Soul of Cinder

by Bree Barton

  As they sailed away from Luumia, Mia saw his smoldering green eyes more often than she cared to admit.

  Now he and Angie were both dead, crushed beneath the snow palace. Pilar was the only family she had left. Sometimes Mia was struck by a tide of compassion so strong it knocked the breath out of her. She had seen Pilar’s past: not just the rape, but the aftermath. She knew that the whole Dujia sisterhood had turned against her. The island of Refúj, whose very name meant “safe haven,” had proven to be anything but.

  Mia ached to be that safe haven for Pilar. She knew in the marrow of her bones that she could do it: be the kind of sister Pilar needed. Mia had failed to see Angelyne, and had thereby failed to save her. She would not make that mistake again.

  “Mia, your face!” cried Nelladine. “Great sands, you’re reddening up like a roasted beet! What did I tell you? You have to apply the cream every hour—it absorbs fast.” She reached for the scooped banana leaf. “Apply evenly or it’ll streak.”

  Grateful, Mia accepted the leaf. After a solid month of unrelenting sunshine, Nell’s deep brown skin had grown a few shades darker, as radiant and dewy as ever, while Pilar’s olive-gold complexion had tanned nicely. Mia, on the other hand, had sprouted a veritable pox of orange freckles and was burning to a well-seasoned crisp. No matter how many times she or Nelladine healed the sunburn, she’d be just as pink an hour later. The endless cycle of burning and healing, burning and healing had become almost comical.

  From their first day on the sea, it had been clear their lives were in Nell’s hands. And what capable hands! Watching Nell captain Maysha was like watching a weaver weave or a blacksmith smith. She could chart the stars, tie a one-handed knot, balance barefoot on the edge of the dhou without holding on to anything.

  Her magic didn’t hurt, either. Nell could do things Mia had never imagined: extract salt from seawater to make it drinkable, catch fish by chilling a modicum of ocean until their heartbeats slowed. A few days into their voyage, she had plucked a floating sea urchin from the water, crushed it down to powder, and used her magic to melt a sprig of seaweed into paste. After blending everything into a pale yellow cream, she had handed it to Mia.

  “To protect you from the sun,” she’d explained. “So we don’t exhaust ourselves healing you fourteen times a day.”

  Now, as Mia smeared the cream onto her cheeks and forehead, she braced herself for the inevitable gibe from Pilar.

  “Still smells like fish carcass,” Pilar said, right on cue.

  Mia turned to Nell. “Could you do my shoulders?”

  Their benevolent captain smiled. “Of course.”

  As Nell’s rope-callused fingers massaged cream into her shoulders, Mia closed her eyes. She had tried dozens of times to re-create the night they fled the snow kingdom, when Nelladine had touched the indigo frostflower inked onto Mia’s wrist, spilling warmth over her skin. Results should always be reproducible: that was a cornerstone of the scientific process. Over and over, Mia had entreated her friend to touch the moving fyre ink again. When that didn’t work, they would try the other wrist. Then hands. Then arms. Then shoulders.

  “Magic?” Nell asked, accurately predicting what Mia would ask next. Magic was a critical variable in the equation; they’d tried it both with and without.

  “Yes,” Mia said. “Thanks for asking.”

  Nell’s hands stilled. Mia knew she was channeling all her magic into her fingers, trying to spark sensation. Hot, cold, tingling, soothing—whatever Mia requested, Nell would attempt to conjure. Once or twice Mia had thought she detected the faintest flicker of feeling. Her heart would soar. Finally, finally she had climbed out of the dark box. But the sensation was so ephemeral she suspected her own yearning was yielding a false positive.

  “Can we try the enthrall?”

  Nell hesitated, the way she always did when Mia asked to be enthralled. And, like always, Mia had her defense at the ready.

  “You told me magic is about being attuned to other people. That you must only touch them if it’s what they truly want. It’s what I truly want.”

  Nell sighed. She reached for Mia’s inked wrist with one hand, her heart with the other.

  Nothing. No thrill of sticky heat, no melted chocolate, no warm honeyed hum.

