Island of the Sun (11 page)

Eleanor inhaled deeply and slowly, afraid to explain but determined to do it anyway. “I was dreaming about the rogue planet.”

Her mom brought her hands down. “I . . . that's
what I thought. What I was afraid of back on the plane.”

“You mean about the Concentrator talking to me?” she said. “It was just a dream, Mom. I can handle it.”

“I know you believe so. But think about it. When was the last time you had this dream?”

Eleanor wondered where her mom was going with that. “In the Arctic. Next to the Concentrator.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what? Maybe that just means there's one close by. Maybe that means we can find it.”

“Or maybe it's reaching out to you. Just like you're trying to reach out to it. Maybe it's— Oh, for God's sake, Eleanor, you sounded . . . I don't want to say it.”

“No.” Eleanor sat up in bed, and the blankets fell away from her, raising instant goose bumps. “Say it. Whatever it is, just say it.”

“All right. You sounded possessed.”

Eleanor said nothing. Her body started to shake, in fear and from the cold, so she dove back under the covers and turned her back on her mom. She wasn't
possessed
. Possessed people weren't in control. There was something else inside them calling the shots, some demonic presence. Eleanor felt in control of herself, mostly, except for the vision, the only thing that came to her unbidden. Whatever was happening to her, one
thing was certain: her connection to the Concentrator was a good thing, because for all her mom's fears, it meant that Eleanor could find it, and stop it.

“Good night,” Eleanor said.

“Sweetie,” her mom said. “Ell Bell—”

“Don't call me that,” Eleanor said, “That's not—” and her voice broke over the memory of Uncle Jack. That was what
he
called her.

“Okay,” her mom said. “I won't.”

“I'm done talking about this,” Eleanor said. “All of it.”

Her mom was quiet for a while, just watching her; Eleanor could feel it, until Mom also rolled over, and they both went back to sleep.

E
LEANOR WOKE BEFORE HER MOM DID.
S
HE EASED OUT OF
bed and tiptoed across the cold floor to the tiny bathroom, and then stepped into its narrow coffin of a shower. The water never really got hot, but it was warm enough that she wasn't miserable. As she rinsed off, she thought about the dream from the previous night, and the confrontation with her mom, and planned what she might say if her mom tried to bring it up again. When she came out of the bathroom, drying her hair, her mom was already awake, standing at the window, looking outside.

“Morning,” her mom said.

“Morning.”

“It's a neat little town, isn't it?”

“Uh-huh,” said Eleanor. She was happy to pretend the previous night hadn't happened if that was her mom's plan.

“I guess I'll shower, too.” Her mom moved past her, into the bathroom.

Eleanor sighed and sat down on the sofa to wait. Before her mom came back out, someone knocked at their door.

“Who is it?” Eleanor asked.

“It's Julian. My dad says to tell you Amaru is already here. We'll be down in the lobby.” He sounded grumpy, but maybe that was because he hadn't eaten dinner the night before.

When her mom came out of the shower and dressed, they went down together and found that Isabela had apparently heard that they had all skipped dinner the previous night, and insisted that they eat some breakfast in the restaurant. The others were already seated at a table when Eleanor and her mom walked in.

“She says it's on the house,” Luke said. “She seems convinced we'll starve to death out on the water without it.”

“I told Amaru we wanted to try diving today,” Dr. Powers said. “He said he'd get the equipment and he'll come back for us shortly.”

“Very well,” her mom said, taking a seat. “How did everyone sleep?”

“Fine,” Dr. Powers said. “The boys, too.”

“As comfortable a couch as I've ever tossed and turned on,” Luke said.

“The bed wasn't bad either,” Betty said. “What about you and Eleanor?”

“Good,” Eleanor said, waiting to see what her mom would add, if she would bring up the dream, and Eleanor speaking in alien, with the others at the table. She really didn't need them thinking she was even more of a freak than they did already.

“I woke once or twice,” her mom said. “But it was okay.” She gave Eleanor a look but said nothing more.

Isabela brought out their plates, all laden with the same thing: rice stir-fried with beans and sausage, with a fried egg on top, and hot chocolate to drink.

“We call this calentado,” their hostess said. “Enjoy.”

They did. Every plate at the table was empty in a matter of minutes, and then they all went to wait in the lobby for Amaru. When he returned, they walked together out into the bright morning sun and a city that seemed a bit bleary somehow. Many vendors hadn't yet set up their stalls or opened their storefronts, and those who had did not appear alert or happy about it. It was cold, too.

Eleanor strolled up alongside Amaru. “So how old is your son?”

