Firebrand (2 page)

W
e had to leave immediately. Kyte would have suspected that something was wrong when he couldn't find us. Other Guardians would be joining the search soon.

Griffin's eyes were fixed on the door handle that had mysteriously come unlocked during the night. I knew without asking that he was thinking the same thing as me—that someone had wanted us to see this cabin, with its mysterious machines and logbooks that chronicled the history of our world. Had that same person wanted us to learn the truth about Dare being our uncle? And that our Guardians, every last one of them, had always known it?

We left together and latched the door behind us. Toward the end of the corridor, the trapdoor to the ship's hold was closed. The stench from below still lingered, though, a reminder of the days our families had spent locked up in the belly of the ship.

Unfortunately, there was still one prisoner on board.

I covered my mouth with my tunic and checked on our father. He was imprisoned in a metal mesh cage in a room beneath the stairs. We wouldn't have discovered him at all except for the trail of blood that led to a hidden door. The lock on his cage was too strong to break.

Father hadn't moved. Aside from the shallow rise and fall of his chest, he looked like a corpse, battered and bruised.

Griffin touched my sleeve lightly. Until we could find a way to get Father out, it was best to let him rest.

Up on the deck, we filled our lungs with the fresh salt breeze. The last of the heavy dark clouds had flown away to the north, and the late-summer sun was searing through the wisps that remained. In the bright light, the events of the past three days seemed like a nightmare from which we'd finally awoken. But it had been real, all right.

Four days before, a storm had caught the Guardians by surprise. They'd sent us to the hurricane shelter on Roanoke Island. When we'd emerged the following day, we'd discovered that our colony was on fire. Pirates had kidnapped our families too. Only five of us were left: me and Griffin, my friends Alice and Rose, and Rose's younger brother, Dennis. Finally, the pirates had come after us, which enabled us to slip aboard their abandoned ship.

Somehow we'd survived. It should've been something to celebrate. But as I looked around me now, I felt nothing but panic.

The four Guardians were sprawled across the deck like a school of dead fish washed ashore at high tide. Having been cooped up for days, they should have been stretching. But only Kyte was well enough to move. The others lay still, heads turned toward the sun. Their faces were gaunt, lips chapped.

Rose bustled around the deck, handing out water canisters. She pointed to the stern, where we'd tethered our sailboats the night before. “I got the bags from the sailboat holds,” she said breathlessly. “The boats were ruined, so I cut them free. But the bags are fine.”

Her clothes hung slick against her. Her long blond braid flopped against her back. Of all of us, she'd been most desperate to rescue her parents—not just for herself, but also for Dennis. Now that they were reunited, she looked tired and relieved. Watching them, I wondered how things would change from now on. Rose and I had felt closer than ever on Roanoke, but it was no secret that her parents disliked me.

I rummaged through the bags and removed the remaining water canisters. Along with a little medicine, it was all we'd been able to bring with us from Roanoke Island. There'd been clothes and fruit and metal implements too, but we hadn't been able to carry it all. That would have to wait until the Guardians were strong enough to return.
If
they got strong enough.

Alice sidled up. She was the same age as Rose, but taller, with unkempt black hair and a perpetually suspicious expression. “It could be worse,” she muttered, looking around the deck at the motionless Guardians.

“How?” I asked.

“Well, we didn't find any dead bodies,” she said with typical directness. “Your father, my parents, Rose's parents . . . they're all here. Ananias and Eleanor too.”

As if he'd heard his name, my older brother staggered toward us. Ananias rubbed his legs, trying to get the muscles moving again. Apart from his soiled clothes and bruises on his arms, he looked mostly unharmed. The look on his face showed that he was as relieved to see us as we were to see him.

“What's wrong with everyone?” I asked him quietly.

He looked around as if he wasn't entirely sure. “They're dehydrated. The pirates wouldn't give them food or water.”

“Them
?
”

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “They kept us separate from the Guardians at first—me and Eleanor. Locked us in one of the cabins with blankets and water and food.”

