Forbidden Passage Read online

  “Do you see her?” Vanessa asked.

  “No,” Carter said.

  “Not yet,” Jane said.

  Several others were murmuring in Nukula, too. It seemed as though everyone was waiting to see how Mima had fared before they tried the jump themselves.

  Buzz counted silently. One, two, three, four—

  “How deep do you think that pool is?” Jane said.

  —five, six, seven—

  “Maybe she hit a rock,” Vanessa said.

  —eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—

  With every count, it seemed more and more as though something terrible had happened. But then—

  “There!” Jane said. She pointed to the edge of the green pool, where Mima had just surfaced. Mima swam a few strokes, then stood up in the shallower water and walked up onto the shore.

  Buzz let out the breath he’d been holding, and Jane squeezed his hand. He felt a little proud, too. Mima was a part of their team now. It felt like a victory. And more than that, it was a reason to push himself even harder.

  He thought about their dad, Eric Diaz. Buzz remembered him talking about going bungee jumping in college. You can’t wait until you’re not scared, Dad had said. And you can’t think twice. You just have to go. The ones who waited were the ones who let the fear get the best of them and sometimes chickened out. The trick, Dad always said, was jumping in spite of being afraid.

  Dad’s words echoed through his mind. Don’t think twice. Buzz was already afraid to jump. And now, literally, he was on his way to his second thought about it—the one he might never come back from. Before it could even take shape in his mind, he called out to the others.

  “I’ll go next,” he said.

  It was the only way.

  “Are you sure?” Vanessa said. “Do you want one of us to—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. His chin shook with the next breath, but he was determined. He swallowed once, bent his knees, and got ready to leap.

  At the same moment, there was a stirring behind them. Someone let out a low growling sound, and Buzz heard footsteps coming closer. He turned and saw that Chizo was making a go at it, too.

  Buzz instinctively stepped back. Chizo shot past him, too close. Buzz’s impulse to move out of the way quickly turned into a stumble. One foot slipped over the rock, and out into thin air.

  “Buzz!”

  Vanessa reached for him. Carter lunged. But it was too late. Gravity took hold as he slid several inches toward the edge—and then off it.

  The next thing Buzz knew, he was falling.

  Carter couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. One second, Buzz was there, and the next, he’d dropped out of sight right behind Chizo.

  All they could do was stare horrified over the edge. Buzz flailed with his arms as he fell. It looked as if he was trying to get upright in the air, but there wasn’t enough time. His back slapped the water with a smack that sounded all the way up to the top, and made Carter cringe.

  “Buzz!” Vanessa shouted.

  “Buzz!” Jane said. “Is he okay?”

  Carter tensed all over. Buzz had disappeared at the base of the falls. It took several long seconds before he surfaced, and even then, he seemed disoriented.

  Mima had waded back into the pool. She motioned for him to swim toward her, and he took a few ragged strokes, but then stopped again. When he looked up, a grimace of pain showed on his face.

  Chizo, meanwhile, was still in the pool. He watched from a distance, backstroking slowly toward the opposite side, like he was enjoying the show.

  Chizo! Just the thought of his name made Carter burn. The anger rose up inside him and boiled over.

  “I’m going to kill him!” he yelled.

  He sprang up and away from the edge. His vision tunneled. All he saw was the open air ahead of him. He drove with his feet—one, two, three, four lunging steps—

  “Carter, no!” Vanessa yelled, half a second too late.

  The fall was the worst part. Carter felt like he was leaving his stomach behind as he plummeted toward the green pool.

  He dropped, faster and faster, spinning his arms until he hit the surface. It was like breaking through glass, followed by the shock of freezing water. Even then, he didn’t stop. His body plunged deeper than he ever would have imagined.

  Disoriented, Carter knew from experience that he had to look for the light. He turned around in the water until he’d spotted the surface, and then kicked toward it.

  By the time he emerged, his lungs felt ready to explode. The falls poured down like liquid concrete on his head, and he fought to swim out of the way as the backflow tried to keep him where he was.

  While he swam, other jumpers started hitting the water around him. They splashed down on his left and right like human torpedoes. He saw Jane land, then Vanessa. And then, closer by, there was Chizo. He was still in the pool, and still watching them.

  Carter didn’t think. He lunged through the water. Chizo did, too, and they met in the middle, grappling against each other.

  There was no time to worry about the others. Carter’s only focus was Chizo. He grabbed on with both arms, the way Chizo had done to him the day before. But Chizo was slippery in the water. He twisted around, pulled one arm free and then the other.

  Before Carter could make another move, the whole thing flipped. Chizo had him now, and he squeezed hard. He held Carter from behind in a painful bear hug as they dropped beneath the surface once more.

  Carter roared underwater. He squirmed and pulled. But it was no good. Chizo knew how to keep this hold locked down in a way that Carter hadn’t. It was like some kind of unbreakable wrestling move. And whatever air Carter had left in his lungs, it was a good bet that Chizo had more.

  Then someone else was there. And another. Carter felt a tussle going on around him. He couldn’t tell what was happening until he recognized Buzz and Vanessa through the blur of the water. They each had two hands on one of Chizo’s arms, pulling him away like human crowbars.

