Mystic Island

☼☼7☼☼

Raine

I woke to the taste of salt in my mouth and a stinging in my eyes. I also woke to a pair of the bluest green eyes in the entire world staring terror-struck into mine. I groaned, and pushed Rose back. “Ugggh,
Rose, move.”
The water demigod sprang backward with relief and excitement. “You’re alive, you’re alive!”
Brooke looked over to where Rose was spazzing, and she grinned with the light of the sun. “Raine, you’re alive!”
I tried to sit up, but as I did, I felt a wrenching pain all over my body. “Yeah, sort of.”
“We didn’t think you were going to make it!” Kayla cried. Andrea made a little smile, but she looked exhausted. She had a long, slender slab of wood and was churning the waters below us. An oar. “Where…where are we?”
“Well, in the closest of locations, we are on a raft made of the sandbar that broke off thanks to the lightning,” Rose said.
“But if you’re looking for exact locations,” Kayla sighed, “we have no idea.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Sandbars can’t float.”
“I’m doing that,” Rose said proudly. “I’m forcing the waters to let us float and Andrea and Brooke are rowing.”
“If you’re making us float, then why not make us move too?”
“Because I’m already tired from making this lousy piece of sand not sink.”
I put a scorched hand to my ringing head. “Wow, how long was I out?”
“Oh,” Brooke said, “I’d say a day.”
“Whoa. A day?!”
“You were hit the worst,” Kayla explained while twirling a finger in the seawater. “Andrea thought you were dead.”
Andrea shrugged. “Looked dead to me.”
I sort of listened to them, but my mind was swimming with my latest dream. Young Artemis had claimed the moon even then, but so had someone else. Did any of that have to do with our quest?
“Raine? Raine, you’re not listening.” Kayla frowned.
“Sorry,” I said. “Sorry, but I’m just thinking about some dream I had last night.”
“Dream?” Kayla echoed. “Tell me about it.”
“No,” I whispered. I glanced around, and the others were staring at me. “Not here, anyway. Not now. My head feels like I’m still being zapped.”
Andrea glared at me at the memory of the storm that had nearly cost all of us our lives. Then I realized something. “My dad listened.”
“Yes,” Brooke said. “You did well. Zeus saved our lives.”
“Why?” I asked. “I thought he didn’t care for me.”
“You’re his daughter,” Rose said. “Of course he cares. Or at least, he cares that we are important, powerful weapons for Olympus.”
My stare hardened at those words. “So anyway, we’re alive. And we’re paddling in the middle of the Pacific miles from anywhere. What now?”
No one said a word. Even Brooke, daughter of the strategy goddess, looked truly puzzled. I tried once again to sit up, wincing and holding back a wail of agony, and succeeded in the sense that I was up. Broken, but up. Andrea continued to paddle listlessly in the water, not going truly anywhere, but trapped in the seemingly never-ending void that was the sea.
At noon, when the world was the brightest and the sun was the highest, instead of a brilliant array of sunlight in my face, warming me the way summer always did, a long shadow was thrown upon our make-shift. I had my eyes closed, so I opened them with shock.
Before us was a massive voyager the color of oak churning the sea spray into our faces. Rose was about the only one who enjoyed that. The ship was colossal, big as the sea serpent, and I found myself marveling at it. After all, the only ships like that were found three hundred years ago and were discontinued when we made airplanes and metal ships. This was the old-fashioned wooden vessel, and as it passed us, in shimmering letters I read, S.S. Dapple.
The Dapple’s hull portrayed a small, human-shape silhouette that dropped down the sleek wood towards us. And then there was a girl with flushed skin and dark blonde hair aboard our raft in a t-shirt that an image of wizard on it and shorts. Her face was dirty and was the same color as her brown eyes.
“Do you need help?” the dark blonde asked us.
“Excuse me?” Andrea asked.
She motioned towards the Dapple. She looked a bit familiar, in the tiniest sense, like someone I had seen once or twice at a store or something. “You’re floating on sand. Do you need a ride?”
“Look, I don’t think you’d be able to…” I began.
The dirty blonde looked me over. “Demigods,” she said. “Yeah, I know all about you. On a quest. You probably just lost a fight with a monster.”
“No, thank you, we won,” Kayla muttered. “We just got struck by lightning.”
The girl didn’t hear her, and Rose cocked her head. “How do you know about us?”
“Because I’m a demigod too,” the girl responded, eyes sparkling a bit with pride. “My name is Lea Gonzalez, daughter of Iris.”
That was why she’d looked familiar. I’d met Iris once before, the time she and three other minor gods had tried to kill us, but Chiron had assured us that Iris had turned good.
