by J. M. Lee
“Why are you giving this back to me?” Amri asked.
“A reminder of my generosity,” skekSa said. “Come. I reckon you all believe any moment I’ll strap you down and have you attached to some infernal contraption. I will call a boat and return you to shore.”
By the time skekSa left them on the lone dock in the bay, the suns were rising. Watching skekSa’s ship submerge under the pink-tinged sky, Amri suddenly felt as if every bone in his body were made of stone.
Onica was waiting for them wrapped in a quilted shawl.
“Ethri told me what happened. We need to talk.”
“About that, and other things,” Naia said. “I think whatever you learned talking to Maudra Ethri, I just made it worse.”
Onica took Naia’s shoulder and said, “We will persevere.”
As they followed Onica to her ship, Amri stole one look back. skekSa’s ship was nothing but bubbles.
Onica’s cabin was more welcome than Amri could have imagined, dim and warm and dry. Even if the ship creaked with the sound of wood and water, it was not the constant deep burbling and breathing of the behemoth ship. It was a boat, but at least it was a familiar one.
Onica nodded solemnly when they told her what had happened.
“Ethri told me as much,” she said. “I stayed to speak with her crew, to see if I could learn how we might change her mind, but they were all close-lipped. Even to me. I fear too much has changed, and too quickly, since I last had Ethri’s confidence.”
“Staya said the signs were against her,” Kylan said. “Against her plan to leave and cross the Silver Sea. Is that true?”
“There are many signs, all with many meanings. What I know is that the tide is against a northward journey, and the wind this time of season would make it impossible if it weren’t for skekSa’s promise to help. And aside from that, no one even knows what’s across the Silver Sea. Ethri is well aware of all this, yet she plans to defy the signs . . . It is not the Sifa way. Something has come over her. I don’t know if it is the fear of the Skeksis, or that she is being manipulated by Lord skekSa.” Onica sighed and pushed her fingers through her hair before adding, “Worst of all, I fear she is no longer the Ethri I knew.”
Tavra stepped out of Kylan’s hands, approaching Onica.
“Then we must accept her for who she is now,” she said. “Tomorrow, we will speak with her. She will change her mind . . . I will make sure of it. What happened tonight is proof of our dire circumstances.” Next, she turned toward Amri. His neck hurt where she’d drawn blood. He tried to shrug it off, though he couldn’t shake the feeling of her voice driving itself through his body, controlling his limbs with crystal whispers.
“Amri, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know what you’re sorry about. I’m the one who tried to do something stupid that almost got us all killed,” he mumbled.
“I didn’t do it on purpose. I just didn’t want you to—”
She reached out to him, but he pulled his hand away. It was still sore from gripping the sword. In his mind, he saw a different night unfold: one where he struck skekSa with the tiny blade. She didn’t die, not that way. She was only enraged, snatching the weapon from his weak grasp. Flinging it across the room and bringing her other claws across Naia’s neck. All because he’d tried to be a hero.
“I’m tired,” he said.
He took the sword from his belt and set it on the table beside Tavra. He found a darker corner of the cabin among the cushions and quilts, wrapped his cloak tight around his shoulders, and pretended to go to sleep.
CHAPTER 12
While the day outside awakened, soon the cabin was quiet with the gentle sounds of sleep. When he heard snoring, Amri quietly pushed the quilt away, sighing. His body was exhausted but his mind refused to rest. So while the others slept, he silently crept out onto the deck.
The sunrise was a lovely one. Only the Rose Sun was up, not bright enough to hurt his eyes yet. Perhaps he was finally becoming accustomed to the daylighter sky. He found a spot on the bow and huddled in his cloak, watching the ships bob in the bay, backed by the sweeping headlands of the coast.
