Nadya Skylung and the Masked Kidnapper

by Jeff Seymour

  His tears hit me like a flash flood. I’m bruised and hurting after my run-in with the Shadowmen, but it’s just on the outside. Alé’s ankle will heal. So will my pride, and probably even my relationships with Nic and Thom. But Aaron’s sister is gone unless we find her.

  “Shh,” I say, and I crutch over and wrap my arm around his shoulder. “I’m not giving up.” As I say it, I realize it’s true. I can’t give up. What am I gonna do, just run away? Never come back to Far Agondy? Spend the whole rest of my life looking over my shoulder for Silvermask, wondering whether his gang has its tentacles in the other cities too? Wondering whether more pirates are going to come after me?

  “But Captain Vega . . .”

  I push back from Aaron and put on my first-mate face, which I’ve still got even though I’m not gonna be first mate anytime soon. “Captain Vega doesn’t know everything. And he can’t be everywhere all the time. We’re gonna crack this, Aaron. We’re gonna beat Silvermask, take down his gang, and get your sister back, okay?”

  Aaron nods and wipes his nose. He smiles up at me, snot puffing in and out of his nostrils. “Thank you, Nadya,” he says. “You really are a hero. Just like Alé says.”

  I let go of him, lean on my crutch, and chew a piece of my hair that’s dangled down by my mouth. I don’t feel like a hero. I still feel like I can’t get anything right and I’m in way over my head. I want to curl up under my blankets and wait for somebody else to fix things. I miss the days when I thought I could do anything.

  But I guess those days are over, and if I’ve got to be something other than Nadya Skylung, Invincible Queen of the Air, I guess I’ll take Nadya Skylung, Hero to Small Children with Missing Sisters.

  I’m just starting to think about how I can follow through on my promise to Aaron when Tam’s voice breaks the quiet from the speaking tube in the wall. “Nadya!” he shouts. He always talks into that thing way louder than he needs to. Maybe I’ll borrow one of Rash and Alé’s masks sometime so he can come in here and understand that he doesn’t need to shout.

  I cross over to the tube. “Yeah?”

  “Captain Vega wants you and Aaron down on deck. There’s a visitor here for you.”

  I glance at Aaron and take a deep breath. The fear-octopus crawls out of my stomach and waves its tentacles menacingly. I’m feeling pretty mistrustful of strangers right now. But you can’t spend your whole life being afraid, right? And all in all, meeting a stranger on the deck of the Orion with Nic and Tam right there is a pretty small risk.

  * * *

  • • •

  I have plenty of time to look at the visitor as Tam lowers me to the deck. He’s a tall man, built like an ironmonger, all huge arms and legs and a barrel chest. He has wavy black hair that reaches about to the back of his neck, light-brown skin, and a small, well-trimmed beard that clings tightly to his chin. He wears green trousers and a dark-red long-sleeved shirt with buttons up the front, work boots, and a belt with a big golden buckle. He chats amiably with Nic as I come down, laughing and smiling and gesturing to a sack near his feet. Nic’s more serious, but his movements are pretty relaxed. He must know this guy well.

  “Nadya,” Nic says as I’m unbuckling from the swing, “this is Captain Raj Varma, of the cloudship Golden Dawn. He’s just back from reporting Mrs. Trachia missing to the Cloud Navy. He’s a close friend of hers.”

  Raj bows his head. “It’s a pleasure, Nadya. Zelda spoke of you often.”

  My heart races. One of the last things Mrs. T said to me, as I was getting ready to leave her with the pirates on the Remora, was “Find Raj. He’ll teach you.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” I say. I can see his gills, now that I’m closer. They move when he does, and every once in a while there’s a flash of pink visible when they open as he turns his neck. “Are they going to track her down?”

  Raj tugs a few hairs in his beard. “I don’t know. They’ll pass the information on to their captains, but the Cloud Sea is a big place. Honestly, I think Zelda’s most likely to rescue herself.” He smiles broadly. “Now, Captain Vega tells me Zelda wanted me to teach you more about using the Panpathia. Are you ready to learn?”

