by Aaron Ehasz
“Goodbye! Good luck! Come back someday!” Ellis shouted. Ava barked enthusiastically.
Then Ezran’s eyes met Claudia’s. Her expression flickered with guilt. Now Ezran understood what Rayla and Callum had been talking about back at the huts. Claudia and Soren weren’t their friends after all. Ezran was sad, but he wasn’t shocked. He’d always put a lot of trust in Rayla.
Rayla punched Callum lightly on the arm. Her white hair was whipping around wildly in the wind.
“We got ’em! I was right,” she said.
“Yeah. You were right,” Callum repeated. But he wasn’t smiling. In fact, the way Callum was staring out at the sky made Ezran think his big brother might cry.
“I’m sorry. I wish I wasn’t right,” Rayla said. She put one hand on Callum’s shoulder.
“Thanks for saying that, Rayla,” Callum said.
Ezran coaxed Zym out of his backpack. “It’s okay, Zym,” he said. “It’s safe to come out now.”
Zym seemed nervous, but he crept out of the backpack into Ezran’s arms. The tiny dragon shuddered when he noticed he was thousands of feet up in the sky. Ezran knew his little buddy was scared, but he couldn’t help but see an opportunity.
“Hey—we’re up in the sky! Wanna see how flying feels?” Ezran asked. He patted Zym to reassure him, and then lifted him carefully into the wind. “Come on, spread your wings.”
Slowly, Zym unfurled his wings. The strong wind beat against their upturned faces. Ezran could feel the dragon’s fear falling away.
It was the first time Callum had ever slept on the back of a flying moon phoenix. Add that one to the list. Initially, he thought there was no way he’d sleep, but the bird’s immense wings flapped methodically in the air, creating a smooth, rhythmic lullaby.
But now Callum was awake and restless. He couldn’t stop thinking about Claudia, how he had trusted her, maybe even—
Don’t think it, Callum. He shook his head, trying to lose the thought because he knew it would hurt. Maybe even loved her. The idea twisted inside him and made him ache. Nothing would ever be the same. He had to do something to move on!
Callum closed his eyes and crossed his legs. He had seen Lujanne slip into a deep meditation in this pose, and he would try to do the same. Callum began watching his thoughts go by and very soon, his mind started to clear. He felt the breeze pass over him as Phoe-Phoe glided effortlessly through the sky. The wind was cool, and the air was fresh.
He would never get over Claudia’s betrayal. Callum felt anger rise, but then exhaled the anger into the sky. He had to complete his mission. He exhaled the anxiety in the air. This was working. The air felt suddenly warmer.
“Ahem,” Rayla said. Callum opened one eye. Rayla was breathing in his face. He closed the eye.
“Ahhhhhh-hhaaaaa,” Rayla yawned. “What are you doing?”
Trying to get her out of my head, Callum thought. Trying to forget someone who meant so much to me. He looked away from Rayla, not ready to admit the truth. “I’m meditating upon the meaning of Sky,” he said.
“That’s more boring than anything I would have guessed,” Rayla said, stretching her arms overhead.
“I’m trying to connect to the arcanum—like Lujanne said. So I can use Sky magic again.” Callum immediately felt guilty for lying to Rayla, but for some reason he couldn’t tell her the truth. She had been right about not trusting Claudia, and that made it even harder to be vulnerable with her about this. But one thing was true—maybe meditating on the meaning of Sky wasn’t such a bad idea?
“Didn’t she also say you have to be born with the arcana-whatsit to do magic?” Rayla asked.
“Actually, no,” Callum said. “She said you had to connect to the primal—and that magical creatures are born with a connection. But I don’t see why I can’t make my own connection.”
“By sitting weird and humming?” Rayla asked.
“Right. Seems reasonable,” Callum said. He ignored the teasing and resumed his meditation. He hoped she would get the message and keep quiet for a little while.
“Hey. Is it just me, or are we losing altitude?” Rayla interrupted again.
This time Callum opened his eyes. “What? No way. I’m extremely attuned to slight changes in air flowwwww.Ahhhhh.” Callum gripped Phoe-Phoe’s bright feathers as she careened downward toward the earth at breakneck speed.
