Nadya Skylung and the Masked Kidnapper

by Jeff Seymour

  She turns to Nic. “You catch all that?”

  “I did, yes,” he says. He’s been watching the operation like a hawk.

  “And you’ll be in port for a while?”

  He frowns, and I notice for the first time how worried he looks. As bad as Pep did, or worse. His hair’s ruffled and unkempt. His jacket’s stained. His shirt’s untucked. “Yes. We have to ensure Captain Varma’s recovery, plus we need a new set of officers.” He lowers his head. “I don’t know how we’ll go on without Thom.”

  The mood in his cabin changes instantly, like somebody sucked all the warmth out. My skin pricks up in goose bumps. Still my fault, I think, no matter what Alé said.

  “You’ll find good people,” Gossner says. “This is a big port, and your name’s like gold here. Give it a few weeks, and chin up. Thom got almost a hundred kids back to their parents, and got the rest into better care. Nobody here’s gonna forget this, Nic. Not for a long time. And Thom’ll be back someday to hear how his own legend’s changed. I think he’ll like that.”

  Nic nods, but he doesn’t look any happier. “I suppose you’re right, Machinist Gossner. Thank you.” He shakes her hand as she walks toward the door. “If you ever need anything . . .”

  Gossner laughs on her way out. “Oh, I’ll call, that’s for sure. Rash, Alé, let’s head home. We’ve got a better tank to build for that gormling.”

  Rash waves goodbye and heads out with Gossner, but Alé hangs back. She claps me on the shoulder and grins. “Thanks for a heck of an adventure, Nadya. I hope I see you again real soon.”

  I smile. “Me too. You’re a lifesaver, Alé. Literally. I owe you big.”

  Alé tugs her cuffs. “Guess you do, huh? I’ll have to think of a good favor you can do me.” She flips me a two-finger salute and runs off, and I grin as she bowls into Rash and he pulls her jacket over her head and sticks his tongue out at her.

  * * *

  • • •

  I nap through the afternoon, then spend a little while before dinner walking around the deck, getting used to my prosthesis. As I’m doing it, Nic brings Raj up from below with Aaron and his sister. I bet they’re coming from the infirmary, and I wobble over to them. “Well?” I ask. “Did it work?”

  Raj looks like he’s just recovered from the flu. “I think so. I can’t feel the shadow anymore.”

  I throw my arms around his waist and hug him. “Thank you,” I mutter into his shirt. “I’m so sorry all this happened.”

  Raj pats my shoulder gently. “Thank you, Nadya,” he says. “For saving me. And for stopping Silvermask.”

  I pull back and nearly lose my balance, but Raj catches me. “Why do you think he was doing it?” I ask. “Kidnapping kids, I mean.”

  Raj tugs at his beard. “My best guess is that he was hoping to weaken resistance to the Malumbra by making people fear one another. Everyone wants to help a child in trouble. It’s one of the deepest caring instincts in the human heart. But if you can get someone to ignore that instinct—perhaps because they’re afraid a child might pass the Malumbra’s shadow to them—then you can crush the heart right out of them. And without heart the world will divide and fall.” He coughs. “I can’t be sure, of course, because the plan never progressed that far. But perhaps we can ask Mr. Salawag once he recovers.”

  “Nadya,” Nic says gently, “I think it’s time we let Captain Varma return to his ship. He’s been through a lot.”

  My gills burn a little, but Raj smiles at me as he turns to go and I don’t feel so bad. He and Nic head up the gangplank, and I watch them, enjoying the cool seawater breeze on my neck as the sun goes down.

  “H-h-hey, Nadya,” Aaron says sheepishly behind me. I turn around. He’s standing next to his sister, who nudges him forward. His hug hits me so hard it nearly knocks me over. “Th-th-thank you,” he says. “For everyth-thing.”

  I squeeze him back, feeling warmer than I have since Pep laid into me this morning. I still wish Thom hadn’t gone away and we’d done things different somehow. But when I think about all those kids free, I feel a whole lot better.

  Aaron’s sister follows him. Her cheeks have little divots in them, like from acne, and she tucks her hair behind her ears before she speaks. She doesn’t look much like Aaron, but I think I’ve figured that out. One of them must’ve been adopted. People don’t have to be born to the same parents to be a family.

  “My name’s Jaya,” she says. “I wanted to say thanks too. For taking care of my little brother.” She hugs him around the shoulders. “I thought I’d lost everybody when the Shadow-men came, but now at least I’ve got him back.”

