Alcatraz

by Brandon Sanderson

  ‘Kaz!’ I said. ‘Get us out of here!’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘My Talent has been—’

  ‘Now, Kaz!’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ he said with a sigh, walking over and pulling open a door. We’d used Kaz’s Talent of getting lost to transport us before. Like all Smedry Talents, it was unpredictable – but it was fairly safe to use across short distances.

  Besides, we didn’t have time to try anything else. I raced through the doorway, Bastille behind me. Kaz pulled the door closed behind us.

  The room smelled musty and wet inside, like mold or fungus, but it was too dark to see anything.

  ‘Activate your Talent!’ I told Kaz.

  ‘I already did,’ he replied.

  There was a scraping noise. Like something very large being pulled across the stone floor. I blinked as Bastille unsheathed her sword, the crystalline weapon shedding a cool, blue light across our surroundings. We were in a cave. And standing before us, looking very confused, was an enormous black dragon. It cocked its head at us, smoke trailing from its nostrils.

  ‘Well,’ I said, relieved. ‘It’s just a dragon. For a moment, I was frightened!’ We’d met a dragon before, and it had quite nicely not eaten us. In fact, it had carried us on its back.

  The dragon inhaled deeply.

  ‘Kaz!’ Bastille said, panicked.

  ‘Put away that light!’ he said. ‘It’s hard to get lost if I can see where I’m going!’

  I frowned at the others. ‘It’s just a dragon.’

  ‘Just a free baledragon,’ Bastille said with alarm, ‘who – unlike Tzoctinatin – is not serving a prison sentence, and who is perfectly free to roast us because we’re invading his den and violating the draco-human treaty!’ She slammed her sword back in its sheath, plunging us into darkness.

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  A light appeared in front of us, illuminating the inside of the dragon’s mouth as fire gathered in its throat and began to blast toward us.

  ‘Reason number two hundred and fifty-seven why it’s better to be a short person that a tall person!’ Kaz exclaimed. ‘Standing next to a tall person gives you a really great shield for dragon’s breath!’

  Bastille grabbed me by the collar and yanked me hard after her, and everything spun. I felt a strange force around me, a lurching feeling as Kaz activated his Talent, getting us lost. The dragon’s flames vanished.

  I recognized that force – the force of the Talent – immediately, though I’d never experienced it before when Kaz had used his Talent. It was hard to explain. It felt like I could see the warping of the air, could tell what was going on as Kaz saved us.

  It almost seemed familiar. Like Kaz wasn’t just getting us lost, like he was . . . well, like he was breaking the way that motion worked. Deconstructing the natural, linear progression of the world and rebuilding it so that we could move in directions we shouldn’t have been able to.

  In that moment, I thought I saw something. An enormous, magnificent stone disk, full of carvings and etchings, divided into four different quadrants. And at the very center, a patch of black rock. There was something crouching there in the center, invisible because of how dark it was. A patch of midnight itself. And it reached tentacles out to the other quadrants, like black vines growing over a wall.

  The Bane of Incarna. That which twists . . . that which corrupts . . . that which destroys . . .

  The Dark Talent. Of which all others are shadows.

  The vision vanished, gone so quickly that I wasn’t certain I’d even seen it. Everything was dark again, and I stumbled, tripping. When I hit the ground, I hit something wet, soft, and squishy.

  ‘Ew!’ I said, trying to push myself to my feet. The floor undulated beneath me, pulsing, quivering. It was like I’d fallen onto a massive trampoline covered with slick grease. And the stench was terrible. Like someone had pelted a skunk with rotten eggs.

  Bastille made a gagging noise, pulling her sword from its sheath to give us light. The three of us were crowded together inside of a pink room, the walls and ceiling all made of the same soft, quivering material. It was like we were trapped in some kind of sack. There wasn’t even room enough to sit up, and we were coated with a slick, goolike substance.

  ‘Aw, sparrows,’ Kaz swore.

  ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ Bastille said. ‘Are we . . .?’

  ‘My Talent transported us into the dragon’s stomach, it appears,’ Kaz said, scratching his head, trying to stand up on the fleshy surface. ‘Whoops.’

