by Kali Wallace
Professor Kosta had chuckled. “Nobody’s been in your position for centuries, Mara. You can do whatever you need to do.”
She was right, and there was only one person Mara wanted for the job. She was not going to let anybody, human or founder, treat Fish Hook like a freak because of what had happened in the Muck’s dungeon. Nor Izzy, but Izzy had Nila and Nila’s family and loads of friends ready to stand up for her. Fish Hook had only Mara.
“He’s the last for today,” Fish Hook said. He stretched his leg out in front of him, groaning slightly as he straightened his knee.
Mara didn’t let herself stare, but she didn’t let herself look away either. Fish Hook claimed the stone foot didn’t hurt, but there was no hiding the pronounced limp he had now, nor the way he grimaced and rubbed his leg when he thought Mara wasn’t looking.
Before Fish Hook had even risen from his recovery bed, Mara had tried to sing the stone away, the same way she had with Gerrant of Greenwood. But it hadn’t worked. Nothing she tried had worked, nor had the Lady’s attempts, nor any of the suggestions of healers from the Citadel or Quarantine Island. Mara had watched the hope dim in Fish Hook’s eyes every time, and his foot remained as stubbornly stone. It was as much a part of him as the shimmering green and blue scales that now stretched from the middle of his forehead and down the right side of his face, curving around his eye like a broken festival mask. Changes he had never asked for, injuries he certainly didn’t deserve, all because he had agreed to help Mara and Izzy.
Mara pushed herself out of her chair and crossed the room to the windows. The Lady said meeting in the library would persuade people to take Mara more seriously, but the massive chamber, with its huge map at the center and colorful tapestries on the walls, only made her feel as small and insignificant as she had been as a diving girl.
The library door opened and Mara turned, expecting the Lady, but instead it was Feather. “They’re waiting for you down at the dock,” she said.
For a second Mara thought Fish Hook had forgotten about somebody, that there was some guild master or mage she was supposed to be meeting right now. Her panic must have shown on her face, because Feather said, “Your friends? In the boat? Driftwood says it’s calm enough to go out now.”
“Oh, right,” Mara said, relieved. “I should go.”
Fish Hook stood up, tucking the lizard into the crook of his arm. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to . . . Are you sure?”
He just looked at her, eyebrows raised.
Mara’s face warmed. “Okay. Okay. Did you want to come?” she asked Feather.
Feather stepped around Fish Hook to sit in one of the tall, embroidered chairs. “No, I’m meeting with the Lady.”
Mara and Fish Hook exchanged a glance. Feather had been staying at Tidewater Isle since the night of the escape. At first Mara had assumed it was because Captain Amanta and the pirates had vanished into the night, and Feather had no way of sneaking off to one of their secret coves or hideaways without alerting others to their location.
But three weeks had passed, and Feather showed no signs of wanting to leave. Two days ago she had surprised Mara with the news that Renata Palisado had offered her a job as her helper in the tower laboratory—a job that sounded very much like the one the Lady had offered to Mara in exchange for sneaking into the Winter Blade.
Mara had felt a pang of jealousy when she first heard, even though she knew it was ridiculous. She was the emissary to the founders now. She didn’t need favors from the Lady of the Tides anymore.
“Have you decided?” Mara asked. She was fairly certain the Lady wanted to keep Feather around for a chance to study her wings, but she was also fairly certain Feather didn’t mind all that much. She had asked for the wings, after all, when the pirates made their deal with the Muck.
Feather stared at the fireplace for a moment before answering. “Yes. I’m not going back. I’m going to stay here.”
“What about your family?” Mara said.
“They are not my family anymore,” Feather said, spitting the words with surprising vehemence. “It was their fault we got into that mess, and because of them Dad is gone. I don’t ever want to see them again.”
Would she feel the same after the initial pain of grief had passed? Mara only knew that Feather remembered no life before the pirate ship, and she cried every night behind closed doors for her father, and she still could not fly.
