by Jake Halpern
Wren’s mouth opened, forming a tight little O.
“That’s right,” said Flower. Her voice grew deeper, suddenly sounding very much unlike a child. “I know what you are. And I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”
For a few seconds, the stairwell was absolutely silent, except for a distant plip-plop of dripping water.
“Why?” asked Wren. “What do you need breathers for?”
“I’ll tell you if we keep moving,” said Flower. “This is not a good place for a chat. Okay?”
Flower started again up the stairs. Alec and Wren followed close enough to hear her voice.
“You have a special ability—a power, I guess you could call it,” said Flower. “You can revive people from bliss. You know, wake ’em up. All you gotta do is blow on them.”
Wren closed her mouth abruptly. She exhaled through her nose, but still worried about the humid air escaping from her nostrils.
“Relax,” said Flower, glancing back at her. “I’m already awake. Besides, you have to blow directly onto the face of someone in bliss. You didn’t wake anyone up in that bliss house, did you?”
Alec and Wren shook their heads.
“I need you to wake someone up,” Flower continued. “My friend Sebastian. He’s on the Sun side of the island. If you do, I’ll help you escape—get you a canoe, paddles, ropes, grappling hooks—everything you’ll need to climb the Drain.”
“You got it all figured out,” said Wren.
“That’s right,” said Flower. “Like I said, I’ve been waiting for you for a long time.”
“But will it work?” asked Alec. He rubbed his hands together as he climbed, trying to ward off the dank cold of the stairwell. “Can you really just … climb back up the Drain?”
“It’s worked before,” said Flower. “I got a breather out a few years ago. Climbed with her for hours, till we neared the top. Then we hit a layer of mist that I couldn’t get through. She kept going. I know she got out—otherwise, alive or dead, she’d have floated back to this island.”
As Wren groped her way up the stairs, she tried to picture it again—actually hoisting herself up out of the Drain on a rope, hand over hand. Maybe it was doable. But it sounded insanely hard.
“What do you think?” asked Alec. “I’m willing to try …” He started to cough. “My throat is really dry …” Wren slapped him vigorously on the back. She meant to help him, but she almost knocked him down.
“Easy there,” said Alec. “I can’t climb the falls if you cripple me.”
“So you’re game?” asked Flower eagerly.
“All right,” said Wren. “We’ll go with you. But first we need some water.” She tried to think back on how long it’d been since she’d had a drink. Back on Edgeland, before they got into the rowboat, Crown had offered her a sip from his flask. She guessed that had been, well, almost a full day ago. Maybe more. Her throat was parched. “Can you get us a little bit?”
“Not really,” said Flower, shaking her head. “There’s no food or water down here. Truth is, dehydration is what kills most breathers. Three days without water can do it. But the hunger is what drives breathers crazy. There were these three sailors I tried to help. Musta been fifty years ago. They were holed up in a cave on the Sun side of the island—starving. I was trying to find them a boat and some rope. Then one day I went down there and saw that they’d started a fire …” Flower pursed her lips and shook her head. “Their cave smelled like burnt meat. And there were only two left. It was then that I realized how desperate breathers get. It almost made killing them seem like a kindness.”
Wren felt her chest tighten.
Flower glanced back at them. “Sorry—bad story. I can’t get you water, but I can find something to wet your throats a little,” said Flower.
As they neared the top of the stairs, Alec’s coughs subsided. Flower paused and turned around to face them. “Once we get outside, there’s a beach not far away where you can find some seashells. The moisture from the fog collects inside of them. You can probably get a few tiny sips of water, if you try.”
Wren suddenly felt very thirsty. She had once seen a House Aron priest ministering to a nobleman who’d been found dead in the sand dunes of the Desert Lands. Thirst is the most painful way to die, the priest had said. We shall treat his body with great kindness.
Flower pushed open a door at the top of the stairs and stepped into a narrow road. Just beyond lay a rocky shore and, past that, pancake-flat water that stretched out so far that it merged with the sky, forming a tapestry of gray.
