The Apprentices by Mailie Meloy
Janie looked at Sylvia, with her methodical categories, her primary and secondary points of vulnerability. So much of her had gone into taking care of Magnusson and his affairs. It would be hard for her to walk away, even if she knew he was doing wrong.
“What about me?” Janie asked. “What’s my point of vulnerability?” She thought of her tender, witty mother, and her father’s goofy laugh. She thought of Benjamin, with his copper-flecked eyes.
Sylvia blushed. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Tell me,” Janie said.
“Well—it’s your ambition.”
Janie was startled. “That’s not true.”
“Yes it is.”
“Not Benjamin?” Janie asked. She’d been careful not to name him before, but it came out, in her surprise. “Not my parents?”
“No,” Sylvia said. “You’re their point of vulnerability. But they aren’t yours.”
“Are you sure?” Janie asked. It was dawning on her, slowly. To lure Benjamin, they’d taken Janie. To lure Janie, they’d taken—her chemistry experiment. Was Magnusson right? Had she become so single-minded that her point of vulnerability was a bunch of glassware and a titrating apparatus, and not the people she loved?
Sylvia gave her a look of sympathy. “It’s okay to be ambitious,” she said. “It’s hard for women to make a mark. You have to be determined.”
“But people are more important.”
Sylvia nodded. “I think so.”
Janie hadn’t told her parents that she’d been kicked out of school and moved in with strangers. She hadn’t told them anything, so she could keep working on her chemistry experiment. And she had reached out to Benjamin only when they took her experiment, because they’d taken her experiment. And now Benjamin was dead. The thought flooded her with sadness. “The way you think about your brother every day,” she said, “I think about Benjamin.”
“Except that you’ll see him again,” Sylvia said.
“I don’t think so,” Janie said. “You didn’t ask me who Benjamin was. Because you already knew.”
“Yes.”
“How much does Magnusson know?”
“A lot. He knows about Benjamin’s father.”
“So what does he want them for?”
“I couldn’t tell you. Even if I knew. But I promise you I don’t.”
There might be more questions to ask, but Janie couldn’t stand to have Sylvia looking so sorry for her anymore. She put her lemonade glass down, lifted her hips off the tile, and slipped feet first back into the pool.
CHAPTER 40
Sprung
The police dumped Pip unceremoniously in a holding cell at the Boston police station, and he picked himself up and grabbed the bars. “What am I in here for?” he demanded.
“Kidnapping a socialite,” said the officer.
“I didn’t kidnap her!”
“Her mother says you did.”
“Well, her mother’s wrong. Your mum ever been wrong about you and a girl?”
“You were in a hotel with her.”
“I was leaving a hotel with her. That’s no crime!”
“We were trying to question her,” the officer said. “You ran.”
“You were chasing me!”
“Seems like her roommate disappeared, too. Jane Scott. You might’ve had something to do with it.”
“That’s crazy! I haven’t even seen her roommate!” Pip was trying not to get riled, but the accusation was ridiculous.
“We’ll see what the detectives say.”
“I get to make a phone call.”
The cop hesitated. “Make it fast.”
Pip thought about his options. There weren’t many people he knew in America. He took a gamble, and asked the operator for the Italian restaurant in Grayson, New Hampshire.
“Which Italian restaurant, sir?” the operator asked.
“I forgot what it’s called,” Pip said. “Something with a B. Wait—Bruno’s.”
“Just a moment, sir.”
Pip hoped Giovanna, the woman from the restaurant, would answer the telephone. She’d said she had a brother who was a lawyer. But instead, a waiter with a young voice answered. “Do you know a girl named Janie Scott?” Pip asked.
“Yes!” the kid said, and his urgency came straight over the telephone line. “Where is she? Are you the one who talked to my aunt?”
Jackpot. Pip grinned. The kid had a lawyer uncle, and he had a crush on Janie.
Two hours later, the kid turned up with his uncle the lawyer, who spoke perfect English, wore a nice suit, and made a big fuss about how the police had no actual charges to bring against Pip. He said that Pip was a celebrity, a television star, a national treasure—Pip liked that one—and the British consulate was going to be unhappy if the police didn’t let him go.
Pip studied the nephew while the negotiations went on. He was handsome in that soft way girls liked, with black curls falling loose across his forehead. Pip started to wonder about Benjamin’s reasons for sending him to rescue Janie. Then Pip was free, and the uncle left, telling the two boys to stay the hell out of trouble after this.
It was cold outside, and Pip hugged his jacket to his body. He’d thought America was going to be so bloody glamorous, but it was freezing here, and the jails weren’t much nicer than in London.
Raffaello said, “My aunt told me that some short English kid came looking for Janie right after she left.”
“I’m not that short,” Pip said.
“You’re pretty short.”
“Why weren’t you at the dance at Grayson?” Pip asked.
“I don’t go there. I had a rehearsal for a play at my own school.”
“You’re an actor?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m in a play. It’s not like being on television or anything.”
Pip was surprised by how unimportant being on television seemed now—except in that it had helped get him sprung from jail. He decided he trusted Raffaello. “So listen,” he said. “I went to that dance, but Janie wasn’t there. Her roommate, Opal, thinks she’s on some island in Malaya.”
