Mystic Island

☼☼8☼☼

Raine

There was no more magnificence than stepping onto a land undiscovered by any one else. When one leaps down unto the terrain that no human feet had ever trampled, the feeling they receive is exhilarating. Even if that one kind of knows that another had stepped upon the land first, the feeling is like no other. The experience is much similar to a deaf man hearing the sound of his own voice: his eyes tear up, and his undeveloped laughter rings out with raucous, unmatchable joy. Well I for one did not feel such feelings.
While others admired the isle’s dazzle, I spit into the sand. Disgusting, yes, but I felt such hatred against this place. This was not new. I had been here before, I’d run through the palm forests that stood warmly before us, and I’d faced certain death of my friend. I spit again.
“This…this is so pretty!” Rose cried. Yes, thank you, blunt Rose.
“Raine,” Andrea said breathlessly. “This place can’t be the death island of your nightmare. It’s so gorgeous!”
“Is that all you can do?” I asked. “Marvel at this desolate death-trap’s prettiness? We’re here for a quest, remember?”
Kayla nudged me. “Calm down, Raine, we don’t need a storm right now. Calm down.”
“Sorry,” I must have muttered for the millionth time. “I just hate seeing this place.”
Lea sprang down from the Dapple’s life boat with the nimbleness of a cat. “Well? Are we good or what? Finding this isle was a breeze.”
“This…this can’t be possible,” I said. “The isle of splendor. It is supposed to be a phantom island, nondescript to the rest of the world.”
“Conor is a good navigator. He can sail you anywhere as you wish it.”
“But this can’t be right!” I protested. Brooke put a hand on my shoulder. Her gray eyes bore into my stubborn yellow ones. She looked at me sternly like a child who is not behaving the teacher. “Raine. Perhaps the son of Athena is a gifted navigator. This is the place, right? The one in your dream.”
“Yes.”
The daughter of Athena looked to the others triumphantly. “Then we are in the correct place. We will look around the island for the one who stole Heather.”
“Who?” Lea asked. “Do you know who it is?”
“The witch,” Andrea said, “which is all we know.”
“Okay,” I said. “I know this ghost island is what they’d call ‘tiny’, but it is more than a few steps. We have to look around the whole, damn island? This is a big, damn island!”
“Profanity,” Brooke scolded.
“Who are you, my mother?”
Her eyes glowed with mock relief. “No, thank the gods! That’d be weird, considering I’m a few days younger than you.”
“Okay!” Rose said shortly. “You’ve had your little spat, can we continue with the demigod quest?”
“Shut up, Rose!” both Brooke and I hissed.
“Hey!” Kayla growled. She pointed to the woods. “Let’s start there!”
“Why?” I asked. “You think that’s where we should start?”
“Well, if that isn’t where a witch lives, I don’t know where one would be.”
“Fine!” I said. “We’ll start there.” I waited, and when no one moved, I added, “Oh yeah. Who’s leading?”
“I would say it would be best if you did,” Brooke said. “After all, you’ve been here before…sort of.”
“So, by those grounds, I’m sort of leading us to certain doom?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s right!” Brooke replied with a slight smile playing on her lips.
I shrugged. “Fine by me.” My heart screamed, ‘No! That will never by fine by me! Ever!’ This isle was going to be the death of me.
My whole self except for my vocal cords shrieked for me to stop, but with a heart of the heaviest lead made of fear and indecision, I stepped forward to the woods. I had the hunch that someone --- or something --- was watching me, waiting for me to fail. After one step, though, the rest followed through with soft steps.
When I stopped, the others, all choked with indecision, did so as well, and because of the peaceful silence of the beach, I heard clearly the sudden halt of feet in the deep sand. One…two…three…four. Not five pairs of feet. I glared at Lea. “Well?”
“I have transported you here,” the bandit said flatly. “That is all I’m willing to do for you.”
“Scared?” I hissed. Kayla nudged me warningly, but I ignored her.
“Me? Never!” Lea snapped indignantly and folded her arms across her chest. She shook her dark blonde hair out from her face. “I just have a business to run, that’s all! Some of us aren’t headlong heroes.