“Besides,” Feather went on, her voice hoarse, “at least if I stay here I won’t be the only freak around.”
Fish Hook made a face at the back of her chair, then said, “We should go, Mara. The calm might not last.”
They deposited the lizard in Fish Hook’s room, stopped by Mara’s so she could change into her swimming clothes, and headed down to the sea cave.
“Finally!” Izzy exclaimed. She stood up from the crate where she’d been sitting and swept her cloak over her shoulders. “I’m so tired of being stuck inside. Are you ready?”
Izzy’s right arm, the one the Muck had altered, was still tender, but she was using it as much as she could. Mara thought she was maybe using it more than she should, just to prove she wasn’t hiding the brilliant green scales that stretched from neck to fingertip, the long claws, the bony spines that jutted from her shoulder like half of a founders’ collar of fins. It was still startling to see, but as long as Izzy was pretending it wasn’t a big deal, Mara was going to pretend too—even when she saw the doubt and frustration in Izzy’s eyes, the moments of fear, and her heart ached because she didn’t know how to help.
Shortly after the escape from the Winter Blade, Izzy, Fish Hook, and Feather had gathered in Izzy’s room to talk. Mara had no idea what they had spoken about; she had never asked. All she knew was that from that point forward, none of them had tried to hide what the Muck had done to them. Fish Hook didn’t cover his head or wrap his neck, Izzy didn’t hide her scaled arm and long claws, and Feather went about with her wings on display for anybody to see. At first people had stared, whispered, following them around muttering and glowering, but now, only a few weeks later, the city was growing used to them.
Driftwood was already at his boat, and with him was the Roughwater boy, whose name was Barrow. He and his grandmother were the only escaped prisoners who had taken the Lady up on her offer of staying at Tidewater Isle. Barrow’s grandmother, it turned out, was trained in the Roughwater magical tradition, and both the Lady and Professor Kosta were delighted to have a chance to learn from her.
Also waiting was a founder, floating in the water beside the boat. She was one of the younger ones who acted as Mara’s escort every time she left Tidewater Isle. Her eyes were more blue than gold, her fins tipped with flame-like licks of red and orange, and she never seemed to grow bored following Mara around when she had to go out into the city. Mara always felt like she ought to say something to the founders who kept her company, but they didn’t understand her and she didn’t understand them, so it was a lost cause. She was going to need to learn the founders’ language to be a good emissary, but she didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe with spells, but she was afraid if she started with the songs, the founders would think she only cared about their magic. She kept thinking about her mother, so long ago, and the sadness in her voice when she said the founders had left because humans stole their songs.
With Driftwood and Barrow at the oars, they set out from Tidewater Isle in a light rain, the founder swimming smoothly beside them. The afternoon was gray, the sea choppy, but the first breath of fresh air cleared Mara’s mind. The other isles were soft shapes in the mist, with Greenwood Island looming as a dark smear to the north.
She closed her eyes to feel the rain on her face. She had thought about returning to Gravetown, finding somebody who knew her parents, learning their names and meeting their friends and finding examples of their work. She hadn’t found the courage to do it yet. She was afraid Bindy had been right and nobody in Gravetown would even want to me
et with her. She didn’t think she could bear that.
An elbow jabbed into her side. Mara’s eyes snapped open.
“You’re scowling at nothing,” Fish Hook said.
“I am not,” Mara protested. She sighed. “I’m just thinking.”
“You’re worrying,” Izzy said knowingly. “You’re always worrying.”
“I have a lot to worry about,” Mara retorted. She didn’t want to admit she had been thinking about Gravetown, so she said, “I have to do this right.”
This, she said, but she meant everything. She worried every hour of every day that she was getting it wrong, that she would make some awful error, like the emissary from the story about the Three Sisters, and the two peoples would be split apart again.
After a minute or so of silence, Izzy said, “You know, I was never joking all those times I said you could come with me.”
