by Molly Ringle
Larkin recognized not a thing of the small village he had passed through in his travels, not until spotting a temple spire on a hill. That had been there in his time. Everything else was utterly different. People walked by, looking at their phones. There was not a horse in sight, but instead cars everywhere, lining the streets, making hasty turns, and darting into the spaces between each other.
“What’s happening?” Larkin asked. “The festival? Is that why everyone is in such a hurry?”
Merrick glanced around. “They’re not. The festival stuff will be mostly at the waterfront anyway, not over here.”
“This pace? This is normal?”
“Sure.”
Everyone was dressed far less elaborately than the noble class had in 1799, but Larkin also saw no one as grimy as the poorest classes had been either. Perhaps the world had reached a bland middle ground.
Larkin himself wore ugly shoes that Merrick called “running shoes,” made of gray and blue leather, cotton laces, and soles of some strange material that gave and bounced back like corkwood. They had evidently belonged to Merrick’s father but had been little used and left in the house years ago. The brown jacket, vest, and pale green shirt Larkin wore had reportedly once been Merrick’s grandfather’s. The ensemble was an improvement upon the shirt with the bear, but nonetheless struck Larkin as quite plain. He would perhaps blend in with the citizenry, at least.
“Why is it you are not authorized to use your magic to clean your house, yet your sibling and niece are?” Larkin asked.
Merrick slowed the car at a crossroads marked with a red octagon proclaiming “STOP,” then turned left. “I’ve had some … trouble recently. We have a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule for magical misdemeanors, and I’m already down two. Which is why I don’t want you to divulge my part in this whole thing. Waking you up would be a hell of a third strike.”
“What had you done before?”
They passed several shops and houses. “I tried to use a summoning stick of Rosamund’s to make my mother appear. She’s an air faery. I’ve never met her.”
“You’re part fae?” Larkin tried to keep the astonishment out of his voice. Unsuccessfully.
Merrick kept his eyes on the road. “Yes, half. So is Cassidy. We’re both counted as human.”
Gracious Lady save me, Larkin thought. Highvalleys, witches, and half fae. He recalled, with discomfort, that he had said something opposing fae-human couplings last night, though he had been thinking primarily of Arlanuk and Lucrecia and the difficulties their varying life expectancies and cultures would present. “Does your heritage affect your magic?”
“Seems to. Cassidy and I both pull primarily from air, whereas pure-human witches don’t tend to feel strongly about any one element.”
Larkin nodded. As a pure-human witch, he knew this to be true. “Your other offense, then?”
“I used magic to display a banner that was uncomplimentary to the prime minister.”
“More a political offense than a magical one.”
“An expensive offense, regardless.”
Merrick seemed to take after Rosamund in terms of recklessness. A pity Larkin had to trust his safety to such a one.
They left Sevinee and gained a rather breathtaking speed along the highway that followed the coast. The sun glinted on the ocean, and in glimpses between flowering greenery he caught sight of the east coast’s black-sand beaches. Larkin could almost believe he was in his proper time again, if he ignored the strip of paved road and the car itself. Birds still darted between treetops, the waves still tossed foam onto the sand, the clouds still curdled over the mountains of the fae territory, as ever. But how the towns and cities had changed.
“Where will we stay tonight?” he asked Merrick.
“At my father’s, on the outskirts of Dasdemir. I have friends in the city, but they all live with housemates or family, and we don’t want many people to see you. My dad lives alone; he’s a better choice.”
“Is he part fae as well?”
“Nope. Human. Which is good, because it means he can lie, which Cass and I are bad at. Also, Dad loves island history, so he’ll be thrilled to meet you.”
“Is he expecting us, or shall we be a surprise?”
“He doesn’t know who my guest is yet. I only texted him that I was coming today and bringing a friend. He’s already delighted.”
Larkin nodded, though uneasy at the prospect of allowing yet another Highvalley into his trusted circle. “What does the palace think of our message, I wonder? Strange that they haven’t responded.”
