Rise of the Isle of the Lost (Descendants 3)

“I think I triggered something,” said Uma. “The machine’s going again.”

Dust sifted downward from the ceiling, followed by a low thunder that nearly shook her to her knees. Rocks fell from the cavern ceiling, and they could hear stones breaking all around them.

“The cavern’s collapsing!” Uma cried, but by then they’d all figured it out. This must be the final trap, the one that would seal them in the cave with the treasure chest forever.

The sorcerer had obviously been serious about the safety of these formerly magical objects. Even without magic at his disposal, he had successfully created obstacles that would deter even the hardiest and greediest goblin.

But Uma was no goblin, and she was determined to leave the Isle of the Doomed with the only inheritance she would ever receive from her mother’s past.

“Run!” she called.

“Already there!” said Harry, at her side, Gil puffing not far behind.

Uma waved her cutlass in the air. “Follow me!” she said, leading the crew toward the light. All around them, stones pelted their heads. The air was already filled with dust, but a light shone faintly in the distance so they ran toward it. The very earth beneath their feet was collapsing as they went, and the walls were falling behind them.

Uma was the first to make it to the cave’s mouth, but she stayed there, waiting for each member of her crew to pass. The captain was always the last to leave, after all, the one who went down with her ship. She would not budge until the last pirate was out. Luckily the pirates were a frightened bunch, so they ran like children, tumbling over one another to get out of the cave as quickly as possible. Uma stepped out of the cavern just as the last stone broke, and the ceiling collapsed entirely, forever trapping whatever was left in there.

“We made it,” he muttered, stating the obvious, as she stumbled out onto the sand, her hair caked with dust and tiny stones. Harry brushed a rock off her shoulder.

In a panic, she looked around. All she saw were pirates, shaking the mud from their hair and brushing it from their clothes. “Where is it? The treasure chest?” she demanded. In all the confusion—in their sheer desire to get out of there—had they left the one thing they had come to find?

Harry tapped her on the shoulder.

What did he want? He didn’t have it either!

But he reached underneath his arm and revealed what he had been carrying the entire time. The treasure chest.

Without hesitating Uma flipped open its wooden lid. There was an old yellowed envelope inside. Uma pulled it out.

“‘Ursula,’” she read, examining the spiky handwriting on the envelope.

Then she shook out the contents onto her palm. There it was, her mother’s seashell necklace, except it was in a hundred tiny little pieces. “I forgot it was broken.”

“Nothing a little island sludge can’t put back together,” said Harry. “Come on. We’ve got a bucket of the stuff back on the ship. It’s stronger than glue; it’ll work.”

Fitting each of the pieces of the broken seashell together was like trying to put together a puzzle without any reference as to what it should look like. They knew it was a shell, but they had no idea where this ridge or that one should fit. It took patience and attention to detail, and they’d just fought a band of skeletons, dodged arrows, and escaped a disintegrating cave. No one was in the mood for a bit of jewelry repair. But there was no time to waste, so they set themselves about the task—clearing a great table and making certain it was clean before Uma placed the envelope’s contents upon it.

“How do we know we even have all the pieces to this thing?” said Uma, frustrated.

“We don’t,” agreed Harry. “But if we give up now, we’ll never find out.”

“Shush,” said Gil, who was placing each piece back together with a delicacy the others hadn’t known he was capable of. They had to trace the edges of each piece, looking for ridges and bumps that matched another piece or a streak of color that ran from one fragment to the next. It was subtle work, almost impossible. Harry threw up his hands more than once, and Uma t

wice had to take a walk out on the deck to let loose a bit of frustration. They all took turns at the task, but it was Gil, oddly enough, who stuck with it, supervising the whole thing. The work was painstaking, until Gil finally made an announcement. “Okay,” he said, “we’re missing one piece.”

“Honestly?” muttered Uma.

“It might have fallen under the table,” said Harry. “Everyone look!” He stood and knelt on the floor to see if he could find a tiny gold piece. Gil, Uma, and the rest of the crew did the same. They looked everywhere and even sent some of the crew back to the beach to see if one of the pieces had fallen out when Uma first opened the envelope. They found nothing.

Perhaps it was lost in the sea, thought Uma.

She recalled her mother telling her about that final battle. How Ursula had called the great waves, urging them to skyscraper-like heights, and how she had blown up to a thousand times her size—a large, laughing octopus, larger than the ship, loud as thunder. How she had cursed them all, wreaking havoc on Prince Eric’s ship, and aiming to drown all aboard.

Except Prince Eric had taken the wheel and rammed his ship right into her heart, right into her necklace, scattering its pieces all over the ocean. Uma always held her breath at that part of the story, wondering how it was that her mother had survived such a battle. Because even though she’d lost, she’d survived. Prince Eric hadn’t destroyed her completely.

And here was the necklace.

Here was hope.