She took her hand off the ground and pressed it flat against the terric spirit’s skin. It was warm to the touch, and the lights flocked toward her fingers. The spirit shifted closer, pressing into her hand.
She looked at her hands. In the spirit’s light, she could see her red and blistered skin. It was a lot better than it had been, but she wasn’t sure it would ever be smooth again. She turned her hands over to look at the palms, and suddenly the memory that had tried to surface a moment before clicked into place. When I tried to apologize for Wîskacân’s hands, he said the pain was his, not mine. Not mine to take. She brought her hands closer to examine them. He was mad. Because I was trying to make it about me. I said it was my fault he was hurt, but actually it was his choice.
“Oh God,” she whispered to herself. “Is that what I’ve been doing all along? Even with Toves?” She looked up at the spirit—the spirit Toves had given his life to free. She wasn’t remembering that Toves had died a hero. Instead, she’d turned him into a reflection of her own failure, a mass of guilt sitting in her stomach. I asked him to stay, but he was the one who decided to do it, and now I’ve made it about me. All those people from the Gloria Mundi too. I’ve been carrying them around like…like I’m the only one that matters. But they were all people. They made the choices that brought them there. That guilt, that blame. It’s not mine to take. Just like Wîskacân said.
The spirit rumbled, and its head pressed forward until it touched her shoulder. Molly leaned into it, pressing her forehead against the warm stone. Vines of light sprouted from the ground and reached up to enwrap her.
“When did I get so self-centered?” she whispered into the spirit’s cheek. She pressed her head harder against its stone. “What am I thinking, wanting to stay here? Everyone else is still out there, everything is still happening. It’s just happening without me.”
She stood up, her weariness swept away, but sat down immediately when the skin across her stomach pulled painfully. “I’ve got to get home.”
The spirit rumbled behind her, and suddenly the ground shifted under her, sliding forward. She fell back but landed on a soft bed of the glimmering vines, which eased her into the grass and curled around her.
“Is that your way of telling me I should rest?” She laughed—and suddenly realized she couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed. She felt lighter than she had in ages. “Okay. I guess I won’t be much good like this, burned to a crisp. Besides, I have no way to get home without Wîskacân.”
She curled onto her side but didn’t close her eyes. She stared down at the glimmering vines that danced in front of her, watching them twine with the orange grass. The movement was hypnotic.
Unbidden, a song rose in her memory, and she hummed it lightly. It was the Irish lullaby her sister had sung to her in their long-ago childhood. The melody had stayed in her head her entire life. When she sang it now, it was tinged by everything that had come later between her and her sister.
But the tune and the vines reminded her of something else. A story Brighid had told her about the time she had visited their mother’s family in Ireland. She’d said it was a place where green sprang from every corner. Growth everywhere. She’d promised they would visit someday, so Molly could see it. There had been a word her sister used to describe the ground in that impossibly green place.
“Loam,” she said aloud, and rolled to look at the spirit. “Would it be okay for me to call you Loam? It’s not your name, I know, but it would be nice to have something I could call you.” The spirit rumbled low and long. Lights danced in its eyes. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it didn’t seem like a rejection. “Okay. Loam.”
She curled down into the grass and closed her eyes.
TWELVE
Someone touched her arm. She opened her eyes and saw Wîskacân leaning over her.
“You have found friends,” he said with a smile and offered her his hand. She took it and stood. “You are well?”
“Yes, good.” She ran her hand along her arm. “It doesn’t hurt anymore. Though I still look like I’ve been boiled.”
Wîskacân nodded.
“How are you?” Molly asked. “How is your family?”
“My family is gone. Since long ago now. But my people are healthy, and Nitassinan has been kind this season. It was good to be home.” As he spoke, he set two leather bags down on the ground and pulled waterskins and some kind of bread from them, offering both to Molly.
“Thank you,” she said after a long drink. “I still don’t understand how you live there. Isn’t it dangerous?” She sat down beside him, and Cog moved over next to her.
“Everywhere is dangerous,” he said. “You mean dangerous for your people.”
“People from Terra Nova who try to explore the Inner Continent disappear. Airships vanish.”
“You bring your enemies in cages with you,” he said.
“You’re talking about spirits?”
He nodded. “There are many spirits on the mainland. They do not care to see their brothers and sisters caged, and when the caged ones are freed, they do not forgive easily.”
“That’s true,” Molly said.
He shook his head. “How is it that you came to be as you are? You come from a people who capture the spirits, yet you set them free. You set me free. You have set yourself against your own people.”
“It’s a long story. I met someone, a spirit, and she taught me better.”
“It is good that you could listen.”
“She’s a good teacher.” She watched him for a moment in silence. His eyes were turned eastward, toward the mainland, as he slowly chewed a piece of bread. His eyes were still and peaceful. He was looking at the land the way she herself looked at the sky. “If you’re from the mainland, how did you end up in that sanatorium?”
He stopped chewing his bread. “One of your ships caught my spirit kin. I tried to set him free, but I could not. They took me there.”
