Cass nodded. He was too smart to protest the plan. He knew the stakes.
And so did I.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s roll, guys.”
As I stepped forward, I spotted a fluttering of wings from the cloudy sky, a streak of red. At the bloodthirsty caaaw of an Atlantean griffin, we had only one choice—duck for cover. The half eagle, half lion hurtled downward, spreading its haunches and flexing its eagle’s wings.
You’d think we’d be used to this. We fought one in Greece. We flew on the back of another through the underworld. But even a thousand encounters wouldn’t make this monster less frightening. Its body was thick and furred, its talons like swords. Sizing us up with yellow, red-rimmed eyes, it snapped open its beak, revealing a rigid forked tongue that could skewer me like souvlaki.
“AAAAAAAHHH!” screamed Cass. Or maybe it was me.
My arms sheltering my head, I counted to five and realized that if I were actually able to count to five, the griffin must have been skewering someone else.
I peeked out. I could see the griffin’s tail disappearing into the branches of the trees high above us. The bird’s shadow merged with the vromaski’s. As the two beasts growled and spat, branches snapped and thick leaves rained around us.
“Run away!” Marco shouted. “That tree is coming down!”
We sprinted back toward the beach, but the tree didn’t fall. Instead, the vromaski’s fearsome growls thinned to a whimper, and then silence.
I heard an odd noise that could very well have been a griffin burp.
Marco let out a hoot of triumph. “Supper for Tweety. Free-range vromaski on a bed of tangy jungle leaves.”
Torquin stood, wiping his forehead in relief. “Hope he leaves tip.”
“Wait—you guys are joking? You think this is funny?” Cass looked at them both in disbelief. “We could have gotten killed. We will be killed. We haven’t even stepped into the jungle yet! These monsters are crazed, hungry, and . . . kcisemit.”
“I stink at Backwardish,” Marco said.
“Timesick?” I offered.
“Exactly,” Cass said. “Like carsick or seasick—which happens when you travel in three dimensions. Imagine what it feels like to travel through time.”
Marco scratched his head. “Wait. Is that a real thing—timesick?”
“I don’t know!” Cass said. “The point is, we can’t jump into this. We have to do something radically different from what we usually do.”
“Which is—?” Marco said.
“Think,” Cass replied. “In plain Frontwardish. Not just rush, rush, rush, then fight, fight, fight. Maybe that works for you, Marco, but think about it. This place has gone nuts. We’re dead if we stay; we’re dead if we go.”
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
“I don’t know that either!” Cass began pacing, running his hand through his tightly coiled hair. “I’m trying to channel Professor Bhegad. He always always told us to think against the grain, not just react to every little thing. So let’s take a few minutes. Recalculate.”
He was interrupted by distant high-pitched screams, back toward the beach. I squinted, but all I could see was a growing crowd of Massa at the edge of the fish-strewn plain. “Was that Eloise?” I asked.
Cass cringed. “She must have seen us. I’ll bet she thinks this is so unfair. In two seconds she’ll be running toward us, with Massa goons behind her. Just what we need.”
My eyes narrowed. Someone was running toward us, but it wasn’t Eloise. It was one of the Massa, wiry, thin, and athletic, with a hood pulled over his face.
As I tensed to run, the hood fell away. First, it wasn’t a he. Second, it was a Karai in disguise, someone we knew very well. “Nirvana?” I said.
The Karai rebel pulled the hood back over her head. Her eyes, no longer rimmed with thick black mascara the way I remembered them at the KI, were softer. Urgent. She grabbed both Cass and me by the hand. “Listen closely. I’ve been gathering Massa weapons while they’re distracted. The rebels are in the jungle and we’ll help you. We know about your mom, Jack. We know exactly who she is, and she’ll be working with us as much as she can. She has the backpack with the Loculi of Flight and Invisibility—and also the sack that contains the shards of the Loculus of Healing. Fritz tracked her down as she came through the jungle.”