  ‘Whoops?’ I cried, realizing that the liquidy stuff had to be some kind of bile or phlegm. ‘That’s all you can say? Whoops?’

  ‘Ew!’ Bastille said.

  ‘Well, if we’re going to be eaten by a dragon,’ he noted, ‘this is the way to do it. Bypassing the teeth and all.’

  ‘I’d rather not be eaten at all!’

  ‘Ew!’ Bastille repeated.

  ‘Hide the sword,’ Kaz said, finally getting to his feet. He was short enough to stand upright. ‘I’ll get us out of here.’

  ‘Great,’ I said, the light winking out. ‘Maybe you could get us a bath too, and – gruble-garb-burgle!’

  I was suddenly underwater.

  I thrashed about in the dark, terrified, suffocating. The water was horribly cold, and my skin grew numb in a few heartbeats. I opened my mouth to cry out—

  Which, mind you, was a pretty stoopidalicious thing to do.

  And then I washed out into open air, water rushing around me as I fell through an open doorway. Kaz stood to the side, gasping, holding the door open. He’d managed to get us to Keep Smedry; a familiar black stone hallway led in either direction.

  I sat up, holding my head, my clothing wet. We appeared to have fallen out of the cleaning closet, and the floor of the hallway was now soaked with salty seawater. A few small, white-eyed fish flopped around on the stones. Bastille lay in front of me, hair a soggy silver mass. She groaned and sat up, flipping her hair back.

  ‘Where were we?’ I asked.

  ‘Bottom of the ocean,’ Kaz said, taking off his soaked leather jacket and eyeing it appraisingly.

  ‘The pressure should have killed us!’

  ‘Nah,’ Kaz said, wringing out his jacket, ‘we surprised her. We were gone before she realized we were there.’

  ‘Her?’ I asked.

  ‘The ocean,’ Kaz said. ‘She never expects Smedry Talents.’

  ‘Who does?’ Bastille said, her voice flat.

  ‘Well, you did say you wanted a bath,’ Kaz said. ‘Come on. We should get moving before those knights think to send someone to Keep Smedry.’

  I sighed, climbing to my feet, and the three of us jogged down the hallway – our clothing making squishing noises – and entered a stairwell. We climbed to the top of one of the keep’s towers and ran out onto the landing pad. There we found an enormous glass butterfly lethargically flapping its wings. It reflected the sunlight, throwing out colourful sparkles of light in all directions.

  I froze. ‘Wait. This is our escape vehicle?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kaz said. ‘The Colorfly. Something wrong?’

  ‘Well, it’s not particularly . . . manly.’

  ‘So?’ Bastille said, hands on hips.

  ‘Er . . . I mean . . . Well, I was hoping to be able to escape in something a little more impressive.’

  ‘So if it’s not manly, it’s not impressive?’ Bastille said, folding her arms.

  ‘I . . . er . . .’

  ‘Now would be a good time to shut up, Al,’ Kaz said, chuckling. ‘You see, if your mouth is closed, that will prevent you from saying anything else. And that will prevent you from getting a foot in your mouth – either yours placed there or hers kicking you.’

  It seemed like good advice. I shut my mouth and trotted after Kaz, making my way to the gangplank up to the glass butterfly.

  To this day, however, I’m bothered by that departure. I was going on what was, in many ways, my first real missio
n. Before, I’d stumbled into things accidentally. But now I’d actively decided to go out and help.

  It seemed that I should be able to make my triumphant departure inside something cooler than a butterfly. In heroic journey terms, that’s like being sent to college driving a pale yellow ’76 Pacer. (Ask your parents.)

  But, as I believe I’ve proven to you in the past, life is not fair. If life were fair, ice cream would be calorie free, kittens would come with warning labels stamped on their foreheads, and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ would totally be about zombies. (And don’t get me started on Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.)

  ‘Hey, cousin!’ a voice exclaimed. A head popped out of the bottom of the butterfly. It had short, black hair with dark tan skin. A hand followed, waving at me. Both belonged to a young Mokian girl. If she were from the Hushlands, she’d have been described as Hawaiian or Samoan. She was wearing a colourful red-and-blue sarong and had a flower pinned in her hair.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, walking under the glass vehicle.

