Journey Across the Hidden Islands Read online

  Alejan flapped his wings hard and shot forward as a second boom blasted through the air—​it had come from the ship. A weapon of some kind?

  Ahead of them, another tentacle burst out of the waves and wrapped around the prow. The ship rocked forward, and waves crashed on either side of the hull. As they flew closer, Ji-Lin saw the pirates racing over the deck and hacking at the tentacle with swords and axes. “Circle the ship!” she called to Alejan.

  One of the pirates spotted them, pointed, and shouted, but then the monster squeezed with its tentacle, and the ship creaked and groaned. All attention went back to hacking at the tentacle.

  The first tentacle wound itself around a mast and pulled, cracking it.

  “It’s underneath the ship!” Seika shouted.

  The water was roiling around the ship, and Ji-Lin saw that Seika was right: the body of the monster was submerged beneath the hull. It was huge, easily twice the size of the ship itself. She saw the massive shadow as it shifted to extend yet another tentacle.

  The pirates kept hacking at the tentacles.

  That’s not going to work, Ji-Lin thought. There were too many tentacles, and they were too strong. The monster was going to rip the ship apart before the pirates could hack them all off. She saw a pirate light the end of a black iron tube with a torch, and then another boom split the air. One tentacle recoiled, struck by the strange weapon, but only an instant later, the tentacle was back, bashing the deck.

  They had to hit the monster where it was vulnerable, but its heart and eyes and any other suitable targets were under the water. If they aimed that weapon correctly . . . “We have to draw it up out of the water so the pirates can strike its heart!”

  “You’re right!” Seika said. “But how?”

  Urging Alejan lower, she skimmed the deck, flying near the pirates. “Be ready to hit its heart!” she shouted to them. To Seika, she said, “Hold on, and hold your breath!”

  “What are you doing?” Seika cried.

  Ji-Lin leveled her sword and held tight to the hilt. “Hang on, Seika!” She hoped this was a good idea. Be unexpected, she thought. “Take us down, Alejan!”

  “I hate when you’re inventive,” he complained, but he dove fast and straight toward the rolling shadow in the sea. He skimmed the hull as Seika screamed, and then they hit the water, diving into the waves.

  Rising in the saddle as the water rushed around her, Ji-Lin jabbed forward and sliced, and she felt the impact as her blade hit the soft squish of the sea monster’s body. She yanked on Alejan’s mane, and the lion switched direction, propelling himself up and bursting out of the water. Ji-Lin gasped in air. Heavy with water, Alejan’s wings pushed him one great arc forward onto the deck of the ship. He collapsed onto it, and Ji-Lin leaped off his back, her sword ready.

  Screaming a shrill sound that made her ears ache, the monster rose out of the water, searching for its attacker. Its face was only a mouth, with four lips that widened to show rows of sharklike teeth within.

  “Hit it now!” one of the pirates cried.

  Boom!

  The sound shook the ship, and Ji-Lin saw smoke from a black cylinder—​the pirates had fired their weapon. The monster jerked backward as its body exploded in red and yellow slime that sprayed across the ship.

  The tentacles loosened.

  Shouting, the pirates pushed the tentacles off the deck. Ji-Lin ran to help, and so did Alejan, leaning his full weight against the tentacle until the monster slid into the sea.

  The dying monster flailed once more, spraying the deck with water. Ji-Lin looked back to see Seika clinging to an unbroken mast. “Hold on!” she shouted to her sister. Slogging through the water, she reached her and wrapped one arm around Seika’s waist and the other around the mast. They clung together as the ship rocked.

  The pirates hacked the final tentacle free, and it slipped off the ship and into the ocean—​and then the pirates cheered in shouts and whoops. One of them clapped Ji-Lin on the back. “Good work! You did—​Whoa, you’re just a kid!” He called to the others, “Hey, it’s a kid! Two kids and their cat! Oh, lord of the sea, it’s a winged lion! They have a winged lion! Get the captain!” Others took up the cry: “Where’s the captain? Anyone seen the captain?” Then: “Is everyone safe? Anyone overboard? Did we lose anyone?”

  Ji-Lin knelt beside Alejan. “Are you all right?”

  Quietly, he said, “I’ll need to dry my wings before I can fly again.”

