The Edge of the Ocean

by L. D. Lapinski

  “She can’t be trusted with it,” Flick said desperately. She stepped closer to Katyo, trembling with nerves but determined to speak. She could still feel the wrench of the suitcase being pulled from her hand. “Nyfe is planning on threatening Captain Burnish’s crew with war to frighten them into surrendering to her, and the suitcase will give her more power than she already has. She could say that only sailors who swore to be part of her crew could use it.”

  The mer-man’s expression had become deadly serious. “She has not offered a peaceful joining of crews?”

  Burnish snorted. “As if she’d offer me that.”

  “If the Pirate Queen gets the suitcase, she’ll force all of us to do as she says,” Flick said. “And that means helping only the people she wants to help. If you give her the suitcase, that doesn’t mean she’ll help you.”

  Katyo sat up, his skin changing from gray-brown to scarlet. “Is this true? She means to use this crisis to increase her own forces? The whole world is crumbling and she has only her own interests at heart?”

  “For a change,” Burnish muttered.

  “Please,” Flick said. “We need it. We all need it, really. We know what’s happening to your world, and… if we have the suitcase back, we promise to try to help everyone.”

  Katyo’s expression softened slightly. The red bled back down his body. “You truly want to help?”

  Flick nodded. “I’m not sure how much help we can be or how many people we can save. But without that suitcase we’re no help to anyone at all. And…” She glanced back at Avery and Jonathan. “And it’s our job to help. We’re members of the Strangeworlds Society. We’ve promised to look after every world we can. But to do that, we need you to trust us.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Flick saw Burnish give an approving nod.

  “I suppose we have nothing to lose by trusting what you say,” Katyo said slowly. “You can hardly run back to the Pirate Queen while Ezra has you under his hand. I shall relay what you have told me to our queen and request the suitcase’s return for you.”

  Jonathan sagged in relief. “Thank you.”

  Katyo nodded to say You’re welcome. His dark eyes stayed focused on Jonathan for a long moment. Flick wondered if he could read grief in his face, just as Burnish had. Then he quickly dropped backward and disappeared beneath the skin of the water.

  Jonathan abruptly sat down, as though stunned by the news that the suitcase might be within their grasp. Flick was about to go over to him when there was a great splash of water, and Katyo heaved himself back onto the rocks.

  “The message is on its way,” he said. “I cannot go to the depths, where the queen dwells, but I would trust my messengers with my life.” He looked at Jonathan sitting on the ground, then back to Flick. “Is he well?”

  “Not really,” she said. “But I hope he will be.”

  Katyo nodded. “The suitcase—it is a portal of magic, is it not?”

  Flick was pleased to be able to talk about something she was sure of. “The suitcase takes us back to our world,” she said. “Back home we have access to lots of other worlds, too, in other suitcases. Once we can go back, we can search for a different world for you. But…” She trailed off.

  “But?” Katyo prompted.

  “I’m sorry,” Flick said. “But the only way through to a new world would be through another suitcase. I don’t know if you’ve seen the size of it?” She gestured with her hands to show the dimensions. “It’s not large. I know for a fact that not everyone and everything could fit through it.”

  Katyo ran a finger over his mouth before speaking. “So not all of us could leave. But it is a way out for some, at least?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “You apologize a lot, girl.” Katyo’s tentacles darkened even further, and Flick wondered if they reflected his thoughts. “I would not wish to abandon those of us who are too big to escape. Is there truly no way to expand the escape route?”

  Flick felt her face prickle. “No,” she said. “None that we know of.” Or have tried, she thought guiltily.

  “Then it is a case of sacrifice,” Katyo said. His dark skin paled. “And a dishonor many would rather not live with.” His black eyes rested on Flick’s face.

  There was a splash. “Katyo,” a mer-person’s high voice called. “The queen sleeps. Her attendants will alert her of your guests when she wakes.”

  “Can’t you wake her up?” Avery asked.