Mara looked at her in confusion. “What? Where?”
“To the candlemaker’s shop, when I marry Nila. I wasn’t joking. I never had a little sister. I’ve never had any family. If I thought you would like working in a candle shop, I would have insisted on it. I would have loved to keep you with me.”
“I don’t know anything about making candles,” Mara said, because she didn’t know what else to say. “I wouldn’t be any use.”
“Who cares? You don’t have to be useful to be welcome, Mara. That’s not how friendship works.” Izzy caught Mara’s gaze and held it. “That’s not how family works.”
“Oh,” Bindy had said, in the darkness beneath the Winter Blade, “you have no idea what a disappointment you were.”
Mara heard the words in her mind with a fresh sting. She was afraid she would start crying if she said anything, so she only nodded.
“And even though you’ve got such an important and exciting job now, don’t you dare think you’re allowed to miss my wedding,” Izzy said, smiling and bumping Mara’s shoulder. “I have to have my little sister there. All of Nila’s aunties would never forgive me if I didn’t give them a chance to fuss over you.”
At that Mara couldn’t stop the tears from springing into her eyes. She swiped at them quickly and tried to make it look like she was only brushing raindrops away, but she knew nobody was fooled. She had spent so long believing that losing her parents, then Bindy, meant she had forever lost her chance at having a family. But Izzy was telling her that while she may have lost the family she was born to, she had a new one now, one she had chosen and one that had chosen her, and they weren’t going to let her slip away.
She decided right then that she would ask her friends to return to Gravetown with her. No matter what happened, she could handle it with them at her side.
“Look,” said Fish Hook, nudging Mara’s arm.
About twenty feet from the boat on the starboard side, a sea serpent was swimming with them, its greenish-black body skimming just below the surface. It joined the founder to swim alongside the boat as they crossed the gray sea between Tidewater Isle and the Winter Blade.
The fortress emerged from the rain and mist slowly, a bleak, lonely spire alone in the gray. It had been dark since the night of the escape, but not silent. Bits of spell-song escaped the fortress day and night, unpredictable melodies and wails emanating from the stone. Both the mages of Obsidian Isle and the founders confirmed that the spells were only echoes, leftover bits of magic from all who had made the fortress home over the centuries. For now the mages of the city were too unsettled by the island’s ghostly spell-song to approach, but Mara knew that wouldn’t last. Danger never deterred the truly curious, and the Winter Blade was too great a prize to leave abandoned for long.
Some people had expected Gerrant of Greenwood to claim the island again, but when Mara had asked him about it, she had seen a shadow a bit like fear pass over his face, and he had said, “I’m tired of darkness and stone and echoes, Mara. I want to go back to the mountains. I should very much like to hear the wind through the trees again.” He had left for Greenwood Island about a week ago. She hoped that wherever he ended up he found a home with an unbroken view of the sky.
The Winter Blade was humming softly now, a spell-song so faint it was barely audible over the gentle sound of rain and restless surf. Driftwood and Barrow brought the boat around to the north side of the Winter Blade, where bubbles still rose to the surface from the shattered dome below.
Mara eased off her cloak and shivered in her swimming clothes.
“Make sure you get a good look before you go inside,” Izzy said. She lit a murk-light but didn’t hand it over right away. “You know it’s not safe to dive that deep more than once or twice a day, so you won’t have a lot of time to get your bearings.”
“I know,” Mara said.
“And if the cracks look too narrow or too jagged, don’t risk it. You don’t want to get hurt or get stuck inside down where we can’t help you.”
“I’ll be careful. I promise.” The founders had already explored the drowned laboratory, so Mara knew what to expect. But she let Izzy fret, because she knew Izzy would be diving with her if her arm was strong enough.
Izzy handed the murk-light to Mara. “You better be.” She was smiling as she said it, but her tone was serious.