“Oh yes,” I said, my voice oozing with sarcasm. “It must be so time-consuming stealing money from defenseless minor gods.” I felt the confused looks of the others boring into us, but I felt this as a stand-off with Lea, a war of words.
“As a matter of fact, child, it is,” Lea said with a superior tone. “But, what am I doing telling you that? A two-year veteran like you wouldn’t know what I would be talking about, would you? After all, I’ve been at this for seven years.”
“Child?” I snarled. “We’re the same damn age!”
“Profanity,” Brooke warned again.
“Watch what you say,” Kayla advised me near-silently. “Lea isn’t a good enemy to make.”
“Yes, thank you, Conscience,” I hissed. I gave little-miss-thief a ten-point glare. “Why don’t you go board your floating piece of crap and sail away to beat up a minor godling? Leave us to do our important work.”
“See?” Lea asked.
“What?” I frowned.
“There you go, trying to make yourself worthy of any attention. I don’t care who your father is; the Dapple’s crew is worth more than ten of you.”
My fury rose within me, and how I wished I had Heather. She had the power to calm angered people, and whenever I was mad, I started storms. And after that, what did Kayla call it, thing that didn’t go so well happened, I didn’t trust my powers one bit. “Just get out of here.”
“Maybe I will,” Lea said. “But…”
“Well?” I snapped. “Get on with it. No one wants you here.”
The daughter of Iris looked actually hurt for a second. But her eyes burned with brown anger. “I’m not going to leave. You can go fall in a ditch with snakes in it. I just care if Brooke, Rose, Andrea, or your little conscience gets injured. So thank you, bossy, but the Dapple is staying right where we are.”
“Bossy?” I laughed with no humor. “I’m bossy. Right. Well, pirate, fine. Stay here. I hope there’s a tsunami while we’re rescuing Heather. You know, important stuff. But I’m sure the seven-year veteran wouldn’t know what I would be talking about, would you child?” I mimicked her.
“See you in hell,” Lea said, waving her hand in a fake send-off.
“Not before you.” I turned around abruptly, and led the other heroes to the edge of the palm forest. I halted at the foot of the darker woods, and glanced at Lea, who I could see the harsh brown eyes of here. To Rose, I said loudly, “Too bad there isn’t a tsunami. I wonder if Rose, daughter of the sea god, could make a little, or big, wave. Big would be nice.”
“No!” Rose said. “Don’t drag me into this, Raine!”
“Go to hell!” Lea called to me.
“If you’re still here, I already am!” I retorted with a satisfied smile on my face. “Come on,” I said to the others, and took my first steps into the unknown.

The dark palms weren’t as frightening as they’d seemed at first glance. The dying sun was still spreading the orange-red light through the trees, so there were mottled patches of the sky’s fire on the ground, lighting up the entire path. The woods were teeming with life, from a monkey swinging from tree to tree to a luckily drowsy cat with dappled fur sleeping in the branches of a tropical tree that looked a little like a maple. The leopard or jaguar (I wasn’t a cat expert) was huge, and thank the gods it didn’t notice us. There was one scary moment when it opened one green eye, and we all froze. But it just growled restlessly and shifted paws around. In moments, it was asleep.
A brightly-colored macaw swept down from perching on a coconut to sit on Rose’s outstretched arm, and it panged in my heart. It reminded me of Hysmira, which led my wandering brain to Scarlet and the friends left in Maryland. I was weighed down with homesickness, something I had only felt once before, when I was in California, down at the beach before the undead attack. The faces of the demigods who’d perished circled my mind and seemed to be images in front of me, a pace ahead. They gazed at me with bright, happy eyes, the eyes they’d wore before they’d realized who they were, and it drove me to tears. Nichole’s mischievous face, Jared’s naughty, amused one, Alexa’s laughing one, Maddi’s double-over-cracking-up one, Emma’s intellectual but humorous one…the tears flowed in buckets now.
I hissed, and waved a hand through the mirages angrily. Someone said, “Um…”
I looked back to the others and said simply with reddened eyes, “I miss home.”
