Flick steadied herself, forcing her feet to stay where they were and not take a step backward. “It’s the same plan we offered you before,” she said loudly, so the rest of the crew could hear her over the wash of the waves against the ship. “Except this time there’s a chance—just a chance, mind—that I could get your ships through as well.”
Nyfe’s eye narrowed as her crew began to mutter among themselves. “What’s changed?”
Flick wondered how to explain. “You see, we worked out—”
“You worked out,” Jonathan corrected.
“I worked out how to do it. How to hold the schism inside the suitcase open to let something big like a ship through.”
Nyfe narrowed her eyes. “But?” She was too clever by half.
“But I wouldn’t be able to do it for very long,” Flick admitted. “You’d have to decide now whether you’re joining Captain Burnish and the Freemariners, including Captain Bee. Captain Burnish is already moving his crew. The mer-people are ready to come as well.”
“How would you get a ship through that tiny suitcase?” Nyfe asked. “Tell me.”
Flick wished she had better words. “I can make it bigger. I can’t explain it in any more detail than that. It’s magic. But to do so… I have to destroy this world.”
There was uproar. The crew crashed about on the desk, shouting and roaring, until Edony appeared with her conical coat and drum. Eventually there was silence again.
Nyfe hadn’t taken her eyes from Flick’s face. “Then you’re not giving us a choice,” she said. “It’s an ultimatum. Either we follow you, or we die.”
“You’re going to die anyway,” Flick said bluntly. “The Break is falling apart—weeks left at the most. Trust me. Please.” She stepped closer and lowered her voice so no one else could hear. “Your father doesn’t want to leave you behind.”
Nyfe flinched but recovered quickly. “I doubt that very much.”
“He said so,” Flick said, stepping closer still. “He said you’re still his girl. He doesn’t want to leave you behind.” She looked up at Nyfe’s face, which, for the first time, wore an expression of uncertainty.
“He’s scared,” Flick went on, taking advantage of Nyfe’s hesitation. “But he knows he needs to try. He wants you to try, too.” Flick raised her voice again. “Captain Burnish is ready to sail right over the edge of the world to save his crew. Captain Bee, too, and the other Freemariners. Will you join them?”
There was a roar of agreement from some of the crew, and Flick squared her shoulders.
“We’re aiming for the edge of the world. The Onslaught will sail over first, as it’s the biggest. If you want to join us, you need to decide which ships to save because you can’t take them all. It’s time to decide what’s more important to you—people, or things. Dump everything you think you can survive without, load up with fresh water and food, and follow us. I’ll send a signal, to tell you when to set off.”
Nyfe held a hand up. “You’ll tell us? On your own?”
“She won’t be on her own.” Avery folded her arms, and Flick felt a rush of heat go through her body at this fierce display of camaraderie.
Nyfe shook her head. “You girls are brave, right enough, but you’re not sailors. You shouldn’t be out there by yourselves at the edge of the world.” She stuck her chin out, then unhooked the eye patch from her face. A sphere of a frosted glass eye stared out unseeingly from beneath. Nyfe held the patch out to Flick. “If it’s magic you’re searching for, I think you might need this. Handed down from captain to captain, and now back to a Strangeworlder.”
Flick took it. “What is it?” It was heavier than she would have expected.
Nyfe smiled as she took a spare eye patch from her pocket. “Lift the embroidered part.”
Flick lifted the embroidered material. It reminded her of those glasses that have a flip-down part to turn them into sunglasses. And below the embroidered cover was a small oval of glass. “Is this…?” Flick raised it to the sun. “Is this a magnifier?”
Nyfe nodded. “Never knew why we hung on to it, to be honest. I suppose we were just waiting for you.”
Flick closed one eye and looked through the glass. Happiness washed through her as the magical sparkles flickered into her vision as if greeting her, swimming through the air in a golden haze she knew and loved so well.
“This is perfect. Thank you, Captain Nyfe.” She lowered the glass. “So, are you joining us?”
Nyfe finished tying the new patch behind her head and nodded. “Aye. If Burnish can do it, so can we. I’m going with you. To the edge.”
32
Dawn was breaking in another world, shining down on the ocean as Flick, Avery, and Nyfe rowed out in the small boat to the edge of the ocean.
Jonathan had gone ahead to the world of the lighthouse. They’d agreed that it might make it easier for Flick to stretch out the connecting schism if there was someone she trusted on the other side of it.
Flick had expected to be able to see a sudden drop on the edge of the world, but when Nyfe dropped the anchor, she could still see water around them, stretching off into infinity.
“Are we close to the edge?” she asked.
Nyfe put a hand to her ear. “Listen.”
Flick leaned over the side, listening hard. There was a faint hiss coming from ahead of them. “What is that?”
“The ocean spilling over the edge,” Nyfe said.
Avery and Flick both looked shocked.
“Don’t believe me? Watch.” Nyfe picked up an old bolt from the bottom of the boat and lobbed it like a cricket bowler. It sailed through the air, and then dropped down. Flick waited for the splash, but it never came.
“It’s gone over the edge?” she asked.