We introduced ourselves, and Lea, pronounced Lay-a, tilted her head to the right. “So…what got you here to the middle of the ocean?”
I exchanged glances with Rose. Lea was a child of Iris, who was recently serving Hades. I didn’t know whether it was right to trust her. And in the case that she did know about the upcoming war, she might have been sent to the Pacific to kill us. Who knew what was aboard the Dapple? Monsters? Gods? Hades himself, perhaps?
I had decided to trust her. “A quest to rescue one of our friends. She’s one of Artemis’ hunters.”
“Oh,” Lea said. “You’re on the Olympians’ side then.”
I hoped that my fears weren’t right. “Yes…” I said carefully. “Why, aren’t you? After all, your mother is against Hades.”
“My mother?” Lea repeated. She took a step towards me, rocking the sand raft a little. She glared at me less than an inch from my face. “Don’t even mention Iris.”
“But you did!” I protested, quite taken aback.
“That is always how I introduce myself to fellow heroes,” Lea said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, I don’t care for my mother. The only time I ever met her was, well, when I was born. I do not need her.”
“You and me both,” I said.
“That is why I have my shipmates,” she continued.
“Wait, what?” Rose asked.
“There are others aboard your ship?” Brooke asked her.
Lea pushed back her darkened gold hair from her eyes. “Yes, of course. Did you think, maybe, I was there all by myself?”
“Demigods?” Kayla asked, eyes a little lit with anticipation.
“Yes. Otherwise our business would not work,” said Lea. “Mortals could never pull this off.”
We stared at her with puzzled expressions. “What business would that be?” I asked.
Lea pretended not to hear. She pointed one tan finger to the glossy wood hull. “So…are you coming or not? Conor can’t keep the ship sitting here forever!”
“Why not?” asked the ever-curious Kayla. Once again, the child of Iris was hard-in-hearing.
“Alright,” Brooke said. “We will join you on your ship.”
I tilted my head back as far as it would go to gawk at the immense vessel. “Well…how do we get up to the top deck?”
The brown-eyed Lea shrugged. “I don’t know.” She looked at Brooke. “Ask Athena’s kid. She’s smart, right?”
Brooke asked, “Well how did you get down?”
“Slid down a rope.”
“Where’s the rope?” I ventured.
“It fell into the water when I landed on your raft,” Lea said. “I didn’t need it anymore.”
I stared at her incredulously. “How were you planning on getting back up?!”
Lea’s eyes grew thoughtful. “Oh…I never really thought of that…”
“Wow,” I said, amused. “Not so good at preplanning, are you, Lea?”
The child of Iris hissed, “I would have just called for Caden, my messenger and fleet-footed one. He always carries me out of difficult situations.”
“Well, call him now!” Andrea suggested.
“Nah,” Rose said. “There are easier solutions.” She snapped her fingers, and her blue eyes glittered. A funnel of water rose from the water and took us along the side of the voyager. Soon the water crashed above the ropes of the bow, and we were standing in the middle of the sun-bleached deck.
A boy with messy brown hair and green eyes pointed to me. He looked about, oh, nine tops. “Who’re they, Lea?”
“Other demigods, bro,” Lea said kindly to the younger boy. “Guests.” She leaned down into his ear, and I thought I was the only one who heard her. “For now.” The boy grinned and continued to polish his short sword.
The apparent leader of the Dapple called the spread out demigods together. There were about ten kids other than Lea and the boy, and they all were whispering, staring at us wide-eyed.
“This is Raine, leader of these demigods,” Lea announced to my shock. “These heroes will be staying aboard our ship until we can figure out where their prophecy calls them to.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Slow down. I’m not their leader. Been there, done that. Almost got killed in the process.”
“You are the daughter of Zeus,” Lea explained. “Zeus is the King of the Gods. Leader of all gods, therefore you are Queen of the Demigods. You know your name means queen.”
“Sure, whatever,” I muttered. “I’m not the leader.”
A girl with brown hair, blue eyes swung down from the mast she’d been scaling and faced Rose. “Piper, daughter of Thetis. Minor goddess of the sea. Queen of shape-shifting.”
“Cool!” she said. “Another water demigod!” She walked away with Piper, messing with the waves. The boy called Conor with silver eyes like Brooke introduced himself to her. “Hi, I’m Conor, son of Athena. I’m, like, the ship’s navigator.”
“A child of Athena?” Brooke echoed. “That would make you my half-brother!”
I began to tune out the other demigods at some point in time. I replayed every part of my dream over and over again, trying to block out the dark skies of lightning that I had created. I desperately tried not to visualize the bolt that had nearly killed us all. So I captivated my mind with the moonlit scene of the young moon goddesses.
Someone poked me in my shoulder. I turned to see Kayla standing there, eyeing me weirdly. “Are you okay? You’re just staring at nothing.”