“Then your spirit, is it still trapped?”
“No. He is gone now.”
Molly shivered. She tried to imagine losing Legerdemain—that horrible sense of loss she had felt when they put on the iron harness, but stretching on forever.
“I’m sorry.”
“Do not be sorry. You did not kill him.”
“No. But I used to do that. Catch spirits. Before I understood.”
He examined her and then bent to twine some of Loam’s vines around his fingers. “Your friend must be a good teacher indeed. I wish her words could find the ears of more of your people.”
“I want that too. My family understands now—or most of them do. But…I haven’t found the right way to make other people hear the truth.”
“If that is what you want, you should go where your people are. From this place they cannot hear you at all. Are you well enough to return?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“And will you bring your storm with you? Hurt yourself again?”
“The lightning? No. No, I think that won’t happen again. I figured some things out. I feel calmer now.”
“Good. But remember, sometimes a storm is what is needed.” He put down his bread and stood. “Come. I will make you a gate home.”
Molly looked around—at the rippling sunlight above her, at Cog nestled against her leg, at the huge spirit she called Loam lying a few feet away. “Actually, do you think you could teach me how to make a font for myself? So I can come back here?”
He smiled at her, and she smiled back. “That would be a good thing. This is your home now as well,” he said. “And when you are kept from your home, no matter where you are, you are in a cage.”
Hours later, in the day’s last light, Molly stepped through her font into the human world and sank ankle deep into water. The shore’s closer here than in the spirit world. She splashed ashore and took a moment to look back at her font. There it sat, just as it had in the spirit world—an orb of woven wind, spinning with gold and blue, its heart a dark
gateway. She grinned and dug her fingers between the strands of wind, plucking them apart. As the winds scattered, the dark center winked out—gone elsewhere, Molly knew, to another place where the winds of the two worlds danced together.
And then a roaring exaltation spread through her and knocked her to her knees. She laughed. She could feel Legerdemain again, and his joy at her return was so huge it swamped her own. I’m here! she thought. I’m back! Oh, I’ve missed you so much.
He wasn’t far off, and she could feel him drawing closer as she climbed back to her feet. She waited, watching the far hills until she saw a blue glow rising against the darkening sky, growing bigger and brighter as it came.
He called to her, and she called back wordlessly, giddily, as his wings dipped to bring him to the ground. There were figures crowded at the prow of the ship below him: her father, her brothers and, between them, Ariel, her own brightness almost invisible against Legerdemain’s belly.
As they flew in close, a rope was lowered, and her family descended to the ground. Molly ran forward, arms uplifted. Before she could reach her family, bright streams of wind swept down around her, picking her up and drawing her in against Legerdemain, pressing her into his bright skin. Molly spread her arms across him, feeling the rushing of his winds. Legerdemain crooned softly, vibrating, and Molly laughed.
“That tickles,” she said. “But I’m so, so glad to be back.”
The spirit held her another moment and then let her go, the winds dropping her lightly to the ground beside her family.
“Hi,” she said just before her father rushed forward and lifted her off her feet. Her brothers crowded in beside her.
“We didn’t know where you were. We didn’t know what happened,” her father said softly into her hair.
“I know, Da.”
“You were captured, and something was blocking Legerdemain from tracking you, and then he couldn’t feel you at all, and—” He squeezed her until it hurt.
“Da, easy. I’m still healing.”
He finally put her feet back on the ground but didn’t let her go. “Healing? Are you hurt? Your skin. What did they do to you?”
“The burns were my fault. I’ll tell you about that, I promise. But first, I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to do the right thing, and I’ve been doing it all wrong. I’ve been making it about me when really it’s about all of us. I want to do better, do this properly, change things for good. And I think I have an idea what to do next—or, at least, I know someone who can help. But you might not like what I’m going to suggest.”
“Bloody hell, Moll,” Rory said, gripping her arm. “You got home a second ago, and you want to talk strategy? Give it a rest for a night!”
Molly laughed. “Yeah. Okay.”
Rory was about to say more, but the words caught in his throat. “Really? Okay?”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Are you dying or something? What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Well, nothing new anyway. But it’s good to see you all.”
She hugged Rory, who stood stock-still, and Kiernan, who hugged her back. Then she walked up to Ariel and wrapped her arms around the spirit, feeling her cool winds against her skin.
“I missed you, Ariel.”
“You have changed, Molly. You have been through something and come out the other side.”
“I think, maybe, yeah. Thanks for staying with me, believing in me, even when I didn’t appreciate it.”
“I have nowhere else to be. This is my fight even more than it is yours.”
“You’re right. But I’m still in it too.”
Ariel nodded. “Good. But your brother was right. We can talk about all of that tomorrow. Tonight we are back together, and that is where our focus should be.”
“Okay.” She and her family walked to the rope that trailed in the grass nearby, swaying as Legerdemain beat his wings. They climbed one by one back onto the ship that had been the only home Molly had ever known.
