It was a hot, humid day in a west African desert, and we were all tired and bored, and we had remained quiet the last five miles of walking on our bare feet.

“Jane, Veronica, are you okay?,” I asked. I thought maybe they went, because Veronica wasn’t making her usual jokes, and because Jane was falling behind.

“I’m okay,” said Veronica, who was two months from being sixteen, had a potato shaped nose, hazel eyes, and looked like she was not enjoying her sari. Veronica was from France, so she probably never heard of a sari, let alone ever worn one before.

Jane said nothing, which is typical Jane, for she loves quietness and peace in the world, and reminds me a lot of a hippie. That is sort of the kind of personality that matches her loving of yoga and meditating, and her amazing stretching abilities. Jane has dirty blonde hair, a slender body, and mysteriously silverish eyes. They seem to shine like a far away star in the night.

Then I turned to look at myself. My long dark hair hung out in front of me, and my skin was getting a dark tan. I wore a lavender colored sari, and jeweled traditional African necklaces from previous adventures dangled from my neck. My long eyelashes hung over my chocolate brown colored eyes. My long legs strided over the sand, as I had been doing for the last hours. My arms seemed to swing back and forth, like a hammock or a pendulum. I remember how my face was drenched in sweat, creeping over my nose, and then how it used to end up in my mouth, and I would hastily spit it out of my mouth.

But then something else caught my attention. In the horizon, I saw an outline of something that looked very odd. There was a steep hill, and then a pit of darkness. I thought it could be a cave, but who has ever heard of a cave out in the middle of a desert? Oh, it’s just a mirage, I tried to reassure myself. I was wrong, but in a twisted way, right.
I thought all about mirages, and minutes dragged by when I thought they were hours, and the sun shone a bright as ever, on the dry sand and what seemed to be a everlasting desert set before us, a long, long way

That long way to the pit of darkness took about forty minutes. Though I did not know this, that mysterious cave was enchanted by an ancient sorcerer, and was a bit altered by it, too. It probably looked more real before, and maybe was located in a more usual place for a cave, because the portal to Mirage Island can be anywhere across the map, but it has to be a place where it is deserted and can show up in the strangest places. For instance, it might be on an iceberg, right out in the middle of a deserted body of water, or at least that is what the ancient sorcerer’s portal list indicated. And from the range I was standing at, it looked like a good place to stay, but it was dark, damp and cold for the first few seconds I was there.

“Should we stop and rest here?” I asked, looking over to the dehydrated Veronica. Then turning around to observe Jane, who looked at me like she said yes. We stepped inside to the strangest place in my life.

Around the walls were mist that covered markings that I did not recognize. Not like Egyptian hieroglyphics, but something so bizarre that it looked like writing from a different universe. Suddenly, the world seemed to swirl around us, with a emerald green glow, and the cave vanished before us. We were thrown down on the ground by an invisible force. Then we got up, and noticed that we were not in the desert any more.
Right in front of us was a deep crevasse. We were on a glacier and freezing cold.

“Where are we?” said Jane, finally talking, and spitting out some greenish gas from her mouth.

“Not in the desert,” I replied, then we both looked for Veronica, who was put somewhere else by the portal.

“Veronica!” I yelled, and my echo screamed back at me louder than I had ever heard it on Earth. I heard a faint, “Help me,” which then turned into a yell, so I looked down the foggy crevasse, and I was shocked.

Veronica was in the crevasse! I took all my clothing out of my backpack, and made a rope by tieing my clothing together. Soon she was out.

“Are you okay?!” I asked, as a typical thing to say to someone who just was stuck in a crevasse.

“Yep, I was just hanging in there, wasn’t I?” said Veronica with her French accent, which is hard to picture. “Maybe we should try to find someone to find out how to get back.”

We took her advice since she was always right. Then we noticed that we were in our bare feet, so we ran until we felt that our feet were on grass.

Before us, we noticed that there was a stairway, winding up and up, and at the top there was a hide out that looked somewhat like a hut. “Hey, it looks like civilization,” said Jane, with a look of relief on her face. “Let’s check it out.”

We all ran up the stairs, which took a long time. At the top we saw an old man with a long beard and a strange symbol around his neck.

“Welcome,” he said, with his arms outstretched, “welcome to Mirage Island”.

“Mirage Island?” Jane, Veronica and I said altogether.

“It is, so let it be,” he said in a bold voice. “I am Vilo, the sorcerer of the Island. I know all about you. You accidentally got here by a portal, you don’t know how to get back, and you were doing errands in Africa. I watched through my ball of fog.”

I stared at him at amazement, and then he resumed his speech.

“The writing you saw in the cave was my friend’s doing, he is from one of those islands behind me, the island of illusions, the one shaped as a skull.” Then he looked me hard in the eye, and again resumed.

“But he is dead, and I must tell you about getting back. You must avoid the lake, for it hypnotizes you, and then jump into the volcano. It—“ But then he was cut off, and he stared at me so hard I thought my eyes would catch on fire.

I heard him mutter something like, “ My step sister’s half brother’s child, Merlin’s beard!” Then he flipped over and fainted.

“Gosh, that man is freaky. Do you think we can help?” said Jane but she knew we couldn’t, after all, we had never seen this place before and didn’t know where to find supplies or help, and it was true.

“And look, there’s that volcano!”

It was true, at the far end of the island, was a bright rocky vent in the earth, a queer sight it was, but all the same, it was a volcano.

We started to run to the staircase on the opposite side, but I saw a purplish green glowing paper which looked so intriguing, that I picked it up.

