The Wizard’s Promise

by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  We were going north.

  “Kolur!” I screamed. “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

  My voice bounced off the cold. The air vibrated. Over at the navigation table, Frida set down her sextant. Kolur kept staring at the horizon.

  “Kolur!” I scooped up the capelin and raced over to the helm. He looked at me, looked at the fish.

  “What is this?” I hissed, shaking it at him.

  “It appears to be a capelin.”

  I hurled the fish back out into the water. “It doesn’t swim this far south. Which means we aren’t south at all, doesn’t it?”

  Kolur fell silent and my anger coursed through me. Not just anger, though – fear, too, a little prickle of it. I’d trusted him. Mama had trusted him. And now he had spirited me away. Even if I had always wanted to go on an adventure, I wanted to do it on my terms. Not Kolur’s.

  “Frida!” he called out. “Do you think you could take the wheel? Don’t like using the steering charm unless I absolutely have to.”

  A pause. The Penelope rocked against the waves. That cold, sweet-scented wind ruffled my hair.

  “Of course,” she finally said, and she set down her sextant and walked over to the helm. I recoiled from her when she passed, no longer admiring her magic but fearing it, fearing what she might be capable of.

  She didn’t do anything except take the wheel from Kolur, who turned to me, not looking the least bit guilty.

  “I suppose we should talk,” he said.

  “Talk?” I shrieked. “Talk? What are you doing to me?”

  “Nothing.” He walked over to the port railing and leaned against it, the wind pushing his hair away from his eyes. I joined him, my whole body shaking, and not from the cold.

  “I’m not doing anything to you.” He glanced over at me. He looked older than usual, like the last few days had drained the life out of him. “You are right, though; we’re not sailing back to Kjora.”

  It was a strange relief to hear him admit it. I slumped against the railing and wrapped my arms around my chest. “So, where are we going?”

  “North.” Kolur squinted into the sun.

  “Well, that’s obvious. Why are we going north?”

  “Just an errand I have to take care of.”

  “An errand? An errand?” I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. “You couldn’t have told me about it?” Then I peered at him, considering. “Why’d you bring me, anyway? You clearly don’t need me.”

  Kolur hesitated.

  “Well?” I snapped. “I know it’s not just because you thought I’d have a good time. You’re the most unadventurous person I’ve ever met.” Even though I wasn’t so certain of that now.

  Kolur let out a deep breath. “I didn’t know about it until after we had made sail. I had to make a quick decision, and I chose to bring you.”

  I stared at him. “The bones,” I said, remembering the way they had scattered across the deck, foretelling times of strife and strangers coming to town. “I knew what I saw.”

  Kolur looked away from me.

  “And you lied to me. You said they spelled out the same thing both times.”

  “I know what I said.” He ran a hand over his wind-tangled hair. “I didn’t handle it as well as I should have.”

  “You think?”

  He gave me a dark look. “Well, you’re always saying you wanted an adventure.”

  “You still lied to me.” I pointed back at Frida. “Besides, you don’t even need me. That’s why she’s here, isn’t it? ‘Cause you need someone trained to do magic? Real magic?”

  Kolur gave me a long look and didn’t answer.

  “Sea and sky, why didn’t you just say from the beginning–”

  “It’s difficult to explain.” He gave me a weak half smile. “If I’d turned around to take you home, I’d never have made it. But I swear I’ll have you back home in only a few weeks’ time.”

  “A few weeks?” My chest tightened. “Mama will be worried sick. Papa, too – they’ll come looking for me.”

  “I sent word that we were delayed.”

  “You what?” The whole world spun around. Kolur kept staring at me, as unperturbed as if we were arguing about the fishing schedule or repairs to the boat. “You told them but you didn’t tell me?”

  “I had my reasons,” he said quietly.

