“Where did you come from?”
“Are you a stowaway?”
“Were you really going to jump off the ship?”
On and on it went, until the woman shooed them away.
When it was quiet, Rook took the opportunity to speak. “Are you a wizard?” she blurted out. Her gaze flicked to the animus crystal.
The captain didn’t seem surprised by the question. “Well, since you’re standing on the deck of a skyship hovering thousands of feet in the air, it’s safe to assume there’s a wizard involved,” she said, her voice rich with amusement. “The question is, what are you? And what am I going to do with you now that you’ve seen what no outsiders have?”
Rook licked dry lips. The captain hadn’t actually admitted she was a wizard. Did that mean one of the children was responsible for charging the crystal?
“Are they exiles?” Rook asked, staring around at the small faces. Silence met her question. The children stared back at her with wide, wary eyes. Taking a chance, Rook lifted her hands slowly and gathered up her wild black hair. Then she pivoted so the captain and the others could see the back of her neck and the white roots.
Gasps echoed all over the deck.
“Because I’m an exile too,” Rook said.
AT ROOK’S REVELATION, THE CHILDREN exploded again, talking so loud and fast it sounded like there were two dozen of them on deck instead of six. She got just enough from their chatter to realize that they were all exiles. And they were obviously very happy to see another person like them. They pressed closer to Rook, crowding her, plucking at her clothes, until Rook started to panic. The urge to flee surged inside her, but she had nowhere to go.
The captain clapped her hands. “That’s enough! Have you all forgotten that we still need to land this ship? Get to your stations! Prepare for descent! Cassandra, widen the fog cloud. Keep us hidden all the way down. Nate, you go on ahead to the house and let them know we have a guest. The rest of you know what to do, so get to it!”
The children scattered. One of the boys ran to the railing and in the blink of an eye transformed into a sleek, shiny black crow. The bird launched into the air, soaring off with a loud Caw! Caw!
The girl the captain had called Cassandra raised her hands above her head, and tiny puffs of mist leaked from her fingers, thickening and swirling out from the deck to form a barrier on either side of the ship. The fog was so dense no one watching from the ground would ever be able to tell there was a skyship hiding in it. They’d just think an unexpected mist had drifted in to cover the world.
With the children gone, Rook edged toward the railing again, risking a glance below. Through wispy breaks in the clouds and fog, she could just make out a snow-covered forest. They were in another part of the world entirely, far from Regara.
The captain came up beside her at the rail. “Quite a view, isn’t it?” She seemed much friendlier now. It must have been because Rook had revealed she was an exile, just like the other children. It was the first time in her life a person had actually been glad to find out her identity.
Rook kept her eyes on the trees. “I’m sorry I…er…dropped in suddenly,” she said.
“I must admit, I’m curious how you managed that,” the captain said. She smiled. “Then again, I imagine there are a few things you’re curious about as well.”
Was she ever. A thousand questions tumbled through Rook’s mind, but none of them mattered as much as saving Drift and Fox. Still, she hesitated. Could she trust this woman, a sky pirate? What if the children here were prisoners forced to work on the ship?
Although they seemed awfully cheerful for prisoners, Rook thought. She glanced over her shoulder at the children running up and down the deck, laughing and teasing each other. Hadn’t Drift said she was going to have to trust someone in order to bring back help? In the end, did she really have a choice?
“My friends are in trouble,” she said, looking back at the captain at last. “They’re exiles like me, and they’re trapped in the Wasteland, which is where I just came from. I used my magic to open a door and asked it to take me to someone who could help.”
She didn’t know how she expected the captain to react, but if she was a wizard, or at least familiar with exiles, Rook’s story shouldn’t sound as strange as it otherwise might.
The woman was quiet for a long moment, staring at Rook thoughtfully. Finally, she nodded. “A door, you say? And your magic brought you here?”
“That’s right.”
“Then the question I’m about to ask you is very important.” The captain swept her hand out, indicating the sprawling forest. “Have you ever opened a door to this area before?”
“I don’t know,” Rook said. “I don’t think—” But then she stopped. She stared down at the trees, remembering the day Fox had leaped through her door into the alley in Gray Town. He’d come from a snow-covered forest—Braidenwood, Mr. Kelmin had called it. The haunted place her doors kept returning to.
What were the odds this was the same forest?
Rook stared at the children running around the ship—all of them exiles like her and Drift.
Like Fox, who claimed to come from a sanctuary.
Sank. Chewy.
Rook clutched the railing. “You’re taking us to a sanctuary, aren’t you?” she asked. “My friend—Fox—came from a place like that. That’s what he called it.”
When she heard the name, the captain’s eyes lit with relief, and her smile widened. “Yes, this is where your Fox came from. My husband and I made our home here in the forest, and we’ve been using it as a safe place for people like yourself. At least, we thought it was secure, but then a few months ago, something strange started happening in the forest. The children noticed it first while they were outside playing. I thought they were telling stories when they said that doors started appearing on the trees.”
Rook was taken aback. “My doors?”