  “No!” Katyo looked horrified at the very idea. “Our queen might be a giant of these waters, but she is over a century old and very fragile. She rests. And you will wait. I trust you brought supplies for yourselves?”

  “I’ll go back for the hamper,” Burnish grumbled. “You three wait here. And watch your lips, all of you. You’re guests here.”

  24

  Flick leaned against the wall of the cove and watched, smiling absently, as Jonathan politely turned down an invitation to a private swim with one of the mer-women.

  “Madam, your affections could not be more poorly aimed,” he said. “And besides, I don’t swim.”

  Avery was sharing some of the picnic with several mer-babies and children, all of whom had taken a shine to her.

  Flick shifted against the cold rocks. She knew she was being antisocial, but she couldn’t help it. Her mind felt as if it were going through a blender.

  The conversation with Katyo had only made her even more painfully aware of their problem. The problem of how to get everyone out.

  The solution was to make an existing schism bigger—that much was obvious.

  Suitcases were holding places for schisms. The schisms couldn’t get out, and they welded themselves into the suitcases the way water fills a sink. The schism was the suitcase, in a way. Back when Flick had first joined the Strangeworlds Society, Jonathan had told her that schisms could not be destroyed or created by people.

  But then, in the City of Five Lights, Flick had done just that.

  Desperate to save her own world and to put an end to the tyranny of the notorious gang of Thieves, Flick had first created a schism—tearing her way out of a tiny holding cell of a world. And then she had destroyed a schism—grabbed hold of a suitcase and demanded that it close permanently, trapping the Thieves inside in another world.

  Flick fidgeted. She still didn’t feel good about what she had done, but it had been a necessary evil. She’d saved the world of Five Lights—as well as her own and countless others—from being exploited by the Thieves’ thirst and greed for magic.

  It seemed appallingly unfair that here at the Break, even though the pirates didn’t hoard magic like the thieves in Five Lights had, their world was somehow having it stolen nonetheless. This place had weeks left, and then… it would vanish. As if it had never existed at all.

  A thought stirred at the back of her mind. A seed of an idea, germinating through worry and desperation. What if she could somehow make a schism bigger? Surely, if she could close a schism, she could expand one? But in her heart she knew it wouldn’t be the same process at all. A bigger schism would need to eat more magical energy from somewhere. It would devour this world even faster than it was already being consumed, and she, Flick, would be responsible for that destruction.

  The thought made her feel sick. She couldn’t possibly suggest it to Jonathan. If she tried it, and it all went wrong… she could never forgive herself, if she even survived.

  She looked over and saw Jonathan sitting by himself now, looking out at the sea, but apparently seeing nothing. He wasn’t doing a lot of blinking. As Flick watched, he bent forward and pressed his face into his raised knees.

  She got up and went to sit beside him.

  He flinched slightly, acknowledging her being there, but didn’t speak. That was fine, Flick thought. She wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. She just watched him breathe, his dark coils of hair spilling over his arms like a hood, hiding him.

  The rock they sat on was letting the cold through Flick’s
trousers.

  “When I was fifteen,” Jonathan said suddenly, raising his head, “we went through a suitcase for my birthday. It wasn’t too long after my mom died, and I was still learning about Strangeworlds. We went to a world far more technologically advanced than ours. Flying cars, teleports, the lot. The sort of thing I used to draw pictures of when I was small. I’d dreamed of that sort of thing, and watching the silvery streets and the rockets was incredible. But what I remember the most is being on this shuttle. My dad must have thought I was asleep, and he let out this big sad sigh, like he’d been holding it in all day, and he just put his head down.…” Jonathan lowered his own face back onto his knees. “I never said anything to him, but I knew how he felt. Like… everything we did was a distraction from what was really hurting. Mom being gone, I mean. That’s how all this feels. It doesn’t feel real, any of it. How can there be a world in danger if my dad is dead? Doesn’t the multiverse know that should be the most important thing happening right now? Everything else should just stop, out of respect.”

  Flick felt as if her heart weighed as much as an anchor. “It’s the most important thing to you,” she said.

