“Is the ruby real?”
Diana nodded and smiled a little. “Red like the Dog Star. I was named for the huntress, Diana, and born under the constellation of her favor, Orion. The stone was cut from the stone of my mother’s crown.” Diana gestured to the wide tiara that hung suspended in the case, a far larger ruby at its center. “They’re heartstones. They act as a kind of compass.”
She popped the star-shaped ruby from its setting and returned the gold circlet to its base. “I hope no one will notice.”
“A missing ruby the size of a macaroon? Definitely not.”
Diana let her fingers trail over the other items in the case: a wide golden belt set with red jewels and hunks of topaz as big as Alia’s thumbnails; an elegant unstrung bow and an embroidered leather quiver full of arrows; a set of what looked like wide iron bracelets; and a long rope, coiled like a snake.
“We’ll need this,” Diana said, taking the lasso from the case. As Diana fastened it to her hip, it glinted brightly, as if it had been woven from something other than ordinary rope. Diana touched the cuff of one of the iron bracelets. “My mother used to bring me here every week when I was little. She’d tell me the story behind each case, all the women who came here. These are the relics of our greatest heroes. Pieces of the lives they led before they came to the island, and the battles they fought to preserve peace after. She told me all of their stories. All but hers.”
They must be heirlooms, Alia thought.
Then the bracelet Diana was touching moved.
Alia took a step backward and almost crashed into the case behind her. “What the hell?” It was as if the metal had turned molten. It slid from the case and clasped itself around Diana’s wrist. “What. The. Hell,” Alia repeated as the second bracelet slithered around Diana’s other wrist.
Diana looked just as shocked as Alia felt. She held her hands before her like a surgeon about to scrub in and stared at the bracelets, widemouthed in disbelief.
I have a concussion, Alia’s mind babbled. I definitely have a concussion. In fact, maybe I’m in a coma. I got knocked out during the explosion, and now I’m in a hospital in Turkey. I just need to wake up, because Nim is going to pee her pants when I tell her about the magical island of women.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” said Diana.
“Of what?” Alia managed to squeak.
“That my quest is just. That I’m making the right choice.”
“To help me get off the island? Absolutely. The justest.” Alia considered the rope and bracelets. Regardless of what Diana had said about people carrying weapons, if any of this was real, there could be a whole slew of cult ladies running around with battle-axes and death mops right now. “Maybe we should take something else?”
“Like what?”
“You’re the one talking about enemies hunting me. Don’t we need, like, a crossbow or a spear? Something pointy, like that sword.”
“The other artifacts? That would be stealing.”
“What about the bracelets?”
“These are my birthright.”
“Can’t we borrow something from the training rooms, then?”
“We’re not going to the spring to start a fight. We’re going there to prevent one.”
“Yeah, but you know what they say: Sometimes the best defense is a good offense.”
Diana raised a brow. “And sometimes the best defense isn’t showing up with a giant sword.”
“Says the girl who tops out at six feet and can carry me around like a knapsack. No one’s going to mess with you.”
“You’d be surprised. I—”
Another tremor tore through the floor, making the room swim with blue light.
“Move,” Diana said, seizing Alia’s arm and yanking her away from the case as it tipped sideways and smashed against the stone floor, sending splinters of glass flying. “We have to get you off this island.”
Alia tried to keep pace with Diana as they fled back through the Armory. Her head was pounding, and the nausea had returned worse than before. Chunks of rock dislodged themselves from the vast dome, crashing to the training-room mats as Diana and Alia zigzagged toward the entrance.
Diana held Alia back as they approached the arch, but their path must have been clear, because she grabbed Alia’s hand and they ran for the woods. Only when they were up the embankment and hidden by the trees did they pause. Alia felt like her chest was going to explode. She knew she was out of shape. Nim was always trying to make her do yoga, and Jason was basically in a committed relationship with his treadmill, but this was something else. Her head was spinning, the pain pushing against her skull in urgent pulses.
“I need to stop,” she said, bending double. Her vision was blurry. She felt something trickling over her lips, and when she touched her hand to her face, it came away bloody. “What’s happening to me?”
Diana took a cloth from her pack, moistened it with rainwater from the nearest branch, and gently dabbed at Alia’s mouth and nose. At her touch, Alia felt the pain recede slightly, her vision clear. “I told you—we need to get you away from the island.”
“The island is a metaphor,” Alia muttered to herself. “When we get off the island, I’ll wake up.”
“It isn’t a metaphor,” said Diana. “My home is killing you before you can destroy it. We have to keep moving. Do you want me to carry you?”
“No,” Alia said, batting Diana’s hand away. “I’m fine.”
Diana shook her head, but she didn’t argue. Alia trailed behind her, leaning on the trunks of trees when she had to, listening to the rattle of the breath in her lungs, squelching her way through soft patches of earth the rain had turned to mud. She was aware of birds taking shelter between the great green leaves, the rustle of their wings. She heard the screech of monkeys, though she saw no sign of them. This place was so alive, brimming with life, drunk on it.
What’s real and what isn’t? Alia wondered. Maybe the island was real and her perceptions were off. Her brain could have been damaged in the wreck. Her body had definitely been flooded by adrenaline. Or maybe she was lying in a hospital somewhere, being pushed into an MRI machine, and this was all a hallucination. She liked that idea a lot. They’d figure out what was wrong with her misfiring mind and they’d fix it. Science could solve anything given the time and the resources. That was what her parents had taught her and Jason. The world had a beautiful logic to it, hidden patterns that would reveal themselves if you could just learn to see them. What would they think of giant trees and jewelry that acted like a well-trained pet? They’d say there had to be an explanation. They’d find one.
Alia staggered after Diana as the woods sloped down. The trees thinned and gradually gave way to a clearing. She had the jarring sense of slipping from one world into another. They’d just left a forest dense with vegetation, crowded with flowers and brightly colored songbirds. Now she was looking at what could only be described as grasslands, long rolling hills of gently shifting reeds, gray and pale green that resolved to the colors of an overcast sky.
Alia tried to catch her breath, acutely aware that she was panting like a tired dog, while Diana didn’t seem winded at all. “This doesn’t make any sense. This kind of ecology is completely wrong for this climate.”
Diana only smiled. “The island is like that. It gives gifts.” Alia tried not to roll her eyes. “My mother never talks about life before the island,” Diana continued. “But she loves this place. I think it reminds her of the steppe.”
Diana stood for a long time, staring out at the grasses. Alia had no desire to start walking again, but she also had the distinct impression that they were supposed to be in a hurry.
“So…,” Alia began. Diana shook her head, placing a finger to her lips. “If you’re going to shush me—”
“Listen.”
“All I hear is the wind.”