Scar Island(59)

Sebastian joined him at the crank and they worked together. The mirror moved faster, sending its spear of light out into the darkness.

After a while, Jonathan let go and stepped back, sweating and gasping. Another boy took his place.

He leaned back against a low wall beneath the windows. His arms were burning, the good burning of muscles put to good use. The room was filled with the vital heat of the fire he had built and lit, the fire that would save them all. A good heat, the kind that calms shivers and warms the chill from wet and tired bones. The fire felt good.

He closed his eyes and didn’t try to stop the tears that seeped out between his eyelids, running in warm paths down his face. They ran down his cheeks and over his lips, which opened into a wide smile, tasting their saltiness. He laughed as the tears poured from his eyes.

Colin walked over and stood beside him. The giant rat still sat on his shoulder, sniffing at the smoky air.

“Why are you laughing like that?” he asked.

Jonathan laughed and sobbed and looked at the beautiful fire through the blur of his tears.

“Because I want to go home,” he answered.

“Then why are you crying?”

Jonathan didn’t wipe at the tears. He let them burn in his eyes until they were full and flooded out.

“Because I want to go home,” he said. “Because I want to go home.”





Did you miss Dan Gemeinhart’s previous adventure? Read on for a taste of Some Kind of Courage!





I reckoned it was the coldest, darkest hour of the night. That still hour just before dawn. Mama always called it the “angels and devils hour,” on account of how only angels or demons would have any work worth doing at a time like that. I didn’t know if I was doing the Lord’s work or the Devil’s, but I knew that it had to be done and the time had sure enough come to do it.

I’d been lying too many sleepless hours in my sorry straw-stuffed bed, waiting for the old man to finally fall dead asleep. My plan had been burning all night in my mind like the last glowing embers in the fireplace, keeping my heart awake. Truth be told, my hands were a bit shaky as I finally crept, as quiet as could be, across the cabin’s dirt floor toward where he lay snoring. And it weren’t just the cold making ’em shake, neither. But my heart was as steady as a true horse, heading toward home.

My leather bag was already thrown over my shoulder. I’d slipped it on without him seeing, before I’d curled up under my blanket. And my boots were still on my feet. He’d been too drunk to notice me not taking ’em off.

All I needed was the money. And the gun. And then to hit the trail running.

The money was piled on a shelf up on the wall by his bed. I licked my lips and crept closer, my feet finding a path in the barely lit darkness. I could see the barrel of the pistol, gleaming in the dim red light of the coals, on the crate beneath the shelf. It was right within reach of the arm the old man had thrown across his face.

Barely breathing, I took the last few steps and reached up with my left hand. My fingers closed around the crumpled stack of dirty greenbacks, and with a smooth and silent motion I slipped them off the shelf. It ain’t stealing, I told myself. This money belongs to me, by all rights. I ain’t sure I convinced myself, and doubt chewed on my insides. But there weren’t no choice.

I crouched and turned toward the pistol, but as I did my foot kicked an empty booze bottle. It spun in the shadows and rattled against another one with a loud clink that shattered the quiet of the cabin.

The old man’s snoring stopped in mid-breath with a snort. His arm jerked up from his face, and two red eyes glared at me, confused but already angry. They narrowed when they saw the money clutched in my hand, and his top lip pulled back in a snarl.

“What’re you doing, boy?” he asked in his high, piercing whine of a voice. Lord, how I had learned to hate that voice of his.

I froze, too scared to answer.

He blinked, his drunken brain no doubt starting to make sense of what was happening. He started to sit up, then stopped. We both looked at the gun at the same time. There was one tight, breathless moment when we both knew what we were gonna do.

Our bodies lunged and our hands struck like snakes. He was closer, but I was quicker, and when I stumbled back two steps the gun was gripped tight in my right hand.

It was his turn to freeze, and he did.

“What’re you doing, boy?” he asked again, but now his voice had a sure enough nervous tremble in it.

“You had no right to sell her,” I said. I was ashamed of how my voice quivered, not at all like a man’s. Not at all like my papa’s.

The old man grimaced like he’d just taken a suck on a fresh lemon.

“ ’Course I did, boy. She was mine. And I need the money to pay for all the food you eat.”

My underfed belly rumbled the truth to his lie, and I shook my head.

“No, sir. I work for my keep, and I work hard. And that horse was mine. You got this money by selling my horse, so it’s my money. And I’m gonna use it to get her back.” And you wouldn’t be using this money for food, neither, but for more bottles of Dutch John’s brandy, I wanted to say. But my mama had taught me better manners than that, and I held my tongue.

He slid his feet out of bed and sat up. I took another step back.

“Give me my money and git back in bed,” he said. “You ain’t never gonna shoot me.”