A sight that, only a single trine ago, he would never have expected to see for himself. Had a Far-Dreamer come into the deep Caves of Grot and told him that he would soon leave the caverns he’d lived in all his life on a journey that would take him to every reach of the Skarith Land, he would have laughed. He’d studied every apothecary tome available, tasted every old musty spice in the Tomb, even if they’d gone bad. He’d never thought he would step foot on the snowy ridges near Ha’rar, nor ride aboard a Sifa soothsayer’s boat.
But now, looking out on the bay, he only felt an intense longing. As if he’d reached for the branch of a tree, only to find once he grasped it, the rock he’d been standing on had fallen from under his feet. He missed the caves. He missed the Tomb of Relics, filled with promises of the mysterious, strange daylighter world without the dangers that pervaded it.
How easy would it be, he wondered, to hop onto the dock and head inland? He would have to cross the Claw Mountains, but mountains were full of tunnels and caves—terrain he understood. If he traveled under the highlands, he would land in the northern pass of the Dark Wood, where the Black River cut through. Follow the river and in another two days’ time, he could be back in the Caves of Grot. Back where he belonged.
“Thought I heard you come out here . . . Are you all right?”
Amri looked over his shoulder as Naia joined him. She sat close enough to him that they could share warmth in the chilly morning.
“Just thinking,” he said.
“About what happened last night?” she asked gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know what there is to say.”
Naia nudged him with her elbow. “Just start talking. Words will come . . . If you want to, that is.”
He had plenty of feelings but he balked at saying them out loud. He tried to come up with something lighthearted to say, but instead of the usually endless-seeming well of quips, all he found was an empty pit of embarrassment and weariness.
Naia put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
“Amri. It’s all right. No one got hurt last night, you know? And it’s not like I don’t understand what you were feeling. I thought it was pretty brave what you did, actually.”
“Now you’re just saying things to make me feel better.”
“No, really! I remember how scared I was the first time I faced a Skeksis. I didn’t think I could do it. I thought Gurjin was dead, and Tavra . . . I’ll never forget. It takes a lot of guts to do what you did.”
Amri scoffed when he felt his cheeks warm. “We’re just lucky the only Skeksis I decided to attack ended up being the one that was willing to forgive me. Can you imagine what would have happened if I’d actually stabbed her? She could have . . .”
“But she didn’t. And I won’t forget what you did back in the snow. You really gave the Chamberlain something to remember.”
She grinned and Amri smiled a little, thinking back on the look on the Chamberlain’s face. But then he remembered what Tavra had said when she had decided to teach him to use her sword.
You’re not going to be able to rely on Grottan tricks every time.
His smile faded.
“I just don’t know what to do.” He noticed he was wringing his hands and made a fist instead. “I’m trying so hard to do things the daylighter way, but I’m not very good at it. I can’t see very well, and I don’t know anything about anything . . . I can hardly walk upright without tripping on my own feet.”
She hesitated, then put her hand on his clenched knuckles. Her silence filled Amri’s heart with a fragile feeling, like he’d shown her something by accident. Something he hadn’t even known was there himself, and now that he was telling her, it all came spilling out.
Naia caught her breath in her throat. “Oh, Amri . . .”
She didn’t try to untangle his fists, didn’t tell him not to be sad. Didn’t scold him or tell him he was wrong for feeling the way he felt. She just rested her hand on his, and at that moment, it was all he needed. She was with him. Straightforward and truthful, and still sitting beside him despite what he’d told her and what they were up against.
The loneliness clenching his heart loosened.
“Augh!” he cried. “I thought the problem was going to be getting people to believe. I thought once they believed, they would know the right thing to do! But Maudra Ethri still plans to sail tonight. We only have a day to figure out how to stop her. And then there’s skekSa—I don’t know what to do!”
“I’m disappointed, too,” Naia admitted. “Nothing is simple anymore. But it’s not your responsibility to figure this out on your own. We all need to be honest with each other, and rely on each other. If we do that, we’ll figure it out. After all, the whole point of this is for us to trust despite difficult times. Come together as Gelfling . . . all of us. Including you. Including the Grottan.”
