Aris tried to run. But the sap from the trees had already soaked through her boots. The bone sand had abraded her skin. She felt a strange, creeping stillness in her joints—a pleasant numbness, like falling asleep in a warm bath.
The tourist brochure had called it "Rakuen Shinshoku"—"Paradise Erosion." A lush, forgotten island in the Pacific where orchids grew to the size of dinner plates and the water was the color of liquid sapphire. What the brochure omitted was the second, older name, scratched into the hull of a derelict fishing boat: Shisha no Shima —Island of the Dead. rakuen shinshoku island of the dead%21