He tilted his head to the left, where Alice's sister, Eleanor, sat alone a few yards away. Ananias and Eleanor were usually inseparable, so it was alarming to see them apart. Not as alarming as the bruises that ran along both her arms, though. They were yellow-brown, not purple or red, which meant that she'd been beaten a few days before, when everything started.

“What happened, Ananias?” I asked gently.

“The pirates kept asking us questions,” he said. “Stuff about a seer and a solution. Maybe they figured we'd give in quicker than the Guardians, but we didn't know what they were talking about. So they hurt her. In the end, they threw us in the hold as well.”

It was killing him that they'd hurt Eleanor instead of him, and that he'd been unable to stop it. He'd feel even worse once he discovered that it was Dare who had made sure he wasn't harmed. An unwanted gift from the uncle he didn't even know he had.

Ananias stared at his hands. “I wanted to use my element to escape. I thought . . . maybe if I created fire, I could burn a hole through the side of the ship, and escape through it. But we were below the waterline. I'd have flooded the hold and drowned us. Either that, or suffocated everyone with smoke.” The words came out fast, as if he was protesting his innocence.

“What exactly did they say about a solution?” I asked.

Nearby, Kyte coughed loudly. “What does it matter? The
solution
is make-believe.”

“You've heard of it?” murmured Ananias, incredulous.

“People have talked about a cure for the Plague ever since it started. Doesn't mean there is one.”

“Dare believed it,” I reminded him.

“Dare was a delusional tyrant. Anyway, Rose tells me he's dead. Drowned, she says.” Kyte pointed to Roanoke Island, only two hundred yards to the east, and choked out a single laugh. “With him gone, none of the pirates will be stupid enough to believe in this folly anymore.”

Alice, who was inspecting the massive sails for damage, spoke up: “We can't take that chance.” She waved her arm across the deck. “You all need time to recover. And while you do, we need to stay away from this place. They still have guns. Remember?”

“No! If we leave this place, our elements will fade.”

Everyone fell silent. Even Kyte must have realized the enormity of what he was saying, because his hands shook as he swigged from his canister.

“What do you mean,
fade
?” I asked.

“Don't pretend you didn't notice what happened to you on Roanoke. How everyone's elements are more powerful there.” He wiped his mouth with a dirty sleeve. “You leave this place, you risk losing your element completely.”

“What element would that be? The one you've kept from me my whole life?”

Rose raised her hand. “Please! Can we all calm down?”

“Calm down?” repeated Alice. “We're next to an island that's crawling with pirates. The same pirates who kidnapped our families and tried to kill us. How can we be calm?”

“I'm just saying . . . let's talk it through. Be reasonable.”

“Reasonable like your father, you mean?” Alice sneered. “What do you think of that, Thomas? Your dear Rose thinks her father is reasonable.”

I wished she hadn't said that. She was just trying to get a rise out of Kyte, but at our expense, not hers. Sure enough, Kyte's eyes flashed from Rose to me, simmering with anger.

Alice flashed a triumphant smile. “You should be happy, Kyte. You've done everything in your power to get Thomas and Rose together.”

His eyes came to rest on me. “I've done nothing of the sort,” he growled.

“Please, Father,” began Rose, “try to understand—”

“Stay out of this! You have nothing to say.”

“Leave her alone!” I shouted. “Without her, you'd be dead. You call yourself a Guardian, but what have you been
guarding
the past two days? Apart from the locked hold of a pirate ship.”

“We tried to resist the pirates, but we were outnumbered.”

“We still are now. And nothing we have is a match for those weapons. But then, you know that already, don't you? Just as you know that Roanoke Island is perfectly safe for us. All those years you told us to stay away from it, and it turns out you used to live there.”

I threw a quick glance at Ananias and Eleanor to make sure they were listening. They'd been lied to as well. Now they deserved to know the truth.

Kyte gritted his teeth. “Yes, there was a time we lived on Roanoke Island. Most of us were born there. Eighteen years ago, when everyone else evacuated during the Exodus, we decided to stay. When we heard about the Plague decimating the country, we knew we'd done the right thing. But sixteen years ago, the pirates paid us a visit and destroyed everything. After that, the colony was unsustainable, so we moved to Hatteras.”

