OUR PLAN IS this: we agree to search for the temple, since it’s the most logical place she would have gone, as far as we can think. Along the way, we’ll keep our eyes open for footprints, broken branches, and trails where she might have been dragged away against her will.
My motives aren’t as pure as simply finding Finnley, if I’m honest. If she was able to decipher the Morse code, I want to know. I need to know—more about my father, more about the island. Maybe she read something about the temple location; maybe she knows something we don’t. Maybe she went on her own for a reason.
Or maybe her blood is being used to ink a new calendar.
I push the thought away.
“Only two refills left on the Havenwater, just so you know,” Alexa says.
“Great,” I say. “Let’s add fresh water to the list of things we’re searching for. Can you pack the canteens in my cardigan?” We found two in the sailboat, full of water and lock-sealed, but we’ve been saving them as a last resort in case of emergency—the Havenwater filter having only two refills left definitely qualifies as a near-emergency. We could probably stretch it to four refills, depending on how brave we feel, but that’s risky.
For the first time since I met her, Alexa doesn’t push back, or—worse—ignore me completely. I pass out the spears I whittled, one for each of us.
Hope turns hers over in her hands. “Anything else before we go?”
“Something to mark our path?” I suggest. “Something to cut up, to tie around tree branches?”
“Could we use the life vests?” Alexa offers.
“Too bright,” I say. “We need something that won’t stand out quite as much. If someone took Finnley, it doesn’t seem like the best idea to leave a trail of bread crumbs for them.”
“But wouldn’t they have taken us already, if they were going to?” Hope says. “And who says there’s a they anyway? We haven’t seen another soul on the island.”
“Just because they haven’t taken us yet,” Alexa says, “doesn’t mean they won’t. Maybe it’s a head game—maybe we’re lab rats in some sadistic social experiment; maybe they’re waiting to see how long it takes for us to turn on each other. Take each other out, save them some work.”
Alexa’s words catch me off guard. It isn’t that they’re illogical words—it’s a frighteningly plausible theory. It’s just that her theory is so far from anything I expected this island to be, based on Dad’s notes in the field guide. So far from everything I still hope it will be.
It’s the most passion I’ve seen out of Alexa yet, though, so I don’t extinguish it. “Maybe so,” I say, “but I think it’s far more likely that Finnley simply set off without us.” That’s what I’m choosing to believe, anyway. It’s the most logical theory, especially in light of how things blew up between us all last night, and in light of the possibility that she cracked the Morse code. “At any rate, we’re losing time. I’d rather use nothing to mark our path than use the super-obvious life vests. Just in case.”
“We can cut my pants off,” Hope says. But she has less meat on her bones than I do, and I wouldn’t feel right taking her up on it, especially because of how the temperature plunges at night. I look to Alexa, but she has nothing to spare—her shorts hardly cover the essentials as it is.
“Let’s use mine instead. I was thinking about making them into cutoffs anyway,” I lie. I’ll just have to weave a blanket to go with our sleeping mats.
“Are you sure?” Hope says. “I really don’t mind.”
“No, it’s fine,” I find myself saying, though I’m not completely sure it is. But I’ve already spoken up, and Hope looks relieved, so I slice my pants to shreds.
We set off for the temple, blind leading blind, marking trees along the way. It’s lush and green and sprawling with life, leaves so thick we only know the sandy ground is there because we haven’t fallen straight through to the center of the earth.
The branches scrape and tickle my bare legs. It’s an odd sensation, comforting and unsettling at the same time. So many days, back at barracks, I longed for a place exactly like this: a place untouched, a place where life grew up without any interference. A place totally unlike what our world has become, all cracked concrete and wild overgrowth at war with each other.
Now that I’m here, it’s not like I pictured it. I imagined freedom would bring with it a sense of peace. Stillness. Silence, and rest.
It hasn’t.
When it’s silent, I wonder why.
Thousand-year-old jungle vines twist around one another, clinging to tree trunks thicker than the three of us combined. I imagine boa constrictors twined with them, ready to strike, like they did in so many of my childhood nightmares. The farther we go, the thicker the undergrowth is. Paranoia creeps in: I can’t stop thinking about what might be hiding just under the green that obscures the sand. Even the illusion of snake is enough to make me want to run back and hide on the beach. But what then? I haven’t come all this way just to hide.
I chop at the undergrowth with my whittled stake, test the path as I step in it. There are no snakes, not even the occasional lizard. No tracks or trails or broken things, no makeshift signs to mark a path—nothing at all that hints at where Finnley might have gone. Nothing but sand.
Perhaps she doesn’t want us to find her. Perhaps she doesn’t plan to return.
Then again, there have to be a hundred variations of paths she could have taken. At this point, it seems most promising to focus on the temple—the final destination, no matter the direction taken to find it.
After at least an hour, maybe two, our only measure of progress is that we’ve trekked deep into the jungle and have had to start rationing our path-marking fabric. We’ve seen no sign of Finnley, no sign of anything remotely temple-like. It bothers me that Dad’s instructions were so clear on how to find the island, but that he left next to nothing for us to go on as far as finding the temple itself.
It bothers me quite a lot.
We come to a small clearing, where the branches at our feet finally begin to thin out. Large, mossy stones recline like weary explorers who’ve given up and succumbed to the petrification process. In three directions splitting off from the clearing, the tree canopy arcs high overhead like a series of naturally formed tunnels. Like everything else on this island, they are sprawling and overgrown.
“We really should be making a map,” Hope says. Tentatively, she runs her fingers over one of the mossy stones. “Seems like it would be easy to get lost out here.” Seems like it would be easy for Finnley to get lost out here, I hear, tucked into the folds of the words she actually says.