“Clearly they’re looking for you, and whoever’s sheltering you.” Merrick squinted ahead in the sunlight. “I’d rather they didn’t find us.”
“On that we agree.”
Larkin touched the doubly-looped resistance chain at his neck, which nestled under his shirt.
Since dawn, every hour like clockwork, he had felt a light but distinct pull toward Dasdemir along with a suggestion in his mind that he report to the palace. Both effects would be overpowering, he knew, if he removed the charm—gallingly ironic though it was to rely upon a charm of Rosamund’s to preserve his autonomy. The sensation lasted several minutes each time before fading, in the usual way of summoning-stick spells. Though physically resisting it was easy thanks to the charm, it still unsettled him. He’d had no appetite all day.
They were seeking him, and wouldn’t give up until he was found. Or came forward of his own free will, which was how he would prefer it. But how to gain a position of strength from which to withstand their demands on his freedom, and yet not incriminate Merrick in the process?
Near the southernmost tip of Eidolonia, red sand replaced the black, and the forested hills rose more steeply on the road’s inland side. Merrick slowed the car as they drove into the town of Amanecer, smaller than Sevinee; a cluster of white-painted houses peppering the slope all the way down to a little bay, where hundreds of sailboats and fishing vessels bobbed at docks. Larkin remembered none of it except the pair of lighthouses, one upon each rocky point at the mouth of the bay. There had been little else here in his time, save for a few homes and a bit of farmland for the families of the lighthouse keepers.
Merrick stopped the car on a street lined with shops. “I have to drop off some perfumes. There’s a shop here that has a festival stall set up.”
“Might I step out as well?” Larkin asked.
“Sure, but … might be better if you wait outside the shop.”
“That suits me. I wish only to stroll about.”
“Here.” Merrick reached into the seats behind, grabbed a dark blue knitted wool hat, and dropped it on Larkin’s lap. “No one ought to be looking for you in Amanecer, but all the same, better cover up that hair.”
“I shall look like a midnight squid fisher. Nevertheless, I suppose you’re right.” Resigned, he wrapped his braid atop his head and fitted the cap over it.
“That’s better.” Chewing the side of his lip, Merrick examined Larkin, then shrugged as if to say It is all one can do, and opened his car door.
Larkin could not find the proper latch to open his, requiring Merrick to come round and open it for him. Larkin stepped out onto the paved walk, giving Merrick a dignified “Thank you.”
The air smelled of the salty sea, along with spiced foods being cooked, a combination that swept Larkin back to seaside days in his youth. He inhaled it deeply, the lost time making him ache.
Merrick took a box from within the car and shut the door. “I’m just going down there, Daisy’s, on the corner.” He pointed to the shop. “If you want to look at the festival or need toilets or anything, the park’s got all of that.” He nodded across the street to a large grassy park. Dozens of people milled about beneath colorful metal sculptures of sea creatures mounted on poles, with blue and green streamers rippling under them, enchanted to resemble water. Music was playing, something with an aggressively thumping drum. Beyond the park lay the glittering ocean.
“If you do go over there,” Merrick said, sounding nervous, “try to avoid talking to anyone.”
“Yes, all right.” Larkin stepped toward the street, glancing up and down it for carriages—cars, rather.
“I’ll meet you by that octopus in ten minutes.”
Larkin noted the sculpture: a purplish-red creature with curling tentacles. “Very well.”
Even after he had crossed the street, he found Merrick still looking after him. Larkin gave him a nod of reassurance, and Merrick finally nodded back and moved along into the shop.