I bit my lip, not truly wishing to speak my thoughts to anyone. But for some reason, I felt as if I could trust Kayla even more than I could the others of the Epic Three. New as she was, one would expect her to be too ready to leap into danger when she wasn’t. But Kayla was so level-headed and bright…it made me wonder yet again who her father was. And her eyes were so clear and happy that I knew her intentions were pure.
Though I did skip over my dream. “I lost control.”
She tugged her green jacket although it was warm weather. But she shivered once like a cold wind had escaped from winter. “That wasn’t your fault.”
“Whose was it then?” No response. “Kayla. I have been training for nearly two years, longer than anyone else who embarked on this journey has. I have always been able to empower my lightning and tell it what to do without any flaws. I have never lost control like that.”
“Look, Raine,” Kayla sighed. “I don’t have any offensive power like you or Rose. If I did…well, that would be awesome, but I wouldn’t beat myself up every time my power didn’t work the way I wanted it too.”
“Every time it didn’t work the way I wanted it too?” I repeated, yellow eyes harsh. “No. Kayla, if I made rain instead of lightning that would be my power not working the way I wanted it too. If the thunder I created was too loud to focus, that would be my power not working the way I wanted it too. Losing power over a deadly lightning storm that nearly turns us into dust does not fall into those categories! We could have died!”
“It probably won’t ever happen again,” Kayla reassured me.
I groaned. “You are not getting this! Let me say this in words you understand: I…almost…killed…you. I…have…no…control.”
“You’ll see. You won’t lose control again.” I sighed. I wasn’t getting anywhere with her and she wasn’t getting anywhere with me. I narrowed my eyes. A wooden barrel was stationed by the thick, central mast. The gleam that caught my eye was the gold…countless, countless, countless gold. My feet drifted in the cask’s direction, and soon I was standing by it, steadily reaching my hand to the gold coins. I held a pile the coins in my palm and let the gold slip through my fingers. When I did, I saw the symbols on each side. It was sort of like American coins, only gold and Greek.
“Raine?” Kayla called. “What’s wrong?”
The demigod came over to the cask. “Gold drachmas. I haven’t seen so many ever before.” My eyebrows knitted together. “Strange. There’s so much here, and even a minor god doesn’t carry so much drachma. How did it all get here?”
I heard a dark voice behind me. “Put. The money. Down.”
Lea folded her arms across her chest, brown eyes dangerous. The wind billowed in her hair, making her look deadly. “Don’t touch our loot.”
“Loot?” Kayla echoed.
“This is crazy,” I said. “Where…where did you get all of this from?”
The younger brunet boy fluttered over – yes, flew; he had wings on his feet. I assumed he must have been a child of Hermes. Despite his young face, his glare was harsher than death.
But when Lea’s eyes softened, so did the boy’s. “We have more than that just below the deck.” She turned to the eleven-year-old boy. “Caden, why don’t you take Kayla and show her around?”
Caden began to whine, but Lea said more firmly, “Brother. Come on.”
Caden huffed, and reached for Kayla’s brown hand. She cracked a smile and allowed herself to be led away by the young son of Hermes.
“Brooke Gray told me about your quest,” Lea told me when we were alone. “She recited the prophecy, and I think I might be able to help you.”
“Do you know where we are supposed to go?” I asked. “Who the witch is?”
I felt disappointed when the daughter of Iris told me, “No, ‘fraid not.” My spirits lightened when she said, “But I have something that might.” She held out a tan hand. “Follow me, daughter of Zeus.”
I trailed after Lea curiously. She guided me to a sleek oak wooden door with a crest of a silver rainbow above the door. Each layer of the rainbow was a different shade of gray, and I thought with amusement, ‘Don’t care about your mother, huh? There are more rainbows on this ship than demigods!’
Lea pushed the gray rainbow door with a long, eerie creeeeeeeaaaak, and I walked into a stale, dark, dusty room. But as soon as the sunlight hit the barrels, the entire room glittered gold patterns on the wall.
I counted the casks of gold drachmas in my head. One…ten…twenty…thirty…forty…fifty! Fifty barrels piled high with gold! “Whoa,” I breathed. “There’s got to be more than America has in those!”
“Oh, yea,” Lea said. “Yeah, how’s that recession going? Bush still treating the country like crap?”
“Nah, Bush is gone. Barack Obama is the president now.”
“Who?”
“He’s the first black president,” I said, eyes confused. “He’s ending the Iraq war…” Lea stared at me blankly. “Wow, how long have you been on this boat?!”
“Five or six years,” she replied. “I gave up school when I was seven.”
“What?! You’ve never been truly educated?”
