Island of Fire

Samheed looked around again. Was this a trick to see if he’d just keep working? But he’d never seen anything like a living statue on Warbler before. They didn’t exist here. He took a step toward it. The kitten hopped up and down excitedly, then ran back to Samheed and turned around and pranced back to the woodpile, its little tail swishing. “Mewmewmew!” it said. It had to be enchanted for its nonhuman voice to be heard over the island’s silence spell, Samheed decided.

The noise made Samheed nervous. What if someone heard? He put a finger to his lips, and the kitten bounded around to the other side of the woodpile and disappeared. At the same time, a ball of light zipped through the trees and stopped in front of him. Samheed froze. It exploded, showing him a picture that puzzled him. It was a brain floating in the air. It fizzled and disappeared, leaving only a silvery trail of light weaving through the woods.

What the—? he thought. And then he remembered. It was his dementia spell. His heart leaped into his throat. He’d given the prototype to Alex for his collection. . . . Could he possibly be here? After all this time?

Samheed’s blood pulsed and pounded. He strode toward the woodpile, forgetting about his leash, and with a yank that almost took his feet out from under him, he came to an abrupt stop. The thorn necklace jabbed deeper into his skin, sending pain searing through him. He couldn’t go any farther.

After a moment, the kitten reappeared. Sam pointed to his neck and to the leash, trying to explain. The kitten watched, tilting her head. And then she darted around the woodpile a second time.

Samheed had to keep swinging his ax or someone would notice he was just standing there. He pounded the log halfheartedly, glancing at the woodpile now and then. After a minute, he looked again, and the ax nearly fell out of his hands, for there, peeking around the edge of the logs, was the ugliest, yet most adorable gargoyle face Samheed had ever seen.

“Hello,” Charlie signed. He waved his two-thumbed hand. Samheed ducked down and signed a greeting back to Charlie, wondering, Does Warbler use the same hand signals as the gargoyles?

Charlie confirmed it in an instant. Samheed couldn’t understand everything the statue was saying, but he got enough of the message to figure out that help had finally, finally come.

But he had no idea how they were going to get him out of there. And he certainly wasn’t going anywhere without Lani.

A second later, the kitten and Charlie disappeared behind the logs, and Samheed saw a brief flash of light and a seek ball skirting around the ships and disappearing. Samheed stood on his tiptoes, trying to see where the statues went, hoping they understood he couldn’t follow. And then he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Looking for something?” the project manager asked, his eyes like slits.

Finally, the

Beginning of the

Third Rescue

Samheed shook his head, pretending to be bewildered. He began signing random words. “Water, left, chicken,” he said. He panicked, wishing he hadn’t said “chicken,” or any kind of animal that might make the manager think of living statues. “Morning, rain,” he added.

The manager gave him a puzzled stare. “You’re not very smart, but at least you can swing an ax,” he muttered. “Back to work.”

Samheed began swinging his ax again, chopping with all his might. The dull edge of the ax made it bounce back hard without splitting much. His arms reverberated with the hit, making his fingers and wrists ache, but he kept going, thinking over and over to himself, Please, please, please.

From the corner of his eye he thought he saw a fox slinking away, and then he was sure he saw Charlie running back to the woods. Charlie inched his way up a tree in the distance, near a clearing, until Samheed could see him. Charlie waved again and pointed. He signed something quickly with one hand, the other holding tightly to the tree.

Samheed didn’t understand, but he also didn’t dare ask questions of the gargoyle. He hoped it wasn’t important. Soon enough, the gargoyle slid back down the tree and disappeared, and Samheed kept his head down, not noticing the long shadows of squirrelicorns circling on the ground in the open area around the covered work space. Soon it would be dark and his workday would be over. Then how would they find him? And what about Lani?

Lani tried to shrug her hair from her cheek, but it had stuck fast to her skin with sweat and grime from the melding fires. In less than an hour and she’d be free of this cave for the day. She paused as she worked, and asked herself for the hundredth time how it was possible that her life had become like this.

She slid the still-glowing thorns into a tub of water to help them cool, and then she went back to the fire, loaded her mold with gold coins, and pushed it into the flames, holding it by its long handle until she could bear the heat no longer. Her face felt like it was about to melt. She closed her eyes and willed herself to stay there a minute more.

And so it was that when a ball of fire streaked into the room and exploded in front of her, she didn’t even see it. On the beach, four visible Unwanteds and their two almost invisible friends stared at the seek spell’s burning portrait of the kitten. Alex watched it sputter out and disappear. “She did it,” he whispered. “Do you think she’s in trouble already?”

“I don’t think she did it for fun,” Sean pointed out. “Though she is kind of a silly kitten.”

“Crud,” Alex muttered. Had he been too ambitious to think they would all come out of this easily? He looked at Sean and Carina. “Okay, well, let’s proceed as planned. You guys stick with assisting anybody heading back this way and help Meghan and Ms. Octavia defend the ship if the Warblerans come to attack. We’ll see you soon. I hope.” Alex’s voice faltered, and he felt an invisible hand on his arm. He brightened with courage he didn’t really have and said, “Come on, Henry. Lead the way, Sky and Crow.”