Into the Hourglass

by King, Emily R.

  “Where are we, Radella?” I ask.

  She puffs out her cheeks and draws a wave symbol with a mountain underneath it.

  “We’re in the Land Under the Wave?”

  She claps for me, her expression mocking. Evidently, I should have realized where we were, but nothing about this place seems immediately different than my world. And I didn’t anticipate a world covered with seas would have land.

  I rise on rickety legs, my boots and stockings squishy with water. As I turn in a circle to evaluate the barren beach, I spot the moon, so large it outsizes the sun. I have never seen a moon this close, with craters bigger and darker and more definable.

  Gooseflesh flocks up my arms. We are in an Otherworld.

  “Do you think everyone else made it to shore?”

  Radella shrugs, worry lines creasing her forehead.

  “We’ll look for them. But first, we need to find somewhere less out in the open.”

  The tide line is no place to linger. Since I woke, the water has rushed closer to us. Although we must go, my knees are locked. Father Time warned me that the Land Under the Wave is a haven for outlaws. Anything or anyone could be on the other side of the sand dunes.

  One step, just a single step, and I can build momentum.

  Why is the first step always the hardest?

  Radella flies ahead, her azure wings bleeding into the sky.

  Oh, quit being an infant, I tell myself. Markham wasn’t in the whale, so he must be here somewhere.

  If that entitled bastard can face this world, I can too.

  I draw a steadying breath, shriveling my fear to a sizeable opponent, and start up the sand dune.

  Chapter Four

  Waves of heat shimmer off the sandy peaks and haze the horizon. I trudge upward, squinting and panting. A layer of grit coats my mouth, but I haven’t enough spit to wash it out. My thirst is cruel, especially given the accessibility of the sea. All that water and not a drop to drink.

  Radella pauses often to rest, hovering in the air. Her wings steadily wilt, until she finally sits on my shoulder. By the time we crest the dune, my boots are full of sand.

  The ridge we stand on runs parallel to the water, like a long, sinuous spine. I rotate in a circle, seeking a landmark or sign of civilization. More of the shoreline is visible, yet there’s still no sign of our comrades or longboat. I don’t see much besides waves of both sand and water.

  “Any guesses which way to go?”

  Radella sinks forward, resting her elbows on her knees glumly.

  “Me either.”

  I plunk down and empty the sand from my boots. Sweat trickles down my back, my neck baking. While I tie my waistcoat on my head as a sunshade, Radella takes off along the dune peaks.

  “Where are you going?” I shove on my boots and stumble after her. “Radella, wait!”

  She stops and points up the coast. I see nothing, but she gestures more urgently.

  I shield my eyes from the sun and squint harder. A tall, thin shadow protrudes from the land.

  “Is that a tree?”

  She tilts her head from side to side. If it’s a tree, it could provide us shelter and perhaps even food.

  We set off in earnest for the lone landmark, Radella riding on my shoulder. While my clock heart stamps out a patient but quiet march, my tired mind drags me back to my worries about Jamison and the others. Radella made it to shore, so they might have too. Assuming anything else may cripple me to the point where I sit down right here and never get up.

  Hiking out to the shadow leads us back to the water’s edge. As I tread across the hard-packed sand, a fogbank creeps in from the sea, hedging in the beach and dimming the light. We approach the landmark, and what we thought was a tree transforms into the mast of a ship.

  The shipwreck is half sunken in the dune. Radella tugs on my hair to gain my attention and frowns. She does not want to investigate. I agree that the wreckage is off-putting, but we cannot pass up the opportunity to scavenge for food or water.

  “We might find supplies,” I say. “We’ll be careful.”

  Her wings droop. I feel how she looks—exhausted, hungry, thirsty.

  We trudge up the dune. The fogbank has crept closer to the shoreline, almost concealing the surf. Up here, the wind is louder than the crashing waves.

  The vessel must be about one hundred barrels in length. Two of its masts have pitched over in a permanent state of falling, and its third has cracked in two like a snapped twig. Countless sails are torn or missing. On the lower tipped side, the ship’s deck is lodged in the sand. Its uneven planks, pockmarked by dents and holes, would be hazardous to climb on.

