Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters (19 page)

“What's the worry?” Peyton slows to a walk. “It'll just be a little water, and we're already wet.”

The cloud rumbles, and I raise my face, ready for the rain. “But if there's lightning, we have to get out of the water.”

“We're fine,” Peyton says confidently.

“Not fine. I heard thunder!” I start sloshing toward the bank.

“It's not a storm,” Jinx says. She quickens her pace. “Stay in the water, Xander. And move faster.” The rumbling intensifies. Jinx looks up, eyes wide. “Cover your face!” She drops into a squat and covers her ears with her hands. She shuts her eyes and buries her face in her knees.

Inu whines and dives into the water. All the way in—I've never seen him do that before. Peyton jumps in, too, his wings folded tight. What's the matter with them?

The cloud opens. Tiny black dots hit my skin. It's not rain at all. The pebblelike things don't hurt. I pinch one between my fingers and it squishes, leaving a red trail behind.

“Hey, guys, it's okay, they're harmless,” I try to say, but as I open my mouth, I inhale a bunch of the black things, and the moment they hit the inside of my cheeks, they start moving around. Bugs! Panicked, I spit and spit, but they won't come out. They're digging into my flesh. It feels like a dentist is poking me with a sharp tool.

I fumble open the octopus netsuke box and throw some salt inside my mouth. I can feel the things shudder, then stop. I spit again, and a huge black-and-red glob plops onto the dirt in front of me. “Blecch!” It's like I ate a big wad of dirt.

The cloud dissipates, leaving the sky clear again. Jinx blinks her eyes open and wipes at them. Inu gets up and shakes, tossing black dots all over the place. Peyton stands, unfurls his wings, then flaps them. More black specks fly through the air, landing like a handful of pebbles thrown in the water.

“Oni eggs. They burrow into wet flesh.” Jinx wrinkles her nose as she surveys me. “You have stuff”—she points with one jagged-nailed finger—“around your mouth.”

I wipe my face with the back of my hand, then wash off the trail of saliva and blood in the water. “What kind of oni egg? Like, all kinds? Is that how they reproduce?” I think of Inu's flea medicine, which kills flea eggs before they hatch. If we could get to all the oni before they were born, we wouldn't have to fight them.

“No. Not all of them.” Jinx frowns and stares hard at me, her hazel eyes boring into mine.

I flush. “What?”

She shakes her head, as if waking up from a spell. “Sorry. It's just that I still can't believe you're from the Momotaro line. Except for your hair. They're usually so strong. It must be because you're half-white. Your blood is diluted.”

Ouch. Heat rises into my cheeks. I turn away from her and watch Inu slurp up water like nothing happened. I'm so angry I can't trust myself to say anything civil.

“Hey, I'm mixed, too,” she continues. “If I weren't, I'd be stronger. I'm sorry. It's just a fact.”

Argh. She just keeps getting better and better. I swivel back and point at her. “Jinx, your mouth.”

She touches it. “What?”

“Stop it from moving.”

“Yeah, Jinx, it would be nice if you could go for an entire hour without insulting us.” Peyton plucks eggs from between his feathers.

I turn toward Peyton. “Are you all right?”

He nods once. The skin on his face is bright red, his nose is peeling, and his hair is sticking up even more than usual. “I'm thinking about flying ahead, seeing what's up.” He lowers his voice and glares in Jinx's direction. “We're out of the jungle now. Do you want to ditch her?”

“Thinking seriously about it,” I mutter. Jinx stands behind us, scratching Inu's head in the exact spot he likes it, between his ears. His wagging tail churns up the water. He likes her.

Doubt tugs at me. Inu has never liked anyone who wasn't nice.

Besides, Jinx is supposed to be my monkey. Momotaro relied on all three of his friends. They were his team. And seriously, we'd be stuck in the jungle still, or maybe even snow-woman food, if Jinx hadn't helped us out. I look at Peyton, and I know he knows what I'm thinking. That's the beauty of being friends with somebody forever. He nods once, his face relaxing in agreement with me.

“It's not much farther.” Jinx points ahead to where the river flows into a small tributary off to the right. Straight ahead, the water disappears into a thick forest again. It looks like the tributary leads to cleared land.