“Wuuuuhhh!” The sudden plummet woke up Ezran and Zym too. They hung on for dear life as Phoe-Phoe plunged through the clouds, rapidly approaching the ground below. If ever there was a time for Ezran to use his talking-to-animals powers …
“Ezran, what’s going on?!” Callum yelled through the rushing air. “Is she crashing?”
“I don’t know,” Ezran said. “It looks like she’s headed for the edge of that cliff.”
Ezran was right—if Phoe-Phoe didn’t correct her angle …
Thwummmp.
They landed hard on the cliff top, and Phoe-Phoe skidded to a stop, coming to a halt just inches from the edge. With the momentum of the sudden stop, Zym lost his grip and flew toward the brink. Ezran reached for Zym but missed and started to fall as well. Stunned, Callum watched as Rayla dug her feet into the ground and grabbed Zym and Ezran, one hand for each.
“It’s nice having both hands again,” she said calmly.
Callum just nodded, afraid even to breathe.
Disheveled and exhausted, Viren continued to watch the unusual room on the other side of the mirror. Even in the candlelight, the room was getting dimmer. The elven figure studied one of the leather-bound tomes, but Viren could tell it was becoming too dark to read. The Startouch elf removed one of the candles from the wall near the mirror—but then stopped and stood perfectly still.
After a tense moment, the elf moved to the desk and picked up a candle snuffer. Slowly, the elf circled the room, extinguishing each candle along the wall. Then he snuffed out the last candle in his hand, and the room went pitch-black.
Viren strained to make out anything. He blinked repeatedly and pressed his face up to the mirror, but there was nothing to see. The only thing Viren heard was the sound of his own anxious breath, rapid and shallow.
Then a pale, four-fingered hand emerged from the darkness and pressed its palm against the other side of the mirror. The suddenness of it startled Viren. Though it seemed to be only a fraction of an inch from his face, Viren knew this mirror-place was probably hundreds or thousands of miles away, if it was even in this world at all. Still, it was shocking.
Viren jumped back. “Who … are you?” he asked. He looked up and down at the beautiful, elegant, mysterious elf figure. And for the first time, the Mirror Mage looked back at him. With both sides of the mirror now dim, they could both see into the other’s side.
The Mirror Mage didn’t respond, but he gave Viren the once-over. Viren looked down at his clothes and glanced at the dark room he was standing in. Was the elf considering his worthiness? Viren’s stomach was in knots.
Then the Mirror Mage moved his gaze to the wall, where Viren’s staff was leaning against a shelf. The mage’s expression softened. A hint of a smile passed his lips. After another moment, he turned and left the room. Viren stood up in a panic.
“What is it? Where are you going?!” Viren shouted. He considered himself a patient man—in fact, his ability to play the long game was one of his finer qualities. But the elf’s strange behavior was making him crazed with curiosity.
A little while later, the Mirror Mage returned to view, carrying a small ornate chest. The chest had four short golden legs. Delicate golden carvings of foliage wrapped around its edges. The top and sides of the chest were clear crystal. Viren felt that he had seen this object somewhere before. Perhaps during his studies as a young mage? Yes, he could see it perfectly in his memory—a chest that could have been this one’s twin, or sibling at least, belonged to Kpp’Ar. Certainly it was among the irreplaceable relics his mentor had destroyed during the profligate tantrum he called his repentance.
The elf opened the chest and removed a few items. First, he withdrew a spherical rock, which appeared to be a geode. Then came a luxurious kerchief of violet silk, a spool of gold thread and a needle, a mallet, a pestle, a crystal goblet of water, and finally a sharp, thin knife. He gestured to the objects, then toward Viren as if to say, “Now you.”
“You want me to find these items?” Viren said. “I can do that.” He strode out of the chamber feeling confident for the first time in a long while.
Ezran, Callum, Rayla, Zym, and Bait stood in a circle around Phoe-Phoe on the top of the cliff. Ezran crouched near her lolling head and stroked her iridescent feathers.
Tell me what’s wrong, Ezran whispered. Maybe we can help. Then he buried his head in her soft feathers and listened.
