“Toves, we should really go.”
“Moll, hurry!” her father called from the deck of the ship. “Kier says there are airships!”
“Come on, Toves,” Molly said. She gave him a hard push, which didn’t move him an inch.
Toves rumbled. “Look, I don’t do so well off the ground. Spirit of the earth and all that. Less than half an hour?”
“Yes! Now get on so we can get you home!”
“Home,” Toves rumbled, and he finally rolled the rest of the way onto the canvas. Molly waved to her father, who backed out of sight. A moment later the ropes attached to the four corners of the canvas pulled taut, and Toves was lifted off the ground. Molly gripped one of the ropes to catch a ride up. She could hear Toves groaning inside the canvas.
“Are you okay?”
“Just get us there bloody fast.” The groaning continued. It sounded as if his stones were grinding against each other. The sound made Molly’s hackles rise.
Once they reached the deck, Rory stepped forward to pull them in. Molly’s father let go of the rope he had been hauling, and Toves fell to the deck with a thud.
“Best go now,” Kiernan called from the ship’s prow. “One of the airships is turning our way.”
Molly moved up next to her brother. Usually she could see airships from a long distance away—the winds they wove to stay aloft were incredible, and to Molly’s spirit-touched eyes they made the ships blaze like beacons. But she could only see clear skies and undisturbed rivers of wind where Kiernan was looking.
“Where are they?” she asked. Kiernan pointed, and gave her the spyglass. She raised it and finally made out the dark outline of a ship, still miles away. It was a strange shape—shallow-hulled and wide, with no sails that she could see. “I don’t understand. It doesn’t have any winds around it. What’s holding it up?”
“Whatever it is, it’s got a silver sword painted on its side, so I doubt it’s friendly.”
Molly nodded. “Legerdemain, better get us out of here.” The spirit lifted its wings and called a strong wind to them. They soared upward, banking out over the water before turning to the west. The dark airship they had seen was left far behind.
As they climbed above the clouds, Toves cried out. He was still struggling to heave himself out of the canvas, but he seemed to be having trouble moving. His stones kept scattering, and one escaped completely and rolled across the deck. Molly ran to catch it before it bounced overboard.
She brought the stone back to Toves where he lay flat across the deck, still half covered by the canvas. She placed the stone with his others, and it slowly sank into the spirit’s body.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Like blazes. Just get me back to the ground as fast as you can.”
“Oh bloody hell. Molly, we’ve got a problem.”
Molly’s father was leaning out over the starboard side, spyglass to his eye. “What is it, Da? Another airship?”
He offered her the spyglass, and she looked through. Her breath stopped in her throat. “Oh.”
“You see it?”
“I see it.”
Up ahead, she could make out what looked like a mine shaft—the entrance to the terric font that was their destination. There was a huge ferratic perched at the edge of the shaft. It looked something like a badger, save that it was ten feet tall and bristling with metal plates. Its long claws flexed, digging furrows in the rock beneath it. Hunched and jagged, it loomed over several human workers who were unloading spirit traps from a lift that descended into the shaft.
“I don’t understand. The record said it wasn’t being harvested. There was no crew listed!”
“Well, I’d say it’s got a full crew now, plus some security with muscle.” He took the spyglass back from her. “We should make new plans, Moll. This isn’t going to work.”
Molly stared down at the activity below them, trying to will it away. The sun was brushing the horizon, the light changing from white to gold, and several large trucks began to rumble away over the hills, heading for Terra Nova. The day’s work was ending. But dozens of workers remained, and the ferratic was going nowhere.
Beside her, she heard her father asking Legerdemain to skirt the mine, so they wouldn’t draw attention. Molly kicked the gunwale and turned, striding back to the aft mast where Toves lay. She hadn’t seen the terric spirit move for ten minutes.
“Toves, there’s a problem. They’re harvesting the font. Full crew, big ferratic. We might have to look elsewhere.”
A few of Toves’s rocks scraped across the deck, but he said nothing.
“Toves? Did you hear?”
“Yeah yeah.” His voice was barely a whisper.
Molly stepped closer and crouched over the spirit. “Are you okay?”
“Okay is not the word for it,” he muttered, and Molly bent closer to hear his faint voice. “Gotta get to the ground. Gotta get…home.”
“But the font isn’t safe, Toves. How bad is it? Can you hold up if we need to go somewhere else?”
The only answer was a long, rumbling groan.
There was a rush of bright wind, and Ariel swept in over the deck. “Molly!” she said. “There is a complication. The font is—”
“I know. We saw.”
“You saw the tunnel rat?”
“Is that what that big ferratic is?” Molly’s father said, and Ariel nodded.
“Tunnel rat. Bloody hell,” Toves wheezed, and Molly pressed her hands to her temples. She and Toves had run into a tunnel rat once before, when he had helped her break into Arkwright’s mansion. She hadn’t seen the ferratic then, but she’d seen the way it could carve through solid stone like it was sand. Even Toves had been terrified of it.
“Maybe now that we’re out of the city, Toves can find us a font,” Rory said. “Terric spirits can find terric fonts, right?”
“I don’t…I don’t think…” Toves muttered, then fell silent.