“Malaya?”
“That’s what Opal thinks. We sent a telegram to her grandfather, who’s a sultan. I was hoping he’d send a plane for us.”
“Where’s Opal now?”
“She was with me when I got arrested, but they didn’t bring her in. They probably took her home.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We try to help Janie.”
“In Malaya?” the kid said. “Do you know how far away that is?”
“So let’s get started!”
They stared at each other a minute, then Raffaello shook his head and said, “I can’t. I have a shift at the restaurant tonight.”
At the word restaurant, Pip’s stomach grumbled. He was cold and hungry, and almost out of money. He had no boat, no plane, no car. The restaurant sounded cozy and warm. They could go there and eat, and he would figure out how to get to Malaya tomorrow.
So they climbed onto the same worn-out bus Pip had taken to Boston with Opal for the two-hour ride back to Grayson. Raffaello got out a dog-eared paperback script to study.
“What’s the play?” Pip asked.
Raffaello showed him the cover: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare.
“Any good?” Pip asked.
“Sure,” Raffaello said. “I think so.”
“Are the girls in it pretty?”
Raffaello blushed. “I guess.”
“Best reason to be an actor, in my opinion,” Pip said, settling into his seat. “Loads of pretty girls. You in love with Janie?”
The boy’s blush deepened. “Who wants to know?”
“My mate Benjamin, I think.”
“It’s none of his business.”
“I’d say that means yes.”
“Look, I got you out of jail because you’re Janie’s friend,” Raffaello said. “You made me late for work, and I ha
“Nothing,” Pip said. “Want help running lines?”
“No.” Raffaello frowned in concentration and started mouthing the words silently, and Pip left him to it.
* * *
In Grayson, they stepped through the back door of Bruno’s restaurant into a bright, warm, busy kitchen. It smelled of delicious things to eat: grilling steak and tomato sauce and sizzling butter. The room was full of cooks and busboys in white, but there were also two people in dark overcoats, a man and a woman, talking to Raffaello’s aunt on the other side of the room. Something about the two of them tugged at Pip’s memory.
Giovanna waved Raffaello over, and the couple turned. They had worried, intelligent faces, and Pip recognized them at the same moment they recognized him. They were Janie’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Scott. Their faces brightened: hope mingling with despair.
Those looks made Pip think he was no actor, not really, because he could never fake an expression like that. It was how it looked when someone was the whole world to you, and was lost, and you would do anything to get them back.
CHAPTER 41
Escape
A great feast was held on the island, to celebrate the coming of the magnificent John Frum. An island pig was roasted, and there were bananas and yams, breadfruit and coconuts. Benjamin was served first, as a sign of honor. He ate everything that was given to him, knowing he had a long journey ahead. But he didn’t drink the kava. He tossed the contents of his bowl into the bushes when he was sure no one was looking. He had no desire for more visions, or for more retching. His fellow banqueters had a better tolerance for the stuff than he did, but still they got drunker and wilder as the feast wore on.
Through the firelight, Benjamin caught Tessel’s eye. The boy was eating roasted yam, scooping the soft orange flesh into his mouth. He nodded to Benjamin, clear-eyed and sober. Tessel’s father was a master navigator and the boy was his apprentice, which was going to come in handy.
The other boy, Salvation, was alert and watchful, too. While one of the island’s leaders gave a long speech in the language Benjamin still couldn’t understand, Salvation trailed away into the darkness. Then Tessel vanished, too.
Benjamin waited, as agreed, taking thirty slow breaths. Then he stood, casually.
Toby Prophet, beside him, caught his arm. “Where you go, John Frum?”
“To—you know, relieve myself,” Benjamin said. “To take a piss.”
“Ah!” the prophet said, laughing. He clapped Benjamin on the back. “You drink too much kava, John Frum!”
No, you drink too much kava, Benjamin thought as he slipped away into the trees. The firelight had made him night-blind, so he made his way carefully in the direction of the hidden boats, waiting for his eyes to adjust. As he walked, the ground became clearer, the trees more visible. The water sparkled beyond the shore.
Tessel and Salvation had a small wooden boat, about sixteen feet long, waiting in the hidden cove. Benjamin waded into the water and then swam out, trying not to splash. Tessel helped haul him up, and Benjamin sat dripping in the cockpit. They hadn’t had much opportunity to talk or plan. “You have food?” he asked. “And water?”
“Yes,” Tessel said. The tone of his voice said that of course they had food and water. Did Benjamin think they were idiots? Or children?
But they were children, of course. These small boys were his guides, his rescuers, his hope. Benjamin looked to Salvation, hoping to gain confidence from the boy’s solemn face, but the child in the stern wasn’t Salvation. It was a girl, with her hair in short pigtails. The night was dark, but Benjamin was quite sure it was a girl.
“Who are you?” he asked her.
“Efa,” she said.
“You speak English?”
She nodded uncertainly.
He looked back to Tessel. “Where’s Salvation?”
“He stays,” Tessel said.
Benjamin had gotten used to the idea of fleeing with Tessel and Salvation, but this was new. The punishment would be worse for a girl. “We must take her back,” he said.
