Chapter the Eighth,
The Third to Last Day,
In which brewing storms are an unborn beast.
I. Ever-Revolving
The pink boat quickly approached the wall at the edge of Coral Wing’s enclosed harbor, but there was no opening through which to pass. The fish-who-was-King had given them no instruction on where or how to exit the enclosed lake. Whatever escort he had promised was nowhere to be seen.
“Leave it to a bunch of fish to put a sign pointing to nowhere in the middle of the sea,” said Why, “and then build a place with no way out, and no signs or arrows to speak of.”
“Should we use the oars?” asked Ceder.
“Should we jump out?” Jai asked at the same time.
They were too slow to choose—the prow of the boat sailed into the tangled reef. The children hunched their shoulders, closed their eyes, and grabbed hands to brace one another, but no collision ensued. They opened their eyes, only to immediately shut them again—the boat had slipped into and beyond the rainbow-colored coral as if by some trick of mirrors, or a magician who claims to swallow a sword, standing sideways and sliding the blade past the hidden side of his face. Passing through the solid, seamless wall made the children instantly nauseous; the colors warped, waned, and distended even as the coral itself seemed to stand still.
Feeling sunshine and the wind in their hair, Jai and Ceder opened their eyes and looked back. The wall was already behind them. “My head is swimming,” said Jai, rubbing his forehead. “I feel like I got dunked in a whirlpool upside-down and inside-out.”
“I think a whirlpool would have been a bit gentler,” said Ceder.
“If you can’t stomach a thing like that,” said Why, pointing back to the wall with his cane, “I don’t know how you expect to get through the rest of your adventures.”
Coral Wing receded into the distance. From their present vantage point the children could clearly see the discolored scorch marks on the peak of Wingtip Tower. Many of the burns had long since healed over—the damage looked to be of ancient origin—but there were still dark spots here and there where the coral had not been able to regenerate.
“What was it Cliff said that burned the castle like that?” asked Jai.
“He never told us,” answered Ceder. “He just said you can’t blame the sun for every fire.”
An octopus emerged shortly after they left the castle. The children were not sure if it was the same one from the harbor and they were too stunned by its appearance to ask. Its green skin looked like the fat on cooked meat. One of its eyes was covered with a purple patch made out of a shimmering fish scale; the other was an opaque ball of black ink floating around a misty white eye socket. There was a tattoo of an anchor with eight prongs on its forehead—this is where Jai and Ceder kept their sight focused while the octopus spoke to them, for maintaining eye contact with the exceedingly ugly creature proved too difficult.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” growled the eight-armed pirate.
“Nothing,” said Ceder.
“No one,” said Jai.
“Gmph!” said the octopus. With its droopy eye it sized up Jai. “Nice tattoo, lad. But aren’t ya a wee bit young fer a mark like that?”
Jai shrugged, looking anywhere else.
“Ya reckon to sail through the Sands o’ Syn, do ya? Gmph,” it grunted again. “Good luck wit that. Won’t say it’s a prime idea, myself.”
Ceder was already itching for the conversation to end; that is just the unfortunate effect which pirates will have on some people. “We need to be there before sunset,” she said tersely.
The blank, inky eye stared at her. “All right, all right, ‘old yer noses.” Neither of the children understood this expression and they half-expected the octopus to drag the boat undersea, as if the journey would be quicker that way. But all it did was wink at them—jet black ink leaked out of its eye as it did so—and simply say, “Anchors away,” before dipping its bulbous head back underwater. The boat accelerated swiftly. The children looked over the prow to see the octopus towing them with its tentacles like a horse-drawn carriage.
“I finally understand what you were saying this morning about feeling like we’re being pulled east,” Ceder teased Jai with a smile.
The Royal Seal emerged from the sea right after the octopus ducked down, one hundred white and black seals swimming around the boat in a perfect circle. One seal in the troop had golden fur—the children supposed this was the end of the chain of command. Each streamlined defender dove into the sea where the one in front of it had jumped out, so that the whole entourage resembled a corrugated wheel ever-revolving, not stopping in all the hours it took to reach the eastern shore.
