On the Isle of Sound and Wonder

by Alyson Grauer

  What now? What now? What now?

  “Mira.” Dante’s voice was hushed, humbled.

  She looked at her father beside her, and found his expression somewhat frightened as he watched the joyful reunions taking place mere yards away. “What is it?” she asked.

  “I’m so ashamed,” he confessed, “of what I was . . . of what I intended to do.”

  “It’s over now,” Mira said dismissively as she met his gaze. There was a strange weight in her chest as she said it. “Everyone’s all right. It’ll be like it never happened.”

  “But my brother, and the king!” Dante protested, and began to cough. “My head is swimming.”

  “Here,” Mira said brusquely, helping him to lie down again on the sand. “Just rest. You’re exhausted. I’ll go fetch them.” Glad of something to do, she scrambled to her feet and moved quickly down the beach, past Karaburan with his arms around the tiger’s neck.

  “Sweet merciful—who is that?” Bastiano exclaimed as Mira approached, the staff in hand.

  Ferran stood up to meet her, brushing sand from his hands onto his trousers. “Mira,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Is your father—?”

  “He’s recovering,” she replied, glancing from face to face as the castaways stared up at her in confusion and awe. Their eyes were uncertain, a little afraid, even. Mira felt oddly powerful in that moment. “As are we all,” she added.

  “Mira?” The king looked perplexed, peering up at her from under his wrinkled brow. “Did you say Mira?”

  “Yes, Father!” Ferran looked excitedly at the king. “This is Mira. She saved me, she saved all of us. We owe her our lives.”

  “But where did she come from?” demanded Bastiano, astonished. “We walked all over the island and saw no signs of civilization, no one at all . . .”

  “Except for the harpy,” breathed Torsione. His expression shifted to one of horror, as though it could appear at any moment. Bastiano squeezed his hand gently.

  “The island does strange things to the mind,” Mira admitted, and felt her voice falter a little. “When I was young, I tried to map the whole thing, and every time I went back over my steps, I found my notes were wrong. I tried to sketch it with charcoal on canvas and the backs of pages in books, but no matter how I tried, the maps always turned out wrong or rearranged. The island doesn’t care much for logic, I think.”

  Bastiano and Torsione exchanged puzzled looks, and Mira met the king’s gaze at last. Alanno sucked in his breath.

  “My gods,” he murmured. “Those eyes! Forgive me, my dear, you . . . remind me of someone. A dear friend we lost long ago.”

  “Sophia?” Mira’s heart pounded. Do I really look like my mother? The idea reassured her.

  Alanno paled. “Yes.” The others looked amazed, studying Mira even closer now.

  “Sophia was my mother,” Mira answered, finding the phrase strange but gratifying to say aloud. “My father . . . was the Duke of Neapolis.”

  “No! Dante?” Torsione staggered to his feet, thunderstruck. “Is he here?” There was desperation in his tone, but also something like anger.

  “But we received word that the ship was wrecked and all aboard were drowned!” Bastiano protested.

  “We didn’t. My father . . . his powers brought us here safely.” Mira took a step back as Torsione rounded on her.

  “Where is he? Where is my brother?” His voice was hoarse and shrill.

  “He’s over there,” Mira pointed with the staff, “resting a little ways up the beach. He’s very weak.”

  “Weak?” Torsione frowned again.

  “Exhausted. From escaping the cave-in.” Mira looked from face to face, seeing the confusion etched upon them like carved stone. “We stopped the ritual.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Alanno asked. “The last thing I remember was the ship sinking.”

  “That was my father’s storm,” Mira confessed.

  “I was taken by the harpy.” Bastiano shuddered. “Just after Tor was. I don’t remember what happened after that.”

  Mira was dumbstruck for a moment, but Ferran leapt to her aid. “He had us all in a cave, bound and shackled, and we’d all surely be dead if Mira hadn’t saved us,” he said, fiercely. “Dante had a spell, a ritual of some kind. He meant to bring back his wife.”

  Alanno frowned softly. “He intended to give us to Death in exchange for her. I had thought sending him away for a time might help him recuperate some of his senses . . . but I see that only made things worse.”

