The Daykeeper's Grimoire (28 page)

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder —Sockman

The eleven times thing worked because I have always remembered it. I don’t know who Sockman is and I never really thought about what the quote meant, but now, as I see the island in the distance, it seems to make sense. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

Alex motions to the back of the plane with his head. “Thomas is knocked out again,” he says.

“Poor guy,” I say, looking back over my shoulder. As I see him—face slack, head cocked, mouth slightly open—a wave of nausea passes through me.

That is not Thomas.

No … no, no, no!” I say. “This can’t be—”

“What?” Alex asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, hell no!”

I look back again. How did I not see it?

“Caity, what is the matter with you?”

“That’s not Thomas!” I hiss.

“Well, then who on earth would it be, mate?”

I cover my face with my hands. “No. No. No. No.”

“Caity, you’re scaring me,” Alex says. “What is
wrong
with you?”

I tell him the whole story, everything Thomas told me. He turns white.

“Bloody hell!” Alex says, looking back. “I’ve known that man all my life.”

“Well, that’s not him, that’s Donald!”

Alex gets up. “I’m going to check it out.”

I watch as he walks back through the tiny aisle, slowly like a cat creeping up on a bird. He stops right by Thomas and takes a good long look at his sleeping face. Then he picks up the customs form sitting on his tray table, reads it and sets it back down.

“What did it say?” I ask when he returns.

“It has Thomas’ name on it, but surely Donald just took his passport.”

“What do we do?”

“We don’t have many options at this point, mate. We need to just be on high alert, keep him within our sights at all times.”

“But you have to share a room with him—doesn’t that freak you out?”

“Nae, it’ll give me a chance to keep an eye on him for you,” he says. “Besides he’s an old man and I’m a strapping young lad!”

He is trying to sound brave but I can hear a tinge of fear in his voice. All I can think about is what Barend Schlacter said to me in my room. I try to push the thought from my mind but it keeps popping up again, like a dandelion through concrete. The only bright spot is that those books had not been translated, which probably means he’s not totally connected to the
Fraternitas
. Yet.

For the rest of the flight, both of us keep looking back at the man with Thomas’ passport.

The Mataveri airport is what I expected the Santiago airport to look like: very small and pretty sketchy. While we wait for our luggage, I find a quiet spot and call my parents. After traveling all this way you’d think it would be a totally different day or something, but it’s only a five-hour time difference between here and Scotland.

Time is so weird.

We have a short and pleasant conversation in which I totally and completely lie to my loving and trusting parents. Nice.

It’s early evening by the time we check into the hotel, so before we head up to our rooms, we have an awkward dinner at the hotel restaurant; I’m glad that Donald is hurt because he doesn’t seem to notice that no one is talking or making eye contact. When I see him move his hand and wince, something brilliant occurs to me.

“Thomas, they probably have a doctor they can call. Do you want to get some antibiotics or something?” I ask.

He looks down at the hand, which is so swollen from travel and infection that the skin bulges on either side of the gauze wrapping and says, “Aye, s’pose I should have someone take a look.”

Before he even finishes the sentence, I’m out of my chair and on my way to the front desk where a man sits picking his nails with a staple remover. He’s small and nervous—has the look of someone who is just about to be asked a question that he does not know the answer to.

I point to Thomas and tell him that my friend is really hurt and needs to see a doctor who can prescribe very strong painkillers. “Oh, and Thomas is very macho,” I add. “He probably won’t want to ask for painkillers himself, so please just tell the doctor he must
insist
.”

The man nods nervously and says, “Of course,” and makes a call, speaking quickly in Spanish. After he hangs up he holds up one hand and says, “Five minute.”

“And he has pain medicine?”

“
Si, si
.”

“Thank you!
Gracias! Muchas gracias
.”

I walk back to the table. “They might have a doctor they can call,” I say casually to Donald before ordering dessert to hold them there longer. As I’m picking at some weird cake that I ordered, the doctor appears.

“Come with me?” he says to Donald. I’m glad he’s wearing a white coat and is carrying one of those old-school doctor cases—Donald might not go if he didn’t look totally legit.

As soon as they disappear into a room by the front desk, I lean over to Alex. “Okay, here’s the deal,” I say. “Donald is going to get some really strong painkillers. We need to get him totally drugged up so he can’t do anything but sleep.”

“How?”

“Put it in something he eats, I guess? Oh, I know! Order room service first thing in the morning and slip a few of the pills in his tea. Did you see how much sugar he just put in his tea? I don’t think he’d taste
anything
.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know—maybe double the dosage? I mean, we don’t want to kill the guy, just put him in a stupor.”

“Aye,” Alex says, clearly—and for good reason—nervous about drugging an imposter he has to share a room with.

When Donald returns to the table, he’s gripping his upper arm. “Antibiotics shot,” he says. “Biggest bloody needle I’ve ever seen.”

“Did he give you anything for the pain?” I ask.

“Aye. Not going to take it until bedtime though, the doctor said it will make me drowsy.”

I resist the urge to look at Alex.

“Well, I’m going to head up,” I say.

“Wait, lass,” Donald says. “What are your plans for tomorrow?”

“First I’m going to sleep in as long as humanly possible. Then have some lunch, look around, and find a good place to do my talk tomorrow night.”

“Night?” he asks.