  I swallow. “Glad I could help. It’s tough to lose your parents.”

  She frowns, and then her eyes soften. “Yeah,” she says. “It is.” We stand there a little longer, and it hits me just how much she’s been through, and how lucky I am to have the Orion and everyone on it.

  Then the irresistible scent of dinner hits us, and Aaron runs toward the stairs, pulling his sister behind him and telling her how great the food we make is. All I can do is smile and follow.

  * * *

  • • •

  We all dine together. Sal and Tian Li have made a spicy yellow curry and bean curd dish, along with Nic’s rice pudding and a spinach-and-cheese thing that I go back for seconds and thirds of because it’s so good. Everybody’s in a great mood except for Pepper, who excuses herself as soon as she finishes her plate, and Nic, who still looks upset over losing Thom. Sal and Tian Li tell Aaron and his sister how they cracked the mystery and brought the police to Silvermask’s mansion. Tam doesn’t speak much, but he keeps staring out the window and crossing his arms over his chest, like he’s got big things on his mind.

  I snarf down sweetened rice pudding and make a plan to get my best friend back.

  I’ve been thinking about what Alé said, and after the meal’s over and I’ve helped with dishes, I head to Pepper’s room. I take the prosthesis, because the Lady’s feeling pretty good and I’m excited to test it out. The stairs are a challenge, and I have to go real slow and hold the rail and the wall, but I don’t mind. It feels great to be learning how to do all this.

  Lamplight shines under the bottom of Pep’s door, and I knock in our old rap-a-tap-tap-tap-rap pattern.

  “Yeah?” Pep says.

  My heart races. I’m scared of having her blow up at me again, but I want to take one more stab at this. Our friendship’s worth it. “Can we talk again?” I ask.

  Pep’s quiet for a few seconds. Her chair scrapes, and then she lets me in. “Sure,” she says, crossing her arms and closing the door behind me. “Congratulations on your leg, by the way.”

  It sounds like she means it. “Thanks,” I say, and I launch straight into what I came here to do. “Look, I’m sorry.”

  She sighs. “I know, Nadya.”

  “Really, I am,” I continue. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, and I’ll try to stay off your toes.” I swallow. “I care about you, Pep. You’re my best friend, even when you don’t like me anymore, and I’m gonna start acting like it again. I’m gonna ask how you’re doing, ask what you wanna do, let you take the lead on things. I’m gonna listen when you disagree with me, and—”

  Pep walks away, and I can’t keep going. I can’t breathe. This was all I had. If she never forgives me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t just not be friends with her. It would leave a hole in my heart the size of a leviathan.

  Pep sniffs. She wraps her arms around herself and squeezes. “I’m sorry too, Nadya,” she says. “I . . . I . . .”

  But she’s sobbing too hard to finish. She just walks over and hugs me. For a whole minute we stand there, crying. I smile, and she smiles, and then we both start sobbing again, and eventually we end up sitting next to each other on her bed, holding hands. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that this morning,”
Pep says. “I’m scared, Nadya. I never wanted to be in a fight against the Malumbra. I never wanted to lose anybody to pirates. I thought we’d spend our whole lives running around the Cloud Sea having fun. I think I’ve been blaming you for everything that’s happened lately, even the things that weren’t your fault.” She looks at her feet. “I still want to be your best friend. I miss you.”

  I sniffle again. “Me too,” I say. “I—”

  “I know I shoulda just kept talking to you until you understood what was wrong, but you kept cutting me off and it was driving me nuts and then you were always with Tam and people were ignoring me and I got in trouble and Aaron was missing and . . . ugh.” Pep presses her fists against her temples and flops back on her bed. “Let’s never do this again, okay?”

  I laugh and wipe my eyes. “Okay.”

  Pep holds up her hand. “Swear it on a pinky?”

  I grab her pinky with mine and shake. “Swear it on a pinky.”

  We sit there into the night, long after everyone else has gone to bed and the Orion’s quiet. We catch up and make new plans to co-captain our cloudship. I feel like a chain around my heart’s been taken off. I’ve lost so much over the last couple months—Mrs. T, my leg, and now Thom. It would’ve been so hard if I lost Pepper too.

  By the time I head up to my cabin, the Lady’s real sore from having the prosthesis on for so long, but I think maybe I oughta make one more stop before bed.

  Nic’s light is on, and I knock on his door, real careful. A few seconds go by, and he opens it. “Something wrong, Nadya?”

