Isle of the Lost by Melissa de La Cruz (23)

Every moment of this adventure had already proven to be a little more adventurous than Carlos had anticipated.

This revelation might have been a problem for the average man of science who didn’t like to run the tombs and who kept to the labs as much as possible. Sure, Carlos had felt a little seasick on the journey over to the Isle of the Doomed, but he’d been able to hold it down, hadn’t he?

If he looked at it like that, he’d already proven himself to be a better adventurer than anyone could have reasonably expected.

That’s what Carlos told himself, anyway.

Then he told himself that he’d done better than anyone else in Weird Science would have. He actually laughed out loud at the thought of his classroom nemesis in this current situation, which had prompted Jay to shove him and ask if he didn’t think he was taking the whole mad scientist thing a little too literally.

“I’m not crazy,” Carlos reassured his fellow adventurers. Still, willing himself not to yak into the churning sea itself had required more than his share of exhausting determination, and by the time the four of them were back on land and all the way clear of the thorn forest—no worse for wear save for a few scratches and itchy elbows—Carlos was more than glad to find a real path leading up to the dark castle on the hill above them.

Plain old dirt and rock had never looked so good.

Until it began to rain, and the dirt became mud, and the rock became slippery.

At least it wasn’t the sea, Carlos consoled himself. And the odds of a person actually drowning in mud and rocks were incredibly slim.

Besides, his invention was now beeping at regular intervals, its sensor light flashing more brightly and more quickly with every step that drew them closer to the fortress. “The Dragon’s Eye is definitely up there,” Carlos said excitedly, feeling a scientist’s enthusiasm at a working experiment. “If this thing is right, I’m picking up on some kind of massive surge in electrical energy. If there is a hole in the dome, it’s leaking magic here somehow, different from the Isle of the Lost.”

“Maybe the hole is right above this place,” said Evie.

“Yeah, I can feel it too.” Mal nodded, still moving forward along the path. “Do you guys?” She stopped and looked at them, shielding her eyes from the rain with one hand.

Carlos looked at her in surprise. “Feel what? This?” He held up his box, and it beeped in her face. Mal jumped back, startled, and Jay laughed.

“Whoops,” Carlos said. “See what I mean? The energy is surging.”

Mal looked embarrassed. “I don’t know for sure. Maybe I’m imagining it, but it almost feels like there’s some kind of magnet pulling me up the path.”

“That is so creepy,” Evie said, stopping to wipe sweat off her forehead with the edge of her cape. “Like, it’s your destiny, literally, calling.”

“Well,” said Carlos, “no, not really. If it were literally calling, it would be, you know, calling her.”

Jay laughed.

Evie glared at him. “Okay, fine. Literally pulling like a magnet, only not really, because it’s, you know, destiny. Are you happy now?”

“Literally?” Carlos raised an eyebrow.

Jay laughed again, which made Carlos feel good, though he couldn’t exactly explain why, not even to himself.

“Don’t you guys feel it?” Mal sounded nervous. Nobody said anything, and she sighed, turning back to the muddy path.

They’d only made it up past the next curving switchback in the path when Mal stumbled and fell, sending a slide of rock down the trail behind her.

“Who-ahh,” Mal yelped, her arms flailing. The dark stones were so slick with rain that she couldn’t right herself, only slipping on the rocks again.

Evie caught Mal before she tumbled headfirst down the stony path. Both girls flew backward into Jay, who almost toppled Carlos behind him.

“I got you,” said Evie, helping Mal to regain her balance.

“Yeah, and I got you,” Jay said.

“Which is great for everyone but me,” Carlos said, barely keeping one arm around his device as the other held Jay off him. “The human doorstop.”

“I am definitely in the wrong shoes for this,” Evie said, wincing at the sight of her own feet.

“We need flippers, not shoes. The rain has turned this whole trail into a mud river. Maybe we should all hold hands,” Jay suggested. “We’ll work better if we’re all together.”

“Did you really just say that?” Mal shook her head, sounding disgusted. “Why don’t we just sing songs to cheer each other up and then weave flowers out of the mud and move to Auradon, while we’re at it?”

“Come on, Mal.” Carlos tried not to smile. He knew that Mal, of all of them, had the hardest time with anything more beneficent than Maleficent.

