by Alex Aster
Maybe the wish-gods’ science of giving out markings was flawed. And not just for Tor.
Melda rolled her eyes and shook her head, just as she broke through a thick shrub. “Ungrateful, the both of you,” she said. Then, she blinked.
Right in front of them appeared a stream of moonlight so thick it looked like fabric—star-woven, just like in the stories. Smooth as silk, and glistening, shooting out of a small hole in the canopy like a finger from the heavens poking through.
And they were not the only ones admiring the lightstream. Animals from all around the rain forest had gathered, standing on the outskirts of the radiance, the sparkling light like a beacon.
Engle rattled off their names in a whisper. “Ram-horned stag, four-fingered sloth, spotted ocelot, tiger butterfly, gato oscuro, willow orangutan, winged slug!”
Tor had never seen so many creatures in one spot. These were species he had only ever heard Engle describe at lunchtime. Seeing them in the flesh, lit up in glowing colors no less, seemed fit for a dream.
Something croaked nearby in a soft tune. A tiny frog, covered in bright blue stripes, just like a tiger’s, jumped right onto his arm. He smiled down at it, reaching out a finger to trail down its back.
“Tor, no!” Engle lunged to slap the animal away with a branch, and it jumped before he could, disappearing into a reed shaped like a green tunnel. The creature had only been on Tor’s skin for a matter of seconds.
But it was too late.
“My arm…my skin, it’s…” Tor screamed out, making more than a few of the animals in front of him turn around. “It’s on fire!”
It was as if he had been bitten by a mouthful of flames, his flesh igniting like a match. His lungs felt as though they had been punctured, his throat filled with moss.
He heard pieces of sentences as his friends rushed around him, felt the pierce of a stump in his back as he fell.
“Dart frog—”
“His heart—”
“Not breathing—”
And then the last word he heard, before even the moonlight fell away: “Deadly.”
Lifelines
Once upon a foaming sea, a woman was born with an emblem never before seen. That of a rainbow circle, right in the middle of her palm. She could sense what time the sun would rise. She knew if the day of hunting would be successful and if her fruit tree would survive the winter. She was a seer, and, once word spread about her abilities, she became very busy.
A line streamed out of her house and down through the village, along the coast, and to the mountains—full of Emblemites wanting to know their fate. As a rule, the woman never gave specifics about one’s destiny. Instead, she would provide a broad outline of a person’s life.
She would take their hand into her own. Then run her finger across their palms. In the places she touched, rainbow streaks appeared in a pattern that showed the highs and lows of their future.
Emblemites learned to read their lifelines like reading a clock—knowing that the brightest parts represented where they were along their journey. They guessed at how long they had to live. Some were just happy to know the path their life would take. Others tried so hard to avoid their fate, they forgot to live their lives.
When the seer passed on, she left her emblem’s gift behind in pockets of air, in between the stars, and underneath river stones. From that point on, all children were born with their own lifeline, painted across their hands.
Some were grateful for that knowledge.
And others deemed it a curse.
9
The Crystals
Tor woke up choking. His skin was burning, and sweat soaked his clothes. He was in some sort of hut.
Thump, thump thump. Tor turned to see an old man next to him, wearing a sweeping shawl and grinding something in a small bowl. He smeared the bright blue substance across Tor’s forehead; it chilled him to the bone.
“We have to break the fever,” the man explained. He held a bright rock in his hand. “It’s a healing crystal,” he said, noticing Tor’s look. He walked to the edge of the hut and opened the door wide. “We have many varieties in Zura.”
Outside the room, at the base of several trees, sat clusters of long, pointed crystals.
“Clear-colored for alertness, rose for love, gray for remembering dreams, green for eliminating negativity, purple for renewal, and, of course, bright blue for healing.” The old man pursed his thin lips. “Without which you would be very much dead.”
Tor nodded, still feeling dazed, like he had awoken from a hundred-year hibernation. “Who are you?” His voice came out as more of a croak.
“They call me a curador.” He shrugged. “But I’m just like you. A little older, of course.” He laughed. “Okay, perhaps a lot older.”
The man wiped his hands on a cloth, and the sight made Tor’s eyes widen even more than the crystals had. His palms were not covered by a lifeline, but by winding, silver scars.
“We cut them away, as children,” the curador said.
Tor gasped, the movement sending a wave of nausea through him. “You cut your lifeline off? Why?”
The old man moved the blue crystal above Tor’s body, from head to toe, then back again. He could feel its energy, a shiver of iciness spreading through him. There was ringing in his ears, the same ringing he always heard underwater.
“We find the idea a bit paralyzing,” the curador explained.
Tor did not have to ask the man what he meant. He knew. He had spent years staring at his lifeline, wishing for peaks, or even valleys, just to make his life interesting. He had, in a way, allowed those rainbow lines to control his life. His actions. Tor began to wonder… If he hadn’t known what a comfortable future he had in store, would he have risked his emblem for a new one?
Would he have submitted such a foolish wish on Eve?
“When your lifeline is gone, you’re free to decide who you want to be,” the curador said. He motioned down to Tor’s own palm. “Don’t you think so?” Before Tor could respond, the old man struck his hands together. A bell rang out sharply through the hut, and the crystal the curador had been holding crumbled into powder.