  “Look on the bright side, Rose,” Pilar said. “You’re immune to magic.”

  “Yes,” Mia said, unable to mask her frustration. “But I’m immune to everything else, too.”

  “Don’t give up hope.” Nell gave her arm a squeeze. “We’re not far from Pembuk now, and there are powerful Pembuka elixirs, all kinds. Like the one your mother gave you that got lost in the avalanche. They could help you, really they could.”

  Mia had a hard time believing anything could help.

  “Want me to massage your shoulders, Nell? You’ve been doing so much for me.”

  Nell shook her head. “I’m perfectly fine.”

  Sometimes when Mia looked at Nell—she was afraid to even think it—she felt a softening in her belly. As if a tiny knot had been untied somewhere, a satin ribbon unfurling. The thought frightened and confused her, but it calmed her, too.

  In those fleeting moments, she wondered if perhaps the enthrallment had worked a little after all.

  “She’s quiet today,” Nell said, assessing the smooth black sea. Mia had marked this many times: to Mia, the ocean was an it; to Nell it was always a she. So was Maysha. Their first day at sea, Nell had told them, “A dhou moves and breathes, same as we do. Why shouldn’t she have a name?”

  Pilar groaned. “I hate when it’s quiet. With no wind it’s like we’re treading water. At this rate we’ll never get to Pembuk.”

  “We will.”

  “But I can see land now.” She waved an impatient hand to the north. If Mia shielded her eyes from the sun, she could see a sandy blur in the distance. That had been true for days.

  “Why don’t we find a harbor?” Pilar said. “We could eat something that isn’t fish.”

  “We’re close, I promise. Don’t forget I know the Pembuka coast better than you do. We’re looking for Pata Pacha, the cove I sailed out of four years ago. We’ll make landfall and take a caravan to the first of the glass cities.”

  Pilar yawned. “I’m bored.”

  “How can you ever be bored on the ocean?” Nell said. “Sailing gives me the same feeling as when I throw a fresh slab of clay on my potter’s wheel. Anything is possible, and everything can shift. The sea is always changing, always transforming.”

  “But isn’t that what makes it dangerous?” Mia said, loathing the sound of her own voice. Sometimes she felt as if Pilar had stepped into the role of rash, petulant child, whereas she’d assumed the role of cautious, fretting mother.

  “I don’t think so, no,” Nell said, “though I suppose it depends on your definition of dangerous. The sea swings high and low, wild and tranquil, but she is always honest about who she is.”

  Like you, Mia thought. Nell laughed and cried so freely, her emotions crashing over her like giant waves before dissolving into sea-foam. She spoke the same way, sentences flowing into one another, words rising and falling in a fluid tumble. Mia couldn’t imagine being that free with her feelings. She wasn’t sure she’d want to be.

  “The sea doesn’t pretend to be sweet and docile when she doesn’t feel like it,” Nell said. “I’d choose the ocean any day over Prisma.”

  Mia cocked her head. “Prisma?”

  “I thought I’d told you about the island! Very controversial in the glass kingdom, some think it’s an abomination, some think it’s a gift. The Isle of Forgetting, they call it. Home of the glass terrors. I told you about those before, didn’t I, Mia?”

  “You didn’t tell me,” Pilar grumbled.

  “It’s a natural phenomenon. The wind whips up the sand and the sun melts it into a glittery glass cyclone, and when you look into it you see your life . . . only it isn’t really your life. All the grief and sadness are gone, along with the mistakes you
made, the people you lost, so you’re looking at the life that might have been, the better one, and you don’t just see it, you’re inside it.”

  Pilar shrugged. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “Sure it doesn’t. Until you walk toward the whirling shimmer of glass with your arms wide, heart open, and you don’t even feel it when it slices you apart.”

  Mia shivered. “Why would anyone go to Prisma?”

  Nell blinked at her for a moment. Then she turned away, hoisting herself up into the bow.

  “Ask the Shadowess,” she said.

  This had been happening more and more: little moments where Nelladine pulled back and drew into herself when one of them mentioned the Shadowess. Strange, considering it was Nell who insisted on taking them to the Shadowess. “The only person who can help,” she’d said as the glacier crumbled around them.

