Chapter 16: Adverbs

Author's note: For the purposes of this chapter, and the rest of the story, spoken lines that are italicized are spoken in English, while spoken lines typed normally are spoken in Japanese. This is to avoid confusion and because I don't know Japanese.

"Alright, try this one," Will said, pointing to the new word he had scratched into the soft sand.

"Um, br-i-ng-s,"I said, slowly sounding out each letter. "Brings."

"Great. That means 'brings.' Now try putting all the words together," Will said.

"The boy brings water," I said very slowly, but in English.

"That was really good, Kari. You've almost got it," Will said. "I didn't think I'd be able to teach you this stuff by myself, but you're a good learner."

"I'm doing my best," I said. "So what's next?" I smiled happily. The lessons didn't seem so hard. Of course, I hadn't learned many words yet, even though we'd been practicing all morning, but I was able to make a couple different sentences.

"How about we try an adverb?" Will asked as he erased the previous sentence.

"Okay. How do we make it?" I asked. English didn't seem that hard so far.

"We'll use the word slow. For most adverbs, you just take an adjective and add -ly to the end of the word. So slow becomes slow-ly." He explained.

"The boy brings slowly water." I said, again being careful to get the pronunciation correct. "How was that?"

"Usually you want to put the adverb in front of the verb," Will said. "Try making another adverb with a different word."

"Alright, how about, bigly?" I said, using one of the other adjectives I had learned.

"Well, actually that's not a word. You can't really describe an action with big." Will explained.

"Why did humans make so many languages? It seems kind of silly to me," Gatomon asked.

"I'm not really sure. I guess they just came up with different languages based on where they lived," I explained. I turned back towards Will. "So all English adverbs end in ly?"

"Not necessarily," Will said. "One thing that makes English hard is that every rule is going to be broken at some point. The English word for backwards is backwards, and it doesn't end in ly. There are lots of other broken rules too. Silent Es are probably going to be hard, and when y changes to I to make some forms of words."

"Let's stick with the easy stuff for now," I said. I thought that for the first day, I was learning pretty quickly. Of course, I couldn't say very much, and I had a hard time understanding Will even when he used words that I had learned.

We spent most of the morning sitting on the beach, with Will writing words in the sand and explaining their meaning, and me trying to put them into the basic sentences that I had learned, like 'The big cat likes milk'. Except that I kept pronouncing the e in likes. Silent Es are really hard to get used to.

"I think that's good for now," Will said, wiping away the words in the sand. "We should probably look for some lunch."

"Already taken care of!" Drakamon announced, as he dragged a large leaf with lots of fish on it towards us.

"We've been fishing by the river. We figured you'd be hungry after all that studying," Gatomon said.

"Thanks Gatomon, great job!" I said. We dragged some wood into the beach and Drakamon's Spirit Fang lit the fire. Neither of us were exceptional at cooking, but we managed.

"You'd think I'd be able to figure this out, my dad's in the food business," Will commented, looking at the slightly burnt fish on the end of his stick.

"It's too bad Matt isn't here. He's a really good cook," Gatomon said.

"Yeah, he always did most of the cooking when we were in the digital world," I recalled, thinking back to the weeks we spent fighting the Dark Masters. "That seems like ages ago. I was only eight years old." I laughed, thinking back to how Tai and Matt had been so protective of TK and me.

"How'd you guys eat?" Gatomon asked Drakamon.

"Shark and Jesse were both really good at cooking. Shark would even slice up the fish so that we wouldn't have to pick at them like this," Drakamon said. "Uniquemon never ate the fish though. He liked to eat the leaves off low bushes."

"Who's Uniquemon?" I asked Will.

"He was Shark's digimon. He's an aquatic one, looks kind of like a ball with a long tentacle sticking up out of his head," Will said.

"What was the rest of your group like? I've already met Michael, but there were others, right?" I asked him.

"Yeah," Will said, staring out at the ocean. "The others were Jesse, Laura, and Ricky. Ricky's a year younger than me, nine at the time. We knew each other pretty well because we both went to nationals for butterfly in our age groups. His digimon was Candlemon."

"You guys were really good friends too?" I asked. Will didn't respond. He had become quiet again. "Will, what's wrong?"

Will shook his head. "Nothing. I was just thinking about something," he said, not looking at me.

I looked at him for a long time, but he wouldn't return my gaze. There was something about him that made him different from my other friends. Some kind of mystery, a secret that he was keeping from us.

"Did something strange happen to your group?" I asked. Will turned and looked straight at me. I felt a shiver run down my spine from the coldness of the look, despite the fact that it was sunny and warm on the beach.

"It's nothing," Will said, finally looking away. But Drakamon slithered up next to me.

"Um, it's probably better for you not to talk to Will about that," he whispered to me. "It really hurts him."

