Mr. Abara looked to be playing his cards close to his chest. Blanche was eager to get on with learning about mapmaking so she could find El Dorado. Oliver seemed happy to go with the flow. Melody and Luke worked on their secrets together, as a unit. And the Wonder Twins obviously sought something together. I doubted they did anything alone. That left me, with no idea about anything involving the monastery.
“So, after that bombshell, who’s here for what?” I broke the uncomfortable silence. Melody offered me a grateful glance for taking the spotlight off her.
“I’m after Shangri-La,” Oliver replied. “I’m going to find it and learn their ways, to discover the secrets of true happiness and a long life. It’s my dream to live in a real utopia, a genuine paradise on Earth. And once I’ve done that, I’m going to write about it.”
I frowned. “Didn’t someone already do that? I mean, Shangri-La is fictional, right? It’s from Lost Horizon.”
“He’s right, it is,” Melody agreed.
“There’s truth in stories, mate.” Oliver gave a casual shrug. “It’s out there, and I’m going to find it, just like James Hilton found it and wrote about it, calling it fictional. If he said outright it was real, people would go flocking after it, ruining that paradise… obviously.”
Why did people keep saying that—“there’s truth in stories”? As if I didn’t know. The Fountain of Youth had been a myth until yesterday. What they were leaving out was the teeny-tiny small print, that there was also danger in stories.
“You’re going after Shangri-La?” The Creep Twins snorted at him. “Well, you can expect to have a race on your hands, mate, because that’s where we’re headed, too.”
“Couldn’t you all go? I’m sure Shangri-La is pretty roomy,” I said.
Shailene snorted. “As if. We’re not into sharing glory, unless it’s between the two of us.”
“May the best explorer win, then,” Oliver replied, evidently unbothered. He didn’t seem like the sort of guy who got worked up about much.
“That’d be us,” Fay shot back.
Oliver smiled lazily. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“What about you?” I nodded to Melody and Luke. “What tickles your geographical fancy?”
Luke hesitated to answer, but Melody came right out with it. “We want to find the Last Unknown—one of the few places on Earth yet to be discovered.”
“The Last Unknown? That’s not very specific. What if your map takes you to a different Unknown?” I asked.
“It won’t.” Melody cast a conspiratorial glance back at Luke.
Figuring I wouldn’t get much else out of her with Luke the guard dog around, I turned to another member of our party. “And you, Mr. Abara?”
“I intend to find the lost Oasis of Little Birds, otherwise known as Zezura,” he replied.
“Never heard of it. What’s there?”
He gave me a warning look. “Something I desire. That’s all you need to know.”
“How about you, Finch?” Melody cut in.
“Me? Oh… I’m… uh, looking for the Fountain of Youth,” I lied. I didn’t want them thinking I was there to steal their ideas. The Fountain seemed like a safe bet, since it was empty and buried under a mine’s worth of rockfall.
I was spared more explanation by the arrival of five more people, coming by sea, sky, and land. One rode up on a four-wheeler, having landed by boat at the other end of the island. He went by the name Bill and came from New Zealand. He instantly recognized the Basani twins. Rodrigo, from Spain, made the same entrance Mr. Abara had, boating to the cliff’s edge and climbing up. Lin, from Puerto Rico, came speeding in on a hang-glider, while Giulia, from Italy, rappelled down from a helicopter. Alessandra, who’d come all the way from Brazil, arrived last.
After brief small talk, it turned out they mostly sought the same things—El Dorado, the Lost City of Z, Arcadia, the Aztec homeland of Aztlán—for the same reasons: treasure, long life, or paradise. All the things mortals longed for. Yet none of those places or motivations set off Erebus alarms in my head.
“Do the doors open when the full moon comes out?” I wanted to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. “Do we start the entrance trials inside?”
A ripple of confusion echoed through the gathered group. Huh, maybe they aren’t as clued-up as I thought.
“Oliver, what happened last time?” Mr. Abara fixed his gaze on our resident hipster.
“Oh, when I said I failed the entrance trials, I meant I missed them completely. I got here too late,” he replied. “I don’t know what to do past getting through that shield, mate. I thought that was the hard part.”
“Anyone?” I said hopefully.
Melody shook her head. “The people who told us the location said that not knowing what to do is part of the trial. I didn’t understand it then—I thought it was just a riddle, perhaps—but now I see that they were right. If that’s the case, I suppose our trial has already started.”
“All doors open,” Shailene said.
“Yeah, we just have to break through them,” Fay added.
With that, the Creep Twins strode up to the front doors like a matching set of bookends and started hammering them with Telekinesis. Following their lead, Melody used a gust of Air to sweep herself up to the nearest window. Luke hovered below like an anxious puppy. Meanwhile, Oliver scaled the wall to try to reach the spires at the top.
Bill stepped forward to help, when the gemstones embedded in the spires emitted a piercing screech. Their thrum had been constant up until this point, but this felt different. This sounded like a siren… a warning siren.
Light shot between the gems, red bouncing to red, green to green, and so on. As the shriek built to a deafening howl, a burst of multicolored light flooded the building, knocking back everyone who had tried to force their way through.
Bill sailed backward, toppling over the edge of the cliff. A splash followed. I ran to the lip with Mr. Abara, both of us peering down to make sure Bill was okay. He surfaced and gave a weary wave before turning around and swimming for a dinghy that waited down the shore.
“Is he out of the game?” I glanced at Mr. Abara.
“It seems so,” he replied.
A voice boomed from within the monastery. “Welcome, brave travelers, to the Mapmakers’ Monastery. My name is Etienne Biset, and I will teach those who make it through these trials. To enter, we begin the first trial—you must solve the riddle of how to enter. I hold these trials every full moon, if enough people gather. I don’t have the patience to coddle every newcomer that darkens my door. So, I suggest you get on with it.”
He had a faint French accent. There was something dangerous about it that scared me and intrigued me in equal measure.
Watching my fellow wannabes gearing up, I sensed things were about to take a turn for the hectic. I had two options: join them or end up like Bill. And I wasn’t in the mood for a soaking.
“Let the games begin,” I whispered, letting Chaos flow into my palms.
Four
Finch