“No!” the girl cried, then she clamped her hands over her mouth. “Please,” she said more softly, between her fingers.
Tessel’s face was jumping with nervousness. “She is in boat now,” he said. “It is tabu.”
Was this a bluff? Benjamin understood that girls weren’t supposed to be in boats, or even to be in the water with them. But would the islanders hurt her for it? He didn’t know. “If she goes back now, they won’t know,” he said.
“She wants to sail,” Tessel said. “To learn.”
“Yes,” Efa said, pleading.
Tessel took her hand. “I can’t make kava now,” he said. “We go.”
Benjamin looked at the children’s linked hands—the girl defying the tabu for a life at sea, the kava-maker despoiled by contact with a girl—and realized that they were not here to help him escape. They were escaping themselves. He was not being rescued; he was aiding and abetting runaways.
Tessel had already raised the sail, and the breeze picked up briskly, as if commanded by a god. The sail filled and tightened, and the boat slid away from the island. Tessel adjusted the lines, watching the top of the sail. Efa watched him work. Then she looked shyly at Benjamin and patted a bundle by her side. “Food,” she said.
He nodded, resigned. The end result was the same: They were getting away.
Tessel studied the stars for their position and pushed the tiller to catch more wind. The three fugitives headed out of the hidden cove through a gap in the island’s protective reef, to sea.
Chapter 42
Bird People
As morning broke, a falcon and a snowy white owl flew over the island where they had determined that Benjamin must be. They had been flying by night, to avoid the notice of hunters and fishermen. The white owl wore a small leather canister on his back, attached with a clever harness that kept the canister clear of his wings. It had been designed for carrier pigeons by a German apothecary, to deliver medication to a sanitarium, and Marcus Burrows had adapted it for his own use.
The morning sun glinted pink on the water. The air was soft and expectant, not yet shimmering with the full day’s heat. The two birds, with their extraordinary vision, capable of seeing a mouse ear twitch a mile away, scanned the thatch huts for a sandy-haired boy sporting a nasty sunburn, but the island was still asleep.
They saw signs of a recent feast: a smoking fire pit, the carcass of a pig stripped bare, kava bowls made from coconuts abandoned on the ground. The island seemed to be suffering a hangover from the night before.
So the birds didn’t expect the swift arrow that shot out of the glowing, sleepy morning. It whizzed, unlooked-for, through the air and pierced the owl’s snowy wing. He gave a surprised cry and began to plummet toward the ground, tilting helplessly. The falcon screamed. The owl tried to right himself, but his wing was shot through.
Crashing into the canopy of trees, he grabbed at a branch with his talons, but the weight of the leather canister tilted him backward. He tried to fly, but there was no space between the lush branches to spread his good wing.
The falcon swept between the leaves, her wing tips clearing the branches by a hairsbreadth, and followed him down.
The owl landed heavily on the ground and began to grow. A man in a loincloth and a faded red T-shirt came out of the trees with a bow in his hand and stood over the helpless white bird, whose legs were getting longer. Jin Lo perched on a branch, out of sight. The straps of the owl’s harness snapped as his body grew, as they were designed to. The owl’s skull was growing larger, his feathers retracting, his wings becoming arms.
The man with the bow retrieved his arrow and watched the transformation. His shirt said Coca-Cola. He was startled and interested, Jin Lo thought, but not astonished. Possibly he had already seen this thing happen to Benjamin. Jin Lo breathed slowly, to keep her mind and body calm. Stress, fear, and pain caus
The apothecary sat on the ground in his simple cotton clothes. His left arm was bleeding through his shirt where the arrow had gone through his wing. He held his good hand up for protection.
“Please,” he said to the man. “Shon’t doot me.”
“You birdmen,” the man said, without seeming to notice the apothecary’s scrambled words. There was hot rancor in his voice. “You come from sky. You say John Frum, you say cargo. I very happy. Then you steal boat, you steal kava boy, you steal girl, you go. You tricky bad. This boy is not John Frum.”
“No,” the apothecary said simply.
The man looked at him with curiosity and the faintest trace of hope. “You John Frum?”
“No,” the apothecary said.
The man looked forlorn. “He must come.”
The apothecary clutched his bleeding arm. He could say nothing that the man wanted to hear. He could barely say anything that the man—or anyone else—could understand.
The man pointed to the leather canister. “What is this?”
“Medicine,” the apothecary said.
“Poison?”
“No.”
“Give me.”
The apothecary hesitated, but when the man pulled out a curved knife, he handed the little leather canister over.
“You come with me,” the man ordered.
The apothecary stood awkwardly, one-armed, and glanced up at the falcon, then allowed himself to be marched at knifepoint through the trees. Jin Lo moved from branch to branch overhead as she followed. She tried not to become agitated. It would do no good for her to tumble from the trees as a woman.
In a clearing, two other men seized the apothecary by the arms. He cried out, but they ignored his injury and tied him with rough twine to a tree in a small clearing. The man in the Coca-Cola T-shirt slid the glass vials from the leather canister out onto the ground. He called to some women, who hurried off on a task that Jin Lo didn’t quite understand. She had missed a few words.