  He seems so scared. The lines on his face are tighter and deeper than I’ve ever seen them. His eyes are as red as Pepper’s were this morning. He’s bathed and dressed, but he’s still so far from being all right again.

  I pick up his hand and hum. I don’t remember the words of the song he used to sing me, but I’ll never forget the tune.

  He stiffens, and I stop humming.

  “You’re how I beat Silvermask,” I tell him.

  His caterpillar eyebrows knit together.

  “You used to tell me I made the world brighter,” I explain. I press his hand against my forehead. “Thank you.”

  Nic coughs. When I look up again, he’s crying. He pinches his eyes shut with the fingers of his free hand. It’s shaking.

  “You’ve still got us, Nic,” I say. I lean into him. “And we still think you’re great.”

  He crumples. He folds up like adults aren’t supposed to, but I guess he really is a lot older than I thought, and maybe even adults aren’t supposed to fight as long and as hard as he has. He sits down against the doorjamb and cries, and I put my arms around him. After a few seconds, I hear footsteps and feel Salyeh’s arms over mine. He whistles, and a little later Tian Li joins us, then Tam, then Pep.

  “Thank you,” Nic says eventually, patting my arm, then everyone else’s. “Thank you all.” He wipes his eyes and stands up, and when he smiles, it looks real for the first time in days. “Now, please. Everybody get some sleep.”

  * * *

  • • •

  But I can’t sleep. Instead, I climb into the catwalks around the Orion’s cloud balloon and hang there, just thinking, drumming my fingers on the metal and looking at the faded design on the fabric, listening on the Panpathia to the happy chatter of the plants and animals in the cloud garden. To my right, the electric lights of Far Agondy blink in the darkness. To my left, lightning flashes under a storm cloud out to sea. Beneath me, the Orion’s deck lamps glitter warmly. My best friends are down there, sleeping. So’s Nic. The people I care most about in the world. My family.

  I don’t know what’s coming next. Maybe we’ll be off to a new port with new officers, doing the same old thing. Maybe we’ll take the fight to the Malumbra and find out what happened to my parents. Maybe Thom and Mrs. T will be back in a few months, or maybe I won’t see them till I’m an old lady.

  But whatever happens, we’ll handle it, together. I’m Nadya Skylung, and I keep the cloudship Orion afloat. I fought the Malumbra, defeated Silvermask, and broke up a kidnapping ring that spanned the Cloud Sea. I have the best friends in the whole world, and I’m still only twelve years old. My whole life’s ahead of me.

  I can’t wait to live it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  All the usual suspects helped make this book a reality. Cass contributed an astounding number of critical late-night sounding-board and brainstorming sessions. Oren gamely tolerated my near disappearance for days at a time when deadlines had to be met. The extended Seymour clan and all my friends and early readers were invaluable. Everyone who babysat, everyone who understood when a deadline slipped or a get-together was missed or I was buried in my office instead of spending time with you, thank you. This could not have happened without your forbearance. Thanks as well to Danielle, Katherine, and Stephanie for the editing; Marikka and Brett for the art and design; Anne for the copy editing; Lizzie for the PR wrangling; and the whole team at Putnam for all their support. Jeremy and Geoff were back for characterization help, aided this time by Alejandra and Silanur. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

  But the real stars of the show are the many amputees whose kindness, openness, and direct or indirect assistance helped me do this book right. The YouTubers KarinaAmelia and AmputeeOT are astonishingly open and marvelously informative on their channels—if you want to know what it’s like to lose a limb, you might want to watch their videos. The authors of a whole trove of blog posts, articles, books, and book reviews helped as well—you can find links to most of them on my website. Most importantly, author Kati Gardner rode shotgun on this whole journey for me, reviewing the manuscript, answering questions, sharing stories, and helping me be accurate. Where I’ve done well, it was with her help, and where I screwed up, the blame lies entirely with me.

  Photo credit: Vanessa Isenbarger

  Jeff Seymour is the author of Nadya Skylung and the Cloudship Rescue. In addition to writing speculative fiction, he works as a freelance editor. Jeff lives an unexpectedly hectic life with his wife, their son, and two energetic cats.

  Visit him online at jeff-seymour.com.

  Brett Helquist has illustrated many books for children, including the bestselling A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

  Learn more at bretthelquist.com.

  What’s next on

  your reading list?

  Discover your next

  great read!

  Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

  Sign up now.