Island of Fog (Book 1) (9 page)

There were giggles and chortles all round.

No more was said for a long while. Robbie finally returned, looking red-faced. He nodded to Hal. “Your turn.”

Hal got up and headed to the back of the class. He entered the short hallway and found the door to the small office standing open.

“Come on in,” Miss Simone said from inside. The office was tiny, no more than seven feet across and twelve deep. It contained a desk crammed against the wall, and a bookshelf under the small window. Miss Simone was seated at a chair with castors, and she swiveled around as Hal entered. “Take a seat.”

Hal sat in the visitor’s chair. The desk had a few items on it—a set of trays jammed with papers in one corner, and a pen holder and blotting pad in the middle. But Miss Simone seemed to have no use for any notes. She eased back in her chair and stared at Hal with her startling clear blue eyes.

“Talk to me, Hal,” she said. “I know you have something to tell me.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do,” Miss Simone said. “Tell me what’s happening to you.”

Hal stared at her, feigning confusion. “Miss?”

“Come on, Hal, I know all about it. You can’t keep it secret forever. I just want you to admit it, and to open up to me. That’s the first step to a better future. My hands are tied until all of you open up and tell me about the physical changes you’re going through.”

Hal swallowed. Did she know about his rash? But how could she? He’d kept it secret except from Robbie and Abigail. Now here was this strange woman turning up out of the blue and claiming to know all about him and his rash.

Maybe she knew because
she had somehow caused it.

“Miss Simone,” he said slowly, “I don’t know what you mean. What physical changes? You mean getting older? I’ll be a teenager this year, and I’ve grown an inch in height in the last couple of months . . .”

“Hal,” she said, leaning forward. Again Hal caught the scent of the ocean on her. “All the girls have told me their secrets. Robbie too. The fact is, Robbie told me of your secret. I just want
you
to tell me. Or show me, if you prefer.”

A feeling of anger bubbled up from deep inside. Hal felt his face heating up. This woman was a liar! He doubted very much that any of the girls had revealed anything to Miss Simone, and he knew with absolute certainty that Robbie hadn’t. She was testing him, bluffing in an effort to make him talk. Well, she’d just blown it big time. Now Hal knew Abigail was right—this woman wasn’t to be trusted.

He got his anger under control and refrained from scratching at his left forearm, which had started itching at a really bad time. He prayed the rash wouldn’t spread down his arm and onto the back of his hand. He slowly folded his arms just in case, and looked thoughtful. “Actually,” he said, “something strange
is
happening to me.”

Miss Simone’s eyes widened. “Yes?”

Hal glanced over his shoulder, then leaned forward. Miss Simone leaned forward too, her eyes bright and eager. Hal lowered his voice to a whisper. “I think I might have a crush on Abigail. I hate to admit it, but she’s quite nice when you get to know her. And . . . I think she likes me too.” He shrugged. “Weird, eh? I never would have thought it.”

Miss Simone stared hard at him for what seemed an age, and then she sank back into her seat. “Send Fenton in, if you would,” she said through gritted teeth.

Hal’s throat was burning and his entire arm itching as he returned to his desk. He felt the rash spreading up to his shoulder and across his back.
Not now, not now
, he thought. He glanced at the back of his hand, afraid of finding the green lumpy skin there in plain sight—but it was clear, at least for now.

“You next, Fenton,” he said, rubbing his painful throat. He flopped down into his seat as Fenton trudged to the back of the class and disappeared through the door.

“Are you all right?” Abigail asked, looking concerned.

Hal opened his mouth to answer, but he felt sudden searing pain at the back of his throat, and he bent forward and choked as if he’d got a red hot pepper stuck in there. There was a brief flash of yellow in front of his face, and Lauren, seated directly in front of him, leapt to her feet with a yelp.

Hal rubbed his throat. The pain had gone, and a smoky smell hung in the air.

He was suddenly aware of a silence. All eyes were fixed on him. “Must be coming down with something,” he murmured. “Lauren, did I spit on you or something? I think I had something caught in my throat . . .”

“My chair’s all burnt,” she said, her eyes wide. “Look, it’s all blackened around the edges.”