However, we can't get there without crossing a big patch of water.

I look at Peyton. He shakes his head. “It's too far to swim. We need a boat.”

“BRB.” Jinx walks out of the water and disappears into the thick underbrush on the bank.

“What's that mean?” I ask Peyton.

“Be right back. Internet-speak.” Peyton kicks at the mud. “What kind of person uses that in real life?”

“A crazy one?” I offer.

Jinx emerges from the tree line, dragging something behind her. A giant piece of palm-tree husk. It's curved and about five feet long, and it sort of looks like a shallow, small canoe. A leaky canoe you'd fall out of, that is. She drags it to the water. “We're going to need another,” she pants.

“That's watertight?” I say doubtfully. Peyton and I exchange a look and a smirk. I mean, not to brag, but I've watched enough survival television to know this thing couldn't make it across a puddle, much less a river.

“Fine, Mr. Outdoorsy McDoorsman. You come up with a better idea. Or you can just swim by yourself.” She shoots daggers at me from her eyes, daring a response.

We shuffle our feet. Um, build a raft out of branches? But these branches are all either way too flimsy or too big to work with without axes and saws. Nothing else comes to mind. “I can't think of anything. Must be because I have mixed blood.”

Jinx sniffs disapprovingly.

Peyton shrugs. “I got nothing, either. Except flying. And I can't carry all of you.”

“You could carry us over one at a time,” I suggest.

“Do you want to rescue your father in this century? We need to go down the river. This will be tons faster.” Jinx jerks her head toward the palm trees. “Go get another one of these. Please.”

“Drill sergeant much?” Peyton mutters. “It's like hanging out with my dad.”

“Hey. Apparently it's the only way to get you guys to listen.” Jinx allows herself a small, satisfied smile.

Anything to get us all to my dad faster. Peyton and I walk into the bushes where she went and discover a bunch of bark at the base of a massive palm tree. Hopefully it's not another God Tree, but it doesn't seem to need these pieces anymore.

Some of the husks have huge moldy holes or are too small. We poke around until we find a good large one, plus two smaller ones to use as paddles, and drag the canoe into the water.

Inu's already sitting in the other one. It bobs gently up and down, and Jinx's pushing it out into the water. Suddenly I don't want Inu with Jinx. What if she wants her own animal companion and takes off with him?

“I'll ride with you, Jinx.” I slosh to the boat. “Peyton, you go with Inu.”

“You sure?” Peyton says.

“You can fly,” I say quietly. “So you can come get me if you need to. And you can help Inu out.”

We fist-bump. “Just push her out if you need to,” Peyton whispers.

“I swim better than any of you clowns,” Jinx says.

I guess her hearing's pretty good, too.

We slowly paddle across the river to the offshoot. Peyton sits in the back of his canoe, rowing alone like it's no big deal, his Halloween costume muscles flexing, swooshing his way past us. Inu barks twice, playfully.

We drift lazily along an eddy. It's not 100 percent comfortable, because a bit of water sloshes in the bottom of our makeshift canoes, but it's a lot easier than walking. I look up at the sky. No more black clouds. The sky's got that purplish tinge instead of blue. I wonder if we're on the same planet anymore. Maybe there's a different moon here.

A green bird swoops in a lazy figure eight overhead. It's bigger than an eagle, but nowhere near the size of Peyton. A giant macaw, maybe? Except its tail is long and skinny.

My dad liked to bird-watch. Since our house backs up to protected forest land, we see lots of different kinds of birds just from our back deck. I used to sit out there with him sometimes, looking through the binoculars.

“Look at that beak and those claws,” my father would point out.

“Bird of prey?” I would say. “Black back, white belly—peregrine falcon?”

“Yes,” my father would say.

Now I try to get a better look at the bird, but it's too high up. I point and yell to Peyton, “See any relatives?”

“Ha-ha!” he shouts back.

The green bird approaches us. Its wings make virtually no sound—that means it's a predator, because they don't want anything to hear them coming. It circles down, down, down toward the water.

I sit upright, suddenly worried. “Uh, Jinx? Do you know what kind of bird that is?”

Jinx glances at it and stiffens, her eyes going wide. “Be still.”

