The island glowed as though it generated its own sunshine via giant floodlights. In contrast, the bridge leading to the island was just a looming shadow over the water. The only illuminated area on my side of the river was the blacktopped landing pad next to the bridge’s entry gate. A spotlight swept across the jeeps and hovercopters parked to one side, and onto the rocky hill that led down to the river. When the spotlight arced back to zip along the base of the wall, I ducked into the hole again like a skittish rabbit.
Once the spotlight passed, I crept out onto the top of a bulldozed mountain of debris made up of earth, bricks, and chunks of cement mixed with broken glass, pipes, and roof shingles. A tetanus infection just waiting to happen. I perched on the rubble of what used to be the east side of Davenport. At the bottom, the bricks and cement chunks spilled onto a muddy patrol road, which meant that line guards could drive by in one of their open-topped jeeps at any moment.
I waited for the spotlight to move onto the hill again and picked my way down the wreckage, stepping as lightly as I could. Even so, rocks spilled down behind me. When I finally stepped onto the unpaved road, I found a length of pipe and jammed it into the foot of the rubble pile as a marker. Okay, orienteering, not a complete waste of time.
I paused to look back at the wall, so massive that it blocked out most of the night sky. A small thrill wound through me at seeing the Titan from this side — in person no less, not via toy hovercopter. Was it really just hours ago that I’d stood on Orlando’s roof hoping for a glimpse of the East? It felt like days ago, and yet I was still squeezed into Anna’s vest.
Her white vest, which in the moonlight may as well have been phosphorescent.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into wearing this,” I muttered and undid my ponytail so that my hair fell down my back in dark waves. My hair was thick and long but it didn’t hide the vest completely. “And I know you said don’t get it dirty, but … sorry.” I scooped up a handful of mud. Ew. How many germs were cupped in my palm? I couldn’t think about it. I smeared the mud over the exposed parts of the vest — grimacing the whole time — and then wiped my hands on my jeans and rubbed them down with more hand sanitizer.
Now what? I knew where I was supposed to go — Arsenal Island — but I didn’t dare just start walking. I slung off my messenger bag, unzipped it, and went through its contents more carefully than I had under Spurling’s watchful eye. The flashlight, the bandages, the iodine, the matches, the map, the machete — I didn’t even want to consider what I might need that for — and finally, a silver badge embossed with the words Line Patrol. I stuffed it all back into the bag except for the badge. What had Dad used this for? A single badge wouldn’t get him past a sentry. I flipped the badge over but there was nothing written on the back, just stiff black plastic.
Something glimmered in my peripheral view. I glanced across the road. A greenish glow had appeared on the ground at the base of a tree. I grabbed the messenger bag and jogged closer. The tree was leafless, dead. The crater next to it suggested an explosion. I reached out to touch the trunk, and my fingertips came back dusted with soot.
The skeleton tree, black as night.
This burnt hunk of wood was exactly how I’d pictured the skeleton tree in my dad’s stories. Maybe this blackened tree marked the start of a path as well. I’d just have to keep away from the harpy eggs….
All right, now I was getting loopy. Though it did make sense that my dad’s stories would come to mind now. When I was little, I always asked him to tell them when I was scared of the dark, or sad — two emotions I was definitely feeling right now.
In the time that I’d been standing there, the greenish light on the ground had grown brighter. I crouched. A fist-sized rock was nestled among the tree roots and glowing like a firefly. I reached for it, but then some glimmer of a memory made me snatch back my hand.
Of course this glow-in-the-dark rock wasn’t an exploding harpy egg from my dad’s stories. But what if it was something just as lethal? Like maybe a land mine? The rocky hill between here and the riverbank was probably covered with them. I backed onto the road. How weird that I may have just avoided death because of a coincidence: that real-life land mines and imaginary harpy eggs both cast a green glow.
My knees locked as realization dropped on me like a cartoon anvil. It was not a coincidence. The exploding eggs in my father’s stories were land mines. The burnt tree before me was the skeleton tree, black as night.
As the spotlight arced my way once more, I hurried back to the rubble pile and hunkered by a piece of a marble column. My mind spun. Why had my dad woven details from his life as a fetch into bedtime stories? Was Director Spurling right? Was he training me to be a fetch without telling me?
Not a chance. He’d never willingly let me do something this dangerous.
Whatever his motive, I wasn’t taking another step until I thought this through. Maybe there was a reason that his stories always began the same way. In a very tall tower, next to a very tall mountain, there lived a little girl who longed to have an adventure. One day when she was walking along the base of the mountain, she discovered a cavern that was so long and deep, it took her through the mountain to the other side.
When she stepped out of the cavern, she saw a river that was wide and wild. She also saw that across the river there was a magical forest just waiting to be explored. As she was about to make her way down to the riverbank, she heard a cry for help. Turning back, she saw that a sheep had gotten caught in an immense bramble bush at the foot of the mountain. Because the little girl had a kind heart, she helped the sheep free itself from the thorny brambles. This turned out to be a good thing, because the grateful sheep revealed that there was a secret way to get down to the riverbank. The sheep sat down on a boulder and, while using its own wool to knit a sweater, it told the little girl that she must look for the skeleton tree, black as night, which marked the start of the path. If she strayed from that path, she might step on a harpy egg. They looked just like rocks, the sheep warned, except for their faint green glow. If you so much as nudged a harpy egg, it would burst into flames.
The little girl followed the sheep’s instructions to the letter and made it safely down to the riverbank, only to discover that an army of silver robots guarded the only bridge across the river.
Up to this point in the story, the only detail my dad ever changed was the type of animal caught in the bramble bush. The animal’s warning about the path to the riverbank was always the same — look for the skeleton tree and watch out for the harpy eggs. But once the girl made it down to the riverbank safely, her methods for getting past the killer robots varied. Sometimes she’d seek out the wizard who lived with the robots and spent his days devising magic potions….
Wait. A wizard surrounded by silver guys. Silver, as in light gray uniforms, maybe?
Okay, Dad, got it. Dr. Solis and the line guards. Wow, that wasn’t even subtle.
I got to my feet. I didn’t need to take the story any further because I didn’t need to know all the ways that the little girl made it across the bridge and into the magical forest. I wasn’t going anywhere near the magical forest, aka the Feral Zone, even if that was where the little girl met the boy who lived all alone in a castle. He was wild and uncivilized and would say the rudest things imaginable, which, of course, delighted me when I was younger. Out of all of my dad’s characters, the wild boy was my favorite. But tonight, there would be no wild boy, no bridge crossing, and no magic forest for me. All I had to do was talk to the wizard. Dr. Solis, who was surrounded by killer robots. With Uzis. No problem.