ACT THREE
REVOLUTION
THIRTEEN
“We have to put the ship down.”
Molly could hear her father’s gasp even from several yards away. Everyone stared at her. Molly looked down at the deck below her feet, at the shadow of the masts and rigging. It had taken her a long time to muster the courage to make this suggestion. Don’t back down now.
“I know it sounds bad. But I’ve been thinking about this. Legerdemain has been carrying this huge, heavy ship for us for years now, and it’s not right. It’s not fair, and what’s more, it’s in the way. If we’re going to win this, we need Legerdemain and everything he can do. The ship is holding him back.”
“Molly, you know she’s not made to be put down,” Kiernan said. “The frame can’t hold the ship’s weight if she’s not in the air. She’ll—”
“Crack like an egg. I know. I got the same warnings from Da as you did, remember?”
“It took us half a year to put her back together last time she was set down,” her father said. He wasn’t meeting her eyes. “And we had the Unionists then to help get the planks and tools. If we break her now—”
“I know all of that. And I don’t want to hurt her either. But…” She coughed, trying to clear the lump in her throat. “But the ship’s not alive. And we can do more good without it.”
She watched her father’s face as he wrestled with his thoughts. “For now?” he finally said. “Just for now, and once we’re done, we can pick her back up.”
“For now,” Molly agreed.
There was a moment of silence, and then Rory shouted, “Ha!” and slapped his leg. “New Molly strikes again. I’m in. Let’s crack her open.”
“Respect, please,” their father said softly. “Show her respect. She’s…” He looked around at the Legerdemain, his ship, and Molly could see tears in his eyes. “Oh, hell. Okay. Be gentle about it, Moll.”
Once it was decided, no one seemed in a great hurry to see the task through, not even Molly. They stowed and battened down everything they could. They packed up any gear they thought they would need and even scrubbed the decks. At last, with every possible preparation made, they found a grassy expanse without too many protruding rocks and directed Legerdemain to begin. He lowered the ship until the keel just touched the ground and eased the rest sideways, down onto the port side of the hull. The masts creaked as the ship tilted, and there was a painful cracking from the frame that made them all wince. Molly’s father turned away.
Once the ship was down, Legerdemain let go of the complex weave of winds that cradled it. The tangled skeins of wind had become so familiar, Molly hardly saw them. Without the winds, the Legerdemain settled fully onto its own weight. The masts bent, and with a crack, part of the hull gave in.
“Well, that didn’t sound healthy,” Kiernan said.
“If you broke my room, I get yours,” Rory added.
Molly felt like something inside her chest had collapsed—her ribs, her lungs, her heart—and she couldn’t speak for a moment. She’d been here before, seen her home laid low all those months ago in the derelict shipyard when she had finally set Legerdemain free from the engine. She suddenly felt like she was back there, young and lost, and her home was gone, and there was no one she could talk to.
Her eyes found her father. He still wasn’t looking at the ship, but he had fallen to his knees, and his fingers were wound in the grass. He feels it too, she realized. He loves her like I do, maybe even more. He first bought this ship for my mother. Molly saw tears glimmering in the hairs of his beard. And yet, when I asked, he still decided to let her go.
“Da,” she said. Her father looked up and met her eyes. He swiped away tears but held her gaze.
“So what comes next?” Rory asked.
Molly looked past the ship to the sky. Legerdemain swam through the air above them, stretching his wings without the great weight of the ship to carry. It had always seemed easy for him to carry them all, but wat
ching him now, Molly realized Legerdemain moved very differently without the ship. He banked in the air, one long wing rising until it crossed the sun. Molly smiled as the light shone through the wing, illuminating it. It was good to see Legerdemain flying free. She felt his satisfaction suffuse her through their connection.
“Now we see how much damage Legerdemain can do when we’re not tying him down.”
They struck at five o’clock in the morning, half an hour before shift change, when the guards and orderlies of the Twillingate Sanatorium would be most tired. Legerdemain plunged down from the clouds, trailing an army of winds behind him, and sent them all straight into the back wall. The wall collapsed. And then, just as suddenly, the winds were all doubling back, gathering under Legerdemain’s wings and carrying him skyward. The spirit was there and gone in less than two minutes.
As soon as Legerdemain was safely hidden in the clouds, Molly and the others burst from their hiding place at the foot of the hill where the sanatorium stood. They charged in through the broken wall. Two orderlies with truncheons stood in the middle of the common room, but they were staring in shock at the cracked wall and not moving. Molly had feared they might be prepared for such an attack after her escape, but clearly they weren’t. She sent her own winds into the orderlies, knocking their weapons away. When Molly’s father came at them, fists raised, they turned and ran.
Molly went straight down the hallway, beckoning her brothers after her. They carried a large log between them.
Theresa was standing at her window, watching them come, looking utterly unsurprised. She nodded to Molly, and Molly gestured for her to back up.
Her brothers swung their log into the doorknob. It took two strikes to crack the lock. Theresa opened the door and walked through.
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