Island of Fire

“I got attacked,” Henry said. He still held baby Seth, who was content for the moment to sit and gnaw on Henry’s shirt collar. “I was trying to bring you some broth, Carina. Two guys came up to me and Crow. They grabbed the food and shoved me.” He shifted the baby to his other leg. “They took off and Crow chased them.”

“I’m so sorry,” Carina said. “How could anybody do that to you?” She looked at Crow. “Did you see what they looked like?”

Crow nodded.

“You’d be able to recognize them?”

The boy nodded again.

Mr. Appleblossom shook his head. “My guess is that these thugs will not be back. The high priest’s guards are bribing Artimé. We’ve lost a score so far—I’m keeping track. What boy would starve when facing a soufflé? I blame them not for joining that wolf pack.”

Alex winced. “Twenty gone? I guess it’s not surprising.” “It won’t be long before a true uprising,” the theater teacher added in a quiet voice, completing Alex’s couplet.

Alex turned to look at the instructor, his stomach feeling as pinched as Mr. Appleblossom’s heat-flushed cheeks and sunburned forehead looked. “I know, Mr. A,” he said with a hint of desperation. “I’m trying.”

“Of course you are, my boy. I have no doubt.” Mr. Appleblossom patted Alex’s shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look. “I hope the rest of us can help you out.” “I’m open to any suggestions.” Alex pulled Mr. Today’s note from his pocket and unfolded it. “I know you’ve heard it before, but I’m going to read this to you all again,” he said, looking around the group. “If you think of anything that might help me solve these clues, please say it, no matter how silly it sounds. We’re desperate. Here goes:

Follow the dots as the traveling sun, Magnify, focus, every one. Stand enrobed where you first saw me, Utter in order; repeat times three.”

Alex looked around the group. “Anyone?” Sky, the Silent girl, closed her eyes and frowned, a look of concentration on her face.

Carina looked out across the water to the west. “Do you still believe the dots are the islands?”

“I don’t know what else they could be,” Alex said. “Trees? We don’t have any. Buildings? Ditto. The clue refers to the sun, and the sun sets over the islands we can see. It seems the most logical thing.”

“But I don’t get how you are supposed to magnify and focus on them when we can’t see them all from here,” Sean said. “And we’re stranded. Maybe we shouldn’t have used the raft for firewood.”

Sky opened her eyes, sat straight up, and shook her head violently. She clutched her hands to her throat and fell back against the shingles, feigning death.

Alex gave his newest friend a small smile, impressed with her theatrics, though now wasn’t the time to mention that. “She’s right,” he said. “The water is really too rough out there for a raft, as Sky and Crow know. Besides, I’m not sure what an excursion would do for us—I wouldn’t have the first idea of what to magnify and focus on once we got to the other islands. Even with a powerboat it would take days and days to stop at all of them. And talk about dangerous—we have no idea what kinds of people we’d face.” He trailed off and couldn’t help but glance at Meghan’s neck. She looked back at him, her sober gaze unwavering. How badly Alex wished he could fix her, but with no tools or magic or medical supplies, he didn’t dare risk trying. He wondered if she’d ever be able to speak again. Or sing.

They discussed the clue at length, with the best suggestion coming from Mr. Appleblossom, who wondered aloud if one could see the other six islands in the chain from the top of the wall, and if so, perhaps there was a pattern to be found by viewing all of them at once.

“Okay,” Alex said, “but how do we get up there?”

“I guess I’ll get to work building a ladder,” Sean said.

“Out of what?” Henry asked, incredulous. “We don’t have any wood or metal, just a few barrels . . .”

Sean glanced down at Florence, his jaw set, and then turned his gaze to the multitude of frozen, once-magical creatures that lined this side of the wall: squirrelicorns, beavops, platyprots, and more lying stiff and helpless without Mr. Today’s magic.

“With them,” he said quietly. “Stack them up like a staircase, I guess.” And then he looked out over the sea, shaking his head. “Without a solution to Mr. Today’s clue, they’ll never come to life again to know the difference.”

The High Priest

Aaron

As High Priest Gunnar Haluki was tied up at the moment, the new Associate High Priest Aaron Stowe wasted no time shortening his official title to High Priest Aaron. It was just easier for the people of Quill that way, he declared, and it took much less time to say and write. Not that Aaron could write quite yet. But soon. He’d been practicing with one of the scholars, Crete Sepulcher, a middle-aged man with crinkly, paper-thin skin and the personality of a rock.

Aaron sat at his desk with a rare piece of paper, scratching on it with an ancient stick of a pencil. As a young boy, he’d always wondered how the markings got on the paper. He never imagined it was with a stick. It made him think of Alex, drawing with that stick in the mud in the midst of a downpour in the backyard. And how he’d tried it too. And how he’d been caught, but his father had mistaken him for Alex. With his eyes, Aaron had pleaded with Alex to go along with it, to take the blame so Aaron wouldn’t get an infraction.