Curse of the Forgotten City

by Alex Aster

  They split up, and Tor took so many different stairs and corridors that he would have feared getting lost in the maze that was the castle, if he didn’t sense a spark of recognition within him, the tug of an invisible thread that spooled down the halls, pulling him along.

  He stopped in a library. Its shelves reached the ceiling, and only the top ones held books, accessible by sliding ladder. The others held objects. Gems, scrolled maps, tiny figures. Tor was reaching toward an hourglass when the floorboards behind him creaked.

  “How?” Vesper.

  He whipped around to face her. “How what?”

  She took a step forward. “No one beyond our people is supposed to have that emblem.” She nodded toward his arm. “How?”

  He splayed his arms, motioning at the castle around him. “The Night Witch. She gave me the emblem I always wanted.”

  Vesper lifted a brow. “The cruel villain of every kid’s nightmares did it out of the kindness of her heart?”

  Tor laughed without humor. “No.” He wondered if he should be telling her this, a secret he had desperately protected for a month. Melda clearly didn’t care for Vesper—maybe didn’t trust her. But even though he hadn’t made his own mind up about the waterbreather, he found himself saying, “She also gave me her other abilities. And responsibilities.” Her green eyes widened and he scowled. “I don’t want any of them or anything to do with it. Giving them to me was just another curse, to end the one that had made me look for her in the first place.”

  Vesper tilted her head at him. “A curse indeed.”

  She looked like she might say something else, but her gaze drifted to just above Tor’s head, to a row of shelves he had looked at earlier.

  A tiny anchor sat on the middle shelf, right beside a miniature silver snowflake. Both were small enough to be charms on a bracelet.

  “That’s what we need,” Vesper said, grabbing them. She turned to leave, then spotted Tor’s incredulous look over her shoulder. “Trust me,” was all she said.

  And, since Tor had no plan of his own, he took the hourglass he had spotted, then followed her back down through the castle.

  * * *

  “Where is she going?” Melda asked with crossed arms and black brows in frustrated arches. Tor, Engle, and Melda had just rushed out of the castle, on Vesper’s heels. The waterbreather kept running, toward the cliff, with no signs of slowing down.

  “I have no idea,” Tor said.

  A few feet from the edge, Vesper stopped suddenly. Tor caught up with her, panting. Engle eyed the two charms in her palm.

  He watched as Vesper took the tiny silver anchor between her fingers and threw it into the Lake of the Lost.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Melda said. Vesper only smirked. She held her hand out as the tiny charm disappeared from view, Engle looking away as it sunk to the bottom.

  Tor wondered what he had been thinking to trust a stranger.

  Then the lake began to shake. Bubble. Tor took a step back as something broke through the gray water with a spray so large it almost reached them on the cliff.

  A ship burst from the lake, bow first, before landing on its surface with another breathtaking splash. It looked huge even from hundreds of feet away—dark as night, with cobweb sails.

  Engle blinked. “What did you say your second emblem did?”

  Vesper folded her fingers back, stretching them each with a satisfying crack. “I can manipulate the size of things, make objects big or small.” She held her hand out, and Tor watched as the ship below shrunk until it was so small he couldn’t make it out, then floated up to Vesper’s awaiting palm. The tiny charm anchor from before was now connected to the miniature ship, by a chain that trailed down her thumb.

  “How did you know the anchor meant there was a shrunken ship in the lake?” Melda asked.

  Vesper shrugged, then held up her wrist. There was a bracelet there, holding half a dozen charms. “Because of my emblem, I can sense things that have been enchanted to be small. When we arrived on the cliff, I felt something in the water, and when I saw the anchor, I knew what it was. Some enchanted objects are locked and require keys of sorts to make them larger. The anchor is a key.”

  “And the snowflake?” Melda asked, her voice tight.

  Vesper handed the charm in question to Tor. The tiny flake glimmered once as it touched his skin, a most peculiar hello. “This contains enchantment that will ensure the Calavera don’t reach shore.”