“We all do,” Brooke said softly. “There’s no need to cry about it though.”
“I saw their faces. Happy and not dead.”
The two of the Epic Three’s gazes softened knowingly, and Rose bit her lip. They’d all experienced the same thing, but it had happened to me more often. But the always-sympathetic Andrea remarked, “Maybe you should see a therapist.”
“Where the hell am I going to find a damn therapist?” I growled and wiped away tears with my greenish blue sleeve. Andrea gave me a look, one like, ‘How should I know?’
Kayla found a point to break in before I mouthed off again. “That went well.”
I was never mad for too long at Kayla. “What?”
She stuck a thumb over her shoulder to where we’d come from…I thought. “You and Lea. You don’t seem to like each other too much.”
“Oh really?” I laughed. “And what, Conscience, drew you to that conclusion?”
Conscience, or Kayla, looked at me funny. “You have a habit of making enemies out of friends.”
“No I don’t.”
“You’re also good at denying things,” Brooke added.
“No I’m not!”
The gray-eyed girl snorted, and said, “Whatever you say.”
I found her annoying, but I was sure everyone else thought the same of me.
“Can we just get on?” Andrea asked. “We’re getting nowhere. And we’re lost.”
“No…” I protested. Brooke said, “You really need to stop denying everything.”
“I don’t…” I stopped myself mid-denial. “I don’t think we’re lost. We just began.”
“Thirty minutes ago,” Andrea said.
“So?”
“Do you know where we are?” she asked me.
“No, not exactly.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“No.”
“Then we’re lost!” Andrea said, using her hands as she spoke.
“Conscience, where do you think we should go?” I asked of Kayla.
She frowned at me. “Why are you calling me that?”
“You are my conscience, therefore I call you Conscience.”
“You’re conscience is inside you. I am Kayla.”
I shrugged. “You advise me when I’m doing something wrong and I often ignore your advice. You are my conscience.”
Conscience narrowed her eyes, but she was defeated on that topic. Her dark brown, near black, eyes glanced at the north. “That way, I think.”
“How would you know?” Rose asked earnestly.
The daughter of … laughed. “To speak the truth, I have absolutely no idea. But it’s my hunch, and usually they’re right.”
“That’s good enough logic for me,” Brooke said, which were words that shouldn’t have come out of the wisdom and strategy goddess’ child’s mouth. “We have no other option.”
“Fine by me,” I said, shrugging again. I began to follow Kayla, the now silent leader of our path, but when I took a few steps, a gust of wind pushed against me restlessly. A squirrel scuttling around the ground’s head rose abruptly and turned to me robotically, chattering frantically.
I raised one eyebrow and walked forward. Now an invisible hand was pushing me back, its palm keeping me from walking forward.
I was walking without moving, as the others began to notice.
“Are you having issues, Raine?” Brooke laughed.
“Not funny!” I said. “I can’t move!” I whacked the invisible hand, which recoiled, and a stern voice said in my head. Ow!
What the heck? I asked it mentally. Who are you?
You’re friend is leading you in the wrong direction. Turn around! The young, familiar voice said in my head.
Artemis?
Go east. You will find answers there.
“Raine?” Rose brought me out of my mental conversation. “You coming?”
“Not that way,” I said. “I’m going, uh, east.”
“Where?” Kayla asked.
“To the right,” I said, and she said, “Oh!”
“Why?” Andrea questioned me with brooding, dark eyes.
“I was told to by, uh, Conscience Numero Dos,” I said. If I told them Artemis told me, they’d think I was crazy. At least, that’s who I thought it was. They all looked at me skeptically.
“What!” I said. “I trust Art…um, my conscience. And east is the right way! If you don’t believe me, don’t follow me.”
“We’re sticking together, Raine,” Brooke said. “Do you truly believe that east is correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then lead,” she said. “Since you don’t seem to trust your conscience anymore.”
I laughed at Kayla. “Yeah, I might fire you as my conscience.”
She shrugged. “Wasn’t doing such a good job anyway.”
