by Ted Neill
The Servior’s ship was gone from the harbor, the mooring lines coiled on the dock where it had been. The sun was now up in the east, a bright orange ball that turned the grass around her the color of flames. Her shadow stretched long up the hill, growing shorter as she reached the top. The breeze had a hint of warmth. She picked out the speck of the Servior’s red sails far out to sea.
The sky was clear, yet to the west hung black clouds, streaked with lightning, their edges lit blood-red by the rising sun with an unnatural fury. The sea was calm except for the waters in the storm’s shadows—there the surface boiled with froth and white caps. The Servior ship was a mite beneath a hammer, sailing directly into night.
It is done.
Could it be?
She watched the ship until a curtain of rain was drawn across it, and it disappeared.
Gabriella stared out into the sea, fighting off a sense of emptiness.
She would hope. That was all she could do.
She walked back through the fields slowly, her feet sore and bruised. Her tears of rage came and went. A few times she simply collapsed, but when she felt no relief in idleness, she stumbled forward once again. She wept for Adamantus, for Omanuju, Ghede, even for Mortimer. Her rage was replaced by a heavy sense of loss. Yet, at times she laughed as she thought of some of the humorous things Ghede would have said about her mad dashing across the island. What would Omanuju say about her sodden and torn clothes and her gnashing of teeth and pounding of the earth? She must have been a bit mad.
As Gabriella reflected on the past hours, the events of the previous night seemed like a dream. She could not help but shake her head with incredulity at what she had said to Chief Salinger. Things would never be the same now. Her father, one of the most upright citizens of Harkness had spent the night in the drinker’s cell—she smiled and wept anew at the thought of his devotion to her. Eloise’s too.
Somehow she covered the ground between the cliff top and the road leading to her house. Smoke billowed from the chimney. She would have to explain to her mother where her father was. She would also have to explain why one of her best shirts was ruined and why her boots were missing. As she took inventory, she realized she had lost her mother’s cloak during the night. Gabriella briefly wondered if she should return to the village and search for her lost belongings instead of returning empty handed, but she was so tired. She was no longer afraid of her mother, anyway. Something had shifted between them. Gabriella knew that they would meet as women now, equals.
As she reached home, the smell of breakfast wafting out of the kitchen made her stomach growl. Gabriella needed to eat. She could fetch her boots and her mother’s cloak when she went to town to retrieve her father from the chief’s office—a trip that would necessitate another uncomfortable meeting with Salinger himself.
She definitely needed breakfast before that encounter. She needed all the strength she could muster. She would, for each passing day, each day that she would press onward through the suffering. She thought of Auren’s gift, a kiss on her forehead, and a certainty welled up within her. Loss would always be part of her. But that kiss, it told her something. She would never recover, but Gabriella knew, with certainty, that she would endure.
She turned into the yard. Dameon was sitting on the steps to the house. His nose was buried in one of her own arithmetic books, his head ticking with a slow rhythm. She realized now the book was surely too simple for him. Gabriella stopped at the foot of the stairs. If her brother was happy to see her, he did not show it. He simply looked up with flat eyes.
“Eloise was here,” he said. “She went to town. She said she would be back.”
“She is a good friend. Did you eat breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have not. We’ll quiz you on your numbers while I eat.”
Dameon closed his book, stood up from the step, and shuffled after her into the house where breakfast waited on the table. After she ate, they leafed through her books together, and so began a custom for them after meals and before bedtime.
Gabriella spent more time with Dameon from that day forward. She no longer grew as impatient with him. She found she could go days now without feeling resentful that he was her brother. Sometimes she would catch herself gazing into his eyes, reminding herself that he, too, had seen Dis. His ears had heard the roar of the mother wyvern and, like her, he had been bathed in mage fire. Gabriella heard her parents remark upon her newfound devotion to her brother.
In time, the notoriety they both suffered on the island faded. Harkness enjoyed great prosperity from the healthy coffers funded with the treasures the Carlyle children had brought back. Neighbors whispered less and less when Gabriella and Dameon passed. Strained deference turned into simple friendliness. They took their place among other children, their family, just another family, their village just another village, their island just another island—a wealthy island—but still just one island among many.
But for one exception: a tree. The spring after Gabriella and her brother’s return, a tree sprouted near the shore of the harbor. It grew prodigiously, and its silvery bark was visible from afar. Families all over the island made day trips to the tree. Children played in its shade. In a month, families might visit the tree more often than they visited the old crumbling tower of the dead. Coins minted on Harkness now displayed the tree’s spreading boughs, rather than the tower as they once had.
Soon it was a custom for the sailors of visiting ships to gather on deck as they rounded the point to watch as the tree came into view. Ships that had no cargo for Harkness would sail into the harbor just so the crew could gaze upon the tree. There were legends of how the tree had appeared, but in truth no one knew with certainty where it had come from. Many tales surrounded the most distinguishing feature of the tree—the color of the leaves—but in the end, no one could explain why the leaves were blue.
No one but Gabriella Carlyle. But she never told. She preferred it this way. Some things were better left as mysteries.
Epilogue
The Northern Sea
The flat seas had transformed into a mountain range. The tops of waves were smoking with froth and spray. Men were bailing. Sade was stumbling about on the deck of the carrack. His spells of weather working were useless against this storm that had suddenly overtaken them. He could sense power in it, a power older and greater than his own. Saltwater left his eyes stinging. Thunder left his ears ringing. Lightening exploded on the forecastle and the afterimage glowed so bright in his vision that he was blinded. He slipped and grabbed hold of the bottom of a set of steps while he waited for his sight to return.
When it did, he saw the aft mast coming down, rigging snapping in its wake. It struck the main mast, rolled, and smashed down on the cage that held the elk. The seams of the cage sagged and splintered.
A hero among us . . . .
A wave hit them broadside. The carrack shuddered. Sade fought against a slanting deck and a wall of water pummeled him. The elk, the elk was too important. They could not lose the elk.
Vondales realized this too, and appeared at the edge of Sade’s vision. His brother was more sure-footed and he danced across the main deck to the cage where the wooden slats had begun to give way. The lock was broken and swung open. Vondales reached the cage just in time, for the elk had thrown himself up against the door.
We should have left him tied up.
Vondales braced himself against a beam and gripped the bars. The tendons in his arms and neck went taut as he pushed to keep the door closed. Exposing his hands was a mistake. The elk lowered his head and raked the bars with the sharp ends of his antlers. Blood mixed with rain. Vondales’ fingers dropped to the deck boards and were swept away by pink, foamy water.
Lightning exploded again overhead. A man went overboard with a wave. The carrack was listing to the side. Screams. Another wave punched Sade in the back and tossed him towards the gunwale. He caught himself along the rail just as other Servior crew went over. In the lull that fo
llowed, he ran slipping and tripping to his brother who remained by the main mast, his face full of fear and pain as he wrapped his arms about the mast and held on as best he could without fingers.
Another wave took them. Vondales could not hold on. Sade grabbed a loose piece of rigging with one hand, hoped it was still attached to something, and reached out to grab his brother’s belt. They both slid over the deck until the rigging caught. Sade felt as if he would be torn in two as his brother’s weight pulled at him. More water crashed over them. His brother was screaming, the saltwater fire in his wounds. The carrack pitched into a trough, and for a moment righted itself between waves. Sade pulled his brother close to him then turned to check the cage. The elk crashed against the bars once more. The door swung open.
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