  “Hello?” I call out. “Is anyone there?”

  All the staterooms and cabins appear abandoned, but one of the doors has less sand in front, as though it has been cleared away.

  The sensation that someone is watching us wriggles under my skin.

  “Hello?” I call again.

  Radella flies off my shoulder and lands on a scrap of canvas half buried in the sand. I dust it off and uncover a section of a flag. The symbol on it is unfamiliar—a crown of ivy wreathing a red apple.

  A swift wind barrels past us, jerking the canvas from my grasp and flinging it into the sky. The piece whirls away, drawing my gaze farther up the coastline. I trudge past the sunken bow and halt, mired in astonishment.

  More mammoth ships are scattered across the sand dunes, countless wrecks littering the shoreline. The ships have been tossed on their sides and stranded aground. They lie on battered hulls, their rigging snarled, anchors severed, and masts decapitated.

  Radella quakes against my shoulder, her wings tucked in and her head down. I could remark on her cowardice, but my own insides have clenched into a fist. I open my breast pocket, and she dives inside, trembling next to my clock heart.

  We investigate the next vessel. Although weather-beaten and landlocked, the standard fishing trawler is a common sight in our rivers back home. Its tangled nets are strewn over the gunwale on the port side, and the Realm of Wyeth’s blue-and-green flag is wrapped around the main mast. My throat feels strangled, as though the flag has wound itself around me.

  “Hello?” I say.

  Again, no answer.

  I continue to sense that someone is watching us. Still, the only movements come from the pouncing sand fleas, and we have not seen a single seabird or scavenger.

  As the fogbank obscures the coastline, we venture from one shipwreck to the next. A smaller vessel has been tipped upside down, its topside decks submerged in sand. Another, a flat-bottomed boat with a single mast and pontoons on either side, is the most peculiar watercraft here. On it are markings in a foreign language.

  None of the grounded ships are small enough to be our longboat, and no other footprints can be seen in or around the wrecks.

  This graveyard of ships tells endless stories. Each one began its life voyaging the seas, and, through tragedy, landed here. I have heard rumors of great storms sweeping ships away to the Otherworlds, and considering the number of mostly intact ships here, they must be true. Many of them are too big to fit through Dorcha’s mouth or inside his belly. Where are their crews? No sign of survivors is evident, nor can I see graves or bodily remains.

  The thickening fog dims the fading daylight. We will be lost in the murkiness soon, so I start back to the first ship, choosing the vessel to serve as our landmark in this empty sameness.

  Radella glows to brighten our darkening surroundings. As the ship reappears in the gloom, she chirps at me.

  “I don’t like this place either, but this is the closest to where we came ashore, and it’s better than sleeping out here.”

  She crosses her arms, her expression dubious.

  I climb aboard and maneuver over the rotted planks to the nearest door. It teeters on a single attached hinge as I push inside. Radella’s glowing light pours across the cabin. The furniture is overturned and water damaged, broken glass strewn across the slanted floorboar
ds. She flies to the porthole to stand watch. My muscles ache and my ticker thrums quietly in exhaustion, but the possibility of finding food or water fuels me to look for salvageable supplies.

  In one corner, I discover a compass with the needle stuck pointing northwest, a dry oil lantern, and a moldy straw mattress. A shiny gold coin on the floor catches my attention. One side has an apple encircled by an ivy crown, and on the reverse, a teardrop leaf. The inscription around the edge is in a language I don’t recognize. I show the coin to Radella.

  “Do you know where this came from?”

  She points at a picture tipped on its side against the wall. The portrait has been damaged by water. The subjects of the painting are blurred, but I make out a man, a woman, an older girl, a boy. I cannot locate a caption.

  “Who are they?” I ask. “What do they have to do with the coin?”

  The pixie’s eyes grow wide, then she zips across the cabin and hides in my hair.

  “Radella, what in the worlds are you—?”

  Then I hear something coming from outside the ship.