Her chocolate eyes glared with offense. “I don’t need an education! I don’t need stupid things like math or science! How’s English class ever going to help me? Me and these other demigods don’t need all that crap.”
“Well, for one,” I said. “You learn grammar. And anyway…we’re off topic! Where did you get all of this money from?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Lea assured me. She stood up on her tip-toes against a dirty wood shelf. When she came back to the ground flat on her feet, she was holding a sand-covered, old book with weathered leather covers and no title. She handed the book, aka thousand-pound-paperweight, to me and I doubled over a little at the surprise of the weight.
I sat down on a small barrel that stood near a worn down desk. I opened the big book and fingered the faded black letters on the page I turned to. Only, the letters weren’t English. “This is all in Greek? What is this?”
“A book of minor gods and goddesses,” she replied. “I figured you’d be able to understand the Greek. I thought maybe this book would be able to help you find who the witch was.”
I smiled. “Thanks, Lea.” I began to look through it, but I still felt her presence there. “Uh…”
“Sorry,” she apologized awkwardly. “It’s just; the book is so old…and valuable…”
I put my index finger on a messy, scribbling handwriting. “So you wrote in pen on here?”
Lea shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t ever planning on selling it or anything…”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What does this say?” I carefully read the near-illegible writing. Harmonia, 6/31/07. On another page, next to winged goddess, it said Hebe, 8/14/08. And that kind of thing kept going on each page, near each of the god’s or goddess’ picture or name.
“What,” I muttered. Instinctively, I glanced to the closest pile of ancient currency. I looked back to the page with Priapus, the God of Bounty, with the date of April 2nd, 2004. I looked accusingly at Lea Gonzalez. “You’re a thief!”
Her stare was as hard as diamonds. “And?”
“That’s where you got all of this!” I hissed, knocking my hand into the gold. A handful of coins spilled onto the floor, clinking and clattering as they touched the ground. Lea glared at me, her hand flickering to an archer’s bow in the corner.
I sighed. “Sorry.” I wasn’t really; I just didn’t want to be skewered by a cluster of arrows. “But how could you steal from minor immortals like that? Your mom is one of them.”
“Exactly,” Lea hissed. “My mother never, ever helped me when I needed her. My dad was a drunk, a complete idiot, and he used me when I was little to hook up with other girls because they thought I was so ‘cute’, or things like that. And Iris didn’t care for me. Not once, and I was stuck with that bastard for a dad!”
“I can’t say she did care for you,” I admitted. “I know all about that. But it doesn’t mean you have to steal from all the minor gods!”
“Not all,” Lea amended. “There are a few immortals that are hidden from the world. Their whereabouts are unknown to most people.”
“Well, how would you feel if you were a minor god? Wouldn’t you go into hiding?” I muttered. “Why do you need to be a pirate? What good is all of this drachma?”
“There is a war coming,” Lea explained. “I said I’d stay neutral, but you can go many, many places with money like this.”
“You mean, like…bribery? Like the gods would take bribes,” I snorted.
“There are not just gods in this war, Raine,” Lea said darkly. “Demigods, monsters, rising Titans…”
“What?”
“Never mind.” She sighed, and looked at the door. “Caden, you remember, the wing-feet boy, isn’t my true brother. But you know I found him alone on the streets in San Francisco. His dad, Hermes, never helped him. And he is a valuable part of the Dapple now.”
As if on cue, Caden flew into the room with a slam of the wooden door. “Lea, Lea! Come quick! Come quick!”
“Caden? What’s the matter?” Lea asked.
The flying boy was in such a hurry to get out to the deck, he hit the wall the first time. “Just come on! I’ll show you!” He grabbed her hand, and I followed, accidentally hitting the ancient book with my hand on the way out.
I held my breath with awe as I stepped outside. The air was warm, as I expected in the summer, but the air was so fresh and sweet that I couldn’t believe I was in the modern world. See, in my opinion, air these days was so polluted that even cigarette smoke seemed clean.
There, before us was an island of such beauty it was impossible to believe it was real. The waters surrounding it were the bluest blue, and the palm trees glistened leafy green even from our distance. The dying sun beamed down upon the golden sands and colored them fire-orange as the sun dipped below the perfect trees. But something about the island was forbidding and dangerous. It was like a hungry leopard with shimmering mottled fur that was ready to pounce and kill someone. That was like this island.
“This is it,” I said. “This was the island of my dream. The witch’s island.”

Meanwhile, the book I had accidentally hit with my hand had flipped a couple pages. A page yellowed from age held a colorful drawing of a beautiful youthful woman. She had shining black hair, pale skin and around her hands coiled magic flames. But the most striking thing about this sketch was the eyes. They were the color of a rainbow.