Part 5

Ta-da!  I like the first half of part five…but what I’m writing right now is kinda boring.  So you might have to wait a while for it.  But, happily, I just finished the final part!  I love the ending.  It’s so hopeful and optimistic.  Well, for now, just read this, which happily explains some of THE Elta’s comment (yes I do read your emails).  It gets really important at the ending.  As in, like, the last six paragraphs.          

  The plan was simple: tomorrow morning we would go to the island to rescue Roxton.  We would start on the west side and travel east as the boat went around the side of the island to meet us.  The vote was almost unanimous.  Almost.

            “What!?” shouted Rourke, “I will not be steering the ship around the island and risk getting caught up in that storm!”

            “Please captain,” pleaded Clara, “We need to find Roxton!”

            “Why should I care about Colchester?  He’s only ever caused me trouble!”

            “What if you simply turned tail and left if you started seeing the storm?” asked Lillian, really desperately trying to compromise.

            “Humph,” muttered the captain, but it seemed as if we had come to a conclusion.

***

            Jessalia expected at least some recognition.  But out of the yellow Lutari that sat there in the dungeon, she received none.

            “Don’t you recognize me?” she asked him over and over again.  He always just shook his head and told her no.  She became certain at this point that he had lost his memory.  Yes.  That must be it.

            “Do you even remember Moltara?” she asked him.

            “Well, I discovered it, so I suspect that I would remember it.”

            “Then you must remember me,” she said, and began to pace back and forth.  The Lutari watched her, utterly confused, and it seemed to Jessalia that he would not recognize her ever.

***

            “One of the first things he told me when I decided to join him on his adventures was that everyone has their last adventure.  And this must be his.”

            “Oh, come on, this is Roxton A. Colchester III we’re talking about.  He’s gotten himself out of plenty of tough scrapes,” I told Clara.  Her eyes were bubbling over with tears as she paced back and forth across the bedroom floor.  “If he can’t escape, we’re gonna bust him out!”

            “I just have this feeling,” she said quietly, looking at the floor, “that this island is not all that it seems.”

            We turned as we heard a groan from the other side of the room.  “Go to sleep Clara.  May, you just stop talking, since I doubt that it’s helping at all. 

            I sighed, and lifted myself up onto my bunk, which creaked under my weight.  Clara thrust herself with a big leap onto hers, but as she did, I noticed a slight glimmer of light on her left hand.  Lying down, I realised exactly why we needed to save Roxton.  Though, I’ll say, at the time I was rather confused.

***

            That morning, I popped back into the girls’ room for my hat.  And that’s when I saw it: perched on the desk was a large book.  Curious, I peered over it.  It was opened to one specific page, and everything in it was written in odd symbol-like letters.

            I stared at it for a moment before I actually realized what I was looking at.  This was the real Atlas of the Ancients!  And it was right in front of me.

            I guess that finally seeing it for the first time really put some things in perspective for me.  The first was that though, for me, Moltara had been discovered a whole whopper fifteen years previously, which was two years before I was born, for Clara and Roxton it had only been three years.  It was hard to picture them coming out of that time warp and onto the streets of Moltara, only to have twelve years gone by.  I realized how scary and strange that must have been, and I couldn’t help but wonder how much had changed in their lives.

            I’m still not sure why, but when I stroked the edge of the page, I had a flashback.  But I was almost certain that I had never seen the Atlas before.

***

            It was a familiar scene to him; papers strewn about the kitchen table, some new, large random book opened to a page filled with runes.  And leaning over it, yet another familiar sight. 

            She looked up at him, but instead of the normal excitement she always had when a new adventure was about to begin, she seemed concerned.

            “It’s a new page in the Atlas,” she said, her voice shaking, “I was documenting our adventure when I came across it.”

            “Well, let’s see it then,” he said, and sat down next to her.  The page itself was like all the rest, but it was the translation that worried him.

            “I’ve seen this before!” he gasped, and read it over again, “It was on the wall of the temple on the Lost Isle.”

            “The Huntress,” Clara whispered, glancing up the stairs, “Who will she kill?”

***

            As we stepped off the boat again, I got an immediate feeling of adrenaline.  And thank Fyora for that, ‘cause right then and there, this humongous enormous Lady Blurg just popped out of the jungle.

            “Run!” shouted Jordie, and that we did.  We hurried right out of there; all of us.  Sadly, yes, all of us.  Because Gaviella was just as intent to run for her life as the rest of us were.  Of course, nobody noticed this until it was too late.

            “Gaviella!” Moht exclaimed as she followed us, “We need you to get the rowboat back to the ship!”

            “But-” she protested, and glanced over her shoulder at it as we continued running.

