City of Thirst

by Carrie Ryan

  Next to him, Marrill clapped her hands together and let out a shout of joy. “We’re on our way!”

  “Yay?” Remy said. “That’s good, right?”

  But Fin couldn’t take his eyes off the Map. Something twisted in his chest. The last time he’d used the Map, it had shown him the galleon that carried his mother. The one that made him recognize the forgettable girl’s ship.

  It would be easy for him to snag the Key and Map when no one was looking. Slip away and use it to go after his mom. No one would even remember him. It would be as clean a job as there ever was.

  Except for Marrill. He glanced at her and she beamed at him. “We’re adventuring together again. Isn’t it amazing?” she squealed, her eyes bright. “And now I know we can get home again.” All, it seemed, was forgiven.

  And he knew right then, there wasn’t a job in the world he would take if it meant hurting her. “Yeah,” he said, letting her excitement wash over him. “It’s spiff news.”

  Suddenly, it felt as though the temperature dropped by forty degrees. Perhaps it had, Fin realized, as a puff of air escaped his lungs in a cloud of frost. Beside him, Marrill’s teeth began to chatter, and scales of ice began to climb a nearby mast.

  “Ardent,” Coll said, his voice both cautious and assertive. The wizard had the Key firmly pressed against the Map. But it showed him nothing. Just the scribbled image of a bird, the Map’s Compass Rose, circling forlornly over the empty Stream as if searching for something even it could not find. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything,” Coll offered.

  Without a word, Ardent snatched the Map from the table, turned on his heel, and stalked toward his cabin. The moment the door slammed behind him, the temperature on the ship returned to normal. Ice-ringed yards overhead defrosting in a shower of raindrops.

  “Whoa,” Remy said. “Things. Just. Got. Real.”

  Fin furrowed his brow at Marrill. “What was he trying to find?”

  Marrill repeated the question, loud enough to catch Coll’s attention. The captain shook his head. “Annalessa.”

  Fin spent the rest of the day trailing after Marrill as she gave Remy the grand tour. Whenever he could, he kept a sharp eye on Ardent’s cabin. The wizard still had the Map and Key in there, after all. Fin’s fingers itched to hold the sun-shaped knob again, to see the great galleon and his mother drawn in ink.

  But even as Coll changed their course to head for the Shattered Archipelago, even when the open Stream grew banks that sprouted long arms that tossed spitballs at them as they sailed past, the door to Ardent’s cabin remained firmly closed.

  Now it was night, and the ship creaked lightly as she skimmed along the surface of the Stream. And though everyone else had gone to bed, the deck didn’t feel too lonely. A few pirats working the night shift squeaked up in the rigging. Four and a half moons shone overhead, their silver reflections punching holes in the golden water. And Marrill was here on the Stream.

  He’d finally gotten his best friend back.

  “I don’t think Ardent’s budging anytime soon,” Marrill said behind him. Fin jumped in surprise, then twisted himself quickly, trying to hide it. She shook her head as she made her way across the deck, one hand hidden behind her back.

  “I wasn’t going to swipe anything,” Fin protested.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t say you were, weirdo. Here, I brought you something.” She revealed what she’d been holding behind her: a brown, raggedy-looking coat, just exactly Fin’s size. A string trailed from each sleeve.

  “My skysailing jacket!” he cried, grabbing it eagerly. “You brought it back to me!” He slipped it on. It had grown a little tighter since he’d given it to her, but even after all this time, it still felt natural.

  He laughed, tugging on the sleeves and flexing the sails, and Marrill laughed with him. They stood shoulder to shoulder as their smiles faded, staring out across the night-glistening Stream.

  “Can I ask you something?” Marrill said at last.

  Fin braced himself and nodded. He had a pretty good idea what the question would be.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the Key?” The look on her face felt like a knife in Fin’s gut. This was the problem with being remembered, he thought: People didn’t just forget when you let them down.

  He still didn’t know how to explain, but deflecting wasn’t going to work this time. “I was afraid.”