“Do you have a better idea?” Jay looked embarrassed.

“If you wanted to hold my hand, you know, you could have just asked,” teased Evie, as she offered it to Jay, waggling her fingers.

“Well, now,” Jay winked. “You don’t say.”

Evie laughed. “Don’t worry, Jay, you’re cute—but thieves aren’t my style.”

“I wasn’t worried,” said Jay smoothly, grasping her hand in his firm grip. “I just don’t feel like taking a mud bath today.”

“From a physics perspective, it does make sense. If you want to talk about Newton’s second and third laws,” Carlos added, trying to sound reassuring. “You know, momentum and force, and all that.”

“What he said.” Jay nodded, holding out his hand to Mal.

Carlos watched him, wondering if Jay and Evie were flirting, and if that was why Mal seemed mad. No. Mal and Jay bickered like siblings. And Jay and Evie were just trying to cover up the fact that they were scared. Jay had told him earlier that he thought Evie was cute, all right, but he thought of her like he did Mal, which meant he didn’t think of her at all. Carlos thought that if the girls were had been their sisters, Mal would have been their annoying, grumpy sister while Evie would have been the manipulative, pretty one. And if Jay had been his brother, he’d be the kind who was either laughing at you or punching you when he wasn’t busy stealing your stuff.

The longer he thought about it, the more Carlos decided it wasn’t so bad to be an only child, after all.

“Come on, Mal. Just take it. Even Newton agrees,” Jay said, wiggling his fingers at Mal, while still grasping Evie’s hand tightly in his other hand.

Mal gave up with a sigh, grabbing it after only a slight hesitation. Mal then held her hand out to Carlos, who grabbed it as if it were a lifesaver, seeing as he knew his physics better than any of them.

Somewhat awkwardly, and little by little, the four of them pulled and pushed and helped each other slosh their way up the muddy path, sweaty palms and muddy ankles and cold feet and all.

Before long the pathway curved once again, and now the thick rain cloud surrounding it seemed to part on either side of the four adventurers, revealing a sudden and dramatic vista—what appeared to be a long and slender stone bridge, half-shrouded in mist, that jutted out above a chasm in the rock directly in front of them.

“It’s beautiful,” Evie said, shivering. “In a really terrifying way.”

“It’s just a bridge,” Carlos said, holding up his box. “But we definitely have to cross it. Look—” The light was flashing so brightly and so quickly now that he covered the sensor with one hand.

“Duh,” Jay said.

“It’s not just a bridge,” Mal said, in a low voice, staring at the gray shape in front of her. “It’s her bridge. Maleficent’s bridge. And it’s pulling me. I have to cross it. It wants me to get to the other side.”

“It’s not the bridge I’m worried about,” Carlos said, looking into the distance. “Look!”

Beyond the bridge and mist, a black castle rose from a pillar of stone. The bridge was the only way to reach the castle, as sheer cliffs surrounded the black fortress on all other sides.

But the castle itself was so forbidding, it didn’t exactly look like a place that wanted to be reached.

“That’s it,” Mal breathed. “That has to be the Forbidden Fortress.” The darkest place on their dark isle—Maleficent’s old lair, and ancestral home.

“Sweet,” Jay said. “That’s one sick shack.”

Evie studied it from behind him, still shivering. “And I thought our castle was drafty.”

“I can’t believe that we actually found it.” Carlos stared from his box to the castle. “And I can’t believe it was so close to the island all along.”

Mal’s eyes were dark, and her expression was impossible to read. She looked almost stunned, Carlos thought. “I guess that explains the rain. The Forbidden Fortress hides itself in a shroud of fog and mist. It’s like a moat, I guess.”

Carlos examined the air around him. “Of course it is. A defensive mechanism, built into the atmosphere itself.”

“I’m sure my mother designed it to keep everyone she didn’t want out.”

She didn’t say the rest, so Jay said it for her. “Which meant, you know, everyone.”

Carlos found it hard to look away from the black tower on the hill. No wonder the citizens of the Isle of the Lost were told to keep away. Here was concrete proof of villainy, of the power of darkness and infamy.

Malefient’s darkness.

It wasn’t just any evil. What loomed in front of them was the most powerful and most storied darkness in the kingdom.