It said, “PORTALS FROM EARTH TO THE ISLAND” in a gold ink in neat cursive handwriting.

Under that, it said, “NORTH AMERICA ....... tunnel in Alaska, forest in Wyoming, hut in Hawaii.”

I skipped down to Africa, and I saw,” .... . .grassland in Algeria, oasis in Morocco, and delta in Egypt.” Hmmmmm, there were only ones in northern Africa, yet we got here by portal in south western Africa, I thought. By then the pieces fit.

“These portals move, and have to be in a deserted place!” I explained to Jane and Veronica. We decided to go to the volcano, before the portals moved again.

I slipped the paper in my pocket because I thought it might come to good use. I knew I shouldn’t, yet the mischievous side of me took over, probably an instinct from the island. A pain throbbed in my heart, and I wondered if “Vilo” was actually related to me, as if a powerful connection was just made.

Then I looked around and made some notes, as there were many to make.

Since the Cliff is the highest point on Mirage Island, I can see the three smaller islands behind me. One is the peanut-shaped one, the closest to the main island, and the other one has no specific shape. An island, and also the biggest one of the three is shaped sort of like a skull. Strait below me is a beautiful waterfall. Then the water becomes a loopy river, with one big meander, surrounded by mountains on each side, creating a mountain pass.

On my left, there is a wide glacier, and almost right in the middle is a crevasse that is as deep as it is freezing. If I looked to my left, I could find some of the strangest sights. There is a continental shelf that constantly changes from green to blue, a hypnotizing lake, and a savanna that looks like it never ends. If I have very good vision, at the far end of the island, I can see a volcano with fake lava that looks real. There’s a hot, humid jungle here. Mirage Island looked foggy when I entered it, and has always been quiet and eerie. The cold rock beneath my feet makes me think that I have been here before.

My senses are tingling with this odd, mysterious place. This place seems deserted and so quiet that my heart feels like an earthquake against my chest, and as loud as a drum. But then I decided that I would think about what was happening now.

So we fled to the staircase, and went full speed ahead, weaving in and out in between mountains that were like exact triangular pyramids. They were scattered with snow and plants that I had never seen before, and were also somewhat chipped. Before we knew it, our feet were under perfectly round royal purple pebbles. We crossed a ford with gentle, pure clear blue water. We filled our water bottles up with water, and it must have made us immune to the hypnotizing lake. We washed our faces in that drawing water from that round lake. My memory was not washed out, or how would I remember this adventure?

We were passing through a savanna, but on our left we saw a continental shelf which was green as a sea reef. To my amusement, it changed to as dark blue as the blue background of the stars on the American flag.

“I wonder, if you take some of that water, will it still change from green to blue?” asked Veronica.

“It is not good to take nature’s blessings,” said Jane. “Besides, it might not have ever been touched by human hands before, and it might not be good for us to touch.”

She had a point. This island was unpredictable.

Soon we reached a hot, humid jungle. Vines hung from the trees, and Jane, Veronica and I saw a lot of fruit that looked a like edible fruit. But when Veronica accidentally bumped her head on it, it vanished in a puff of smoke. What was left was another vine.

“Just another mirage. What you would expect of Mirage Island?” I said. No one paid attention to me, because what was in front of us was the rocky volcano.

“Should we climb it?” asked Jane. But everyone knew we should, because, what else could we do?

When we were at the top, silverish winds seemed to threaten to throw us off the volcano. I stared at the islands, and wondered if I should believe the sorcerer. The island would be an okay place to live, I guess, but what should I do? I looked into the volcano, and I seemed to feel heat coming up. It is just a mirage I told myself, and voices flashed through my head.

“I am Vilo, the sorcerer of the island….Just jump into the volcano”. I tried to clear my mind. I could not jump into the volcano and live here at the island. It might possibly save my life from being burnt to ashes, but I would miss Earth every minute I was here. Or I could jump into the volcano and possibly get back to the Earth, the desert, but I might be burnt to death, I tried not to think of this one. But it was Mirage Island, after all, so it might be a mirage.

I decided to consult my friends.

“Well, what should I do?” I asked Jane or Veronica, whoever would answer me.

“Trust him, after all, he might actually be related to you, and he must know a lot about this island,” said Veronica.

I decided to take her advice. I took a deep breath, looked down, and jumped. At first it seemed like going down a whirlpool of colors, then like falling into nothingness. Instead of being thrust down unto the Earth, I found myself resting on the hot sand right outside of the cave that let us into all this mess. No time had passed.

Soon, I saw Jane and Veronica starting to form on my right and left. But then I started to notice that the trip had done us good. We were right in front of a stream, and behind that was a handful of mud huts, distinctively made. We had arrived at the village!

“Look—,” I said, but Jane and Veronica already knew. The portal had moved, but it had moved to the village of our errand.

We were awarded with food and water for our errand, which was to bring the ancient necklace of Namibia. I had been wearing it and then recognized someone could steal it, so it was hidden in my backpack, and stayed there for the whole trip to the island.

As far as I know, the island and the portals were always okay. Because, after all, the ancient sorcerer was on the island, and knew of any portal to it. I do not know what happened to the sorcerer, and I probably never will, but what I do know is that this story is not finished, and I am pledged to tell the rest.

We kept on doing errands and had more adventures, but when I pulled out the portal list I had taken from the sorcerer, it was just a blank piece of paper. And I wonder, was that all a dream, or was it all a mirage?

The End