Alia straightened her spine. “Okay, we do it your way.”
Diana nodded and turned, gesturing for Alia to clamber onto her back. Alia hopped on, and the girl hooked her hands beneath Alia’s knees, shifting her into place like an oversized backpack. So much for dignity.
“Giddyup,” Alia said sourly.
“Pardon?”
“On, you huskies?”
“I am not your steed,” Diana said, but she trotted—jogged—to the mouth of the cave. Without warning, she dug her fingers into the rock and swung outside. Alia squeezed her eyes shut and held on tight, trying not to think of the unforgiving boulders below.
“So,” she said, chin tucked over Diana’s shoulder, attempting to distract herself. “Now that we’re hanging off the side of a cliff together…any hobbies?”
“My mother is trying to get me to take up the lyre.”
“Interesting choice. Siblings?”
“No.”
“Any nicknames?” Alia felt the girl’s muscles tense beneath her.
“No.”
Maybe that was enough small talk.
Diana’s body moved in stops and starts as she searched for holds, making steady progress up the cliff. Occasionally, she would grunt sharply or mutter, but she wasn’t panting or grumbling the way Alia would have been.
Just as Alia was wondering how much cardio this girl did, the cliff shook with a tremor. Diana’s foot slipped. They dropped.
A cry escaped Alia’s lips as her heart lodged in her throat. They jerked to a rough halt, dangling in the air, supported by nothing except Diana’s right hand jammed into the rock. Alia could see blood trickling from somewhere between her fingers.
The urge to look down, to see how far they’d come, how far there was to fall overtook her. Don’t do it, her logic centers commanded. But the rest of her nervous system was in full flight-or-fight mode. She looked down. Dizziness washed through her. There was nothing below but roiling sea and hulking black rocks, whitecaps smashing to foam on the humps of their backs.
Alia looked up at Diana’s bleeding fingers slipping slowly from their hold. Her own hands felt sweaty; her body was sliding. She wriggled to keep her grip.
“Stay still,” barked Diana. Alia froze.
Diana released something between a roar and a grunt and shoved her body upward, swinging her left arm overhead. For a moment, Alia thought they were falling. Then Diana’s fingers found purchase, her toes dug in, and they were wedged against the rock once more.
Alia felt the tension in Diana’s back, the contraction of her muscles. They were moving again, higher and higher. Alia didn’t risk another glance down. She shut her eyes and, long moments later, Diana was hauling them over the top of the cliff. Alia rolled off her, and for a moment they just lay there.
Diana leapt to her feet, dusting herself off. She offered Alia a hand.
“Give me a minute,” said Alia, trying to get her heart rate to return to normal.
“Why are you tired?”
“We almost died!”
Diana cocked her head to one side. “Do you think so?”
“Yes.” What was wrong with this girl?
Alia took the offered hand and they stood. The clouds above them were knotted with thunderheads, and the wind tore at their hair. She touched the braids at her scalp. They were uncomfortably stiff with salt and sand.
The beginnings of another storm, or maybe the same storm that had caught the Thetis was moving in. She peered along the coastline but could see no lighthouse or harbor, no signs of civilization at all. This place really was isolated.
Alia didn’t want to look at the sea, but she did anyway, searching for some sign of the Thetis and its crew. Jasmine, Ray, Luke, Dr. Ellis—Just call me Kate, she’d said. But they’d called her Dr. Ellis anyway. What had Ray and Jasmine been arguing about when the winds had picked up? They’d been blown off course, their instruments giving readings that made no sense, and everyone seemed to be blaming everyone else.
The crew had been sniping at one another since they’d boarded. Alia had kept to herself, feeling a sinking sense of disappointment. Her month aboard the Thetis was supposed to show Jason that she’d be safe on her own, but it was also supposed to give her a chance to make some new friends away from Bennett Academy, and to escape the tension that seemed to follow her everywhere lately. Instead, the trip had been more of the same. Ray and Luke had actually started shoving each other over a playlist, of all things. And now they were gone.
“Maybe we should stay where we are,” said Alia. She’d been feeling pretty awful before Diana had shown up, but now that she was out of the cave, her lungs were clearer and she felt a bit less woozy. “They’ll send search parties for the ship. Maybe we can find a way to signal from shore.”
Diana shook her head. “No one is going to find you here. No one ever does.”
Alia raised a skeptical brow. “Is this some Bermuda Triangle shit?”
“Something like that. The island is incredibly hard to reach. It doesn’t show up on any maps or charts.”
Alia waggled her fingers. “Google knows all and sees all.”
“Google,” Diana repeated. “Is Google one of your gods?”
“Hey,” said Alia. “Just because I spend time online doesn’t mean I’m totally brainwashed.”
Diana looked at her blankly, then gestured for Alia to follow. “Come on. We’re too exposed out here.”
“I’m not sure the woods are a good place to be in a thunderstorm,” Alia said. Diana bit her lip, as if she hadn’t considered that. “I’m guessing you don’t get bad weather around here?”
“Never,” said Diana. “But it has to be the woods. We can’t stay out in the open.”
A chill spread over Alia’s arms that had nothing to do with the storm or her damp clothes. “What do you mean?”
“The people on this island came here because they don’t want to be found.”
“Like you?”
“I…didn’t have a choice. I was born here. But they really don’t like outsiders.”
Alia shivered. Great, they were one step shy of a dueling-banjos scenario. Dueling lyres? Keep it together, Alia. “They’re not in some weird militia or something, are they?”
“Actually, a lot of them are…uh…military.”
Better and better. Probably a bunch of paranoid survivalists, with Alia’s luck. If they didn’t like outsiders, they definitely weren’t going to like a brown girl from New York. “And they don’t have phones? Radios?”
“No contact with the outside world.”
“What if someone gets sick or hurt?”
“That isn’t a problem here,” said Diana, then added, “Or it didn’t used to be.”
So Alia had managed to get shipwrecked on Cult Island. Perfect. “Can’t we just steal a boat or something?” she asked.
“I considered that, but the docks are full of people. They’ll notice someone taking out a craft, especially during a storm. And I think we’re going to need more than a boat to get us to Therapne.”
“Where?”
“Southern Greece. The Gulf of Laconia.”
That made no sense—not if Alia remembered her geography right. The Thetis had only been a few days out from Istanbul. Even if they’d been wildly off course, it made no sense to travel that far. Why not Thessaloniki or even Athens? “That’s hundreds of miles from here. We can’t sail all that way.”
“Of course not.”
Alia took a deep breath. Her chest hurt as if someone had punched her. Her lungs still felt waterlogged, and her body was covered in bruises. Beyond that, she felt nauseous and bleary. She needed to see a doctor. She needed to get to a real city.
Unless Diana was lying or delusional—both of which were definite possibilities—she was stuck on an island crawling with weirdos, so she needed to be smart. Play along, she told herself. This girl wants to go to southern Greece? No problem. Alia could nod and smile for as long as it took to get somewhere with a phone.
She steeled herself and followed Diana into the green hush of the forest. It was like stepping into an alien world. Alia’s parents had taken her and Jason on a trip to the Brazilian rain forest when she was little, so they could learn about some of the new species of plants being discovered there and the medicines developed from those findings. It had been a bit like this—lush, alive—and yet not like this at all. The trees here were like nothing she’d ever seen, some of them wide enough around that the Thetis could have docked in their rings with room to spare. Their roots ran along the forest floor in thick spirals, covered in vines that bloomed with widemouthed trumpet flowers. The air smelled sweet and felt almost silky on Alia’s skin, and the raindrops on every surface made the moss, leaves, and branches glint like they’d been hung with gems.