  It was cold in Tor’s palm. “How?”

  “It will freeze them in place. But not forever. And we’ll have to get close enough for it to work.”

  Melda frowned. “Then what do we do when they thaw again? Estrelle will still be in danger.”

  Tor bit his back teeth together. He knew what this was—the beginning of another quest he didn’t want to be a part of. But Melda was right. The snowflake charm was just a temporary solution. “The Pirate’s Pearl would give them control of the seas, right?”

  Vesper nodded.

  He sighed. “Then we have to find it before they do. And use it to send them back where they came from.”

  Melda turned away from him. He watched her hands reach for the necklace she no longer had, something she always used to do when she was worried.

  Engle shrugged. “I was saying just this morning how much I miss adventure.”

  At that, Melda glared at him. “I certainly don’t.” She faced Tor. “But I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?”

  “I’m in,” Vesper said, which didn’t do anything to dim Melda’s annoyance.

  With that, they stacked their hands on the gold coin to return home. It glowed—and a breath later, they were in front of different water.

  Estrelle’s Sapphire Sea was just as blue as its namesake gem. Shockingly deep blue, all the way until the horizon.

  Blue all the way to a dozen ships, made from swirling smoke and bones.

  “The Calavera,” Vesper breathed.

  Tor’s grip on the snowflake tightened. Its metal edges dug into his palm. He had never seen ships so big. Even in its full glory, the Night Witch’s boat could have fit inside one of their hulls.

  Engle swallowed, his vision seeing far past Tor’s own, thanks to his emblem. “There are hundreds of them…and they’re…they’re…”

  “Dead?” Vesper said.

  “They’re more bone than flesh!” he said.

  Vesper nodded. “Their curse at work. They have to reach land to become whole.”

  They were just a mile short of shore.

  “Let’s go then,” Melda said.

  There was a voice behind them. “Tor.”

  His mother.

  She stood there, holding something against her chest. A book.

  “Mom, I have to go. We have a plan to stop the pirates, at least for a bit. And a ship.” He tried his best to stand very straight, chin high, like the leader he never wanted to be, though his fingers shook at his sides. “We’re going to find the Pirate’s Pearl ourselves and save Estrelle.” He lifted his palm, giving her a good view of the scar the Night Witch had left in the center of his palm, a vicious mark across his lifeline. “I might be the only one who can. I have to try.”

  A tear shot down Chieftess Luna’s cheek, and Tor didn’t think he had ever seen his mother cry. “I know.” Worry lines etched across her forehead. Her hair, now gray after she gave the color to a goblin in search for her son, was tied back. “I know what you are now, and what you must do,” she said. She, more than anyone, knew the sacrifices necessary to protect and serve. “You will need this. Your ancestor saved a pirate who had washed onto these very shores, long ago. In gratitude, we were gifted this book. A guide to the seas. You would have read it, had…” She didn’t finish her sentence, but Tor did in his head: You would have read it, had you not made a wish that had resulted in you b
ecoming Emblem Island’s new wicked, the Night Witch’s replacement. You would have read it if you had followed the rules, and become Estrelle’s future leader instead.

  She handed him the book. Its cover was made of barnacles and shells, stuck together in uneven patterns. Its pages smelled of salt and brine, long yellowed and ripped in some places.

  It had a name: Book of Seas.

  “We can only hold them off for so long,” Tor said, holding up the snowflake charm. His mother’s eyes darted to it, then met his once more. “Estrelle needs to be evacuated…just in case.” Just in case we fail were the words he didn’t say.

  Chieftess Luna swallowed. “Leave it to me,” she said, and threw her arms around her son. “I wish I could have done more to protect you. I wish I could do more now.”

  Not far away, he spotted Melda embracing her own mother. She must have come looking for her daughter. Engle’s parents were far away, at the Alabaster Caves, where they worked as researchers.

  He breathed in the cinnamon scent of his mom, of home, one last time, knowing it could be a while before he returned. “You did everything right,” he said. Tor pulled away, trying to smile. “I’m the one who made a bad wish.”