  ‘I’m your cousin Aydee! Kaz says you need me to fly you to Mokia.’ There was an exuberance about her that reminded me of her sister, Australia. Only Australia was much older. This girl couldn’t be more than eight years old.

  ‘You’re our pilot? But you’re just a kid!’

  ‘I know! Ain’t it great?’ She smirked, then pulled back into the butterfly, a glass plate sliding into place where she’d been hanging.

  ‘Best not to challenge her, Al,’ Kaz said, walking up and laying a hand on my arm.

  ‘But we’re going into a war zone!’ I said, looking at Kaz. ‘We shouldn’t bring a kid into that.’

  ‘Oh, so perhaps I should leave you behind?’ Kaz said. ‘The Hushlanders would call you a kid too.’

  ‘That’s different,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Her homeland is being attacked,’ Bastille said, climbing up the gangplank. ‘She has a right to help. Nobody sends children into battle, but they can help in other ways. Like flying us to Mokia. Come on! Have you forgotten that we’re being chased?’

  ‘It seems like I’m always being chased,’ I said, climbing up the gangplank. ‘Come on. Let’s get going.’

  Kaz followed me up, and the gangplank swung closed. The butterfly lurched into the air and swooped

  . . . well, fluttered . . .

  away from the city in a dramatic

  . . . well, leisurely . . .

  flight toward Mokia, with a dangerous

  . . . well, mostly just a cute . . .

  determination to see the kingdom protected and defended!

  Either that or we’d just spend our time drinking nectar from flowers. You know, whatever ended up working.

  42

  Change.

  It’s important to change. I, for instance, change my underwear every day. Hopefully you do too. If you don’t, please stay downwind.

  Change is frightening. Few of us ever want things to change. (Well, things other than underwear.) But change is also fascinating – in fact, it’s necessary. Just ask Heraclitus.

  Heraclitus was a funny little Greek man best known for letting his brother do all of the hard work, for calling people odd names, and for writing lyrics for Disney songs about two thousand years too early for them to be sung. He was quite an expert on change, even going so far as to change from alive to dead after smearing cow dung on his face. (Er, yes, that last part is true, I’m afraid.)

  Heraclitus is the first person we know of to ever gripe about how often things change. In fact, he went so far as to guess that you can never touch the same object twice – because everything and everybody changes so quickly, any object you touch will change into something else before you touch it again.

  I suppose that this is true. We’re all made of cells, and those are bouncing around, breaking off, drying, changing. If nothing could change, then we wouldn’t be able to think, grow, or even breathe. What would be the point? We’d all be about as dynamic as a pile of rocks. (Though, as I think about it, even that pile of rocks is changing moment by moment, as the winds blow and break off atoms.)

  So . . . I guess what Heraclitus was saying is that your underpants are always changing, and technically you now have on a different pair than you did when you began reading this chapter. So I guess you don’t have to change them every day.

  Sweet! Thanks, philosophy!

  I whistled in amazement, hanging upside down from the tree. ‘Wow! That was quite the trip! Aydee, you’re a fantastic pilot.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Aydee said, hanging nearby.

  ‘I mean, I thought thirty-seven chapters’ worth of flying would be boring,’ I said. ‘But that was probably the most exciting thing I’ve been a part of since Grandpa showed up on my doorstep six months ago!’

  ‘I particularly enjoyed the fight with the giant half squid, half wombat,’ Bastille said.

  ‘You really showed him something!’ I said.

  ‘Thanks! I didn’t realize he’d be so interested in my stamp collection.’

  ‘Yeah, I didn’t realize you’d taken so many pictures of people’s faces you’d stamped on!’

  ‘Personally,’ Kaz said, untangling himself from the bushes below, ‘I preferred the part where we flew up into space.’

  ‘We should have done that in book two,’ Bastille said. ‘Then that cover would have made sense.’

  ‘There were so many exciting things on this trip,’ I said, still swinging in the vines. ‘It’s tough to pick just one as my favorite.’

