On the Isle of Sound and Wonder

by Alyson Grauer

  Ferran turned red as his uncle began to laugh heartily. “And that makes me what, pray tell?” demanded Bastiano, grinning from ear to ear.

  Torsione cut his eyes sideways to Bastiano. “A hedonist,” he purred, without letting his own smile crack too wide.

  Bastiano guffawed at this, burying his head in his hands and crowing with laughter. Ferran pulled a face; he’d never been in a bawdy tavern, but sometimes the way these two talked to one another was downright unseemly.

  “Good night, my lords,” he muttered, sliding his chair in neatly to the table’s edge and stalking toward the door.

  “Nighty night, Ferr!” giggled Bastiano, still shaking his head at Torsione, who waved his brandy snifter aloft in farewell.

  We’re almost home, the prince reminded himself, gritting his teeth as he made his way back to his room. I won’t have to put up with them much longer. I can go back to my library and read for a whole week and ignore everyone. The whole library all to myself . . . it’ll be like a vacation on a remote island, with no Uncle Bas, no Tor, and no Father glaring at me across the dinner table. Just me and my books. And maybe in another week or two, I can get Father alone and tell him I want to go to university.

  Ferran climbed into bed with the only book he’d been allowed to bring with him, a tattered copy of Sinbad’s Roc, and tried to forget about the disappointment in his father’s gaze. He dozed off a few chapters in, the book still propped in his hands.

  He awoke to the harsh banging of the ship’s warning bell.

  Ferran sat up. What time is it? A scattered pounding of running feet sounded down the corridor. There was a knock on his cabin door.

  “Yes?” Ferran said, sliding out of bed and reaching for his dressing gown.

  The door opened and his father’s advisor, Gonzo, waddled into the room, his brass and steel legs hissing and sighing on pistons unseen. “Your Highness,” he hummed, his shining head inclined, expression as blank as ever. “They have asked us to dress and descend to the lower decks for life preservers. Also, it seems they’ve prepared tea for us.”

  Ferran stopped and stared at Gonzo. “What do you mean, life preservers?”

  Gonzo bowed slightly. “It appears there is a very large storm heading for us rather quickly, and the captain would rather not take any chances with our safety. Upstanding sort of fellow. Shall we?”

  Ferran moved to the wardrobe and began pulling on trousers, a shirt, and jacket. “We sailed through a storm on the way down to Tunitz, and they didn’t wake us up for life preservers,” he muttered.

  “Yes, Your Highness, I recall that instance. However, I am led to believe that this immediate storm is a considerable threat to this aeronautical craft, and that we should prepare ourselves for an uncomfortable night.” Gonzo paused and tipped his head, his round, blank eyes glowing a soft golden-green. “But they’ve made tea. Isn’t that thoughtful?”

  Ferran exhaled sharply and slid his feet into his boots. “Yes, Gonzo,” he said, “very thoughtful.” The mech had always had an unusually optimistic outlook, despite his neutral expression, and Ferran was glad that it was Gonzo who’d come to get him this time, and not Truffo again. This time of night meant Truffo was likely drinking as much wine as he could get his hands on.

  The ship shuddered all around them, vibrations permeating the walls and floor of the cabin. There was a distant, groaning creak of metal and wood, and outside the porthole, a flash of lightning illuminated the rolling gray clouds beyond.

  “Perhaps we should hurry, Prince Ferran,” suggested the mechanical.

  “All right,” Ferran murmured, feeling the first glimmer of fear creep into his bowels. Turbulence was certainly not his favorite part of air travel. “I hope it’s not as bad as they say.”

  “Indeed,” answered Gonzo, closing the door behind them as they left the room. “It may be unpleasant, but not too much so. After all, there’s tea.”

  A great crash of thunder shattered the silence of sleep and jolted Mira awake. Gasping for air, she twisted against the canvas of her hammock and looked to the window. The world beyond the treehouse was still dark, but she saw a glimmer of lightning which illuminated the churning clouds above the canopy of trees. She put a hand to her chest, her heart racing, and frowned. Storms were nothing new to her—she always slept more soundly when it rained—but there was something distinctly strange about the thunder that had woken her up. Forcing herself to breathe more deeply, she swung out of the hammock and went to the door.