II. Plainchant
“Ceder,” said Jai, running his hand through Astray’s fur conspicuously close to hers, “may I ask you something?”
“Yes?”
“Sorid used to tell me about you. Oh, not a lot,” Jai hurried to say when Ceder’s hand froze, “I mean, he told me there was a girl imprisoned somewhere above the tunnels, and that he put a curse on you, to keep you there. But you bear no markings like my own. You escaped without him knowing. I was just wondering—”
“If I’m really cursed?” She met his eye. “Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
“When the unicorn touched me… something changed.”
“A kiss from the King is no small thing,” Why sang errantly, a phrase from an old tune on the wind, perhaps.
Jai batted the butterfly away like a mosquito. “Ceder,” he said—he waited until he caught her eye again, “how did you get away from Sorid?”
“What if I told you I just walked out the door?”
“That would be more believable than telling me we just sailed through a solid wall,” said Jai.
Ceder bit her lip, lost in thought. A fiery glint flashed in her eye as she began to recite a plainchant verse:
To flesh run,
By virtue of a bite.
When the day is done,
Live in fright.
Jai shivered from a chill in spite of the sun. “What was that?”
“That was the curse Sorid put on me. Or, not on me, exactly.” She took a deep breath. “All I ever got to eat were apples. Well, apples and worms—oh, you know what I mean.” Jai stuck his tongue out.
Ceder shook her head, taking a fresh start. “Sorid took every apple before he gave it to me and held it up in the sunlight. He put the curse on every one. To flesh run, by virtue of a bite,” she repeated. “I had to eat them or I would starve. That was all it took for the magic to flow into me.”
“What does the other part mean?” asked Jai. “When the day is done, live in fright?”
Ceder took a moment to gather her words. “Every night of my life is like sleeping in ice water, freezing my heart. I have nightmares of the sea and the things in the deep that are as real as… any of this. Every morning I wake up covered in cold sweat from being eaten or slaughtered or torn apart a hundred times throughout the night. That’s what it means.”
Jai was on the edge of his seat. Why had leaned over Ceder’s ribbon to stare at her upside-down. Even Astray seemed to be immersed in her story, his emerald eyes flashing a hundred shades of green.
“I spent my days huddled against the wall,” said Ceder, “as far from the great stone stove as I could get. Sorid kept a huge fire roaring inside it. On top was an iron pan warming those red eggs that never hatched. He spent all his time huddled over the oven, basking in the glow of the eggs. I think he would have gotten up and sat on top of them if he could have.
“The Circle of the Sun has three doors, but I didn’t know for sure where each one led: Sorid never left the room until I was asleep, paralyzed in pure fear, and he was always back by the time I woke up at first light. I suspected one door led to the tunnels because he always told me that he spent nights ‘tending to the furnace.’”
Jai frowned—if Sorid had spent his nights in the
tunnels and his days ensuring Ceder did not escape from above, had the old magician never slept?
“A second door led to his tower atop the mountain,” Ceder continued, “and the third door handle was covered in dust, never used. I thought it must lead outside, but I guessed it would take me to the orchard, which Sorid told me covered one side of the summit; he must have been talking about the other side, though, because when I ran through that door all I saw was water.”
“But how did you overcome the nightmares?” asked Jai.
Ceder stared at Jai hard. “Before I went to sleep yesterday, Sorid told me a story I’ve never heard before. It was so strange… He spoke of something called Syn, and of the death of the Land of Lin. As if the world itself could die. He said everything was going to end in three days. Flesh, bone, sky, and stone. When I asked what was to become of me, he said I was to play a special role. His eggs were going to hatch, he told me, but they needed a beating heart to grow. He said he was going to cut out mine and feed it to the hatchlings.”
Why’s face went white in terror and he ducked inside Ceder’s ribbon like a child hiding under his covers. Jai’s jaw clenched in anger as he listened.
“Last night I was so scared by Sorid’s story that I never fell asleep. I pretended to, I shut my eyes so he would leave, but the nightmares never came; I was more frightened being awake, being alive, than what any cursed dreams could have done to me. I laid there for hours making sure everything was quiet, then I got up, grabbed the eggs and the apple, and ran out the door without looking back.”