  Surprised, she cocked her head to the side. “You? Afraid? Come on. You’ve stared down evil oracles and played touch-tag with krakens!”

  Fin shrugged. “Well, yeah,” he said, with exaggerated swagger. “I mean, when you put it like that, I am pretty heroic.” She swatted him on the arm. He laughed, but heat infused his cheeks. He only wished he felt heroic. “I just wanted to find my mom so bad,” he said. “And figure out what’s wrong with me, and fix it. And you were going home, and I was afraid that once you were gone… once you are gone, I’ll be alone again.”

  Marrill was silent. For a moment, the only sounds were the squeal of the sails shifting and the shush of the bow cutting through the golden waves. Then she threaded her fingers through his and the warmth of her touch flowed through him. He’d forgotten how nice it was to be touched by a friend, and not just by angry guards.

  They spent half the night talking, catching up about their lives. He hugged her awkwardly when she told him about her mom’s illness getting worse. She patted his shoulder reassuringly when he told her about the forgettable girl and her ship.

  “So all we need,” Marrill said, leaning across the railing, “is some way to find your mom and some way to fix mine. Then you can be memorable, and my mom can be okay, and we can sail off to wherever we want, whenever we want!”

  “Don’t forget the Iron Tide,” he reminded her.

  She grinned. “Come on, exploring ancient prophecies, fighting world-destroying dangers? That’s all part of the fun!”

  Fin had to laugh. Her excitement was so contagious he couldn’t help but get swept up in it. “Yup,” he said. “All we need is some kind of wish machine, and we’ll be in good shape.”

  CHAPTER 7

  A Problem of Unusual Gravity

  Laaaaaaaaannnd HO!”

  Marrill woke with a start. Coll’s voice echoed down the spiral staircase, bounced around the empty cabin, and careened across to the lower decks. Apparently, they’d arrived at… wherever it was they were going.

  She jumped from the bed (the Kraken had given her a big, soft cushion this time, surrounded by lush Arabian carpets and warm, dimly glowing braziers), quickly changed into a set of clean clothes from her backpack, and threw open the door. Outside, Fin leaned against a doorframe, waiting for her. “Welcome to waking! Nice of you to show up!” He tossed a plummellowich her way. She took a grateful bite as she knocked on Remy’s door.

  When no response came, she carefully cracked it open. Remy was snuggled deep under the covers. White snowdrifts piled softly in the corners, and her walls wavered and glowed like the aurora borealis. “Mfyou comfhing?” Marrill asked, mouth full.

  The lump of covers that was her babysitter barely moved. “Still the weekend,” came the muffled reply. “I get five more minutes.”

  Marrill swallowed the glob of plummellow. “Oh, sure,” she said, carefully slinking back.

  “Don’t do anything stupid until I get there,” Remy called after her.

  “Totally.” Quietly, Marrill closed Remy’s door, then raced on tiptoe after Fin, who was already on his way to the staircase. Their giggles echoed down the hallways as they climbed toward the main deck. A second later, they broke through the hatch, out into the sunlight, and into a world so bizarre it made Marrill’s head spin.

  Half-formed islands swam all around them, as if someone had broken a continent into pieces, shaken them up, and tossed them like dice into the Stream. An upside-down mountain stuck up from the wash of golden water ahead, its narrow peak widening as it rose until its large, root-covered base waved in the air. A mushroom
-covered marsh bobbed beneath a tower of rock that drifted freely overhead. All around, disconnected chunks of ground floated inches or feet or miles apart, each one totally different, as though they had no relation to each other whatsoever.

  “Shanks,” Fin breathed. Nearby, a fog bank dissipated, then suddenly reappeared.

  Marrill’s steps faltered. “Where are we?”

  “The Shattered Archipelago,” Ardent announced from the forecastle. The wizard surveyed the landscape through a long spyglass. He rounded toward them, one eye looking so huge through the end of the telescope that Marrill had to laugh.

  Ardent set the spyglass aside and tucked his hands behind his back in his favorite storytelling stance. “Do you remember me telling you once that too much raw magic would tear apart a completed world like yours?”