Carlos suddenly felt it—the magnetic pull Mal had tried to describe. He could feel it thrumming in the air, in the very stones beneath his feet. Even if magic was no longer a factor, there was power here, and history.

“Feel that?” Carlos held his vibrating hand up into the air.

“I can too,” Evie said, picking up a rock from the mud. It rattled in her fingers as she held it. “Destiny,” she announced dramatically.

Jay pointed at the lightning that crackled in air above the black turrets. “Me too. I guess it’s time.”

Mal didn’t say a word. She only stared.

“Hold on, now. We’re not in any rush,” Carlos said. “We need to do this right, or—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He just shrugged.

Then he caught Mal’s gaze and knew she felt the same way.

“Look,” Jay said, yanking back an armful of overgrown vines that covered the stony steps leading up to the main ramp of the bridge. He tossed them to the side.

“What are those horrible, ugly creatures?” Evie made a face. “No, thanks. I’ll stay on this side of those things.”

Because now that the vines were gone, they could see that the entire bridge appeared to be guarded by ancient stony gargoyles. The winged gryphons glared down at them from where they perched, flanking the bridge on either side.

“Lovely,” Jay said.

Carlos stared. It wasn’t only Mal who could see her mother’s hand in every stone around them. The carved creatures sneered in exactly the same way Maleficent did, their teeth pointed, their mouths cruel.

Mal looked at them, frozen.

Then Carlos realized it was because she was paralyzed by fear. “Mal?”

She didn’t answer.

She can’t do this alone, Carlos thought. None of us can.

It’s no different from pulling each other through the mud. It’s just physics, if you think about it. It’s science.

But then Carlos tried not to think about it, because his heart was pounding so loudly, he thought the others would hear it. He began to recite the periodic table of the elements in his head to calm himself down. Atomic numbers and electrons were always somewhat comforting in times of stress, he’d found.

And the more numbers he recited, the easier it was to put one foot in front of the other.

Which is exactly what he did.

Carlos stepped up on to the first stone paver that led to the sloping bridge. Just as he did, the stone gargoyles began to flap their wings in front of them.

“Whoa!” Jay said.

“No,” Evie said. “Just, no.”

“How is this possible?” asked Jay. “There’s no magic on the island.”

“The hole in the dome,” said Carlos. “It must have sparked the castle to life or something, like a chemical reaction.” It made sense—not only had Diablo been unfrozen, but the whole fortress as well.

Carlos moved his way up the next step, and then the next, until he was standing level with the main ramp of the bridge itself. Mal and Evie and Jay now followed behind him.

The creatures growled as they came to life around them, the bridge rumbling beneath their feet. The gryphons’ horrible eyes glowed green, illuminating the fog around them, until they were practically shining a spotlight on the four intruders. The gargoyles uncurled their hunched backs, now almost doubling themselves in height.

Evie was right, Carlos thought. They were really ugly things, with snaggly teeth and forked tongues. He couldn’t look away from the hideous faces hovering over him. “This must be residue, left over from the magical years,” he said. “Whatever did this was probably part of the same power that sparked Diablo to life.”

“The same power?” Mal looked spellbound. “You mean, my mother’s?”

“Or the same electromagnetic wave.” Carlos thought about his last Weird Science class. “I’m not sure how to tell the difference anymore.”

Jay swallowed as a gargoyle leaned down, looking as if it could spring at Carlos at any moment. “Right now, I’m pretty sure the difference doesn’t matter.”

“Who goes there?” boomed the gargoyle to the right of Carlos.

“You cannot pass,” said the one on his left.

“Yeah? Says who?” Carlos took a step back, as did the rest of the group following behind him. They looked at each other nervously, unsure of what to do next. They hadn’t known about the gargoyles, hadn’t expected a fight. This was going to be more difficult than they expected, maybe even impossible.

But it didn’t matter. Even Carlos knew there was no turning back now.

“You ugly things need to move!” said Mal, shouting from behind him. She glared at the gryphons. “Or I’m going to make you!”

The gargoyles growled and grimaced, flapping their stone wings as a threat.

“Any ideas?” Carlos looked over his shoulder nervously. “We don’t have weapons or magic. What would we fight with? Besides, how do we fight something made of stone?”

“There has to be a way,” Mal said. “We have to pass!” she shouted again. “Let us through!”

“Yeah, I’m not sure that’s working.” Evie sighed.