Larkin skirted the edges of the festival, observing from a distance. Fae and humans mingled, feathers and scales and wings alongside ordinary black hair and various shades of brown skin. As for those with blue or green or pink hair, one could never be sure if it was natural through fae ancestry, the work of a witch, or just a cunning dye. The leafy top of a dryad towered a foot above everyone else, moving gently through the crowd. A pair of dancing fire sprites hovered high enough to be at eye level with most people. On the side of the park nearest the sea, four merfolk lounged on the scattered driftwood, listening to the music, their webbed fingers playing with the gifts of beaded jewelry draped around their necks and wrists.
During the months of Ula Kana’s attacks, merfolk had torn boats apart and drowned the sailors. True, they had likely only done so because Ula Kana had ensnared them with a spell to draw them to her side—a mercifully rare ability among fae, and one that made her especially lethal—but Larkin gave the water fae a wide berth regardless. He stepped onto a log, soothed by the waves’ endless motion. When he shut his eyes, he could almost believe himself in the 1700s again, enjoying a day at the seaside.
Cheers and applause made him turn. Half a dozen performers were bounding into an open space on the grass, some vaulting feet over head in handsprings, all of them in tight-fitting harlequin-like garments whose iridescent patches changed between blue and purple and green in a rippling progression—a matter-witch spell. They each wore a different absurd water-themed hat: a carp head, a jellyfish, a smiling porpoise face.
“Friends!” one of them called. “For Water Festival, we, the Quicksand Theatre Company, bring you … The Quickest Ever Settlers’ Day!”
Everyone cheered again, and the troupe launched into their play. Larkin soon grasped that they had named it “the quickest ever” because they had condensed the story of the first human settlers arriving on the island, in 1722, into an absurdly fast-paced production. The crowd laughed, human and fae alike, and Larkin smiled too as the actors playing the friendly fae picked out his great-grandparents for the king and queen; knocked down a few upstarts who proposed claiming the land for Spain; and informed the humans that, unlike in the countries they had come from, folk on the island could be male, female, or other, and anyone might marry anyone. (“My sister, then?” “No, not that! Ew!”)
“So we can be together at last?” said one male actor, clutching another close to him. “Hurrah!”
Another actor leaped into the scene, wearing knee breeches, a wooden sword, and a long red wig. “Hurrah!” he repeated.
“Oh, you weren’t even born yet; who wrote this script?” another actor retorted. “Go to sleep.”
While everyone laughed, the red-wigged one closed his eyes, pirouetted, and collapsed on his back on the grass in feigned sleep.
Larkin didn’t understand. Then all at once he did.
Heat rushed into his face. His glance shot around, startled—they had found him out! He must escape, warn Merrick—yet, no, nobody was looking at him. All went on smiling and watching the performers, who had already tumbled into a scene showing the settlers asking if they could go to their native countries and bring their families back. The actors playing the fae made ironic replies about how surely nothing could go amiss if a few more humans were added to the island. But the humor had vanished for Larkin.
He stepped down from the log, wanting to—confront them? Stalk away in silent disapproval?
It must in any case be time to seek Merrick under the octopus. He turned, only to find Merrick rushing up to him, breathless.
“Gods, there you are,” Merrick said. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Larkin nodded toward the play. “I was … being entertained.”
Merrick looked at the performers—the fake Larkin was bounding up from the grass to throw off his wig and seize his next costume accoutrements. “Oh.”
“I’ve seen enough. We may go.” Larkin set off around the outside of the crowd.
Merrick joined him. “I thought something had happened to you. Since you don’t have a phone, we need to get emergency buttons in case we get separated again. They’re these—”
“Tell me, the wig you carried, for the festival. Was it part of a Prince Larkin costume, by any chance?”
Merrick fell silent for a few paces. “It’s common to do plays with historical figures in them. Every festival. People find new ways to do it, so there’s still novelty—”
“Then you mean to say ‘yes.’”
“It’s done affectionately. I promise.”
Larkin pressed his lips shut. It was beneath his dignity to complain, and in any case public attention and ridicule had both been a part of his life since birth. But to see his horrible sleep treated as a jest, and himself treated as history—long-past history, as far from these people as the Middle Ages had been from him—shook his foundations like an earthquake. He had little hope of making Merrick understand this, and no inclination to try.