  The pirates continued to celebrate around them, marveling at Alejan and gawking at the princesses, as some counted their crew and others checked the hull for leaks.

  “How long?” Ji-Lin whispered to Alejan.

  “An hour. Maybe two.”

  “Let’s hope they’re friendly pirates,” Ji-Lin said.

  Chapter

  Thirteen

  ALL OVER THE ship, the crew was busy trying to repair the damage from the sea monster. Sails were ripped and one mast was snapped in half. The whole ship smelled like sulfur as the sailors melted down black rocks and smeared the hot goop onto the holes in the hull. Seika felt a headache between her eyebrows from the stench and hoped Alejan’s wings dried soon.

  After being left to wait awkwardly, Seika and Ji-Lin were ushered into the captain’s quarters, a low-ceiling cabin filled with maps and spyglasses. The captain sat at a desk that was covered in charts. Peeking at them, Seika didn’t recognize the shoreline—​it curved and curled like no island she knew. How strange, she thought. She’d studied plenty of maps in the palace library, and none looked like this. Her history tutor used to wax on in a voice of near despair about all the maps of the world they’d lost over the years . . . Still, it seemed unlikely that this pirate captain would have them.

  The captain sported a beard that reminded Seika of a swallow’s nest. She’d seen them in the palace spires, tucked into the rafters, where the cleaners couldn’t easily reach them. She and Ji-Lin used to climb up and count the eggs and check on them until they hatched. Once, they’d found an egg that had fallen and broken. Ji-Lin had cleaned it out and given it to Seika as a present. She still had it, tucked into her jewelry drawer, in the back where the ladies-in-waiting couldn’t find it and toss it out. The captain’s beard could have housed several eggs, as well as a few birds. He stroked his beard as he considered them. “Exactly what am I supposed to do with you?”

  “You aren’t supposed to do anything with us, except thank us,” Ji-Lin snapped.

  Nodding in agreement, Seika tried to hold her borrowed blanket around her shoulders with as much dignity as the emperor held his robes. She’d changed into drier clothes, but the sailors had lent her a blanket. She was still cold from the dunk in the ocean.

  The pirate captain drummed his fingers on his desk. Seika decided she didn’t like him. He was looking at them as if they had caused problems, instead of coming to his ship’s rescue. “I thought we were goners when that scylla grabbed us. It had been hunting us for several days. We’d had good wind for a while and were able to outrun it, but then the wind died and so did our luck.”

  “Several days?” Ji-Lin sounded startled, and Seika knew why: if the scylla had been in the sea around Himitsu for several days, the lions and riders would have spotted it. No, this meant that the ship and the sea monster had come from outside. Beyond the barrier.

  But that was impossible. She dismissed the idea as nonsense. He must have been sailing around the islands. It was a many-day trip around all of them. Her eyes drifted back to the strange maps . . .

  “And then out of the blue come two children and their kitty cat.”

  Ooh, Ji-Lin is not going to like that, Seika thought.

  “He’s not a ‘kitty cat,’” Ji-Lin said, nearly spitting the words. “He’s an imperial guardian, celestial born, beloved of both the stars and sea!” Glancing out the porthole at the deck, Seika saw Alejan resting by the broken mast. Several of the pirates milled around him, and she noticed they still had their axes and knives in their hands from
battling the sea monster.

  He snorted. “Winged lions haven’t been ‘imperial guards’ for over a hundred years. Tell the truth: where did you come by that thing, and how did you tame it?”

  Seika saw Ji-Lin’s hands curl into fists. She looked about three seconds away from losing her temper. Before Ji-Lin could reply, Seika jumped in. Using her most royal voice, she demanded, “The question is: how did that sea koji cross the barrier and enter our waters?” She tried to picture herself acting as imperiously as her father. As the emperor’s heir, Seika should be asking the questions, not this pirate.

  “What barrier?” the captain asked.

  Seika exchanged glances with Ji-Lin. “The magic barrier that protects Himitsu,” Ji-Lin said.

  Then she added, “You aren’t from Himitsu, are you?”