“The Massa haven’t found out?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“No, and they won’t, as long as I’m alive.” Nirvana smiled. “All of it is in hiding. We’ll figure a way to get them to you. Now go—go save Aly. Get her out of the rift. Get the Loculus of Strength back. We’ll look after Eloise and the other Massa trainees. We have our ways. Whenever you need us, we’ll be waiting. This will be our signal.”
She inserted two fingers into her mouth and whistled an earsplitting version of the first few bars of “Happy Birthday.”
“Oh, cifirret,” Cass said. “The one tune none of wants to hear.”
Nirvana cringed. “Sorry.”
Then, with a nod, she headed for the trees. But she stopped in her tracks when the carcass of the half-eaten vromaski tumbled from the branches.
It hit the ground with a dull thump, sending a spurt of cold green vromaski blood onto my ankle. Both of its eyes were missing, its body was in shreds, and a torn piece of flesh clung to my ankle. As I jumped back in horror, I heard a loud craaaaack echoing from the beach like a cannon shot.
I spun around. The rotted mast of the Enigma was splitting up the middle. Either half alone could crush a person. And there was exactly one person standing near enough for that to happen.
Eloise.
“What is she doing?” Cass said, running toward the beach. “GET BACK!”
For some reason, Eloise wasn’t moving. And even though the Massa were clumping around to watch, no one was pulling her out of danger’s way.
As I raced after Cass, I saw Mom out of the corner of my eye. She cupped her hand over her mouth and shouted one word.
“Quicksand!”
CHAPTER THREE
COWBOY CASS
THE WOOD GROANED. Splinters spat into the air like sparks. The two halves of the mast split apart into a V shape, connected only by thin shards of wood that were snapping one by one.
With each step, my feet sank deeper into the mud. Far ahead of me, in the area just before the ship, four Massa soldiers were stuck in a huge patch of quicksand uncovered by the receding sea. They twisted as if doing some creepy tropical dance. The other soldiers had clumped behind them, too wary to move forward.
With another sickening craaack, the broken mast split apart, toppling downward—directly toward Eloise.
As I screamed her name, a blur of brown passed me to the right. I knew it was Marco. No one else could possibly move like that. What happened next was so quick I could only piece it together a few moments later.
He stopped just before reaching the crowd of soldiers. Heaving his arm back, he hurled something toward the ship, hard. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, maybe some kind of log. But when it finally hit the mast, I knew.
It was the remains of the vromaski, a hulking projectile of bone and gristle. On impact it sent off a spray of green blood, its head separating clean off and spinning into the muck. The weight of the animal seemed to knock the mast off its course—but not by much.
I flinched. My eyes darted away, and I heard the mast hit the ground with a soft, sickening whump. And Cass’s voice, yelling for his sister.
The Massa were rushing toward the scene now. I forced myself to look, but their bodies blocked my view. I glimpsed Marco in the crowd and headed for him as fast as I could. Elbowing my way through the clutch of people, I saw part of the mast embedded in the mud but no signs of Eloise. Was she underneath? Weren’t they going to lift it?
I fought my way past a phalanx of robed monks until I was finally standing next to Marco. He—and several other Massa—had stopped short. “Stay right there, Brother Jack!” Marco urged. “Don’t move.”
; About twenty feet away, inches from the sinking mast, Eloise was standing thigh-deep in quicksand. Alive.
She was peeling a piece of dead vromaski from her cheek. “EWWW,” she cried out. “What is this green glob? And why are you all just staring at me?”
Now I could see Cass, carefully high-stepping through the muck toward his sister. “Eloise, you have to try to reach toward me—”
“You did this on purpose, Casper!” she shouted. “You waited till my feet were stuck and then pelted me with this . . . disgusting thing.”
“Cassius,” he said, trying to reach across the expanse of quicksand.
“What?” she snapped.
“My name is Cassius, not Casper,” he replied. “Now come on—reach out to me!”
She threw the hunk of flesh at him, but he ducked. Marco lunged forward, pulling Cass back by the shoulder. “Easy, Brother Cass. Or we’re going to have two dead Williams in the quicksand.”
“Williamses,” Cass said.
“This is quicksand?” Eloise shrieked, jerking her body left and right.
