The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [71]
Now he was torn between what he wanted to do and what he knew he must do. And it seemed that the two were often the same; but he could never be sure. And, unable to decide, Jack ceased dreaming and slept fitfully the rest of the night.
Charles also dreamed. And in his dream, he could fly. And it was glorious.
Dawn, or whatever it was that passed for dawn in the Underneath, was still to come when the companions were awakened by someone poking at them in the darkness.
It was Laura Glue.
“C’mon,” the girl whispered anxiously. “We’ve got to leave, now! It’s almost morning!”
“What happens in the morning?” said Charles, still groggy from sleep. “And, uh, weren’t you a prisoner, like us? How did you get free?”
The girl shook her head, almost frantic. “No time, no time! We have to go now!”
She untied Charles, who then helped her to free the others, and carefully they opened the door of the lodge. Outside, the two stocky men appointed as guards were lying on the ground in poses that suggested unconsciousness rather than sleep.
“We bonked them on the noggins,” Laura Glue whispered. “Took ’em right out.”
“‘We’?” said Jack.
In response Laura Glue pointed to two shadows standing at the base of one of the bluffs that bracketed the settlement.
It was Aven, who was waving and looking around to make certain they were unobserved, and one other.
“Hairy Billy?” John said suspiciously as they approached. “Isn’t he Burton’s toady?”
“Perhaps,” said Aven, who was hugging her father. “But once he was a boy called Joe Clements, who ran away from home to become a Lost Boy. He was one of the last full-blood Algonquin among the Croatoans, and they mocked him, calling him ‘Injun Joe.’ So he went someplace where he could choose a new name—his own name. With us.”
“How do you know we can trust him?” asked Charles.
In answer, Hairy Billy pushed aside his ornate necklaces and showed them a plain leather cord, looped through a silver thimble identical to Laura Glue’s.
The massive barrel-chested Indian turned and pulled something from a bramble bush that he handed to John. It was the Imaginarium Geographica.
John started to stammer a thank-you, but Hairy Billy merely smiled his openmouthed, grotesquely tongueless smile, then turned and motioned for them all to follow.
Jack grinned. “Burton thought he was so clever with his secret society and covert agents,” he said. “He didn’t realize it works both ways.”
In silence they followed the Indian through the underbrush of the pine forest for almost a quarter of an hour before finally emerging into a broad clearing. There ahead of them was the unmistakable rise of another island, and in between, nothing but a mile or so of moist sand. In the distance was a sound of thunder, which grew louder with each passing second.
“That’s not thunder,” Laura Glue said when she realized they were scanning the sky for storm clouds. “We have to hurry, please!”
Hairy Billy made several motions with his hands, indicating that he could go no farther with them, then squeezed Aven’s shoulder briefly and disappeared into the trees.
Back in the direction from which they’d come, there arose a great hue and cry, and a roaring of fury that could only have come from Burton.
“Our absence has been noted,” said Bert. “We’d best hurry along.”
“To what end?” said John, scanning the expanse ahead of them. “They’ll be on us in a few minutes, and then we’ll be back where we started—only this time, there’ll be no pacifying Burton.”
“Listen to her!” cried Aven, grabbing Laura with one hand and Bert with the other. “Just follow us and try to keep up!”
With that the three took off at a dead run across the sand. John, Jack, and Charles had little choice but to follow.
It was when the companions were almost halfway across the expanse of sand that their pursuers burst out of the forest and onto the sand. Turning to gauge their pursuit, the Caretakers suddenly realized what the increasingly loud sound was.
It was not thunder. It was the incoming tide. And it