            Clara sighed, “It’s too late now,” she told us, “We need as much help as we can get right now.”

            Jordie shook his head, “But we need someone to go back to the ship with the rowboat.  Otherwise, we might get stranded.”

            “It is too late now,” insisted Clara, her eyes narrowing.  Jordie backed up a few inches; I’ll say that even though she was a good two inches shorter then him, she was quite intimidating.

            “Well, we might as well keep going,” I said, and grabbed the machete that Roxton had been kind enough to drop when he was captured.

            We hiked in silence for a while, but it was more interesting for me then it had been previously.  Hacking away with a machete is really quite exhilarating, but you have to be careful what you whack.  Like, cutting into a tree is absolutely pointless compared to going through the underbrush.

            That was when Gaviella screamed.  “What is that!?” she shouted, pointing to an object.  Her eyes were wide open with fear.

            “That,” said Moht, “is a leaf.”

            “I know that,” she said, glaring at him.  Actually, I was kind of surprised that she knew what a leaf was.

            Kerlie looked at it, and his eyes grew wide.  “Selerium Taniverens,” he said, his eyes the size of Fish Neggs, “Don’t touch them!  Their sap can be very toxic!”

            “So I’m guessing they make a bad salad,” I said with a slight laugh.  If Moht was drinking milk, I think that it would have spurted out of his nose.  Clara grinned, but I could still tell she was still worried.  Jordie and Gaviella smiled, but Kerlie looked at me dead serious.

            “Yes,” he said, staring me right in the eye, “don’t eat them.”

            “It was a joke!” I said, grinning.  Then everybody looked at me like I had just grown a third eye.

            “What?” I asked, and my grin fell away from my face.  I looked behind me, half expecting something to be there.  But I saw nothing.  “Guys, what is it?” I asked, now getting a little worried.

            “Oh my gosh,” exclaimed Jordie, “you look so much like-” but he was cut off by a loud screech from above.  A cloud Pteri dropped out of the sky and grabbed Jordie by the collar.  And yes, we’re talking the same cloud Pteri that kidnapped Roxton.

            “Ahh!” he shouted, “Help!”

            “Wait, what’s happening!” shouted Clara as the ground beneath us began to move.  It was almost like the earth had come to life and wanted lunch.  It seemed like it was filled with boiling water.  Then, it was still.

            “Whoa,” I muttered, “What just happened?”

            “It seemed like a seismic eruption,” both she and Kerlie said at the same time.  They grinned at each other, and dropped to the ground.

            “Uh,” I whispered to Moht, “What the heck are they doing?”

            “Beats me,” he said with a shrug.

            “Shh!” whispered Clara, “we’re trying to predict the next eruption.

            “That was no eruption,” said Gaviella, seeming a little far off.  Moht and I exchanged glanced.  Here we go again.

            “Well, then what was it?” Kerlie asked her, standing up.

            “The great one was angry,” she said, spacing out for a second, and then coming to with a shake of her head.

            “Great one?” wondered Clara.

            “A great power.”

            Clara stared at her, her jaw ajar.  “Oh no,” she wailed suddenly, “The Huntress!”

            Gaviella turned to her, seemingly confused.  “Why are you worried about the Huntress?  She is standing here with us.”

            I whirled around, but saw no one.  I looked at everyone in the clearing, but the only people there were Moht and Kerlie, both of which were boys, and Clara and Gaviella, both of which seemed unlikely to be hunting anything.  Then I realised why everyone was looking at me.

            “Stay away!” shouted Clara, throwing out her arms in front of everyone else.  I backed up a bit.

            “Huh what?” I asked, looking at all of them, so very confused.

            Clara was breathing heavily, eyeing me, scared.  I wondered why.  “What did I do?” I asked her.

            She took a deep breath, and looked straight at me.  “According to the prophecy,” she paused, taking another deep breath, “You’re supposed to kill someone.”

            I gulped.  “I wasn’t exactly expecting that,” I said quietly, “But are you sure that Gaviella’s right about this?”

            Gaviella sighed.  “She won’t kill any of you,” she said, confronting them, her back to me, “And, no Mrs. Chatham, since you’re wondering, she wont kill me either.”

            “But then…” Clara trailed off for a second, “Who will she kill?”

            And woosh!  The cloud Pteri was back.  And this time, he or she picked up Kerlie and Gaviella, Kerlie by the tail.  That looked really uncomfortable.

            “Help!” screamed Kerlie, all high pitched like he was gonna die or something.  “Do not worry,” stated Gaviella calmly as the Pteri soared high in the air.  I watched it, as it went directly towards a volcano.

            Clara groaned.  “So I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with a journalist and a murderer.  Great.”  She glanced at Moht and me, and continued hiking through the woods.