I felt the wind die down as I turned eastward, and the crazy squirrel stopped chattering. I was no more than a few steps when I felt a dip in the ground. The leaves rustled and gave way, and suddenly I had no ground beneath my feet. I dared myself to look down and gasped sharply. There was a river far, far, far away and with a harsh jab in my mind, I thought, ‘That must’ve been what Alexa saw.’
“Raine!” Kayla called with fear. My knees scraped hard, gray stone and my hand, thank the gods, caught hold of a sharp piece sticking out from the cliff side and I dangled thousands of feet above certain death.
“Damn!” Rose yelled. “I’m sorry, but you don’t have very good judgment skills, Raine. One step and boom! Over the edge.”
“Shut up, Rose!” I hissed. “Can I have a little help?”
Brooke grabbed a long, bleached-pale stick and held it out to me. “Here, grab onto this.”
I made a desperate grab with the free hand, but it waved and caught air. “It’s too far! Get a longer one!”
“Are you kidding? That was a whole branch!”
I sighed dramatically. “Then I’m dead.” Didn’t see that one coming did you, Artemis? I thought.
No voice.
Kayla looked over the edge and said, “Why don’t you make a storm cloud under your feet to carry you up?”
I paused and looked up at her like she was incompetent. “I’m not a magician.”
“You can shoot volts of lightning from your eyes!” Kayla retorted. “Indirectly.”
“And that’s grounds for magic…how?”
Andrea slapped her hand on Kayla’s shoulder. “Are you finished?”
Kayla nodded shortly. “Yes, Andrea.”
“Good,” she snapped. “‘Cause you’re wasting time we could be using to save Heather.
“Hello!” I called. “Girl trapped on cliff here!”
“Try the cloud thing,” Andrea said.
A cold claw of fear crept down my back. I froze. “No!” I yelled, all the time trying to keep my voice from shaking or rising. “I won’t use my powers!”
“Why not?” Andrea asked, frowning.
“I just won’t!” My hand was losing grip on the stone.
“Come on, Raine,” Brooke yelled. “It’s that or death!”
“Thank you for your words of encouragement!” I said sarcastically.
“Raine, make the stupid cloud!” Rose said. “What are you afraid of?”
Wrong question. There was a flash of lightning, not here, but a little back in the past. Then another bolt lit up the world and a roll of thunder boomed. I heard the desperate cry from my friends to stop the storm…and then another scene took the storm’s place. The face of my former friend, green eyes glowing, darkest wind coiling around her hands. Nichole’s bloody hand reached out to me with a sword in her hand…
Images like these replayed in my head until one final one appeared before me. A boy, hair the color of wheat and scared eyes. A pack of dogs were chasing us and then I heard it. A dying wail. My mind went blank, and my limbs lost feeling. I wasn’t holding onto a rock anymore.
“Raine!” Kayla shrieked. Rose’s blue eyes glowed, trying to raise the waves, but for once they didn’t respond. Or…so I thought. A blue-purple wave rose up to cushion my fall in midair, raising me upward to stand on the top of the cliff were I had fallen off originally.
My knees buckled for a moment, but Kayla held out her hand before I hit the ground. “You okay?”
“F-fine,” I said slowly. I turned gratefully to Rose. “Thanks.”
Her blue eyes churned with confusion. “I didn’t do anything. My powers were defective.”
“Then…who?” I began until I heard a cough behind me. I looked across the abyss that I had been clinging above before to see a…monster? I could say that, but sadly that wouldn’t be polite to the one that apparently just saved my butt. The girl stared back at me with colorful eyes, purplish blue, and dark hair.
“Sierra?” I asked. “Sierra Sweeder?”

One of the most popular girls in school was standing across the canyon facing people from a world she didn’t belong in. She must have belonged in our world though because, well, here she was, standing on a phantom island.
Sierra held out her hands and two small flares of sapphire flames sprouted in her palms. “Surprised to see me?”
I narrowed my eyes. “The better word would be, oh, disappointed. Disgusted. Confused.”
“How about bored and regretful?” Sierra asked. She smiled a smile whiter than snow. I would’ve spit, but that would give her another word: disgusting. “Don’t make me regret saving your sorry ass.”
