Battle Mage: Dragon Mage (Tales of Alus) (63 page)

The Mermaid’s Chest

The four friends jogged down the beach in the direction the boat and two girls had gone. Fighting the urge to run harder and knowing it would be futile if they did, the four hurried along the sand with its broken branches and washed up seaweed forcing them to keep an eye on where they placed their feet.

“You don’t think she’d actually leave us behind for real?” Taylor gasped as she ran near the back of the group. She had never been overly athletic and preferred theater and music to running track, so she had avoided it since the first year of gym.

Emily had firmer control of her breath since she swam and jogged quite often. Wanting to be a sports doctor in the future, the girl felt she should be an athlete as much as possible. Shaking her head Emily spoke loud enough for her friends to hear, “No, if I know her, she’ll figure to get just out of sight before turning around to get us, but then again Faith could let us wait for half an hour before doing it. When she pulls pranks, my little sister tends to go for maximum effect.”

“I’m going to kill them both!” Katie snapped looking somewhere between Emily and Taylor for fitness as they jogged along the beach. “When I get my hands on her…

“She has our food and water too. It’s not like she could have at least left us something.”

Phoebe tried to concentrate on where she placed her feet. Thankfully her friends back home had kept her somewhat active and her breathing was still fine. She still wondered why they were running. Faith would have to come back for them, wouldn’t she? There was no way that the girl would leave them stranded on an abandoned island without food or water.

Even if Faith had a grudge against her sister, Phoebe couldn’t believe that the rest of them would need to be tortured as well, but she had to admit that she barely knew her younger cousin. The past few days the Australian had become close friends to Emily, Katie and Taylor with a lesser degree of time spent with the younger girls. Even so, that hardly meant she or any of the others should be left behind.

Several minutes later as the girls neared a bend in the island’s shape, they spotted the boat drifting near the middle of the channel and the two girls moving frantically onboard.

“Oh no,” Emily gasped, “she didn’t?”

“Didn’t what?” the other girls seemed to answer in a chorus as their eyes went from Emily to the speedboat out on the water.

Giving a groan and sweep her hands along her cheeks anxiously, the blond leading them answered, “I think she may have broken it!”

A feeling of dread covered them all as they moved to the edge of the sand where the water rose and fell splashing across their bare feet. The four girls standing side by side watched as Faith broke out the paddles. It wasn’t an efficient endeavor and the waves would work against the boat making it that much slower.

Emily stripped back to her swim suit. “I’m going to swim out and try to help them before they drift away.”

Taylor joined her though the second girl wasn’t as strong a swimmer as the trim blond. Both girls pulled their hair back into tails that they tied with flex bands that had been on their wrists like bracelets. With hair out of their way, both girls waded in for several feet before they were up to their waists in the water.

Plunging her upper body into the water and letting her scooped hands push through like an arrow, Emily quickly slid through the channel cutting through towards the speed boat with long, strong strokes. Taylor followed right behind her though at about half the pace of her more athletic friend.

Phoebe glanced to Katie, who still stood beside her and hesitantly asked as her attention moved back to the water and the girls swimming towards the crippled boat, “Should we…?”

The curly blond quickly shook her head. “When they get closer we can wade in and use the anchor’s rope to pull them in. Emily and Taylor can handle it. Besides there are only four paddles so we’d just add weight and get in their way, unless you wanted to try kick paddling behind them to push the boat?”

Scrunching up her face at the idea, Phoebe quickly shook her head. “No, I like your idea better. When they get closer we can wade out to grab the rope and pull them in then.”

The plan decided, the two girls waited for the others. Emily made it to the boat first and gave Taylor a hand up before getting onboard. Everyone could tell that the elder sister was angry at Faith, but the blond haired girl said little about the fact that her little sister had done something reckless and stupid. Instead she set Taylor to work with Brook on one side of the boat and joined her sister using another paddle to paddle from the other.

Sitting a few feet above the water and having to lean over the side of the boat, the four girls struggled for nearly twenty minutes against the tide despite only being a short distance away from the island to start. The currents fought their efforts refusing to let them take shelter by the island. It was as if the boat had become an uncooperative enemy beneath their feet.

While the girls paddled, Phoebe looked at the part of the island that might end up being their refuge for longer than she could have known when they first arrived that afternoon. Only twenty feet back from the water, the island jutted upward in a forty foot climb to a cliff top. It had a lot of loose stone, the girl thought, though she wasn’t a skilled climber so her guess was hardly an educated one. Vines and other greenery dotted the off white stone and the brown of dirt colored it in places where the cracks were big enough to give purchase.

The sand near where they stood was worn into an odd groove like a river’s bed nearly ten feet across and five feet deeper than the ridges to either side leading back towards the wall of stone. She guessed that at higher tides the water might enter the trough that extended all the way to the steep wall. The wall of the cliff curled a bit coming closer to them on the near side and obscured the end of the trough from Phoebe’s sight, but instead of dwelling further on the land she returned her attention to the water and the approaching boat.

“I think we can get the rope now,” Katie stated grabbing the other girl’s attention from her search.

Emily must have thought the same thing. Abandoning her oar a moment, the girl moved to the anchor and swung it for a decent throw ahead of the boat. With a splash, it sunk quickly and dug into the sand beneath the water unseen. Worries of the tide pulling them back were over as the anchor would be tough to pull free.

Katie and Phoebe waded up to the taller girl’s chest and the smaller blond dove under to find the rope. It still took a few seconds to find the thick cord in the murky water, but Katie was able to pass off the strong strand. Letting Phoebe, who was taller, pull the length to where she could help pull the craft towards shore, the two then began pulling the boat with the rope. Their feet were set in the soft bed of the channel but the boat began to turn as the girls strained to pull the boat after them.