“And that’s when you bumped into me,” said Jai, “without so much as a word of warning.” Ceder laughed uneasily. “But what do the unicorns have to do with it?” asked Jai. “You said they changed something. Did the King lift your curse when he kissed you? What happened?”
“I—” she began, unsure how to finish, “—slept. It was… wonderful. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was at peace. I don’t know if I’m cured, though, or if the nightmares will come back now. I won’t know until tonight. When the day is done.”
“He must have been in his tower all last night watching the sky, looking for the comet,” said Jai, looking up at the selfsame sight. “How else could he have missed the two of us sneaking away down below?”
“We still don’t know how Seaweed knew we would be on the shore,” said Ceder. “Could Sorid have sent him to intercept us?”
Jai shrugged. “Seaweed did mention Sorid, but he acted so afraid. I don’t know what to think.” He furrowed his brow, chewing on a difficult idea. “Ceder, I just realized something. Seaweed took the apple you stole—if he eats it, he’ll get a mouthful of Sorid’s magic!”
Ceder grinned. “And so will that glowworm that was hiding inside. Poor little guy.”
Jai laughed. “Why did you pick an apple with a worm in it, anyway?”
“They all have worms, Jai. It’s just a matter of picking one that’s not too big.”
Jai grimaced.
“They all look big to me,” said Why.
“Jai,” said Ceder, “you still haven’t told me how you got away. When I bumped into you, you were just standing on the mountainside like a moon-addled owl, staring at the sea.”
Ceder already knew about the tunnel-minnows and the lava furnace, so Jai skipped right to the scene of his escape. “I got out through a small crack in the side of the mountain. It took me years to find it. Sorid was always fuming when he found me exploring instead of working, but I don’t think he ever suspected I was memorizing every twist and turn in the tunnels until I could picture a map in my head as clear as by light. I found a tunnel one day a long time ago that smelled like nothing I had ever breathed. When Sorid found me there…” Jai trailed off, scratching his back absent-mindedly as if an old scar had begun to itch. “But I never forgot how to find my way back to that draft of fresh air. The crack in the side of the mountain was just a few turns away from there. I always planned to sneak out with my wheelbarrow one day and use it to sail across the sea.”
“Oy!” barked the octopus. “Won’t last long on the river with wits like that!”
“I didn’t know he was listening,” Jai whispered to Ceder, embarrassed. “Well, I guess I was too scared to try to leave until last night, finally. Sorid told me, too, that these were the last days. He said he was going to feed me to the furnace as part of some sick ritual to make enough fire for Syn.”
Ceder shook her head in disgust.
“Hey,” Jai exclaimed suddenly with bright eyes, “this is great!”
“What? Why?”
“My lady?” said Why.
“Not you,” said Ceder.
“Sorid never told me very much about the ritual,” said Jai, “but from what you said about the eggs, this could be really great!”
Ceder was plainly not following.
“It sounds like the heat from the lava I carted into the furnace went up to fire the stove above, in your room. And, come to think of it, they’re both probably part of the big stone pillar that holds up the mountain, down in the lowest part of the tunnels, in the middle of the underground lake.”
Ceder arched an eyebrow—she had heard of no such lake or pillar. “What’s so great about that?”
“Think about it! Sorid told me that I’d be burned in the furnace to make more fire for Syn’s return, and he said he would give your heart to those eggs that were heating up on top of the stove. If the furnace leads to the stove, then Syn must have been inside the eggs you stole! Syn wasn’t even born yet! That’s what Sorid’s ritual was all about!”
Ceder’s expression immediately soured.
“This is good, Ceder! Remember how the eggs used to glow red last night? It all makes sense. That was Syn inside—two of them, one in each—but now they’re gone! The King and Queen turned them blue. They’re filled with water. Don’t you see? We stopped Sorid! We killed Syn before it could be born again! The legend Sorid told us was true, but we stopped it! Why do you look like you’re about to throw up?”
