The Floating Island

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “What do you mean, Your Majesty?” Ven asked.

  “I want to see the kingdom of the Nain when it’s not been prettied up for a state visit,” King Vandemere said. “I want to see the lairs of dragons and the nests of giant eagles, or what the sunrise looks like at the top of the highest peak of Balatron. But since it is unlikely that I ever will get to, I want to be able to see those things through the words of someone who really has.”

  The thoughts in Ven’s head came bubbling out before he could stop them.

  “You need a storyteller,” he said excitedly. “There are many of them in Vaarn, where I come from. They travel the world, and when they come to town they bring news, and endless wonderful tales.”

  The king shook his head. “No,” he said. “I don’t want a storyteller. I want a reporter, someone who will give me nothing but the straightforward report. Storytellers make up many of their stories, and they rely on their own talents to shape a tale. All those tales become nothing more than the storyteller’s vision of the world. I want to hear it as I would if I were there myself. I want to see things in my mind as I would have seen them with my own eyes, not as the storyteller sees it.

  “I have already tried to find such a person. Many have auditioned, all adults, of course. They have told me a tale to try and gain a position in my court. Until now, they have all been just storytellers. What I need is someone to be my eyes, to go out there, both on this land and in places across the sea I never got to, and see those things for me. And to be my ears, to repeat the tales they have heard in those places.”

  The king’s blue eyes burned with excitement.

  “How about it, Ven?” he asked. “Want to audition?”

  “I—er—what?” Ven replied, his hands starting to shake.

  The king made himself comfortable in his chair.

  “Tell me another story,” he said. “Tell me about something special you’ve seen.”

  “I already have,” Ven said, embarrassed. “I just told you everything I’ve seen that wasn’t the inside of the ship factory. I meant it when I said the story of my life didn’t start until I caught the feather.”

  “Well, then, tell me a tale someone has told you,” the king insisted. “It doesn’t have to be especially magical or interesting—just repeat to me a tale you have heard from someone else, someone not at all like yourself. In his or her own words. Try to keep your own thoughts and opinions out of it, as if you are just reporting on what you’ve been told. Tell me the hammered truth.”

  “No one talks to me,” Ven said. “I’m the youngest in the family—I’m lucky if anyone listens when I ask them to pass the butter.”

  He glanced out the window, and saw a cloud float by in the shape of a barracuda.

  A thought occurred to him.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “Maybe I do have a tale or two like that after all.”

  21

  The Merrow’s Tale

  * * *

  So I told the king one of the tales Amariel had used to keep me from falling asleep while I lay on the wreckage, watching the albatross fly in circles above me. She told me stories for hours, and when she grew tired of that, she sang me songs. The songs were mostly soothing, but she grew impatient with my sleepiness, not realizing I was listening to her every word and sound. She would swat me, or pinch me to make me open my eyes.

  She started this tale at sunset. She meant to amuse me, I’m sure. But then it grew dark. And the story changed.

  When the night came, it didn’t really matter whether my eyes were open or not. There were no stars out that night, and except for the sting of salt in my lashes, I could not tell the difference. So seeing nothing but blackness, I listened carefully to her words, because they were the only things in the world except for the darkness.

  I still remember the story she told word for word. This is what the merrow said.

  * * *

  The Sea Beneath the Sea

  Hey! Open your eyes. I know you’re tired. I was tired of this hours ago, but I’ve already wasted so much time on you, you can’t sleep. You’ll drown. And if you drown, I’ll look bad. So stay awake, or I’ll pinch you again.

  As you can probably guess, now that you’ve been floating here for a while, it can get very cold in the sea.

  Not always, of course. There are rivers of water that run through the ocean, warm currents that make it quite pleasant to be here most of the time.

  But sometimes it gets cold. And when it does, there is almost nothing that can be done to escape it.

  Merrows have bodies that adapt to the changes in temperature. But when it gets too cold, we go up to the surface and look around for a large rock or even an island to stretch out on in the sun and bask. Basking may seem lazy, but actually it’s the way we store up enough heat to go back into the cold depths. And humans shouldn’t be criticizing us as lazy anyway. You try swimming all day, every day of your life, and maybe then you can criticize. Hmmph.

  Anyway, it gets cold.

  And nobody likes to be cold, even merrows.

  Now, merrow females are the most beautiful creatures in the world. Everyone knows that. But merrow men, well, that’s a different story. It’s probably fair to say that, as creatures of the sea go, merrow men are a little bit lazy. All right, a lot lazy. Very, very lazy. They bask for more than just heat collection—they lie around in the sun on rocks whenever they can to get out of helping with the children or the other work that has to be done. As a result, they are fat around the middle—even fatter than you, Ven. And on top of that, they are ugly. Not my dad, of course, but most merrow men. They have noses that are flat and round, with big nostrils that sometimes sprout hair. Their teeth are frequently green, and they tend to burp a lot. Bubbles come out the other end as well, which makes them unpleasant to be around.

  So maybe now you can see why merrow females are sometimes willing to give their caps to human sailors, marry them, and make lives with them on land instead. Not me, of course. I’m never going to get married. I’m going to be a racing hippocampus rider and win the Grand Trophy at the summer sea festival.

