The others turned and beheld a wall that looked high enough to scrape against the omnipresent moon. It was made entirely of blackened timbers, barnacles and dried-out clams clinging to their sides, like they had been harvested from the greatest shipwreck the world had ever known. Slowly, the vast gates swung open, and with another flick of the reins, Jack drove them through, into the dubious safety of the town.
The gates slammed shut behind them with remarkable speed, and everything was quiet, and Christopher knew, with absolute certainty, that not all of them were going to make it home.
PART III
WHERE THE DROWNED GODS GO
10 WHERE THE SHADOW MEETS THE SEA
BUT WE MUST go backward, briefly: we must go back to a girl running, running, running across the vast sprawl of the Moors with her heart in her throat and her lungs achingly full of unfamiliar air. Air has never been her harbor, never been her home, and this air is less hers than most. This air burns. And still she keeps running, racing toward the shadow of the sea.
That’s what called her, of course. The sea, the sea, the sea. A sea, not the strawberry soda of Confection, not the muddy turtle pond that kept her from drying out at school. She missed the depths so much some days that she couldn’t concentrate on anything except how much she wanted to go home. The other students would talk longingly about endless skies and forests filled with talking flowers, but none of them understood, because they’d always been air-breathers. They’d gone from one world filled with wind and light and gravity to another, and they didn’t know how much she’d lost.
In the Trenches, “up” and “down” had been a matter of consensus. Oh, the surface and the bottom existed, but they were inconsequential things. The people of the Trenches measured by depths and shallows, and they danced their way from one side of the ocean to the other. They breathed the living sea, and the sea rewarded them by keeping them as safe as she was able—which wasn’t very, because the water was filled with countless dangers, and none of them mattered in the face of the absolute, indisputable fact that the water was home.
When Cora’s door had tossed her unceremoniously back into the world of her birth, she hadn’t only lost adventure. She’d lost weightlessness, freedom, flight. She’d lost her entire native environment. She ran, as caught as any fish snared by a fisherman’s lure, and wondered distantly whether she was going to throw herself off the first cliff she saw, convinced all the way to the bottom of her bones that she’d transform as soon as she struck the sea.
She wondered whether it was going to hurt.
She wondered whether she was going to care.
Behind her—far behind her, for she had always been the more athletic of the pair, the more equipped for the rigors of heroism—Kade struggled to keep up. The bracken and briars that seemed inclined to let her pass unhindered snagged at the hems of his jeans. Holes opened beneath his feet, and he stumbled, he staggered, he swore. But he kept running. Sometimes, after all, that’s what must be said to make a hero: the willingness to keep running even after it becomes clear that the entire exercise is doomed to failure. Sometimes heroism is pressing on when the ending is already preordained.
Cora ran, and Kade pursued, until the windmill was a speck in the distance, until it disappeared altogether, and there was only the Moors, and the glaring red eye of the moon, and the vast, alien darkness of the sea.
When Cora reached the cliff she stopped, wobbling at the very edge, chest heaving with the effort of breathing in the unforgiving air. Kade, gasping, staggered to a stop some fifteen yards behind her. He couldn’t run any farther, and he tried to tell himself it was exhaustion, and he knew that he was lying, and he knew he was afraid.
“Wait,” he wheezed, the word half-swallowed by his gasped attempts to breathe. “Cora, wait.”
There was no way she could possibly have heard him. But she turned, and smiled, and it was the most beautiful expression he had ever seen. Heroes would have gone to war for that smile, would have died for even a shadow of its grace.
“It’s all right,” she said, and the wind carried her voice to him, each syllable polished and perfect as a pearl. “Can’t you hear them? They’ve been waiting so long for me to come home. Tell Jack thank you, and that I forgive her. Tell her not to look for me.”
“Cora, don’t do this.” Kade staggered forward, one step, then another, trying to reach her before she did anything that couldn’t be taken back.