If they’d been this close to the water in Edgeland, they’d smell the salt, hear the crashing waves and the squawking shorebirds. Here, the air was stagnant, and both the landscape and the sea were featureless, almost as though an invisible weight were pinning everything down.
“That way,” said Flower, pointing down the path. A five-foot-high wall made of packed dirt separated the path from the beach and the water, as if to prevent it from flooding. The path followed the waterline, along the back of several bliss houses. “You’ll find your shells down there, on the beach, but be quick about it. I’ll wait here.”
“Aren’t you coming?” asked Wren.
“I have to collect a bag I stashed around the corner,” Flower said. “But don’t worry. You’ll be fine, just stay away from the cages—and hurry.”
“Cages?”
Flower shooed them away impatiently with a stroke of her hand.
Wren and Alec headed down the footpath in the direction that Flower had indicated. For a minute or two, they were quiet, taking in this strange gray world. The earthen wall, the exterior of the bliss houses, and even the water were essentially the same color. None of it seemed real.
Alec looked back over his shoulder to see if Flower was still there. She was—standing as still as a statue.
“Do you trust her?” he asked.
“I try not to trust anyone,” said Wren.
“Not even me?” asked Alec.
“Of course I trust you,” said Wren, quickening her pace. “Anyway, do I have a choice?”
Alec hurried to keep up. “Even if Flower gets us the boat … I don’t know if I can climb all that way,” said Alec. “I mean, you climb all the time in the descenders. You’re like a spider. But I’m not sure—”
“Come on,” said Wren, giving his hand a squeeze. “One thing at a time. Let’s find those shells.”
They continued down the path until it dead-ended at a small pebble beach. Wren set off in search of shells. Alec followed slowly. By the time he caught up, she was already at the water’s edge, holding an old conch to her mouth. The shell itself was covered in barnacles and dried seaweed.
“How is it?” asked Alec. He eyed the shell warily. Wren was used to eating all kinds of critters that she caught in the descenders. She once claimed to have spit-roasted a rat. Alec, however, had a far more delicate stomach.
“It tastes fine … there’s just not much of it,” said Wren, putting the shell back on the beach. “Like Flower said, just enough to wet your throat.”
Alec picked up a shell and poured a modest trickle of water into his mouth. It was drinkable.
Wren’s eyes roamed the beach, in search of other shells. She then let out a muffled shout and clawed at the ground with both hands.
“What is it?” Alec asked, peering closer.
Wren opened her left hand. Inside was a gold case that sparkled with diamonds surrounding a three-inch-wide sapphire, and a pale pink gem that glittered as if lit by some internal light source. In her other hand, she held an exquisite turquoise necklace and a few sunstones. Together, these jewels would be enough to feed several families for the rest of their lives.
Alec’s eyes went wide and he opened his palms for the jewels. “Where did you find those?”
“I can’t believe it,” Wren replied, setting them in his hands. “They were washed up on the beach like trash. I guess it makes sense … there’s nothing to buy
, and most everyone’s in bliss.” Her eyes scanned the turquoise necklace. “All those people trying to take their riches with them, and wasting their money on fancy funerals …”
Alec frowned and placed the jewels back in Wren’s hands. “Keep them. If we get back, you can use them. And you’ll know not to waste your money on funerals.” He looked away, not willing to make eye contact with her.
Wren reached inside her robe and stashed the jewels within a small pocket sewed into the lining. At long last, she was rich. Not that it mattered.
“Look—I’m sorry,” said Wren. “It’s not funerals that are the problem—it’s the selfishness that bugs me—thinking you can take wealth with you. I mean, imagine how many graylings these jewels could’ve helped.”
Alec glanced down the beach and spotted one or two other glittering stones. “Who could’ve known that treasure wouldn’t matter down here …”
“Or that it wouldn’t matter if you stole a ring from a dead woman,” added Wren. She locked eyes with Alec, holding his gaze until he looked away. “Too bad Sami Aron isn’t here to see this. I’d like to hear what he’d have to say.”
