The Guardians of Island X

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Glossary

Acknowledgments

About the Author

The Hunt for the Panther #3

Scarlet McCray was beginning to regret going barefoot. At the time, it had seemed like a jolly idea. After all, her feet hadn’t even known a stocking for the first five years of her life. So why, she’d reasoned, confine her toes to some rat-eaten boots now that she was back in the place of her birth?

Except that now as she crept through the jungle, twigs snapping under her heels and burrs burrowing between her toes, she suspected she’d been too hasty in handing them off to that monkey who’d eyed them hopefully.

Maybe it was the funny kink in his long black tail. Or the way his fur stood up on one side of his head, like he’d just rolled out of bed. Whatever it was, Scarlet had been charmed into trusting him.

“But look, Monkey,” she’d said as she tugged the boots off her feet, “you’ve got to take good care of these. I’ll need them next time we set off on the
Hop
for a supply run.”

The monkey had responded by snatching up the boots, pinching his nose, and scampering off, leaving Scarlet to wonder if she’d ever actually see them again.

She pushed aside a massive fern and climbed over a rock nearly as big as herself. Then she stopped to concentrate. At first she felt nothing, but after a few moments…yes, there it was. A faint tremor. And if she
stood perfectly still and squeezed her eyes shut, she could feel something else. Uncertainty. Panic. Somewhere on the island, there were animals in distress. And it was up to her to find them.

Unfortunately, in a place like Island X, so full of surprises, this was no easy job.

It had only been a month since Scarlet and her crew had first set foot on the X-shaped island, but in that time she’d made more amazing discoveries than she had in her entire life. To start, she’d realized that Island X was, in fact, her birthplace. Scarlet was part Islander—one of the only remaining members of a culture killed off when people from the Old World came to the islands, bringing diseases and despair. Perhaps even the
only
remaining member.

And if that weren’t overwhelming enough, she’d also discovered that somehow she was able to channel the island’s animals and feel what they were feeling. If a flock of parrots rejoiced in the fruit of a nearby tree, her heart felt light and joyful. If the chief of the local band of smelly wild pigs had slept badly the night before, she felt that, too. It was a huge honor, an amazing ability. Not to mention totally perplexing.

The problem was, she could never tell when an animal in distress needed her help. Just an hour ago, for example, she’d followed a panicky feeling to its source, only to find the monkey with the kink in his tail having a temper tantrum because his brother had stolen his breakfast of termites. (He quickly got over it when she agreed to lend him her boots.)

Then, as soon as he’d left, she’d channeled another upset feeling. This one, she was fairly certain, came from the aras, her very favorite kind of bird. And while it was possible the aras were simply being harassed by hummingbirds, it was also possible that they were trying to warn her of something far more important. Like, for instance, a troop of treasure-hungry pirates. So she had no choice but to search for them—which was what she was doing now.

“If only I knew where I was,” Scarlet grumbled, looking around the jungle with her fists on her hips. She concentrated hard. It was like a game of Hot and Cold, which the Lost Souls sometimes played on board the
Margaret’s Hop
. Someone would hide a “treasure”—usually a lime or a piece of hardtack—while someone else would get blindfolded. Then the crew would yell “Hotttt!” or “Cooold!” as the blind one wandered toward or away from the treasure. In Scarlet’s case, though, the feeling of distress grew stronger the closer she came to the anxious animal.

It felt strongest over to her left, but as she took a step in that direction, her foot sank right into a patch of amber-colored mud. “Blasted boots,” she growled as the mud oozed between her toes. “And blasted monkey.”

Trying to ignore her mucky foot, she inched toward some soft, leafy shrubs. “Maybe if I just cut through here…” Scarlet slipped between the shrubs, pushed through a wall of ferns, and found herself standing underneath the trees that held the aras’ nests. Exactly where she wanted to be.

“But how…?” She looked up into the tree branches and sighed. Her new talent was just one of many things about this island that she didn’t understand. Its geography was another. Not for the first time, she wished her crew’s only map hadn’t been stolen by the treasure-hungry pirates. But then, she reminded herself for what must have been the millionth time since they’d landed on the island, what kind of Islander needs a map?

“An Islander who was forced to forget all about her island, that’s who,” she muttered.

When Scarlet was five years old, the Island Fever had struck her village, and her Islander mother had fallen ill. She’d begged her husband, a former admiral for the King’s Men, to take Scarlet off the island and keep her healthy. Scarlet never saw her mother again.

Her father, John McCray, had returned to the King’s Men, leaving Scarlet with a governess named Mary Lewis (aka Scary Mary), who’d made every attempt to erase Scarlet’s memories of her old life. She’d even forced her to do awful things like curl her hair and wear petticoats and learn English.

Not that the English lessons themselves were awful. It was being forced to forget her language that truly scuttled. Now, with no other Islanders around, Scarlet doubted it would ever come back to her.

She studied the tree branches above her until she spotted a sparkle of red. Then she concentrated hard. The aras’ distress was gone.

“Figures.”

Scarlet grasped a low branch and swung herself up
into the nearest tree. She could climb it blindfolded by now. High above the ground, she settled into her usual spot on a sturdy branch and looked around. To her left she could see the clearing where the Lost Souls were camped. To her right stood another tree and another beyond it. And in those trees sat dozens of birds’ nests—a rookery, the Old Worlders called it. And in those birds’ nests sat dozens of sleepy scarlet-red birds with bands of green and blue on their wings. The aras. They didn’t look a bit distressed.

“Well?” she said. “What was all that fuss about? Hummingbirds? Rotten fruit? Come on, I came all this way for
nothing
?”

A few aras eyed her drowsily, fluffed up their feathers, and went back to sleep.

“Honestly.” Another problem, as she’d recently discovered, was that while she could understand what the animals were feeling, she had no way to communicate with them. No matter how much time Scarlet spent with them, the aras never seemed to understand a word she said.

A beam of sunlight sneaked through the tree canopy, illuminating specks of red in each nest, and despite her annoyance Scarlet couldn’t help but smile. All these years, the King’s Men and the pirates had been scouring the islands for treasure, as well as wood and spices, but they’d rarely come across a single jewel. Perhaps because the aras hid them so well. The birds simply scraped the ground with their beaks, nabbed the rubies here and there, and tucked them into the walls of their nests for safekeeping.