Fairfield sat on a rock with his head in his hands, gently rocking his body.
Amelia Britten looked up from her pattern in the sand.
“Master Kip, what a surprise. The strangest thing happened.”
Kip stepped forward, speechless. Shadow wasn’t far behind, his small arms still wrapped around his body for warmth.
“I dreamed of water,” she said, looking off into the distance. “It was cold, the coldest thing I’ve ever felt, and it was inside me, finding its way into every part of me. And then there was nothing…nothing but stars and it was even colder still.”
Fairfield spoke next.
“The gravity of the stars…we saw it pulling … our bodies are there, even now, drifting into some uncharted place.”
Kip knelt in front of Britten and took her hands. They were bitingly cold and he nearly dropped them with a gasp, but forced his fingers to hold on.
“Blackmoor did this,” he said forcefully, trying to meet her eyes. She found every opportunity to look away.
“Did you ever find your lover, sweet child?” she asked, ignoring his words.
Kip let her hands fall. They went back to tracing patterns in the sand.
“No, not yet. I…I’m trying to find him.”
“Was it worth it, boy?” Fairfield said from his rock, his cheeks red. “Was it worth it to abandon your duties for some romance, some cheap and tawdry thing that’s as common as copulation, and just as transient?”
Kip turned on him in a rage.
“You think I wanted this? You think I asked for any of this?”
“I think you set the board, you placed the pieces. You tantalized Blackmoor with the very thing that led us to this doom.
“And now we’ve been cast out into the cosmos, frozen carcasses waiting to shatter against a passing bit of debris.”
He balled his fists. “I had a family, boy. Did you know that? A wife of twenty-two years, two girls. I’m sure I had two girls. I…I can’t remember their names.”
He trailed off, his head sinking back into his hands.
“We saw him,” Britten said. “I’m sure we saw Lord Blackmoor passing by. Did he speak to us? I don’t remember. He looked…old.”
Fairfield coughed. “He said we sailed from Surrey, shades of ourselves.”
Shadow was staring at the ship. He padded towards the shore and Kip followed.
“Does Kip see it?” his friend said.
Kip looked at the water. There was the merest hint of a path playing on the lapping waves. It moved straight towards the horizon, stretching an impossible distance towards the purple disturbance.
The place we’re going, Kip thought.
The air split with the deep clang of a bell. Again, the single deafening peel that sent the Pale World into chaos. The gray sky turned black as stars stabbed down at them. Constellations rippled in the water at their feet.
Kip brought his hand to his ears, riding out the horrible sound as it faded in an echoing loop.
As quickly as it had come, it vanished. The gray board set again, waiting for the next move.
“Kip and Shadow are going to sail the sea like two privateers!” Shadow exclaimed.
He raised his hands over his head and his body went pale, all except for his eyes. The blue rolled into purple.
Still water began to churn, sea foam rising in angry circles. A swarm of purple lights became visible just below the surface like a host of jellyfish. The lights darted towards the wreckage of the ship.
It was a host of Shadows.
Kip saw one breach the water, its small black form cresting then disappearing, its body wet and slick.
These creatures were architects of this underworld, or linked to its creation somehow. The purple had returned to Shadow’s eyes, only more forcefully. It slashed and cut, mixing with, and fighting, the blue.
“Shadow, be careful,” Kip said, but his friend didn’t seem to hear him. He didn’t like him using the magic of this world, siphoning off a piece of Vorax’s sorcery, if that’s what he was doing.
The ship tilted to the right, showing its broken underbelly, a ragged gash in its hull, then righted itself. It was like one of the great lizards in a museum, raised from the depths. Unearthed timber and canvas revealed themselves inch by inch. The tattered sails caught the wind and billowed to life. Holes plugged, grew back together like living wood. Water flushed from every pore.
The Shadows burst out of the water and scurried over the body of the ship, mending it as they ran.
Kip and Enos sail to the Lost Library of Antilla.
This is my ship, Kip thought. Bought and paid for. If only he could sail far away and not to that purple glow on the horizon. He looked back to find Enos again as if he would offer the answers.
Enos stood a few paces back on the crest of a dune, his feet blurring with the black sand. He was looking away from the ship at some unseen point.
Kip hated him for that. He hated him for not looking at the marvel in front of them. He hated him for his absence. He wanted to scream at him, to awake some part of him.
“We were going to sail to Antilla! This is one of your ships!” Kip yelled at his static form. “Don’t you remember?”
Shame swelled in Kip. He knew Enos was dead. His love had gone before him, had suffered, and then departed, and all Kip could think about were ships in bottles and the pain that wouldn’t leave his chest. He turned away from the memory.
Shadow’s small body was shaking now but he kept his hold on the ship. Kip reached for him, wanting to steady him, to help him, but his hand passed through his body.
His eyes had given over to the purple light. They blazed like two beacons, a lighthouse calling the ship. It obeyed, moving clumsily in the wind as it turned and faced the shore.
“That’s the ship that drowned us,” Fairfield said.
“No, Stephen, it was the stars that did it,” Britten corrected. “Don’t you remember?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Amelia.”
