Free Easter Island by Jennifer Vanderbes Page B

hundreds of grazing sheep, strong winds hurling in from the sea.
    “I don’t have a book! Why don’t I have a book?” Alice, seated on the floor, dutifully unfolding the letters for Elsa’s pile, stops her work. She focuses on Elsa. “Alice must have a book.”
    “But you’ve your very own journal, Allie,” Elsa says.
    “I do. I have my own journal. What do I put in it?”
    “Anything you like, Alice,” Edward says warmly, looking up from the mess of papers before him. His work relaxes him.
    “Pictures. Why, you should be the official expedition artist,” says Elsa.
    “My book is in the room. I want to get it.”
    Their cabin is only yards away, and Elsa tells Alice she may walk, slowly, to the room, retrieve her book, and return immediately. In a flash Alice is gone. Elsa closes her book and watches the narrow passageway. When Alice reappears, she has her journal in one hand, Pudding’s cage in the other.
    “Allie.”
    “He wanted to see the boat!”
    “Set him down, there, beside the sofa. This is a lounge. If he begins to caw, we’ll have to take him back.”
    “Keep quiet, Pudding. Or Elsa’s going to take you away.”
    Alice dramatically perches herself in a chair, mimicking Elsa’s studious posture, and spreads the blank book in her lap.
    “What will you draw in it?” Elsa asks.
    “Who is on the expedition?”
    “We are. You, me, and Edward.”
    A mischievous smile curls Alice’s mouth. “Three people.”
    “Three indeed, Allie.”
    Alice carefully counts three pages. She looks up at Elsa. “Portraits.”
    “Excellent. Three portraits.” As Alice’s pencil leaps into the book, a young couple, elegantly clad, strolls past.
    “Good evening!” says Edward, and the couple return his greeting, but Elsa can see, in the way their eyes search Edward and his clutter of papers, then Alice, herself, and Pudding’s sparkling cage, that they are unsure of what to make of this group before them. Pudding squawks, and the woman grabs the man’s arm.
    “A bird,” the man says. “Just a bird, my dear.”
    “Allie,” cautions Elsa.
    “Pudding,” scolds Alice.
    “I told you we would have to take him back to the room.”
    “What’s in your book, Elsa?”
    “Allie.”
    “What are you writing in there?”
    “Words for us to use when we meet people who don’t speak our language.”
    “Put some in my book.”
    “Very well.” Elsa takes the book from Alice’s lap and writes:
     
    Iorana: Hello
    Ahi: Fire
    Ana: Cave
     
    “Now study those words so that you can use them when we arrive. Everybody is going to want to talk to you.”
    Alice smiles, then slides Elsa’s notebook from her lap. “You need drawings.”
    Below them, another song begins. A slow song, with violins. Elsa imagines all the well-dressed couples clasping hands, swaying from side to side. She imagines the two young women she saw on deck wearing long white gowns, their eyes seeking out the man with the magazine. She sees the Belgian couple gliding across the dance floor, the woman’s gold necklace lit by the porthole’s moonlight. But when she looks at Alice, Elsa brushes the image away.
    “Drawings. Yes. I do need them, don’t I? Do you think you could make some for me?”
    “Can he stay?” she begs, looking at Pudding.
    “All right, Allie. He can stay.”

    After two weeks at sea, they arrive in Boston Harbor and Elsa says a silent good-bye to the vast liner, the elegant strangers, the ballroom and game room and canopied promenades. Standing in the hubbub of the dock, fortressed by their crates, they watch the waves of splendid greetings: valises dropped, arms flung open, names trilled,
Charles! Clarissa! Father!
Trunks are tumbled into the boots of motorcars. Skirts are gathered in small fists as one black-buckled shoe, then another, sidesteps into the backseat. Doors thud closed. The crowds thin, and cars rumble away. How strange, thinks Elsa, to see people move from one container to another. From ship to