Desperate Measures Page 4

  Ani’s mouth shut tight. But for Jane, even his silence had something to say, and it wasn’t about winning the blood ring.

  “This is our chance to find Carter and get away!” she said. Now Ani looked at her approvingly, and she kept going. “We can escape! If we can find him first—”

  “How are we going to do that?” Buzz asked, nervously eyeing the thirteen other runners.

  “I don’t know,” Jane said. “But we have to. This is our chance.”

  Ani spoke up again. “If your brother is trying to reach you—”

  “He is,” Jane said. There was no doubt in her mind.

  “—then he will travel in this direction,” Ani said. He pointed across to Cloud Ridge but pivoted to the right, indicating the curve of land around the bay. “It is the narrowest part of the island. The ground is not easy to navigate there. In places, it is impossible. That is why the tribe travels here by water.”

  “But Carter doesn’t know any of that,” Vanessa said. “He’s just running blind, straight toward it.”

  “Yes,” Ani said simply. The Nukula always seemed to take obstacles as facts, not problems.

  So maybe it was time to start thinking like a Nukula, Jane thought.

  “What happens if someone else finds him?” she asked.

  “I suspect Laki will leave him here when we depart for the village tomorrow,” Ani said.

  “We can’t be separated!” Vanessa said. “Not again. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Then do not fail,” Ani said.

  He wasn’t going to tell them to disobey Laki, Jane realized. Not exactly. But if they could get to Carter first, and get him back here to the eastern shore without anyone seeing, at least they’d have a chance for escape. One last chance.

  Now Ani looked upstream, along the channel to where the boats were tethered. “My canoe has a small store of coconuts and water on board,” he told them.

  “But . . . we can’t take your canoe,” Jane said. “It’s yours.”

  “It is mine to give,” Ani answered.

  Even now, he hadn’t told them what to do. He was only stating facts. This was an opportunity. His canoe held some supplies. It was his boat to give.

  What they did with those facts was up to them. And even then, it was a terrible risk Ani was taking. His own place in the tribe could be threatened if they betrayed his trust in any way.

  “Whatever happens, it will be decided by sunrise,” Ani added. “That is how much time you have.”

  Jane looked up. Already, the light was turning gold and orange with the end of the day. Before long, night would set in.

  “How are we going to do this?” Buzz asked. “We can’t compete against these guys. They’re going to leave us in the dust.”

  “We got this far, didn’t we?” Jane asked.

  “Yeah. With Mima’s help,” Buzz said.

  “What’s Mima doing?” Vanessa asked.

  Mima was still with the other group of seccu winners, waiting for the start of Ohzooka. She knelt on the ground, sharpening a smaller rock against a boulder for a makeshift blade. Already, she’d broken off a crude handle from a piece of bamboo. Everyone was working fast to get ready—cutting and coiling vines, gauging the landscape, and speaking low with their family members.

  For all of them, it was about more than just a hunt now. It was about earning the blood ring, and securing a place of leadership in the tribe.

  “Mima will run her own Ohzooka,” Ani said. “You must allow her that.”

  “But we need her,” Buzz said. “We’re a team. She wouldn’t have even gotten to the end if it wasn’t for Carter! She owes us!”

  “If it wasn’t for Mima, we never would have made it that far to begin with,” Jane said. It made sense, at least to her. This was a chance for Mima to turn her life around beyond anything she’d probably imagined. And who was to say Mima’s life was any less important than their lives?

  There was nothing more to do about it, anyway. Mima was as stubborn as Carter. If she’d decided to run this alone, then that was that.

  “When does it start?” Vanessa asked.

  “Immediately,” Ani said, raising his chin in Laki’s direction.

  Laki stood in the middle of the group, his hand raised high over his head, with the small blood ring grasped in his fingers. He called out then, in a long, sustained note. As he did, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to face west.

  With no more warning than that, Laki’s call ended, his hand came down to his side, and the group of runners sprang into motion.

  This was it—the beginning of Ohzooka.

  The hunt for Carter was on.

  It was amazing, the way the Nukula runners took to the trees. Within seconds, the canopy was full of people moving from branch to limb, to the ground, and back up into the next tree again—all heading west.

  “What do we do now?” Jane asked.

  “Mima!” Vanessa shouted, but Mima was already gone.

  Maybe it was even for the best, Buzz thought. She could travel faster without them. At least that meant they had an ally at the front of the pack. And none of them—Buzz, Jane, Vanessa, or even Carter, who was the strongest—had come anywhere near mastering the parkour-like moves of the Nukula.

  “We’re losing them already!” Jane said as they pushed into the forest. “Come on! We have to try!”

  “Hang on a second!” Vanessa said.

  Buzz turned to look. Vanessa’s gaze pivoted inland. Her eyebrows knit together.

  “What is it?” Buzz asked.

  “This way!” she said, and crashed through the brush ahead of them.

  “Vanessa? Where are you going?” Jane asked.

  Vanessa looked around before she answered. None of the other runners spoke English, but still, she only mouthed the words.

  To the tunnels, she said.

