The Secret of Ka (8 page)

That was the end of our discussion about his hand.

Now, flying over the water on our magic carpet, halfway to God knew where, I reflected on his story and realized it had all been a lie. There were too many convenient details. A burning shard had hit his goggles and melted into them. He worked with the band saw every day, but rather than taking a step back to get his bearings or turning it off, he swept his hand directly in its path. Then, his hand just happened to land on the one spot where it could be destroyed.

Who cared if it was Turkey? He was working for an American firm. He should have been able to sue for big bucks.

Plus, who would have given a teenager such a skilled job in the first place? The fact that Amesh was now a gofer made sense. Making deliveries was an ideal job for a young man on a moped. But cutting critical cables to within a fraction of an inch? Gimme a break—that was a job for someone with years of experience.

Amesh continued to sleep. Scooting around, I saw the knot on his right sleeve was loose. His stump was visible, although it was only a shadow in the dark. Taking out my flashlight and cupping my palm over it to reduce the glare, I decided to take a closer look.

"Forgive me, Amesh," I whispered.

I had to be sure I was right. I lifted his sleeve several inches.

Amesh had not lost his hand with a single clean cut. The skin on his lower right arm was heavily scarred. A number of scars reached past his elbow. The discolored flesh on his stump was particularly bumpy. The surgeon who had sewn it together had done a poor job. Or perhaps he had not had much to work with.

The wound had been no accident.

It was as if Amesh had been hacked with a sword.

T
HE FACT THAT AMESH
had fallen asleep did not stop me from eventually passing out. Perhaps the carpet was casting spells, or else I simply stopped worrying about falling into the water. It had been a long day and I was totally exhausted.

When I woke up and checked my watch, I discovered it had stopped. It read 10:35 p.m. That would have been an hour after we'd left Istanbul.

It was an expensive watch. Waterproof. Shockproof.

The battery was fresh. It should not have stopped.

I didn't have time to worry about it. It was no longer dark, although we were light years away from a sunny day. The carpet had transported us to an eerie fog bank, where there were no stars or sky. And it had lowered us to within three feet of the water. Our speed had also decreased; we were creeping along.

The fog was neither cold nor warm. It did not even feel damp. I might have mistaken it for smoke, but I smelled no odor. I could not tell from which direction the light was coming. There was no wind and yet the fog moved, forming brief-lived spirals that spun up from below. As one swept over me I felt a distinct chill. They looked like ghosts.

The stars in the center of the carpet had disappeared. In their place was a gray-green circle—the same color as the water.

I had lost my desire for adventure.

I wanted to go home.

Amesh sat with his chin resting on his chest, breathing heavily.

"Amesh," I said, then louder, "Amesh!"

He did not wake up. I tried shaking him. He slumped to the side; he almost fell off. Still, he did not regain consciousness. "Amesh!"

I was terrified. He was breathing; he was alive. Why didn't he wake up? Was there something about this place we were traveling through that was keeping him asleep? Of course I blamed the fog and not the carpet, although the reverse could just as easily have been true. I felt it was a mistake that I had woken up in this place. I wished I hadn't.

Not long after, I blacked out again.

***

When I awoke next, Amesh was softly calling my name. I sat up with a start. I had passed out sitting in his direction, and as soon as I saw him I gave him a quick hug. "You're all right!" I gushed.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because ... never mind, I was just worried." I realized our surroundings had changed again. The creepy fog had lifted and the sky was back, along with the stars, although a rising sun in the east was chasing them away. Yet in the opposite direction, near the horizon, was a weird red glow. The color seemed angry; a bloody red. It was shrouded in mist and I could not tell if it was caused by a single star or planet. At the same time it was sinking below the horizon.

I mentioned it to Amesh but he had no idea what it was.

"I woke up just before you," he said, gesturing in the direction of the sunlight. "I can't believe we slept the whole night."

