Island of Fog (Book 1) (22 page)

Miss Simone’s face was a curious mixture of scientific interest and approval for her successful experiment, but personal disdain at what she must think of as a loathsome creature.

Meanwhile, Hal was only half watching the show. He was more intent on the thinning fog and cooling air. Again he wondered about the virus. It hadn’t harmed him or his classmates when they stood at the top of the lighthouse, but it had long ago been established they had good immune systems. What if the unfiltered air was harmless to the children, but remained deadly to his parents?

“Yes, Lauren, you’re a harpy,” Miss Simone was saying as Lauren flapped gracefully to the ground. “The harpies don’t like that name though. They simply call themselves winged people. They insist they’re human, and in history have felt insulted that humans refused to accept them as such. Well, the prejudice is thousands of years old and the damage is done; the bird people shun humans and will gleefully pick a fight. The word
harpy
is, by definition, insulting and should never be used in their company.”

“Why can’t I fly up into the sky?” Lauren asked, looking breathless. “I just can’t seem to fly higher than a rooftop.”

Miss Simone nodded sagely. “There’s a chemical agent in the fog,” she explained. “We put it there for exactly that reason. The agent is lighter than fog but heavier than air, so it hangs over the island and dampens flight. It affects birds too.” She paused suddenly and looked up. Her brow furrowed.

Tell her
, Hal urged himself.

“Who’s next?” Lauren asked, as she changed back to human form and allowed her parents to hug her. “Dewey—your turn!”

Dewey’s change was met with a cry of recognition. “A centaur,” many voices said at once. “My handsome son!” cried Mrs. Morgan. “Oh, you must be so proud,” Dr. Porter said. The babble of voices filled the air as Dewey stamped around in his usual restless way, turning in circles and swishing his tail.

Miss Simone joined in with the noise, explaining that Dewey would have some immediate duties to attend to when he arrived in her world; he would have to talk to the centaurs and persuade them to alter a few of their stubborn ways. As Dewey changed back into his human form, Miss Simone added, “So it was
you
we saw last night. It was the storm that set you off, wasn’t it?”

Eyes downcast, Dewey nodded. “Something about the lightning and thunder scared me. I’ve never been afraid of storms before, and I like watching them, but this one was different.”

Miss Simone shook her head. “The storm was no different to any other. But something in you had changed recently. Just about all centaurs have an irrational fear of storms, and somehow I expected one of you kids to show your true self last night once the thunder and lightning got started. I waited around behind the houses with my colleagues just in case, and sure enough, a frightened centaur showed up.”

“That was me,” Dewey said, looking mildly embarrassed.

“You ran off,” Miss Simone continued. “We never did catch up with you. It was very frustrating. I knew it had to be one of you boys, but I didn’t know which of you—Hal, Robbie, or you, Dewey.”

Only half listening to the story, Hal looked around for Robbie, seeking his opinion on the virus and the fog-hole. But his friend was at Lauren’s side, where he’d been since her impressive performance.
Figures
, Hal thought.

So he turned to Abigail. She had been clapping and cheering with everyone else, but seemed lost in thought. “Hey,” Hal whispered. “Have you noticed the fog is lifting?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And Miss Simone’s noticed too.”

“Right.”

They said nothing more for a few moments. But then Abigail turned to him and whispered in his ear, “Hal, do you think we did the right thing, blocking the fog-hole?”

“I don’t know,” Hal moaned. Hearing this from Abigail was like a punch in the stomach. His own nagging feeling was confirmed. Something bad was in the air. “But it’s been thirteen years since the virus struck Out There.
Surely
it’s gone by now.”

Abigail shook her head. “If that’s true, then why did Miss Simone bother keeping the fog going all this time?” She sighed. “I realize I was wrong about her. I still don’t like her very much, but I do think she’s telling the truth now.”

“So the virus could still be Out There,” Hal said. His heart began to thump hard and a queasy feeling settled in his stomach.

“Who’s next?” Miss Simone said, looking around. “Hal, Emily, and Darcy. Care to show us what you can do, Emily?”

Emily blushed. “Um, well . . . actually, I haven’t been able to transform yet.”

For a moment her parents looked horrified at this news, but after a moment, Mrs. Stanton smiled and winked. “You’ll get there, my dear.”