  Slowly, Chizo’s grip loosened. Carter broke free, and all of them surfaced at the same time.

  He’d barely gotten his next breath before he was reaching for Chizo. His only thought was to do as much damage as he could. Chizo grinned back, his half-red, half-black painted face now a monster mask of running colors.

  “Don’t do it!” Vanessa yelled in Carter’s ear. Carter strained, but she and Buzz pulled him away with a force that surprised him.

  “He’s too strong!” Buzz screamed. “You can’t take him! Let’s go!”

  Chizo was treading water and watching them. But Carter also noticed he wasn’t coming closer. Maybe he could beat one of them at a time, but not all three. Not the whole family.

  “This isn’t over!” Carter shouted at him.

  “Come on!” Vanessa said. “We’re ahead of them! Let’s just go!”

  Not all of Chizo’s group was down yet, Carter realized. Vanessa was right. This was a chance to move ahead. Reluctantly, he turned and swam toward Mima and Jane at the edge of the pool.

  “Are you hurt, Buzz?” he asked, as they stumbled out of the water. Carter could see the stop-sign-red streaks up and down Buzz’s back. It looked like the world’s worst sunburn, but Buzz only shrugged.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he answered. More than anything, he looked focused. Which was what Carter needed to be now, too.

  “This way?” Vanessa asked Mima. She pointed into the woods, but Mima pointed downriver instead. From here, the water flowed out of the green pool, along the edge of the forest, and out of sight.

  “’Dis way,” Mima said. “Ekka-ka!”

  Ekka-ka, Carter thought. Ka, for a friend.

  At least there was that.

  CHAPTER 11

  As they moved along the river, Carter stuck with Jane,
Vanessa, Buzz, and Mima. It wasn’t long before Chizo and his friends passed them, but they never lost sight of the larger group. By his count, there were twenty-eight runners still in it. Somewhere along the way, four had been left behind.

  Before long, the river led them to the mouth of a bay that cut into the island’s coastline. The bay was several hundred yards across, with more jungle rimming the far shore. Beyond that, Carter could just see the spiked peaks of Cloud Ridge in the distance.

  “What’s that?” Buzz asked. He pointed farther up the beach, where a tall wooden post was planted in the sand. It wasn’t hard to recognize the red, black, and white markings of Raku Nau by now. They were faded but noticeable, as though the post had been painted a long time ago. Its wood was worn smooth in places, and the top was hatched in a kind of zigzag pattern.

  Most of the Nukula seemed to know something about it. They glanced in its direction several times as they began spreading out along the shore.

  “Are we making camp?” Jane asked hopefully.

  “It looks that way,” Vanessa said. She pointed over to where Mima had already begun picking up dry wood. The other groups seemed to be staking out different sites for the night.

  Carter didn’t say much, but it was a relief to stop. The sun was headed for the horizon, and it would be dark before too long.

  He kept his eye on Chizo as they worked, and he thought about everything he wished he could do to wipe the conceited look off that kid’s face. Back home, Chizo probably would have been in high school, or at least eighth grade. Carter was big and strong for his age, but he was still a few months shy of middle school.

  At least, he would start middle school if he ever got home again. Back to the other side of the world.

  “Car-tare!” Mima called over. She had been working her way up the shore, but now she set down her pile of firewood and was motioning for him to come over.

  “What is it?” he asked, as he reached her.

  She held out her hand to show him a ball of greenish mud. Without pausing, she took him by the wrist and pressed the mud into the cut on his hand.

  “Ow! What are you doing?” he asked.

  It stung as she rubbed it in, working it down to a kind of second skin that covered the wound. When she was done, she put the rest of the mud ball—it was really more like clay—into his other hand, and pointed across the bay.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re supposed to take it with you,” Jane said.

  Carter hadn’t even known Jane had followed him over. She was pretty good at sneaking around when she wanted to.

  He looked down at the mud again, and then across the bay.

  “That way?” he asked. “That’s where we go tomorrow? Straight across?”

  “That’s a long swim,” Jane said.

  Carter nodded and put the mud into his side pocket. But now Mima was laughing for some reason.

  “What?” he asked again, shrugging to show his meaning.

  Mima plucked a waxy leaf off a low bush from the edge of the woods. It was the size of her palm, and she held it out.

  “Ekka, Car-tare,” she said. He liked her knowing his name, anyway. But mostly he felt stupid for not knowing he should have wrapped the mud in a leaf.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking down while his face burned a little.

  Way to go, Benson, he thought. All smooth, all the time.

  When he looked up again, Mima had already turned away. She was looking at something out toward the ocean.

  Several others had taken notice, too, and were heading over. That’s when Carter saw Ani, and the two elders from before. They were rowing an outrigger in from the open water. Behind them was a simple bamboo raft, tethered to their boat.

  “What’s going on?” Jane said. Buzz and Vanessa were there now, along with all the other runners. The energy in the camp had just jumped. Something was about to happen, and as far as Carter could tell, Jane, Vanessa, Buzz, and he were the only ones who didn’t know what it was.