Ceder was nearly pale for a girl with skin so brown. “There were three eggs, Jai. I left one on the stove.”
Jai reeled back and sat down, touching his forehead unconsciously. “But… but you and I escaped. If he needed us—if he needed your heart—to make the ritual work, then we’ve still won. He won’t be able to hatch the last egg without us.”
Ceder was unconvinced. “What if he doesn’t need my heart to make it work? What if he just catches a bunch of fish and throws them on the fire? I should have taken the third egg instead of that apple. But I was so hungry, and I didn’t think I could swim all the way across the sea with too many things in my arms.”
The octopus shook its head but said nothing.
“Ceder, without that apple, we wouldn’t even have a boat right now. We had to have it, in a twisted kind of way.”
She forced a smile.
Jai took the enchanted eggs out of his satchel and handed one to Ceder. They sat in silence for several minutes, taking comfort in the gentle rumbling of the eggs and the pallid luminosity they emitted. Ceder took a drink, then raised the small crack in the blue shell to her eye. She had not yet taken the time to closely examine the perpetual squalls that raged within them. For a moment she was utterly absorbed. She lowered the egg. “Jai, why didn’t you tell me what was inside of these?”
Jai was taken aback. “I thought I told you about the little storms inside. I’m sure I did.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the dragons?” She was dead serious—the color drained from her face.
Jai pressed the egg in his hands up to his eye. She was right—he could not believe he had missed it before! Now he saw them clearly. The egg was not filled with miniature hurricanes, but with diminutive dragons rushing around the interior of the eggshell in endless cyclones; Jai had mistaken serpent for squall because the tiny spirits were formed of the water itself and were difficult to see at first. Their horned skulls and ridged spines were one with the
turbulent, tea-cup-sized typhoons, there one second, gone the next.
Jai put the egg down. His skin was pale to begin with, now it was ghostly. “The King and Queen didn’t destroy Syn,” he mumbled in disbelief.
“They just turned it from fire into water,” said Ceder.
They sat in silence, stunned. “Does this mean they’re not a threat to the sea anymore?” asked Jai.
“I don’t know,” said Ceder, “but maybe we should stop drinking out of these for a while.”
They put the eggs away and tucked the satchel under the bench, out of sight but never out of mind.
III. Last to Go
The Sands of Syn appeared at first as a roiling red haze hovering above the horizon, then the desert slowly crystallized into the more distinguishable profiles of smooth, sloping hills. Silhouettes of craggy mountains were faintly visible beyond the forbidding dunes. There was only one break in the shoreline where the river flowed into the sea. A green archway rose over that threshold—a statue of some sort—but Jai and Ceder were too far away to make it out clearly.
A tail away from the river the boat came to a stop. The octopus with the eye-patch emerged from below, scowling fiercely, but Ceder had the unshakable impression that it was trying not to cry. “So we’re ‘ere, by my eye. That’s where the guardian’s at. The Oldest Fish in the Sea. Never met him, myself, but I ‘ear ‘e’s a bit on the cranky side. I’ll keep an eye on ya, in case ‘e don’t take yer case kindly.” And with that, the patch-eyed pirate submerged.
“Wait!” called Ceder.
The octopus eyeballed the children as if their reluctance to leave had been the most predictable thing in the world. “Aye?” it asked gruffly, resurfacing.
“What should we say to the guardian?” asked Ceder.
“I’ve no idea, missy. Say what ya like. Most fish ain’t too fancy about thee’s and thou’s.”
“Will he know that the Coralute has given us permission to go ahead?”
“From what I’ve ‘eard, aye, ‘e’ll know. Not that ‘e’ll care. The guardian does as ‘e desires. ‘e doesn’t give a whit about Coral Wing, they say. Says it’s false advertisin’. Now, good luck to ya two, I mean that. But remember, if ya do get past them statues, ya won’t be in the sea anymore, will ya? Out o’ friendly territory—catch my drift? So watch out fer yerselves. And watch out fer each other. That’s the only way ye’ll make it.” The octopus waited for them both to nod. “Right, off ya go. Out yer oars and bend yer backs. The river flows against ya, so ya best get used to blisters!”
