” He scrambled to look at the miniature mansion, and lifted the roof clean off so he could stare into Mr. Today’s office unhindered.

And there on the walls they were. Only they were the tiniest replicas of already tiny dots grouped together, so tiny they could hardly be seen, and instead the masses of dots looked like blobs. “That hideous artwork,” he whispered, remembering how he’d noticed the odd series of paintings while waiting for Mr. Today. The words rang true and sounded right and solid in his head, so he said it again, louder. “That hideous artwork. It’s the artwork! Great protuberating conch shells!”