I look over at Peyton and Inu, but they're drifting away at this point. I hope they notice this thing, too.

As it gets closer, I see that its tail is not feathery, but covered in hair, and undulating like a serpent's. But it's the face that has my heart hammering. It looks like a small ogre's face, with a little squat nose and eyes like a person's. Its mouth is fairly human-looking, too, except that the lips form a pyramid, like a beak.

I don't have to be told to sit completely still. I couldn't move if I wanted to. The bird creature swoops lower and lower. Its eyes are a light shade of white-blue. The little nose twitches, its nostrils opening and closing as it sniffs.

Then it opens its pyramid mouth and lets out a cry:
“Itsumade!”

“It's talking!” I flinch involuntarily. “What's it saying?”

A thin plume of blue flame flares and disappears just as quickly. I stiffen, hoping it won't catch the canoe on fire. The air from its beating wings ruffles my hair. If it gets too close, surely it'll feel our body heat. I can hear its rasping breath rattling in its throat, and suddenly I know that it's about to shoot flame again. I duck and simultaneously stick the oar into the water and push.
Go.
I imagine the boat zooming away from the bird just as it sends out another
whoosh
of fire. I feel heat on the back of my neck.

To my surprise, the oar pushes strongly into the water and we careen at a forty-five degree angle away from the bird.
Yes!
I do a fist pump in my head. My arms are getting stronger. I moved the boat all by myself. I feel powerful enough to pick up the boat and carry it to wherever we need to go.

I sneak a glance upward. The bird thing climbs into the sky again, and I let myself relax a little. “Oh my gosh, Jinx. What was that thing?”

Jinx lets out a big breath, and I realize she's trembling, too. “Itsumade. Creepy things.”

“It looked like a human!” I wrinkle my nose. “Humanish, anyway.”

Jinx grimaces. “A lot of oni are part human. Or used to be human.”

I shudder.

She gives me what she probably thinks is a reassuring smile. “Don't worry. You usually have to die before you become something like that.”

“Great.” I set my gaze on the water but peer up at her from under my eyelids. “Did you see how I pushed the boat away from the bird?”

“What do you want, a gold star?” Jinx leans over the side of the boat, clears her throat, then hawks a huge loogie right into the river. The spitball swirls rapidly in the water, bouncing about like a pinball in a machine. “The current's getting rough and crazy. It wasn't you.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She's so pleasant. I bet if Jinx went to a little kid's birthday party, she'd go around popping all the balloons and cackling. I look for Peyton and Inu and spot them on the other side of the river.

I hear the sound of what I think is a hard rainfall up ahead. I try to look at the sky, but now there's a copse of trees in front of us and it's difficult to tell what's going on. “Do you hear that? What is it? A storm?”

Jinx frowns and squints. She scratches her armpit absentmindedly, and I giggle. “I think that's just a little bit of rapids. But don't worry. The trees will slow us down.”

Now we reach the trees growing straight up out of the water in the middle of the river. A big one with enough branches to black out the sky and millions of roots reaching into the water dominates the copse. The roots look like knotted snakes diving into the darkness. For the first time, I can't see the river bottom.

A root tickles the raft. But it's no root. It pops out from the water, making me gasp. It grabs the side of our canoe with a sucking sound. Octopus?

Jinx smacks it with her paddle and the root lets go and disappears under water. “Xander! Come on, you have to be ready.”

I stick my paddle experimentally into the root mass. The roots make a grab for it, and I yank it out. “I'm not used to stuff like this. I don't know how you are.” She must have been on this island for a really long time.

Jinx shrugs. “I just am.”

“Is it a kodama?” I'm pretty much going to be paranoid about trees for the rest of my existence on planet Earth.

Jinx tilts her head at me, and the sun reflects off her freckles like they're a constellation of golden stars. “I don't know. Why don't you see if you can wake this one up, too?”

But I don't have to answer, because the boats start moving. Really fast.

“Oh no.” Jinx sticks her branch in the water and starts paddling. “Help me!”

I try to obey, but the water grabs my paddle and washes it right out of my hands. Wow. This river suddenly went from couch-potato-lazy to Olympic-active.