Island of Shipwrecks (18 page)

Alex cringed. “I'm sorry, Ishibashi-san. I meant to tell you
when you first mentioned him, but we were distracted by the storm. Mr. Today . . . he died. He was killed by my brother. . . .” He sighed and briefly closed his eyes. “Never mind. It's complicated.”

Ishibashi narrowed his eyes. “Your family was the enemy of Marcus Today?”

“No!” Alex exclaimed. “No, not at all. I loved him. He was—he was like a father. . . .” He stopped, overwhelmed. He didn't have the emotional stamina left to explain further, except to add, “My brother is my enemy.” The lifeless words hit the rock walls with a dull thud. Alex dropped his gaze.

Ishibashi nodded. “I see. I am sorry.” He was silent for a moment as a wave of pain washed over his face, and then his countenance cleared and he held out the mass of broken pieces. “This will help you fix the tube?”

Alex reached out, and Ishibashi poured them into his hands.

“Thank you,” Alex said. “Truly.” He hoped the scientist knew he meant it.

Ishibashi's lips curved into a sympathetic smile. He put a hand on Alex's arm, nodded, and then disappeared once more, leaving Alex to his thoughts.

» » « «

When the sky grew lighter and the lightning faded, and the others headed to the shore to work on the ship, Alex darted out into the wind and rain with a woven bag full of tools, supplies, and the bits and pieces of the control panel that Ishibashi had given him. He made his way across the rocky terrain and slipped inside the tube, which offered a bit of shelter from the elements. Setting the bag down, he looked everything over carefully. The tube was in rough shape.

The entire unit slanted fifteen degrees or so in one direction—enough that Alex couldn't stand up straight in it without his head brushing the glass wall. He stepped outside and pressed his hands against it, trying to push it back the way it was supposed to be, but it didn't move. He pushed the tube harder, but nothing happened. Finally he slammed his shoulder into it with all his might.

It didn't budge. Alex stepped back to catch his breath, and then he moved around the circumference of the tube and saw that years of constant wind had forced sand and debris to build up under one side, causing the tilt. He scraped at the base of the tube with his hands, then thought the better of that and
pulled a long metal bar with a flat end from the bag and began chipping at the refuse. It was packed so tightly that it seemed practically petrified. Alex worked at it with all of his strength until a large chunk of debris cracked loose. He poked and prodded, trying to dig all the way to the root of the problem, and finally he dislodged the entire wedge enough to get a decent grasp on it with his fingers. He set down the tool, gripped the edge, and yanked it out. The tube groaned and settled into place with a satisfying thud.

A few moments in the rain had the block of particles disintegrating in Alex's hand. He tossed it aside. It crumbled and the wind picked up the pieces and sent them out to sea. Alex wiped his hands on his pants and stepped back inside the tube. It was slightly wobbly, but level for the most part. He jumped up and down a bit, making sure it was stable, and felt it settle even farther into place. Satisfied, Alex got on his knees and began scraping up the moss on the floor, pocketing the green bits to use later for components.

When it was fairly clean, he stepped out once more and began collecting rocks and dragging them over to the base of the tube. He propped them up against the sides in order to
hold the tube in place and act as a barrier to block further debris from working its way underneath.

“Now for the hard part,” he muttered, looking at the broken panel. He dug inside the bag and pulled out some of the pieces Ishibashi had given him. He looked at them. He studied the panel. He looked at the pieces again, hesitated, picked up one, and pressed it into a hole. It fell through and clattered to the floor.

Alex picked it up and stared some more. He hadn't felt this lost on a project in a long time. Clearly the mechanics of the tube system were beyond Alex's abilities, at least without some sort of guide. “Add
Repair Your Tube in Seconds!
to the list of books I need to find in Mr. Today's messy library,” he muttered. And then his heart sank as he remembered he might never get back there. He sighed, completely discouraged. “Simber,” he groaned. “Help. Get us out of here!”

» » « «

Over the course of the hour of calm, Alex tried plugging every piece into the panel in a variety of combinations. He used tools and supplies from Ishibashi to attempt to secure the controls
in place. He imagined what magical incantations Mr. Today might have come up with to make the thing work. He even managed to find the piece that looked like the most important directional button, and he got it to fit partially in the space where he thought it should go. But when he pressed it, nothing happened.

It was no use. The tube was broken beyond repair.

He kept trying, barely noticing the worsening storm until the sky grew too dark for him to see clearly. He looked up just in time to see a big scrubby bush flying through the air straight at him. Alex covered his face and let out a gasp as it slammed into the side of the tube, then bounced around it, out of sight.

Alex opened his eyes. He had to get to the shelter. He took one last look at the control panel, which now resembled something Carina's young son Seth might create—a pile of junk all stuck together—and shook his head. This tube would never work again. Eyeing the storm, he hoisted the bag to his shoulder, took a breath, and dashed out into it. The wind nearly took him away, so he bent down and pressed forward, shielding his face from the blowing bits of dirt and brush and the
thick waves of rain, until finally he made it back to the shelter. He staggered past Florence and ducked inside, the wind howling behind him.

When he lifted his head, he saw the Artiméans awaiting him with hopeful faces. Alex, streaming wet, took one look at them, sighed, and shook his head. “There's no fixing it,” he said. “Maybe Ms. Morning or Mr. Appleblossom would know what to do if they were here, but they're not. I tried everything I could think of.”

Fear returned to their eyes. Another hope dashed.

“I'm sorry,” Alex said.

“But what—” Crow began.