“Fire came out of your mouth,” Robbie said, staring at him with awe.

“Shh!” Abigail whispered. She frowned at Lauren, then at the others. “This is exactly the sort of thing Miss Simone is looking for. Hal has something weird going on, and so do I. So do you, Lauren, and so does Emily. And we know Fenton does too. That leaves Robbie, Dewey, and Darcy.”

Everyone gazed first at Robbie, then Dewey, and then Darcy. But although a flicker of understanding passed over Robbie’s face, the other two simply shrugged and looked mystified.

“This is nuts,” Emily said. “There’s nothing going on with me. Abigail, tell us everything you know.”

“Not here,” Abigail said. “Later. But it’ll have to wait, because Hal, Robbie and I have plans after school. We’re going to follow Miss Simone and see where she goes. But Emily, if you really want to help, maybe I could leave you to organize a mission?”

Emily at once brightened up. Hal smiled to himself. It was funny how Abigail knew exactly which words to choose to get others to do her bidding. “What do you have in mind?”

But Fenton returned at that moment. “You next, Abi.”

With a sigh, Abigail got up and strolled to the back of the class. Fenton returned to his seat, looking glum. “Did I miss anything?”

Lauren at once told him, in a quiet voice, how Hal had scorched the back of her chair. She pointed out the blackened edges and Fenton looked astonished.

“You never told me you could do that,” Robbie said to Hal, sounding a little put out.

“I never knew I could,” Hal admitted. He glanced around. “I’ve had a sort of rash for a while now. It comes and goes, and I didn’t think much of it. Thought it was an insect bite or something. But now . . . I don’t know. And this—” He waved a hand at Lauren’s chair. “Burning her chair? That’s, uh, kind of new to me. I think I would have noticed if I could breathe fire.”

Not much more was said after that.

When Abigail returned to the classroom, she looked triumphant. She poked Dewey on the shoulder. “Your turn,” she said. “Don’t you dare breathe a word about
anything
—understand?”

Dewey nodded and disappeared.

Emily approached Abigail. “So . . . you had a mission for me to arrange?”

“Yes.” Abigail glanced around, and Hal could almost see the cogs and wheels in her brain turning. Then she leaned close to Emily and whispered in her ear for a full half-minute. Emily listened intently and eventually nodded.

“Leave it to me,” she said, sounding important.

It was not long before Dewey emerged from the office, with Miss Simone right behind him. Dewey returned to his seat looking a little shaky and pale. As Miss Simone swept by and headed for the front of the class, Abigail glared at Dewey with a questioning look. He gave a weak smile and a thumbs up.

Miss Simone looked disgruntled. “Get on with your essays,” she said, heading for the coat stand to retrieve her dark green silky robe. As she swept it around her shoulders and tied the sash at her throat, she glanced up at the clock. It was only halfway through the morning. “Since you have nothing to tell me today, we’ll resume tomorrow. Take your essays home and have them completed by morning.”

She gave a curt nod, flipped back her hair, and exited through the door at the front. A silence settled on the class once more, and everyone rushed to the windows.

“There she goes,” Emily said, pointing. The stranger was moving at a brisk pace across the meadow, her cloak billowing in a light breeze that had sprung up. Puffs of fog blew between her and the school, and in an instant she was gone.

Abigail swung around. “Quickly, Hal, Robbie—let’s go. Emily, I’ll leave you to organize things here, okay? See you all tomorrow.”

Abigail hurried from the room out the back door, and Hal rushed to catch up, followed by Robbie. The three of them collected their bikes from the rack and cycled around the building to the other side, keeping a sharp eye out for Miss Simone. But she was already engulfed in fog.

“She went that way,” Robbie said, pointing. “Let’s get after her. Hurry, before we lose her completely.”

Hal, Robbie and Abigail pedaled through the long grass of the meadow, heading in what they guessed to be the direction Miss Simone had taken. It had been bright when Hal had left home that morning, but now the sky had dulled to a miserable dark gray, and the fog had thickened. Gusts of wind whipped at the grass and blew through the trees standing along the edge of the meadow nearby. His dad had predicted a storm, and it seemed he was to be proven right.