“Just a question of time,” Mr. Stanton said, nodding.

Emily smiled back, but Hal could tell she was embarrassed, perhaps even ashamed of herself.

Miss Simone said nothing, just gazed at Emily with narrowed eyes for long seconds. Then she turned to Hal. “How about you, then, Hal?”

Hal felt all eyes turn to him. His parents held each other, nervous but expectant. He was reminded of all the times he’d stood up during school plays and recited carefully memorized lines to a hushed audience. He wasn’t very good at speaking to crowds, even though he knew each and every person in the audience. And his parents
knew
he didn’t like it, so they always had that same nervous but expectant look about them. He knew they were silently thinking, “We love you, but don’t mess it up, but don’t worry if you do . . . but try not to mess up anyway. Make us proud.”

Now Hal felt the pressure of an audience again. And to make matters worse, he still hadn’t fully mastered the ability to change at will. Everyone else could manage it, so why couldn’t he?

He swallowed, nodded, and stared at a spot in the road. He thought hard. He imagined himself as a dragon. He imagined himself breathing fire. He even, for a moment, imagined himself flying up into the air with huge leathery wings pumping, but this immediately made him think of the damping effect the fog would have on him, and that in turn reminded him of the blocked fog-hole.

Why, oh why, had they blocked it up?

“Hal?” Miss Simone asked, studying him with concern.

“I’m trying,” Hal mumbled, feeling his face heat up.

Darcy smiled and wandered over. She gave Hal a wink, then turned to the audience. “While he’s trying, I have a neat trick of my own. Ready?”

The audience’s gaze flicked across to Darcy, and Hal could almost feel the weight of that gaze leaving him.

“Now you see me,” Darcy said, grinning—and then she was gone.

Hal blinked. No, she was still there, but extremely difficult to see. Darcy moved, and he focused on her. But immediately she was still again, and Hal blinked several times, sure she was there, but unable to adjust his eyes correctly. It was like staring out a window and realizing that, an inch in front of his face, a small spider was crawling across the glass. Adjusting his eyes to focus on the spider would cause the outside world beyond to become a blur.

Several gasps and a multitude of blinking eyes told him that he wasn’t the only one having trouble focusing on her.

There was a rush of movement before him, a sort of ripple in the air as though he were looking into a clear pool disturbed by a breeze. Then he felt a light touch on his shoulder and a voice whispered in his ear. “Do it, Hal. Change. Don’t think about it, just
do
it.”

Then the touch was gone and he found Abigail glancing at him, looking puzzled. She was touching her arm where Darcy must have brushed by.

As Darcy played games with her audience, flitting here and there and touching shoulders, Hal stared once more at the ground.
Change. I can do this. Change!

Wrangler was barking again, his tail wagging furiously. Miss Simone was laughing. “How lovely! Darcy is a perfect example of how difficult it is to communicate with dryads. It’s even more difficult in the forests. Darcy is going to be such a help to us.”

And then, as heads began to turn toward Hal, he felt a moment of panic and blurted out, “Miss Simone, we blocked the fog-hole!”

A long, quizzical silence followed. Darcy faded back into existence next to Emily and Lauren. Robbie, standing behind Lauren, frowned as if annoyed. Dewey looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. Fenton was nowhere to be seen. All the adults looked bewildered—except Miss Simone, whose face slowly darkened.

Thankfully, Abigail stood by Hal. She actually moved closer and faced the crowd with him, her chin jutting out defiantly as if demanding that Miss Simone split her increasing anger between the two of them.

“You . . . did
what?
” Miss Simone said quietly. Her fists were clenching and unclenching. “I thought you told us that you didn’t block that hole.”

“We didn’t the first time,” Hal explained. His heart hammered. “But we went back this afternoon and finished the job.”

A ripple of concern spread through the parents. They began to murmur, looking around fearfully. Hal’s mom touched her face and then looked at her hands.

“It’s okay, though, right?” Hal said, raising his voice above the murmur. “The virus is long gone now, surely. And it didn’t affect us when we went up to the top of the lighthouse.”

“It didn’t affect
you
,” Miss Simone snapped, “because you’re not quite human anymore. You’re shapeshifters. You have the ability to heal. The microorganisms in your body are constantly changing, evolving, fighting off new bacteria and viruses. Why do you think you’ve never had a common cold or a simple sore throat?”