  I want to keep pressing him about Mrs. T, but I also really want to know more about the Panpathia. My thirst for knowledge wins, and I nod.

  “Excellent!” He claps. “I think I can show you a few things, but I’d prefer not to do it on deck. Is there a good place for a lesson?”

  “You can use the galley,” Nic suggests. “It should be another few hours until dinner. Will that be long enough?” The sun’s starting to slide toward the horizon, but I guess maybe Nic’s thinking we’ll have a late dinner tonight.

  Raj laughs and shrugs. “Who knows? It could be twenty minutes, or it could be two hundred.” He points with his chin over my shoulder, where Tam and Aaron have reached the deck. “A lot depends on you and your young friend there, if he’s willing to come. I hear he may have a few things to teach me.”

  * * *

  • • •

  A few minutes later, we’re sitting around the table in the galley. The windows face the docking spire rather than the sea, but they still let in enough red-gold light from the afternoon sun to see pretty well. Raj settles down at the head of the table, leaving Aaron and me to sit on either side of him.

  “Well,” he says. “I hear you had a rather exciting morning.”

  I nod, my gills flapping a bit. “Yeah. Kidnappers. Know anything about them?”

  “Nothing more than what’s in the newspapers, which isn’t much,” Raj says. “We’ve only been in port a few days.” He leans back and drums his fingers on the table. “You’re quite direct, for someone your age,” he says. “Don’t lose it. It’ll do you good.”

  He cracks his knuckles and looks over at Aaron. “Now,” he says, “in a moment, I’ll answer any questions you have for me. But first, a toast.” He pulls three glass bottles out of his sack, each with a metal cap and a fizzy brown liquid inside. “Medzin’s Cola,” he says, smiling, and he pops the caps off the bottles with his thumbs, one by one. “One for each of us. Have you had it before?”

  I shake my head and sniff the mouth of the bottle he hands me. It smells sweet and tart, like a mixture of root beer and lime syrup. Aaron does the same.

  He chuckles. “You’re in for a treat, then. I won’t spoil it. But before you drink . . .” He holds up his bottle. The sunlight shines through the liquid and makes it glow, and the laughter leaves Raj’s eyes. “To Zelda Trachia, a fine human being, a fine skylung, much loved and much missed. May Goshend’s hand shield her, Goshend’s breath sail her, and Goshend’s anger never find her.”

  I raise my bottle and tap it against his. “To Mrs. T,” I echo, choked up, thinking of her climbing through the broken window on the Remora so she could stay there in my place. “A true hero.”

  Aaron lifts his bottle and adds it to the toast, but he doesn’t say anything. He just watches us, like he’s not sure what to do. Raj tips his bottle back, and I do the same.

  It’s like drinking the sunset. The cola starts off fizzy and sweet and kind of sticky, like any other cola, but it changes as it moves over my tongue and down my throat, golden sweet and thick and soothing like honey and then fruity and thin like strawberry juice and then sharp and clean like a dissolving peppermint. “Whoa,” I say, thumping the bottle down. “What is this stuff?”

  Raj takes another sip. “Liquid gold, I find. There’s a lot of money to be made buying it wholesale here from Medzin and selling it across the Cloud Sea. But we’re here to talk about the Panpathia, and the Malumbra, and how to fight the one on the other.” He raises an eyebrow. “I assume you have a few questions?”

  Do I ever. I barely know where to start. “Thom told me the Malumbra’s like a leviathan that lives between the worlds and eats minds. But where did it come from?”

  “Who can say? Wher
e did the worlds come from? Where do our minds come from?” Raj shrugs. “There are some mysteries no one has solved.”

  I frown. That’s not much of an answer. “Well, do you know how it controls people, then?”

  He drums his fingers on the table again and nods. “A little. It reaches into our world from the space between and touches minds. If you’re on the Panpathia and it contacts you, it has direct access, so it can cloud your mind very quickly. But it can also possess people—even ones who can’t use the Panpathia—by touching them physically with one of its skylung or cloudling drones.”

  “What’s a drone?” I ask, sipping cola and feeling it explode on my tongue.