Just as Hal thought they’d lost Miss Simone in the fog, perhaps even cycled right past her, she appeared as a fuzzy shape ahead and to the left. The three of them slowed to a crawl and said nothing, just watched in silence.

Miss Simone moved fast, her silky cloak billowing in the breeze and her golden locks blowing freely. However, the cyclists had to keep stopping and starting to avoid catching up with her.

“She’ll see us if she glances back,” Hal whispered after a while. “We should walk our bikes.”

“Yeah,” Robbie agreed. “We’ll hang back just enough so she’s almost lost in the fog, so we can hardly see her. Then, if she does look back, hopefully she won’t see us either.”

“Is it my imagination,” Abigail said, looking around, “or has the fog gotten thicker since we left school?”

“Storm’s coming,” Hal said. “I don’t know if that has anything to do with the fog, but Dad said a storm’s coming later tonight. Wind’s picking up already. Come on, Miss Simone’s disappeared again.”

“And let’s quit talking in case she hears us,” Abigail whispered.

They walked in silence, pushing their bikes through the long grass and listening to the hypnotic ticking of chains around the gears. They left the meadow and started through a rough field of dry brush and the occasional thicket. Throughout the trek they glimpsed Miss Simone perhaps no more than fifty feet ahead, although Hal swore the gap was closing. The fog seemed to be thickening even more, and they naturally increased their pace to keep the visitor in sight.

They had to stop dead in their tracks at one point because a bank of fog rolled aside to reveal Miss Simone stepping carefully through a hedgerow. She was just twenty feet ahead, and had only to whip her head around to see them standing there gaping at her.

But she pressed on through the hedgerow and Hal let out a long sigh. “That was close,” he whispered. “Where are we headed?”

“To the cliffs,” Robbie said, frowning. “I’m sure the cliffs are this way, and if we head left a little bit, we’ll end up at Black Woods.”

They forged on, breathless with anticipation. Would the strange woman lead them to a boat? Would she sail off Out There without a protective suit?

When the smell of salt water hit their nostrils and a strong, persistent wind tugged at their clothes and hair, they knew they were nearing the edge of the island. Ahead, the fuzzy dark figure of Miss Simone faded in and out, her cloak billowing and hair streaming. The walk had become a bit of a slog by now, and Hal’s feet were moving on automatic, one foot after the other. He almost failed to notice when the visitor finally came to a halt; he kept on walking until Robbie yanked him back.

Miss Simone had stopped by the cliff edge, where the long grass simply ended and gave way to a wall of fog. Robbie had guessed right. But it didn’t make sense; how could she have moored up a boat here?

Abigail leaned close to Hal and whispered, “What’s she doing?” Her warm breath tickled his cold ear. “Looking for a boat?”

“Maybe,” Hal whispered back. “I don’t see one though.”

They waited in silence as the visitor stood there on the cliff, peering down. She licked a finger and held it up.

“She’s testing the wind,” Robbie remarked.

“Maybe she’s—” Abigail started.

Miss Simone dove off the cliff.

Abigail stifled a scream as the strange woman pitched forward with her knees bent. As she reached a horizontal position, she pushed away from the cliff with her legs and dove outward, as graceful as a bird, her arms extended and her green, silky cloak billowing behind her.

Then she was gone.

For a stunned moment nobody moved or said a word. Then Hal threw down his bike and raced across the grass to the edge of the cliff. An updraft whipped at his hair as he searched for Miss Simone.

About fifty or sixty feet below, the sea pounded against the cliff face, green and swirling with white froth and bubbles where it sloshed back against fresh waves. There seemed to be no dangerous rocks in these parts, but diving from this height was reckless enough. What if she’d been blown back against the cliff face, or dashed against it underwater? What if there was a current that sucked her down and down until she drowned?

“What happened?” Abigail asked, rushing over to Hal’s side. “Did she come up somewhere?”

It took awhile for Hal to find his voice. “S-she must have a boat out there somewhere, in the fog. She must have swum out to it. What a nerve, though, diving off the cliff like that!”

Robbie whistled. “She’s nuts.”

“I wish it wasn’t so foggy,” Abigail grumbled. “We might have seen her swimming away, maybe even seen her boat.”

