Kingdom Keepers V(91)

With the window easier to check out, he hurried over and carefully peered into the dark hut. He could make out a tractor and other large machinery packed in neatly at the far end. Closest to him was a machine shop containing an industrial drill, a band saw, and grinders. No light. No activity. Only the strong odor of paint—the open window suddenly explaining itself: ventilation.

He crossed back to the small tin shed. It had no windows, but there was a large gap between the top of the wall and the eave of the roof allowing for airflow in the tropical climate. Standing perfectly still, he heard faint sounds from inside. They might be explained by an animal, he thought. Or a person. The more he listened, the more the sounds seemed less random and more ordered. A keyboard? Valves?

Maybeck slipped around front and put his eye to the door. He could see inside, but only a sliver of the shed’s grayish interior was visible. Not enough to see what was going on. Maybeck lacked the urgency of some of the other Keepers, but he possessed a wily cunning that served him well. He was in no hurry.

A minute passed. Two…five. A leg appeared—a human leg, from the knee down. A man’s hairy leg, or a grown boy’s. Dark shorts. A black flip-flop. Sight of the leg confirmed his earlier suspicion, but it was neither the leg nor the shorts (which should have been khaki if worn by a Cast Member) nor the flip-flop (which should have been a canvas deck shoe if worn by a Cast Member) that sounded the alarm in Maybeck’s head. It was the lack of tan—the pale, reddish skin that revealed itself even through the limited light. There was no way—no way—that a resident of this island could have skin so pale.

Pale reddish skin…Maybeck knew whose leg it was. He studied the door’s rust-colored hinges. Any metal on the salt-wind island was in a constant state of decay. He knew the hinges would squeal when he opened the door. He licked his finger and applied spit to each of the three hinges. He tugged the door gently, moving the hinges only slightly, and worked his spit into them. Then he eased the door open and slipped inside.

He recognized him immediately: Greg Luowski.

* * *

New Age music—wood xylophones, a bamboo flute, and brass bells—floated in the air along with the scent of jasmine, cinnamon, and musk oil. Finn crouched among the wide elephant’s ear plants outside the first of the dozen massage cabanas. With the shutter open, candlelight flickered through the open-air window. A shadow swept past on the sand. On all fours, Finn crawled beneath the occupied cabana, paused, and scurried across moonlit sand to the next. It was occupied as well, and the soft music suggested a massage session here as well.

Finn kept moving and was squarely beneath the fifth cabana before he identified it as the one from the night before—Tia Dalma’s cabana. He’d moved too quickly—been in too much of a hurry.

A rope was coiled around the cabana’s stilt. Finn moved to examine it, but too late. It began moving as he turned his head. Uncoiling like a snake. It slithered into the sand, stood up, and became rigid. A staff with a cobra’s head. Its eyes flamed red and glowed hypnotically. Jafar’s staff.

Finn felt the movement of sand against his knees and shins. He tried to look down to confirm he was being dragged toward the staff, but couldn’t take his eyes off the cobra. It had some kind of grip on him, physically and mentally. The murmur of voices came from above. A man and a woman speaking. Jafar and Tia Dalma. Overtakers. Jafar’s staff had been left to keep watch.

Long ruts in the sand behind Finn. He’d slid five…now six…seven feet closer to the rigid staff. He fought to break eye contact, but it was little use—the cobra owned him. He struggled to open his fingers, and he scooped up sand as the thing drew him closer. The spinning eyes grew larger and their effect more powerful; the gravitational force increased, and he sped up as he moved across the sand. The voices above him sounded as if they were arguing.

Flexing his arms felt as if he were trying to curl an impossible amount of weight in the school gym. He slid closer still, the glowing eyes now the size of the sun. There was a universe in there—he wanted to travel inside.

Using every ounce of his strength, Finn brought his arm up and threw the sand into the cobra’s eyes. The creature’s eyes squinted shut.

The spell broke.

Finn dove forward, grabbed hold of the staff, and swung it like a baseball bat against the stilt. As it connected, it softened. Rather than break, or make a sound, it wrapped around the stilt, and the cobra’s face was suddenly an inch in front of Finn’s. Finn let go and fell back. The staff tried to unwrap, but Finn saw it coming, grabbed hold a second time, and slammed it against the stilt again, soundlessly, as it turned fluid and coiled around the wood. But this time Finn reached with his left hand and took hold beneath the cobra’s hood, brought his left and right hands together, and, without thinking, tied the snake into a knot. It was a like a pro wrestling move: the Whitman Whip Knot. The cobra struggled to untie itself, but only expended energy unnecessarily. Then, as Finn moved to choke it, the creature took the form of wood again: a wooden staff, wrapped around a post and carved in a granny knot. Finn grabbed some dried seaweed from the sand and draped it over the staff, covering the snake’s dangerous eyes.