Not a rock.
Something else.
Man-made.
I suck in a breath, hope like a drum in my ears, and shove away more soil and stones, uncovering a peculiar, flat, solid layer beneath the sand. Smoother than any river rock. Cold and slick. I run my palms over it, trying to make sense of its size, what lies beneath… but I already know what it is.
Near my left knee, I find a handle, a rectangle of bent metal. I try pulling it upward, but it doesn’t budge.
The light-haired man finally staggers up from the shore, breathing heavy, cursing, then buckles over to heave up deep exhales of salt water. “Help me,” I shout down to him.
I point to the handle and he lifts his head, swaying a little like he’s on a teetering ship.
“I think it’s a door,” I say. “But it’s too heavy—I can’t lift it.”
He looks like he might be sick again, but he keeps it down, and together we wrap both our wet hands around the handle and pull. At first nothing happens, but on our second tug, I can hear the low moan as the door gives way, and after another hard yank, we’re able to pull it open. Like a cave being exhumed. The hinges creak and shake, but the door swings wide, resting diagonal with the sky. The man blinks at me, confused, having no idea what this is.
But I know.
I peer down into the darkness below, the hull of a ship hidden in the belly of this island. But with the sky thick and overcast, there’s not enough sunlight to illuminate the hole. My hand feels down inside, and my fingers find the rung of a ladder.
The man glances from the hole to me, uncertainty cut into his features, but I swing my legs over the edge and feel for the top rung. “Keep the door open,” I say up to him.
He only manages a nod.
I slip my body through the opening, my feet finding the ladder, and slowly scale down into the dark. It feels like entering a tomb, a cavernous, echoey space untouched by time.
I climb down six feet, then twelve, until I finally reach thebottom, and my feet land on a smooth, level surface. Not the uneven rock you’d expect if this was an actual cave. There is no light, so I take a few cautious steps forward, hands reaching in front of me.
The space is empty, the echo of my footsteps ringing in my ears, and the structure around me moans, a long, labored settling. My lungs catch, holding in air,listening.I almost call out into the dark, ask if anyone is there, but then the sound quiets.
With my fingers twitching in the cold, I wave them in front of me, inching forward—afraid of what I’ll feel, what I’ll find—when my right foot meets with something solid.
A table.
I move closer, squinting, trying to see, and run my palm over the surface.
A ripple of light shivers across my vision, and I yank my hand back.
My breathing is a rasp and a sputter in my throat. Mom told me what I’d find inside the ship, described it to me as best as she could, but it’s another thing entirely to see it for myself. To face something so unfamiliar that it’s hard to describe.
I glance back up at the open hatch in the ceiling, knowing that my escape is close if I need it, then slide my gaze back to the table. My fingers shake, from the cold, from what I’m about to do, but I reach forward and touch the glowing table, and light erupts from its center. Not like candlelight—flickering and uneven. This light glows softly from all corners, pale and muted, and it illuminates the rest of the space around me. The walls are dark and curved, smooth, and the light also reveals something else.
The table is a map… of the stars.
Not like the maps that Mom used to draw in our cabin, flat and dull.
This one hovers, as if suspended on the surface of a perfectly still pond. Except there is no water at all. Only air and humming waves of light.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
“What’s down there?” the man calls through the opening above.
I swallow, emotion gripping my throat—too many thoughts mashed together. “I found it,” I yell back to him, hoping he’ll signal to Holt back on the shore, buy myself some time, so they’ll keep Noah alive.Just a little more time.
“Hurry up!” he shouts back. “There’s a bad storm blowing in.”
It’s not a storm,I think. It’s the anomaly.