  Singing.

  Chapter Five

  I run to the porthole and peer out at the foggy night. The singer is female, and although her lyrics are in a language I don’t know, her music is enchanting. Her song comes from the direction of the sea. I start outside, but Radella yanks hard on my hair.

  “Ow! What is it?”

  She covers her ears and glares at me until I emulate her, which I do only to stop her from pulling my hair again.

  The woman’s lovely singing seeps past my fingers. Her voice is the purest call of life I have ever heard, a sign that creation power dwells in every living creature. I start to lower my hands, and Radella tugs on my hair again.

  “Will you stop it? You cannot torment people into—”

  “Jamison, come back!”

  Is that Laverick? Her voice comes from outside, over the singing. I look out the porthole again, yet I see no one in the fog.

  “We have to find him,” says Laverick.

  “Why?” Harlow retorts. “Let him go.”

  “We’re not losing Jamison too. Listen. He’s going that way.”

  I still cannot see them, so I call out, “Laverick, over here!”

  Neither woman responds.

  I march out the door. Radella flies after me and lands on my shoulder to ride along. I drop over the side of the ship into the sand, and we set out into the fog.

  The woman’s singing and the crashing waves grow closer. Oddly, the two rhythms complement each other, as though the singer set her tempo to match the sea’s.

  I travel in the direction I last heard Laverick and come upon the water. Moonlight filters through the fog, expanding my view of the roaring waves raking across the sand. Some fool is swimming offshore. I squint in the dimness and make out Jamison’s blond hair. He’s the person in the water, and he isn’t alone.

  A woman approaches him from out in the sea. Her thick evergreen tresses and pale-green skin are startling, but more so is her voice. She’s the woman singing.

  The stranger slides up to Jamison and pulls him close, running her fingers across his shoulders and up his neck. He’s passive in her clutches, her touch roaming long enough for heat to rise in my cheeks. As she begins to pull him out to sea, Radella speeds off toward them.

  I run into the shallows, cold water pouring into my boots. “Jamison!”

  The singing woman jerks her head toward me. Her eyes are blank and soulless like a shark’s. Her low brows and high hairline create a disproportionately large forehead compared to her other features.

  Radella circles her head and snatches at her hair. The woman swats at the pixie, missing her, and then pushes Jamison’s head underwater. He slides down into the sea without resistance. Radella grabs more of the singer’s hair and pulls. The woman shrieks and splashes her with something I did not expect—a fish tail.

  She’s a merrow, fish on the bottom and human on the top. I should have seen it before. Her big lips protrude out over her small chin and are puckered like a fish’s, and her large ears taper down to gills partially hidden by her voluminous hair. Ridges of spurs stick out from her upper spine, sharp bones pointed at the ends.

  Radella does not let go of her hair, the merrow screeching instead of singing. In her struggling, she releases Jamison, and he resurfaces, sputtering up water.

  I wave my arms big and wide. “Over here!”

  He kicks for shore, traveling the same path as the waves. The merrow hits Radella with a bigger splash, sending her pinwheeling, and begins her melody again. Jamison halts his retreat, still too far offshore for me to reach.

  The merrow glides toward him, her expression murderous.

  “Jamison!” I splash into the water up to my knees. Clock heart or not, I won’t stand by while he’s drowned.

  A man runs past me into the water, swinging a rope over his head. He releases the rope, and it unfurls into a net that lands over Jamison and the merrow.

  She shrieks and thrashes, splashing so rowdily I lose sight of them in the spray. The commotion quiets, and the empty net floats to the surface. Jamison slowly swims for the beach. The merrow has disappeared and taken her song with her.

  Prince Killian Markham tromps out of the water, muttering under his breath. “I almost had her.”

  I stare at him, my jaw slackening. Markham threw the net?

  Jamison crawls from the shallows. I lug him up the embankment, and he lies in the sand on his back, rubbing his head and blinking blearily.

  “Everley, you’re alive?”

  I dust sand off his cheek and try not to let our lackluster reunion bother me. He nearly drowned, after all.

