Blue Sea Burning (33 page)

I WAS ALMOST FINISHED
with the cheese when I heard a gurgling noise. I looked up.

Framed in the gray light of the open door was the silhouette of a man. He was missing part of his head.

He gurgled again, and I realized who it was.

“Mung . . .”

Wet ash clung to him like a gray paste. Water dripped from his clothes and hair. His gurgling was loud and urgent. He held out his arms, beckoning toward me.

I stood up, my heart in my throat and the chains clanking in my ears as I shuffled toward him.

I was halfway to the door when a hollow, metallic
thong
rang out, and Mung crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Roger Pembroke stood in the doorway, holding a shovel like a club.

“Where did
he
come from?”

I stared down at the motionless body of my old friend. I hoped he wasn't real. I hoped I'd just imagined him.

I hoped I'd just imagined all of it.

A shovel head struck me on the arm, just hard enough to convince me.

“Time to go.”

The Red Cliff

“MOVE!”

We were halfway up the ridge, dripping sweat in the shimmering heat as we forced our way through the waist-high choke plants that covered the hillside. It was slow going. My chains kept getting caught in the low branches.

Pembroke was behind me. It was so hot he'd taken his shirt off, and his upper body was caked in the gray ash that blanketed the hillside and dotted the air all around us.

“Move!”

He'd stopped threatening to whip me. It didn't do any good, and he needed me strong enough to dig if we ever reached the top. We were only a few hundred yards from the pink-tinged rock face of the Devil's Pimple, up and across the ridge to the left. But there was a constant, dreadful rumbling under our feet, and from time to time the sky lit up as the volcano spat molten lava into the air.

“Faster!”

I yanked my foot free of a choke plant. “It's the chains,” I said. “If you take them off . . .”

He shook his head. “Just move.”

“Please . . . I won't run.” That was a lie.

“You want them off? Find my treasure.”

There was a loud crackling noise up the hillside to our right. We both turned toward it.

Something was breaking a path through the choke plants. At the leading edge of it, the branches shook violently, stirring up puffs of ash before sinking out of view like they were being eaten by some slithering, unseen animal.

“Hurry!” Pembroke shoved me up the hill.

I struggled to push through the vegetation, keeping one eye on the strange commotion to our right. Then I caught a glimpse of bright orange down at ground level, and I realized what was chewing up the plants.

It was lava. A fat stream of it was creeping down the hillside, melting everything in its path.

After that, Pembroke didn't have to yell to get me to move faster. If I was going to drown in lava, it was going to be on open ground, where at least I could see it coming.

Ten minutes later, we were on top of the hill, emerging onto a field of ash-covered shale behind the Devil's Pimple. It was just fifty yards from one end of the Pimple to the other, but fifty yards was a lot of ground to dig up.

And farther up the mountain toward the summit, I could see half a dozen streams of lava slowly oozing toward us.

Pembroke pushed past me, the shovel in his good hand, and began to stride down the length of the cliff. His boots crunched under the shale.

I found myself staring at a large, red scar on his upper back, just inside the left shoulder blade. His skin was mottled with bits of ash, half covering it, so for a moment I wasn't sure what I was seeing.

It was a four-inch-high
C,
identical to the one on my uncle's back.

Until then, I hadn't really believed anything Pembroke had said about either Healy or my mother. But seeing that scar made me wonder all over again. I gaped at him for a moment, watching as he searched the ground for a sign that would tell him where to dig.

Then I realized his back was to me.

I started to search the ground myself—for a rock big enough to brain him with. But there was a layer of ash over everything, and even as I dragged the chain on my feet across it, turning over the flaky shale, I couldn't find a piece bigger than my thumb.

“GET OVER HERE!”

He was kneeling near the middle of the cliff.

As I started toward him, a booming growl rose from somewhere in the bowels of the earth, and the whole side of the mountain shook so hard it nearly knocked me off my feet.

I heard Pembroke curse in surprise. When I looked up, he was staring toward the summit.