  Anyway—

  It’s dark, isn’t it? It certainly got dark all of a sudden. A moment ago I was going to tell you why merrows think the sun is made of rum. But the sun disappeared, and now it’s really too dark to tell that story. Are you awake? Because now I can’t see your eyes, but if I catch you snoring, I’m going to let you fall into the sea.

  Oh, good. You are awake.

  You’re shaking. I hope that’s from cold, because you don’t seem the type to be afraid of the dark. I hope you’re not the kind of person who closes your eyes when you’re afraid. Look how dark it is. I guess it’s kind of funny to ask you to see the dark; it’s sort of like saying “look at all the nothing.”

  I wonder where the moon is taking us. The moon is the world’s pilot fish—do you know what a pilot fish is? It is usually long and thin, striped and spiny, and it swims in the company of a shark, helping it find its way in the depths. The moon does that for the world, too, and when you see its shadow, it’s turning the world in a different direction. Maybe toward better areas of the dark universe. Tonight is so dark that I wonder where the pilot fish is going.

  It’s only dark like this a couple of places down home. In the depths of the sea most all the living things carry their own lights, like your stars, only closer.

  I have a story for the dark. I’ll tell you about the most terrible place in the ocean.

  Did you know that there is a sea beneath the sea? I’ve seen it.

  My father wanted to show me never to go there. He knows that if he tells me not to go to a place, I sometimes don’t listen, so he took me himself to make sure I never would go alone. And I never will.

  When he first told me we were going, I was pretty excited. “A sea beneath our sea?” I said. “Below the sand in the ocean there is another ocean? I’ve got to see that.”

  My father did not smile, but he nodded. “It’s som
ething you should see,” he said. “But only once. And you will only want to once.”

  We left home and swam for days. My dad didn’t say much the whole way, except that the chain coral, which is the hardest, strongest type of coral there is, had long ago been asked by the Sea King to make a huge wall to keep this place apart from the rest of the world. The coral left one opening. It was not meant to be an entrance, but in case something came out it would have just one way to leave, and the chain coral would be the first line of defense if it was something awful.

  The only other thing he said was that the Mythlin, the people who are made from water and live in the sea, built their great city, Tartechor, on exactly the opposite side of the world from it, to sort of balance it out, I guess. That made me a little nervous. Tartechor is a beautiful place, a gleaming city surrounded by a dome made of billions of bubbles, and if they saw it as the opposite of where we were heading, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go there. But we did.

  Finally we came to a huge path of chain coral. I wasn’t sure once I saw it that I wanted to go any farther, because you can get really torn up by chain coral—it can rip right through your scales. But Dad insisted, so in we swam.

  At the beginning of the wall there were fish and plants, just like everywhere else, but the closer we got, the fewer and fewer fish there are, until we got to the end, where there’s nothing, just sour sea and the bones of coral piled all around. And a hole. Like someone a long time ago rolled a rock away and revealed a great cavern full of evil water. My father told me not to breathe, and we went in.

  You probably think because I have gills that I don’t know what it means to have to hold your breath, to be afraid to take water in, or to choke on something, but I do. This place, this sour sea, is the one place on earth where I know I could drown. We went into the cave, and it was so dark, not like there was nothing there, but like the light had all been sucked out.

  The wider I opened my eyes, the less I could see, and I couldn’t speak for fear of getting some of that water in my mouth. I brushed up against some fire coral that burned to the touch, but gave no light, and the whole place felt of something terrible somebody had done, and hidden there.

  It felt as if deep at the bottom of that sea, in the darkest darkness, was some treasure somebody had stolen and then broke, or some murder that had been buried. My father says some secrets fester just like wounds, and I think that’s the sort of thing that’s at the source of that sea. My father had to carry me out of there because I ran out of breath and started to panic. Whenever I have nightmares now, I smell the heat of that water.

  When we got far enough away from the chain coral to know that we were truly safe, I asked my father what that horrible place was.

  “The beginning of the world,” he said. “And its end.”

  And that’s all he would say.

  So now you know that, as dark as the depths of the sea may be, as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is really not true darkness. It’s just waiting for light to return. There are places that are truly dark in the world, Ven, but this place here, this open stretch of sea where you are floating, is not one of them. It’s not really dark here—it’s just night. If you hang on and stay awake, in a short while the edges of the sky will start to turn gray, then pink, and the sun will rise, and there will be blue above and all around you again.

  22

  The Offer of a Position

  “YOU’RE NOT FAT AROUND THE MIDDLE,” SAID THE KING WHEN THE story ended.

  “Thank you,” Ven said. “But I wasn’t offended when she said that. She’s a merrow. She had never seen a Nain before. And we are a little paunchy.”

  “I can almost hear her voice when you tell her tale,” said King Vandemere, standing and stretching his legs. “And I can imagine what it must have been like, lying there, half dead, in the sea, listening to it.”

  He stood up from the table, walked to the door and opened it.

  “Galliard,” he said, “will you be so good as to come back in now?”