  A cold front had swept through. The wind through the trees was harsh, like hands combing unruly hair, yanking forcefully on branches and boughs and making the treehouse shudder in spite of Mira’s careful architecture. The little pinwheel made of leaves spun wildly on its axle, and the chimes of sea glass and shells hanging from the ceiling rang and swung helplessly in the breeze. The little house shivered and creaked around her, but Mira had spent years tying it off and supporting it with extra ropes, extra beams, extra netting. It was her home, and she had built it to last.

  Another heart-stopping peal of thunder thumped against her very bones, and Mira grabbed for the tree trunk which grew up through the middle of the room. She narrowed her eyes toward the patches of sky visible beyond her windows. Although the wind blew, and the thunder was quite close, the rain had not yet come.

  This is no ordinary storm.

  Mira reached for the thatched grass cloak that hung by the hammock and the diver’s goggles from the basket on the floor. Then she lifted the spear from its leaning place in the corner and stepped out of the little elevated hut, putting one foot into a rope sling and wrapping her other leg around the upper part of the rope. The pulleys squeaked and the rope began to unwind, lowering her to the ground. She untangled herself from the rope and it rose upward into the tree line again, vanishing from sight in the darkness of the pre-dawn forest.

  Mira adjusted the fit of the goggles against the bridge of her nose, hefted her spear, and began to run. The diver’s glasses were one of the thousand and one things she had recovered from the sea and learned to use for the better; they helped her see in the dark and underwater, depending on which knob she turned. They were her prized possession.

  She ran surefooted through the trees and underbrush, heading east. The night-birds and quiet animals of the early hours were nowhere to be heard or seen—another hint that something unusual was taking place.

  Lightning flashed a brilliant green through the trees ahead, and Mira slowed, crouching lower as she pressed forward through the bushes and smaller trees. Ahead, a rocky sort of cliff overlooked the lower beach of the eastern shore of the island. On the uppermost rock of that cliff stood a tall, dark shape, facing the sea.

  Her father.

  Mira found a sturdy young tree near the timberline and hitched herself up into the lower branches to see him better without leaving the cover of the shadows.

  Mere yards away, Dante stood close to the edge of the cliff, his hands lowered at his sides, palms open toward the sea below and before him. The moon was gone, but the world seemed lit by strange glimmers of blue and green and silver that danced over the waves and through the clouds, darting like fireflies. The clouds boiled before him, churning and folding in and out of themselves. Lightning cut and splintered through the thickening thunderheads, suddenly outlining a large, dark shape within them that turned and pitched violently.

  A ship!

  Mira’s eyes went wide behind the diver’s glasses. She had seen drawings. She had read descriptions in her father’s books. She had seen wrecks along the ocean’s bottom, scattered along the edges of the island’s deep shorelines, but this was the first real ship she had ever seen in person.

  It was incredible. And it was falling apart.

  The storm clawed at the vessel like a cat shaking a bird and the ship spun and splintered, struggling to get away from the lightning, from the wind and clouds and rain. It careened lower and lower, the churning waters of the wild ocean below threatening to swallo
w it whole.

  Dante stood, appearing focused and serene as he watched the ship struggle to keep to the air. At his feet lay the long, gnarled stick he carried with him everywhere, a staff decorated with carvings and etchings of arcane symbols. To his right, lying open on a flat rock just behind him, was the book.

  Mira watched him inhale deeply, then tip his head back, exhaling slowly and raising his hands a little, like a flower reaching for the warmth of the sun. Lightning flashed again, and the ship’s mast cracked, the sails tearing, alarm lights flashing red in the storm clouds. It began to fall.

  Mira’s gaze flicked from the floundering ship as it pitched downward toward the ocean to the great heavy book that lay on the rocks not far from where she crouched in the tree. She could probably get to the book before he saw her. After all this time, it was finally right there in front of her, within reach. She grasped the tree with one clammy hand and her spear with the other.

