The Golden City

2

When she had finished her geometry problems, Alice Chen slid off the bench, grabbed a scone from the breadbox, and pushed open the cooking hut’s heavy door. It was cold and windy on Skellig Columba, but Alice left her quilted jacket open. Her black braids swung back and forth as she hurried up the pathway that connected the three terraces on the northern edge of the island. Two rainwater catch basins and a garden with parsnips and cabbage were on the final terrace, and then the pathway disappeared and she was striding across rocky ground dotted with sorrel and saw thistle.

Alice scrambled up a boulder, kicking off bits of black lichen as if they were ashes from an ancient fire. When she reached the top, she turned slowly around and surveyed the island like a guard who had just climbed up a watchtower. Alice was twelve years old-a small, serious girl who had once practiced the cello and built forts in the desert with her friends. Now she was living on an isolated island with four nuns who thought they were taking care of her-not realizing that the opposite was true. When Alice was alone, she could assume her new identity: the Warrior Princess of Skellig Columba, Guardian of the Poor Claires.

She could smell peat smoke coming from the cooking hut and the rotting odor of the seaweed hauled up from the shore and used to fertilize the garden. The cold wind coming off the water touched the collar of her jacket and made her eyes water. Directly below her were the chapel and the four convent huts, each one resembling a stone beehive with slit windows and recessed doors. Looking out at the ocean, she could see the whitecaps on the waves and a dark line on the horizon that marked the circumference of her world.

The Poor Claires cooked special treats for Alice, mended her torn clothes and poured pots of hot water into a galvanized washtub so that she could enjoy a once-a-week bath. Sister Maura made her read Shakespeare plays and Irish poetry, and Sister Ruth, the eldest nun, guided her through a Victorian Era textbook of Euclidian geometry. Alice slept with the nuns in the dormitory hut. There was always an oil lamp burning in the room; when Alice woke up in the middle of the night, she could see the nuns’ heads lying in the center of goose-down pillows.

She knew that these gentle, devout women cared about her-perhaps they even loved her-but they couldn’t protect her from the dangers of the world. A few months earlier, Tabula mercenaries had landed on the island in a helicopter. While Alice and the nuns hid in a cave, the men broke down the door of the storage hut and killed Vicki Fraser. Vicki was a very kind person, and it was painful to think about her death.

Alice believed that everything would have been different if Maya had been on the island. The Harlequin would have used her sword and knives and shotgun to destroy all the men on the helicopter. If Maya had been living at New Harmony, she would have protected Alice’s mother and the rest of the people living there when the Tabula arrived. Alice knew that everyone at New Harmony was dead, but they were still with her. Sometimes, she was doing something completely ordinary-tying her shoes or mashing her potatoes with a fork-and then she saw her mother getting dressed or heard her friend Brian Bates playing his trumpet.

Alice jumped off the boulder, turned away from the convent, and headed west across the rocky ground. The island was formed when two mountain peaks pushed their way out of the water, and the bluish-gray limestone was riddled with caves and sinkholes. During her months on Skellig Columba, she had stacked up columns of rocks; some were signposts for her different pathways around the island while others were false clues that might lead a careless invader off the edge of a cliff.

Her storage spot was a badger-sized hollow hidden inside a patch of weeds. She kept a rusty butcher knife that she had found in the storage hut and a paring knife stolen from the convent kitchen wrapped in a sheet of plastic. Alice thrust the butcher knife beneath her belt, wearing it like a short sword, and strapped the paring knife to her forearm with two large rubber bands. There were no trees on the island, but she had found a walking stick down by the landing dock, and she used it as a tool to probe mysterious places. Now that she was armed, she tried to walk like a Harlequin-calm but alert, never fearful and uncertain.

After hiking for about twenty minutes, she reached the western end of the island. The constant attack of the waves had cut away chunks of limestone. Now the cliff looked like five gray fingers reaching into the cold water. Alice walked to the largest of the fingers and stood near the edge. It was a six-foot jump over a crevasse to the next section of cliff. If she slipped and fell, it was a long drop down to the jagged rocks that received the surge of each new wave.

The gap between the two sections of cliff was wide enough to make the jump difficult, but not impossible. She had already imagined what it would feel like if she didn’t reach the other side. Her arms would flap wildly like a bird that had just been shot. She would have just enough time to hear the waves and see the rocks before the darkness reached out and claimed her.

A flock of shearwaters circled overhead, calling to each other with a wavering cry that made her feel lonely. If she looked toward the center of the island, she could see the cairn that marked Vicki’s grave. Hollis Wilson had dug a hole and piled up stones like a madman. He had refused to speak, and the only sound came from the blade of his shovel as he jabbed it into the rocky ground.

Alice turned and stared out at the empty horizon. She could walk away, returning to the warmth of the cooking hut, but then she would never know if she were as brave as Maya. Alice placed her walking stick near a clump of grass and adjusted the two knives so that they wouldn’t shift around when she moved quickly. She stood at the far edge of the cliff and realized that she had only about ten feet of running space before she had to leap across the gap.

Do it, she told herself. You can’t hesitate. Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath, and then dashed forward. As she approached the edge, she stopped suddenly. Her left foot kicked a white pebble into the gap; it bounced off the walls and disappeared into the shadows below.

“Coward,” she whispered as she backed away from the edge. “You are a coward.” Feeling small and weak and twelve-years-old, she gazed out at the seabirds riding the air currents up to the heavens.

When she took a few steps back to level ground, she saw a black shape come over the ridge. It was Sister Maura, red-cheeked and breathing hard. The wind grabbed at her veil and the sleeves of her dress.

“Alice!” the nun shouted. “I’m not pleased with you. Not pleased at all. You didn’t finish diagramming your sentences and Sister Ruth said you didn’t peel the carrots. Back to the hut. No dawdling. You know the rule-no play until work is done.”

Alice took a few more steps back and concentrated on a patch of red lichen on the other side of the gap. There must have been something in the way she held her body that told Sister Maura what was going to happen.

“Stop!” the nun screamed. “You’ll kill yourself! You’ll-”

But the rest of the words were absorbed by the wind as the Warrior Princess ran toward the edge.

And jumped.