“I remember aperitifs and stars and coldness, and then nothing. Don’t you remember the nothing?”
But Fairfield didn’t respond. Instead he stepped into the water and walked towards the ship.
15
They leaned on the railing like gawking tourists, Kip, Shadow, Fairfield, and Britten all in a row. They watched the black sand and sloping cliffs of the shoreline move away from them as their ship caught the wind. The sails bellowed outward, touched by a breeze that didn’t seem to effect the surface of the water. It was as still as glass.
Shadow’s eyes had returned to their normal blue, but Kip wondered for how long.
“A ship needs a name,” he said.
“It had a name,” Fairfield said.
“No, a new name for a new world.” Kip turned to Shadow. “You should name it. You resurrected it.”
Shadow hung from the railing, letting his back legs dangle above the deck and looked up to the sky, deep in thought. Kip knew it wasn’t something his friend would take lightly. The name would need to be perfect, not something of mere whimsy.
Amelia Britten was moving her arms over her head in some strange pattern, doing a meditative dance, her eyes closed. Kip was reminded that the spiritualist and Fairfield were both dead. It seemed like a cloud of memory now with no clear edges. Had he really seen them cast into the stars to freeze in the depths of space?
Shadow made a sudden exclamation and jumped down to the deck.
“The Frigatebird!” he yelled.
The ship responded as if it had been waiting to be named. It lurched forward across water that was suddenly filled with chop.
“Shadow read in a book that the Frigatebird can fly over the ocean for weeks at a time. They ride the clouds. That’s what we should do.”
Foam-pointed waves appeared around them. The ocean had a hint of color to it, like an oil slick; many shades mixing together in a fluid dance. The sky, too, looked less cheerful now; dark enough that it blurred with the wat
er. It made a claustrophobic dome around them. Kip felt shut in as if they were sailing in a bubble.
Or a bottle.
“I’m going to look below-deck,” Fairfield said. “We’ll need provisions for this trip.”
Britten joined in, her voice distant.
“What provisions do you think we’ll need? I can’t remember wanting food or water. I can’t remember what I wanted.” Her voice trailed to a whisper.
“Come, Amelia. We’ll look together.”
As the two left, Kip looked again at the tracks of color on the water’s surface.
“What do you think of the ship’s new name, Enos?” Kip asked, knowing he’d get no answer. He turned to find the shade and saw only an empty deck.
A panic seized him.
He spun around, searching. How could he have missed him?
Then he turned back to the shoreline. There, barely visible, was a dark spot. It moved like a wavering horizon on a hot day. A mirage.
The gulf of water stretched out between them, all white tips and crashing waves.
“Enos!” Kip cried. His fingers dug into the railing. He thought he would splinter it to pieces.
He called his name again and again, as if it were some spell that could summon him. But there was no magic here.
The shoreline sped away. He watched Enos flicker as he blended with the gray continent behind him, visible and then gone.
There was so much to tell him, even now. Even if he couldn’t talk back, he could have listened. And yet the words weren’t there. There were so many trying to get out of his head at once that it become a numb mass stuck in place.
Kip watched until the land disappeared. He watched until the gray sky deepened into dusk.
“Enos doesn’t want to cross the water,” Shadow said.
Kip didn’t want to be on deck. The sky was too big, the water too wild.
“How can he know what he wants?” he whispered. “He’s dead.”
Kip pushed back the door of the captain’s quarters. A gust of wind rushed past him to fill the room, upsetting the layer of dust that had settled over everything. It curled into the air and was caught by the fading light that streamed through the windows.
It looked as if it had been sealed up for decades. The layer of dust formed new structures as it hid the objects it coated. It was like raiding a crypt; forgotten objects, suddenly unearthed.
Darkened iron lanterns hung from the ceiling like sleeping bats. They swung back in forth in time with the waves. There was a globe near the door. Kip ran a finger over it, lifting off the dust. The surface was blank. All lands were uncharted here.
A wooden desk stood in the center of the room, covered with objects. There were stacks of books, a quill and inkwell, a sextant, and an open ledger.
Standing over the book, Kip read the last entry:
Took on three strange passengers before leaving port. They kept to themselves but acted in the most curious manner. I greeted them briefly when they arrived, none of them carrying luggage; an older woman, a man, and a youth. What was meant as a short polite conversation, took on a different tone. They asked the same questions repeatedly, first one and then the next. I must have answered their questions about the weather a dozen times.
Regarding the weather, my first officer thinks a storm is coming. He prides himself in being able to read the clouds, an art I never mastered. Unseasonal weather surrounds the ship despite barometric readings, he says. We’ll know more tomorrow with the rising sun, but for now the stars are obscured, a bad sign. I hope for smooth sailing tomorrow.
Bookmarked between two pages was a passenger manifest. Kip’s finger moved down the page searching for something he didn’t want to find. The last three passenger names were scribbled in messy ink.
Amelia Britten.
Stephen Fairfield.
And his own name.