  “But it shouldn’t be.”

  “But it is. That’s not a bad thing.”

  “The Strangeworlds Society takes care of other worlds. Head Custodians aren’t supposed to be like this.” Jonathan lifted his head back up. “I want to cry all the time, but it won’t always come out. And that just makes me feel like an overinflated water balloon, about to burst at any moment.”

  They were quiet for a moment, and Flick looked up at the sky. The streaks of black were interrupted by streaks of blue, as though the sky had been raked through by the claw of something gigantic.

  “What are you thinking?” Jonathan asked.

  Flick shook herself. “Um. The tears, in the sky.” She pointed, slightly embarrassed to be changing the subject from Jonathan’s grief. “Are they schisms?”

  But Jonathan seemed grateful for the distraction. “No, they’re actual tears. Rips, in the sky. Like this world is a tent, and it’s been slashed.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. What about the atmosphere?”

  “Perhaps it healed, but transparently. Those clear spaces above might be scars.”

  “That sounds too good to be true.”

  “Doesn’t it? But unless you have a rocket hidden in your backpack, I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  Flick tucked her hair behind her ears. “You think worlds can heal?”

  “Five Lights is healing. But for this place, it’s too late. Too sick to get any better.”

  “But in Five Lights, it was the Thieves taking the magic,” Flick said thoughtfully. “What or who is taking it here? And why now? The pirates aren’t doing it.”

  Jonathan pushed his glasses up his nose. “If I knew that, Felicity, I would certainly tell you,” he said.

  Flick looked at him. “Your dad came here, didn’t he? Do you think he knew something?”

  “It was on his list. Perhaps he…” Jonathan stopped. Then shook his head.

  Perhaps he found out too much, Flick thought.

  “He would want us to help, though,” Jonathan said after a moment. “If we could.” He pushed his glasses up his nose again. “There might be something you could do, something that doesn’t involve a suitcase. Don’t tell me you haven’t been thinking about it.”

  “It won’t work,” she said.

  “You ripped a world open before.”

  “Yeah, and look what happened! The whole little world collapsed. Even if I could rip a new schism here, I would have to keep the Break from collapsing while holding a new schism—a BIG one—open at the same time. I don’t know how to do that. And I can’t exactly practice.”

  “Mm. I suppose you’re right.”

  They watched Avery laugh as a mer-baby bit into a soft fruit, making a face of utter disgust.

  “If the queen returns our suitcase, I think we’d do well to go straight back to Strangeworlds,” Jonathan said. “Dry off, get more supplies, and then we can find a water world for these people. We owe them the option to run to another world, if they want to at least. They can always refuse.”

  “Nyfe won’t go for it.”

  “Right now I’m struggling to understand her pig-headedness.” Jonathan shrugged. “Her ship is special to her, but if she chooses to value it over her own life and the lives of her crew, that’s not something we can change. We’ll tell the truth to everyone we can, and people can make their own decisions.”

  “Are there other water worlds?”

  “Oh, yes. A great many. I don’t see finding an unpopulated one being too much of a problem.”

  Flick considered. “I think you’re right about giving them the option. We can only offer what we have. I don’t know how to stomach leaving people behind, though.”

  “Well, unless you work out how to hold an enormous schism open, you’ll have to,” Jonathan said, getting to his feet. “Look—they’re waving us over.”

  They got up and walked quickly over to where Burnish and Avery were already waiting with Katyo.

  “The queen has awakened,” Katyo said. “You will need to sail out, away from this island and into the vast ocean to meet with her.”

  “Why?” Flick asked.

  “She cannot surface here,” Katyo said, his tentacles flexing. “She is of the deep. Sail out and she will find you. We have brought your boat around.”

  The mer-people had indeed pulled the jolly boat around. It was beyond the cove, away from the rocks and shallow water.

  “More swimming?” Jonathan groaned.

  “Can you not swim?”

  “I can, if I absolutely must.”

  Katyo looked at Burnish. “Will you come?”

