The Destiny Detour

The Island Prison

Drake

More jungle wandering had Drake lamenting his lack of shoes, but when Zaphia broke out into a neighborhood and zig-zagged down streets of burning sand, he wished to be back in the jungle underbrush. If the girl knew Drake was following her, she gave no sign. The windows he passed were darkened and covered as a defense against the sun, but he traveled close to the houses anyway, forced to close the gap between him and Zaphia to keep track of her. She ended her purposeful journey at an innocuous house where she grabbed a few discarded nuts from the ground and tossed them into an upper window. A yawing face appeared. Zaphia flapped her arms to get its attention.

Drake tried his hardest to continue to suspect she was notifying the authorities, but when a boy scrambled down vines clinging to the side of his house, his certainty was tested.

The sharp-eyed boy pointed straight at Drake, and Zaphia glanced behind her, jumping when she saw Drake. "Wow," she exclaimed, seeming impressed. "You're really sneaky."

Drake gave up trying to suspect her of colluding with the enemy after that. If she was helping them, she was doing so by accident. He came closer so she would stop speaking so loudly in the middle of a sleeping village.

"Drake," she whispered, "this is Ario. He's a good climber, and if the guards catch him, they won't think anything of it." Then she said something to Ario including the word "Drake" that earned enthusiastic head bobs from the fuzzy-headed boy.

Back to the palace they went, child in tow. Ario was one of those kids who bounced everywhere he went. He could hardly take a step without adding in an extra spring. Soon, all three were back under the volcano.

"How can he get me in the palace?" Drake asked, watching Ario. Even when the kid was standing still, he was bobbing up and down.

"Oh, no, he can't do that. I mean, he can cause a distraction like last time, I guess, but I don't think they'll fall for that again."

Zaphia chattered to Ario. He chattered back.

Zaphia shook her head at Drake. "No. They told him if they caught him again, he'd be scrubbing statues with a toothbrush for a cat-sleep."

The length of time entailed in a cat-sleep was unknown, but it sounded long enough for Drake to respect Ario's reticence.

Two young sets of eyes blinked at him hopefully. Well, prisons were prisons. "Since it's your night, I'm guessing the head guard delegates this shift," Drake pondered. "Where does he sleep?"

Zaphia shrugged. She chatted quietly with Ario while Drake peeked out from behind their boulder hiding spot next to the palace. A set of spear-armed guards sauntered by an open second-floor balcony. On the plus side, there was no reason for this prison to be on high alert. On the negative side, this prison had no reason to be on high alert. It was enormous, on an island that was impossible to find, and it had its own magical protection system. Maybe he should wait for Rosaliy to join them with some magical options.

"Ario thinks the head guard stays in the cone." Zaphia pointed. In the middle of the sprawling palace, a large tower rested. Now that she named it, the tower did have the shape of a cone with its point wedged into the stone ceiling.

The beginnings of an idea swirled in Drake's head. "You said Ario was a good climber?"

She bobbed her head in agreement.

"Could he wear your concha?"

It took a while to hash out the plan. Zaphia kept trying to overcomplicate the plan, and who knew what she was explaining to the boy, but finally, they all seemed to understand what was going on. A nimble child and an enthusiastic teenager were an ideal crew for a prison break-in. Certainly good people did not think that way, Drake chided himself. However, that was exactly why a nimble child and an enthusiastic teenager were so effective at prison infiltration. Besides, he was on the right side of this prison escape. If anything, he was helping these children take social justice into their own hands. "Taking social justice into their own hands" was a phrase Cliff had used more than once. Drake was not sold on its relevance to his current situation, but Cliff was usually on the right side of things, so Drake decided to accept the man's hypothetical moral approval of the situation.