  She took his hand and pressed a nail against his palm. Not on his lifeline, but on the scar the Night Witch had left. “The only way I can fathom letting you leave is knowing what you are. And what you now wield.” Chieftess Luna shuddered. “You are strong, Tor, you always have been. Don’t let this new part of you change who you are.”

  He hugged his mother once more. She motioned for Engle and hugged him, too.

  “You three, keep eyes on each other,” she said, addressing Melda, Engle, and Tor. Then she looked at Vesper and nodded, looking uncertain whether to trust her, but left with no other choice. Tor squeezed his mother’s hand.

  Then, he turned to the sea.

  They waded into the ocean until the water reached their knees. Vesper tossed the tiny ship into the waves. Under her directing hand, it became a boat just big enough for them to climb inside. It grew, bit by bit, the farther they sailed out. Tor held tightly onto a ledge as it slowly expanded around them. When they were deep enough that his mother was just a tiny figure in the distance, the ship bloomed in one dizzying whoosh and they all were propelled high into the sky. Tor lost his grip and rolled right into the center of the deck, its wooden planks expanding longer and longer, more ship rippling from its center, the sides growing farther and farther away. Only when the water was deep blue did the ship snap into its full form, a mermaid decorating its front.

  Tor stood on wobbly legs, taking in the vessel around him. Steady as land, yet fluid as the sea. He wanted to explore its every inch but didn’t have time to study the boat as he walked to its bow, salt filling his nose, wind howling in his ears and sending his hair back.

  The ships of smoke and bone now sailed so close he could see their passengers. Engle had been right. The crew looked almost indistinguishable from the bone boat itself—skin covering only bits of their bodies. A man grinned at Tor with only half of his lips and a quarter of his teeth.

  “Tor.” Melda was by his side. Engle was at the other.

  He nodded. “I know.”

  They drifted closer, wind whipping their hair back, salt filling their nostrils.

  “Tor.”

  “Just a little closer.”

  They were headed straight toward the main ship, a beast with a swirling phantom shark at its front, its jaw opened wide, rows of teeth on full display.

  Tor watched the teeth, getting bigger and bigger—and closer.

  “Tor!”

  He threw the snowflake as hard as he could in the space between their ship and the rest.

  The ocean cracked as soon as the snowflake landed, turning to ice that rippled in waves, long sheets that traveled faster than wind. Ships groaned as they came to a halt, frozen in place. And the frost did not stop at the water—it traveled with insatiable hunger, climbing up the hulls, to the decks, freezing the half-dead sailors before they could make a single move, screams hushing almost as quickly as they started. Someone managed to throw a sword, and it, too, froze before reaching the Night Witch’s ship, falling with a clank onto the ice.

  Frozen—a line of ships and people like a row of statues.

  But not everyone stood still. Three men had somehow escaped the ice. One with a wide, black hat floating just above his head—Tor thought him to be the Calavera captain. Next to him stood a man with hair like Vesper’s, silver. The Swordscale traitor.

  Between them was someone who made a chill rush down Tor’s spine. A man in a cloak, without a mouth. Just sickly pale flesh pulled too tightly across his face. His eyes were black, only a dot of bright yellow alive within them. He stared at Tor with a frightening intensity, then tilted his head under the cloak just as the ice tried again, rushing at them in full force. Before it could reach the three men, the one in the hooded cape conjured a purple flame in his palm. And with another flash of mauve, they disappeared.

  “Grandma!” Vesper gripped the side of the boat, and Tor followed her gaze to a silver-haired woman on another ship, now frozen, reaching toward her granddaughter. She was surrounded by others who wore scaled outfits and had the same strange hair. Vesper’s people. Apparently taken from Swordscale and now caught in the snowflake curse just like the rest of them. “It’s just temporary,” Melda whispered.

  Vesper whipped back around. “I know,” she said sharply. Then she took a breath. “This is a powerful charm… We have fourteen days before it melts. Two weeks to find the pearl.”

