Chapter Sixteen
Trinka Takes Flight
Trinka struggled to lift her head.
My body feels so tired… like it’s making up for an entire week of lost sleep all at once.
She fell back with a gentle thud against a firm yet slightly spongy surface. As her eyelids hovered half-open for a moment, she glimpsed a huge arc of green billowing far above her in an expanse of dark gray sky. It was an unfamiliar sight yet, one that seemed like it should make sense.
Everything seems so far away, even though I’m here.
And suddenly Trinka remembered.
“Dad! Dad!” she cried out. She sat upright, but before she could recognize anyone in the small circle of men that surrounded her, she slumped back down.
Her cheeks felt like they were burning even as she shivered and shook, as if her face had been left behind in the heat of Apostrophe while her body lay in the cold, wet winds of Brace. She pressed one of her clammy hands to her cheek to try to cool it, but she could hardly hold up her arm.
“It’s the traveling sickness,” she heard one of the men say. “Not safe. Give me nothing but the wind and the water, I say, and a ship and stories to sail her by.”
“Hear, hear,” the men murmured in agreement.
Their voices were fading now, and Trinka wondered if she were disappearing, if at any moment she might really be back in Aunt Vashti’s room, and the talisman from Annelise wouldn’t have worked at all. But as she forced her eyes open, she saw that the men were still there.
“Dad!” she cried out one more time.
One of the men peered down at her worriedly. “She must be Bram’s little lass.” A few of the men scurried away while the others continued muttering.
Trinka felt something soft fall onto her legs and saw that someone had dropped a dark, slightly slippery blanket on top of her. A shallow bowl of something hot and steaming appeared in front of her lips, and a man helped lift her head up so she could take a sip. It was slightly bitter and not exactly pleasant-smelling, but as she drank, she felt a little bit of the warmth travel away from her face and into her toes, and a little bit of the coolness of Brace brush against her cheeks.
Still, everything felt so strange, so distant. For a moment, she almost fell back into sleep again, but a familiar voice made its way into her mind. It seemed very far above her. And it seemed to be calling her name.
“Trinka. Trinkalassa.”
Only my father calls me that, she thought wearily. I’ve done it. I’ve made it to Bram.
She managed a small, weak smile.
“Trinkalassa,” he called again.
Slowly, Trinka forced her eyes open. It seemed to take more strength than lifting a heavy potful of water. She tried to focus on the familiar, weather-beaten face, the shocks of stiff blond hair, and the deep gray-blue eyes that peered down at her anxiously. As her father’s rough, cracked hands smoothed the hair away from her forehead, Trinka suddenly felt warmer and more relaxed, as if she’d just gone to bed after a hot, filling meal.
“To think you came all this way to see me. All by yourself,” he muttered. “If I’d have known, I would have come and picked you up. Not safe, traveling that way—” he stopped abruptly and looked away, as if he’d just thought of something he’d rather not think about.
At last he looked back, his eyes glistening. “But you’re here now―you’re all right?”
“Yes,” Trinka managed to say. She thought of telling him about the vial Annelise had given her. But there was something else, something much more important…
She sat bolt upright and threw the blanket aside, desperately alert.
“Dad! Dad!” she exclaimed. “It’s Mom―Ashira! Aunt Vashti’s got her and you’ve got to come and help her!”
Trinka paused for a response. When none came, she continued explaining, ignoring her father’s expressionless face.
“She’s got her trapped in her palace. Not in the palace, I mean, but she’s been giving her a potion to make her not remember. Even if the first wish does wear off! She doesn’t remember me at all, even though I was there―I saw her! And she doesn’t remember you. But she never meant to leave us. It was all a mistake!”
She gripped both her father’s hands and tried to look him in the eye, but his gaze turned away.
“Dad! Did you hear me? What are we going to do?”
“It’ll be all right,” he said finally. “You’re just sick from the traveling, that’s all.”
“It’s the truth!”
“Okay. Okay.” Bram’s chapped hands brushed the wisps of hair from her forehead again. “We’ll talk about it after you’ve had some sleep.”
Trinka wanted to stay awake and talk more about it right now, but all the energy that had burst forth within her had burned away, leaving her weak and shivering again.
As she laid her head back down on the damp planks of the ship, her father tucked the blanket around her shoulders. Trinka blinked a few times, trying to fight off the tiredness, but it wasn’t long before the ship’s rocking, the breathing of the sea, and the soft, repeated splash of the waves lulled her to sleep.
Trinka and the Thousand Talismans Page 18
