She took a deep breath and was full of the moment and the sky. There was so much—the terns and the gulls up above, the slick red backs of the crabs racing for the pools, the giddy little boats tipping their red sails out in the distance, the shacks up the hillside, the scavenger gang watching to make sure she wasn’t there to forage . . .
I beat you again, she told the sea, her beloved enemy. We saved everyone from you, and we survived. I’ll keep beating you, you’ll see. I won’t let you kill me. But you can’t make me live in fear of you, either.
With her toes, she gripped the shingle of her beloved island. Her gang was hers again, and the warmth of that belonging was like the sun on her skin. Things were not the same as they had been, and they never would be. Selphin’s crew-family could no longer see her as the little kid they had watched grow. Now their affection was mixed with the same wary respect they showed storms, whirlpools, and Rigg. Nobody talked about Selphin as Rigg’s successor, but Rigg and Sage had taken to beckoning her over when they discussed plans for the gang’s expansion.
Perhaps there were worse fates than becoming a smuggler queen. Selphin smiled up at the sky, knowing that Lady’s Crave was hers, hers, hers . . .
There had been a long debate about how much the old priests should be told. Could they bear to hear that their carefully guarded secrets were spreading through the Myriad? Or that Quest, their friend of decades, had been a traitor in their midst? While the staff agonized over this issue, somehow the priests managed to hear about it anyway. Rumor is like sand: Once it starts blowing around, it is very hard to keep it out of anywhere.
Some of the priests were bitterly distressed by the news. Others took refuge in denial and refused to acknowledge it.
After the initial shock, sorrow, and rage, however, many of them started to talk. For decades their oaths and habits of secrecy had kept their tongues under seal. Now that all was lost, they had nothing more to lose.
In particular, they talked to Hark.
He had been nervous about returning to Sanctuary. After all, he had fled its halls after driving most of the priests to frenzy with the god-heart. Besides, he knew that he was different now. He was no longer the same desperate-to-please boy who had pretended to be cheery and harmless, to keep everyone off guard and at arm’s length.
The other Sanctuary staff didn’t know how to treat him. He was no longer indentured, he was Marked, and rumor hung above him like a storm cloud.
The priests, however, opened up to him like flowers. They saw the weaving white mark in his hair, and perhaps even the Undersea reflected in his eyes. There was an unspoken understanding. He and they were bruised veterans from the same war, even if they had not been on the same side.
The stories tumbled out.
Hark heard about the time Entreater-of-the-Torrent prevented Kalmaddoth from devouring everyone on Maddothmain by talking to it nonstop for nearly two days and finally persuading it to swim off in pursuit of the moon’s reflection.
He heard about the youthful, passionate affair between Call-of-the-Air and Fifth Lament. Once, they had even smuggled wine and sweetmeats down in a bathysphere with them and enjoyed a romantic interlude, fairy-lit by phosphorescent creatures of the deep.
Wailwind turned out to have a daughter, whom he had kept at a distance so that he would betray none of the priesthood’s secrets as his wits faded. Now Hark saw them together, rebuilding their bridges one invisible brick at a time.
Moonmaid was the real revelation. She was enraged by Quest’s treachery and even more furious that his accounts might shape forever how people saw the priests. She was determined to set the record straight, so she kept cornering Hark to pelt him with jagged anecdotes. Her personality still struck Hark as cold, but he learned that she could also be interesting and clever, with a ruthless eye for character.
Best of all, the priests felt free to talk and reminisce together, now that they were less fearful of being overheard. Once, to his astonishment, Hark saw Moonmaid and tiny Seamist both laughing so hard at some shared memory that he feared for their health.
In the evening, Hark went to Lady’s Crave. He headed to one of the old taverns where the salvage crews and submariners drank, the sort where storytelling always started by moonrise. It was an inn where Hark had gone when he was a little kid, to hear stories of the gods, and smuggling runs, and missions to the deep, and faraway lands. He had hung around on the edge of the crowd or wriggled in under a table, straining to hear some of the story, like a stray cat prowling for scraps.
