The Guardians of Island X Read online

  by Rachelle Delaney

  Grosset & Dunlap

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Text copyright © 2010 by Rachelle Delaney. Map illustration copyright © 2010 by Fiona Pook. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First published in Canada in 2010 as The Lost Souls of Island X by HarperCollins Canada. First published in the United States in 2012 by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011043289

  ISBN: 978-1-101-58136-0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Hunt for the Panther #3

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scarlet McCray was beginning to regret going barefoot. At the time, it had seemed like a jolly idea. After all, her feet hadn’t even known a stocking for the first five years of her life. So why, she’d reasoned, confine her toes to some rat-eaten boots now that she was back in the place of her birth?

  Except that now as she crept through the jungle, twigs snapping under her heels and burrs burrowing between her toes, she suspected she’d been too hasty in handing them off to that monkey who’d eyed them hopefully.

  Maybe it was the funny kink in his long black tail. Or the way his fur stood up on one side of his head, like he’d just rolled out of bed. Whatever it was, Scarlet had been charmed into trusting him.

  “But look, Monkey,” she’d said as she tugged the boots off her feet, “you’ve got to take good care of these. I’ll need them next time we set off on the Hop for a supply run.”

  The monkey had responded by snatching up the boots, pinching his nose, and scampering off, leaving Scarlet to wonder if she’d ever actually see them again.

  She pushed aside a massive fern and climbed over a rock nearly as big as herself. Then she stopped to concentrate. At first she felt nothing, but after a few moments…yes, there it was. A faint tremor. And if she stood perfectly still and squeezed her eyes shut, she could feel something else. Uncertainty. Panic. Somewhere on the island, there were animals in distress. And it was up to her to find them.

  Unfortunately, in a place like Island X, so full of surprises, this was no easy job.

  It had only been a month since Scarlet and her crew had first set foot on the X-shaped island, but in that time she’d made more amazing discoveries than she had in her entire life. To start, she’d realized that Island X was, in fact, her birthplace. Scarlet was part Islander—one of the only remaining members of a culture killed off when people from the Old World came to the islands, bringing diseases and despair. Perhaps even the only remaining member.

  And if that weren’t overwhelming enough, she’d also discovered that somehow she was able to channel the island’s animals and feel what they were feeling. If a flock of parrots rejoiced in the fruit of a nearby tree, her heart felt light and joyful. If the chief of the local band of smelly wild pigs had slept badly the night before, she felt that, too. It was a huge honor, an amazing ability. Not to mention totally perplexing.

  The problem was, she could never tell when an animal in distress needed her help. Just an hour ago, for example, she’d followed a panicky feeling to its source, only to find the monkey with the kink in his tail having a temper tantrum because his brother had stolen his breakfast of termites. (He quickly got over it when she agreed to lend him her boots.)

  Then, as soon as he’d left, she’d channeled another upset feeling. This one, she was fairly certain, came from the aras, her very favorite kind of bird. And while it was possible the aras were simply being harassed by hummingbirds, it was also possible that they were trying to warn her of something far more important. Like, for instance, a troop of treasure-hungry pirates. So she had no choice but to search for them—which was what she was doing now.

  “If only I knew where I was,” Scarlet grumbled, looking around the jungle with her fists on her hips. She concentrated hard. It was like a game of Hot and Cold, which the Lost Souls sometimes played on board the Margaret’s Hop. Someone would hide a “treasure”—usually a lime or a piece of hardtack—while someone else would get blindfolded. Then the crew would yell “Hotttt!” or “Cooold!” as the blind one wandered toward or away from the treasure. In Scarlet’s case, though, the feeling of distress grew stronger the closer she came to the anxious animal.

  It felt strongest over to her left, but as she took a step in that direction, her foot sank right into a patch of amber-colored mud. “Blasted boots,” she growled as the mud oozed between her toes. “And blasted monkey.”

  Trying to ignore her mucky foot, she inched toward some soft, leafy shrubs. “Maybe if I just cut through here…” Scarlet slipped between the shrubs, pushed through a wall of ferns, and found herself standing underneath the trees that held the aras’ nests. Exactly where she wanted to be.

  “But how…?” She looked up into the tree branches and sighed. Her new talent was just one of many things about this island that she didn’t understand. Its geography was another. Not for the first time, she wished her crew’s only map hadn’t been stolen by the treasure-hungry pirates. But then, she reminded herself for what must have been the millionth time since they’d landed on the island, what kind of Islander needs a map?

  “An Islander who was forced to
forget all about her island, that’s who,” she muttered.