  Take it. Her own voice in her head was quiet, calm, and collected, despite the pounding of her heart and trembling of her hands. Take the book. It’ll be easy.

  The ship hit the water with a massive splash, a fountain of smoke and flame rising into the storm from the upper decks. The propellers and enormous flight panels shuddered and screeched, and the lights flickered as they met the waves. Mira could almost hear the screams and shouts of the ship’s crew and passengers.

  They’re dying, thought Mira. My father’s storm will kill them.

  If she could just reach the book, she could find out what her father had been doing all these years, hiding away in the caves and ignoring their little island life. The book never left his side, and she was certain it contained words and incantations of great power. If she could just get the book, she might finally figure out why her father kept her here, away from the rest of the world she knew must surely be out there. Her gut clenched with the weight of the decision; it was so close, the closest it had ever been, but if she didn’t make herself known, the people on that ship would certainly die. Whoever they were.

  But the book . . . she thought longingly. The book will wait. She tightened her grip on the spear and slid down from the tree, stumbling forward out of the bushes.

  “Father!”

  He did not turn to look at her; indeed, Mira would have thought that he had not heard her, except that she had encountered him in such a trance before and knew what he could and could not do while casting a spell.

  “Father, stop!” she commanded, her voice raw from lack of use. She sounded squeaky and small, but she held her ground. “Those people are dying!”

  He turned his head toward her slowly, as though it were an enormous strain for him to do so. For a moment, she did not recognize him, his face was so changed from the last time they’d spoken, some time ago. He certainly was not the same man she remembered from her childhood. His eyes had a gleam of lightning in them, and the strange, sleepy expression on his face was almost that of ecstatic release. Mira could not quite place it, but it seemed to her to be something like bliss.

  “Mira,” Dante said faintly, as though he could not bear to speak any louder. “My daughter . . . I must have woken you.” His words slurred slightly, as though he were sleepwalking.

  Mira squeezed the spear more tightly. “I know it’s you, Father. I know you’re making that storm. That ship must have passengers. There are people inside it . . . people who will die if you don’t stop. I don’t know why you’ve made this storm, but you have to unmake it!”

  “Go back to sleep, my little girl,” her father answered in an almost singsong tone, his eyes flashing brighter as the lightning surged again. “It’s just a little rain.”

  “Wake up!” she screamed, as thunder shook the trees around them. “You don’t know what you’re doing! You have to stop!” He turned his face away, achingly slow, and resumed staring out toward the sinking ship. A light patter of rain began to fall over them. “They’ll drown!” Mira shouted. “This is the closest anyone from beyond the sea has ever been to our island, and you’re killing them!”

  “Yes,” agreed her father, raising his hands to the sky. “I am.”

  The ocean swelled, rising up like a snake poised to attack the ship, and Mira lunged for her father. He turned suddenly about to meet her, hands raised, his eyes masked in bright white-blue light, and the force of his mind threw her to the ground. She knocked over the book as she tumbled backwards onto the rocks, cutting her chin.

  “Why are you interfering?” wondered her father, his hands claw-like. “Even if there are people aboard, why should it matter if they live or die? You are safe, Mira. That’s what matters.”

  “Safe?” Mira spat, touching the back of her hand to her chin and wincing in pain. “Safe and isolated. You’ve never let anyone get this close to us before. You’ve kept the entire world beyond at bay to keep me safe. But you don’t have to go killing people! They don’t deserve to die simply because you don’t want visitors! Why are you doing this?”

  Something in his face changed, and the light went out of his eyes. “You’re bleeding,” Dante said softly, lowering his hands, muscles beginning to relax.

  Behind him, beyond the shoreline, the lightning began to fade, the clouds untangling themselves and smoothing out again. The waves began to lessen, though the vessel still continued to sink.

  Mira stared as her father knelt before her, the sleepiness fading from his expression, which melted into one of concern and anxiety.