“I spoke to no one,” Larkin said, resuming a casual tone. “None recognized me, and no harm came to me, as you see.”
“Okay,” Merrick answered softly.
They got into the car and set off, neither saying a word.
CHAPTER 14
MERRICK HAD NO IDEA HOW TO TALK TO Larkin. That had been clear from the moment of waking him, and though they had begun to get along during the night’s negotiations, Merrick’s skills had evidently deteriorated over the course of the day. The more Larkin learned about the modern world and about Merrick, the less he liked both, apparently.
Merrick supposed he would resent it too, seeing himself reduced to a quick laugh by comedians who had never met him, but surely a royal had to be used to things like that? To judge from Larkin’s stony silence, however, the prince wasn’t taking it lightly. Which probably had more to do with finding himself two centuries out of time than with the festival performance, and Merrick couldn’t imagine where to begin addressing that.
Thus he kept his mouth shut the rest of the drive to Dasdemir, speaking only at a rest stop to instruct Larkin, quietly, about the facilities he was leading him into, and then to ask him at a food stand whether sushi was all right for lunch. Larkin consented with a nod after Merrick described what it was, and, sitting on a park bench at the rest stop with the blue cap covering his hair, ate a little of the sushi and drank the bottle of water without comment.
At the fuel station shop, Merrick bought a pair of red emergency buttons, flat and round and as small as seed pearls. He explained them to Larkin when they got into the car again. “These are the buttons I was talking about. They’re paired; they communicate with each other. You squeeze one … ” He pinched one in his fingers. The other sparked to life with a flashing red light and a burst of hissing sound. “Now we’re communicating,” he said into the first, and his voice echoed from the other. “You can tell me to come find you. They track each other’s location too.” He pinched it again, and they went quiet.
“How curious.” Larkin took off the cap to scratch his head. His braid fell down his shoulder. “Technology, I suppose.”
“Yes, boosted by magic. People are allowed to buy and sell these, since they’re for safety. So.” He examined Larkin’s attire, then picked up the braid and affixed a red button to the back of one of the cloth clovers in his hair, using the tiny Velcro patch on the button. Merrick
stuck the other button to the inside of his own jacket.
They drove on. A bead of sweat trickled down Merrick’s ribs as they neared the Dasdemir city limits. What if the police had cameras snapping pictures of every car? Whether they did or not, no one stopped them and he saw no greater than usual number of police cars, nor palace guard cars.
When the car crested a hill and Dasdemir spread into view, Larkin pulled in a sharp breath. His gaze locked onto the twisting pale-yellow towers in the heart of the city, topped with gold globes and statues, with lava-and-ocean flags fluttering from the topmost spires: Floriana Palace, named for the Spanish ship that brought the first queen and king. Larkin’s home, surrounded by a new sea of modern clutter.
“Dare I ask the population of Dasdemir now?” Larkin said.
“About five hundred thousand.”
“Unimaginable.” Larkin looked up and down the slope, at the houses sprawling across the land.
Merrick decided not to bring up for comparison the current populations of London, Mexico City, or Tokyo.
They wound along the hillside, staying in the outskirts. Merrick stopped for one more break, in a small tree-shaded park. They had it to themselves; evidently festival celebrations in larger venues had drawn people elsewhere. Down the hill, beyond the city, lay the ocean, a shimmering blanket of seawater under the setting sun.
“I’ll see if Sal’s around.” Merrick got out his phone. “Hopefully we can talk to her before going to my dad’s for the night.”
Merrick: Hey, I’m in town. Are you home?
Sal: Not yet. Having a lovely time in Miryoku so am staying an extra night. But I have to teach tomorrow, so I’ll be back then! I’ll be available after 4:00
“Gods damn it,” Merrick muttered.