Wren looked off at the water. That’s when she saw the cages that Flower had mentioned: several dozen rusting boxes, almost completely submerged. They looked almost like oversize lobster traps. She squinted, then realized that the boxes were sea coffins, the ones that bone houses, back on Edgeland, made for the Boat People from the Southern Atolls.
“Those are probably the cages Flower mentioned,” said Wren, pointing out across the water. She ran her hand across her scalp, feeling the soft tufts of new hair coming in. It was nice. A reminder that she was still alive.
“Do you hear that?” asked Alec.
Wren lifted her head and listened. A muffled gurgling was coming from the water.
The water around the sea coffins began to ripple.
“We’d better go,” said Alec.
Just as they turned back toward the path, they heard a splash behind them. Wren spun and looked at the sea coffins again. The water was swirling and frothing now.
Definitely time to go.
Wren and Alec had almost made it off the beach when they heard a clattering noise, like a wooden wheel turning over loose rocks. They scrambled over the dirt-packed wall that separated the path from the seashore. The noise grew louder, then died down, as if something had passed their hiding spot and was now on the beach.
They crept up to peer over the top. A few dozen graylings were heaving and pushing an old ox cart across the beach. They moved together in fits, struggling for traction. None of them spoke or even grunted. Resting on the cart was another rusting iron sea coffin. Several long fingers were pushing through an iron grate on its side.
Then they heard a voice from within the coffin itself.
“Please!” wheezed the voice. “Please!”
The fingers jabbed out of the grate, as if pointing at the very spot where Alec and Wren were hiding. Seconds later, one of the graylings turned her head toward them.
Wren and Alec dropped to the ground, ducking behind the earthen wall to hide. A minute passed. Then another. In the distance, they could still hear the man inside the coffin, pleading with the graylings. But his voice became fainter and fainter. Silence returned. Wren and Alec decided to risk another look, and inched slowly up the wall.
The graylings had loosened the ropes that bound the sea coffin to the cart. Like an army of ants moving a hunk of bread, they worked together to move their weighty cargo. They lifted the sea coffin from the cart and marched it into the water, heading toward the other rusting cages that lay offshore. As they splashed into the sea, water reached the bottom of the box and began to rise up the sides.
Again, the voice from within the coffin called out. In the absence of any wind, it carried far. “I can explain! I can explain!”
The water around the sea coffin rose higher, and its occupant began to babble, then scream. The graylings waded deeper until the coffin was almost completely submerged. When they reached the area where the other coffins lay, they released the box.
Alec and Wren were so transfixed that they didn’t notice Flower, who had crept up behind them. She touched Alec lightly on the arm. Startled, he whipped his head around. She put a finger to her lips.
Let’s go, she mouthed, tilting her head back toward Bliss House Forty-Seven.
Neither of them needed any more convincing.
Flower hurried back down the path, hunched over at the waist, trying to remain hidden. Her pigtails swung about wildly. She was now wearing a small sealskin backpack—the kind of waterproof bag that sailors from the north favored—and it bounced on her back as she ran. Alec and Wren followed on her heels. They hustled past Bliss House Forty-Seven, then ducked down a narrow alley.
“Slow down,” whispered Alec, when he had finally managed to catch her.
Flower stopped abruptly and turned toward them.
“What was going on back there?” asked Alec.
“They were vanishing someone,” said Flower. “Someone who got on Ember and Shade’s bad side.”
“Vanishing?” asked Wren. She rubbed her shirtsleeve across her dampened forehead, wiping away the sweat. “You mean, drowning?”
“Nope,” said Flower. “I mean vanishing.” She wriggled her shoulders, readjusting the straps on her backpack. “You can’t drown the dead, can you? So how do you punish ’em? I’ll tell you. You put ’em in a box and shove the box into the sea. There’s something about being in a cage like that—underwater—it’s much worse than being in bliss. They say it’s like a never-ending nightmare. You can hear ’em crying under the water.”