Phoe-Phoe responded with a combination of chatter and trill punctuated with clicks of her tongue and beak—Ezran loved the rhythm and musicality of the way she communicated. When anyone spoke, whether a person or animal, Ezran always listened with his ears, but also with his heart. He could feel the great bird’s exhaustion in his own bones. As he stroked Phoe-Phoe’s feathers, Ezran’s own breathing synchronized with the great bird’s.
“Phoe-Phoe is okay,” he said to everyone. “She’s just tired. But she feels strong.”
“Maybe she’s carrying one too many passengers?” Rayla asked. Ezran caught her giving a meaningful look at Bait, who hurried over to Ezran and hid behind his leg.
“I’m just teasing, froggo,” Rayla said.
Ezran shook his head. Phoe-Phoe wasn’t just tired. She was getting too far from home.
“She gets her power from the Moon Nexus. The farther away we go, the harder it is to carry everyone.”
“Wow, Ez, I can’t believe you could understand all that,” Callum said. He looked genuinely impressed. Ezran enjoyed impressing his big brother with his gift. It wasn’t so long ago that Callum would ridicule him for communing with animals.
“You did such a good job getting us so far, Phoe-Phoe,” Ezran said. She cooed pleasantly in response. “It’s time for us to send you home.”
Ezran gave her a soft pat on the head, and Phoe-Phoe took off with a majestic whoosh. She cawed as she reached her full wingspan and soared into the sky. A tiny feather floated down and gently landed on Bait’s nose. It tickled, making him wriggle his nose. Then he sneezed.
“So. What do we do now?” Ezran asked.
“Well, Xadia’s that way,” Rayla said. She pointed across the wide bay visible from the cliff. “Across miles and miles of that blue fluid I both need to survive and hate more than anything in the world.”
Ezran felt bad for Rayla and her fear of water, but he knew she could face the fear again. He was about to encourage her to cross the bay when Callum jumped in.
“You know what?” Callum said. “We’ll just walk around it somehow. With our legs.”
Ezran couldn’t believe what he was hearing. But thankfully, Rayla shook her head no.
“That’s sweet, Callum,” she said. “But walking around is going to take too long. We need to get that former-egg-now-adorable-baby-dragon home to Xadia as fast as we can. We’ve got to go straight across.”
“You mean over the water?” Ezran said. He wanted to make sure—sometimes the way Rayla spoke was confusing.
“Shh! Don’t speak its name,” she replied with a glint in her eye.
After descending the cliff, Ezran, Callum, Rayla, Zym, and Bait arrived at some docks by the edge of the bay. There were boats and sailors as far as they could see. Callum thought Rayla looked a little greener than she had before, but traveling by sea was the only timely option.
The question was, who was going to help their ragtag gang? Callum tried to picture the scene.
“Hello, we’re two human princes, one dragon prince, a Moonshadow elf, and an incredibly grumpy glow toad in need of a ride.” No sailor in their right mind would take them on. Callum sighed and motioned for the gang to hide behind a stack of crates.
“Well, we need a boat. And … a captain who knows how to make it go,” Ezran said.
“Right. Specifically, a captain who doesn’t hate elves,” Callum said, looking at Rayla.
“That won’t be a problem—I can disguise myself as a human again,” Rayla said. She clapped her hands together and grinned.
“Yes, that worked out incredibly well last time you tried it,” Callum said. “Remember when you tried to ‘borrow’ a Sunforge blade and your disguise literally burned up?”
Rayla waved her hand at Callum to silence him. She pulled up the hood of her cloak, then she cleared her throat and adjusted her posture by slumping her shoulders.
“Hello again, fellow humans—human fellows,” she said in a deep voice with a human accent.
“Rayla, come—”
“Ooh!” Ezran interrupted Callum. “You’re going to love this, Zym. I’m a huge fan of ‘Human Rayla.’ ”
Callum clamped his mouth shut.
Rayla puffed up her chest. “Let’s go judge and criticize things other humans do … and then do the exact same things ourselves!”
Ezran laughed hysterically. “Do another one!” he shouted. Callum frowned.
“Sure thing, old buddy, old pal,” Rayla said. “I am excited to rapidly eat a plate of unwholesome food in an excessive portion size!”
“Mmm! I’d eat a jelly tart the size of a dog,” Ezran said.