  “Mira, sweetheart, are you all right?” He looked at her bleeding chin, reaching for her tenderly.

  She met his concerned gaze. The weathered lines of his face spoke of how tired he was, and how sad. He suddenly looked much more like the father of her memory, and for a moment, Mira considered letting him draw her into his arms and comfort her the way a father should. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d come close to her. His beard was prickled with silver now, and his body was thin.

  “You haven’t been eating enough,” she observed warily.

  “My wondrous girl,” Dante went on as though he hadn’t heard her. “Let me look at your cut.”

  There was no apology, no acknowledgement that he was the one who had caused the injury, no admission of guilt or responsibility. Mira recoiled and scrambled to her feet, looking past him to where the fires of the wrecked ship were dimming.

  “I hope they have life preservers,” she said fiercely. She pointed her spear toward the wreck. “Or their blood is on your hands. How could you do this?”

  “Their blood is on my hands?” echoed her father, unfolding himself to his full height again, his brow darkening in anger. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I may not know all that you know,” Mira retorted angrily, “but I’m not a murderer. And I never thought you would be.” She turned and fled into the woods.

  * * *

  Dante sighed in frustration, turning to pick up the enormous, weathered book from the ground where it had fallen. He reached with an open hand and beckoned the staff, which leapt into his grasp, then turned again to look out at the ship as it slowly descended in pieces beneath the choppy waves.

  Dante narrowed his gray eyes. Something had gone terribly awry, but at least the ship still sank. “Come back to me, my dainty spirit,” he murmured, leaning on the staff. “Come and obey in all things, Aurael.”

  The light rain began to fade as the clouds moved swiftly by overhead, and the air folded and shimmered before him.

  “I did perform this tempest as you bade me, my lord,” yawned the spirit as he solidified into pale, translucent skin. His hair was wild from the winds, and his eyes had an iron heaviness to them. “Was there some problem that made you call it off before the Big Finale?” Although his words were courteous, his tone had a touch of steel to it, cold and sharp-edged.

  Dante shook his head slowly, pulling his gaze from the wreck to stare at the spirit. He pursed his lips. “Did you hear me order you to call it off?” he asked, dangerously so
ft.

  Aurael squinted at him, hovering and hesitating. “No,” he answered slowly, “my lord, I heard you not . . . It seemed to me out there that you took control of the spell yourself and made the storm calm again.” His brow wrinkled. “Was that not so?”

  Dante looked darkly at him. “No, Aurael, I did not send the storm away. I had rather hoped to see the ship split into a hundred pieces in mid-air, and watch their bodies drop like stones to the sea below. Needless to say, I am disappointed.”

  “Wait just a second!” Aurael demanded. “I didn’t do anything except exactly what you told me to do! But if you didn’t stop it, and if I didn’t stop it, then who did? My lord, I cannot even begin to fathom a guess, unless they had a sorcerer on board. More importantly, the deed is done. The ship is sunk, and all souls will surely perish, by shark or salt water or both.” Aurael threw his hands up in childish exasperation.

  “You dare make light of this?” Dante growled.

  “My lord,” replied his servant through gritted teeth, “I have done you great services and served you most loyally for these long fifteen years since you arrived. You promised me one thing for my loyalty back then, and you promised me this very morning that you would deliver it to me if I brought down their stupid ship with fire and brimstone.” He swung a shimmering arm wide at the wreckage. “And look! I have done so.”

  “Yes, but there is so much more to be done.”

  Aurael seemed wild with anger, as though he would twist himself up into a cyclone at any moment. “I would like what is due me, my lord,” he insisted, jaw tight. “I just want my freedom.”

  Dante burst out laughing—a dry, brittle laugh that faded away as quickly as dead leaves on the wind. “You’ll have it when you’ve earned it. Bring me the king, his brother, the duke, and any of the other live men ashore, but scatter them about the isle so that no more than two are together at a time. Let them wonder at their friends’ demises, and despair their own fates. Go now, lighter than air and faster than thought. Will you do this?” The question was a mockery, as though Aurael had any sort of say in the matter.