She wasn’t the only one. At least five Massa were stuck, too, squirming helplessly. “Don’t fight it!” someone yelled.
“Lie down!” someone else yelled.
“Don’t lie down!”
“Grab the mast!”
Everyone was shouting at once. Eloise froze. Tears began streaming down her face.
“We need a branch—something long!” Marco said. “Now!”
Everyone around us began scouring the beach. I could feel my feet sinking immediately, and I instinctively backed away. My heel clipped the top of a large rock, and I fell.
I landed butt first in the mud, and I could see a black, pointed object jutting upward. I hadn’t tripped on a rock at all.
It was an anchor.
Where there was an anchor, there was a rope. I dug hard with my hands until I found the anchor’s ring. There. A thick, barnacle-encrusted rope was tied to it securely. “Marco!” I shouted.
He was instantly at my side. “Sweet,” he said, yanking the rope from my hand. The thing was stiff from the centuries of mud and seawater. But Marco was Marco, and he managed to pry it loose, holding the end upward. “What now?”
I was about to tell him to throw it to her, but I vaguely remembered something that Cass had once told me about his childhood. “Cass, can you throw a lasso?”
He looked at me funny. “Third place for ten-year-olds in the Laramie junior rodeo. How did you—?”
“Marco, give him the rope!” I said.
Marco quickly massaged the stiffness out of the rope and tossed it to Cass. His face all grim and focused, Cass began fashioning the end of the rope into a fancy loop. I glanced out toward Eloise. She had sunk at least a foot more, nearly up to her shoulders. “Stay still, Eloise!” I cried out.
“No-o-o-o!” she screamed.
She was squirming, jerking her body left and right. Panicking.
“Eloise, listen to me—quicksand behaves like a liquid!” I shouted. “If you stay still, you’ll rise to the top and float.”
Eloise cocked her head and looked at me curiously.
“You’re doing it!” Marco called out. “Nice!”
“Do you feel the difference?” I asked.
Eloise’s panicked expression dissolved. “Um . . . yeah!”
She wasn’t going anywhere, but at least she wasn’t sinking. Beside me, I could see Cass beginning to twirl the rope awkwardly over his head. I took a deep breath.
Marco looked doubtful. “You sure you don’t want me to try?”
“Git along, little dogie—yee-hah!” Cass cried out.
My jaw dropped. Unathletic, geeky Cass reared back and tossed a perfect loop that dropped neatly over Eloise’s head. He immediately pulled back and it cinched around her chest, just below the shoulders.
“What did you call me?” Eloise said.
“Just go with this, Eloise!” I called out. “Go limp!”
She did, and Cass began to pull. Slowly she leaned backward. Her torso emerged from the sand . . . her knees . . . A moment later she was flat on her back, floating toward us at the end of the rope.
“Way to go, Cowboy Cass!” Marco shouted.
I wasn’t aware that my mom had approached me from farther up the beach, so her voice made me jump. “How did you know that Cass could do that?” she asked.
She was looking toward Eloise, not at me. For years Mom had kept her real identity secret from the Massa and she couldn’t risk any suspicion. I did the same.
“When I was nine,” I said softly, “a few years after you died . . . or after we thought you did . . . a family from Wyoming moved to Belleville. The kids were sad we didn’t have rodeo, because they’d all competed in it. I always thought it would have been cool to grow up in Wyoming. Anyway, back at the KI when I first met Cass, over lunch one day he listed all the places he’d lived in all those foster homes.”
Mom smiled. “And you remembered one of them was in Wyoming,” she guessed.
“Yup, it was his longest stay. Two and a half years.”
“So you figured he might know how to handle a rope, like those other kids.”
I nodded.
“And the quicksand info?” she asked.
“I read it in a Superman comic,” I explained.
“Good, Jack,” she said. “Very good.”
Her voice was warm and admiring. I had to turn away from her, or I’d start to cry. Or hug her. Or both. And then we’d be in deep Massa doo-doo. Okay, yeah, I’m thirteen, but imagine finding out your mom is alive after six years of thinking she’s not. It does things to you.
“Thanks,” I said.
Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “I have to go. Don’t follow.”
She began crossing behind me, as if just passing me randomly on the beach. In my peripheral vision, I could see Brother Dimitrios and some of his henchpeople heading for her. Dimitrios was gesturing toward a line of injured Massa lying in the sand. Mom took him by the shoulder, pointing him away from me.
Had he noticed me? I couldn’t tell.
It took every ounce of my strength not to run after Mom. But she had told me not to follow, and the last thing I needed was Brother Dimitrios’s attention right now.
From the opposite direction, a very soggy Eloise was storming angrily toward me. Just beyond her, Marco was doubled over with laughter. Cass was wiping a huge glob of mud from his face. The lasso lay on the ground next to him.
“Welcome back, Eloise!” I said. “Are you okay?”
“At least you were nice to me, Jack,” she snapped, jerking a thumb back toward her brother. “He called me a doggie.”
CHAPTER FOUR
TINKERS AND TRAILERS
“DOGIE, NOT DOGGY!” Cass cried out to his sister. “Dogie means calf.”
“Oh, so I look like a cow?” Eloise stormed away, toward the Massa.
This was our chance. We could take her with us. I tried to pull her back, but she shook me off angrily.
“Eloise, we have to get out of here,” I protested. “You don’t want to go in that direction. You betrayed the Massa. They are not going to be nice to you.”
“Pfff,” Eloise said. “You saw them. They tried to save my life.”
“But I did save your life,” Cass pointed out.
“But I hate you!” she protested.
“Eloise, please.” I looked out toward the ship, where the Massa were all frantically trying to pull each other out of the quicksand with the rope. “This place is chaos. They’re distracted by the earthquake and the quicksand. Give them a few minutes, and they’ll be on us. They’re the enemy. So let’s go before it’s—”
“Um . . . too late?” Eloise murmured, her eyes flickering farther up the beach.
Mom and Brother Dimitrios were heading toward us across the wet sand, with two guards in tow. Mom was tucking a clipboard under her arm. Dimitrios looked stern and tight-lipped. “Well, that was an admirable deed of
derring-do,” he said, then turned to the guards. “Seize them!”
One of the guards grabbed Eloise, but she bit him on the wrist. As the other guard jumped in to help, Mom raced toward me. Her eyes were frantic as she grabbed my arm.
I didn’t know what to do. She drew me close. I could feel her shoving something into my pocket. Then she rasped the word go into my ear and fell back as if I’d hit her. I fought the instinct to help her up, but she was staring at me with a fierce look that was unmistakable. Leave fast.
She had done that on purpose. To make it look like I’d pushed her. She didn’t want the Massa to suspect that I’d escaped her clutches without a fight.
As I pushed Marco and Cass toward the jungle, Brother Dimitrios and the guards dragged a screaming Eloise away.
We ducked behind a bush near the tree line. As we peered over, I caught my breath.
“Now what?” Cass said.
“Why’d you make us run?” Marco said. “We had the chance to extract Eloise.”
“Because Mom wanted it that way.” I scanned the beach—or what used to be a beach. Mom was being helped to her feet by a couple of guards. Behind one of their backs, she was shooting us a thumbs-up gesture. “Now she’s giving us an okay signal. We have to trust her. She’s no Dimitrios. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Are you sure you’re not just saying that because she’s your mom?” Cass said.
I shook my head. “Here’s what I know, Cass. One, she’s the smartest person on this island. Two, she probably just saved our butts. And three, she’ll take care of Eloise. I don’t know her exact plan, but we have no choice. Unless we want to be captured.”
Cass gave me a barely noticeable nod and stared glumly through the branches. Eloise was surrounded by Massa now, and Mom was fake limping toward her with a towel to wipe her face. Farther to the right, a team of Massa had fallen into line, one behind the other, holding on to the rope like a bunch of overgrown preschool kids. They looked like they were testing the mud for quicksand. Trying to find a safe path toward the Enigma. An exploratory mission, maybe. Behind them, Brother Dimitrios was barking orders in an agitated voice. He had a cell phone or walkie-talkie to his ear.