“He’s hurt or sick or something. From being up in the air,” Molly said. “I think we have to get him home soon.”
“But we can’t, Moll,” her father said. “We can’t go up against a ferratic like that.”
“We don’t have a choice, Da! I said we would get Toves home.”
“Not at the cost of our lives! We have to keep ourselves safe too!”
“If you can stop shouting at each other for a moment, I may have a way to do both,” Ariel said. “As I said, this complicates things, but complications can be overcome. We must get ourselves down to the shore. There is someone we should speak to.”
They found a spot on the shore where Legerdemain could drop them, hidden from the terric mine by jagged cliffs. Molly shoved the limp Toves back into the canvas, and they lowered him down. The stones of his body spilled loosely out onto the rocky shore, barely holding together. “Never doing that again,” he muttered. “Bloody airships.” He fell still and silent.
By the time they were all on the ground, the sun had vanished from the sky. Molly watched ribbons of wind wending their way eastward, stars glimmering between them. Legerdemain rose up and drifted out over the water, disappearing among the winds. Even after he flew out of sight, Molly could still feel his worry.
Ariel floated out over the water, her blue light frosting the low waves. Molly followed her to the edge of the rocky beach. “You said we were going to speak to someone? I don’t see anyone here.”
“Patience. She is coming,” Ariel said, drifting back and forth. “There. Just below me.”
Molly looked down, but saw only the dark water. Ariel made a strange burbling sound.
“Ariel?”
“She is nervous.”
“She?”
The surface of the water broke, and Molly saw scales glimmering in the blue light. Two eyes emerged from the water and blinked up at her. It was some kind of fish, fat-bodied and iridescent.
“An aqueous spirit?”
Molly stepped forward, but the fish drew back, and the water hunched
up around it as if to defend the small spirit. Ariel made the burbling sound again, and it stopped moving. Molly approached more slowly this time. The fish blinked up at her, silver lights in its eyes glowing and fading in rhythm with the waves.
“She has told me there is another way into the mine,” Ariel said.
The fish raised her mouth above the waves. “There is a tunnel,” she whispered, her wide lips bending awkwardly to fit the human words.
“Would it take us to the font?” Molly asked. The fish nodded. “Where is it?”
“Here. Below us.”
“Underwater? But we can’t travel underwater. I don’t even know how to swim!” She looked down at the spirit, into her shining eyes. She seemed to shrink under Molly’s attention. “Can you help us? Clear the water out?”
The small head shook. “She cannot move that much water,” Ariel said. “She is young, and not as strong as that. But I have looked, and I believe the tunnel is narrow enough that you could traverse it without much swimming.”
“What about, you know, breathing?”
“I can provide air while we are underwater.”
“But what if I can’t get to you in time? I can’t swim, what if—”
“Molly, the winds listen when you call them. You can bring your own air if you are worried.”
Molly breathed deep and looked down into the water, but in the dark she could see nothing below the surface.
“What you need to be asking isn’t if you can, but if you bloody well should,” her father said. Molly turned, but in the shadows of the cliff she could hardly see him—just the curve of his shoulders and two glimmering eyes. “You want to dive down underwater, without knowing how to swim, to break into an active terric harvest with God knows what defenses. All we’ve seen is the surface. Who knows what we’ll find belowground. And for what?”
“To help Toves,” Molly said. “He’s sick. We made him sick when we took him aloft, and he needs—”
“Why is his life more important than yours?”
Molly paused, caught off guard by the anger in his voice. He hadn’t raised his voice to her in months now, not since the night he’d gotten drunk and thrown her out of their house, before he had read Haviland’s true journal, before the Gloria Mundi and everything else.
“It’s not more important. But it’s not less important either.”
“It is if—” he began, but stopped short. She could see his eyes staring out at her from his shadowed face. And then he turned, and she heard his footsteps retreating back toward the cliff.
“Da?” He didn’t stop, and she was afraid to raise her voice further, lest the crew at the mine hear her.
“I can talk to him,” Kiernan said beside her. Molly turned and saw him watching the aqueous spirit curiously. “It sounds like a good plan, Molly. It’s just hard for Da. All of this.” He shrugged and walked after their father.
Molly turned to the aqueous spirit. “Thank you for your help.” The spirit nodded once and then disappeared into the water, leaving not even a ripple behind. Molly listened to the waves at her feet. “Ariel, can you show me how to bring wind underwater?” she asked.
“Call the winds, and hold them close.”
Molly reached up. A small golden thread of wind broke away from the eastward procession and bent down to her outstretched hand. She wrapped it in her fingers, holding it tightly. It shimmered in her hand for a moment, then fractured and broke into filaments that dissolved into the air.
“Not so tightly, Molly.”
“Then how do I make it stay?”
“You cannot make it stay. You can only ask.”
Molly reached up again. When the wind came down she took it in her hands, but this time kept her fingers loose. Come with me, she thought. Keep me safe down there. As she thought the words, more wind flowed down through her hands and circled her arms, stirring the small hairs on her skin and making her shiver. The wind entwined itself about her entire body, shifting constantly. It felt almost the same as when Ariel held her.