  Mira was at a loss for words, studying the sad face of the king. “He was already on a dark path when you sent him away,” she replied finally. “He may not have been saved by staying where he was. He may have continued to choose the darker path.”

  “Perhaps,” said Torsione, his voice wavering, “but we could have chosen to try harder. He’s my brother.”

  “You tried,” protested Bastiano.

  “I should have tried harder.”

  “He pushed you away!” Bastiano looked indignant. “You tried as much as you possibly could, Tor. All you can do now is try to reconcile, if he will hear reason.”

  They all turned their eyes to Mira again, and she swallowed to push the uncertainty back down to the pit of her stomach. “He is much changed. We broke more than his ritual, I think. Come and see him; he asked for you,” she added, and turned to lead them back up the beach.

  Karaburan cried out in alarm, and, from a distance, Mira saw the huge form of the tiger leap toward her father’s prone body.

  Mira’s heart stopped. She sprinted toward them, the sand shifting and slipping beneath her feet. The tiger pounced at her father, snarling, but even as Mira skidded closer, the tiger was flung backward onto the beach, tumbling tail over snout. Karaburan staggered to help the tiger up again, and Mira saw what had prompted the attack.

  Aurael had Dante by the hair and throat, his shimmering lower body entwined about Dante’s torso like a gigantic serpent. Dante gasped for air, his arms pinned down by the spirit.

  “Aurael, stop!” Mira cried, stabbing the staff into the sand. The runes flickered brightly for a second, but Aurael did not recoil. He tilted his head to look at Mira, his eyes filled to the brim with a starless, deep black void. His smile was humorless and hungry.

  “Oh, no, my love,” he hissed through his gleaming rows of teeth. “There’s not a thing that could stop me now.”

  “I command you to stop!” she called out hoarsely, but the runes on the staff only glowed dimly. Why isn’t this working? She brandished the staff as though it were her old spear again.

  Aurael’s laugh was like broken glass. “You’ve only got half the toolkit, precious girl,” he told her, “and besides—you freed me, remember?” The serpent tail of his lower body curled around Dante one more time. Mira saw that, wrapped in the very end of the tail, was her father’s book, shuddering with energy as the snake-body squeezed it ever tighter.

  “Don’t,” she begged. “Please don’t, Aurael. He’s my father. He’s been a terrible, awful man, but he’s my father!”

  “All children must bury their parents,” the spirit snarled. “Isn’t that right, Karaburan?”

  The tiger lay in a jumbled heap on the sand, Karaburan at her side, distraught. Aurael smiled again.

  “Please, Aurael,” Mira insisted. “Please. I have one more chance to have him as my father, a real father. One last chance. Don’t do this.”

  Aurael’s face contorted as he squeezed both Dante and the book tighter in his coils. Dante made a hollow, painful sound, his eyes rolling back into his head.

  “Say ‘please’ again,” hissed the spirit.

  “Please!” Mira couldn’t help it. Her father’s face grew redder and redder. “You’re killing him, please, Aurael!”

  “I vowed when I was put into that tree that once I got out, I would never be trapped again. And what happens? Your selfish, pathetic father snares me by a trick of words and makes me his slave. For fourteen y
ears I served and suffered, and now I am free at last. This is my final duty from a servant to a master.”

  “Please!” Mira’s voice hardened. “I know we have all been trapped, but you don’t need to—”

  “Trapped? You, who have never known the ecstasy of a pure wind and the open sky? You, who have never seen the stars from above, the seas from below, the earth from its core? You are mortals. I was trapped. You were simply inconvenienced.” Aurael sneered. “You are nothing compared to me! I am a god. You are as ants to a titan!”

  “Show him mercy,” Mira pleaded. Aurael’s shimmering brightness, the gleaming of his teeth and dark stare made her own eyes water and burn. “Please, Aurael! For whatever love you bore me as a child, please!”

  Aurael glared back at her, but his churning rage began to flag, his coils loosening around Dante’s body, and the old man gasped weakly for air as the spirit let him go, bit by bit.

  “Gods be merciful,” breathed Bastiano from somewhere behind Mira.

  Dante sagged onto the sand, choking on the air that rushed too quickly to his lungs now that he was loose. The spirit slid back a little from the old man, eyes locked with Mira’s, his tail still coiled about the heavy book.

