The Island
Authors: Teri Hall
THE ISLAND
––––––––
Teri Hall
THE ISLAND
Book THREE
of
The Line Trilogy
The Line
Away
The Island
Copyright © 2013 Teri Hall
All rights reserved.
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Thanks
T
his year has been, even in a series of rather difficult years, notable in its challenges. I’ve had to ask friends and family for help, which I gratefully received. This book would not exist without that help. I thank and appreciate you all.
But I want to thank one person in particular for the help I received this year. I want to thank
the person behind the white envelopes
.
I don’t know if you are a friend or a stranger. I have to admit I don’t really want to know, because I’m so far from out of the woods I cannot see a time where I can repay you. What I want to thank you for, besides the obvious, is that I never had to ask. You, in your kindness, just gave.
And that has worked two kinds of magic (or maybe I should say it has generated two kinds of hope, for doesn’t all magic begin with hope?). The first is a very practical magic, to be sure. At the very moments when despair enveloped me, a white envelope would appear. It was an unasked for, unexpected
magic
, which made food materialize and made heating bills disappear.
The second kind of magic these white envelopes have worked is not such a practical one. I can’t explain it very well. All I can really say that this second kind of magic has made me see different things in strangers’ faces—even in friends’ faces. It has made me see the need there, when I might have missed it before. It’s made me see the kindness. It’s made me hope to be like you are, whoever you are. To help if I can, without being asked. To notice, and to care, and however I am able, to
do something about it
.
N
ipper crouched behind a clump of unfamiliar grass, motionless but ready, every muscle taut. His undercoat was still damp from the sea and he was cold. More urgent than the cold was hunger; after fighting the waves for so long, he needed food.
He didn’t think about sliding along the bottom of the boat, frantically clawing for traction, or about losing his grip and being swept into the frigid water. He didn’t relive the moment, swimming, when he’d felt the last of his strength draining from his legs, or the moment just after that, when he felt sand firm beneath his feet. That was all over. Now was the moment he thought of—now, and the warm blood-scent of the strange creature he stalked on this unfamiliar beach.
He had not seen a creature like it before, but it looked like he could eat it, once he got past the gray-furred skin. It was soft and fat, and had no sharp ends, at least as far as he could detect. That usually meant the thing was food. It waddled across some flat stones set into the sand, stopping every few seconds to raise its crinkled nose to the sky and sniff, its eyes squeezed shut as though it didn’t use them for much anyway.
The stones were the thing that held Nipper back. He knew they weren’t natural; they were too consistent for that. They formed a path, a trail leading through the sand to somewhere. Nipper didn’t want to go on the path. The scent of strangers— a smell not unlike that of his Nandy, but not, not hers—hung heavy around it. His stomach spoke louder than his fear, though. He crouched even lower and waited for the moment when the creature stopped to sniff again. Then, gathering all the power he had left, he leapt.
R
achel couldn’t stop smiling. She watched Pathik’s chest rise and fall, slow and steady, and she smiled. The sun, so welcome after the black gale of the night before, was shining on his face, gilding his eyelashes and casting great long spikes of shadow along his gaunt cheeks. He was right there, next to her. And he
breathed
. And she smiled.
He was alive. They were
all
still alive.
They were all still asleep, too, except for her. She looked around the hastily made campsite, marveling at the fact that they’d made it to dry land. That they were here, on Salishan, the fabled haven to which Indigo, Pathik’s grandfather, had urged all of the Others to flee. She wished he could be here with them. She wished, more than anything, that she hadn’t been the cause of his death.
Pathik’s father, Malgam, lay next to Nandy, the woman who had helped him raise Pathik. Nandy’s head was nestled on Malgam’s shoulder and one of his arms wrapped around her waist, holding her close even in slumber. Rachel’s own father, a man she had thought was lost to her forever, held her mother, Vivian, cradled in his arms in a similar fashion. Seeing the two of them together still made Rachel feel as though she was dreaming; her whole life had been spent thinking Daniel was dead. Now, here he was, snoring.
She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to wake any of them. She didn’t want this moment in time to pass her by. In this moment, they were all safe. In the next, who knew what would happen. It had only been a matter of weeks since she’d left the relative safety of The Property and Crossed into Away, the forbidden territory where the Others had made a sort of life for themselves. But in those few weeks, her life had changed forever, in good ways and in bad. She yearned for a few days of peace. Boring would do just fine, right about now.
She looked back at Pathik, hoping to lose herself in the shadows of his lashes again for just a little while. Instead, there were his eyes, his startling blue eyes, an inheritance from his grandfather Indigo, staring back at her. His lips curled upward and she felt herself smiling yet again.
“You okay?” Pathik spoke softly.
Rachel nodded.
Pathik sat up slowly, testing his muscles and stretching. Rachel watched him take in the sight of his family—what was left of it—and hers, relief smoothing his face. Then he stood and surveyed the dry beach they had dragged themselves up onto. He assessed the meager supplies they had managed to drag up the beach, safe from the tide’s hungry grasp. Finally, his gaze lingered on Nandy, the only mother he had ever known.
“Nipper?” Pathik whispered the question.