"Did his crest react really badly with Ricky's?" I asked, figuring that had to be the problem.

"No. Well, it did, but that's not the whole story. Just don't bring it up again, please?" he asked. It seemed like he didn't want to talk about it any more than Will did.

"Alright, I won't," I said quietly. He slithered over to Will and curled up in his lap. Will looked down and started softly petting Drakamon's head. I looked at Gatomon, and she looked back, just as confused as I was. But we couldn't ask them what had happened. They didn't want to say. I was getting worried that it was something bad, but not knowing what, I was powerless to do anything about it. So I sat there and waited for Will to calm down. He picked up some sand in his hand and stared at it, then tossed it into the ocean. He really was one of the strangest people I had ever met.

Izzy's email had said that there were two portals near us that we'd be able to close that day if we hurried. One was a bout an hour's walk up the shore, and the other was a little ways out to sea, on an island. Izzy said that he had come through the first earlier and left a raft so that we could get to the second one. We set out late in the afternoon. Will had cheered up a bit, and I was glad. Walking always seems to take longer when you don't have anyone to talk to.

"What excuse do you think they'll make up for us not being in school?" I asked.

"My dad will probably just tell them that I'm visiting family back in America. That would be fairly logical, since my mother, brother, and sister are still there," Will said.

"You have a brother and sister?" I asked, curious.

"Yeah. Jake is a year younger than me, and Steph is five years younger. Steph is really jealous that I have Drakamon," Will laughed. "Once when he was Dremon she tried to take him to school and pretend that he was her digimon."

"Do your parents know about the digital world?" I asked.

"Yeah. I figured it was easier just to explain everything to them than to try and hide Drakamon from them. Don't yours?"

"Well, yeah, but only because they saw what happened when Myotismon came to our world with his army before. We tried to hide our digimon from them, or rather Tai tried to. I didn't find out that Gatomon was my digimon until most people had already seen them."

"Hey Gatomon, if you were in Myotismon's army, don't you have some friends who can get us inside information?" Will asked.

"No. Most of them were jealous of me because I was his favorite," Gatomon smiled.

"That's a little ironic, don't you think?" Drakamon said.

"I suppose," Gatomon mused.

Off in the distance, I saw a TV set sitting half buried in the sand. "Hey, I think I see it," I announced. We sped up a bit, with Gatomon running ahead all the way t the TV.

"Yeah, this is it alright! I can feel it!" Gatomon said. The screen was glowing brightly. Along the shoreline, the large raft that Izzy had promised was pulled up onto the shore.

"Alright, here goes nothing," Will said as he pulled out his tag and crest. He held it close to the screen, and it started to glow with its usual black light. The glow from the screen faded away before the darkness.

"That's step one I guess. Now we've got to go find the other one," Will said as he looked toward the raft.

"Can we eat first?" Drakamon asked.

"You're kidding right? We just ate less than two hours ago," Gatomon said.

"But I'm hungry, really!" Drakamon complained.

"We'll get something when we reach the island. You can go fishing again. I'd like to get this thing closed as quickly as possible," Will said. "Besides, it's starting to rain, and getting caught in a storm at sea is not my idea of a good time."

"I don't think Myotismon knows about these two portals," I said. "But the rain is a concern."

"He probably doesn't, but there's no reason to leave this one open any longer than we have to," Will said.

"Good point. Let's get going then," I said, looking toward the raft.

The tide was low, so the raft was entirely on the beach. It was tied up to a nearby tree stump by a single rope, which we rolled up and set next to the mast so that we wouldn't lose it. It took all four of us to push it across the sand to the water. Once we had it in, we all got on board.

"Izzy said the currents should carry us straight to the island," I explained. "We don't even need to unfurl the sail."

"Great, did he say anything about how long it will take?" Will asked.

"He said it won't take more than a half hour. The current is pretty fast. Why, do you get seasick?" I asked him.

"Never. Every year my family goes to a lake in Kentucky where we own a cabin and a few boats. We spend a week just hanging out with friends on the lake. I love the water," Will said with a smile.

"Are you a good swimmer?" I asked him.

"Yeah, really good. Didn't I tell you guys that I went to nationals for the butterfly?" Will asked.

"You might of, I'm not sure," I replied.

"That's how my group met; we were all at the national championships for swimming, in our age groups, of course," Will explained.

"Then you could have just swam to the island yourself," Gatomon laughed.

"Maybe I should try. I haven't been in the pool in a few days now," Will grinned.

"I bet you that . . ." Drakamon began, but he stopped. "Do you smell something?"

Gatomon sniffed the air. "Yeah, I do," she said as she continued to sniff. Then her eyes suddenly went wide as she realized what it was. "Megaseadramon!"