“Most of them disappeared before we could get close,” the captain went on, “but Fox was fascinated by them. He’d spend hours trekking through the forest, searching, waiting for one to appear. He never told us why.” Her face clouded. “And then one day, a door did appear, close enough for him to get to it. It opened, and he didn’t hesitate. He just jumped through before anyone was able to stop him.”
So that was how it happened. It was what Rook had been afraid of, ripping Fox away from his home. But why hadn’t he wanted to go back to the sanctuary, where he was safe, cared for, surrounded by other children like him?
“After that, my husband and I started searching the forest for the doors,” the captain said, “and we did approach a small one once, but there was no knob on our side to turn. I knocked on the door, but it disappeared without ever opening.”
Rook’s heart stuttered. That night, in the closet, when she’d heard the loud knocking…
“That was you,” she whispered. “I heard you, but I was…” She’d been afraid. And all along, it had been Danna trying to make contact with her. She’d been looking for Fox.
“In a way, we’ve been expecting you,” Danna said. “Or rather, we’ve been hoping that whoever was behind the doors might someday show herself.”
“Coming up on the manor!” shouted one of the boys from the crow’s nest, waving a brown cap. “Prepare for landing!”
“You’d better find something to hold on to,” the captain told Rook. “The descent can be rough if you’re not used to it. Once we’re on the ground, we’ll talk more.”
With that, she strode back to the quarterdeck and stood next to Cassandra. She moved with surety and grace, as if she’d been on the deck of a ship her whole life. Rook, on the other hand, tripped and stumbled as the Chase suddenly tilted, the prow angling toward the treetops. Then, all at once, they began to drop.
Fast.
Rook’s belly clenched. She leaned ove
r the rail, afraid she was going to be sick. Everything was happening so quickly. A sanctuary for exiles. A vessel that somehow still had enough animus to fly. And behind it all was a sky pirate.
Below her, the trees grew larger and larger as the ship descended, and the cold, crisp air was thick with the scent of pine needles. But where were they going to land? The forest went on for miles in every direction. Threads of fog drifted around the ship, reducing visibility to just a few feet. Rook’s fingers dug into the wooden rail.
“Land ho!” shouted the boy in the crow’s nest, and suddenly, there it was—a break in the tree line, a thin sliver of a clearing within the dense forest. Nestled in the center was a large two-story brick house with four lighted windows in the front. Smoke curled from two chimneys, one at the front and one at the back of the house.
The Chase was headed for a landing right on its front lawn.
Rook braced herself as wind gusts buffeted the ship, but the captain guided them smoothly between the trees and settled the ship on a landing platform. With a creak and groan, the ship slid into place, and the dense fog slowly dissipated.
Once they were docked and secure, two of the children ran to the rail to lower the gangplank. Rook followed the crew as they disembarked, but she hung back while the other children pelted toward the front door of the house, which was already opening, spilling yet more children onto the snow-dusted lawn. There must have been a dozen in all.
One of them was a tiny girl with tight braids clutching a stuffed elephant in one hand and a stuffed mouse in the other. She ran right up to Rook. She wore a long coat over a rich brown dress that matched her eyes, and a smile that reminded Rook very much of the captain’s grin.
“H-hello,” Rook said to the girl.
The girl didn’t answer. She continued to smile as she held up the stuffed elephant and mouse, as if for Rook’s inspection.
“Those are really nice,” Rook said, though, if she was being honest, the stuffed toys had seen better days. One of the elephant’s button eyes was missing, and the mouse, well, it was a little bit too—
Real.
Rook yelped and jumped back as the mouse, which turned out to be very much alive, flicked its tail and twitched its whiskers at her. The little girl giggled, and before Rook could react, she tossed the mouse into the air.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Without thinking, Rook reached out to try to catch the creature, but it curled into a little gray fur ball, evading her as its form stretched, grew…and transformed right before her eyes.
An instant later, a man stood on the lawn in front of Rook. He wore a small pair of spectacles, and had wavy brown hair that hung down in his eyes.
More pieces of the puzzle fell into place in Rook’s mind. It wasn’t the children who had provided the animus for Danna’s skyship. It was this man. He was a shapeshifter.
Another wizard of Vora.
“WHAT HAVE WE HERE?” THE man’s voice boomed. He swept the little girl and her stuffed elephant into his arms and smiled down at Rook. “Your name’s Rook, yes? A little crow told me you were coming. I’m Heath Poe, Danna’s husband, and this little one is our daughter, Henrietta.”
The girl waved her stuffed elephant at Rook and then put her head on her father’s shoulder.
“You’ve already met some of the children,” Heath went on when Rook didn’t immediately reply. “Don’t worry about keeping any of the names straight yet. Just come inside and we’ll get you settled and fix you something to eat.”
“She’s not here for food, love,” Danna said from behind Rook. Rook turned to see Danna striding up to the house with the rest of her crew in tow. “She came for our help. I think you’d better hear her out.”
Heath’s friendly smile faded, and his face sobered at once. “Come into the kitchen then, and let’s talk. Children, give us some privacy, if you please.”
Something in his tone must have told the children not to argue, because none of them said another word as they filed quickly into the house. Heath set Henrietta down when they reached the foyer and nudged her to go play with the younger children.