The gargoyles glared at the children with glowing eyes, their fangs bared, their stony wings beating the wind. “You cannot pass,” they said again in unison—and just as the creatures spoke, the thick gray clouds surrounding the long stone ramp dissipated, revealing a gap in the bridge, a forty-foot gulf with nothing below but air.

The bridge was broken, virtually impassable.

“Great,” Jay said. “So it’s over. Fine. Whatever. Can we go now?”

The others just stared.

Carlos had to admit Jay was probably right.

There was no apparent way to reach the castle. They had come all this way only to fail. Even if they could pass the gargoyles, there was no way to cross the bridge since there was no bridge. It was hopeless. Their journey was ended before it had truly begun.

Carlos stepped back and noticed something carved in the stones at the foot of the bridge. He sat down to read it.

“What is it?” Mal asked, kneeling next to him.

He brushed away the dirt and moss to reveal a sentence carved in the stones: Ye who trespass the bridge must earn the right of way.

“Great. So what are those, like, directions?” Mal looked at the others. “What does that mean? How do we earn the right of way?”

Evie shook her head as she glanced back up at the gargoyles and the broken bridge. “I don’t know, Mal. We don’t seem to have earned anything.”

“And technically, we are trespassers,” Jay said.

Evie frowned. “I think we should go. Maybe the bridge was destroyed—maybe it’s been like this for years. Maybe no one gets in and out now.”

“No. Those words have to mean something. But is it a riddle, or a warning?” Mal asked. She looked at the gap in the bridge and pushed her way past the others, toward the edge. She was determined to figure it out.

“What are you doing?” Carlos yelled. “Mal, wait! You’re not thinking straight.”

But she couldn’t wait, and she didn’t stop.

He took a step back, Jay and Evie flanking him. “Go after her,” Carlos said. “Pull her from the break in the stone before she falls. This is crazy.”

Jay nodded and followed her.

“It’s so sad,” Evie said. “To have come this far.”

“I know. But half a bridge might as well be no bridge at all,” Carlos muttered. He put down his machine and turned it off so that he wouldn’t have to listen to its beeping. The noise of the sensor—more proof of how close they’d come to finding the source of the power—only made things that much worse.

The moment Carlos killed the machine, the light in the gargoyles’ eyes faded. The eerie green glow receded back into their black stone sockets.

“Wait—did you just—”

Carlos looked incredulous. “Turn off the monsters? I think so.” He called out to Mal, who was now standing with Jay, just a few feet from the break in the stone ramp. “They’re like big doorbells, Mal. When we try to cross, they turn on. When we go to leave, they turn off.”

“So they’re another defense mechanism?” Evie looked unconvinced.

“Maybe.” Carlos studied the bridge. “Anything’s possible. At least, that’s what I’m starting to think.”

Mal came running back. “So maybe it’s just a test. Look,” she said, approaching the gargoyles, their eyes once more glowing. “Ask me your questions!” she called up to the guardians of the bridge. “Let us earn the right of way.”

But the gargoyles didn’t answer her.

“Maybe you’re not turning it on right,” Evie said.

“Maybe this is just a waste of time.” Jay sighed.

“No, it’s not,” Mal said, giving them a beseeching look. “This is my mother’s castle. We’ve found it, and there has to be a way in. Look at the inscription on the stone—it has to be some kind of test.”

Jay spoke up. “Carlos said they’re like a doorbell. But what if they’re not? What if they’re like the alarm system in a house? All we would have to know to disable them is the code.” He shrugged. “I mean, that’s what I would do, if I was trying to break in.”

Of any of us, he would know, Carlos thought.

“So what’s the code?” Mal turned back to the gargoyles, her eyes blazing. “Tell me, you idiots!”

She drew herself up to her full height and spoke in a voice that Carlos knew well. It was how Cruella spoke to him, and how Maleficent spoke to her minions from the balcony. He was impressed. He’d never seen Mal so like her mother as now.

Mal did not ask the gargoyles, she commanded them.

“This is my mother’s castle, and you are her servants. You will do as I bid. ASK YOUR RIDDLE AND LET US PASS!” she ordered, looking as if she were home—truly home—for the first time.

Because, as they could all now see, she was.

A moment went by.

The mists swirled, in the background, ravens cawed, and green light pulsed in the distant windows of the castle.