  “That’s what we call people whose minds are taken,” Raj explains. “The Malumbra controls them directly, in contrast with its servants, who work for it of their own free will. It’s the drones you can spot by the darkness in their eyes.”

  “Servants?” I sputter, spitting cola across the table. “There are people who work for it on purpose?”

  Raj’s nostrils flare. “Yes,” he says angrily. “There are. And I hope you never meet one.”

  My stomach flips, and I look at Aaron. “We saw a man last month with darkness in one eye, the captain of the pirates we fought.”

  “Captain Vega told me,” he says, frowning. “My best guess is that he was under partial control. I’ve never heard of that before, though. The Malumbra must be changing its tactics, and that worries me.”

  Anything to do with the Malumbra worries me. I get caught up thinking about the time it touched my mind, until Aaron says, “Wh-wh-what h-h-h-happens to someone if it clouds their mind?”

  Raj grimaces. “We don’t know. It takes a long time for the Malumbra to assume full control, and it seems the process is reversible in its initial stages. But for people who have been possessed for years, or decades?” He shakes his head. “It may consume them entirely. We’d have to return to the Roof of the World to find out, and no one has been able to do that safely.”

  Aaron looks at the floor. His chin quivers. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “What about just a month or two?” I ask. “We think his sister was kidnapped by the Malumbra’s drones.”

  Raj’s shoulders slump and his voice softens. “Ah, I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Aaron keeps his eyes locked on the floor. “Th-that’s all right. But do you think sh-sh-she’s still okay?”

  “I hope so,” Raj says. His eyes drift toward the window, like he’s thinking about someone off the ship.

  We all stay quiet for a little while, and then Raj clears his throat. “If that’s all of your questions for now,” he says, “I have one for you, Aaron. Captain Vega told me you burned the Malumbra’s shadow out of Nadya. Can you tell me how?”

  Aaron answers quietly. “It’s a lot of imagining,” he says. “My mom said it draws on your h-h-heart, how you see yourself inside.” He fiddles with the cap from his cola. “Wh-when you see the sh-shadow, you start by clearing your mind, like it’s a big empty f-floor and you’re sweeping the fears off it.” He looks up. “Does th-that make sense?”

  I stare at him. That sounds hard. Whenever I think about the Malumbra, my mind has more fears running around it than an ant colony has ants.

  “I think so,” Raj says gently. “Please, continue.”

  Aaron stops fiddling with the cap. “After that comes th-the really h-hard part. You have to see yourself as something big and strong and bright. I see myself as a lion, with th-th-three heads and six legs and paws full of claws.” He blushes a little and looks up at me, and I do my best not to smile. “Th-then you wrap yourself in th-the Panpathia’s light and you be the animal. ‘Light always wants to burn sh-shadow,’ th-that’s what my mom said. And a big, strong animal will always ch-chase away a threat. So you ch-chase and fight and burn.”

  Raj nods. “Hmm. And what happens if you don’t win?”

  “You h-have to win,” Aaron says. “If you don’t, you’re the wrong animal. That’s the wh-whole point.”

  Raj leans back, eyebrows furrowing.

  But I think I get it. “It’s like if you were trying to figure out how to be a bird without knowing what a bird was, right?” I say. “And you only knew that birds could fly. If you imagined yourself as something that couldn’t fly, then you’d know you weren’t a bird and you had to keep trying.”

  Aaron smiles. “Exactly!” he says.

  I get a sinking feeling in my stomach. The fear-octopus pokes its head out and hisses at me. If clearing my mind of fears sounds hard, this sounds impossible. I can barely imagine myself as somebody worthy of staying on the Orion right now. How in the world am I going to imagine myself as something that can beat the Malumbra?

  We sit quietly while the cola fizzes. Raj strokes his beard.

  “Hmm,” he says at last. “Hmm, hmm, hmm.” He stands up and paces. “This will take some doing, I think. Thank you, Aaron, for sharing. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to pass the knowledge on to a few other skylungs.”

  “You’re welcome,” Aaron says. He licks his lips, then looks up. “Raj,” he asks, “h-h-have you ever met a servant of the Malumbra?”

