Kingdom Keepers V(92)
Irritated conversation continued overhead. Tia Dalma spoke sonorously and calmly in a lilting rhythm; the man Finn took to be Jafar had a singsong, melodic voice, higher than the woman’s. His muffled words came out rapidly, a man upset.
Finn sat up taller and put an eye to the cracks in the flooring. Pitch black. Under a mat. He moved slat to slat, board to board, until the glimmer of candlelight revealed itself. He could see through the gap and up into the bamboo rafters that supported the cabana’s thatched roof. But it wasn’t only his vision that improved. So did the sound quality.
“…is unacceptable.” Jafar.
“All things given time,” Tia Dalma said. “There is but one cause.”
“Promises were made.”
“Not by me.”
“You know who I mean,” he said.
“The green one does not break such promises.”
“She has not kept them, either.”
“She will.”
“I am owed the lamp. My purpose in joining this journey is the fulfillment of years of effort. Any delays like this—”
“—are necessary or they would not happen. You must trust the one cause.”
“I trust no one. Not my own shadow.”
“We all want what you want, if for different reasons. The ’chive is important to every one of us. Every one. Do not think yourself alone in this endeavor. The ’chive is my destination as well. But unlike you, apparently, it is evident I am willing to do what is asked of me.”
“You conjure this and that. It is very different for you than for me.”
“You must role-play. What is so very difficult?”
“Children! Gooey-eyed, wet-lipped little spoiled brats all begging for an autograph. It is an insult to my dignity.”
“It is not so very difficult, I think. Two weeks, and then the answer to your dreams. How many of us live with such a luxury?”
Silence.
A gruff chuckle. “Perhaps you are right.”
“I am never anything but,” said Tia Dalma, adding a chortle of her own. “If I could lie, even with great difficulty, how much easier my existence. But the one cause does not permit it. This is my curse. This is my legacy. So be it.”
Another long silence. “Go in peace,” he said.
“And you.”
The board creaked. Sand spilled into Finn’s ear. He scurried out from beneath the cabana, tore the seaweed off the cobra staff, crossed the moonbeams, and lay down flat in the shadow of the adjacent hut. His feet faced Tia Dalma’s cabana; his face, toward the ship. If Jafar spotted him, if the man came for him, Finn would have no warning.
He slowed his breathing.
“What have we here?” Jafar said, incredibly close.
At first, Finn was convinced Jafar was speaking to him. Thankfully, he was wrong.
“Got yourself tied all in knots again?” Jafar said, presumably to his staff. “Do you never learn? Must I—? What’s that?”
Finn didn’t hear the staff talking, yet had little doubt there was communication under way. Little doubt about the subject of that discussion.
He rose to his feet, stayed low, and took off running.
“You!” Jafar called out.
Finn ran, cabana to cabana, only visible for the fraction of a second he stepped into and through the patches of moonlight between the huts. He sensed it—or perhaps heard it—before he saw the cobra on his heels. Spinning its large lazy Ss, it sped through the sand step for step with Finn. It darted in front and tried to lasso Finn by the ankle, but the boy saw it coming and jumped, banging his head beneath the final cabana, where the masseuse called out, “Just a moment please!” believing it to be a knock on the door.
Finn could not run any faster—the sand made it a slog. The cobra pulled alongside and tried to catch him by the ankle once again. Finn jumped and it missed him.
He broke through a dining area. A man screamed at the sight of the slithering cobra. Then a woman. Trays of food spilled as people leaped from their picnic tables. Finn was sprinting now, never slowing, but not gaining on the ungainly creature. His legs struck and broke through some ribbon—neon-orange plastic tape.
Then he heard a boy shout, “Heads up!”
A dart flew by Finn’s right ear. He’d broken through a warning fence and was inside a beach-dart competition.
The finned yard dart soared downward past him.
Thunk!
It had hit…
The cobra. Right in the head.
Upon being hit, the snake turned instantly to wood. Frozen. Stopped in its self-defense like a turtle pulling into its shell.
Finn saw this but did not slow for an instant. He hurdled the opposing dart toss boundary onto the open beach, spraying sand behind him, out of breath and desperate to put distance between himself and whatever that thing was that lay behind.