The moment the rock specks floated down onto his skin, Tor’s body rose—floated in the air for just a moment—then fell.
And Tor was in darkness yet again.
* * *
He opened his eyes to find Engle and Melda’s faces right above his own.
She threw her arms around his neck. “We thought you were a goner!”
Engle nodded, impressed. “Dart frogs are the most poisonous animal on all of Emblem Island,” he said. He pursed his lips. “You really should be dead.” Melda elbowed him in the shoulder. “Ow. Not that I’m complaining or anything.”
Tor sat up and groaned. Though he couldn’t see any, his entire body might as well have been covered in bruises. Everything hurt. “How long was I out?”
“Almost all night,” Engle said. “Enough time for us to have slept a bit, gotten dinner, and, best of all, drumroll please…figured out where to go next.”
Melda cleared her throat.
“Okay, the curador figured it out, but I showed him the book.”
Melda blinked at him.
“Okay, he didn’t need the book, Melda told him the pelilarga story, and he figured it out.” Engle’s face lit up, and he dug into his pocket. “But I did get you this!” He produced a handful of crumbs, then frowned. “Oh. Must have…um…fallen apart.”
The curador handed Tor a cup of something bright red. Probably ground from crystals. “Drink this. For strength.”
He took a sip, and almost spit it out. It tasted like a mixture of sour dirt and mossy bark.
“Vile, but it’ll do the trick.”
Tor gulped it down in one go, then winced. “So where…where—emblem, that’s awful.” He grimace
d. The crystal drink had an even worse aftertaste. “Where are we going next?” Though being poisoned by the dart frog had been the most painful experience of his life, Tor felt a slight rush of relief that his friends had figured out the next step in their journey without him.
Melda laced her hands together. She looked nervous…no, afraid. “Perhaps the curador should explain.”
The old man squinted, looking down at Tor from where he stood. “I’ve heard of these beings. The ones from the story your friend told me. There are legends northeast of here, of women with long, wicked hair that they can control like whips. Stories of men disappearing, without a trace. Of echoing screams.”
That definitely sounded like the creatures from the fairy tale. “Where?”
“The Scalawag Range.”
Hearing that name, that place, made Tor’s stomach do all types of terrible things. It sunk because he actually knew of this location, of its treacherous paths and the carnivorous animals that lived there. It also squirmed with shame. Because, for the first time in what seemed like a while, he thought of Rosa.
His little sister… How was she doing? Was she worried about her brother?
“A treacherous journey, no doubt,” the curador said. “You’ll be needing supplies…yes, yes…perhaps a few crystals to guard against the dark spirits? And food, of course, you won’t find even a weed in those mountains. Might have to fast a bit, depends on how much you can carry, I suppose.” The more he spoke, the more Tor’s confidence in their abilities faded.
Koso yawned. Tor hadn’t noticed he had walked into the hut until now. “Talk of imminent death makes me drowsy. We have just a handful of hours left in the night, and I don’t know about you, but I plan to spend them with my eyes closed.”
His yawn was contagious and soon spread across the group, infecting everyone except for the curador. Through the doorway, they watched him pick crystals from the bases of his trees as simply as plucking flowers in a garden. The glowing rocks slipped out of the dirt with ease, their bright color flickering, then returning to their previous glory. Once he had a bushel, the old man looked down at his selection and nodded, satisfied. “This should do. Keep them close by, and make sure—are you listening? This is important. Make sure you don’t let them touch the ground. Once picked, crystals are never supposed to return to the soil.”
Melda squinted. “What happens if they touch the ground?”
The curador shivered. His bald head caught a glimmer of light. “Well, all sorts of things could happen. Earthquakes, tornadoes…fire-covered boulders falling from the sky. Or, nothing at all. It all depends on which crystal falls, I should say. Some are moodier than others.” The curador held one of the long crystals to his chest, a green one, and stroked it the way one might a child. “Every single one has its own flair, and, if we’re lucky enough, their tremendous energies are shared with us.” He nodded. “Go ahead, take it.”
Melda looked like she would rather jump into quicksand, but allowed the curador to place the crystal in her hands. She sighed. “Am I supposed to be feeling something?”
“It’s all right, everyone starts somewhere. Close your hand around it. In fact, Tor, Engle, why don’t you try it as well?”
They all locked their hands around the emerald-colored rock at once—and it glowed even brighter than before, so brilliantly that Tor had to close his eyes against the flash of light. The crystal began to quiver, trembling beneath their grip.
All at once, like a blast of sunlight melting a clump of dirty snow, all of his worries started to thaw…
Rosa. The guilt he carried for leaving her faded.
The curse. An image of the eye on his wrist made his stomach twist into a braid. Slowly, however, it began to disentangle, as his worries were expelled.
Lastly—
The Night Witch. The thought of her was a massive glacier, fear frozen solid. His chest tightened as pieces of her stories flitted through his mind…
But, unlike every other time before, none of those images stuck. Tor’s fear slowly but surely began to defrost, until it softened into a more manageable mound. He was still afraid, of course. But his journey seemed more possible now than it ever had before. Achievable, even.