  Marrill nodded. It was hard for her not to remember, with the Stream being so close to her world again.

  Ardent waved a hand at the tangle of twisted landscape. “I suspect that is precisely what happened here. That this was once a world—or maybe even worlds—detached from the Stream, like your own. Only somehow, somewhere deep in the past, they got, well, sucked onto the Stream, for lack of a better term. And these islands are all that remain of the collision.”

  Off the port side, a pillar of mossy rock let out a belch of steam, erupted into molten lava, then re-formed, complete with moss again. “As you can see, that event left the islands themselves with some… unusual properties,” Ardent continued. “I recall a story of one islet where things broken would mend themselves without warning, and another where a ball thrown into the air might stop there, or start moving again, for no reason at all.”

  “Weird,” Fin said.

  “Oh, look, a local!” Ardent chirped.

  “He’s with me,” Marrill reminded the wizard.

  “Of course he is!” Ardent turned back to surveying the Shattered Archipelago. “It’s best to be careful in a place like this,” he said absently. “You never know what you might find. Or what might find you.”

  Marrill looked out, too. The water moved oddly here; there was a current, pulling everything sideways and forward. The beginning, she realized, of the whirlpool.

  “Check it out!” Fin stood with one foot up on the bowsprit, pointing. Marrill made her way next to him, stopping just shy of the railing.

  The lushest, greenest meadow Marrill had ever seen stretched out before them. Or more accurately, stretched up before them. Because it was vertical, towering straight into the air.

  “GRASSBERG!” Coll bellowed. “Full stop!” he called to the rigging. At his command, the Ropebone Man trimmed the sails, and pirats scampered along the yardarms adjusting knots. Despite their efforts, the Kraken floated closer, her momentum unslowed.

  Marrill leaned out, feeling herself oddly drawn to the field-cliff ahead. Like it was pulling her forward. Like she could just fall into it. And then, sure enough, she slid right over the ship’s rail and tumbled through the air.

  “Yahh!”

  A second later, she thudded onto soft ground.

  “Marrill!” Fin cried, from somewhere above her. Shaking her head, she sat up, trying to get her bearings. Grass blades tickled at her palms and the back of her knees. In front of her, a sheer cliff of glowing water stretched up from the ground. Now it was the Pirate Stream, not the field, which jutted straight into the air like a shimmering wall.

  She braced herself, expecting the water to come sloshing down on her in a tidal wave. But the Stream simply sat there, rippling and eddying. She could even see the current of the whirlpool, still dragging the ship along its lazy spiral. Other than the fact that the water was vertical, which water generally was not, everything was normal. It was just like someone had taken the world and stood it on one side.

  “Huh?” she said aloud.

  “Marrill!” Fin cried again from above. She looked up just in time to see him tumble by and thump to the ground beside her. “I really should have seen that coming,” he muttered.

  “Uh-huh,” Marrill mumbled. Her eyes were stuck on the Kraken. It floated above them, coming down the water-wall toward them like a spider coming down its web.

  Marrill blinked. The world wasn’t turned on one side, she realized. She was.

  “I said full stop!” Coll’s voice bellowed. But the Kraken was still sailing forward—or falling down, as it now seemed—straight on top of them!

  Marrill rolled aside, moments before the Kraken’s bowsprit pierced the ground where she’d been sitting. The ship shuddered to a halt, teetering in the air.

  “Hmmm.” Tugging his beard, Ardent paced the railing, looking down on them. Only, he was totally sideways to them, defying gravity just like the water of the Stream, just like the rest of the Kraken itself. Marrill had to crane her neck to look up at him.

  From somewhere in the pockets of his robe, he produced a small yellow ball, then let go of it. It flew sideways, straight to the Kraken’s deck, as if it had been tossed through the air rather than dropped.

  Ardent caught the ball as it bounced, then stepped forward, holding it out over the railing, and let it go again. This time, it dropped straight down like it should have. Fin snatched it with a grin.

  “We seem to have a problem of unusual gravity,” Ardent offered. “Indeed, unusual gravity is precisely the problem!” He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “Quite interesting when you think about it,” he added.