Before she left, the little girl skipped up to Rook again and, before Rook realized what she was doing, threw her arms around her waist for a tight hug. For a second Rook stiffened, unsure what to do, then she gave in and put her arms around the girl’s shoulders. For a moment, Rook, the girl, and her stuffed elephant were all squashed together in the narrow foyer.
“Got you,” Henrietta whispered, giggling, and then she was gone, running off to find the other children.
Rook glanced up at Heath, but he didn’t seem at all surprised by his daughter’s actions. “As you can see, Henrietta isn’t shy,” he said, chuckling. “She likes you, though. She doesn’t waste any words—or hugs—on people she doesn’t like.”
Heath led her to the kitchen, where a small fire burned in the fireplace, casting flickering shadows across a floor of multicolored flagstones. Danna was already there, cleaning some mud off her boots. Heath went to the big old cast-iron stove in the corner and poured mugs of tea for himself and Danna, and then got a glass of milk for Rook. Together, they all sat at a long, scarred oak table. Heath folded his hands on the tabletop and leaned forward, shoulders hunched, eyes kind.
“So tell us, Rook, how can we help you?” he asked.
Again, Rook hesitated. Fox came from this place, she reminded herself. He’d been cared for here and called it a sanctuary. But something had also made him leave. What if it turned out these people weren’t who they said they were?
Rook shook her head. She didn’t have time for doubt. Fox and Drift needed her help. She had to take a chance.
Maybe it was the man’s kind eyes, or the little girl with the stuffed elephant, or the exhilarating journey on the ship with all the other exiles, but something tipped the scales, and Rook told them everything, starting with how Fox had come bursting through one of her doors.
She explained how they’d all been tricked and kidnapped by Captain Hardwick and Dozana. She told them about their journey into the Wasteland, and Heath confirmed that the time distortion had caused almost a week to pass in the outside world while their journey through the Wasteland had taken less than a day.
That meant the constables outside the Wasteland would no doubt be sending a search party to look for them. Maybe they could even rescue Captain Hardwick and his men before the Wasteland’s monsters got to them.
Heath’s and Danna’s expressions darkened with worry when Rook described what Dozana had done to the captain, Jace, and Garrett and what she wanted to do at the portal site. Heath stared down at the table, lost in thought.
When she’d finished her story, Rook sat back in her chair and gulped down her milk, not realizing until that moment just how thirsty and exhausted she was.
Danna went to get more milk and refilled Rook’s glass. “I’m glad Fox found a home with you,” she said. “He was always a stubborn one.”
“They all are, in their own ways,” Heath commented, though he seemed distracted.
Rook took the opportunity to slide in a couple of questions of her own. “How did you come to have so many exiles here?” she asked. “Are they really part of your crew?”
“Nowadays, they’re my only crew—the only ones I can trust with our secrets, anyway,” Danna said. She leaned back in her chair, crossing one leg over the other. “In my younger days, I was a merchant, but then I turned pirate—well, privateer—for the kingdom of Izfel, back when they were feuding with their sister kingdom, Moravel. I raided ships, stole cargo, and had more than a few cannons fired at me. But the feud ended eventually, so I went back to hauling cargo—magical this time—and it was about then I met Heath.”
“Dozana told you the truth,” Heath said, picking up the story. “I came to Talhaven in secret to escape the wars in Vora. I stowed away as a mouse on one of
the Voran merchant ships, hiding among the cargo they intended to trade with the people of Talhaven. Turns out that cargo ended up on Danna’s ship, the Chase.”
Danna laughed. “I nearly fell overboard when Heath transformed in front of me,” she said.
Heath grinned at his wife. “I apologized over and over again, but I’m not sure she’s forgiven me.”
“Give it a few more years,” she said, winking at him. “After we got married and after the Great Catastrophe brought the exiles to Talhaven, I petitioned the queen of Izfel to let me take some of the children into my care. I couldn’t tell her about Heath, of course, but I’d served the queen well, and she owed me more than a few favors. Yet she turned me down. Said the leaders of the six kingdoms would handle the situation, and that I wasn’t suited to looking after the magical children.” She flashed Rook a dangerous smile. “But I, never being one to take no for an answer, decided it was best to turn pirate again. So after the exiles escaped, I took the Chase and began searching for them. That’s how we found Fox and all the rest. With Heath secretly providing the animus, and the children helping to hide the ship from prying eyes, we’ve managed to sail the skies undetected.”
“And we’ll help you too,” Heath said. His expression was grave. “Especially after hearing about Dozana and her plans. I believe we can rescue your friends without involving the constables or anyone else in Regara.” He glanced at his wife, who nodded her agreement. “The trickier part will be figuring out a way to stop the wild magic that threatens the city. I’ll have to see it for myself before I can formulate a plan.”
Hope, which had before been only a spark in Rook’s chest, expanded to an actual feeling. Heath and Danna were going to help her. But they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into.
“You haven’t seen Dozana’s power,” she said. “She didn’t even touch us, and she drained all our magic.” How could a shapeshifter hold out against that?
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