“Why not rebuild?” I asked.

“We had neither the materials nor the means to repair anything—buildings, windows, roads, bridges. A town that can't be kept alive is dead—a Skeleton Town, nothing more.”

“What about the water tower? The boats? The clothes?”

“What about them?” Kyte sounded bored, as though my questions were irrelevant, instead of getting to the very heart of who we were. “They were just reminders of what used to be. Historical artifacts. Why would we show you things you couldn't build or repair? It would've been cruelty to tease you with seemingly magical objects that would never work again.”

“So hiding everything . . . spreading lies . . . it was all for us, then?”

“Open your eyes, Thomas. The only people you've ever seen are clan folk trapped on floating cities, or pirates who pillage other colonies to survive. We alone built a sustainable colony.”

“It was built on a lie,” I shouted.

Alice's mother, Tarn, raised a hand. She was tall like her daughter, and normally as defiant. Now she stooped forward, hugging her knees. “Come on, Kyte,” she said. “After everything they've been through, they deserve to know the truth.”

Kyte turned on her. “The
truth
? The whole truth, Tarn? Every little detail?”

Tarn reddened. As Kyte stared her down, she lowered her hand, bullied into submission.

Kyte grasped the ship's wheel and pulled himself upright. He wanted to be eye-to-eye with me, never mind the pain. “Our colony was a place to live and grow. A place where we could nurture and protect you.”

“Protect?”
I wanted to laugh, but I was too angry. “The pirates burned it to the ground. Look around you, Kyte. Is this your idea of protection?”

“We did our best. We counted on our elements to help us survive.”

I let him recognize the hypocrisy for himself before spelling it out. “Except mine, you mean.”

Kyte flinched, but recovered with a deep breath. He took a faltering step toward me, fists clenched at his sides. “Your element is a mistake. An anomaly. So is Griffin's ability to see the future. A generation ago you'd have been banished, sent far away where you'd be spared from knowing your true nature.”

I stepped forward to meet him. “How do you get to decide what's an element and what's not?”

“It's been that way ever since the beginning of the New World.” His voice was fading, but the hollow words still erupted from him. Spittle flew out of his mouth. “Earth, water, wind, and fire. Four boys. Four elements. One lost—”

He stopped speaking at the same moment that I heard a faint popping sound. Immediately, his fierce expression turned to one of surprise. His eyes grew wide. And then, quite suddenly, he dropped to his knees.

Rose jumped forward, but she couldn't catch him before his legs buckled and he hit the deck. Eyes blank, he clasped his hand against his chest.

Blood glistened vivid red against his filthy tunic.

D
own!” screamed Alice.

I threw myself onto the deck. Blood had already pooled around Kyte's left side. Rose cupped his head in her hands, pleading with him to stay alive.

“What happened?” cried Eleanor, sliding over. She looked around the deck as though the culprit might be one of us.

“It must be the pirates,” I said. “But how can their guns reach so far?”

I rolled to the edge of the ship and peered over the lowest rail. In the distance, a group of men were launching a cutter—a rowboat. This time they wouldn't have to fight wind and waves to get to us.

“They're coming,” I shouted.

There was another group behind them. I tried to count the pirates, to know what we were up against, but they ran along the shore, paths crisscrossing. I still didn't understand how they had been able to hit Kyte from so far away. As I raised my head to get a better look, I saw something that reflected the sun. Instinctively I dropped down. A moment later, the wood beside my hand splintered.

“Pirates on the shore! Two hundred yards. They have guns.”

Alice appeared beside me. She grabbed a piece of my tunic and tugged it so that I'd face her. “I saw how close that was,” she whispered fiercely. “You could've gotten yourself killed!”

I couldn't think about that. Rose and Eleanor were dragging Kyte's body toward the stairs, trying to get him below deck. Dennis struggled to support their mother as she followed the trail of blood. Everything was chaos.

“We have to get out of here,” I yelled.

Ananias crawled toward us. “What about our elements? You heard what Kyte said: They'll fade away if we leave.”

“Can you stop those weapons with your element?”