“I’m home,” she said, and stepped backward, over the edge, toward the welcoming sea. Her expression faltered—only for an instant, but long enough for Kade to see the terror in her eyes, shining through the glazed, artificial serenity.
He found he had the strength to run after all.
“Cora!” he howled, and dove toward the edge of the cliff. Too late, too late, too late.
She was already gone.
11 UNDER THE EAVES, WHERE SWALLOWS SLEEP
THE TOWN WAS oddly familiar. Christopher snapped his fingers as the gates swung closed behind them.
“I knew I’d seen this place before!” he said. “Didn’t Vincent Price film a movie here?”
“Not everyone who visits the Moors decides to stay,” said Jack.
“Are you saying Vincent Price—?”
“I’m saying there are a great many channels of cultural exchange between the worlds, and I’d prefer not to discuss them here, as drawing attention to ourselves is unwise.”
“Says the girl with the skeleton horse,” said Sumi.
Jack laughed.
The town really did look like something out of a black-and-white horror movie, for all that it was far from monochrome. The houses were painted in brilliant, eye-searing colors, making Sumi the only one who really matched the surroundings. There were little shops, public houses, even an inn with a sign advertising rooms to let. People walked along the narrow sidewalks flanking the street—if they could still be called “sidewalks” when they were made of wood instead of concrete. Christopher thought they might be boardwalks, or maybe promenades, but he wasn’t sure. The nomenclature of architecture had never been his focus.
There was something faintly off about the people. Their eyes were too big and their fingers were too long and when they stopped to watch the wagon rolling by they were too perfectly, profoundly still, like predators lying in wait for their next meal. Sumi stared them down, and one by one they looked away, no longer willing to meet her eyes. She snorted.
“Not so brave after all,” she said.
“Not under these circumstances,” said Jack. “I advise against walking alone down any alleyways. I’m told the public house nearest the docks serves excellent chowder that practically never contains human flesh. I’m also told that ‘practically never’ is not the same as ‘never,’ and it’s better not to gamble with such things. Anyone hungry?”
“I’m good,” said Christopher hurriedly. Jack laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound, not exactly; it was the sound of someone clinging to the last vestiges of sanity and stability with all their might. It was the sound of slipping.
Christopher shivered. No one who sounded that close to the end of their rope could hold on forever. It simply wasn’t possible.
The road led through the middle of town toward a towering edifice that appeared to be part cave and part cathedral. It had been carved from a single spire of blackened rock. Bells tolled in the distance, loud enough to have an almost physical presence.
And there, sitting on the edge of the wooden sidewalk, elbows on his knees and head bowed, was—
“Kade!” Sumi leapt down from the moving wagon and half-ran, half-skipped over to him, her oddly rollicking locomotion carrying her forward with startling speed. She stopped a few feet away, looking at him with a wide-eyed brightness that almost—almost—hid the wary caution in her eyes. “You ran away! Bad boy. Where’s the mermaid?”
“She fell.” He raised his head, looking through her more than at her, like he was staring at some distant, indescribable hori
zon. “She ran right to the edge of the world, and then she stepped off, and she fell. She didn’t scream. She just went.”
“The Drowned Gods called to her,” said Jack, flicking the reins and urging the horses to a halt. “It was always a possibility. It’s very sad, but we don’t have time to sit around grieving when there’s a monster to be defeated.”
Kade stared at Jack for a single long, frozen moment. Then he lunged to his feet, grabbing her by the front of her shirt and yanking her off the wagon. She didn’t fight him or resist. She just allowed him to pull her toward him, legs dangling, expression cold.
“I warned her,” she spat. “I told her there were shadows in the sea, I told her the Drowned Gods might know her name, and she came anyway, because she didn’t want to be left out of an adventure. This isn’t an adventure to me. This is my home, my life, my future. I warned her and she came anyway. Break my sister’s jaw if it makes you feel better. But be aware that there are worse things in the Moors than the sea, and all of them will come for you if I can’t state my own challenge.”
Kade grimaced. “You really are a monster,” he said, and let her go.