“Carlosssssssss,” hissed the gargoyles, in disturbingly creepy unison. “Approaaaach ussssssss.”

Hearing his name, Carlos took a step forward with an awestruck look on his face. “Why me?”

“Maybe because you touched the step first? So the alarm is set on Carlos mode?” Jay scratched his head. “Better you than me, man.”

“Time for the pass code.” Mal nodded. “You got this, Carlos.”

Then the gargoyles began to hiss again. “Carlosssssss. First quesssssstion…”

Carlos took a breath. It was just like school, he thought. He liked school. He liked answering questions that had answers, right? So wasn’t this just another question? That needed just another answer?

No sooner had the gargoyles stopped speaking than rumbling began beneath their feet. “Carlos!” Evie cried, stumbling as she tried to stand in place.

“What?” Carlos ran his hand through his hair anxiously. His mind was reeling.

Ink is black. Snow is white. What’s red and rough? A steak? Who loves a steak? We haven’t had those in a while, anyway. And what does any of this have to do with me?

“Answer the question!” Mal said. The light was once more fading from the gargoyles’ eyes.

“It’s—” said Carlos, stalling. He was stuck.

Black. White. Spots. Red. Loved. Lost.

“The puppies. My mother’s puppies, the Dalmatians. All one hundred and one of them. All loved and all lost, by her.” He looked up at the stone faces. “Though I think the love part is debatable.”

Silence.

“Do I need to say the names? Because I swear I can tell them to you, every last one of them.” He took a breath. “Pongo. Perdita. Patch. Lucky. Roly Poly. Freckles. Pepper…” When he had finished speaking, the mist once more congealed around the bridge. Carlos let out a sigh.

It hadn’t worked.

“Wait!” Mal said, pointing to the spot where the mists had congealed. “It’s doing something.” The gray mist parted, revealing a new section of the bridge, a piece that had not existed a moment ago.

The gargoyles cleared a path, and the four of them ran out onto it, hurrying to the newly formed edge, waiting for the next question.

“NEXT RIDDLE!” Mal demanded, just as a ferocious wind blew at them. Carlos was beginning to get the feeling the bridge had more than a few ways of getting rid of unwanted visitors. He swallowed.

They needed to hurry.

Or rather, he did.

“Carlossssssss. Next quessssssstion.”

He nodded.

the gargoyles hissed in their eerie unison, turning to face them, claws raised. Their muscles flexed and their tails whipped, their forked tongues raking their fangs. It looked as if they might pounce at any moment.

Once again, the bridge began to shift beneath their feet.

“‘Her kiss is death,’” echoed Carlos. “It has to be about my mother. Is that the answer? Cruella De Vil?”

The bridge began to shake even harder.

Wrong answer.

“But it is about your mother!” said Evie, suddenly. “A rose in a blizzard, it blooms like a cut…her kiss…it’s about what color lipstick she wears! Cruella’s signature red!”

Carlos was dumbfounded. “It is?”

“A red smear—see? It means it’s something she puts on. Oh, I know what it is!” Evie said. “The answer is Cherries in the Snow! That has to be it; it’s been everywhere this season. I mean—judging from what’s been thrown away on the Dumpster barges.”

Mal rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you know that.”

The wind whipped up again, and the four of them locked hands, holding on to one another for support. They pressed their shoulders together, bracing themselves against the gale.

Evie cursed. “It’s not Cherries in the Snow? I could swear that was it. Red with a pinkish undertone. No, wait—wait—it didn’t have a pink undertone, it was darker. Redder. A ‘true red’—what did the magazines call it? Frost and Flame? No—Fire and Ice! That’s it! Cruella’s pout is made of Fire and Ice!”

The gargoyles paused, their eyes glowing. They stood in place as the mist once more congealed around the bridge, then thinned to reveal another new section.

Carlos relaxed. Jay whooped—and even Mal clapped Evie on the back as they advanced across the bridge.

One more answered question, and the way would be clear.

“Ask your last riddle!” Mal charged them.

The gargoyles looked crafty.

“Carlosssssss. Last quesssssstion.”

He nodded.

Mal looked at him encouragingly.

Here it goes, one last time.