Mara dove into the water. The cold was a shock, but even more so was the sudden ring of the spell-song in her ears. There were founders singing all over the city now, and she hadn’t gotten used to hearing it. She couldn’t pinpoint any of the songs—and some of them were faint enough she wasn’t sure they were songs at all. She could be overhearing founders having conversations elsewhere in the city, their fluting voices carrying through the water as they argued about what to have for supper.
The dome was eight or ten fathoms beneath the surface, and while the water was clear, the day was anything but bright. But before Mara could even think about the problem of light, a new song filled the water. It had a high pitch and a fast tempo, and it sounded like the same word or syllable repeated over and over again in a rapid trill. Mara was so surprised she spluttered to the surface, then ducked her head under to listen more carefully. The founder who had come with them was singing, and within moments it was obvious what she was doing.
The song was making the dome glow.
The glass that remained took on a bright bluish-green color, brightening steadily until the entire broken dome was visible in the depths. The gaps where the glass and stone had fallen away shone so clearly there was no chance Mara could miss them.
Mara offered her thanks—underwater the words were only a burble of sound—and surfaced one more time for air. Before she dove again, the sea serpent bumped its head gently against her arm.
“What?” Mara said as the creature circled around her. “What is it?”
It nudged her elbow from underneath, reminding her of the winged lizard when it was asking Fish Hook for food. This was one of the smaller serpents; its body was slender enough that Mara could embrace it easily with both arms.
“Is that what you want?” She laughed when the sea serpent bumped her once again. “Well, okay, but if you go too deep I’m letting go.”
She wrapped her arm around the serpent’s body, just behind its head. She had only enough time to take a breath before the creature dove.
The serpent arrowed through the water with Mara clinging to its back, swimming so fast she was momentarily blinded. But her vision cleared as they dove deeper. The serpent aimed right for the largest break in the glowing glass, and they entered what remained of the Muck’s laboratory.
Nearly everything in the laboratory had been smashed or overturned or whirled into a mess by the rushing sea. A small current kept pages, papers, scrolls, and fins floating in a ring around the room, and there was a logjam of furniture and cages against the round door. A school of slipfish swam in lazy circles, and crabs and starfish dotted the room with spots of color. Everything was eerie in the green light, but even so Mara could tell that only about half the laboratory had succumbed to the stone cur
se. The water rushing in must have stopped it. Water was more powerful than stone, in magic as in time, and her mistake had not spread.
In the center of the room, like two statues in a sunken market square, were Bindy and the Muck.
The Muck had flung his arms up to protect his face just as the curse took him; the broken remains of a stone arch lay shattered around him. Bindy was not cowering. She wasn’t looking at the Muck or the ceiling that would have been collapsing on their heads.
She was looking toward the door.
Mara could hold her breath for only a couple of minutes. She didn’t have time to let herself feel anything. She let go of the sea serpent and kicked down to the floor of the laboratory. She quickly searched through rubble near the door, and when her fingertips brushed smooth stone she tugged and tugged until the object came free.
She turned without pause and swam toward the breach in the dome. She kicked past the founder, who was watching her with a curious expression, and swam hard until she reached the surface. Driftwood helped her into the boat, and Izzy hurriedly wrapped a cloak around her.
“Did you get it?” Izzy asked.
Mara held out the small stone frog she had taken from the laboratory. It had been caught by the curse she had unleashed and frozen into gray stone just before it could leap to freedom. She didn’t know what color it had been before the curse overtook it. It fit in her palm.
“Do you think you’ll be able to bring it back?” Izzy asked.
She said it but they all knew she meant them. Mara looked at Fish Hook, but he wasn’t looking back at her. His expression serious, his hair damp with drizzling rain, he was looking at the base of the Winter Blade, where the ancient statues stood in their niches above the water.
Mara closed her hand over the little frog. Magic could be used to harm, and it could be used to help. It was up to those who wielded it to decide for themselves which path they took.
“I don’t know if I can,” she said. “But I’m going to try.”