  “Less thinking, more fixing!” Coll shouted. “There’s a storm blowing in from the Stream. We need to get clear of this… meadow and get out of here before it overtakes us!”

  Marrill craned her neck, looking up past the Kraken to the horizon. Sure enough, dark clouds were gathering there, and moving in on them rapidly. The Shattered Archipelago was a maze of chaos already; she didn’t want to think about what it would be like in a hurricane.

  She looked around quickly, hoping to find something—anything—that would be useful. The grassberg wasn’t huge, she realized, just big enough really to run from one end to the other. On one side, the Stream reached up endlessly; on the opposite side, the ground dropped away, and past that, the sky waited, as if she could just walk into it. Other loose islets floated freely through the air there, drifting on the rising wind from the storm. Not far away, a river floated past, curling and twisting in on itself like a snake.

  “We’re drifting,” Marrill murmured to herself. She looked at Fin. “The current is moving the whole island!”

  He held up a hand and sat still for a second, clearly feeling for the movement. “Huh,” he said. He pointed to the waterline. “I guess this grassberg doesn’t go too deep.”

  Just then, a loud groan filled the air as the ground—or the Kraken—shifted. Her bowsprit scraped through the earth. Overhead, the ship tilted precariously to one side.

  “Um, not to be a worrywart, but is the Stream about to fall on us?” Fin asked.

  He was right, Marrill saw. It wasn’t just the ship that was tilting; it was everything. The wall of Stream water was leaning in, threatening to topple on them. The horizon full of dark clouds, which had been straight overhead, was now slowly moving, like the sun traveling across the sky.

  Marrill gulped. She knew the Stream wasn’t really falling on them; they were falling on it. But one way or the other, ship and land were crashing into each other. And for the kids stuck in the middle, well, if they didn’t do something fast, it wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Okay,” Fin said. “Way I see it is we either climb the bowsprit to get back onto the ship or run for the far side of the island. Thoughts?”

  She took a deep breath and focused. Getting clear of the grassberg wasn’t enough. It would still crash on the Kraken if they didn’t do something to push the two apart.

  “Come on, Marrill, decision time!” Fin shouted, waving for her to join him.

  Marrill took one last look around, biting her lip. On the Stream-side, she caught sight of the edge of the island, lifting free from the wat
er. The island wasn’t anchored at all, she realized. It was free-floating in the air, and the Kraken was pushing on one side, flipping it around.

  Suddenly, she figured out what to do.

  “Jump!” she yelled to Fin. He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. But Marrill knew how to make this work. She started bouncing into the air, each time slamming back down against the ground with all her might. “The grassberg is flying!” she said. “We just have to knock it free from the Kraken!”

  Fin shook his head, but he took her advice. He, too, started jumping as hard and furiously as he could. Together, they bounced like lunatics on a trampoline. Marrill just hoped the force of their combined weight would be enough.

  Above them, the Kraken protested loudly, as though it were being wrenched apart. Marrill’s stomach churned as the world seemed to shift around them.

  “Aaaiiiiii!” she cried. The cold shadow of the ship fell across her shoulders. With one more giant leap, she pushed down with all her might, striking the earth as hard as possible.

  A scraping whine filled the air. Her heart pounded in her ears. And then

  everything

  went

  still.

  She risked a glance to the side. Fin crouched next to her, eyes wide. Cautiously, she searched for the Kraken, but the ship was nowhere to be found.

  “Where did it go?” she asked Fin. He shook his head, mouth open.

  Something tickled the top of her head. She glanced up, and came face-to-face with Ardent. He was dangling, upside down, from the tip of the Kraken’s mainmast. Because the entire ship was upside down.

  Or rather, she and Fin were. The Pirate Stream was above them now, a golden expanse of water where the sky should have been.

  “Well done, First Mate Marrill,” Ardent said. “Clever last-minute thinking. With your help, and perhaps a little magical oomph from someone notoriously talented in such things, we seem to have dislodged the grassberg quite neatly.”