  “Not I.” He shook his head. “It’s not my time to speak to Leviatha.”

  Promising to see Burnish again shortly, the three of them went to the water. Flick kicked off her shoes, as did Jonathan and Avery—they had learned that much, at least. Katyo took all three pairs and held them above water level as he splashed into the sea with a sigh of delight, his chest rising and falling as his gills took over.

  “It isn’t far,” he said.

  Flick gritted her teeth as she stepped into the water. It was no warmer than before, and immediately her feet felt like blocks of ice. She waded farther, hands held up as if she could prevent them from getting wet at all—when the surface beneath her toes fell away sharply, and she dropped under the water like a stone.

  “There’s a ledge there,” she gasped, surfacing, more embarrassed than anything else.

  Avery and Jonathan made noises of distaste, but jumped into the deeper water with more grace than Flick’s anchor impression.

  When Flick reached the jolly boat, she reached up for the side to pull herself in, but it was surprisingly high.

  “Here.” A mer-woman who looked a lot like Katyo appeared and wrapped six of her limbs around Flick’s waist and thighs, then pushed her up out of the water as if she weighed nothing. Flick tumbled into the boat.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem, girl. There are dry blankets under the benches. You should take your wet layers off.”

  “I would, but I’m not sitting half-naked in a boat with these two.” Flick’s teeth started chattering as Jonathan and Avery landed, one after the other, in the bottom of the boat.

  “Please yourself,” the mer-woman said. “But you will die of cold before you die of shame.”

  With averted eyes and embarrassed blushes, the three of them stripped off their coats and trousers, leaving only their shirts and underwear on and bundling themselves into the thick blankets.

  There was no need to worry about who would be rowing, as the mer-folk were pulling the jolly boat along as if it weighed less than nothing.

  “I’m not certain this is worth losing toes for,” said one of the blankets in a Jonathan sort of voice. He sat in the bottom of the boat, his legs up, knees
against his chest. “Why couldn’t we have gone somewhere warm?”

  “Like a desert?” Flick shivered.

  “Ha.” Avery tried to laugh but it came out like a cough. “We’d be in one now, if that letter hadn’t come.”

  Flick was puzzled. “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “The House on the Horizon, remember? It’s in a desert.”

  “The D-Desert of Dreams.” Jonathan shuddered.

  “I should have come to you sooner,” Avery said miserably. She’d clearly been stewing this guilty admission up for a while. “The custodian who lives there—Danser Thess—might have been able to help you find Uncle Daniel, since he was looking for him himself. I was too late to tell you about it.”

  Jonathan pushed his blanket down a little. “Even if you came as soon as you heard, it might still have been too late. It’s been months since Dad… disappeared. ‘Too late’ might have been weeks ago. And we can still go to the House, to find this Mr. Thess and ask him why he was searching for my dad. We can do that if we get back.”

  “When we get back.” Flick smiled.

  “When,” Jonathan agreed.

  The boat glided through the water with ease, and the cold wind bit into their cheeks. Overhead, the darkness lent to the ocean by other worlds was beginning to lighten, though it was really coming close to the end of their day. Flick shut her eyes for a second. She imagined this must be what jet lag felt like.

  “Why do you think Burnish is helping us?” Avery asked.

  Flick opened her eyes. “I think he knows that if he doesn’t, he’s condemning himself, and all his crew, to death. We’re his only way out. Everyone’s only way out.”

  “No pressure, is there?” Avery sighed.

  But Flick wasn’t listening. She was looking over the prow at the blank expanse of flat water. “I think we’re close.”

  Jonathan reached for his trousers. “Wet through or not, I’m not meeting a queen in my underwear, thank you very much.”

  They all struggled back into their clothes, which, although damp, didn’t seem as cold as they’d expected.

  Katyo pulled himself up on the side of the boat as they started to slow. “She is below,” he said, his voice low in reverence. “The proposal you’ve made has been explained to her, and she wishes to discuss it with you. And, if you are lucky, you may learn something, too.” He dropped back down with barely a splash.