  “How do you know?” Engle asked.

  She shook her head impatiently. “The enchantment has an energy. When it spreads, or gets larger or smaller, I sense it.”

  Engle perked up. “Could you make me small?” He turned to Tor. “If I was tiny, my hut would be like a palace!” He brightened. “And one doughnut would be like a thousand doughnuts!”

  Melda glared at him.

  Tor ignored him. “Did you see that…” He didn’t know what to call it. “Figure?”

  “It’s called a spectral,” Vesper said, walking across the deck. “And if it’s helping the Calavera, we have bigger worries than we thought.”

  “Those three got away,” Melda said. “They’re going to try to find the pearl by themselves, aren’t they?”

  Vesper nodded. “The Calavera are the cruelest pirates to sail the seas. With the Pirate’s Pearl, they would be unstoppable. No ship or coastal town or even underwater settlement would be safe.”

  Tor wanted to go back home. He didn’t want another adventure. More than anything, he wished there was someone else…someone else chosen by the Night Witch. But Estrelle was in trouble, so he found himself saying, “Then we really have to find it before they do.”

  Engle scratched at his cheek. “How are we going to do that? We don’t even know where to start.”

  The current had moved them steadily eastward, away from the frozen ships. Away from Estrelle. From their families.

  Vesper reached toward her bracelet. “This map of the sea has been in my family for generations.” She unclipped a tiny charm the shape of a scalloped seashell and let it grow in her palm.

  Then, she opened it.

  Colors erupted in the air, spraying from the shell like magma from a volcano. They twisted and spiraled—the red of sunset, the blue of fish scales, the green of Zura, the silver of moonlight. The colors spilled down onto the ship’s wide deck and puddled until they formed a new three-dimensional painting, brushed across the wooden planks. Tor took a step back as a sea appeared around his feet, followed by mountains and long strips of land.

  With a howl, the hues fell into place.

  “That’s Emblem Island,” Melda said, looking down at the strange map.

  “And that’s us!” Engle said, pointing. He was right. A t
iny ship bobbed in the sea, near a line of frozen ships. Tor had to kneel to see it, Melda crouching next to him. It was as if they were giants, peeking over clouds at the island below.

  Melda held her head high. “This is a very nice map, but we still don’t know where we need to go.”

  “I have an idea.” Vesper turned to Tor. “Can I see that book?”

  The Book of Seas had fallen to his feet when the ship had grown. He picked it up and handed it over. Vesper flipped quickly, eyes narrowed, scanning the titles of each page.

  She nodded sharply. “There. I knew she’d be in it.” She closed the book before Tor could get a look at the page. “And the story’s the same as the one I’ve heard.”

  “Who’d be in it?” Engle asked.

  “Mora, blood queen of the sea.”

  Engle’s all-seeing eyes went wide as dobbles. “Blood queen?”

  “She’s known for helping those at sea with acts of vengeance. And she’s ancient. She might tell us where to find the Pirate’s Pearl, to get revenge on the Calavera. According to lore, she doesn’t want to see them gain control of the sea any more than we do.”

  Melda scoffed. “Sure, she might help us. But at what cost?”

  Vesper shrugged. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

  Melda whirled to face Engle and Tor, as if expecting them to disagree with Vesper’s plan to seek out the blood queen.

  Tor didn’t want to go against Melda. He trusted his friend’s judgment. But Vesper was from the sea, and they had no other leads.

  He peered over his shoulder, at the line of ships frozen in place, farther than they had been before. The current had taken them deeper out to sea with every second.

  Vesper had said the freezing enchantment would only hold for two weeks. Which meant the clock was ticking.

  “I think it’s worth a try,” he said, and watched shock bloom across Melda’s face, followed by a flash of hurt.

  She turned to Engle. “Do you agree?”

  Engle looked less sure. But he faced Tor and smiled. Though it didn’t meet his eyes. “I’m in. I’ve never met a blood queen, but she can’t be worse than Queen Aurelia, can she?”