“He is two years and four months old,” Amaru said, and the smile that appeared on his face was spontaneous and genuine. “His name is Lucio, and I think he might be a devil.”

Eleanor laughed. “I think they're supposed to be at that age, right?”

“Very true,” he said. “And if he were not also an angel, I don't know what I would do with myself. Or with him. He breaks my heart and puts it back together in the same day.” He closed his mouth and looked down at the ground suddenly.

“What is it?” Eleanor asked.

“It's . . . I wonder what kind of world he will have when he grows up. Your mother probably has the same thought when she looks at you.”

“You don't want to know what my mom thinks when she looks at me.”

“No?”

“We haven't exactly been . . . getting along.”

“But I'm sure she still loves you and would do anything for you. As I would do for Lucio.”

Eleanor knew he was right, even if she didn't always agree with her mom.

Amaru led them through town, back down to the
pier. Aboard his pontoon boat, Eleanor saw just four diving tanks, with suits and masks and flippers.

“That was all I could get,” he said. “The city has suspended diving tours.”

“Suspended?” Dr. Powers asked.

“Yes,” he said. “The Global Energy Trust is working on something in Titicaca, and they asked us to cease our tours.”

“What about us?” Eleanor asked.

Amaru winked. “We'll be careful.”

The boat pulled away from the dock and back onto the lake, its water a fluid and faceted gem in the morning sun. The return trip to Isla del Sol seemed to take longer than the trip to Copabanana had the previous night. Perhaps that was because Eleanor felt both anxious and eager. Rather than sit along the side of the boat, under its canopy, she stood at its bow, hands on the front rail, trying to sense the humming of the Concentrator. She felt nothing yet, but it was difficult with the engines roaring behind her, and the rush of the waves and water against the boat.

Twenty minutes out from the dock, they reached the island's first spit of land and continued along its length, past a few ruins both smaller than the Chin-kana and not as old in appearance, the central mountain ridge rising up behind them in grassy terraces.

Eventually, they swung around a rocky, jagged point and pulled into the same bay as the day before, the one beneath the Titikala rock. Amaru steered the boat back to the docks and tied them off. No sign of the G.E.T., and they seemed to be the only ones on this part of the lake and island.

“Okay,” he said. “Who will dive first?”

“I will,” Eleanor said.

“As will I,” her mother said.

“So we can take one more,” Amaru said, looking around.

“I'd rather not,” Betty said.

“I'll go,” Julian said, just a breath before Finn, who seemed about to say the same thing.

“Neither of you are going without me,” Dr. Powers said. “Your mother would kill me.”

“You're going to worry about that now?” Finn said.

Eleanor laughed at that, as did her mom and Betty.

Then Luke stepped forward. “I'll go.”

“Good,” Amaru said. “We will start with a quick lesson in the shallow water, and then we go down deeper to a submerged temple. Many tourists enjoy seeing it.”

Eleanor wondered if that meant they were as unlikely to find anything there as they had been up on the island.

“Is this really safe?” Betty asked.

“Yes,” Amaru said. “Some people say you need scuba certification, but for this dive . . .” He shook his head. “We won't go too deep.”

They helped him take all the diving equipment off the boat, along the pier, to the lake's shore where the waves slapped the rocks. Eleanor had never been particularly frightened of water but also hadn't had many opportunities to go swimming. Here, staring at the impenetrable surface of the cold lake, her breathing sharpened, her heartbeat kicked up, and the altitude magnified the effects of her fear on her body.

“Let's put on your suits,” Amaru said.

Eleanor swallowed and turned away from the lake toward their guide.

He explained that the suits he had for them were dry suits. “Wet suits are not warm enough. The deep lake water is below fifty degrees at all times.”

Then he gave them each a thermal undersuit, which they took turns changing into using the privacy of the boat, before helping them each get into their outer suits. Eleanor took the smallest, which Amaru said would work even though it was a bit large on her. Its shell was made of blue rubber and smelled like it, with tight seals at the ankles, wrists, and neck. It was cumbersome to wear, particularly at her elbows
and knees, where it was harder to bend, but she felt instantly warm inside it. After that, they pulled on neoprene gloves, boots, and hoods, then strapped their flippers to their feet.

“Here is a flashlight for each of you,” Amaru said. “Now, your diving tanks.”

He helped each of them put on the backpacks that carried their diving cylinders, held to their bodies by a complicated set of straps that went over their shoulders and around their waists and legs.

“It's heavy,” Eleanor said, shifting the weight, her rubber suit squeaking.

“About as heavy as you were riding on my back at three years old,” her mom said.

Next, Amaru helped them put on their face masks and the breathing apparatus he called a regulator. It went into Eleanor's mouth, stretching her lips.