Nyfe nodded. “We’re always closer to the edge than we think.” She adjusted her new eye patch.
Avery frowned. “But if the water spills over, why hasn’t the ocean all drained away?”
“It falls back down as rain. What—are you simple?” Nyfe turned to Flick. “You ready?”
Flick nodded. “I think so.” She tapped her fingers on the suitcase. It seemed to buzz under her touch.
“All we have to do now is wait for the Onslaught to get close enough.” Nyfe looked back across the water. “Once it gets up to speed it takes a very long time to stop. They’ll be using both the oars and the sails, and the wind is on their side. They won’t be able to stop if you’re not ready in time.”
“Thanks for the pep talk.” Flick sighed. She flexed her hands. Her fingers and wrists felt tingly and achy, as if they knew what was coming. She pulled Nyfe’s old eye patch from her pocket and wrapped it around her head. Nyfe helped tie it into place, the embroidered part lifted so Flick could see through the glass underneath. She squinted through the glass of it. It was amazing, being able to see magic while having her hands free.
There was a lot of magic concentrated around the edge of the circular world, like a golden ring holding the whole thing in place. Except Flick knew that the world wasn’t being held in place. What was causing this magical barrier to fail? The question didn’t just nag at her; it stomped around, demanding attention she couldn’t really spare.
Flick pushed the magnifying patch up onto her forehead. “When I was in Five Lights, I could see the magic drifting away into the giant schism. This magic isn’t drifting anywhere. It’s just sitting there. Everything should be fine.”
Nyfe nodded. “And yet the circle still collapses.”
Avery pursed her lips. “Always in big chunks at a time? Not gradually?”
“You remember watching it break away when you first arrived? That is how it happens.”
Flick looked up at the sky. The golden sunlight was growing stronger now, making yellowy spots on the ocean. “Something must be taking it. Or someone.” As she said it, she knew for certain that what she said was true. Her blood seemed to sing with the truth of it. But who would need such a large amount of magic in one go?
“Yeah, that’d show them,” Avery said vaguely. She was looking at Flick, who wasn’t really listening.
Flick looked down at her hands. She could only think of one thing that would need such a large amount of magic at once: opening a new schism, like she had done in Five Lights.
But no one else could do what she could do.
Not even Elara Mercator, the very founder of the Strangeworlds Society, had been able to open schisms of her own.
Surely… surely, it couldn’t be that?
“I can see the Onslaught, dead ahead,” Nyfe said, shaking Flick out of her thoughts. The woman was looking through a brass telescope. “It’s already got some speed, girl. You’d best move fast.”
Flick didn’t bother asking for the telescope. She could already see the shape of the enormous ship approaching at a tremendous speed. Barrelling straight toward the end of the world.
Nyfe collapsed the telescope. “Shouldn’t you do it now?”
Flick shook her head. “No, I need as much energy as possible. And that means waiting until the ship actually tips over the edge.”
“What?” Nyfe spun around so suddenly the boat rocked violently.
“A falling object has energy,” Flick said. “Energy is magic. Magic is what I need to open this schism. If I open it too soon…” She swallowed. “I don’t know how long I can keep it open.”
Nyfe’s expression was so hard you could have broken a chisel on it. “Some of my crew are aboard that ship.”
“So let me do what I’ve got to do!” Flick snapped. “You’re not helping.”
Nyfe looked back at the approaching ship. “You know,” she said, after a moment’s silence, “you’d make a good captain, one day, with that attitude.”
Avery nodded. “She’s right.”
Despite it all, Flick had to smile.
Flick could see the individual sails of the Onslaught now, each one big enough to wrap up a house. As it bore down on them, she could make out the figurehead—a twisted carving of two women embracing.
The ship wasn’t slowing down. If anything, it seemed to be getting faster. Flick could see the splash, splash, splash of the oars jutting out from the sides. The sailors pulling on them must be afraid, worried this wouldn’t work, and yet pulling as hard as they could because the little girl from another world had told them to give it everything they had. Flick could see the full bellies of the sails now and understood just how much force this ship had behind it.
She’d asked for everything they could give her.
It looked as though she’d gotten it.
Behind the Onslaught, following in its wake, were the other ships determined to try to cross to a new world. The Aconite, the Serpent, the Watchman, and a dozen others, sailing with all their might into an uncertain future. And the mer-folk, swimming beneath the waves, occasionally surfacing to see if they were close, like whales breaching. There were even littler splashes beside the ships that Flick thought might be sea creatures, racing the pirates to the way out.
Flick had never felt smaller in her life.
It was time. Hands shaking, Flick picked up the lighthouse world’s suitcase and flicked the catches open before dropping it into the water. The suitcase opened like a book, floating quickly toward the edge of the world. The suitcase buckled and hesitated at the waterfall, wobbling and splashing but not quite going over the edge.
The Onslaught was now only the length of a playing field away. It was barrelling forward faster than Flick had imagined a ship could move.
Flick braced her feet in the bottom of the boat.
The Onslaught came closer, closer, closer, too close—
—the suitcase was pushed forward by the waves and disappeared over the rim of the world.
The Onslaught reached the edge a moment later—
—and teetered.