  When Scarlet was five years old, the Island Fever had struck her village, and her Islander mother had fallen ill. She’d begged her husband, a former admiral for the King’s Men, to take Scarlet off the island and keep her healthy. Scarlet never saw her mother again.

  Her father, John McCray, had returned to the King’s Men, leaving Scarlet with a governess named Mary Lewis (aka Scary Mary), who’d made every attempt to erase Scarlet’s memories of her old life. She’d even forced her to do awful things like curl her hair and wear petticoats and learn English.

  Not that the English lessons themselves were awful. It was being forced to forget her language that truly scuttled. Now, with no other Islanders around, Scarlet doubted it would ever come back to her.

  She studied the tree branches above her until she spotted a sparkle of red. Then she concentrated hard. The aras’ distress was gone.

  “Figures.”

  Scarlet grasped a low branch and swung herself up into the nearest tree. She could climb it blindfolded by now. High above the ground, she settled into her usual spot on a sturdy branch and looked around. To her left she could see the clearing where the Lost Souls were camped. To her right stood another tree and another beyond it. And in those trees sat dozens of birds’ nests—a rookery, the Old Worlders called it. And in those birds’ nests sat dozens of sleepy scarlet-red birds with bands of green and blue on their wings. The aras. They didn’t look a bit distressed.

  “Well?” she said. “What was all that fuss about? Hummingbirds? Rotten fruit? Come on, I came all this way for nothing?”

  A few aras eyed her drowsily, fluffed up their feathers, and went back to sleep.

  “Honestly.” Another problem, as she’d recently discovered, was that while she could understand what the animals were feeling, she had no way to communicate with them. No matter how much time Scarlet spent with them, the aras never seemed to understand a word she said.

  A beam of sunlight sneaked through the tree canopy, illuminating specks of red in each nest, and despite her annoyance Scarlet couldn’t help but smile. All these years, the King’s Men and the pirates had been scouring the islands for treasure, as well as wood and spices, but they’d rarely come across a single jewel. Perhaps because the aras hid them so well. The birds simply scraped the ground with their beaks, nabbed the rubies here and there, and tucked them into the walls of their nests for safekeeping.

  The King’s Men, meanwhile, continued hunting the aras to near extinction for their gorgeous red feathers, not realizing that the birds were the key to the treasure they so desperately searched for.

  Scarlet leaned back against the tree trunk and sighed. It was a funny situation, but not laugh-out-loud funny. The kind of funny that made you want to spit.

  She turned away from the birds to look down on the Lost Souls’ camp. It wasn’t the place she’d originally called home; she had yet to find the spot where the Islanders’ village once stood, although she guessed it was about an hour’s journey from here. This clearing, with its long, soft grass and glistening freshwater pool, was a special place the Islanders used to visit a few times a year to relax, chat with neighbors, and harvest food and spices. It had a safe and peaceful feeling about it, which lingered even now, years after the last Islanders had been here. Scarlet was fairly certain they were still here in spirit, though. Island X was rumored to be one of those islands, filled with spirits and spooks that kept the pirates and King’s Men far from its shores. Scarlet believed it was just the Islanders continuing to protect their home.

  If she concentrated hard enough, she could picture the clearing as it had looked years ago—with children playing tag around the pool while their parents talked and filled baskets with seeds to grind into spices. If she focused even harder, she could picture her mother among them, tall and graceful and beautiful. And if she was very lucky, she could make out her father. Strong and relaxed and happy.

  In a way, she’d not only lost her mother when the Island Fever hit, but her father, too. At least the father she knew and loved.

  Once they’d left Island X, he rarely even paid her and Scary Mary a visit at the house where they lived in Jamestown. When he did, he was stern and stony. He refused to talk about the past and their life in the village or to call his daughter by her true name, Ara, which meant both a fiery shade of red and the brilliant bird of the same color.

  Scarlet hadn’t seen her father in nearly three years now, not since he’d announced that he was sending her to live with his family in the Old World. While Scarlet had been thrilled at the thought of escaping Scary Mary, she’d had no intention of spending the rest of her life in Old World ribbons and petticoats. So one afternoon, she’d up and run away. And it was a good thing, too, because if she hadn’t, she’d never have met up with the Lost Souls or joined their jolly ship or been named their captain.

  She squinted at the clearing. She could make out a few of the figures below: Liam and Ronagh Flannigan were playing catch with an enormous mushroom while Tim Sanders, the quartermaster of the Margaret’s Hop, sat cross-legged near the pool, reading a thick book he’d lugged up from the ship. Other Lost Souls played Smelly Wild Pig in the Middle on the grass, and still more swung upside down in a nearby tree, screeching like monkeys.