Rachel shook her head. “No sign of him.” She’d been scanning the beach for the Woolly since she awoke, hoping to see him. The look on Nandy’s face the night before when the storm had ripped him out of the boat had been heartbreaking. Rachel had to admit she’d developed a soft spot for the strange creature herself. He was fierce, a mixture of feline muscle and woolly-furred
something
, with razor-sharp claws and, to put it politely, an independent nature. But he’d helped Rachel find her father when nobody else could. And he was Nandy’s special friend. Not a pet—there was no way anyone could call Nipper a pet—but he
was
a very special friend.
“Shall we go look for him, and get an idea of where we are?” Pathik still spoke quietly.
“We can’t leave them asleep and unguarded.”
Pathik grinned and nodded toward Malgam. Rachel looked and saw that his eyes were open. She wondered how long he’d been awake. She hoped he hadn’t been observing her while she watched Pathik sleeping.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Malgam said. “But don’t go far. And get back here soon.” Even after being half-drowned, Malgam still managed to sound prickly.
Pathik walked over to where Malgam lay and knelt, silently touching his shoulder. Then he rose and went to Rachel’s side.
“Let’s go.”
After one long look at her parents, who were still sleeping, Rachel followed. The two of them headed inland, toward a stand of wind-twisted evergreen trees on a bluff above the beach they had staggered onto, bedraggled and wet, the night before.
“Do you think Nipper made it ashore?” Rachel thought of the waves, taller than their boat, powerful enough to kill all of them easily. She could still feel them reaching for her, eager to snatch her up whole and devour her.
Pathik said nothing for a moment. Then he shrugged. “
We
made it to shore. Maybe he did, too.”
The morning sun was gaining strength and Rachel felt her shoulder muscles relax as its warmth caressed them. When they reached the bluff, Pathik stopped and cast his head back and forth in that odd way he had, trying to sense anything emanating from within the stand of trees. Rachel couldn’t help grinning. When he used his gift he looked like a dog, sniffing the air for a scent. Pathik was searching for feelings, as his gift allowed him to, feelings that would alert him to the presence of any strangers and what their state of mind might be. He described it as feeling for different colors, each associated with different emotions.
“Anything?” Rachel didn’t tease him like she usually did.
Pathik shook his head. “I don’t get a thing.” He narrowed his eyes at the copse, as though he might see something there that his other senses didn’t reveal.
Rachel didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved that Pathik didn’t sense anyone in the trees. She was thankful they’d made it to Salishan, but there was something foreboding about the island, despite the sun shining bright in the sky. She couldn’t name what it was that made her feel this way, but it was strong.
Indigo had been certain that there were people here, even though the island had been evacuated decades ago because it was too expensive to include it in the Border Defense System. Rachel wondered what effect Korusal’s bombs, dropped all those years ago, had on Salishan. Were there animals here like there were Away? Savage baerns, capable of ripping a person apart? If there were people, did they have strange gifts like the Others, who had barely survived when Away was hit?
They moved slowly into the copse, eyeing the distorted branches, twisted by the sea winds until they resembled outstretched arms clutching for whatever came into range. Pathik took the lead, and this time Rachel let him without protest. They made their way across ground cushioned by years of dead needles, through which no undergrowth could grow. It was a change from the forests Away, where the undergrowth made travel more difficult. This was almost like walking through a park, somewhere on the Unified State’s side of the Line.
There were no signs of people—not at first. There was just the oddly silent copse, deeply carpeted with needles from the twisted trees. They moved slowly, cautiously, uncertain of what might be just ahead, just out of sight. When Pathik stopped, Rachel, who had been checking behind them, ran right into him.
“Your trekking skills still need some work.” Pathik grinned.
“I can’t help it if you decide to stop for no reason, with no warning.” Rachel didn’t feel as irritated as she sometimes did with Pathik; the fact that she could have lost him last night in the sea was still with her. She didn’t know if she could ever forget his cold, lifeless body on the beach, how frantic she’d felt when she realized he wasn’t breathing.
They kept walking, stopping now and then to let Pathik sniff, listening carefully for any sounds that might betray someone’s—or some
thing’s
—approach. Rachel couldn’t see anything but the twisted trees ahead. When she looked behind them again, she couldn’t see the beach anymore. They’d gone further than they planned. She was just about to say something to Pathik when he stopped, held his hand up without looking back at her.
She stopped too, and waited, silent. But when he said nothing, she walked up to his side. He was looking ahead, down at the ground.
“What—” Rachel stopped talking when she saw what Pathik was staring at.
It was definitely blood. Blood on a path—a
manmade
path—of flat stones. The needles had been cleared here and the stones were set into the sand.
Rachel and Pathik stood studying the stain. It was fresh, but it had begun to dry in the morning sun, leaving a burnt brown glaze on the flat stones that formed the path.
“Seems like a lot,” said Pathik.
Rachel nodded. Then she noticed something along the edge of the blood stain—something that made her feel sick. “Look, Pathik.”
It was a smudged foot print—a
paw
print. Rachel hoped she was wrong, but Pathik’s whisper confirmed her fears.
“Nipper.” Woolly prints were unique enough that Pathik had no doubts.
Rachel heard the pain in his voice and knew he was thinking of Nandy. When they agreed to seek refuge on Salishan, the hardest part for Nandy had been leaving Nipper behind. She’d raised the Woolly from a cub and grown to love him, but she knew the journey would be dangerous. Nipper had other ideas, though. He’d made his own decision on the day they left Away, by hopping into the boat they would use to get to the island and refusing to get out.