He sighed. Wanted to believe.
“You think we can?” he asked.
She grinned. “I promised I’d bring you home to Great Smerth, didn’t I? We’ll have to find a way, if we’re going to make it all the way south to Sog! Then you can meet Gurjin, too, and my sisters and my parents. They would love to meet you.”
Amri badly wanted that. He let the idea, that hope, lighten his heart.
“You think Gurjin made it back all right?”
Naia rolled her shoulders and tilted her head. There was no way for them to know for sure, and they had been traveling for so long, it was doubtful even a messenger swoothu could find them. Even if it brought good news. Naia leaned back and faced up into the sky, wiggling her feet back and forth while she thought. He worried he’d asked a question that would make her worry, but she was nodding, a little smile on her lips.
“You know that place in your mind, right before you wake up? In between your dream and the waking world? Like in a dreamfast, almost . . . When I’m in that place, sometimes I can smell Sog. Feel it, all around me. Like I’m sleeping in my hammock back home. But it’s not me. It’s Gurjin. With Neech, and . . . I can’t explain it, but somehow I just know he made it back.”
She looked at him, and it was the closest Amri had ever been to seeing the southern wetlands, full of life and green and hope. He wanted to believe that they would go there together, one day. Reach Great Smerth and meet Naia’s mother. Proud Maudra Laesid, who would surely join her eldest daughter to the beating of the Drenchen drums. He tried to imagine who Maudra Naia would be, one day, and whether she would be different from the friend who sat beside him, watching the Rose Sun’s gold melt away the edge of the sky.
Naia’s eyes drifted away from his.
“Is it just me, or is Omerya moving?”
Amri stood with her to look across the bay. At first it seemed perhaps the coral-tree ship was only dancing on the changing morning currents. But then the anemone sails unfolded, blooming like night flowers. Within moments, it moved away from its dock. All around it, the Sifa ships came to life, sails dropping.
“Oh no,” Naia breathed. She leaped to the top of the cabin, scaling the mast and dropping the sails. “I thought we had until sunset—quickly, get Onica! We have to catch them before they make it out to sea!”
Amri dashed to the cabin, slamming the door open and waking everyone inside. Onica had heard Naia’s footsteps on the cabin roof already, swinging out of her hammock.
“What’s going on?”
“Maudra Ethri’s taking the Omerya out. They’re leaving!”
Onica’s untamed hair cascaded around her face, and she quickly wrapped it back with a sash. Tavra was on her shoulder. Onica pushed past Amri and out onto the deck, swinging up into the rigging. Kylan followed quickly after. The ship caught the wind and swung out to sea, heading a course to intercept the Omerya.
“Can we catch them?” Naia called. Onica’s boat was small and fast, but once the Omerya hit the open ocean, it would be unstoppable. They had to catch up before Ethri cleared the bay.
“I don’t know,” Onica said. “But we must try.”
Kylan grunted, pulling on a rope with all his weight. “And once we do, then what? How do we convince her to join us when she’s made up her mind to leave?”
They raced toward the Omerya as it broke away from the docks, the dozens of Sifa ships coasting on its typhoonic wake. The coral ship had not reached its full speed yet, its enormous body blocking out the sun with its sparkling coral hull and flowering sails. Amri could barely make out Ethri standing at the bow, Tae at her side.
“Wait!” Naia called. “Maudra Ethri!”
Only Naia’s voice could rise above the crashing of the waves on the bow. Amri clung to a rope to keep from being thrown from the bucking deck. Ethri saw them and exchanged a word with Tae, then raised a horn to her lips. The ship slowed, though it did not stop altogether, and the Sifa ships flocked around it.
When the waves subsided, Ethri leaned on the coral taffrail.
“If you’re here to try and convince me again, save yourself the effort!” she shouted. “But if you’re here to apologize and come with us, you best hurry up. That little ship won’t make it across the Silver Sea, even with skekSa’s help!”