Wren glanced back toward the seashore path and shuddered.
“What’d you mean when you said that guy might’ve gotten on Shade’s bad side?” asked Alec.
“It’s like this,” replied Flower, shaking her head as if annoyed by the stupidity of his question. “We’re all stuck on this island, right? Stuck in what seems to be an endless purgatory. Shade and Ember tell people they have to say their mantras and wait for heaven to open its gates—wait and wait and wait. And if you don’t follow their rules, well …” She motioned back toward the beach. “They’ll find a nice, cramped iron box for you.”
Flower crossed her arms defiantly. “Only we think there’s a way out of here. But we gotta find it.”
“Who’s we?” asked Wren. “You mean you and this Sebastian guy?”
“Yes,” said Flower. “He’s our leader. There are a handful of us.” Then she knelt down and rummaged through her pack, pushing a leather-bound prayer book aside, and pulled out three dirty gray cloaks.
“Put ’em on,” said Flower. “They’ll help us pass as graylings.”She handed a robe to Alec and one to Wren.
“We gotta be careful,” said Flower as she pulled a cloak over her summer dress. “If the graylings catch you and realize you’re breathers, they’ll slice you up on the spot.” Flower paused and stared at the scars on Wren’s arms. “I’m guessin’ you already know how that goes. And once you’re dead, they’ll put all three of us in sea coffins—just like the ones you saw back there.”
Flower looked at Alec and Wren. Evidently, she saw the terror on their faces, because she added, “It should be fine—we don’t have that far to go—and the only tricky part is crossing the Meadow.”
Alec cleared his throat. “Lamack mentioned the Meadow. What is it?”
“It’s the most important place on the whole island,” Flower replied. “Every so often, all the graylings and Keepers—everyone who works for Shade and Ember—goes to the Meadow to get Drops of Life. Without the drops, you end up like the rest of those sacks of flesh sitting in their bliss houses and repeating the mantra.”
Alec scratched the back of his neck. His grayling robe was so stiff and itchy that it made his skin crawl. Wren never complained about this. But then again, she never complained about much.
Seconds later, Flower was moving again. They
walked in silence for several minutes, continuing down the narrow alleyway. At one point, they turned a corner and came upon an old man who was pacing in tight circles. He was muttering the words of the mantra to himself, but only the last word was audible, so it sounded like he was just saying: fear … fear … fear … fear …
Flower raised her arm as a warning. The man had a rope around his neck, with a bell on it that jingled softly. He scratched his head as he walked, as if trying to remember where he placed his spectacles. He seemed totally oblivious to their presence.
“It’s all right,” whispered Flower. “He’s in bliss—but he walks. Some people are like this—so the graylings march ’em around in packs. This old-timer must be a stray.”
Alec remembered the sound of bells and shuffling feet that he’d heard before they entered Lamack’s bliss house. He took a step closer. The man was ancient-looking, with a hunched back and yellow skin webbed with blue veins. Suddenly, he pivoted and changed direction, moving toward Alec. Flower grabbed Alec’s shoulder and tried to yank him backward, but it was too late. The old man came at Alec face-first and smashed into his forehead.
Alec cried out and grabbed his face, and the old man toppled over.
Wren let out a little shout and jumped backward.
Flower seized Alec by the arm and squeezed it hard.
“I didn’t know he was going to t-turn,” stammered Alec, shaking off Flower’s grip. His face was flushed and his hands were trembling, but he wasn’t injured.
“Damn,” said Flower, banging the palm of her hand against her forehead.
The old man was still on the ground, lying on his back. He was blinking furiously and making a gagging noise.
Wren looked at Flower. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s waking up,” said Flower. She looked at Alec accusingly. “This is bad. Now they’ll know for sure that there’s breathers on the island.”
The old man sat up. His eyes—streaked with red capillaries—were wide-open now, and his teeth were chattering.