Alex interrupted. “We keep working on the ship until Simber comes,” he said. He looked from one dejected face to the next. “Please, just focus on the ship, and find useful things to do during the times we're stuck inside. Got it?” His words came out sharper than he intended, but he couldn't stand to hear another person ask what they'd do if Simber didn't come back. He wiped the rain and dirt from his eyes, and added with false surety, “He's coming back.”

The murmurs began anew.

Something about this situation reminded Alex of when Artimé was lost, and people were getting restless and angry. Only back then he'd had his silent partner to lean on. She was here now, but there was no leaning. She was among the first to turn away.

One by one his friends walked off, leaving Alex to brood alone.

W
ith such a limited amount of time each day to scavenge the other wrecks, shipbuilding was slow. Florence could work longer than the others in the gale-force winds each day, but not much—it didn't take very many minutes for the wind to be so furious that it would rip material and tools right out of her hands and carry them skittering across the rocky ground, no matter how hard she tried to hold on.

After the first few days of waiting just a little too long to pack up the excess material only to lose it to the wind, Florence, Copper, and Sky began to pay careful attention to
the storm's warning signs. Florence and Copper instructed the scavengers to gather up the extra material before it was too late and carry into the shelter each day when the hurricane returned. And they used the time in the shelter to construct the necessary pieces for the next day.

The scavengers had a variety of other things to keep them busy as well when they were forced inside the stone structure. Captain Ahab needed attention after his injuries, so Ms. Octavia did what she could to help him hear once more, going so far as to take his head apart and clean it out to see if that would help him make a bit more sense. Inside she found quite a lot of cobwebs, a tiny mouse that was slightly larger than Kitten, three honeybees, and a rather delicate butterfly cocoon attached to a twig. Everyone was quite sure these items must have contributed to the statue's increasing dementia. Ms. Octavia also found some pieces of Ahab's broken ear inside, which was definitely causing the rattling sound.

They placed the cocoon in a jar in the greenhouse where Ishibashi, Ito, and Sato could watch for the butterfly to appear, and they shooed the honeybees in that direction as well, to the scientists' great delight. They let the mouse run about through
the cave, where it chased Kitten and pounced on her a little too rambunctiously, causing Kitten's porcelain tail to get a chip in it. Luckily, Ms. Octavia fixed Kitten immediately, and then she herded the little mouse into one of the unused nooks and gave it some food and materials for nest making, which kept it busy from that point on.

Once Ahab's head was put back together and reattached, he felt better than he had in a long time, and he began to help with the ship's reconstruction, choosing the grand task of making a new helm from chunks of driftwood. Fox delivered some giant auger shells to the shelter, courtesy of Spike, who had batted them ashore with her tail. Ahab used the shells for the wheel's spindles, which gave it an exotic look.

Henry and Crow spent part of their indoor time helping Alex with spell components and assisting Copper with ship parts. But Henry often snuck away from the others and tagged along after Ishibashi, learning about the greenhouse that Mr. Today had helped create, and talking to the little man about scientific things.

Samheed, Lani, and Alex collected moss and pebbles every chance they could get to try to create new magical spells.
Ishibashi was gracious enough to let them go through the storage room as well as his personal collection of strange items that he'd picked up from wreckages over the years. There they found a large bucket of something called rubber cement, which Alex determined was perfect to help seal and preserve the ship—once he added a little magic, of course. He and the others went to work rolling bits of the rubber cement into tiny component-size balls so they'd be ready as soon as Florence and Copper finished the repairs. And while he worked, Alex thought and thought about how to construct the flying carpet component. After a few failed attempts at creating something viable with the moss he'd collected, he came to the conclusion that there was no way to make the moss dense enough without a loom to weave it. And that was definitely one thing Ishibashi didn't have.

One evening, Alex found a private nook, sat down, and rested his head against the wall in defeat. It was almost harder to create things here on this barren island than it was in Quill, where things were outlawed. At least there he'd have chicken bones to whittle into a makeshift loom. Here he only had random junk to work with, and the only things in abundance were moss and rocks.

Sky walked past the nook and hesitated when she caught sight of him. A shadow passed over her face and she nearly continued on. But instead she asked gruffly, “Everything okay?”

Alex turned to look at her. He shrugged. “Not really,” he said, surprising himself with the confession. He'd been increasingly positive in front of the team.

Sky knit her brows. “What's wrong?”

Alex looked away, embarrassed. “Nothing. I don't know why I said that.”

“Oh.” She shuffled her feet, contemplating her plan of escape from the awkwardness, when he spoke again.

“It's fine really. I'm just frustrated,” he muttered. “I can't create the flying carpet component without a loom, so if you happen to find one anywhere . . .” He shrugged again and his face got warm. “Stupid, I know. Never mind. I'm just in a weird funk. I'll just . . . yeah. I think I'm tired. I'll figure something out.”

“Yeah. Okay,” Sky mumbled. She frowned at the floor, and then turned and slipped away.

Alex watched her go, and then shook his head. “Stupid,” he muttered.

» » « «

By the end of a week, the Artiméans had grown accustomed to the schedule, and their days began running quite smoothly. During the hour or so of calm each day when Alex was outside, diving and pulling things from shipwrecks, he didn't have time to think about much besides the task at hand. But when he was in the rock shelter, he had plenty of time to think about how senseless all this ship repair was without Simber there to get them safely on board.

Where was he? Why wasn't he back yet? Were they so far from home that it would take him this many days to make a round trip?

Alex assumed that the cat's keen eyes would have no trouble spotting the ship on the shore of this island, in spite of the raging storm, but what if Alex and the others had actually floated much farther off course than Simber expected? What if Simber couldn't find them and was just flying aimlessly over the ocean? Or worse . . . what if something had happened to him? There was a time not long ago when Alex had foolishly thought Simber invincible. But he knew better now.