“Human Rayla” was on a roll. “Look at me, I’m a human with all the things I need to make me happy … but then I compare myself to another human who has different things, and now I’m miserable!”
Callum was starting to think Rayla enjoyed offending humans just a little too much.
“Won’t it be great to encounter other humans, and talk about which roads and pathways will take us somewhere slightly faster than other roads and pathways?” Rayla asked with mock seriousness. She started pointing this way and that and bending her elbows to demonstrate corners and turns. “You turn here, and you go around the bend like so, and then there’s a little-known way to go, but trust me, all these little tricks will add up and save you nearly half a minute.”
Ezran wiped tears of laughter from his face. “It is so true! We do love going slightly faster.”
“Hey,” Callum said. “Sometimes getting somewhere slightly faster is important. Like right now.” He’d had just about enough of this act. “Ezran and I will find a sea captain. Rayla, you stay here and work on growing a fifth finger. That’s the real secret of being a human: the pinko!” He raised a single pinkie in the air with greater pride than any human had ever had for their littlest finger.
“You got it, my smooth-skulled friend,” Rayla said, giving Callum the thumbs-up sign.
Ezran was still applauding Rayla’s performance as Callum hauled him off to the docks by the collar.
The sun was sitting low in the sky, and Rayla was pacing the docks. Where were those princes? How hard could it be to find a sailor to help them? Zym was going to be a teenager by the time they got him to his mom. Then she heard voices, so she scurried back behind the crates to hide.
Rayla peeked through the holes in the crates and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw Ezran running toward her hiding place. He was grinning. Callum was not far behind.
“We found the perfect captain,” Ezran said.
Rayla began adjusting her hood to better hide her horns. She stuffed her hands into her pockets.
“Don’t worry,” Callum said. He grabbed Rayla’s hand and pulled her out from behind the crates. “Your horns are not going to be a problem with this guy.”
“You’re kidding,” Rayla said. “Is he some kind of enlightened human who can really see the good in elves?” She could scarcely believe she wouldn’t have to use any kind of disguise.
“Hmm … I’m not sure he can see the good in anyone, really,” Callum said. “But that’s part of what makes him uniquely qualified.”
“You’re being awfully cryptic,” Rayla said. “Myste
rious Callum is my least favorite kind of Callum.”
“Well, the mystery is almost over,” Callum said. “There’s our captain.” Callum pointed to the only person on the dock. It was a tall man, standing in profile, gazing out at the sea.
Rayla could see the captain’s long red beard and wavy auburn locks tucked under a traditional black pirate’s hat. He was wearing long brown gloves, a puffy white shirt, and a green coat and breeches. A patch covered his left eye, and a blue-and-red parrot was perched on his left shoulder. He looked like the captain out of one of the made-up seafaring stories Runaan used to tell her, where fearless sailors battled monsters ten times their size.
“We’re back,” Callum called to the captain.
The captain turned to face Ezran, Callum, Rayla, Zym, and Bait. Rayla gulped. Even in the most outlandish yarns Runaan had spun, she’d never heard of a captain who wore patches over both eyes. Rayla caught Callum looking at her, trying to stifle his laughter. Rayla stared at Callum in disbelief.
“You were gone for hours,” she whispered. “This was the best you could come up with?”
“Greetings,” the captain said. He turned to face Rayla. “The name’s Captain Villads,” he said, pronouncing the name vee-lahss. “The D is silent.”
“There’s a D in that name?” Rayla asked. She was going to give this so-called captain a tough time.
“Arr,” Villads said.
“Wait, there’s a silent R?” Rayla asked. If Callum wanted to be Mysterious Callum, she was going to be Befuddled Rayla.
“Narr,” Villads said.
“Oh. Okay, so it’s just the silent D, then,” Rayla said. She glowed inwardly under Callum’s glare.
“Aye,” Villads said.
“Ahh, so there’s a—”
“Ahem,” Callum said, interrupting. “We need to get moving. This is our regular human friend, Rayla.”
“Spelled like it sounds,” Rayla said. One final jab. “And these are my … weird dogs … Zym and Bait,” she added.
“Ahoy, Rayla. Ahoy, doggos,” Villads said. “And this is me first mate, Berto.” He pointed at the parrot.