Amaru then turned on the air in their tanks. “Breathe,” he said. “Through your mouth, not your nose.”

Eleanor's mask covered her nose, so she couldn't breathe out of it, and she quickly got used to the stale-tasting air coming out of the hose into her mouth.

“Take full breaths,” Amaru said. “That is very important, especially at this altitude.” As they grew accustomed to the regulators, he put on his own
equipment, and when he was finished, he watched them for a moment longer. His mask was different from theirs and covered his whole face. “Good,” he said, his voice now coming through an earpiece in Eleanor's mask, sounding like a radio in the next room. “Are we ready to go into the water?”

With the regulator in her mouth, Eleanor couldn't say a word, but she gave a thumbs-up, and they all waddled forward, clumsy as penguins, lifting their knees and their flippered feet high. When Eleanor reached the water, she hesitated a moment and then took her first step into it.

She couldn't feel the water's coldness, but she could sense its pressure against her suit, like hands climbing up her legs, and then her waist, with each step ahead.

“Stop there,” Amaru said. “Now, lower yourself into the water. Go slow. I want you to put your head under the surface. But try to keep your breathing normal.”

Eleanor bent at her knees and waist, letting the water's hands climb up the rest of her, surrounding her up to her neck. Then she dunked her head under. And stopped breathing. She couldn't help it. Through her mask, she could see the ground clearly beneath them, her mom next to her, bubbles rising up from around her face. But it was hard for Eleanor to override the instinct to not, under any circumstances, take
a breath underwater. Moments went by. She felt a light-headedness setting in, and a burning urge in her lungs to gasp, which she finally did, involuntarily. But that seemed to get her over the threshold, and afterward, she found she could breathe normally. The hiss of the air through her regulator sounded loud in her ears, but over it she could still hear Amaru.

“Very good,” he said. “Let's stay here for a few minutes. Try moving around. Swim.”

Now that Eleanor's body had accepted that she could breathe underwater, she felt ready to
go
. She kicked her flippers and swam forward, into deeper water, and dove downward to the rocky, weedy bottom, where she pirouetted using her arms and looked back up at her mom. Both she and Luke were slowly stretching and kicking, moving about like whales.

Eleanor pushed off toward them, slowed by the drag of her suit, but found the sensation thrilling. She was weightless. She was flying. Up, down, left, right, any direction she chose.

“Good,” Amaru said. “You are all doing very well. Give me an okay sign if you feel ready to go down to the temple.”

Eleanor formed a circle with her thumb and index finger and looked right through it at him. Her mom and Luke gave the same sign.

“Okay,” Amaru said. “I will go slowly. Stay with me.”

He spun in the water and kicked his flippers, swimming with his arms trailing at his sides. Eleanor adopted the same posture and worked to make the scissors movement of her legs smooth and even. Her mom swam up alongside her, and they shared a smile with their eyes and a thumbs-up.

A short distance on, the bottom of the lake plunged away from them into darker water, and Amaru switched on his flashlight and guided them down into it. The fear Eleanor had first experienced at the lakeshore returned, an irrational and insistent dread that felt the same as a fear of snakes, or of spiders. Some deep warning painted on the walls in the caveman part of her brain.

Movement at the edge of her eye caused her to flinch, but she realized it was only a brownish fish, and not a very large one. She kept her eyes on Amaru and the blade of his flashlight and made sure her mom stayed in her peripheral vision, which was limited by the edges of the diving mask. Before long, the tunnel of her vision and the narrow reach of her own flashlight tightened her claustrophobia, even as the pressure on her ears mounted.

“We're over sixty feet deep now,” Amaru said. “The temple is close.”

Eleanor strained to see ahead into the murk. Then she tried to shift her awareness and listen for the hum of the Concentrator, wondering if at any moment she would see its dark outline loom out of the depths like black coral. She even stopped breathing for a couple of moments to find a space of silence in which to focus.

“You okay, Eleanor?” Amaru asked, looking back toward her.

She nodded and inhaled.

“Try to keep your breathing even,” he said. “Very important at this altitude.”

She gave him a thumbs-up.

They resumed their dive, and a moment later, among the chaotic contours of rock and grasses along the bottom, Eleanor spotted a straight line, part of a large stone wall carved at right angles, taller than Uncle Luke, and half again as wide, stretching off into the depths.

“You see that?” Amaru asked. “It goes on for two thousand feet.”

Eleanor marveled at it as they swam along it, and soon they reached a wide flight of stone steps cutting through it. Amaru turned them upward, and at the top of the stairway they reached a flat terrace of paving stones.