The Island of Excess Love Read Online Free

see the ship swaying in the dark waters, as if it’s watching us. We try to stay busy with our morning meditation and yoga class, our reading and drawing and repairs—I’m mending some shirts and Venice is attempting to fix a broken chair—but it’s like we can’t really concentrate. Hex has taken his sword down from the wall above our bed and every so often he reaches for it as if to reassure himself. But we skip sword practice today; it’s always hard to get Ez and Ash to comply and Hex, Venice, and I are too worn out from the morning incident to try to convince them. But as the day drawls on I can’t sit still anymore.
    â€œWe need to do something about it,” I say, finally. Before I wanted to get inside the house but now I feel like I’m going crazy just sitting here.
    I do a quick checklist of our abilities, trying to see how we could use them against an ominous ship or what might be aboard it. There are Hex’s sword-fighting lessons and we regularly lift the weights my father kept in the basement, Ez cooks and guides the meditation and yoga, and Ash’s music saved us from being eaten by a Giant. Ash once flew; Ez kept furniture from crushing him during the Earth Shaker; Hex put out fires; Venice once hid himself from the eyes of Giants and he has a supernatural ability with growing plants. And me, I stopped a wall of water from destroying my house during the Earth Shaker and after I lost my eye I began to see random visions of people’s pasts, although it’s happened much less lately. None of our gifts sound particularly promising.
    â€œI don’t want to explore just yet,” says Hex. “I don’t like the effect it had on Venice.”
    â€œBut that’s the whole point. What if that happens again?”
    We all look at Venice but he’s busy hammering away at the chair, singing softly to himself. Sometimes he gets a very peaceful look when he’s working, as if he’s back in our old life, minus the video games. Well, minus just about everything.
    Finally he looks up. The peaceful expression is gone. “I won’t let it get me again.”
    â€œI’m not going,” says Ez. “Pen, we just have to wait it out.”
    I get up and go to the window but I don’t open the curtains. “Wait what out? Wait for them to attack?”
    â€œWho’s them?” Ez says. “We don’t know if anyone’s there at all. We don’t even know if it’s real.”
    â€œWhat, you think it’s a figment of all of our imaginations like what happened to Venice’s hair?” I say. “Collective post-traumatic stress disorder?”
    That’s our explanation for almost everything and it kind of makes sense after what we’ve been through.
    â€œWho knows? It could be anything. We’ve pretty much seen it all, right?” Ash chimes in.
    We pretty much have.
    â€œWhat do you think, Ven?” I ask, since the rest of them seem to have made up their minds.
    My little brother shrugs. “I can beat it now.”
    â€œIt looked like it was going to burn you to death,” I say, which I realize, too late, isn’t exactly going to help Venice feel better about what happened. But it might get my friends to change their minds and deal with the situation.
    â€œBut it didn’t,” Hex says. “It was some kind of hallucination we all had at the same time. An”—he pauses and then emphasizes the next word—“illusion. And what’s ‘it’? The ship? How do we know they’re connected? How do we know it means anything?”
    Before I can stop myself I answer. “Because your book says it is. The fire was like what happened to Aeneas’s son Ascanius’s hair.” I pick up Hex’s precious Aeneid . “It was an omen.”
    We all look at each other, six sets of somber eyes, including Argos’s.
    Oh shit, not another prophetic