About two hundred yards straight up the slope, the ground had split open, and a fresh geyser of lava was bursting from the open seam and running toward us. The new lava, thinner and more liquid, moved at twice the speed of the older stuff.

“GET OVER HERE!” he yelled again as he stood up and jammed the shovel head into the earth. By the time I reached him, he'd pulled the pistol from his satchel.

He jerked his head at the shovel.

“Dig!”

I looked down. At first, I couldn't tell why he'd chosen the spot. Then, as I looked closer, I saw a rock—larger, smoother, and of a color that was different from either the black shale around it or the reddish pink of the pimple.

There were several rocks like that—rounded stones the size of my fist, worn smooth by the sea. Painted on the biggest one, in colored dye so faint it had nearly vanished, was the image of a firebird.

The rocks were big enough that if I slung one at Pembroke's head, it might kill him.

Which was why he had the gun trained on me again.

“Don't get any ideas. Dig!”

I pulled the shovel out of the ground and started to dig. The loose shale gave way without any trouble.

“Hurry up . . . ! Not there—farther over . . . ! There . . . ! FASTER!”

I looked up from my digging to see why his voice had turned so urgent.

The streams of lava were closing in on us. One thin, fast-moving line was already dripping over the side of the red cliff just a few feet away.

I shoveled faster.

The shovel head struck something solid.

It was wood. Rotten and splintery.

“Give me that!”

He grabbed the shovel, shoved me out of the way, and started digging frantically, grunting from the pain of his injured arm.

I checked the lava flows on either side of us. Back the way we'd come, a three-foot-wide river of the stuff had already reached the cliff.

I couldn't jump three feet with those chains on my legs.

“Help me dig!” he yelled at me.

“Give me the keys!” I yelled back.

“I DON'T HAVE ANY!”

He'd lied before. Or he was lying now. It didn't matter which. I was going to die if I couldn't jump over those lava streams.

I looked over my shoulder at the thin stream right behind me. I could clear that one with the chains on, no problem. But farther past it, I could see an even wider stream, five feet across at least. It was already spilling over the cliff.

I was trapped on both sides.

Pembroke was screaming at me to help him dig, but I ignored him. Nothing he could do to me was any worse than what was going to happen if I couldn't get those chains off.

How . . . ?

Just ahead, the shale was sizzling into vapor at the edges of the thin lava stream. It was slowly sinking below ground level as the lava ate through the rock underneath.

Melt the chains.

I scrabbled forward and sat on my butt near the edge of the stream. Then I raised my legs and lowered the dangling chain into the orange stream.

The iron sizzled as it touched the molten rock and began to dissolve. I felt a sharp tug as the flowing lava sucked my feet down toward it.

The heat on my feet and legs was intense, and getting worse by the second.

Just a few seconds more . . .

Then there was a new and different pain, higher up, around my ankles.

The iron collars were overheating.

I yanked my feet up and away, nearly splattering my lower legs with bits of lava.

The skin on my ankles was burning.

The chain had broken in two, but there were still a few inches of it dangling from either collar, and I knew if I tried to run with those flapping around, I'd break the bones in my feet.

I had to burn the rest of the chains off.

Pembroke was yelling curses at me, demanding help. I didn't even glance back at him.

Instead, I rolled onto my hip to get a better angle, then lowered my left foot toward the lava.

Right away, the collar began to sear my skin again.

Hold it . . . hold it . . .

I ground my teeth against the pain.

Yes!

The left foot was free of its chain. Now the right. I rolled over onto my other hip.

The mountain was rumbling beneath me. Pembroke was screaming. My left ankle was burning with pain.

I lowered my right foot toward the lava.

My leg began to shake. I couldn't make it stop.

I pulled it back, bending the knee and letting it rest on the shale.

Deep breaths. Don't panic.

I tried again.

The iron began to sizzle. The pain of the hot collar rose against my ankle.

I screamed. But I held on.