  “Things will be different once we get to the glass kingdom,” Nell said, her eyes fixed on some distant point Mia couldn’t see. “I’ll be different.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ll see. There’s a reason I left home.”

  “But you won’t tell us what it is,” griped Pilar. “Or why you’re dragging us back. All we know is that we’re going to Pembuk.”

  “You really haven’t put two and two together?” Nell laughed her husky laugh. “It’ll all become clear soon enough. We’re going to a sacred place where the greatest minds have gathered since the beginning of time: people who have learned how to heal not just the world around us, but our own hearts and minds.”

  “Great, more riddles,” Pilar groaned. One thing Mia had learned from a month on the sea: her sister was keen on groaning.

  Sister. The word still felt strange and out of place, like a blackberry drupelet stuck between her teeth. She still had trouble reconciling the fact that, after seventeen years, she’d lost one sister and inherited another.

  “Mia.” Nell nodded toward the lateen sail. “The luff—that’s the edge closest to the mast—is a little loose. Can you help me reroute the halyard?”

  “Yes,” Mia said, although “probably not” would have been a more honest answer.

  Pilar dropped from the stern, landing evenly on both feet. “Need a hand?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “There’s no shame in it.”

  Mia was caught off guard—in part because Pilar was being kind, in part because she had invoked shame. Shouldn’t Mia be the one telling her big sister not to feel ashamed? She’d tried so many times to initiate a conversation about their night under the snow palace; the more Mia replayed her own words, the more tweaks she wanted to make. She should have done a better job offering both comfort and support. Every time Pilar lobbed a sarcastic barb in her direction, Mia reminded herself that this was simply a means of self-protection. She knew she could make things better for Pilar, easier, if she could just say the right thing.

  But whenever Mia offered an olive branch, Pil crushed it.

  Now Mia met her sister’s eyes. Compassion welled inside her. This was the moment.

  “Pilar,” she began. “I want you to know you can—”

  She gasped as Pilar stripped off her shirt—and jumped overboard.

  Chapter 3

  Another Kind of Sweat

  PILAR WAS BETTER OFF alone. Why did she keep forgetting? Her so-called half sister was the perfect reminder. For weeks Mia had tried to force her to talk about things she didn’t want to talk about. Didn’t need to talk about. Pilar had offered to help reroute the halyard, not have a heart-to-heart sob fest with Mia Rose.

  The only escape was to go overboard.

  “Pilar!”

  She dunked her head under, drowning Mia out. The water was bracing. Much better. A jolt of cold ocean to slurp her down.

  Her head broke the surface, eyes stinging with salt. Just in time to hear Mia say to Nelladine: “. . . going to get herself killed. Can’t you do something?”

  “Actually, there is one thing,” Nell said, and then she was pulling off her shirt, too, and plunging into the water.

  Pilar crowed with delight. A moment later, Nell resurfaced, triumphant. Beads of water clung to her thin black braids.

  A panicked Mia leaned over the boat’s edge.

  “I can’t sail, Nell!”

  “Maysha will be fine for a few minutes. There’s no wind.”

  “But what if . . .” Mia motioned helplessly toward the water.

  “It’s the ocean, Mia, it doesn’t bite.”

  “Except for the thousands of aquatic species that literally bite.”

  Nell splashed the side of the boat. Mia did not look amused.

  “Didn’t you grow up on a river?” Pilar asked.

  “Not on a river,” Mia said. “Close to one.”

  “Why does the water scare you?”

  “It doesn’t scare me.”

  “Why do you hate it?”

  “Because there are infinite unknowns lurking beneath the surface.”

  “You don’t like that you can’t control it,” Pilar said. She jerked a thumb toward the sinking sun. “You can’t control a sunset. Does that scare you, too?”

  She didn’t wait to hear Mia’s answer. She paddled farther out, blading her hands through the water. Filled her lungs with air. Floated on her back, starfishing her arms and legs. It felt nice to swim, to let her muscles stretch and thrum. You could only bend your body so many ways on a boat. Sit. Stand. Crouch. Lie down—until someone stepped on you.