Jack caught herself on the edge of the wagon, barely avoiding a tumble into the dust, and straightened up, adjusting her collar with unshaking hands. She kept her eyes on Kade the whole time.
“I never claimed to be anything else,” she said, before climbing back into the driver’s seat. “Come along. We’ve much to do, and time is short.”
Kade and Sumi climbed into the back with Christopher. Jack flicked the reins, and they were away, continuing toward that blackened spire.
Red-robed acolytes appeared as the wagon neared its destination. They melted out of the nearby rocks with an air of casual, implacable menace. Hoods hid their faces, and their hands were empty, which was somehow worse than them being filled with weapons. Weapons, at least, were predictable; weapons made sense. A sword was just a knife with delusions of grandeur. A trident was a really big fork. This …
“What are they going to do to us?” asked Christopher.
“Nothing, unless they decide we’ve offended the Drowned Gods, which virtually never happens.”
Kade made a wordless snarling sound. Jack ignored him.
“The Drowned Gods are amiable monsters,” she said. “They sleep, and dream of worlds where fire is a forgotten impossibility, and occasionally they wake long enough to eat a few dozen villagers before going back to bed.”
“Wait,” said Christopher. “Are you saying they might feed us to their gods?” The question of whether the Drowned Gods might have eaten Cora was left mercifully unvoiced.
“Don’t be silly,” said Jack. “We haven’t earned the honor.” She pulled on the reins, bringing Pony and Bones to a halt, and called to the nearest acolyte, “Jack Wolcott, apprentice to Dr. Michel Bleak, and friends, here to see the High Priest about a little problem we’re having. Will you please permit us to enter?”
The acolyte made a garbled hissing sound. Jack rolled her eyes.
“That may be so, but we don’t have time for that, and your High Priest won’t be pleased if you keep us here long enough to endanger my chances. There’s a challenge beginning, and the entire protectorate is at stake. Your High Priest enjoys cheese, vodka, and fresh bread, none of which you’re very good at making here. If no one buys your chocolate biscuits, how will he be able to purchase his necessary luxuries?”
The acolyte repeated the terrible hissing and stepped aside. The other acolytes followed suit. Jack nodded, pleased.
“I thought that might be your decision. Have a lovely evening.” She flicked the reins, urging the horses toward the terrible maw of the black cathedral.
Sumi cocked her head. “Why is the village of scary fish-people where you get your chocolate biscuits?”
“It has something to do with shipwrecks and the tides, and to be quite honest, I don’t know. Every time I ask Dr. Bleak, he tells me it’s impossible to dissect the sea and orders me to leave it alone.” Jack’s face fell. “I suppose I’ll have to learn, if we can’t resurrect him. I suppose it’ll fall on me to be the one who knows.”
“A little knowledge never hurt anybody,” said Sumi.
“Perhaps not. But a great deal of knowledge can do a great deal of harm, and I’m long past the point of having only a little knowledge.”
Conversation died then, as the black cathedral swallowed them all alive. It didn’t move in any way in the course of accomplishing this feat; it simply lay in wait, the perfect predator, and let them escort themselves through its jaws.
The stone closed in around them, moist and jagged and dripping, drops of seawater falling from the vaulted ceiling to land on their arms and in their hair. Dots of bioluminescence lit the walls and spangled the dangling stalactites, which hung like so many vast, sharpened teeth. Jack drove blithely on.
“Who built this place?” asked Christopher.
“That’s a theological question,” said Jack. “Science says no one built it: erosion and time did the bulk of the work, and then a few faithful stonemasons came in and cleaned up the rough edges to make it suitable for their liturgical needs. Faith says the Drowned Gods are ageless and eternal, and could very easily have shaped the course of erosion while in this area, guaranteeing their faithful a place to worship.”
“What do you think?” asked Sumi.
“I think it’s not my place to comment on someone else’s religion. Science is my god. Lightning is my miracle, and storm clouds are my catechism. I don’t need anything else to give purpose to my days. I find my purpose in the scalpel’s shine, and the knowledge that I’m doing exactly what I was put in this world to do.”