He still seemed unsure. He clung to his precious element as though it was all he had to offer.

“Listen,” I snapped. “Unless you can take on a cutter full of pirates, as well as shooters, we better move.”

Finally he gave a sharp nod, and signaled for Griffin to join him at the stern anchor.

Alice was already heading for the bow so that she could raise the anchor there. I was right behind her. Side by side we pushed the anchor winch.

“We need to lower the foresail,” she said.

“How? If you stand up, they'll fire at you.”

“What other choice do we have? We need to start moving.”

Once the anchor was up and secured, we worked the sail winch. Little by little, the sail began to show.

Straightaway, there was another popping sound—the telltale sound of gunfire. I scanned the deck, heart in my mouth, but all of us were keeping low. “What are they firing at?” I yelled.

Before anyone could reply, the sail caught the wind and billowed, pushing the canvas taut. But then there was more popping and a new sound filled the air: tearing cloth. They were firing at the sail.

Alice raised her head just enough to see the shore. “They're a hundred and sixty yards away. And still firing.”

While Griffin took up position beside the wheel, Ananias joined us. “We can't afford to lose the sails,” he shouted. “But how are we going to get out of here otherwise?”

“Wait!” cried Alice. “The tide is going out. Maybe the current will carry us.”

“Not fast enough. We have to lower the mainsails.”

“What if we lose them?”

I glanced over the rail. The pirates in the cutter were gaining on us, but the shooting had stopped. “Maybe we're too far away for the guns to reach us,” I said.

Alice stared up at the torn foresail. “Then let's lower the mainsail and take our chances.”

We moved along the deck and pushed the winch handle to lower one of the mainsails. I'd seen the massive canvas sheets on the clan ships that passed our colony from time to time, but hadn't realized how truly gigantic they were until now. As soon as the wind caught it, the ship jarred into motion, gobbling up water. The pirates in the cutter fell back so quickly, it was like they'd stopped moving.

While I caught my breath, Alice stared at the giant waterway before us. “I'm worried,” she said. “I don't know how deep the sound is, but we need to get out of here before low tide. The currents are fierce. If we run aground, the Guardians will drown.”

Usually that would have sounded crazy. Every one of us was a strong swimmer. But a quick look at her parents assured me that she was correct. Her mother, Tarn, couldn't stand up. Her father, Joven, was crawling down the staircase, presumably to check on Kyte. Neither of them had the strength to fight strong currents.

Waves crashed against the bow, powerful but oddly comforting. What lay beneath the surface was a mystery, though. Rose had once told me about the remains of ships that rested on the waters around Hatteras. She saw them when she was diving.

“Let's head for the ocean,” I said.

“And go where?” Alice asked.

I didn't want to tell her about the message I'd heard in Dare's cabin, not like this. I wasn't even sure she'd believe me. “Griffin found a map in one of the cabins. There's a refugee colony to the southwest.”

I waited for her to ask which cabin, but she didn't. She didn't ask for more information about the refugee camp either. Maybe she didn't want to press me for details while Ananias and her mother were around to overhear. “How do we know it's safe, Thom?”

“It can't be any more dangerous than Roanoke Island, right?” A weak answer, but she let it slide.

We were fast approaching the southern tip of the island. We'd need to make a decision soon.

“What if Kyte's telling the truth and our elements fade as we leave Roanoke?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Kyte also said there were only four elements, remember? Earth, water, wind, and fire. If he was wrong about that, he might be wrong about this. Anyway, wasn't it you who told me we're more than the sum of our elements?”

She smiled at that. “Yes. I guess I did.” She stared into the distance and narrowed her eyes, engaging her element, or whatever it was that heightened her senses. Like me, her main power didn't fit the Guardians' tidy definitions of what an element ought to be. Because of that, she'd kept it hidden from us her whole life. Even though I'd discovered her secret a couple of days before, it was still hard to believe what she was able to do.

“The Oregon Inlet is about six miles away,” she announced. “At the speed we're going, that won't take long. This ship is amazing.”

She was right. Now that we were on open water, the wind freshened and the ship sliced through the water like a knife.