“What…what are you doing here?” Rose asked.
The normally-obnoxious girl I wished wasn’t here rolled her eyes. “Uh, my mom owns this island paradise? I spend every summer here. It’s the only time I ever get to see my mom.”
“Oh,” I said with deep disappointment. “So…your mom’s rich or something? Is there a hotel here?”
“Rich?” Sierra laughed. Her purple-blue eyes clouded. “Sure, yeah, my mom’s rich. She bought the island.” She bit her lip and I knew she was lying. “Do you want to see the house?”
I was about to object---after all, we were on a quest---but I was outvoted.
Everyone else agreed to follow Sierra. After all, this was just Sierra, a normal girl from Dumbarton Middle. But…was she really? Was there a specific reason why she was here, on this island, the island of my dream? Had fate intentionally brought us here to meet her? Sierra had kind eyes, unlike her normal annoying air at school, and she was smiling a little. The memory of blue flames raising me upward, saving me from death…those kept me from trusting her. She saved my life, but I didn’t think it was just that. She didn’t do it for me; the guard in the depths of her purplish blue eyes told me that.
“So…what are you doing here?” Brooke asked her. “Isn’t it strange we winded up ere on your island.”
“Yes,” Sierra mused cautiously. She looked me up and down with narrowed eyes. It wasn’t hostile; instead, she was thinking hard. She turned back to the others friendly-like. “How peculiar.”
I came out and said it. “What are you, Sierra?” There. I said it. Too late to take those words back now.
Sierra shot two fiery eyes at me. “What do you mean, w-what am I? What…what are you?”
I looked back to lock eyes with Kayla, my conscience. She nodded, but her eyes warned me to be careful. If Sierra was a monster in disguise, we might’ve been able to take her, but we didn’t know what she was. For all we knew, she could’ve even been a minor goddess.
“I…we are demigods,” I said carefully, thinking hurriedly for a clever taking back of those words in case I was completely off, and she was a normal human being, stupid and ignorant to the way the world truly was.
With what I said, Sierra visibly relaxed, her shoulders dropping and her eyes flooding with relief. “Oh, thanks gods, I wasn’t sure. I mean, I didn’t want to say anything about that, you know, just in case you weren’t half god, and…well, you’d think I was crazy.”
Andrea muttered, “I still think this is all weird and praying that it’s a dream.”
But Rose shrugged. “That’s not the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Sierra raised one eyebrow at her, and she snorted, “Really?”
I coughed, and Sierra turned her attention to me. I widened my eyes when she looked at me. Her face seemed so familiar---not because I’d seen her every school day since fifth grade (really, the girl would not get sick) but because it was similar to another one I’d seen before. A young, narrow pale face. Multi-colored eyes…no, I couldn’t put my finger on who I was thinking of.
But I wanted to know who she was. “Sierra, who’s your dad?”
“You’ve seen my dad before, Raine,” Sierra said. “He’s picked me up from school and stuff like that.”
“Oh,” I said. “He’s your mortal parent.”
She snorted again. “Of course! No, my godly parent picks me up after school. Right. Think a little, Raine.”
That wasn’t the first time that day I’d been treated like an idiot, and I still didn’t like it. My golden eyes burned. “Okay, then. Who is your mother?”
Her eyes clouded and turned to blue stone. “That isn’t any of your business.”
“It isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” Brooke told her softly. “We’re all demigods here.”
“I said no!” Sierra hissed. She glared at the daughter of Athena until she saw Brooke’s warm gray eyes. She mouthed something, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Brooke, but I can’t tell you.”
“I don’t think…” Kayla began.
“I said…” Sierra began, snarling. “Look. My mother just told me not to tell anyone who I was, no matter whether they were demigods or not. She said no one.”
“We can respect that,” Brooke said.
She titled her head to a leafy palm tree to her left. “Come on. I’ll show you my place.”
I didn’t trust her one bit, but I followed her and the others when we walked after Sierra Sweeder. I thought I could feel someone watching me, but when I looked back, only a shadow was there. I shivered, and then continued on.