  I tore away from him, shaking with fury. Frida looked at us from her place at the wheel, the wind tossing her braid around. Everything was falling into place. The extra supplies. Frida joining us on the trip. Kolur’s strangeness during the storm–

  “You caused this.” I whirled around to face him. “You made all this happen. I don’t know how, but you – you’re planning something.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  My eyes were heavy, and my face was hot. I raced over to the stairs and climbed down below. As soon as I was off the deck, the tears spilled out. I thought about Mama receiving word that I’d be home in a few weeks. It was from Kolur; she wouldn’t think anything of it.

  He’d betrayed me. He’d betrayed her.

  I slammed the door to my cabin and shoved the trunk of old sails up against it. I hoped that would be enough to hold him – I hoped he wouldn’t get Frida to use magic. Then I dug through my stack of clothes until I found that charm I’d bought in Beshel-by-the-Sea. I’d taken it off when I’d boarded the boat, thinking I was safe.

  I slipped on the charm, and its thin protective spell rippled through me. I collapsed down on the bed and took deep breaths as tears dripped down the side of my face.

  I didn’t know if the bracelet would keep me safe from Frida’s magic. It certainly wouldn’t take me home, where Papa could soothe me the way he had once when I was a little girl, telling me that all liars are punished by the ancestors. But it was better than nothing. Even so, I lay there weeping, with no idea what to do next.

  I woke with a jolt in the middle of the night. My face was sticky with dried tears, and the charmed bracelet had twisted tight around my wrist. I couldn’t see anything. I was in a void.

  No – I just hadn’t activated the lantern before I fell asleep.

  I crawled out of the cot and felt around until I found the lantern’s familiar round curves. “Light,” I whispered, and it blinked on. The cabin looked as I had left it. My clothes were flung across the floorboard; the trunk was still shoved up again the door.

  The Penelope rocked and creaked, sailing us to whatever fate awaited in the north. My stomach rumbled. Of course. I’d missed dinner.

  I shoved the trunk aside and eased the door open. Kolur usually slept up on deck, next to the helm, but Frida had been sleeping down in the storeroom. I wanted something to eat, but I didn’t want to see her. I supposed that was the trouble with hiding on a fishing boat – there aren’t many places to hide.

  Still, I crept into the storeroom, taking care not to step on the noisier boards. The storeroom was flooded with dark blue light from the lantern, and I could just make out the shape of Frida curled up in a hammock in the corner. Moving quickly, I grabbed a jar of dried caribou and some sea crackers and jam, along with a skin of water, and then hurried back to my room to eat.

  It was a satisfying enough meal, since we hadn’t been at sea long enough for me to be sick of it, but when I finished, I had no desire to fall back asleep. My thoughts kept swirling around, churning and anxious. I imagined Frida sneaking into my cabin and casting some dangerous curse on me, and I rubbed at my bracelet, trying to make the image go away. It didn’t.

  Plus, my chamber pot needed emptying.

  I held out as long as I could, not wanting to risk facing Kolur up on deck. I resented him for keeping secrets from me, for keeping his magic from me. In the gentle rocking of the boat, I had the unnerving thought that maybe Mama’d known about his past, too, and maybe that was why she’d arranged for me to apprentice with him.

  Or maybe not. I took a deep breath, grabbed the chamber pot and left my cabin.

&n
bsp; The Penelope rocked back and forth, and I pressed one hand against the wall to steady myself. The wind was howling outside, a low, keening moan that sent a prickle down my spine. I’d have thought it was Frida’s doing if I hadn’t just seen her sleeping.

  With practiced movements, I climbed up on deck without spilling the chamber pot. The wind gusted around the boat, slamming into the sails and kicking up the ocean in frothy peaks that appeared now and then over the railings, illuminated by the magic-cast lanterns. At the horizon, Jandanvar’s lights cascaded across the night sky, swirls of pink and green. You could see them even in Kjora, and it was a comfort to see them here, in unexpected waters.

  The first thing I did was check for Kolur. He was over by the helm and sleeping, a blanket tucked around his shoulders.

  I made my way to the starboard railing and chucked out the mess in the chamber pot. It all disappeared into the churn of the sea. I set the pot down at my feet and leaned against the railing. The air had that scent again, sweet like berries and flowers. Except nothing about it made me think of spring.