  Once the glowering Vizier had returned, the king sat back down.

  “Well, Galliard, I’m satisfied that I have found my reporter—although we will have to find a better title than that,” he said.

  The Royal Vizier’s face turned as purple as an eggplant.

  “What? Your Majesty—”

  “What is the name of the jailer in the palace dungeon, Galliard?” the king asked, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

  The regal man’s mouth flapped open silently, like a fish breathing air.

  “I really have no idea, Your Majesty,” he said disdainfully.

  “Of course you don’t. Nor did I, and the man has worked in my father’s castle since before I was born. And yet Ven took the time to make note of it. He has a natural curiosity and attention to detail that will serve me well, I believe.” The king looked at Ven again. “So Ven, what do you say? Are you willing to accept the position?”

  Ven’s face turned gray, and he leaned forward in his chair, trying to keep from passing out. “Uh—as much as I would love to say yes, Your Majesty—and I would really love to say yes—I don’t think I can.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have to go home,” Ven said. “I don’t know whether or not my father will want to see me again, but I have to do something about Mr. Witherspoon. My father does—well, did—business with him all the time. Witherspoon’s one of his best customers. If by chance the family business did survive the sinking of the Angelia, it won’t if Mr. Witherspoon sets him up again.” Ven’s face went from gray to red with anger. “And I want to pay a visit to him personally.”

  “You may be fifty years old and large for a Nain, but you should not take on a human man all by yourself,” said the king. “Especially one with pirate connections. That’s unwise.”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing it myself,” said Ven. “I’m taking my brother Luther with me.”

  “Hmmm,” said the king. “Well, one advantage of being king is that we have some power to deal with matters such as this. I will take care of contacting the authorities in Vaarn myself. I suspect they may take action a little faster on my behalf than they will for you.”

  “Thank you,” said Ven, but he still was unsure about the king’s offer.

  “Tell you what,” King Vandemere said, seeing the doubt on his face, “why don’t you think about it? I can imagine you have a lot to figure out right now. You can take some time and consider what you want to do with your life.”

  “I will,” Ven promised. “But can you tell me what exactly a royal reporter would have to do? I understand you are looking for someone to be your eyes and ears, and go to places you can’t go to, but what specifically are you looking for? What do you expect to find in this search?”

  The king smiled. “I’m not looking for what I expect to find, Ven. I’m just looking for what is there. That’s all.”

  “So there are specific places you want me to go?”

  “Yes, but eventually I would like you just to explore on your own. Go out and see what’s there. Then tell me about it. This is not just a title, it’s a job. I will pay you to do this for me, and for your expenses. I will give you whatever you need—soldiers, horses, interpreters, maybe even your own Vizier.”

  “Your Majesty!” Galliard objected.

  “Well, once Graal returns and you are done with your studies, you will need a position, Galliard. I’d hate to see you out of work.” The king’s eyes twinkled.

  “I have to object, Your Majesty,” the Vizier said.

  “Of course you do, Galliard.”

  Ven’s head was spinning. “I will think about it, as you suggested, Your Majesty. But can you tell me one last thing?” The king nodded. “In the end of it all, what is it you are hoping for? What will you do with all the information your reporter gathers?”

  The king considered for a long while.

  “I just want to know the answer, as my father said. I want to be the best king
I can be, and need to have all the knowledge I can in order to do that. If I can’t see those things myself, can’t go out and learn about it firsthand, I will have to read it in a book, just as everyone else does. But the book must be the hammered truth. In the end? In the end I suppose I’d like to have a book of all the world’s magic. I’d like to have a book of all human knowledge. If I can’t be the man who collected that magic, that knowledge, then I want to be the one who commissioned it to be done. I want that to be my legacy. You asked me what my story was. I want that to be my story, Ven. Does that make sense to you?”

  Ven smiled. “Very much so, Your Majesty.”

  The king’s smile faded slightly in return. “Magic left over from Creation is a very fragile thing, Ven,” he said finally. “I need to know as much about it as I can, to have an accounting of where and what it is—because I have reason to believe that it may be in danger of disappearing. There are many people lurking in the world who would see it dead—or try to control it in an evil way. My offer stands, and you should consider this—if you accept it, you might not only be documenting the magic of the world, you might be helping to save it as well. So think on it, and let me know what you decide.”

  He tossed Ven the box-cube puzzle he had been working on.

  “The last rule of puzzling is this: Sometimes there are many solutions, sometimes only one. But you never know which until you’ve tried to solve it more than once.”

  The king pointed to the puzzle in Ven’s hand.

  “Except every now and then you find one that has many answers, but only one solution. Have you ever seen one of those before?”

  Ven shook his head. The box was simple, with no decoration, made from a strange dark wood that had a tint of deep red in its grain.

  “That is a practice box made by a Rover master in training,” King Vandemere said. “Rovers are an odd people, strange nomads that cannot seem to stay in one place very long. Like gypsies, they travel the world, going wherever the wind takes them, without roots. They have a veil of darkness around them. Little is known about them and their ways, but long ago one piece of lore found its way onto the wind—it was the story of their puzzle boxes.