With her hair flapping about, Alice seemed to become part of nature itself. She didn't even blink as she focused on the inlet, too far away for me to make out. She didn't press me for information on the map either, or where we'd found it. Or how far away the refugee colony was, or how I could be sure it was still there. What if we sailed for days, only to discover another ruined, deserted colony? What if we didn't have enough food to make it that far? It was a miracle that Alice hadn't demanded answers.

That's when I realized that Alice had been looking for an excuse to leave all along. She'd always told me she would do anything to escape our Hatteras Island colony. At last she'd have that chance.

»«

The Oregon Inlet was a mile-wide channel dividing the southern tip of Hatteras Island from the island to the south. Massive stone columns rose from the water, the remains of a collapsed bridge. I didn't dare to imagine how close to the surface the rest of the bridge was.

“How's the water level?” I asked.

Alice's eyes flickered left and right as she steered the ship between the columns. “All right, I think. But we lost speed when we changed course.”

Sure enough, the mainsail shifted against the mast as though sniffing out the wind.

In the distance, hidden among grassy dunes, were the shells of a few wooden cabins—a tiny settlement I'd never seen from Hatteras.

“What's that?” I called to her.

Alice turned to her right but didn't answer at first. “I don't know. I didn't realize it was there.”

Ananias and Griffin had noticed it too now. They stood beside the rail and stared at the mysterious settlement.

“It was a colony,” explained Tarn. I'd almost forgotten that she was on deck with us, let alone listening. She ran her fingers through her hair, short like her daughter's, but matted and coarse. “Not so different from ours on Hatteras.”

“What happened to it?” asked Alice. “Where is everyone?”

“Dead. Died years ago.” Tarn stared into the distance, gasping shallow breaths. Her voice was hoarse. “No one believed the rats could make it out this far. The island settlements are so irregular—entire regions uninhabited. Rats need food and human waste to survive, and there's so little of it here. But then one of the clan ships weighed anchor to trade. No one knew they had rats on board. Or that a couple would get into the bags they brought with them on the cutter.” She made it sound simple, almost inevitable.

“You saw it happen?” I asked.

“No. But we used to trade with the colony too. We'd row to the middle of the inlet . . . exchange news and goods and food. Then, one day, they didn't come when we signaled.”

Ananias wiped sweat from his brow. “Why didn't they cross the inlet? Try to escape.”

“The colony was small. The people were old too. You wouldn't understand, but sometimes it's better to die with a loved one than to live alone.”

We'd passed the columns now, and the settlement had disappeared from view so completely, I would have sworn I'd imagined it. Half a mile farther and we'd be able to look back at Hatteras Island. We might catch a glimpse of Bodie Lighthouse, and imagine the place farther up the coast where our colony used to be. I wondered if we'd ever see it again.

“What's Croatoan?” asked Ananias.

I followed his gaze to the left-most column, where the word was written in giant letters.

Tarn hesitated. “Croatoan is a myth—a story of a colony that mysteriously disappeared from this area hundreds of years ago. Legend has it they left nothing but the word
croatoan
carved into a tree. Our neighbors would've known about the legend. They probably wrote that when they knew the end was near. Their own farewell, in a way.”

There was something familiar about the word, but it took me a moment to realize why. Alice and I had seen the letters
CRO
daubed on a cabin on the mainland across the sound from Roanoke Island. More mysterious letters from an extinct civilization.

Alice beckoned me over. “Grab your binoculars,” she whispered as I drew near.

“I don't know where they are. Why?”

“There are
two
words on that column.”

Sure enough, when I squinted, I could see two sides. On the east-facing side, the word
CROATOAN
was large and clear. But on the south-facing side was another word, too small and faint for me to read. “What does it say?”

Alice hesitated. “It says . . .
murder
.”

Before I could respond, footsteps sounded on the staircase. Eleanor paused before us, long brown hair flowing in the breeze, looking for all the world like an apparition. Only her bruises looked real.

“Kyte, Guardian of the Wind, has passed on,” she said. Her voice was quiet and emotionless. “Kyte is gone.”