Blackmoor had told the truth. This dead ship had found its way to a dead world. He shuddered to think of Britten and Fairfield in the hold right now, two shades going about their business as if nothing had happened. He thought of his own name on the manifest and wondered where his shade was. He hoped he wouldn’t find out but was overcome with the feeling that some fate would draw them together again. How lonely to think of his double lost in this world.
A sharp sound broke the silence. Shadow plucked at one of the strings of a violin, a repeated E-note filled the room. It was impossible to think that this place had once known music and laughter. He could almost see it, officers sharing a drink and discussing the workings of their ship and the conditions of the sea.
Looking back to the ledger, he saw the entries start to fade. They were being reclaimed by the Pale World. All secrets needed to be kept.
Kip sat in a hard-backed chair next to the table. Using the Fixation solution, he lit a single candle. Its flame came to life, nearly buried by a rim of wax. He watched the fire spread its orange glow across the room.
A pistol next to the ledger jumped out like an exclamation point. Kip wondered if it was loaded.
Shadow approached and sat on a small stool, his paws gripping the edge of the table. He picked up the sextant and clumsily moved the pieces around, then squinted through the telescope.
Kip looked up and saw a small wooden trapdoor on the ceiling. It was open just enough to see the sky, a shifting palette of gray.
“Do you know where my shade is?”
Shadow shook his head.
“I want to say I can feel him out there, somewhere in the Pale World; that he’s a part of me. But the truth is, I can’t. He’s as lost and mysterious as everything else in this place.”
Kip was overcome with exhaustion. He leaned back in his chair and let it wash over him. As his head nodded, he felt something tug at his wrist. The metal of his bracelet caught the light as his hand fell from the arm of the chair to his lap. It was a lonely thing now, having lost its twin. Still, had he felt it move? Was something pulling it in a new direction?
A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. Fairfield and Britten stood in the doorway. Their faces were drawn again, taken over by sorrow.
“I found something,” Fairfield said, and then stepped aside.
Lord Blackmoor stood in the doorway, smiling.
16
The cabin shuddered, screaming as the wooden boards stripped back. They bent inward like curling fingers searching for a hold.
Searching for my neck.
The roof sheered away, letting in the pale light of dusk.
Lord Blackmoor directed this new destruction, his hands guiding its movement.
“A reunion of friends and colleagues,” the magician said. “‘Three luminaries. Three masters of intellectual thought and accomplishment in London, not to be trifled with.’ I seem to remember calling you that.”
Again Blackmoor had aged with some preternatural speed. His downy white hair was even thinner and now rose, untamed, from his head. His back was arched forward.
“Thank you for letting this stowaway above deck.”
“I…I know you,” Fairfield said. The scientist turned to face him, his eyes widening, as if seeing him for the first time.
Britten simply pointed, a witness identifying a defendant in court.
Lord Blackmoor ignored them, his eyes on Kip.
“We must talk,” he said.
Long blades of stars appeared above them, like black glass catching the light. Fairfield and Britten looked up in horror. A droning sound filled the air until there was nothing else.
“No need for hangers-on,” Blackmoor said over the noise.
He waved his hand and the star-scape screamed down like a hunting falcon. Britten and Fairfield blew apart like burning paper. There was no time for them to scream, no time for any reaction at all. Their ashes caught in the wind and moved upward in spirals, their remains floating through the tattered wood.
Kip watched blankly, not able to process what he’d seen. Shadow’s growling brought him to his senses.
Without thinking, Kip reached for the pistol on the desk. He raised it and pulled the trigger. The hammer clapped into place with a dull metallic sound. As empty and dead as the books in the room.
Blackmoor was far too amused by it. He let out a single sharp laugh as he raised his hand, closing his fist in mid-air. The pistol crumbled in Kip’s hand, the metal twisting into a tortured shape. He dropped it onto the desk where it became a ball of steel.
“We must talk,” Blackmoor said again. “All that matters is what we can accomplish, you and me.”
Kip’s mouth formed a sneer and he shouted back, naming all his grievances, wanting to hammer Blackmoor with his words, to tell him he was a liar and a murderer. But no sounds came from his mouth. He could feel his vocal cords vibrate and the air pushing from his diaphragm, but there was no sound behind it.
“It’s your time to listen, boy.”
Blackmoor moved his hand over his head in a slow arc and the rocking of the ship stopped. It lifted from the water like a bird taking flight. The wood creaked and moaned as it lumbered into the air. Ocean water followed it, forming constellations of droplets. The Frigatebird hung twenty feet above the water as the world froze, focused on this one moment.
“I fractured the earth under the mountain, looking for material, for some answer. But it was you who were able to mold that material into something. An alchemist can harness things that a magician cannot.
“You brought this world to life. I don’t know how, I don’t know what deeper magic you used, what hidden secret. But, even now, we share the same goal, finding the Soul of All Things, the tonic that creates life. It’s the only way we can escape, both with our own lives, and with your beloved Enos. Why not share that burden? Why shouldn’t the two great Houses of London work together once again?”
Kip looked into the stars over the magician’s head, feeling their chill.
Kip & Shadow Page 12