Tor opened his eyes to find that Melda’s constantly tense shoulders had relaxed. The expression she wore reminded him of Rosa waking up from a nap, one foot still stuck in dreamland. She looked odd, he thought, without the worry lines that typically crumpled her forehead into a folded-up fan.
Engle’s eyes were still closed, and he swayed gently back and forth like a foamy ocean wave, humming a soothing song.
“Works wonders, doesn’t it?” The curador watched them with delight, his hands intertwined in front of him. “Only downside—side effect, if you will—is that use of crystals can make one quite drowsy. Then again, it is time to sleep now, isn’t it? Koso, why don’t you show our guests to their beds?”
Tor stumbled out of the hut after his friends, his limbs so relaxed they could have been softened sticks of butter. The crystal’s calming effect made it so that when Koso presented a hammock hanging fifty feet above the rain forest floor as a bed, Tor did not even complain. In fact, he smiled.
He fell asleep to the sound of Melda, somewhere near him, joyfully humming herself to sleep.
A sliver of light on Tor’s face woke him the next morning. He had only slept a couple of hours, but jumped up at once, filled with energy. Neither the fact that the hammock rocked dangerously to one side—this close to flipping over—nor a glimpse of the eye on his arm could bring Tor’s spirits down. For the first time since he had been cursed, he felt light as a feather.
He briefly wondered how long it would be before the crystal’s effects wore off.
They ate breakfast on the Canopy, miles from the cocoanut hut. This part of the market looked nearly the same, but it had larger structures, including an archway made entirely of flowers. It was early, and most of the stands were still boarded up, but Koso had managed to get them eggs, scooped-out avocado, and a bowl of mashed acai topped with cinnamon and sliced banana. Tor ate quickly, grateful for his first full meal in days.
When even Engle’s black hole of a stomach was stuffed, Koso gifted them two bags—one filled with food and water, and the other holding the sack of crystals the curador had given them the night before.
Then, he led them to the zippy, the fastest way out of Zura. And their proximity to the glowing, calming rocks was no doubt the reason why neither Tor nor Melda said a word.
“Farewell,” Koso said. “I wish I could say we will see each other again, but, well—no guarantees, right?” He laughed nervously.
His words didn’t make Tor feel better, but they didn’t exactly make him feel worse, either. “Thank you for everything. And we will see each other again. That’s a promise,” Tor said, with about ten times the confidence he actually felt, even with the crystal’s help. He squeezed the zippy’s handle so tightly, his knuckles turned pale.
Koso nodded as Chico shrieked a goodbye. Then, with a final encouraging smile, he bounced heavily on the wooden platform, sending Tor, Melda, and Engle careening down into the rain forest.
The moment they landed and stepped out of Zura, Tor, Melda, and Engle were showered with sunlight so thick and bright, it was as though they were emerging from a cave. Tor covered his eyes with his hand, but the sun’s rays found the rest of his body, toasting him in seconds.
“How far until the mountains?” Engle asked, chewing on a fruit from their store.
Melda unfurled the map. “Farther than you’d like.” Tor followed her finger across the parchment’s colors—across a sea of gold, then blue, then, finally, to a mess of peaks resembling a scaled creature’s back.
The Scalawag Range.
Even though they were traveling right toward danger, toward soul-stealing creatures, at least they had a plan.
&nbs
p; Tor swallowed, wondering if a bad plan was worse than no plan at all.
Melodines and Captivates
Once upon a midnight hour, the sea felt it was owed a debt. Over time, ships had become sturdier, so sound that sailors often traveled upon the ocean’s back without a drop of blood as payment.
That will not do, the sea said. So, from its depths, it created a creature that would balance the scales of life and death.
With skin as glittering as sea foam, hair silkier than water, eyes the purple of sea glass, and a voice more alluring than the sound of curling waves, the first melodine was born.
When the next ship sailed by, the water around it began to swirl in miniature whirlpools. It glittered with the dazzle of the nighttime sky, like a pirate had tipped his treasure right into the ocean, and left a trail of gemstones in his wake. The anchor heaved over the side, and sailors leaned over the edges of the ship for a look, just as a head peeked through the water. That of a woman.
Then, another head. That of a man.
Their eyes broke through the night like beams of light. The sailors were hypnotized, falling from the deck, one after the other, without the melodines even opening their mouths.
Over time, stories were passed down and sailors became wary. Now they know better than to look too closely at the waves. They keep their eyes on the horizon and stuff their ears with beeswax when the sun sets. So the melodines traveled to distant waters—ponds, streams, and rivers began to shimmer with their magic as they awaited their next meal. The water they inhabited became a black hole of hunger. A trap.
A captivate.
Beware a lake that does not run clear. Beware the whispers of bubbles in your ear. Beware flower petals in water that seep color. For you might have found yourself in a captivate. And sheer willpower is the only escape.
10
The Golden Ocean
They traveled for hours in a heat so thick Tor swore it had its own color. Like a fog, the humidity surrounded them and weighed down their limbs, making even walking a grueling task.