  “Be free, Aurael,” Mira commanded, her breath shallow. “Go away and never come back.”

  “Free,” echoed the spirit, sounding dazed. He looked down and saw the book still in his grasp. His eyes narrowed. “Yes. Now, I am free.”

  Aurael squeezed hard, snapping the book’s spine and weather-worn cover as easily as driftwood. A flash of light burst from the book as it split. A spark caught fire on the pages, blazing with sudden brightness and consuming the book as it fell into pieces on the sand. Blue and white sparks flew, the heat keeping Mira at bay even as she dove to save it.

  “No!” Mira cried out in anguish. Ferran yanked her back from the flames, stumbling on the sand with her. Not the book! Burning pages of the old volume fluttered to the ground as Aurael opened his snake-jaws to strike.

  An echoing roar erupted from off to the side. The tiger leapt onto Aurael’s back, sinking her claws and teeth into him. He howled and, with a blast of wind, shook her violently off. She scrambled to her feet again, but the spirit slapped at her with the length of his thick tail. Something cracked, like a huge branch snapping in two. The tiger collapsed onto the sand in an orange heap, motionless. Karaburan screamed, and Mira felt her entire body go cold. She looked up to see Aurael crush Dante in the folding coils of his silver-blue scales. She stared, paralyzed with disbelief, as her father’s body vanished into the serpent’s grip.

  No, she thought, I was so close. I almost fixed it. Darkness crept in at the edges of her vision, overwhelming her. For a second, she thought she smelled something burning, then a powerful wind knocked her down. A bright light ahead of her chased the blackness away from her sight.

  Mira shook her head to clear her vision and found herself on her back, blinking up at the most gorgeous woman she could possibly have imagined.

  “By the gods!” breathed Torsione.

  “She’s beautiful,” whispered the king.

  She wore a plain ivory gown like the Greccians did in ancient times, her black hair in tangled, sweeping locks adorned with flowers and vines. Unnaturally tall and willowy, the woman’s skin was warm brown with mossy green undertones. Her eyes were bright, polished gold, lined with dark kohl, and her expression was that of the housecat who has captured the last mouse. Dread clenched Mira’s stomach, but then the woman smiled, and she felt a warmth spread throughout her body.

  “Well done, storm-child.” The woman’s voice was like water in a marble fountain, resonant and clear. “The sins of the father are paid for, the monster is absolved his crime, and the imp will face a punishment greater than his own revenge.” She shifted slightly to look back over her shoulder at where the tiger, Karaburan, and Dante were scattered on the sand. Mira sat up quickly, and found that Aurael was no longer a massive silvery snake, but a twitching, goblin-faced imp suspended in the air. He looked nothing like the handsome, smooth-cheeked boy he’d been to Mira, his features uglier, more twisted. He whined and panted, hanging above Dante’s fallen form.

  “Who are you?” Mira winced, her body tender from the fall. She looked around to find the other men sprawled all over the ground around her, with Ferran off to her left, trying to get his bearings again after the fall.

  “A gambler,” said the woman, and laughed as if she had made a joke. “My lord husband often places bets on the losing pony, and when he does, I am the one to collect. It’s especially true when the loser is one of my husband’s little lackeys. Isn’t that right, Aurael?” She reached for him, and the spirit soared to her hand, jabbering and snarling. The woman held him aloft and peered at him as a fisherman examines his catch. “Oh, would you have words with me, imp? Very well, speak.”

  There was a faint popping sound and Aurael groaned, snapping his jaws in frustration. “Please, my queen, I can explain . . .”

  “You can always explain,” she tutted at him. “But that does not mean anyone will believe you. That is your real tragedy, Aurael. Your tongue is so silver that even your truths are falsehoods.”

  “Please,” Aurael begged. “Don’t be hasty, Your Highness!”

  Mira held up a hand to her brow, her head still echoing with the strange burst of power. “You’re a queen?” she prompted. “I don’t understand. You’re a spirit, too?”

  The tall woman looked at her and smiled a little. It was a beautiful smile, but a dangerous one. “Among other things, storm-child. I have many names, as do we all, in our lifetimes. If you will excuse me, I shall remove this imp from this awful little island and leave you all to your utterly confusing mortal moralities, or whatever else it is you do in your short little lives.”