  Vanessa watched as Ani and the others paddled closer. Then, just as she expected them to come to shore, they turned and aimed themselves for the middle of the wide bay.

  “Ani! What’s happening?” she called out, not even expecting him to reply.

  What he did was turn to face the group on the shore while the other two paddled. He reached down and picked something up from the floor of the outrigger. It was a painted and carved piece of wood, some kind of animal figure. Its markings were immediately familiar. The striped pattern matched the ones on the post that sat farther up the beach. And in fact, Vanessa realized, they were like puzzle pieces. The sawtooth cut at the base of the totem in Ani’s hand was the same as the zigzag pattern cut into the top of the post.

  “They go together,” Jane said, recognizing it, too.

  Ani began speaking then, but in Nukula. All the runners on either side of Vanessa knelt at the water’s edge, with one palm flat on the ground. It was like the start of Raku Nau, all over again. She took up the same position with her siblings.

  Vanessa couldn’t help feeling more nervous than ever. She looked to Mima, who seemed calm, or at least focused. That helped a little. They’d have to follow along and figure this out—whatever it was—once it started.

  But then Ani gave them the few words in English they needed to understand.

  “The first to place the totem atop the post on the beach will be free to use the raft however he or she wishes,” he called out.

  All at once, the stakes went up. Vanessa eyed the far side of the bay. Knowing they’d be traveling in that direction, it was clear now just how much they needed the advantage of the raft. Swimming across would be exhausting. Hiking all the way around could take hours of extra time they didn’t have.

  It was also a chance to do something for Mima. She’d started Raku Nau on her own, but this was a challenge that no one person was going to be able to complete alone.

  Finally, Ani held the wooden piece high over his head. He pulled the raft closer, placed the totem in the middle of its deck, and then untied the vine-rope tether from the outrigger.

  “Ma tikka sematikka!” he shouted. “By any means necessary!”

  With that, he dropped the rope and set the raft free. At the same moment, all twenty-eight runners sprinted into the water, including Vanessa, Carter, Jane, Buzz—and, at the front of the pack, Mima.

  Even as Buzz splashed into the chill water with the others, he thought about what Ani had just said: By any means necessary. This was going to get ugly, he could tell.

  “Vanessa, Jane, stay here!” Carter said to the girls as they swam out. “We need a line of defense. Buzz, come with me!”

  Buzz didn’t question it. He let Carter call the shots and focused instead on what they had to do.

  Looking back, he saw that several of the others had done the same. Chizo was headed for the raft, but two of his group were treading water nearby, halfway between the raft and the red, black, and white post on the shore.

  It was a long swim. Buzz quickly fell behind, but he didn’t stop. By the time he reached the raft, all of the others were swarming around it. Three of them—two boys and a girl—had climbed up on top. All three had their hands on the totem, trying to pull it loose from one another. Everyone else seemed to be waiting to see who came up with it first.

  It seemed like a hugely uneven contest. The groups were all different sizes, and Chizo was obviously one of the strongest in the competition, if not the strongest. But then again, there were lots of things about the Nukula that were hard to understand. Not necessarily better or worse, just different.

  “Over there!” Carter said. Buzz swam again, following him around to the back of the raft where it was less crowded.

  “Wait here!” Carter told him. He didn’t know what Carter had in mind, but it was a relief just to catch his brea
th for a second.

  Carter had barely pulled himself up onto the raft deck before one of the girls reached out and shoved him off with both hands. He plunged in, popped right back up, and jumped on board again. This time Mima was beside him. They both stayed low, which Buzz saw made it harder to push them off.

  “Get it!” he yelled. The adrenaline was pumping. He could feel himself rising to the challenge.

  Carter was on his knees now, both hands on the totem. With a fast jerk, he pulled it free from the other three and fell onto his back on the raft. Mima was right there to take it from him.

  “YES!” Buzz shouted out.

  It didn’t last long. Before she could even dive, the whole raft rose up in the water. Chizo and two others were there, underneath, raising it into a hard tilt that sent everyone on top sprawling.

  Mima fell right toward Buzz, still holding the totem, but it slipped out of her hands when she splashed into the water next to him.

  This was his chance. Buzz wrapped his arms around the rough wooden piece and dove down under the surface. If he could disappear with it, even for a few seconds, it might buy them an edge.

  He kicked toward the shore, eyes open underwater as a dozen pair of legs twisted around in every direction. They were looking for him, he could tell. His heart surged—he was actually getting somewhere. But there was no way it could last, and he knew it.

  He kicked for several more yards, until his lungs couldn’t take another moment. Then he aimed for an open place in the water and surfaced.

  The swarm was on him immediately.

  “Carter!” he yelled. “Mima!”

  Before he could spot them, one of Chizo’s teammates enveloped Buzz with both arms and pulled him under. There was no contest now. A second later, the boy had yanked the totem from his grasp and was headed toward shore.

  They were getting closer to the beach, Buzz realized. All the participants who had hung back were heading toward the swimmers for another face-off. Carter and Mima were swimming ahead of Buzz. He was exhausted, with arms like rubber, but there was no way he could give up now.