  The change in the captain’s face was remarkable. His mouth opened like a fish, his eyes widened until they looked like they’d pop from their sockets, and his cheeks reddened and then whitened. He exhaled in a gust that rustled the maps on his desk. “We found it.” He slapped the desk with his meaty fist. “We found it! We’d hoped, when we ran the coordinates, but there are so many uncharted areas. And all the scientists said the barrier would fall years ago, when the egg hatched, but no one could find it . . . But here you are, and you have a tamed winged lion . . . You said Himitsu? The fugitive called this place after himself, huh?”

  Seika raised her eyebrows. Fugitive wasn’t a term usually used to describe their illustrious ancestor, the architect of the islanders’ freedom and future. And no scientist expected the barrier to fall.

  “Are you pirates?” Ji-Lin asked bluntly.

  Seika winced. They should be trying to stay on the captain’s good side, at least until Alejan was ready to fly. She didn’t want to swim for shore, especially since she didn’t know what else had passed through the barrier with the sea monster.

  “Pirates? What makes you think—​No, child, of course not. No wonder you look so tense. We’re explorers!” He spread his arms wide, as if to embrace the entire ship. “We seek out new lands—​and lost ones. These islands have been lost for so long that many believe they’re merely legend. Sweet bedtime stories. But you tell me the Hidden Islands are real?”

  Ji-Lin glanced at Seika, and Seika knew that it was time for her to sound her most princessy. “I am Princess Seika d’Orina Amatimara Himit-Re, firstborn daughter of Em-peror Yu-Senbi, many times descendant of Emperor Himitsu, he who delivered us to freedom and peaceful beauty, and this is Princess Ji-Lin a’Tori Eonessa Himit-Re, second-born daughter—​”

  The captain snorted. “You expect me to believe you’re princesses?”

  He was certainly rude enough to be a pirate, even if he wasn’t one. Seika didn’t think she’d ever had anyone talk to her like this before. She drew herself up tall. “We are who we are, whether you believe us or not, and as soon as our lion’s wings are dry, we will be on our way. We’re on an important quest and can’t be delayed.”

  Slapping his knee, the captain laughed. “Oh my, that’s rich. Two princesses on a quest! I remember when I was your age, I used to play conqueror. I’d lead my battalion of toy soldiers up the hill and capture the dog pen.”

  “She’s telling you the truth. We’re on an important journey.” Ji-Lin was running her fingers over the hilt of her sword. Seika saw that her arm muscles were tense and her knees loosely bent. She hoped Ji-Lin had noticed how outnumbered they were. There was a major difference between how the sailors looked at them and how the villagers had acted—​the villagers had treated them with honor. The pirates—​sailors, she corrected herself—​treated them like . . . like . . . well, like she and Ji-Lin were untrustworthy little children.

  “Of course you are.” Still amused, he shook his head. “We shall see, though. As soon as we have fixed our ship, we will sail to speak with your emperor. If you’re truly princesses, you can help us arrange an audience with him. Until then, you have the freedom of the deck.” He waved his hand as if dismissing them, or shooing away pesky flies. Studying his maps, he didn’t look up again as they retreated out the door.

  As they exited the captain’s cabin and returned to the deck, Seika whispered, “He’s not going to let us leave, not voluntarily.” She knew lords like this captain, used to getting their own way.

  “He doesn’t have wings,” Ji-Lin whispered back. “As soon as Alejan’s feathers dry, we can be away from here. Just a little while more. He dries fast.”

  “Whoa, you have a pet lion!” a young voice cried. “Can I pet him?”

  Seika turned to see a boy, scrawny thin, about their age, perched on a broken ladder that led to the ship’s wheel. He had an oversize hat on his head from which tufts of black hair stuck out, so frizzed that they looked like they defied gravity.

  “He is not a pet,” Ji-Lin said in nearly a growl. If she were a cat, her fur would be bristling. “And no, you can’t pet him, unless he allows it.”

  “I don’t mind,” Alejan said, lowering his head.

  Ji-Lin shifted her glare to Alejan.

  The boy plunged his hands into the lion’s wet mane and scratched behind his ears. “Dad doesn’t like nonhuman creatures, on account of the fact they’re usually trying to eat us. You’re lucky Dad didn’t attack him.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Ji-Lin muttered. She switched her death glare to the sailors who milled around them. Shrugging off the blanket they’d given her, she wrapped her hand around her sword hilt.