Paddling to assist the girls in the water, the six soon had the boat close enough to shore that the anchor was forced into the sand in the sandy groove which had begun to fill with water as the tide began to rise. The moon was rising in the east even as the sun continued to fall into the west. Time was getting to be a scarce thing and when the daylight left them, the girls would have no hope of fixing the engine or rotor until morning.

Phoebe noticed Emily searching thru the bag she had brought along which held a smaller handbag. Producing her cell phone, the blond flicked it on with an answering chime of music. After only a few moments, Emily’s forehead knotted worriedly. “I can’t get any bars,” she announced in disappointment.

While the other girls on the boat began searching for their own phones, Katie tripped a set of levers on the housing and forced the motor assembly forward. The shaft with attached rotor lifted out of the water revealing a snarl of seaweed and other plant material. Phoebe waded over taking a look at the mess that had been made of machinery.

As Katie began to pull the weeds free, the other girls began to add announcements of their cell phones having no signal.

Emily walked over to the rear of the boat looming over Katie where she worked at the snarl. “How bad is it?”

“The shaft doesn’t appear bent or broken, but I can’t see everything yet,” the wavy haired blond said glanced up with her blue eyes meeting her friend’s gaze. A slight smile of relief flit across her mouth trying to be encouraging.

Returning the smile with a grim one of her own, Emily stated, “Well, then it’s up to you, because it doesn’t look like we’ll be phoning for help from here.”

“We could try climbing higher and see if we can pick up a signal from there,” Taylor proposed as she lowered her useless smart phone. For all its bells and whistles, the piece of technology was little more than a dead piece of plastic in her hand without a tower to make a connection.

Nodding, Emily said, “Let’s give Katie a minute to see if clearing the rotor will get the engine running again. If she can’t make it start then we’ll send a couple people up to test all the phones.”

Curiosity forced Phoebe to ask, “Do you know much about motors?”

“I’ve helped my dad and brothers with their cars. Dad has a garage. He and my oldest brother Jack run the place,” the girl said with most of her attention on the mess in front of her. “We don’t have a boat but I’ve messed with Emily’s a little bit. Usually I have tools to work with in a garage, so this is a little more challenging. As long as nothing’s broken or bent too much, it’s no big deal.” Glancing up to Emily momentarily, she asked, “Check the first aid kit. There might be a knife or scissors in there. This is pretty tough stuff.”

Her friend did as she was asked while the other girls watched and waited with various levels of patience.

After nearly half an hour and a little help from other hands, Katie managed to clear the rotor of tangling weeds. Despite the run in with both plants and what was guessed to be a hidden sandbar, the blades looked to be none the worse for wear. Using a Phillips screwdriver, the only tool they could find besides the small scissors in the first aid kit, Katie managed to open the cover on the motor and did her best to make sure there was no damage hidden that would ruin the machine even more if it was restarted.

Phoebe watched as the sun continued to dip towards the horizon. Clouds caused the light to scatter looking more orange as the globe fell further and further. She didn’t want to rush Katie knowing that, if the engine was on the verge of failing, only bad things could happen. As it was, if the engine and rotor all worked properly or enough to limp home, it was probably going to be dark while they were on the river. The house seemed very far away.

Turning away from a view that would have seemed beautiful had the circumstances not been so uncomfortable, the tall brunette decided it was time to either get into the boat or return to the beach. She and Katie hadn’t left the water since going in to help pull the craft to shore. Fingers were wrinkled and she could assume that her feet were as well just from the tightening that she could feel on her skin. As she looked past the boat, Phoebe noticed that the tide had indeed been rising. The channel was filling and the
beach had shrunk. Their piled clothes were still there and in danger if being washed away by the water climbing the sand.

“I’m going to move our clothes before they’re washed away,” the girl stated into Katie’s ear as she lay a cold hand on the smaller blonde’s shoulder. Being cold as well, she didn’t even start at the clammy touch.

With a brief nod, Katie turned to look at her and Phoebe noticed that the girl’s jaw was fighting a shiver. She was cold as well, but refused to give up on the engine for fear of stranding them all on the island. “Yeah, if you could move mine to safety, I’d appreciate it. I’m going to want to snuggle into something warm in a minute. It’s getting pretty cold already.”

The taller girl returned the nod with a smile. As she began to walk past the boat and the water slipped below her shoulders again, the breeze caught her skin making her shiver with its passing. The day had certainly taken a turn. It had been in the mid eighties Fahrenheit, so the Americans had said. Phoebe guessed that it was now closer to seventy as clouds began to build in the west. Another rain was coming which was another reason they needed the boat to work and flee for home or they would have to suffer with no shelter.

In the midst of a shudder, Phoebe glanced up the newly filled channel and noticed a strange glint as the sunlight hit the cliff face.

As she climbed from the water and gathered the clothes of all four girls, Phoebe felt movement in the ground as if some giant stone was grinding against the earth. Forehead wrinkling in confusion, the brunette pushed back a strand of hair that fell across her face and looked towards the cliff. She was almost certain that it came from that direction.

Throwing on her shirt for the warmth it could provide after being heated by the sun and being dry, Phoebe glanced back to the boat noting the girls were gathered in the back of the craft. Katie must have been close to finished with what she could do for the engine, she thought.

Instead of returning to the beach or trying to ferry the clothes onto the boat for now, Phoebe let her curiosity carry her up the channel. Following the water inland, the girl found she could ford the water closer to the cliff and only step in to her knees. Quickly, passing through to the opposite side, Phoebe was able to see that the shape of the cliff led into a pocket only about ten feet from one side to the other. The water had climbed the channel and touched the stone of the cliff, but now there appeared to be a doorway where a large piece of the stone had moved away.