  From afar, Scarlet thought, they looked like normal Lost Souls. But she knew better. Her crew had been acting a little off since she’d made the “new mission” announcement a few weeks back. She felt their uncertainty as clearly as she’d felt the aras’ anxiety or the monkey’s outrage over his stolen breakfast.

  It wasn’t that the Lost Souls didn’t want to protect Island X. But leaving the Hop to guard a treasure on land wasn’t exactly the kind of mission they were used to. They’d grown accustomed to life at sea, dressing up like ghouls in black cloaks and raiding the ships of pirates and King’s Men. And they probably could have carried on like that forever (or at least until they were grown up) if Jem Fitzgerald and his uncle Finn hadn’t gotten themselves kidnapped by pirates. The Lost Souls had staged a rescue, and it turned out that Jem was in possession of a map to the storied treasure everyone was looking for. (Although no one knew quite what it was.) When he got separated from Uncle Finn, he joined the Lost Souls in a hunt for both the treasure and his uncle. A few jungle treks, bouts of treason on board the Hop, and battles with bloodthirsty pirates later, here they were, the guardians of Island X and all its treasures.

  Scarlet only wished the Lost Souls could share her enthusiasm for the new mission. Maybe if she taught them more about the island, she mused, they’d feel more connected to it. But then, that would require her to remember all the details she’d forgotten in the past seven years. And at the rate she was remembering these days, that would take a while. She sighed again. It was all rather complicated.

  “But don’t you worry,” she said, turning back to the aras, not caring if they understood English or not. “We’ll protect the treasure from anyone who dares trespass. And not just the rubies. We’re here to protect all of Island X.”

  She knew the Islanders would have appreciated that; it was this special, untouched place they’d valued, not some shiny red rocks. If the treasure hunters were to discover Island X’s riches, they’d take not only every jewel on it, but also every tree and animal they pleased—just as they had on all the other islands.

  “Don’t you worry,” Scarlet repeated, sounding far braver than she felt. “We’ve got a plan.” She began to climb back down the tree to call the crew together to make that plan.

  Scarlet had barely set foot in the clearing when she ran into eleven-year-old Jem Fitzgerald and his uncle Finn, who was supposedly a famous botanist on the other side of the world. Scarlet still thought that Finnaeus Bliss, with his very bald head and sweaty, egg-shaped body, looked nothing like a famous person should. But then, from what she’d heard, things were a little backward in the Old World.

  “It’s really the Bediotropicanus onicus that
we’re after,” Uncle Finn was telling Jem, who seemed to be trying hard to stay awake. Uncle Finn tended to go on at length about plants. “It’s one of the most riveting Bedios I’ve heard of, and that’s saying something! The structure of its anthers, you see—”

  Scarlet decided that this was a fine time to interject and stepped toward them. “Are you off then, Uncle Finn?” He wasn’t her uncle, of course, but all the Lost Souls had taken to calling him “Uncle Finn.” They might never have admitted to missing their own parents, whom they’d either abandoned to join the Lost Souls or who’d abandoned them, but they were happy to take on a surrogate uncle.

  Jem looked relieved at the interruption. Uncle Finn mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I am, indeed, Captain. Off on the trail of a plant that could change our lives.”

  Scarlet studied the sweaty scientist. Uncle Finn could be a little dramatic when it came to plants, but this sounded interesting. “Really? What is it?”

  “A bromeliad.”

  “Oh.” Scarlet herself wouldn’t have known a bromeliad to see one, but she knew better than to admit that to Uncle Finn.

  “A bromeliad that will”—he paused for effect—“cure the world of androgenetic alopecia.”

  Scarlet’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  Jem raised an eyebrow at her. “Do you know what that is?”

  She shook her head. “Not a clue. But it sounds terrible.”

  “It is,” Uncle Finn said solemnly.

  “It’s baldness,” Jem said, blowing a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Hair loss.”

  “Oh.” Scarlet looked from Jem to his uncle. “A bromeliad can cure that?”

  Uncle Finn nodded. “I believe so. It’ll take some searching, though. And some intense experimentation. Fortunately, I’ve acquired a research assistant,” he said, just as a monstrous man in tattered trousers came running toward them.

  “Finn! Finn, I’m ready!” the man shouted. A cutlass hanging from his belt slapped his tree-trunk leg as he ran.

  “Thomas?” Scarlet looked at Jem, who grinned.