  Raj’s face tightens and his nostrils flare again. “Yes,” he says shortly. “Though there aren’t many.” The sinking sun makes deep, sharp shadows on his face and neck. “It promises them things they want, and they justify horrible acts to get them.” He takes a deep breath and reaches for his cola again. “But for now, let us turn our minds to brighter things, and I’ll see if I can teach you some useful tricks.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Raj shows us how to find someone by holding their image in our mind, then feeling along the Panpathia for a vibration that reminds us of their footsteps. It’s pretty tricky, especially here where the web’s so dangerous and we can’t spend much time on it, but after we play a few rounds of hide-and-seek around the ship, I get the hang of it. It’s not as exciting as burning shadows and fighting back against the Malumbra, but I have to admit it would’ve come in handy on the Remora. If Mrs. T had taught me this, maybe I would’ve found everyone more quickly.

  After our lesson, Raj debarks, promising to come back and teach us something else. He tells us we’re doing a great job, and that we can get in touch with him anytime we have more questions.

  “I’ve got another question now,” I say as he’s about to head up our gangplank and back to his ship, which is moored at a different spire. “Do you know anything about my parents?”

  There’s been so much going on in Far Agondy that I haven’t thought much about them. Nic told me last month that he thought their cloudship crashed outside the city of Vash Abandi and that it was carrying something special. Maybe Raj will know something too.

  Raj pauses, looks at his hand on the ropes along the gangplank’s edge, and sighs. “Not much,” he says. “Just rumors, a few names. Your parents’ ship was called the Brightening, and it left the Roof of the World from Arnvang, the city that surrounded the Tree of Whispers.” My heart thumps. The Tree of Whispers is the heart of the Panpathia. Nic told me all the strands on the web lead back to it.

  “Your parents were first-rate cloud gardeners. They specialized in crossbreeding plants and creating new strains that produced wondrous things. The first fire-opal plant, for instance, came out of their lab.”

  My imagination takes off like a robin that’s spotted a worm. The things Raj is telling me mix with the few memories I have of my parents. I can picture them dashing around the world, collecting plants and breeding them, or working hard at chemistry benches in a dazzling city, the huge boughs of the Tree of Whispers over their heads. “Do you know their names?” I ask.

  Raj shakes his head. “People called them the Plant Doctors, and that was the only name attached to the rumor I heard: the Plant Doctors escaped from Arnvang on the Day of Shadows, car
rying something that could heal the Tree of Whispers. Captain Vega and Mrs. Trachia spent years trying to track them down. They found the wreckage of the Brightening, and you, but no more.”

  “The Day of Shadows?” I ask. I’ve never heard that name.

  Raj shudders, and he looks at the horizon, where the sun’s just dropped below the sea. “That’s what we call the day the Malumbra took over. It was full of chaos and terror. Friends turned on friends, and family turned on family. There was fire and panic and death and flight.” His eyes look like gravestones, scoured by wind and hard years. “For those of us who survived, it was the worst day of our lives.”

  I think of my doorknob, with its picture of a tree crawling up the front of it. I think of my mother, pulling it off a big silver safe and telling me to hold on to it, saying she’ll be right back. I wasn’t born yet when the Malumbra took over the Roof of the World, but I know when the worst day of my life was.

  Raj puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Nadya,” he says softly. “I wish I knew more about your family. I lost my parents, my sister, most of my aunts and uncles and cousins and friends.” He kneels and takes my hands, rubs my knuckles gently. “But let me tell you of the other things I’ve seen in the last twenty years. We are coming back, like a plant that’s been trodden on reaching for the sun again. There are skylungs in every city around the Cloud Sea, and in some beyond. We talk. We make things. We trade. The fall of the Roof of the World was a terrible thing, but it was not the end of our story.” He lets go of my hands and stands, tall and proud as an ironwood tree. “It was only a dark moment, partway through. We are writing the next chapter ourselves, day by day, and we will make it whatever we wish.”

  He bows his head to me, and to Aaron. And then he walks into the deepening dusk, his eyes twinkling like stars, and leaves me thinking sad thoughts about home.

  CHAPTER 12