“Yeah. It’s scheduled for 5:00 at night,” I casually reply. For once it feels good to lie to a scumbag instead of my parents. “Meet here for late lunch? Say, oneish?”

“Aye,” they say in unison.

I walk to my room on autopilot, so wiped out from the travel and the Donald thing. I barely muster the energy to set the alarm before I sink into bed, wondering how on earth I am going to get through tomorrow.

————

The curtains on the sliding glass door in my room are open so the first rays of the sun blast me full force. I get up to close them, but once I look outside the sunrise mesmerizes me in that weird way that you can get hypnotized by something completely ordinary, like a sprinkler.

I open the door and walk out on the small balcony. Waves are lapping the shore and the sun is peeking over the ocean. As more of the sun is revealed, I am filled with an amazing sensation. I don’t think I can explain exactly what it is, but it’s most like a feeling I had as a young child when I would fall asleep on my dad, with my ear on his chest so I could both feel and hear his heartbeat. Total comfort, total warmth, total love.

I remember a conversation I had with Dr. Slaton about how there’s a sudden surge of magnetic energy when the sun rises, something about the solar wind changing the Earth’s field as it turns to see the morning sun. I suppose that’s what I’m feeling.

I instantly want to call Justine. I try her cell phone and after just two rings she picks up.

“Your phone works!” I say, happy it’s as clear as if she were in the next room.

“Caity! How was your trip? How are you?”

“Great!” I say, not wanting to lay the Donald stuff on her. “I’m on Easter Island watching the sun rise over the ocean and it’s so beautiful it makes me want to cry. But what are you doing up? How was
your
trip?” I ask.

“Oh my God, do you know how far this place is from San Francisco? It feels like we’ve been traveling for a week!”

“I know, me too. But you’re there? You’re fine? What are you doing?”

“Yep, we’re fine. We’re actually at Machu Picchu right now.”

“Really?”

“Yep, and when the sun rose this morning it came through this hole in the wall of the Temple of the Sun and lined up with a groove in a huge rock. It’s like some adventure movie or something, it was
so
cool.”

“That’s amazing!”

“Oh, and thanks for arranging for Eduardo to meet us at the airport, we’d never have made it without him.”

“Wait, who?” I ask. “I thought you were with David—”

“Yeah, David flew down here with me and then Eduardo met us at the airport.”

I can’t think of anything to say. I have no idea who Eduardo is and wonder if Donald arranged for him to be there.

Justine says, “He said he was a friend of Chasca’s.”

“And you’re sure he’s legit?” I ask.

“Completely. He’s great, and he shares a room with David so there’s no weirdness about what to do with sleeping arrangements.”

“So Eduardo got you guys to Machu Picchu?”

“Yeah, by planes, trains, buses, and foot. Plus he arranged for us to come up here late yesterday and stay overnight here so we could watch the sunrise. I guess he’s a shaman or something. Whatever he is, he can definitely pull strings. Anyway, we all had to promise to be very quiet and very respectful, which is pretty easy because this place is incredible.”

“So it wasn’t creepy there at night?” I ask.

“No, it was beautiful. The moon lit the whole place up all night, and then that crazy sunrise thing happened.”

“I wish I were with you,” I say. “So do you think anyone else will show up?”

Justine pauses. “Well, I was going to wait until after the event to tell you …”

“It’s okay, seriously. You and David and Eduardo being there will still be a good start.”

“No, you don’t understand, there are like hundreds of kids here now and more coming.”

“What?” I say as I sit down on the corner of the bed.

“Caity, that email has gone all over the place,” Justine says. “Eduardo told us there was a huge underground movement of kids planning to hike up the last part of the Inca trail from a little town below Machu Picchu. They should be here in a couple of hours.”

“Oh my God.”

“Caity?” Justine says. “What’s wrong? Wasn’t this what you were supposed to do?”

“Yeah, I guess maybe I just didn’t expect it to really happen …”

Justine slaps me into reality. “Well, it’s happening, sister, so you better get yourself together! Lots of people are counting on you to say something worth hearing.”

I walk back over to my glass door and step out on the patio to look at the sun. The fact that we are looking at the same thing comforts me.

“Caity, are you there? I didn’t mean to—”

“No, you’re totally right. I’ve got to get a grip,” I say. “Hey, Justine, do any of those kids have cell phones?”

“Not too many, but it turns out that David is a genius,” she says. In the background I can hear David say, “This should
not
have been a surprise …”

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

“Well, when I told him what we were going to do he was totally into it, but then when I got to the part about the cell phones he laughed so hard he almost fell down.”

“What was so funny?” I ask, feeling stupid. I hear David saying. “Here, let me talk …”

“David wants to talk to you,” Justine says, quickly passing the phone over.

“Hey! Cracky Mac Cracken!”

This is something I could have gone without hearing for the rest of my life. “Hey,” I reply.

“Yo! Quite a little event you got going on. I’m shocked; I never pegged you as the worldwide-movement kind of girl.”

I roll my eyes. “Hey, David. Thanks for traveling with Justine,” I say, trying to be polite. “So what’s the deal with the cell phones?”

“Love the teleconference idea, great work on that. And the fact that it’s listen-only will really boost sound quality and keep the hecklers from bringing you down. But come on, kids with cell phones in Peru? What kind of low-grade crack are you smoking?”

“Oh,” I say quietly. “Well, to be honest with you I wasn’t expecting that many—”