"Maybe we didn't." My body was stiff from sitting for so long, and yet I knew I had not been asleep seven hours. But how could one argue with the heavens? It was a brand-new day. And now my watch read 6:30 a.m. I said the time out aloud. Amesh's expression suddenly turned glum.

"My Papi's going to kill me," he said.

"I won't tell you I told you so."

"You just told me."

"Well, that's beside the point. Where are we?"

Amesh frowned as he scanned the area. The carpet had climbed once more to ten feet, and it was traveling at about ten miles an hour. The color of the water had returned to normal, but the red glow was not the only thing that troubled me.

Like I said, my dad had taught me a few things about the stars, but I was not an expert when it came to astronomy. Still, I did not recognize a single constellation. I tried to explain my difficulty to Amesh. He brushed me off.

"The sun's coming up. There aren't that many stars to go by."

"There's that weird red glow, too. We can't just ignore it."

"I'm not ignoring anything; I'm just trying to figure out where we are. If the carpet stayed at this speed for eight hours, we could be two hundred kilometers from shore."

A kilometer was about two-thirds of a mile, I reminded myself. He was saying we were about 140 miles from Istanbul.

"You said if we kept going, we'd run into the Aegean Sea. Isn't that full of islands?"

"Sure. We're bound to run into one. But there's more chance we'll see one in the distance. We should keep the binoculars handy and practice turning the carpet. If we see one, we'll want to head straight for it."

"You don't want to retrace our path home?"

Amesh yawned and stretched. "I can't sit here another eight hours. Let's find an island. They'll have boats heading back to Istanbul. It's the biggest port in the area."

The red glow vanished as the sun rose higher. We decided to have breakfast. Protein bars, candy bars, and bottled water. Amesh chewed the peanut butter bars with relish.

"I thought you were nuts when you packed all this stuff," he said.

"It goes to show how good my intuition is."

"You've been right about a lot of stuff, Sara."

I blushed. Just the way he said my name, it got me.

"A lot of lucky guesses. Usually my batting average is lower."

"Batting average?" he asked.

"Like in baseball."

"Oh. I'm serious. You were right about the carpet, how to fly it, the ley lines. Everything."

"Does this mean you'll be my slave from now on?"

"I feel like I already am. Why don't you use your intuition and figure out how to turn the carpet?"

"Okay," I agreed, although my intuition was still telling me to do the opposite and keep going. The carpet knew where it was heading and we would know when we got there. But there was no point in saying that to Amesh.

Especially since we had a more pressing problem.

"I have to pee," I told him when we were done eating.

He turned red. "So do I."

"Why are you blushing? You can just slide up on your knees and pee off the side into the water."

He turned a deeper red, if that was possible. "I can't do that."

"Don't be embarrassed. I won't look. I'm the one with the problem."

"Why?"

"Duh! I'm a girl!"

He looked away. "I'd rather not talk about this."

"We have to talk about it. I can't hold it much longer."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a girl and Allah made us inferior to boys. What do you mean, why not? My bladder's about to burst."

"You shouldn't have drunk so much water."

"I was thirsty! Besides, you drank twice as much as I did."

"I did not!"

"You drank half a bottle! And you ate three protein bars!"

"Well, why didn't you stop me?"

"You were hungry. But forget that. Are you going to go or not? There's no reason for you to suffer just because I am."

"In my country, males do not urinate in front of females."

"Like it's a big sport in America! I'll turn around and put my fingers in my ears so I can't hear you."

He did not respond. He was simply too embarrassed.

Fortunately, ten minutes later, when I was on the verge of stripping and hanging from the back of our glider, we spotted an island. It appeared small, devoid of trees and grass, although there was an array of low-lying hills that blocked a clear view of the far side. I was learning not to make snap judgments. For all we knew, it might be miles across and have a hotel on the other end.

The carpet took us beyond the shoreline before it slowed and began to lose altitude. A moment later we were sitting on a sandy beach and staring at each other. A wind howled against the stone cliffs and in our ears. The sun was bright in the sky. The stars in the center of the carpet had stopped moving. They faded until they were no longer glowing.