“How should I know?” Hal suddenly yelled. “You kept everything a big secret!” He felt his blood beginning to boil. “You told us just enough to keep us quiet, but not
nearly
enough to keep us from wondering. You told us nothing about what we would become, so we assumed the worst—that we were some big dark dirty secret, and that you wanted to take us away and lock us in cages and experiment on us, a load of doctors in white coats with clipboards making notes and nodding and whispering to each other and ordering more tests—”

“Hal, what on earth are you—” Miss Simone interrupted.

But Abigail jumped in. “And we knew nothing about where
you
came from, Miss Simone, until you showed up one day and started dropping hints about some other place full of strange creatures and forests and grassy hills—oh, and sunshine! Yes, how could I forget that? This other world of yours is full of sunshine and blue skies, and yet here we are, still cooped up on this foggy, depressing island, slowly turning into weird monsters and wondering what you’re going to do to us.” She scowled at Miss Simone. “And you wonder why we didn’t
trust
you?”

“Abigail Porter!” her mother said, sounding flustered.

Miss Simone held up a hand for silence, her eyes fixed on Abigail. She turned her icy stare to Hal, then back to Abigail. Then she looked once more at the sky.

The moon was becoming clearer, brighter, more defined by the minute. And, Hal realized, the sky was becoming blacker. The hazy glow that normally surrounded the moon was vanishing, and—was that a pin-prick of light nearby? A star?

Hal stared and stared. He’d seen pictures of course, but actually seeing one, a
real star
, was something else entirely.

“If you blocked the vent,” Miss Simone said evenly, “then we need to
unblock
it immediately. That means
now
, before it’s too late.”

She peered into the night sky, her brow furrowed.

“No, it may already be too late,” she said quietly. “If the virus has made it to the island . . . if it’s in the air already . . . it could take days, perhaps a week, for the fog to sanitize the air and make it safe again.”

“Where are the chemical suits?” Mrs. Stanton asked, as she had earlier.

“You can’t all wear chemical suits for a week,” Miss Simone snapped. “Our best bet is to leave the island immediately. The children can stay—they’re safe enough. But the rest of us must leave. We can return in a week, when the fog has been restored and the air is safe.” She nodded, rubbing her chin, thinking fast. “Yes, we’ll leave the island through the fog vent in Black Woods, and unblock it as we go.”

“But the manticore,” Hal protested. “It’s in the woods. It’s tried to kill us twice already! You can’t go that way unless we go with you!”

“Yes, we’ll protect you,” Robbie said. “We can all turn into monsters.”

“But we can’t use that tunnel!” Mrs. O’Tanner exclaimed, sounding horrified. “We’ve been down there before, remember? I nearly broke my ankle. It’s dangerous! Pitch black, jagged rocks hanging down, that slippery slope—”

“And don’t forget the fog,” Mrs. Franklin said. “Whether the tunnel is blocked or not, it will be filled with fog. Won’t we suffocate or something?”

Hal wasn’t sure he agreed with that, but he kept his mouth shut. At that moment, his dad cleared his throat to speak.

“Simone, you’ve always said the hole by the lighthouse is the safest one to travel through. You said it was just below the surface of the water, yes? You just duck under and swim through, right? That’s where you were taking Fenton and his parents tonight, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes,” Miss Simone said impatiently, “but I only have a small boat, big enough to hold four. We’ll have to make several trips, which will take time.”

“Then let’s stop wasting time and
go
,” Mr. Franklin said firmly. “We leave now, tonight. All of us. I’m sick of this island anyway.”

“But . . . we can’t
all
leave,” Miss Simone said, starting to sound desperate. She looked around, her eyes wide. “Listen to me. The children must stay until we’re sure that—”

“Simone,” Dewey’s dad said in his deep, rumbling voice, “we’re leaving. Now. Take us to the hole by the lighthouse.”

Miss Simone’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came out. Finally, she took a deep breath and help up her hands, speaking in a low, calm voice. “Let’s not panic. We’ve held on for twelve years, and we can hold on for an extra few days. Let’s not be hasty and take the children before they’re ready. We can go and find the chemical suits, and that’ll give us time to think before we—”