“If this is how she gets off the island,” Hal said, “I wonder how she got
on
earlier. Did anyone see which direction she came from this morning? She couldn’t have climbed up the cliff here. She must have arrived at the island somewhere else. But then . . . why not go back the same way? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Abigail sighed. “
Nothing
makes sense. Come on, this has been a waste of time. Show me the fog-hole. Robbie, didn’t you say Black Woods is near here?”

Robbie nodded. “Not far. Let’s leave our bikes and bags, though. It gets awkward up ahead.” He dumped his backpack by his fallen bike and hurried off along the cliff, veering inland a little. The fog swallowed him up.

“Does he know where he’s going?” Abigail asked.

“He knows the island better than anyone,” Hal said, throwing his backpack down with Robbie’s. “Good sense of direction. You should see him in the woods—just cuts right through as if he can
smell
the route.”

Abigail slipped her backpack off too, and together they marched along the grassy cliff top and then up a little rise where the terrain became rockier. Bushes sprouted at random, and hidden in the long grass were little potholes that made them stumble. Occasionally they came across rabbits that froze, stared at them with wide eyes and twitching noses, then bolted into the gloom.

Abigail jammed her hands into her coat pockets and hunched her shoulders against the wind, while Hal’s fingers, ears and nose slowly turned numb. He should have worn a sweater or a coat—but then, he hadn’t planned on taking a walk along the blustery cliffs when he’d set out that morning. Still, the brisk pace warmed him, and Abigail too, judging by her rosy red cheeks and pink nose.

But no matter how briskly they walked, Robbie managed to remain out of sight somewhere up ahead. “Robbie?” Hal called after a while. “Where are you?”

“Where are
you?
” came a faint retort on the wind. “You still back there?”

Robbie didn’t seem very far away. If the fog cleared he’d probably be right there, thirty or forty feet ahead, clambering over rocks as Hal and Abigail were.

The meandering walk up and down short hills stretched on. Hal wished there was a simple path; then they could have brought their bikes and avoided the walk back again later. At that moment his stomach growled, reminding him that his lunch was in his backpack, which he’d left with the bikes. Wishing he could chew on a sandwich right now, he sighed and tried to think of something to take his mind off it.

“Abi,” he said after a while, “how do you . . . control your wings? How do you make them appear and disappear at will?”

Abigail seemed to shake herself from a state of deep thought. “What? Oh, well, I guess it’s like learning to ride a bike. It’s easy once you know how, and then you can’t
not
ride one, if you see what I mean. It’s the same with swimming. Once you figure it out, you just do it without thinking.” She glanced at him and frowned. “You must know how to control your scales now, right? You had that rash on your hand when we met in the garage on Saturday night, but now it’s gone. You must have willed it away.”

“Uh, not really,” Hal admitted. “Well, I suppose I might have willed it away somehow, but only by accident. Or it might have been coincidence that it disappeared right when I was wishing it would go away—”

Abigail snorted. “It wasn’t coincidence, Hal. This is how it starts. Whatever you are, it creeps up on you, growing like a pimple or a rash, and when it gets really bad you get angry and tell it to go away. And it does. Then it returns, quicker than before. Before you know it, you’re a monster.”

Hal slowed to a stop. “A monster.”

She continued up the rise a moment longer before realizing he’d stopped. Then she turned and looked down at him. “I was kidding. Do you think
I’m
a monster?”

“No,” Hal said, shaking his head. “You’re a girl with wings.”

“I’m a
faerie
,” Abigail said with a half smile and a little gleam in her eyes. She took a few steps to one side and leaned against a huge boulder. “At least, I think I am. First I went through an old book on wildlife, but couldn’t find anything remotely like me. There’s no such thing as a girl with wings, so the book said. Then I remembered a story my mom used to tell me when I was little, about the Tooth Fairy, a magical lady with wings.”

“Yeah, right,” Hal said with a smile. Then he frowned. “You think you’re the Tooth Fairy?”