  Kaz dusted himself off, looking up at me. ‘Reason number eighty-two why it’s better to be a short person: When you plummet to your doom, you don’t fall as far as tall people.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Of course you do!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Kaz said. ‘Maybe our feet fall as far as yours, but our heads have less distance to fall. So it’s less dangerous for us on average.’

  ‘I don’t think it works that way,’ Bastille said.

  Kaz shrugged. ‘Anyway, Al, if you ever write your autobiography, you’re going to have a real tough time writing out that trip here. I mean . . . words just won’t be able to describe how perfectly awesome it was.’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll think of something,’ I said, letting Bastille help me untangle myself from the vines. I dropped awkwardly to the ground beside Kaz, and then Bastille went to help Aydee get down.

  ‘Where are we?’ I asked.

  ‘Just outside of Tuki Tuki, by my guess,’ Kaz said. ‘I’m certain that rock that knocked down the Colorfly was thrown by a Librarian machine. I’ll go scout for a moment. Wait here.’

  Kaz moved off into the bushes, pulling out his machete. He didn’t – thankfully – engage his Talent. I made sure to keep an eye on him as he walked out toward the sunlit ridge in the near distance. We were in a dense, tropical jungle arrayed with a large number of flowers hanging from vines, sprouting from trees, and blooming at our feet. Insects buzzed around, moving from flower to flower, and didn’t seem to have any interest in me or the others.

  The flight had taken a long time, but it had seemed to pass remarkably quickly, considering how busy we’d been with wombats, outer space, and stamp collections. It seemed like just a few moments ago that we’d left Nalhalla, yet now here we were, hours of flying later, in Mokia. In fact, those chapters were so fast, so quick, so exciting, it almost feel like I skipped writing them.

  Good thing I didn’t, though. That would have been pretty stoopid of me, eh?

  Aydee sighed as Bastille helped her down. ‘I’m going to miss that ship.’

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘that’s the third time I’ve been up in one of those glass ships, and it’s also the third time I’ve crash-landed. I’m beginning to think that they aren’t very safe.’

  ‘Of course there couldn’t be another explanation,’ Bastille said dryly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve flown in them hundreds of times,’ Bastille said. ‘And the only three times I’ve crash
-landed, I’ve been flying with you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, scratching my head.

  ‘I’m going to have to travel with you more often, cousin!’ Aydee said. ‘I never get shot down when I fly on my own!’

  It appeared that Aydee had inherited the characteristic Smedry sense of adventure. I eyed my diminutive cousin. We hadn’t had much of a chance to talk, despite the lengthy flight – we’d had to spend too much time dodging war koalas while building a new lighthouse for underprivileged children. (You might want to reread Chapters Five through Forty-One to relive the adventure of it all.)

  I reached out to her. ‘I don’t believe I’ve properly introduced myself. I’m Alcatraz.’

  ‘Aydee Ecks,’ she said energetically. ‘Is it true you have the Breaking Talent?’

  ‘The one and only,’ I said. ‘It’s not everything it’s cracked up to be.’

  ‘No,’ Bastille added, ‘everything else is what it cracks up.’

  ‘What’s your Talent?’ I asked Aydee, shooting a dry look at Bastille.

  ‘I’m really bad at math!’ she proclaimed.

  By now I was getting used to Smedry Talents. I’d met family members who were magically bad at dancing, others who were great at looking ugly in the morning. Being bad at math . . . well, that just seemed to fit right in. ‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘That sounds useful.’

  Aydee beamed.

  Kaz came traipsing back a few moments later, his pack slung on his shoulder. ‘Yup,’ he said, ‘we’re here. The capital city is just a short hike down that direction, but there’s a full Librarian blockade set up around the place.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  The others looked at me, expecting me to take the lead. Partially because of my lineage, but also because I’d organized this trip. It was still odd to be in charge, but I’d taken the lead a number of times now. Though it had originally bothered me, I was getting used to it. (Kind of how listening to really loud music a lot will slowly make your hearing worse.)

  ‘All right,’ I said, kneeling down. ‘Let’s go over our resources. Bastille, what do you have?’