  Seika noticed that the sailors weren’t looking at the winged lion with friendly expressions. She read mistrust, even outright hostility. She wondered how they’d be acting if Alejan hadn’t just helped them fight a sea monster. Dry, she thought at his wings. She turned to the boy. “Where’s your home?” she asked.

  “Western Zemyla.”

  Zemyla! But that . . .

  Ji-Lin tightened her hand around her sword. “Seika . . .” She knew what Ji-Lin wanted to say: a ship from Zemyla, the land their ancestors had fled, was here.

  “Impossible,” Seika breathed.

  Or not impossible. If the scylla was here, why not a ship too?

  She thought of what the captain had said about wanting an audience with the emperor. If it occurred to the captain to use them against Father . . . She’d never been held hostage before, and she didn’t want to be. Zemylan history was full of kidnapping attempts and royal hostages, and she really didn’t want that to be her chapter in the Himitsu history books.

  The boy was still talking. “Guess I can’t really call it home, though, because we never lived in one house very long. Dad likes the sea. It’s his home. I wish we had a real house, on dry land. I get seasick. Especially when we get attacked by giant sea monsters. Not that it really matters, because I’m dying anyway.” He delivered all this so quickly that Seika felt like she’d been caught up in a whirlwind.

  She grasped on to the last thing he said: “What do you mean you’re ‘dying’?”

  The boy shoved up his sleeve to show his bare arm, which was mottled with red and gray splotches. “It started as a red dot, but it’s been spreading fast. Last week it was the size of a field mouse. Now it’s more like a fat rat. I’ll probably be dead in a day.”

  She didn’t know what to say or do. He said it so matter-of-factly. She half wanted to hug him and half wanted to run away. “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re very calm for someone who’s dying tomorrow,” Ji-Lin said. It was clear from her voice that she didn’t believe him. But why would he lie about that?

  He shrugged. “Yeah, the doctor said it’s happening, but I just . . . I mean, I’m alive now, so how can I be dead in a day? From a dumb bite? I try really, really hard not to think about it. Right now, I’m just glad I wasn’t eaten by a scylla. You were amazing! I saw you up on the lion. Your sword raised!” He mimed hacking at the air. “And when you dove into the sea . . . I thought you were goners for sure!”

  The cabin door opened, and the c
aptain strode out. He began barking orders at the sailors—​fix that, move this, carry that, sew the sails, add more pitch to the hull . . . “Report!” he roared.

  One of the sailors scurried up to him and began listing the issues. “Two days at least until we’re ready to sail.”

  Scowling, the captain stomped across the deck. “Make it faster! We have a chance at history here, people! Look alive!” He then crossed to the princesses and the boy. “Kirro, what are you doing out of bed? You’re supposed to be resting.”

  “A sea monster woke me up,” the boy, Kirro, said.

  “Get back and rest some more. This excitement isn’t good for you. You know what the doctor said about your heart.”

  Kirro nodded. “Harder it pumps, faster the sickness spreads, until—​pop—​my heart is squeezed until it stops.” On the word pop, he opened his hands and then squeezed them into fists. His tone was light, but Seika was used to looking for what people didn’t say. Lords and ladies always said one thing and meant another. He might have pretended he was fine, but she saw the sadness that quivered in his eyes and pulled on the corners of his lips. He truly was sick. And scared. Deep-down, bone-quiveringly scared, and trying his hardest to hide it. Her heart went out to him. No one should have to be that scared.

  The captain paled, and his voice softened. He rested his hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder. “Rest, please.”

  “Yes, Father.” Shooting a lopsided smile at Seika, the boy scampered down a hatch into the hull. She wanted to call him back, say she was sorry, ask if she could help . . .

  The captain heaved a sigh and looked so sad that Seika began to revise her opinion of him. Maybe he wasn’t so unlikable after all. He did care about Kirro. He was just being stupid about the princesses. In her experience, people were often correct about some things and dumb about others, especially those adults who thought they had to be right all the time. “He said it was a bite,” Seika said. “What bit him?” She’d seen marks like that, in illustrations in the records, but she couldn’t remember which book or what the explanation was. Her tutors would be disappointed in her—​a practical chance to apply knowledge, and she couldn’t recall more than the image.