Abigail shook her head. “No, but it gave me the idea to look for books about fairy tales instead of wildlife. I found one called
Creatures of Fantasy
. It had all sorts of strange creatures, and I found something similar to the Tooth Fairy—a faerie, spelled differently but basically the same thing—a magical person with buzzing wings, only very small, no bigger than your hand.”

Hal gaped.

“Only thing is,” Abigail went on, “the introduction on the first page said that all those creatures were ‘mythical, magic beings,’ or ‘creatures of the imagination’ . . . which of course I’m not.”

She looked skyward for a moment. “There’s a thought. Maybe none of this is real and we’re all in a dream.”

The wind tugged at her ponytail. She hunched her shoulders again and tried to bury her nose in her coat. “Let’s keep walking,” she said. “Robbie’s probably at the woods already.”

They continued up the rise and found themselves on another grassy field. The walk was a little easier now, and they hurried along together.

“So,” Hal said, “you think you’re a faerie, from this book of fantasy creatures? I once read a book that had faeries in it.”

Abigail looked surprised. “You did? Where did you find that?”

“On the shelves at school. You’ve been looking in the reference section, but there are plenty of books on the shelf marked ‘Fantasy’ that have magical creatures in them—stories rather than just pictures and descriptions.”

“That’s why I’ve never come across them,” Abigail said. “I don’t read much of anything except reference books. I don’t see the point in made-up stories. I’d rather learn about real life.”

Hal frowned. “You’re weird. But Robbie’s the same. He’s read every bug book there is.”

Abigail smiled as they walked together. Darkness loomed ahead; they were approaching Black Woods at last. “So anyway,” she said, “I started to wonder if maybe I’m a faerie, even though all the books say they don’t really exist. Maybe the books are wrong. And if I’m a faerie, then what are you? And all the others? Are we all so-called fantasy creatures?”

“That’s nuts,” Hal said. But he had to concede that he couldn’t really be sure of anything anymore. “Hey, I meant to ask: Why don’t you just fly up out of the fog, or over the water to the mainland?”

“Can’t,” Abigail replied. “I think the fog dampens my flight somehow. I can fly along low to the ground for up to an hour, but if I try to fly upwards I get all heavy and tired. And I’m nervous about flying out across the sea.”

They stopped at the fringes of Black Woods and peered in. The fog seemed thinner here, almost as if the trees filtered out the really thick stuff. However, in its place was an ominous dark stillness, as though the woods were listening for intruders. Somehow the open fields of thick cold fog didn’t seem quite so bad anymore.

“Where’s Robbie?” Abigail asked, as if Hal would know.

Hal shrugged. “Robbie?” he called loudly.

Silence.

He sighed. “I guess we could try and find our way. There’s a cliff path that we could follow, but it would be quicker to cut through the woods here. We should come to a stream, and the fog-hole is in a clearing nearby.”

Abigail shivered. “Let’s go the shortest route. We’ll probably come up on Robbie soon enough.”

Hal took a breath and plunged into the woods, with Abigail in tow. Nothing looked familiar to him, but he felt he couldn’t go far wrong as long as he stayed roughly straight. “Robbie!” he yelled. “Wait for us!”

Abigail said nothing as she trailed behind Hal through the dense vegetation. Twigs cracked and leaves crunched. Bushes rustled and shook. A wet patch of dirt squelched underfoot, and a rodent ran across Hal’s shoe and scurried away. It reminded him of the red-faced monster, and he wondered if they were making a mistake by wandering around in the woods with that thing roaming loose. Then again, it was just a guard, after all, and probably alerted to his presence now that he’d been yelling for Robbie. He mentally kicked himself. No wonder his friend hadn’t shouted back—he’d had more sense!

“I think our parents are scared of us,” Abigail whispered.

“Scared?” Hal whispered back. He pointed the way around a crop of prickly bushes. “What do you mean, scared?”

“Well, think about it. We’re stuck here on this island.” She waved her hands around expansively. “I always had a theory that the adults were making up stories about Out There being a dead place we wouldn’t ever want to visit. I think they just want to keep us here because of what we are. They want to keep us here to experiment on, but they know we could escape if we really wanted to, so they make up all these stories about diseases and things. They’re trying to make us believe they love us and are trying to protect us when all the time they’re lying and keeping us prisoners here.”