“Better,” Ariel said.
Molly knelt on the rocks and put her wind-wrapped hand into the water. The water parted as the wind touched it. When she withdrew her hand, it was dry.
“This will stay with me?”
“As you breathe it, it will lose strength. But it should be ample for your needs.”
“Except we have to get back out again, and there’s no wind at the bottom of a mine.”
Ariel flew closer. Her human shape became more definite, more solid, and her hands reached out to Molly’s shoulders. “You forget this from time to time, Molly, but you are not alone. I am here. Your family is here. I will be able to provide air for everyone on our return. Not every responsibility is yours.”
Molly clenched her teeth. “I know that.” I might actually feel better if it was just me. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about getting you all killed. “With the factories, I knew what we were doing. This is new.”
“As was the first factory. As was the Gloria Mundi, which was considerably more formidable than this small harvest.”
“Okay.”
Molly checked the wind still wrapped around her. She looked over to where her father had retreated, against the cliff. He met her eyes and scowled, but nodded his head. Molly moved closer to the heap of stones that was Toves.
“It’s time, Toves. Can you move yourself, or do we need to rig something up?”
“No. I can do it.” The stones heaped up and then fell again, but on the second attempt Toves formed his body and rolled down into the surf. “First the air and now the damned water,” she heard him mutter.
“When you need a breath, come to me,” Ariel said to everyone. “Stay close.”
The waves parted around Ariel as she flew downward, water frothing around her. Rory followed, then Kiernan and their father. Molly put her foot into the water, and it immediately soaked through her shoe. She stepped in farther, and the water began to part around her legs and the wind that wrapped them. The water got through in small cold splashes against her skin.
She stopped. Ariel’s glimmering form was sinking away into blackness below her. It’s always worse before you start. So start. The beach fell away as she walked forward, and then she was in up to her chest, her shoulders, her mouth. She closed her eyes and let the water flow over her head.
Once she was submerged, she opened her eyes again, letting them adjust. She couldn’t see well in the murky salt water, but Ariel glowed from below, easy to follow even when the rest of the world was a blur. Molly found handholds in the rocks and dragged herself downward. Why didn’t I ever learn to swim? She vaguely remembered a day at the lakeside with her brothers and Brighid, Kiernan and Rory splashing her mercilessly, her sister ignoring them all.
Ariel’s light illuminated the dark mouth of the tunnel, just a couple of yards below Molly. Molly couldn’t see her brothers. They must already be in the tunnel. Ariel flew inside, her blue light going with her. By the dimmer light of her own winds, Molly watched her father follow Ariel. Toves went after him, flowing inside stone by stone, leaving Molly alone in the ocean. She put her lips to her arm and took a breath of the wind there before pulling herself through the opening. Ariel’s bright light turned the others into silhouettes in the murky water ahead.
The tunnel was narrow enough for Molly to touch both walls when she stretched out her arms. She dug her fingers into the stones and pulled herself forward, legs out straight behind her. Just keep moving.
The walls narrowed, and the top of Molly’s head brushed the jagged ceiling. Molly’s breath escaped in a cloud of bubbles, and she raised her arm for another deep lungful. The golden glimmer of the wind flickered as she breathed, and Molly felt more water splashing through onto her skin. She closed her eyes for a moment. Not far. Keep going. Below her, Toves rolled across the tunnel floor like a slow landslide.
There was an opening in the ceiling ahead, and Kiernan pulled himself through. Molly watched impatiently as Rory
moved into the opening. She took another breath and felt a strange fizzing against her skin. The wind around her chest was fading and fracturing, turning into a cloud of bubbles in the water. No, no. She snatched at the bubbles as if she could bring them back, but they flowed through her fingers. Her heart drummed in her ears. Her lungs began to burn. Her father was in the opening now, kicking hard to push through, and Toves was rolling forward. Molly kicked ahead of Toves. Let me through, let me through! She pushed up, tangling herself in her father’s legs. His foot connected painfully with her nose, but she didn’t stop—she needed to get up, to find air.
Toves pressed into her from below, and for a moment she thought he was going to crush her. But his stones lifted her and her father up, and her flailing arms splashed into open air—Air! Thank God, air!—and she rose onto her knees and breathed in deep. She rolled off Toves’s back onto the craggy ground. She blinked the salt from her stinging eyes. There were hands on her shoulders now, and she looked up to see her father again.
“Moll, you okay? What happened?”
“I’m okay. Sorry, Da.”
“Near gave me a heart attack, coming up at me like that.”
“It was just…the tunnel, all that stone around us, and the water, and then my air ran out.” She took another deep breath. “Sorry, Da. And thanks, Toves.”
“Welcome,” Toves said, his voice still sounding ragged. “Don’t blame you for panicking. Not natural, all that water.” His stones rattled together.
She pulled herself up to sitting and looked around. They were crammed together in a small cave, close enough that Ariel’s winds made everyone’s hair dance. Across from them was a low, dark tunnel, and Kiernan had crawled halfway inside.
“This looks like it leads out to the mine,” he said. “It’s a tight squeeze though.”
“Toves, could you open the passage up wider?” Molly asked.
Terra Nova Page 5