  “Wait!” squawked Aurael.

  “Wait!” cried Mira, putting up one hand. The queen looked at her in mild surprise. Mira hesitated, unsure how to properly address the faerie queen. “Please, Your Majesty. I ask you for your assistance.”

  “Do you? Very well, I will hear your request.” She seemed utterly amused at the concept of demands from a mortal child.

  “I have several.” Mira held the queen’s gaze a moment, hoping that the faerie queen would know how badly she needed what she was going to ask for. She drew a deep breath before kneeling to the crumpled body of her father. Dante’s face was pale as the sand, his cheeks sallow. Mira’s insides went watery, and she took his limp hand in hers. He’s gone. Aurael destroyed the book, and it’s too late to save him. “Can you reverse death?”

  The queen’s amusement left her like a bird from a windowsill. “Only Death can reverse death, and she is not likely to do it anytime soon. I am sorry you have lost your father, child, but there is nothing more to be done for him.”

  Mira drew a deep breath and let it out again, feeling tears prickle her eyes. The lords nearby exchanged wary, amazed looks. “I understand,” she replied, shakily. “And the tiger?”

  The queen glanced at the tiger, eyebrows raising in surprise. “Why blessed be,” she murmured in astonishment. “Corvina!”

  Karaburan was sobbing piteously over the tiger’s blood-soaked face. He cowered as the queen’s eyes passed over him.

  “Do not cry, witch-son,” the queen said gently, waving a hand as though she were wafting perfume toward herself. The tiger’s fur shimmered and faded, and, for a moment, there was no tiger at all, but a dark-skinned woman covered in tattoos lying on the sand. Karaburan’s tears slowed in astonishment, and he gaped at the sight. “Your mother served me well in her younger days,” the queen told Karaburan. “For that, I will shift her. Her spirit stayed here to guide you all in the body of this tiger . . . but now that body, too, has failed her. Her spirit is now part of the very island itself, so that she can be troubled no more, and can continue to watch over you.”

  The queen beckoned, and the gleaming, rune-carved staff soared through the air to her hand. She broke it in hal
f as neatly as a twig of driftwood, and Corvina’s body faded into a hazy sky-blue shape, which sank into the sand. The two halves of the staff gleamed blue, shimmering into dust, and the queen scattered it to the wind.

  She looked at Mira with an arched brow. “Well, storm-spawn? What else is on your shopping list of boons?” she asked tersely.

  “Can you repair a shipwreck?” Mira got to her feet with Ferran’s help, keeping her voice steady as she did so.

  Someone made a noise of agreement behind her, and Mira saw the men nodding hopefully out of the corner of her eye.

  “Our trunks,” murmured Bastiano. “All of our clothes, our food, our supplies.”

  “The crew,” Ferran added, looking sad. “The servants. Oh! Gonzo!” He turned to Mira, eyes wide.

  “I picked up all of the pieces,” she told him with a shake of her head. “I have no idea if he’s fixable.”

  “Gonzo?” The king looked confused.

  “Dante . . . he smashed him,” Ferran explained, and the king’s face fell. “I’m sorry.”

  “But how is that possible? If the ship went down, he ought to have gone down, too.”

  “I found the trunk he was in and brought it ashore,” Mira interjected. “He was already in pieces, but now he’s in shards, I’m afraid.”

  “His inventor is long dead,” Alanno sighed. “And Dante was the only other one who knew much about his anatomy, unfortunately.”

  Mira looked at the queen, and the others turned to follow her gaze.

  The queen eyed the men haughtily. “Hm,” she mused, as though bored by the very suggestion. “That’s an awful lot of gears to piece back together, but I suppose I could make it work. As for the shipwreck . . . perhaps I could bring you something a little smaller? A smoke signaler?”

  “You’re joking, right? These men need passage home, not a slightly larger chance that a passing ship might pause to pick them up at an undetermined point in the future!” Mira leaned on Ferran and exhaled sharply in frustration. “Please. Anything you can do to help. Surely it is a small matter to someone as great as you, Highness?” she added.