  Mia Rose was that someone. Four weeks and the girl still didn’t have her sea legs. Typical.

  Pilar had noticed something since they’d set sail. Whenever she thought about what had happened to her beneath the snow palace—trapped in her own Reflections, forced to relive her worst nightmare—she didn’t feel a sense of closure. If anything, she felt more exposed.

  Mia had seen everything. She’d watched as Orry, Pilar’s fight teacher, raped her over and over in his cottage by the lake.

  To Mia’s credit, she’d said comforting things.

  You didn’t deserve what happened. It wasn’t your fault.

  At the time, Pilar had felt seen.

  The problem was, sometimes being seen wasn’t a good thing. Mia had also seen how desperately Pilar wanted to be loved. At night, trying to snatch a few hours of sleep on the tiny boat, Pilar would remember what Morígna, Orry’s wife, had said the day she turned the entire Dujia sisterhood against her. There will always be girls so starved for attention they must lie to get it. Girls who pretend to be victims when they are anything but.

  Mia had seen that part, too. It gave Pilar a sick feeling. Like she’d sliced open her chest and let Mia Rose root around the slimy guts.

  Honestly, Rose would probably enjoy it. She was always yammering on about fibula this and ventricle that.

  Pilar hated the feeling of being vulnerable. Needy. Worst of all: weak. She hated the word rape, hated everything about it. Raped. She didn’t recognize herself in those five letters. But she could see them in Mia’s eyes every time she looked at her.

  Pilar felt herself sealing off again. The same way cuts on her knuckles turned to white-slash scars after a fight. She’d always healed quickly, even when she didn’t use magic to speed things along. Her wounds scabbed over within a day or two. The skin scarred up. Got tougher.

  Maybe hearts did that, too. Slit them open and they closed up tougher than before. The deeper the cut, the thicker the scar—and the more unlikely the heart would break again.

  “You’re a strong swimmer,” said Nelladine, who’d come up beside her. Pilar stayed on her back, puffing out her chest to keep afloat.

  “I did grow up on an island. No shortage of ocean to swim in.”

  “You all right out there?” Mia yelled from the boat.

  “Are you all right?” Nell yelled back.

  “Yes! I think so?”

  Nell shot Pilar a sly look. “To tell the truth, if I had to leave Maysha with anyone? Mia wouldn’t
be my top pick.”

  Pilar righted herself in the water. “She’d die if she heard you say that.”

  “That’s why I’m only saying it to you.”

  Why did Pilar feel suddenly protective? She’d done nothing but heap scorn on Mia’s bad sailing for weeks, widening the gap between them.

  But then she would remember how it had felt to stand beside Mia in their Reflections, hand in hand. The way some torn part of her had begun to knit itself back together. It scared her, how much she wanted to feel that again.

  Starved for attention.

  In the past her own hunger had made her vulnerable. When you opened yourself up like that, people hurt you.

  And then she thought of Quin. Pilar had offered him her body and a good chunk of her heart. He’d offered her the same. But his body and heart were never his to give. Angelyne had broken him, scraped him clean of everything good and gentle.

  Pilar saw now what she couldn’t see then. She and Quin had never been destined for some epic love affair. He was happiest writing dramatic monologues and correcting her grammar. She was happiest pounding sandbags. They’d found one another because they were desperate, and because there was no one else.

  But they had meant something to each other. That part was true. Sometimes when she replayed their history, she felt searing guilt that she hadn’t known—or hadn’t wanted to know—how much he was hurting.

  And then she thought of the night underneath the palace. Quin would have burned her alive. She knew it in her core. What a fool she’d been. Still that needy girl, starved for attention. It had almost killed her.

  “The water gets warmer the closer we get to Pata Pacha,” Nell was saying. “By the time you’re in the cove it’s practically bathing water. You’ll see whole shoals of melonfish.”

  “Melonfish?”

  “They look like halves of orange melons with long trailing lappets, and they’re luminous, they create their own light. They’re really quite beautiful. My brother caught one once, tried to keep it as a pet. But they don’t last long in fresh water.”