  Radella stares daggers at Markham as he reels in the fishing net. The immortal prince has not changed; his face is still unfittingly handsome for his rotten heart. My curiosity for where he came from and how long he’s been here is less important than what brought me here. He doesn’t appear to carry a weapon under or over his wet clothes. I charge up to him, sticking my nose next to his.

  “Where’s my sword?”

  Markham pats his hip and pretends to search for it. “I’m afraid it’s not on me at the moment.”

  I shove him in the chest. “Where is it?”

  “Does harassing people often result in your getting what you want?” he asks lightly and then taps Jamison’s leg. “Remove your feet from the water, Lieutenant. The merrow’s enchantment will linger inside you as long as you’re touching the sea.”

  “Don’t tell him what to do,” I say, hitting Markham again for good measure.

  The prince’s wolfish eyes flash. “Then let him swim to his death.”

  This moment is going terribly wrong. I imagined when Markham and I next met, I’d shoot him and take back my sword. Not only do I not have a pistol, or any weapon at all, but he doesn’t have the sword of Avelyn.

  Farther up the beach, Harlow emerges from the fog, pauses to view our party, and then runs at us. Markham drops his net and soon catches her in midair. Her legs go around his waist, and I cannot tell which one kisses the other first, but in an instant, their lips are merged. I look away, disgusted, and envious that Harlow received a warm greeting while all I got was puzzlement from Jamison over the fact that I’m not dead.

  Laverick breaks out of the fog next and wraps me in a hug. “I knew you’d make it to shore. Is Claret here?”

  “Last I saw, she was in the boat with you.”

  “We capsized.” Laverick’s voice hitches. “The three of us managed to flip the boat over and climb back in, but Claret was swept away.” Her attention fastens on Markham and Harlow still embracing. “Is that Prince Killian?”

  “One and the same,” I grumble.

  Out in the waves, the merrow starts her melody again, drilling a shiver straight through me. Jamison’s bloodshot gaze starts to wander in her direction. I grab his hand, startling him, and lace our fingers together. In our world, merrows are storybook antagonists. A
pparently, the tales about them luring men under the sea to their deaths are true.

  “Here.” Markham offers Jamison pieces of beeswax. “Put these in your ears to soften the sound. Resisting the merrow’s song can be torturous, like your teeth are rattling out of your head.”

  “Why aren’t your ears plugged?” I question.

  “Younger men are more susceptible to the merrow’s summons.” Markham’s lips quirk upward. “Don’t fret, Countess. I won’t let your husband drown.”

  I nearly shove him again, just to wipe away his smirk. He would let any one of us drown if it suited him. He pretends he’s a hero when, in truth, he cast the net to try to capture the merrow. Jamison’s hand squeezes down on mine as her singing grows more insistent.

  “We must go,” Markham says, lugging his net. “More merrows may join her song, and then their summons will be too strong for any of us to resist.”

  He and Harlow trudge up the sandy embankment into thicker fog. The rest of us stay where we are, except for Radella, who lands on Jamison’s shoulder. Now that they’re reunited, he has resumed his role as her favorite.

  “Well?” Laverick asks. “Do we leave?”

  A cringe deepens Jamison’s brow. He’s so tense about the merrow I doubt he heard the Fox’s question. We need to move away from the seashore, and I still need to find my sword.

  “Let’s see where this leads,” I say.

  We catch up to Harlow and Markham and follow the prince into the boneyard of ships.

  Markham does not waver from cutting a path through the shipwrecks. How long has he been here? Where is here? And what did he do with my sword?

  To my surprise, he guides us to the same vessel that Radella and I chose to take shelter in, only he goes inside a cabin three doors down from ours and lights an oil lantern as we file into the small quarters. Broken deck planks cover the portholes, sealing in the lantern light. Four chairs and a wardrobe cabinet are toppled and strewn about, and a desk has slid across the slanted floor to the far corner.

  The merrow’s song has finally stopped. Jamison releases my hand and removes the wax from his ears while I skim the cabin for the sword of Avelyn.