Then it was done and I was up, limping, hopping, both collars burning hot against my ankles.

It'll cool. It can't get worse.

I heard a roar of fury behind me.

“— SAVAGES!”

I turned around. Pembroke was kneeling over the hole he'd dug, halfway between me and the three-foot-wide stream of lava I had to cross to escape. I hopped in his direction, and as I got close, I saw the treasure.

It was piled into a wooden box the size of a small coffin. Pembroke had pried open the lid with his shovel head, and now he was digging frantically through loose mounds of little white seashells, searching in vain for something more.

But there wasn't any more.

The shells were the treasure.

Thousands upon thousands of them. A fortune in Native money.

A century ago, when the Okalu still ruled the New Lands, there was no end to what those shells might have bought. You could have raised an army with them.

Even now, back in the New Lands, there were tribes who traded with them. You could get an awful lot of corn pancakes and blankets for that many shells.

But not a ship. And not an army. Nothing Pembroke wanted.

He plunged his hand into the pile and threw a fistful of shells at me like an angry toddler.

“—!”

Then he turned, reaching back behind him, and I realized too late he was going for his gun. As he brought it back around, I started to run, but I tripped and fell hard on my stomach as the pistol roared.

The shot didn't hit me, but I kicked up so much ash when I fell that I opened my eyes into a cloud of it. I struggled to my knees, eyes burning from the ash, and the first thing I saw when my vision started to clear was Pembroke coming at me with the shovel.

I ducked and rolled, but that kicked up more ash, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut as I spluttered backward. When I opened them again, he was looming up over me, framed in a blossom of orange fire spewing into the sky behind him as he raised the shovel to bring it down on my skull.

Then he was staggering sideways, yelling in pain and surprise, and as he spun away from me, I could've sworn I saw a monkey straddling his head.

I lurched to my feet, woozy and confused, and I heard a screech and a yell and a clank, and then there was a monkey flying past me through the air, off the end of Pembroke's shovel.

“CLEM!”

It was Adonis, running full speed at Pembroke, screaming vengeance for his pet, but there was more fury than brains behind the attack, and Pembroke caught my brother hard in the chest with the shovel and knocked him off his feet.

Adonis landed on his back, coughing blind in his own little cloud of ash. Pembroke started for him.

Lying near my foot was one of the big smooth rocks that had marked the treasure. I picked it up and hurled it at Pembroke's head.

I missed. It sailed right past his nose and struck the shovel near the top of the handle just as he was cocking it back.

The shock of it threw Pembroke off just long enough for Adonis to roll out of the shovel's range and scramble backward toward me in a cloud of ash.

I got to my feet, looking for another big rock, but the only thing within reach was Pembroke's unloaded pistol. So I threw that.

I missed again.

As Pembroke ducked the pistol, I saw a burst of bright orange out of the corner of my eye as a fresh geyser spit up from the hillside not twenty feet above us.

Lava began to pour down the hill toward Pembroke. With all his focus on Adonis and me, he didn't see it coming—but with just three steps along the hillside toward us, he'd be out of its path.

He raised the shovel and took the first step in our direction.

“TELL ME MORE ABOUT MY MOTHER!” I screamed.

He paused.

“What?!”

The lava was rushing toward him.

“I WANT TO KNOW THINGS!”

He snorted in disgust and began moving again. “Too late for—”

“DID YOU LOVE HER?”

The question caught him short for half a second—just enough time for the molten rock to reach his right foot, burning through his boot in an instant and unbalancing him enough that he fell sideways, right into the oncoming stream.

I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of his scream.

By the time the screaming stopped and I opened my eyes again, there was nothing left of Roger Pembroke but a cloud of vapor.

I turned to look for my brother. He was a few feet away, wailing over the motionless body of his monkey.

“Cleeeeeeem!”

CLEM WASN'T DEAD—
or at least, Adonis insisted he wasn't. My brother clutched the monkey to his chest as we ran down the mountain, leaping and dodging the rivulets of lava that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.