  The one advantage of being behind the pack was that nobody noticed as they veered to an alternate route. Vanessa led the way, pushing a rough path through the tall brush that Buzz and Jane could follow. It wasn’t easy going, but she seemed to be onto something. And right now, a fast, risky decision was better than no decision at all. If one of those tunnels headed in the right direction, at least they’d have some chance of catching up to the others.

  “Vanessa!” Jane said before they’d gone too far. “What about the guards?”

  Vanessa stopped short, breathing hard as she turned. “You’re right,” she said. “We don’t know if they’ll stop us or not.”

  “But that guard hut isn’t the only way in,” Buzz said.

  “Do you mean the other tunnels?” Jane asked. “We don’t have time to get all the way over—”

  “No,” Buzz said. “Not the other tunnels. There’s something else we can try.”

  He brushed past his sisters and moved into the lead, taking them in a slightly new direction. The scratch of the brambles and undergrowth on his legs was nothing new. Buzz ignored it as he pushed farther into the woods.

  Before long, the domed bamboo ceiling that covered the underground chamber came into sight. They looked at one another in the silence as they approached it. Maybe there were guards at the hut nearby, and maybe there weren’t. But the safest bet right now was to move as quietly as possible.

  Buzz parted some of the brush that grew over the bamboo to look down inside. The place was empty. He scanned the arena, looking for a vine that grew all the way to the dirt floor inside.

  That’s the way in, he mouthed to his sisters. Vanessa and Jane both nodded back. They understood.

  Buzz pointed to himself and then down in again. I’ll go first, he told them.

  The ceiling’s bamboo crosspieces were laid close together. Even the widest gaps looked small for squeezing through. And he was the heaviest of them all. If he couldn’t fit, he�
�d have to send the girls on without him.

  You’ll fit, Jane mouthed, as if reading his thoughts, or at least his expression.

  Buzz wasn’t so sure, but worrying was just one more way to waste time. He could hear the other runners crashing through the forest and heading farther west by the minute.

  He sat himself on the first crossbar of bamboo and swung his legs over to dangle his feet inside. The ground was more than a story below, maybe even two stories. Falling could mean a broken leg, or worse. And there was no knowing if these vines would hold his weight, even if he did squeeze through.

  With another deep breath, he leaned in and gripped the longest vine he could spot. There was no turning back now.

  Sliding forward, he was surprised to feel his belly slip right through the gap. In fact, there wasn’t much belly left. Not after eating so little for so many days. The painful scrape of his ribs against the bamboo told him so.

  For a fraction of a second, he dropped. Then the vine snapped taut in his hands and he swung crazily back and forth. As he did, he lowered himself toward the ground, hand over hand with all the strength he could muster.

  It didn’t last. He was halfway down when his grip gave out. The woody vine tore into his palms like a million splinters before he dropped the last several feet to the dirt below. It wasn’t pretty, but he was in. He rubbed his palms to put out the fiery feeling, and motioned to the girls to go for it.

  Jane was the monkey of the group. She managed to lower herself all the way without any trouble. Vanessa climbed and then slid, like Buzz had done.

  That way? Vanessa mouthed. She pointed down the tunnel that led directly under the guard hut.

  Jane and Buzz nodded. The tunnel definitely set out to the west, but it was impossible to say how far it went, or what kind of turns it might take. From where they stood, it was just a black hole.

  The only thing to compare it to was the tunnel leading in the opposite direction, toward Trehila and the canoes. That one had been a straight shot, and not very long. But it didn’t mean this one would be the same way. Which was the whole point. They had no idea.

  Here! Jane indicated, and bent down to pick up an abandoned torch from the marking ceremony. She used it to stir the ashes in the fire pit and quickly turned up a few orange embers. Soon after that, they had a small flame to carry with them.

  Jane went first, with Buzz and Vanessa close behind. They moved cautiously past the ladder that led up to the guard hut, and then picked up their pace over the uneven tunnel floor, continuing west.

  Hopefully, toward Carter.

  CHAPTER 7

  The light was dimming fast when Carter stumbled onto the mud bank of the river. He’d ridden the current as far as he could. Now, the water had slowed to a near standstill, and gone shallow.

  There was no knowing how far he’d come. It was all a blur of white water, rock, and mud. Both his knees were bloody, and he’d have some new bruises for sure, but at least nothing was broken.

  He stood on the bank and listened. The jungle gave back its usual insect buzz and hum, and he could hear the soft sound of ocean waves somewhere. The drumming from the eastern shore had stopped. He was completely turned around now, with no real sense of direction.

  Carter turned and looked for the sun. It was too late in the day for that, but through the trees behind him, he could make out the red-orange glow of a sunset. That meant west, didn’t it? His mind felt thick and slow. He needed food. Fresh water. Rest. But he couldn’t have any of those things.

  It was tempting to drop right there in the mud and close his eyes. Falling asleep would have been beyond easy. But the darkening sky was like a ticking clock he couldn’t afford to ignore. So he put the sunset at his back and pushed on, one step at a time.

  His path took him over a small rise through the forest and back down again, into a patch of wetter and muddier ground. The river hadn’t dried up so much as fed into a swamp of some kind.