The creatures hissed in unison, and as soon as they finished speaking, they walked toward the four, teeth shining, claws raised, wings flapping. The gargoyles would tear them to shreds if Carlos answered incorrectly—the four of them saw that now.

Carlos had to get it right, not just to cross the bridge but to keep them all alive. “‘Dark is her heart’—they must mean Maleficent, right?” He turned to Mal. “But it could mean any of our mothers.”

“My mother has no true love. My mother loves nothing and nobody! Not even me!” said Mal, with a slight pang that Carlos knew all too well.

“Don’t look at me. I don’t even have a mother,” Jay said.

“Beauty!” Evie called out. “That’s mine. I know…it’s a little cliché.”

But the gargoyles were not interested in anything anyone had to say. Coming closer, parting the mists, their tails swishing: “WHAT IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE?” they demanded, looking from Evie to Carlos to Mal to Jay.

“My father?” Mal ventured.

Carlos shook his head. If Maleficent was anything like Cruella, she hated Mal’s father with a vengeance. Cruella had forbidden any questions about his own, no matter how curious Carlos was, how much he wanted to know. As far as Cruella was concerned, Carlos was hers alone. Maleficent had to be the same.

The gargoyles were nearly upon them. They were taller than Carlos had realized, maybe eight or nine feet. They were enormous, and their weight made the bridge groan beneath their every step.

Carlos didn’t think even the periodic tables could help him now.

“WHAT IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE?” the gargoyles asked again, extending their massive wings. When they flapped, the mists swirled about them.

“The Dragon’s Eye?” Mal guessed. “That’s all my mom cares about.”

“Being the Fairest One of All!” Evie shouted. “Her, or me. In that order!”

Jay just shrugged. “I can’t help. I’m pretty sure the answer isn’t Jafar, Prince of Pajamas.”

At first it looked as if the gargoyles were shaking their heads, but Carlos realized it was because the bridge was rumbling so much. Everything was quaking, and the gargoyles were nearly upon them. His teeth began to clatter. Evie lost her balance and slipped, almost falling over the side, but Carlos caught her in time. Jay held on to a crumbling post and held out his hand so that Carlos could hold on to him, forming a link to Evie.

“Hurry! Somebody’d better come up with something,” Jay grunted. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

Evie screamed as she dangled off the bridge, Carlos clinging to one of her blue gloves, which she was slipping out of, one finger at a time.

“THINK, MAL! What does Maleficent love?” Carlos yelled. “She has to love SOMETHING!”

“WHAT IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE? ANSWER THE RIDDLE OR FALL INTO DARKNESS,” the gargoyles intoned.

“Diablo?” Mal screamed. “Is it Diablo?”

In answer, the bridge buckled under her feet, and Mal slid down, only by luck managing to hold on to Jay, who was anchoring everyone. The entire castle was shaking. Stones flew down from its ramparts, and the towers threatened to crumble on top of them.

The bridge began to sway dangerously.

“Wait!” screamed Jay. “You guys! They’re not talking about Maleficent! They’re still talking about Cruella! Quick—Carlos—what is her one true love?”

Carlos couldn’t think. He was too scared. He couldn’t even put a sentence together. And he was even more frightened by what the answer would be.

Maybe that was why he hadn’t guessed right, this time.

I can’t bear to say it out loud.

Jay’s voice echoed. “CARLOS! WHAT IS YOUR MOTHER’S ONE TRUE LOVE?”

He had to say it.

He’d almost always known.

Sometimes, like this afternoon, he would think she meant him, but he really knew better.

Because she never meant him.

Not once. Not ever.

Carlos opened his eyes. He had to say it, and he had to say it now.

“HER FURS! FUR IS HER ONE TRUE LOVE!” he yelled. She said it all the time. She had said it that afternoon in front of everyone.

“All my mother cares about is her stupid fur coat closet and everything in it. But you guys already know that.”

It was the truth, and like any truth, it was powerful.

In the blink of an eye, the four of them were standing on the other side of the gargoyle bridge, and everything was set to rights once more. There was no more swaying or rumbling, no one was falling over the side, and the gargoyles had all turned back to stone.

Although Carlos would swear that one of the stone gargoyles had winked at him.

They were safe, for now.

“Nice work,” said Mal, breathing heavily. “Okay, now—where to?”

Carlos shakily looked at the beeping box in his hands. “This way.”