  It was cold.

  Death-cold, Papa would say, but I stayed out in it anyway. There was a crispness to it I found refreshing after being cooped up in my cabin. I wasn’t used to being inside, and I’d always preferred to be out-of-doors. I did understand why Kolur would rather be at sea than back in the village, trapped in his shack on the beach. But that still didn’t explain what we were doing out here, why we were sailing into the north. I’d be home in a few weeks’ time, he’d said, so we couldn’t be going far. Maybe it had something to do with his old life in Skalir. A fisherman’s debt? Payment to a former apprentice master? Perhaps he’d gone too far into unfamiliar waters before I met him, and he had old ties to sever.

  A lot of possibilities, to be sure. None of them made me any less angry with him.

  The lanterns cast long shadows across the water that rippled with the waves, moving like the ghosts in Papa’s warning stories. It was mesmerizing, the inky black of the night sea, the blue glow of the lanterns, the stars glittering overhead. My thoughts unwound from me, still conjuring up reasons for Kolur to sail us north with a trained wind-witch. Maybe he was cursed and finally found a cure. Maybe she was cursed, and he was the cure. It would be just like the story Mama had told me about Ananna – I used to pretend I was Ananna before she was a ship’s captain, travelling across the desert to cure the curse placed on Naji of the Jadorr’a. Maybe I was on the same sort of journey now.

  Something splashed in the water.

  I jumped back from the railing, startled. Or maybe this was about the Mists. I hadn’t considered that possibility. I hadn’t wanted to.

  Another splash. This time I realized it came with a shadow, one that moved differently from the others. I leaned over the railing, peering close, my heart racing. In truth, this didn’t seem like the Mists. They always came with omens, with mist and gray light. Maybe this was just a whale. Even though we were too far north, and too early in the season, to see one.

  Another splash. I grabbed one of the lanterns and dangled it over the water, trying to get a better look.

  There was something below the surface. Too small to be a whale and too thin to be a seal.

  I took a step back. Under other circumstances, I would have called for Kolur. But not tonight; I was still angry with him. I touched my bracelet instead.

  A head emerged from the water. A young man’s head, pale hair plastered to his skull, seawater running over his skin in rivulets.

  I shouted and dropped the lantern overboard, then immediately turned to Kolur, afraid I’d woken him – but he slept on.

  The lantern’s glow sank all the way down into the ocean’s depths. I cursed. I’d have to explain that eventually.

  “Oh,” said the young man. “You dropped something.”

  His voice was strange, melodious and reedy, like a flute. I was too scared to move. He swam alongside us, his face turned toward me. It was almost a human face, one with all the marks of beauty – sharp cheekbones and a long, thin nose and large, pale eyes. But that beauty was what made it unnerving. I’d seen handsome men before, and I’d seen exquisite women, and it wasn’t until this moment, in the shivering dark, that I realized every single one of them possessed some minor imperfection that let you know they were human. The more I looked at this young man, swimming like a dolphin alongside the boat, the more inhuman I found him.

  “What are–” I started in a fierce whisper.

  The young man dove beneath the waves.

  The wind surged. I clutched the railing so tightly that my knuckles turned white. My bracelet was freezing against my wrist. I waited for gray mist to curl off the water, for a gap to appear in the sky filled with unearthly light. I waited for danger.

  But nothing happened.

  Kolur slept on.

  The Penelope continued on her path to the north.

  The ocean was empty.

  CHAPTER 4

  Three days passed and I didn’t see the boy again. I wasn’t frightened of him, exactly, but when I crept up on deck at night, I wasn’t certain I wanted to see him. I thought he might be part of the reason Kolur was sailing us north.

  After those three days, I decided not to keep myself locked in the cabin during the day. It was too much, being alone with my thoughts like that, with all my anger and frustration and confusion swirling around inside my head. I didn’t want to hide – I wanted answers. Besides, fuming in my cabin was even more boring than doing chores.

  When I finally wandered up on deck, nothing had changed: Frida still mapped out our path through the water. Kolur still steered at the wheel.