  The island around him had narrowed, too. He could see the ocean, first on his left and soon after on his right. But his pace was miserable. The ground was just a murky slime under his tattered sneakers. It felt like walking through wet cement.

  With the next step, he was up to his calf in scum-covered water. He stumbled, caught himself on the trunk of a dead tree, and kept moving.

  Jane . . .

  Buzz . . .

  Vanessa . . .

  Mima . . .

  Their names passed through his mind, over and over. Each name was a step. It was all he had to keep him moving as the darkness deepened around him. And for now, that would have to be enough.

  Vanessa peered into the tunnel ahead. It felt as though they were still heading west, but it was hard to say. At least there were no choices to make, no forks or turns to choose from. The passage cut a single straight path, wherever it was taking them.

  “Carter wouldn’t head back for the village, would he?” Buzz asked.

  “Not if he’s thinking straight,” Vanessa said. But that was no guarantee with Carter. He usually made decisions first and thought second, if at all. “We don’t know anything for sure,” she added.

  “I do,” Jane said. “He’s coming for us.”

  Jane had known Carter all her life, the same way Buzz and Vanessa had known each other all of their lives. It was only a few months ago that they’d all become brothers and sisters. And Jane sounded as sure of herself now as she’d ever been.

  Soon, the soft thudding of their footsteps turned into a wet slapping sound. The ground was becoming muddier as they traveled west. The idea of rats and other animals scratched at Vanessa’s mind, too. But there was nothing they could do about that. Hopefully, they were alone down here.

  “Where is this going?” Buzz asked, the frustration heavy in his voice. Nobody answered. All they could do now was stick with the gamble they’d made.

  After several more minutes, something showed in the dark up ahead. It was just a ragged crack of light, but Vanessa nearly cried when she saw it.

  “Do you see that?” she asked, and they all hurried toward it.

  They seemed to be traveling uphill. By the time they came to the tunnel’s dead end, Vanessa could touch the dripping, rocky ceiling. And there, just above their heads, was the crevice of light they’d been moving toward. She pressed her fingers into it and felt around.

  “There’s a rock here,” she said. “A big one. Give me a hand.”

  Jane stepped back to let Buzz through and held the torch up to shed some light. The flame was tiny by now. It wouldn’t last much longer.

  Vanessa held her breath while she and Buzz pressed their hands flat against the small boulder and pushed. It rocked away from them once, then thudded back into place.

  “Again!” Buzz said. “Jane, help!”

  The torch was down to a tiny match light by now, and it went out completely when Jane set it down. Vanessa’s adrenaline surged in the dark. With the next push, the rock rolled away from her hands, leaving behind a hole just big enough to climb through.

  “I’ll go,” she said, and scurried out.

  She came into a small alcove of some kind, with curved woody walls on either side. They were close enough that she had to wriggle forward just to get free of the small space.

  And in fact, they weren’t walls, she realized. They were the tall roots of a tree, like the banyans back in the Nukula village. The rock they’d moved had clearly been wedged in there to block the tunnel’s entrance. Or maybe to hide it.

  Buzz came right behind. He turned around then and lay flat on his stomach to help pull Jane out while Vanessa scanned their new surroundings.

  They’d arrived in a marshland. The ground where they stood was one big mud puddle. Straight ahead was a large pool, mostly covered in green scum and ringed with more of the same odd trees. Their lower branches were heavy with thick m
oss that hung like old tattered sheets out to dry.

  It would be getting dark soon, Vanessa realized. In fact, the days were getting just a bit shorter. It was hard to believe they’d been in the South Pacific for over three weeks—long enough for something like that to change. But they had. She tried to remember the last time she’d even looked at a clock.

  The outside world was slipping away, bit by bit. And from the look of the dead, empty landscape around them, so were their chances of ever getting out of here.

  “This is exactly what Ani told us about,” Jane said. “He told us we’d be crossing the island’s narrowest point. That has to be here, don’t you think?”

  The land had thinned to no more than a few hundred yards across. She could see the ocean in both directions. It seemed as though the Nukula had dug the westward tunnel as far as they could. Any farther and it would be underwater.

  “Do you think Carter could have gotten this far already?” Vanessa asked.

  “I doubt it,” Buzz said. “He’s got to still be coming this way, right?”

  “Right,” Jane said. But it was nothing more than a guess. That was all they had.

  Continuing west through the swamp was going to be exhausting. That much was clear. Still, however tired and hungry Jane felt, she knew Carter had to feel worse. At least she, Vanessa, and Buzz had been given some water and a tiny bit of rest. Their brother didn’t have that advantage.

  Suddenly, Vanessa clutched Jane’s shoulder.

  “Someone’s over there!” she said.

  “Who?” Jane said, looking around. “Where?”

  “I see her,” Buzz said, and pointed straight into the marsh. “Up there.”

  And then Jane saw her, too. The girl was sitting on the lowermost branch of a dead tree in the middle of the swamp. The vine she’d brought was coiled over her shoulder, and she seemed to be tying one end of it into a loop.

  She was setting a trap, Jane realized. For Carter.

  “And there!” Buzz whispered, pointing off to the right this time.

  “And there, too! Behind us!” Vanessa said.