*Isla*
“Land ho!”
The words echo through my mind as my eyes stay focused on the sliver of green in the distance. We are almost there, back at Maatua, where I will face my past and hopefully secure a future for the man I love and my unborn child.
“Once we get there,” Antony is saying from his spot near the railing, “we’ll need to figure out accommodations for the night. Then, we’ll move out into the jungle first thing in the morning so we’ll have all day to find my mother.”
“What about the treasure?” Poppy blurts out. “That’s what we really need to find.”
“We will need my mother to find the treasure.” Antony glares at her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people more at odds than those two. “Besides, she knows exactly where it is. Why the hell would we want to wander around the Goddessdamn jungle looking for shit when she can take us right there?”
Poppy has a smart remark at the ready. “Because we don’t trust her. You said that she wanted to kill Isla.”
“Look, my mother made it sound like she was angry at Isla for not coming back to the island. I know about the letter. I know what she said directly to Isla. We’ll be fine.” Antony turns his back to us, dismissively. Poppy only glares at him.
We are taking a chance. I know that. Aunt Mary’s letter seems to contradict what Antony had told me. I can’t imagine she’d want to harm me, but I’m not in any position to fight at the moment, not with this baby in my belly.
Not that I’ve ever been much of a fighter anyway.
If this witch from the legends is still there, guarding the treasure, will Mary and I be strong enough to fight her off?
What worries me even more than the thought that we might have trouble ahead of us is that I don’t know what that ship behind us might be.
Captain Dave and his first mate, Jude, have confirmed there’s a boat behind us, and that’s not something they are used to. Most of the time, no one comes this close to Maatua. I have no idea if it’s just a coincidence or if we are being followed. If we are being followed, who might it be? I seriously doubt there’s any chance that Maddox would’ve found out I am missing just yet, not with Seth and Trinity on my side. So… could it be someone else coming after the treasure? I know that other people come out here often, hunting treasure. That’s how I ended up with the cufflinks I’d given Maddox. What if it is someone who wants to get the treasure before we can?
With the boat approaching the dock, I push those thoughts aside. For now, I simply need to concentrate on what I am doing. I am about to get off this boat and step onto the island of my birth for the first time in almost two decades. For two weeks, we’ll be left to our own devices on this island. What sort of trouble awaits us, I won’t know until it’s right on top of us.
Jude and Captain Dave work together to get the boat tied up to the dock. Then, the captain addresses us. “Two weeks. Don’t be late. If you are, if you miss your window, I will leave your asses. I don’t fuck around when it comes to this place.” I can see the fear in his eyes, and it is disturbing. A ship captain, a man old enough to be my father, is frightened of this place, and I’ve chosen to bring myself and my unborn child here. Not to mention my best friend and my brother. No, this is a mistake.
But everyone else is heading off the boat, their backpacks on, ready to go. If they are frightened, they don’t show it. Antony looks excited, Mystica looks overjoyed, Ben looks curious, and Poppy just looks pissed. Probably still at Antony.
I am the last one off the boat. The moment my boot touched the deck, Captain Dave was giving the order for Jude to push off. I had a feeling he wouldn’t be going toward the approaching boat either. I wondered if we could get out of there in time for both ourselves and our scents to be away from the area before the other boat showed up. Looking out across the sea, I didn’t see the other ship, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It is—and it’s coming for us.
The wooden planks of the dock creak beneath our weight. Splintered and frayed at the edges, they look like they could give way at any moment, plunging us into the sea. I’m sure they’re not in that rough of shape, but they don’t look welcoming.
Neither does the island itself. A small path is cleared from the dock into the jungle, but as we wind through the first hundred or so paces, the path becomes overgrown. Maatua isn’t exactly embracing us.
My feet shifting through the sand feels nothing like what I have imagined. In my mind, Maatua looks much like it did in my dreams. Wide open beaches with gentle rolling waves, a bright blue sky, unobscured by the wilds of the jungle, and buildings constructed of the finest materials well taken care of and appointed.
That’s not what I’m seeing.
Antony knows where he’s going. With a machete in his hand, he cuts through the fresh overgrowth and leads us deeper into the jungle.
Bugs swarm us from every direction. Not big and scary, rather small and annoying, they buzz around our heads, looking for a place to land and feed off our warm blood. Poppy squeals and brushes them away, but she has no luck. Antony is growing even more annoyed at her.