Sumi gave Jack an approving look. “You’re like unnerving fudge with a chewy creepy center. School is a lot more boring without you there.”
“Perhaps, but I wager there have been fewer murders.” They had reached a rickety wooden suspension bridge, stretched across a canyon wide enough to almost qualify as an abyss. Jack pulled the horses to a stop again. This time, she tied off the reins before sliding out of the wagon and announcing, “We walk from here. Follow me, and try not to plummet to your deaths.”
“Ha, ha,” said Christopher flatly. When Jack didn’t laugh, he frowned. “That was a joke, right?”
“I’m not a comedian,” said Jack.
“We should at least go one at a time,” said Christopher. “That doesn’t look entirely stable.”
“We can’t.” Jack gave him one of those unnervingly anxious looks, the ones that seemed to be ticking off her remaining capacity to cope. “Splitting up here, this close to the Drowned Gods … when they feed, they feed on the unprotected. We go together, or we’re likely to disappear alone.”
“That’s fun,” said Sumi.
“I’m well aware of the situation, thank you,” said Jack, and stepped out onto the bridge.
It was narrow enough to sway with every step she took, and while there were rails, of a sort, they were made of braided rope, and didn’t seem nearly sturdy enough to keep her from losing her balance and falling to the water below. The water far below: the drop from the bridge to the surface looked to be around eighty feet, and there were … things … writhing in those depths, things that would have looked like the arms of an octopus, if not for the fact that each of them was easily as big around as Cora’s torso.
“This is terrible,” said Sumi brightly. “I mean, we knew it was going to be terrible when we followed a mad scientist and her dead girlfriend to a horrifying murder world, but this is bonus terrible. This is the awful sprinkles on the sundae of doom.” She skipped out onto the bridge, not seeming to care when it twisted and swayed under her feet. Christopher followed, his bone flute already in his hands, fingers moving through silent arpeggios to calm his nerves.
Kade was the last to leave solid ground for the swaying causeway. As bad as the bridge had looked from solid ground, it was worse. It shifted. It shook. The boards were damp from the ocean air,
and his feet slipped and slid with every step, making him cling even harder to the ropes. If he missed a step, he’d fall, and if he fell—
He was so focused on keeping his balance that he didn’t hear the board crack beneath his feet until it fell away and he was dangling over empty air, his grasp on the ropes the only thing keeping him from falling. He screamed, high and bright and clean, all of his terror and all of his resignation expressed in a single sound.
“Kade!” Christopher turned and bolted back to his position, dropping to his knees on the rickety wood and grabbing for his arms. “Take my hands! Don’t let go!”
The two commands seemed contradictory: to take his hands, Kade would have to let go, have to risk that split second when he wasn’t holding on to anything. Still, he started to loosen his grip, willing to gamble everything on how quickly they both could move, and was on the verge of reaching for him when the board Christopher was kneeling on snapped in two. Sumi grabbed the back of his shirt, dragging him to safety before anything worse could happen, and Kade was left dangling alone, surrounded by nothing but empty space.
“Kade!” shouted Christopher.
“It’s all right,” said Sumi, helping Christopher to his feet. She kept her eyes on Kade. “He’s a hero too, remember? We’re all heroes here. Sometimes a hero has to fall.”
The words were needles, red-hot and sharp as anything. Kade closed his eyes. If he held on, the others would keep trying to save him—even Jack, who looked lost and scared, as if this change to her plan were already too much to stand. She was more fragile than anyone remembered her being, faced with the loss of home and mentor and even her own skin. She was falling apart, and Kade was just … falling.
If he stayed where he was, the others would kill themselves trying to do the impossible, and in the end, he’d fall anyway. That wasn’t what a hero would do. That had never been what a hero would do.
He was never going to make it back to the school, never going to take over for Aunt Eleanor. He felt bad about that. By letting go, he would become one more person who let her down. But he didn’t have a choice. Not anymore.
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