Though it hovered at the edge for only a split second, Flick felt as if she could see everything happening in slow motion as the magic in her blood came to life. The ship’s enormous wooden frame groaned as it pitched forward, prow-first. The sails sagged, and the ship became a deadweight. Flick caught sight of the sailors on deck, hanging on to the rigging or tied to whatever they had found.
The ship tipped over halfway.
Flick breathed in, and everything seemed to freeze for an instant.
And then immediately sped into real time again.
The Onslaught went over the edge like a cannonball.
And fell.
It was now or never.
Flick pulled the magnifying glass back down over her right eye, shutting her left. Her view exploded into luminescence, and she could see glittering magic shooting up from the Onslaught as it fell.
Flick gritted her teeth. She let the tingling feeling in her fingers shoot outward, meeting the glimmering magic in the air and gathering it up like cotton candy in a machine. She could sense the suitcase, which was falling through the air scarcely ahead of the ship, the schism inside it waiting for her like so much bunched-up elastic.
All she had to do was stretch it out.
The magic in the air, guided by Flick’s mind, seized hold of the suitcase’s schism. And pulled.
Find Jonathan, she told it. Find the lighthouse.
The magic responded gleefully, as if she had told it a delicious secret. A swarm of glittering magic dived off the edge of the world, dragging the schism free of its suitcase prison, gathering more and more energy as it went. The schism rose into a golden mist that condensed into a line that was more red than gold—like a wound in the sky only Flick could see.
All this happened so fast the Onslaught had only just dropped out of sight when the explosion came.
Flick couldn’t just see the glowing line in the air; she could also feel it. And she felt it as it darkened, deepened, turning from red to black as it reached across the space of the multiverse that was the emptiness between worlds.
And then it broke through.
It all happened in a single heartbeat.
Blue-white light suddenly streamed upward in a blinding FLASH.
Avery gasped, and Flick realized the flash must have been visible to the naked eye.
A tear, a schism, a gash the size of the biggest ship in the fleet hovered a few feet below the edge of the world. It was as clear as the rips in the Break’s sky.
* * *
The Onslaught dropped like a wooden whale through the portal between the worlds. It hit the water below with a SMASH, the prow splintering as the force of the drop took its toll. The ornamental figurehead broke off the front, the carved embrace splitting in half as it was forced into a new world.
The water the ship landed in rolled like steel, rising up in a wave that carried it away through the new ocean before crashing hard against the beach and dunes. The oars were broken off, the polished wooden body was wounded, but the ship had made it through. And, from the happy shouts on board, so had the crew.
Jonathan, clinging to the railing at the top of the lighthouse, yelled in delight at the sight of it, waving as the invalided ship began to slowly drift away from the schism, as if it were limping.
* * *
Above, in the pirates’ world, Flick felt as if she could see it all happening at once. She could feel the pulse of the schism, smell the saltwater from another world, and hear the rush of approaching ships and mer-people from this one.
It had worked.
It was working.
“They made it,” Flick whispered. Her arms were aching already. “They’re through.”
“How do you know?” Nyfe asked urgently.
“I just know.” Flick twitched as she felt a piece of the pirates’ world suddenly break off and vanish, reduced to pure magic to feed her new schism.
“Flick?” Avery grabbed her arm.
“It’s crumbling. The circle. This world. The rest of them n
eed to leave, as fast as they can!”
In her mind, she could see the schism, hungry for magic, devouring the world it had been born in. There was no time to lose.
Nyfe pulled a small glass crystal from her sleeve. She blew on it, hard, and it glowed a brilliant blue before she smashed it between her palms. The light went shooting into the sky before exploding like a firework. A signal for everyone to haul as fast as they could.
Immediately, there was a great surge beneath the water as the mer-people began to pick up speed. And even though Flick was starting to tremble with the effort of keeping the schism open, she gasped at the sight of the great Mer-Queen raising her head and shoulders above the surface.
Moments later, like a school of brightly colored fish, the mer-people jumped from the water in an arc, over the edge of the world. They fell down gracefully, dropping into the waters of their new home like pebbles scattered into a pond. They were joined by sea creatures of all colors, tentacled monsters that looked like balls of slimy sting, and lithe sharks all leaping as one from the old world to the new. The larger mer-people, each one the size of a house and with glowing eyes, followed behind. Leviatha herself went last, heaving her enormously strong body from the water of the Break in a sort of roll. Her lower half was the thick blue-gray of a whale, scattered with barnacles that looked like beauty spots and gray jagged scars that spoke of a life full of stories. She tipped over the edge and hit the water below with the same grace as the rest of her people, crashing into the depths so that water splashed upward into the old world in the shape of a crown.
And with a CRUNCH loud enough to be heard on the other side of the world, another piece of the world broke off and vanished to feed the schism. Flick had to allow it to happen. She had to keep feeding the schism its magic, or else it would consume the people, the ships, the world, and her.
The schism was turning to her, and it was as though she could see its evil grin.
I will win, it seemed to say.
Flick made a noise of effort, somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. Not today, she thought back, as loud as she could.
The Edge of the Ocean Page 19