Amri gulped, glancing out to sea. In all the chaos, he’d forgotten about the gargantuan ship, hiding somewhere beneath the waves. With one blow of skekSa’s whistle, it could be right below them, a huge monster ready to swallow them all.
Onica leaped from the deck with surprising swiftness. She didn’t even use her wings, one moment airborne with only ocean below her, the next grabbing hold of the ropes and lines that laced the hull of the Omerya. She untied one of the lines and threw it to Kylan, shouting orders. He obeyed and quickly tied the rope to their smaller ship’s prow so they were pulled along by the Omerya.
As soon as Kylan finished the knot, Naia jumped from the boat. She snagged the ropes and climbed up after Onica.
“Are we really doing this?” Kylan asked, eyes wide.
Amri grabbed the song teller’s shoulders.
“Yes!” he cried. “We are!”
Salt licked their heels as they leaped. The rope netting was thick in his hands, easy to grab on to, though the rough coral scratched his knuckles and arms as he crashed against the hull. He worried at first Kylan wouldn’t make it, but within moments he was close behind, clambering up the netting. Together, they pulled themselves against the wind, finally toppling over the taffrail onto the deck.
Dozens of Sifa were staring, some aghast and some, Amri pretended, in awe. He didn’t try to guess how many captains and crew had forsaken their ships in Cera-Na to join their maudra in her quest to escape upon the Silver Sea. He recognized Captain Staya, and the other Sifa who had called him a thief on the beach.
By the time Amri got to his feet, Naia and Onica had already found Maudra Ethri on the deck. The maudra’s dark hair whipped like a storm around her face.
“Ethri!” Onica cried. “You must stop this. You must heed the signs. If you have any faith left in me, as a Far-Dreamer—as your friend!”
“Faith has nothing to do with this, Onica,” Ethri said. “A storm brews in the Skarith Land. That is the sign I’m heeding. The pink petals with their song. The rumors of the Skeksis at the castle, feeding off the Gelfling. I can’t be reckless anymore, not with the lives of my clan at stake. I will do what must be done, winds and
tides be damned.”
She said it all with the force of a gale, but Amri saw the flicker of doubt across her face. He saw the clouds that arced toward land, blowing against the sails even as the Omerya struggled to continue out to sea. The cold hearth on the deck, where he imagined the Sifa once lit the fires of prophecy every night.
Onica saw it, too.
“I know you are only afraid,” she said. “Please do not let fear change who you are, Ethri. Who I know you to be.”
Tae looked between the two Sifa who commanded the attention of all that stood on the deck. She took Ethri’s arm in her hand a moment, and Amri remembered when she had begun to say something before, in skekSa’s lab. But once more, Ethri brushed her aside, striding forward to meet Onica eye to eye on the lower deck.
“You and Tae trusted me once,” Ethri said. “And you alone paid a terrible price.”
“In exchange for a wonderful gift, worth the price I paid. One I am grateful for every day.”
The Far-Dreamer’s soft reply was like the ocean, passionate and eternal. Even Amri felt swept up in it, and he was but a silent witness to her truth. Onica took Ethri’s shoulders in her hands, and this time the maudra did not protest.
“Ethri, we cannot know the future,” Onica said. “We can only heed the signs when Thra whispers. But there is no need to be afraid. Not when we gaze upon the stars with open hearts together. I remember an Ethri who looked into the future with me, unafraid. When is the last time you looked into the Sifa fires? Where is that fearless Ethri I once knew?”
Ethri looked down, shaking her head. “Gone.”
“I don’t believe it. And I can’t be the only one who remembers, and who will challenge you to remember who you truly are.”
Onica turned, seeking the eyes of the Sifa who watched her from the deck. One by one, they looked away. Amri remembered what Ethri had said to Naia on the ship: The first to stand are the first to be struck down. What a defeating superstition.