This time, he didn’t have to elbow a space in the tavern. The crowd shifted and made room for him, the way they did for friends and dangerous people. They no longer saw him as a skinny Shelter kid or Jelt’s sidekick. They saw a teller of stories strange and true, with his adventures written across his scalp. A space was cleared for him on a bench.
Hark had arrived halfway through the telling of a tale, as he had so many times before. This time, however, he didn’t feel confused or left out. No stories were complete anyway. They were all really just parts of a bigger tale that could only be told by many different voices and seen through many different eyes. There was always more of the story to learn.
The story was being told through a sea-kissed song. The “singer” was magnificent, creating silent music through her swaying as she signed, the expressions of her face ever shifting and expressive as the sky. A drummer held the beat, but everyone in the tavern matched it by stamping on the floor in time, sending an ever stronger vibration through the timbers. It was the heartbeat of the story, and everyone could feel it through body and soul. It filled Hark with a feeling of kinship and strength.
It was a story of doomed lovers on a salvage mission to the Undersea, and Hark could tell that the singer had really been to those deeps. She showed him anguish, beauty, and terror, and every moment was mesmerizing.
Stories, stories. He had always been a storyteller, of sorts—eager to entertain, or win people over, or get something he wanted, or play the hero for a bit. Now other people’s stories were the treasures he prized. He was a storykeeper for gods and heroes.
Once he could read and write, he would travel, he realized. He would leave Sanctuary and sail all over the Myriad. He would collect stories everywhere and save them before they could fade away from everyone’s memory. You could keep people alive forever through stories.
“What about you?” someone called to Hark, after the sea-kissed song ended. “Are you telling us one tonight?”
They wanted to hear the true story of the Cataclysm, or the Gathergeist’s strange dealings with the lantern wraiths of the deep, or the priests’ daring theft of the Dawn Sister’s gelatinous tresses while she slept. Of course he would tell one of those true tales tonight, while the audience listened, spellbound.
For now, however, he was aware of others in the crowd, still mustering the courage to raise their voices. The old woman with tattoos from three submarines along her thin arm. A polite middle-aged man with a continenter medal pinned discreetly under his collar. A young man Hark recognized, looking nervous and rueful without his Leaguer uniform.
Hark could see the stories they yearned to tell glimmering in their eyes. They could be coaxed out, with a little effort.
“In a while,” Hark answered, “I’m listening for now.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank: Ella, a young reader who contacted me to ask whether I would ever consider including a deaf character in one of my books, triggering a small avalanche in my brain that resulted in the invention of the sea-kissed, after which she generously became my expert consultant; the other members of the Young People’s Advisory Board of the National Deaf Children’s Society (Amber, Adam, Cam, Esther, Francesca, Ida, Jayden, Jovita, Lily, Lucy, Molly, Mollie, Lucy, Reuben, Rhodri, Sam, Sarah and Zain) for all their incredibly useful input; My sensitivity readers (Jane Newman, Judith Tarr and Kayleigh Goacher, plus Ella, Jovita, Francesca and Ida from the YAB); Rosie Eggleston; my editor
Rachel Petty for not screaming when I handed her a first draft slightly bigger than the moon, and for helping me hack it down to something book-sized; my agent Nancy Miles; Martin for putting up with a crazed, feral, semi-nocturnal author-girlfriend in deadline crisis for months; Rhiannon Lassiter for preternaturally clear-sighted feedback; Ships Beneath the Sea: A History of Subs and Submersibles by Robert F Burgess; Half Mile Down by William Beebe; The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss; The Incredible Record-Setting Deep-Sea Dive of the Bathysphere; Being Deaf: The Experience of Deafness, edited by George Taylor and Juliet Bishop; Inside Deaf Culture by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries; Deaf Culture Our Way: Anecdotes from the Deaf Community by Ry K. Holcomb, Samuel K. Holcomb, and Thomas K. Holcomb; and last of all, every scuba instructor and dive leader who has shown me the strange glories of the deep.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frances Hardinge is the winner of the 2015 Costa Book of the Year for The Lie Tree, one of just two young adult novels to win this major UK literary prize. She is the author of several books for young people, including Cuckoo Song, Fly By Night, Verdigris Deep, and A Face Like Glass. She lives in England.
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