Jai moaned in despair, looking at his hands.
“Thank you for pulling us,” Ceder said to the pirate, summoning her best manners for this last uncomfortable conversation, though she still focused on its anchor tattoo as she spoke. “If you see the Coralute again, would you please tell him we’re sorry we could not stay longer. It would have been nice to visit more of the castle and watch the celebration under the sea.” This earned her a look of esteem from the octopus, but Ceder frowned, deeply troubled. “And yet, it hardly seems right to be festive when so many soldiers were injured in the fight, and the King and Queen—” she stopped herself short; she did not want to be the one to break the bad news to the surly pirate.
“Well, that’s the curious part, ain’t it?” said the octopus, giving her a queer eye, as if it knew she was hiding a secret. “I heard a wave o’ gossip on the way ‘ere. Seems there’s been some kind o’ miracle back at the castle since we left. There’s a bowl o’ pink medicine goin’ ‘round—a panacea, they say, a pink panacea fixin’ all the soldiers up right as rain. Funny thing is, no matter how many fish drink from it, or how many wounds they pour it over, the dish won’t run dry. How’s that for a bit o’ good, salty cheer?”
“That sounds pretty far-fetched,” said Jai.
“Aye,” said the pirate, “aye. Let’s just say, I didn’t believe in a lot o’ things when the sun rose today, but I’ll be believin’ in a lot o’ things when the sun goes down. By the ‘oly Sight o’ Silver, when the sun goes down, I’ll wager fish can fly.” The octopus swam away with a wave of eight silver hooks and wooden legs.
No sooner than that but the entirety of the Royal Seal vanished below the sea; giving the children one respectful nod, the golden-haired leader was the last to go.
Ceder handed Jai an oar and they began to row.
The Year One,
Two brothers awoke standing over the river. Ignoring the strange light that stirred them, they began fighting as soon as they could see, their fingers locked in a groping tug-o-war for a trinket which they slowly came to realize was no longer there. Something was amiss. Stupefied, they checked the water below and the wasteland all around, but the object of their quarrel was nowhere to be seen. The brothers sat down, each on his own side of the river.
They looked around, puzzled. The trinket was not the only thing missing. Where were the red sands? More importantly, where were their piles of gold? The whole world was wrong. The brothers looked at one another and snarled, but as dense as they were, they knew neither was to blame for the other’s missing treasure—they were both afraid of the water and would never try to cross the river.
They gazed at the sea. Had the waves washed everything away? Surely no ordinary rainfall could have wiped clean so boundless a desert. Whatever the cause, all that remained of the desert they once called home were endless tails of gray shale littered with large, broken bones petrified to stone.
The brothers gaped at the sky, noticing now that the air was cast in an uncanny light, as if it was both day and night at once. They stared in awe—there was a black hole in the sun. Only a rim of fire remained burning in flickering tongues around the dark disc. This is what had woken them, they knew—the sun, which they had never seen before; with its center blacked out, the brothers finally saw their world in the light of day.
To the far west, over the sea, the sky morphed red in a single heartbeat, alight from horizon to horizon.
The brothers turned from the coast and began marching to the mountains, each on his own side of the river. It began to rain. They quickened their step. In the mountains there were good places to hide. The rain did not bother them, nor the livid sky, but if the black hole left the sun, the brothers knew they could not be there to bear witness and yet survive.
They waited in dark caves for over a year. When they emerged the world was renewed, as if they had been sleeping all along. They shuffled along the riverside to the edge of the sea. Vast crimson dunes covered the wasteland, just as they remembered. They sat in the dark of night and waited.
When they were hungry they caught fish.
When a ship passed along they demanded a hefty toll and hid the gold below the dunes, amassing new hoards of treasure to replace what had been lost.
When the sun rose they burrowed into the sand and waited for dusk to fall again.
They waited by the sea night after night, dreaming of a trinket they had seen long ago which might one day drift within reach again. They waited, and a century slipped by like a river in the dark.
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