“Did you not expect there to be insects in the jungle?” he asks.
“I didn’t expect them to be everywhere!” she shouts back at him.
“Well, you may as well get used to it. They aren’t fucking going anywhere.”
Ben turns to me. “Did it used to be this way? Do you remember?”
“The bugs? I don’t think so.” I pull the collar of my shirt up to my nose, as far as it will go. It doesn’t really help, but it makes me feel better.
“They came with the hurricanes,” Mystica explains. “When the tropical rains began to pool all over the island, in the lowlands created by the moving earth, the bugs came to claim this land as their own.”
She sounds more philosophical with every step we take. It must be strange for her to be back here. Yet, she seems overly happy to be home.
We walk through the jungle for over an hour. I don’t complain, though my back aches, and my feet are beginning to swell. I’ve been walking a lot, exercising while I’m pregnant, but this is different. The sand is unforgiving, as are the heat and the humidity.
I hadn’t thought this through.
Finally, up ahead of us, some buildings come into view. A memory flies back to me, though it’s hazy, and it doesn’t quite match what I am seeing.
But I know this place. I am certain of it. The top of a building up ahead on the left, round and silver metallic, the sun glinting off it, comes into focus. I know that has to be the palace.
When we arrive, I can see excessive damage from the earthquakes in the form of cracks and fallen sections of the walls and ceiling. The building certainly isn’t stable, nor should we be walking into it.
Yet, Antony is walking in that direction.
“Where the fuck are you going?” Poppy shouts at him. “We can’t go in there!”
“We can and we are.” Antony doesn’t even turn around to look at her.
“Are you insane? We’ll be flattened by a falling section of the roof!” she shouts back at him.
Antony stops and turns around with a huff. “No, we won’t. We are going into a portion of the palace that is stable. It’s either that, or you can take your chances out here with the bugs and whatever else is lurking in the woods.”
As if we are being observed, a howl rings out from the jungle behind us. The distance sounds to me to be at least five miles away, but who knows? It sends a shiver down my spine. Poppy’s eyes widen in horror.
“How do you know whatever’s out there can’t come in here?” Poppy asks defiantly, folding her arms across her chest.
Antony shrugs. “They can. But they won’t. Everyone’s afraid of this place because of the curse.”
“But you’re not?” she asks him.
He shakes his head. “When you’re already as cursed as I am, what fucking difference does it make anyway?”
“What about the rest of us?” Poppy asks him.
A loud sigh comes out of Antony’s mouth. “As long as the princess is with us, you’ll be fine.”
“Why is that?” Poppy will not stop.
Another howl sounds, and this one is closer. “Just fucking come on!” Antony insists, and we start walking again.
Antony leads us through a broken entryway, down a hallway where big chunks of ceiling litter the floor. We step around them, following him, Ben taking time to help me when he’s afraid I might trip.
After a few minutes, we step into a large room, and my breath catches in my throat. A thousand memories flood my mind—music plays, the scent of sweets, people dancing, the brush of tulle against my legs….
“The ballroom.” I take a moment to spin around. I remember this place. I remember playing here with my sisters when I was a little girl, only about two or so.
Mystica’s hand is on my back. “This was a magical place where people met and fell in love or planned to rule the world.” Her pride smile echoes what I feel in my heart.
Antony isn’t lingering, and I can’t blame him. The missing pieces of the ceiling tell me this room isn’t stable.
We head on, and eventually, he comes to a door that brings us downstairs. When we are all through, he locks the door behind us. I have to imagine that’s because he doesn’t want whoever was howling at us to have easy access to wherever we are headed.
A few flights of stairs down and I discover we’re in the dungeon. But it isn’t desolate and depressing. No, when Antony lights a lamp, I can see that he’s set the entire place up like a little home with fine furniture from the other levels of the palace, including couches and beds. I see foodstuffs as well. It appears as if he may have been living down here for a while.
“Welcome home,” he says. “Make yourselves comfortable for the night, and we’ll move out in the morning.”
I don’t know what to say. I wasn’t expecting this at all. But I am exhausted, so I move toward one of the beds to lie down.
That’s when I hear it—a sound I never expected to hear—and I freeze, turning my head. My eyes meet familiar green ones, and I gasp in shock, unable to breathe.