“Hey, Mysty-Mysty-Mysty!”
Mysty opened her eyes. She was looking into Miriam’s face only inches from her own. “Oh, hello, where you been?”
“Wake up you twit!” Miriam was now lifting Mysty’s shoulders and shaking them.
“Ok, Ok, what? Where are we?” Mysty suddenly remembered her fall and the strange boy. Glancing to the side, she could see they were in a cave. There was a makeshift door of branches that closed them in a side room, barely big enough for the two of them. Maybe seven feet by eight feet and only about four feet high. She felt the sand under hands. Her right arm was in a sling made from a dirty plaid shirt.
“Sh-h-h-h. I think they’re coming.” Miriam was gripping Mysty’s hurt shoulder and she winced from the pain.
“Let go!” Mysty hissed between her teeth clenched from the pain.
“Oh, sorry, sh-h. Maybe you should pretend you’re still out.” The look of terror in Miriams eyes made Mysty’s stomach clench. She could hear the boys voices getting closer. Mysty laid back down and closed her eyes.
“Think she’s awake? Do we need to get Brandent?” Mysty recognized the boy’s voice from her fall.
“God, no. Who knows what he would do. I think we should handle this ourselves.” Mysty assumed this must be Jimmy. His voice was raspy and sent shivers up her spine.
“Hey Jimmy, look, Miriam aint it? How’s your buddy? She’s your buddy, right? You’re kinda cute, you know, I might…” his voice trailed off. Mysty wondered who this boy might be. She hadn’t recognised him.
“Shut up Brick. Your a clod.” Jimmy gave a half smile to Miriam.
“We’re not goin to hurt you. But, we need to get a few things straight. You can tell your friend when she wakes up. This is a secret place, and if you keep it secret, we can let you go. Let me tell you about it and I think you’ll be on our side. You see, we’re from an island two over east of here. We was goofin around sailing about and saw this cave from the water. We landed and tried to climb up, but Brick fell. Kinda like your buddy there. I thought for sure we was in trouble cause I knew the Protectors would come cause he was hurt. But, they didn’t come! I don’t know why, but this is a nomans zone or somethin. No one comes here, and the Protectors don’t come. Well, we come back later with a rope. We snuck around the other side of the island and made our way clever like to the top of this cliff and tied our rope up around a tree. We were sure there must be treasure and all in this here cave. Anyways, we got in here and found some big old metal boxes. Some too heavy to lift, so we took a smaller square-like one back with us home. Some buddies of ours helped us open it and you know what?” With this, Jimmy looked over at Miriam and her eyes were round and big, more with fear than wonder. She was hanging on every word he said. Mysty had her head faced away from him and was staring at the sandy wall of her enclosure.
“Ok, don’t guess. There was this old black leather book. It’s pages had a shiny gold edge and all. And, it was in English, but a kinda of strange words and all. We studied it for months. We found out it was about how all this came about. And there was these papers stuck in the pages. They told about how aliens were being spotted around everywhere and how tons of people just disappeared one night. They was survivors of some awful thing, and wrote about what they was thinkin. They thought the Protectors and the Overseers were aliens!! From some place off our Earth! Sos we started planning. And it makes sense don’t it? I was thinkin’ you might agree with us and help us out and all. That way we can let you go before Brandent finds out we got you here. I don’t want to hurt you all.” Jimmy’s face was scrunched up, sweat ran down the side of his dirty face, making a clean line as it went.
Miriam didn’t know what to say. She just stared back at him. “Ok, so tell us more.” She tried to say as calmly as she could. Mysty turned at that and sat up next to Miriam.
“Hey look, Brick, I told you she was ok. Now, let me read you some, and tell you the whole story.”