I was the first one to shake myself and stand. "Get up," I said.

"What's the hurry?"

"You know."

"You don't have to take the carpet with you."

"We have to keep an eye on it at all times. We don't know anything about this island." The second he was off the carpet, I knelt and rolled it up.

"All I'm saying is I can watch it while you—"

"I like carrying it," I interrupted, holding it close. I did not know why I felt so possessive of the carpet. Especially here, of all places, it wasn't as though he could steal it from me. "I'll be back in a few minutes."

"I'll meet you here in five!" he shouted after me.

Not far from the shore were plenty of boulders, which offered many places to pee. Honestly, I could not recall having ever felt such relief. When we met back at the beach I was in a much better mood, although Amesh was puzzled.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

He gestured to the island. "I don't recognize this place."

"You told me there were plenty of islands out here. Why should you recognize it?"

He frowned. "Let me see that map you brought."

I reached in my pack and gave it to him. As he studied it, his frown deepened. "Well?" I said finally.

He sighed. "I don't know where we are."

"Can you make an educated guess?"

He handed back the map. "I suspect the carpet picked up speed while we slept and flew us deep into the Aegean Sea, maybe close to Greece."

I almost mentioned the fog we'd passed through but something held me back. I didn't like thinking about it, never mind talking about it. Plus, he'd never believe I couldn't wake him up.

"That's good, right? The Greek islands are crowded with tourists. We should be able to hitch a ride back with someone."

Amesh nodded, although there was doubt in his eyes.

"We'll be okay," he said.

We debated sticking to the shore and heading right or left, but felt that hiking straight inland would bring us to civilization faster. I favored the latter course for another reason. I worried about our water supply. We had four one-liter bottles. With our dozen protein bars and eight candy bars, we could do without real food for a while. But we would be dead in two days—three at the outside—without water. I hoped we'd stumble upon a stream soon.

The wind disappeared as we left the beach behind. But there were problems with hiking inland. First, there were no paths and the ground was loose and rocky. Gravel kept seeping into my shoes. I had to keep stopping to empty them. Second, the hills that looked low and gentle from the sea were nevertheless hard to climb. I had always hated walking uphill. While Amesh coasted along, I panted heavily.

The temperature increased rapidly as the sun rose higher.

But the biggest problem was, we didn't know where we were going. At least if we had tried circling the island, staying by the shore, we would have had a clear direction. But even with our compasses, we couldn't plot a course because we would no sooner crest a row of hills than discover another row behind it. Just as I had guessed, the island was much larger than it appeared from the sea.

After three hours of hiking, Amesh called for a halt. I was grateful. My throat was parched and I had blisters forming on my feet. Amesh opened another bottle of water. He had greater endurance and was carrying more weight—he had our backpack and the bottles on his back—but he was going through the water faster than I was. Naturally, I carried the carpet.

"Careful," I warned. "We only have two bottles after that one."

He gestured to some tired-looking grass and a few low-lying shrubs.

"There has to be water here for this stuff to grow," he said.

"I wonder. They look pretty thirsty. Maybe they live off the rain."

He shook his head and handed me the bottle. "We have no choice. We need to drink to keep hiking, and to find water, we have to hike. Unless you want to find some shade and take a long nap and wait for someone to rescue us."

I accepted the bottle and took a hearty slug. "That idea's not as silly as it sounds. Not the rescue part, but the waiting until dark. Then we might be able to find another ley line and explore the island from the air."

"You wouldn't use the carpet to take us home?"

"I'd like to take a look around first." Amesh did not look happy with my answer so I added, "Well, I don't think it took us here to die."

He snorted. "There you go again, speaking as if it were alive."

"Maybe it is."

He threw his hands in the air. "That's ... that's blasphemy!"

I was suddenly angry. "How can you say that? The carpet has proven its worth. It can fly! It can fly because it's a magic carpet."