“Ouch!”
Sharp pain shoots through me as I trip over a stone that protrudes from the hillside. “What the …”
“Uh … guys?” Noah calls. He’s already climbed the rocky ridge and is looking down on the beach and the water and … me. “I think you need to see this!”
There’s something in Noah’s voice that frightens me, so I run up the embankment as quickly as I can. Noah clutches my hand and helps pull me the rest of the way. The others have taken the long way around, but soon I feel my friends gather at the edge of the ridge, all of us peering down at the same eerie sight.
I didn’t trip on a boulder or an outcropping of rock, I realize. I tripped on a —
“Face!” Rosie says what everyone else is thinking. “That big rock is a face!”
“I think it’s some kind of statue,” Noah says, his voice flat, but there’s no doubt that he’s right.
I lean over the edge and peer down into the face that stares back at me from the ground. Years of age and erosion have dulled the features. The nose is smaller than it probably once was, but the lips are still closed, as if keeping a secret. And the eyes stare up at me like a giant who’s been buried alive.
Like a god who was cut down in his prime.
“Neptune.”
Part of me had just assumed that the tale Ms. Chancellor told me was some kind of myth. Or legend. Or fairy tale. But now I stare into eyes that are the size of washing machines, at a nose the size of a tiny car. In its prime, the statue must have been massive, and now it’s easy to imagine a great stone idol rising into the sky, looking out over the blue waters of the sea.
“What do you think it is?” Noah asks.
“A statue used to guard the bay before the Crusaders came,” Lila says. “I never thought I’d see it. I thought it was all gone. But it’s … here.” She gestures toward the parts of the statue that we can now identify strewn across the beach.
“Is that a foot?” Noah points to a huge stone. There are fingers, and long, massive pieces that are probably broken arms and legs. The hill has tried to reclaim it, but from this vantage point we can clearly see the statue’s base.
“Why would someone tear it down?” Rosie asks.
Lila shrugs. “False idols and all that, I guess. But if you ask me, they didn’t want someone else sneaking up and stealing Adria from them after they went to so much trouble to steal it from the Turks or the Mongols or whoever it was they stole it from in the first place.”
Lila and I share a look. We could tell them about the knights and the angel that guided the Grace through the storm. We’ve both heard the same story, but it’s one that I’m pretty sure we aren’t supposed to tell.
“No wonder people say this place is haunted,” Rosie says. Then, undeterred, she turns, ready to get back to business.
Slowly, we pair off. Megan and Lila start toward the rocky cliffs at the far side of the island. Rosie and Noah comb the beach.
“I guess that leaves us,” Alexei tells me.
Together, we start toward the trees.
I know exactly where I’m going. My feet move on their own. The sun burns above us, but its light is fractured as it cuts through the trees, shifting, swirling. I’m inside a kaleidoscope, I have to think as I make my way toward the clearing.
I close my eyes and try to remember it as it was that night. There was music in the distance. Shadows played across the forest floor. But in the light of day, I see the details that were invisible then, especially as I stare up at the high structure that disappears inside a rocky hill.
“Wow,” Alexei says. “It’s … bigger than I thought.”
The stones of the structure itself are staggered, so it looks almost like a pyramid built into the hillside, so utterly out of place among the trees and crawling vines, the thick bushes that almost swallow one side of it whole. From the air, you’d never even see it, and I know now how this place has remained almost a total secret for so long.
As I creep closer I see flowers and smell honeysuckle — see a piece of a hand coming out of the ground, as if Neptune is trying to wrench a sword free from the flowers and the vines. It feels like I’m stealing into some ancient burial ground and if we disturb anything the giant is going to wake.
But a part of me swore I’d never wake a sleeping giant ever again. That’s why I’m careful as I head toward the place where Spence and I stood not long ago. The emblem is right where I remember it, so much clearer in the light of day.
“What is that?” Alexei is right behind me. I can feel his chest against my back as he leans closer to see.
“I don’t know,” I lie.
He’s too close.
We’re back at the place where it happened — the kiss, the argument. The fight. And it’s like we’re both only just realizing it.
“Grace.” Alexei’s breath is warm on the back of my neck.
When I turn, he’s just right … there. I don’t even have to reach out to touch him.
“I didn’t mean it,” I say.