  “Decided to join us, huh?” Kolur grinned. It was colder now than it had been a few days ago, despite the sun shining up in the clouds. No heat charms burned on the deck. I thought about Mama’s garden back in Kjora, all the seeds tucked into the mud and waiting for the air to turn so they could punch their way up to the surface. Henrik and I had helped her plant them, the way we did every year. She never told us what seeds we were given, and it was a surprise every spring when they revealed themselves.

  It was almost spring there. But it didn’t feel like spring here.

  “Are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “North.” Kolur pointed up to the sky, as if the world were a map.

  I glared at him. “Well, if you’re not going to answer my questions, do you at least have anything for me to do?”

  Kolur shrugged.

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you dragged me out on your errand.”

  Over at the navigation table, Frida lifted her head, the wind tossing strands of her silvery-brown hair into her eyes. “I do,” she called out.

  I frowned. Glanced at Kolur. He was staring out at the water, lost in the motions of the Penelope.

  “You can come over,” she said. “I won’t bite.”

  I walked across the deck, rubbing at my bracelet. It held the warmth of my skin, so I knew I didn’t face any immediate harm.

  “Our path is going to get dangerous,” Frida said.

  “I thought this was just a simple errand.”

  Frida smiled. “The danger isn’t the errand; it’s the path.” She pulled the cover over the carved map before I could see where that path led us. “The ice hasn’t completely broken up yet, so we run the risk of icebergs. Kolur tells me you can do a bit of magic? I may need help with spells, and I thought we could practice.”

  “You want me to help you but you won’t even tell me where we’re going?” Heat flushed in my cheeks.

  Frida looked at me, her head tilted like a bird. “Kolur asked me not to.”

  I twisted around and looked at him through the blustering wind and the flapping sails. He was ignoring us both, as was his way.

  “Why?” I turned back to her. “What harm could it do? It’s not like I have any choice here.”

  Frida smiled knowingly. “That’s what I told him. But he’s worried
about you doing something that could get yourself hurt.”

  I hugged myself, trying to conjure up some warmth.

  “Shall I show you the magic we’ll be doing?”

  “On what? There isn’t any ice around here.”

  “Ah.” Frida nodded. “Yes. I see what Kolur was worried about now.”

  “What?” I hated this, the way they both kept talking around me, dropping hints. Like they were playing some stupid game.

  “There is ice here. Come.” She walked over to the railing. I waited a moment to be contrary. Then I followed out of nothing better to do. The water was choppy and dark green, almost black: a color that made me think of emptiness. “It’s hidden, drifting beneath the surface. I have a spell working to melt it away before it hits the boat.” She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “That’s why I’m not burning the heat charms.”

  I had wondered, but she didn’t need to know that.

  “Kolur worried that you would run off when we next made port, that you’d try to steal a boat to sail your way back home.” She laughed. “I told him you seem capable enough. You’re his apprentice, after all.”

  I squeezed the railing and wondered where we were going to make port. It was hard to remember the carved map from Papa’s boat, but I was pretty sure there were chains of smaller islands this far north. Not that I’d ever heard anything about them. Papa was always saying that there was enough wonder in the waters of Kjora to last a lifetime.

  “Where are we going to make port?” I said.

  “Ah, already plotting your escape, I see.”

  “I’m not going to steal a boat,” I snapped. “Kolur’s going to take me home, isn’t he?”

  “Of course.” Frida smiled. “But your mother is a pirate.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You can’t sail these boats alone, even with magic. I’m not an idiot.”

  Frida laughed. “It’s been done before, I imagine. But yes, you’d be safer with a crew. Honestly, his real concern is that you wouldn’t know this part of the world. It’s dangerous, more dangerous than the southerly islands. Not just because of the Mists–” she gestured at my bracelet and I covered it protectively with my other hand “–but because of the land and the sea themselves. You’re not used to it. Now watch.” She braced herself against the railing with one hand and lifted the other in a slow, graceful gesture. Her wrist swirled and swayed, and her fingers rippled.