“Pardon?” Ardent said, cocking an ear.
The teenager wheeled on the old man. “I said no.” She turned to Coll. “And that goes double for you, mister. You two are being weird and scary and secretive, and I am not having it. Spit it out: What’s going on? Where are we going? What’s going to happen when we get there?”
Ardent started to reply, but Coll held up a hand. “That’s fair. It’s not like we can turn back now. The truth of the matter is, there will be a price for our trip here. Just like there was the first time I made it”—he took a deep breath—“four hundred and seventy-three years ago.”
“What?!?” Remy croaked.
Fin looked at Marrill; he could see her eyes, white and wide in the shadow. He was sure his own looked the same way.
There were ways to extend life, without doubt, and many creatures on the Stream who naturally lived beyond that of mortal men. Ardent, for example, was at least two hundred, and probably a lot older. And Coll had always seemed wise beyond his years.
Even so, the sailor didn’t look a day over sixteen, much less pushing five hundred.
“Right,” Coll said. “I was expecting that reaction.” The waterfall sound came louder than ever, forcing him to yell to be heard. “But to your second question, where we’re going is there.”
He pointed, just as the Kraken rounded a bend. Ahead of them, the rocks ended. Indeed, the whole giant cave ended, opening into a great chamber with no ceiling or sky Fin could make out, and no floor or walls, either.
On all sides, rivers of glowing water thundered inward. Hundreds of them flowed from the tunnel they’d been traveling through, and their tunnel was just one of thousands twining in from every possible direction, each pouring its own rivers into the vast emptiness ahead.
Where the tunnels ended, the rivers burst into empty air. Some cascaded down in mighty cataracts; others sprayed upward, casting rainbows like spiderwebs through the air. Still other rivers twisted and corkscrewed around one another, tangling and twining impossibly.
And at the center of it all, a great cathedral hung in the air, like a spider in the rainbow webs. It was strung like a pearl on a line of pure magic, buoyed by streams passing below, wrapped on all sides by rivers that flowed around and across and through it. And it was there, at the cathedral, that Coll was pointing.
“Whoa,” Fig gasped. Fin nodded in agreement, his mouth gaping.
“The Knot of the Coiled Rope,” Coll said. “That’s our destination.” His next words were so quiet, they were nearly lost in the rush of water. “Now what’s going to happen when we get there? I have no idea.”
CHAPTER 18
The Knot of the Coiled Rope
As the Kraken sailed along twisting, looping rivers of magic, Marrill stared at the foreboding edifice before them. Up close, what had looked like a solid building showed itself to be a maze of interconnected structures.
They were all built in the same style: long, rounded curves and arches, carved in a coiling motif, twined around the flowing rivers of magic as if grasping onto the Stream itself.
Like a knot, Marrill realized with wonder. The entire thing was built in the shape of a massive, intricate knot tangled around the myriad branches of the Stream.
She squinted, but couldn’t tell what exactly it was made of; it was smooth like marble, yet soft and rubbery as well. In the glow of the Stream water, every surface of the place glistened.
“This is the home of the Sheshefesh,” Coll told them in hushed tones. “The creature to whom all great navigators owe their loyalty—and their fear. Now prepare for landfall.”
Marrill quickly scanned the main deck, making sure Fin wasn’t forgotten and Karnelius was secured (in the arms of the Naysayer, where he practically lived these days). Satisfied, she turned back, only to find Remy standing dead in front of the wheel, facing Coll.
“We’re not preparing for anything,” the babysitter said, “until you tell us exactly what your deal is.”
Coll leaned to one side to peer around her. The babysitter leaned to block him. He leaned back the other way. She matched him once more. He looked to Ardent for help, but the wizard said nothing.
Seizing the moment, Marrill jumped forward. “Yeah! No one goes anywhere until you fess up”—her eyes narrowed—“old man.”
Coll smacked his lips. “You really want to know?”
They nodded as one.
“Fine,” he said. Taking his hands off the wheel for the briefest of moments, he pulled up one sleeve. The inky ropes of his tattoo now writhed across his skin, as if he had been etched with live eels. “This thing,” he said, “is the gift of the Sheshefesh. The greatest sailors, the ones who can make it to the Knot of the Coiled Rope all on their own—the Sheshefesh rewards them with it. Through it, they can always feel where the currents are turning, and always find their way back to the Knot. But it’s a curse, too.”
Chills stole across Marrill’s flesh. “Curse doesn’t sound good.”
Coll looked terribly unimpressed. “Yes, by definition a curse is never good. The price you pay for the gift of the Sheshefesh is never being able to settle. Stay in any port for more than a day or two, and the mark gets restless. That’s what happened when the ropes of the tattoo started strangling me in Monerva—we were stuck there, and the mark was trying to drive me on. If we hadn’t left when we did, it might well have killed me.”
Marrill gasped. Remy hung her head. Fin looked away, while the new deckhand fidgeted uncomfortably. “So you just have to keep going and going?” Marrill asked. “Forever?”
Coll shrugged. “More or less.”
“Because you’re immortal,” Remy offered uneasily, as if hoping he might contradict her.
Coll shrugged again. “More or less.” He looked down at himself. “Good thing I was so young and handsome when I first made it here. Could be stuck in an old man’s body.”
Marrill crossed her arms. Something about this didn’t add up. “If you came here before to get this gift, how come you’re so afraid of being back now?”
Coll looked toward the glistening building, with its walls shaped like the coils of a giant serpent, squeezing the very heart of the Stream. “Every sailor who comes here eventually returns. And when they do, the Sheshefesh’s mark binds them here… for good.”
“What?” Remy snapped.
Coll took a deep breath. “The second time you come to the Knot of the Coiled Rope, you never leave.”
“Almost never,” Ardent broke in, finally speaking up. “Some have come here twice and come out again.” Coll gave him a long, withering look. “They have!” the wizard exclaimed. “At least one has. And I’m confident it will happen again!”
“But…” Marrill asked. “Why? Why does the Sheshefesh want to keep all those sailors?”
Ardent cleared his throat. “The Sheshefesh is a creature of old magic. It works by rules that do not apply to the more… finite among us.” He looked at her with dead severity. “To call, to guide, to entangle. Those are the rules that define the beast. It cannot do anything else, or else it would not be what it is.”
Marrill and Remy burst with questions, but Coll held up one hand sharply. “I said prepare for landfall.” His tone was so harsh that no one dared to contradict him.
As the Kraken sailed close, the building ahead shifted. Marrill watched with wide eyes as one of the massive coils untwined from the Stream and swung toward them, bearing a stone wharf atop it. Ropebone Man quickly fastened several lines to its pylons, pulling them in close. The pirats scurried down from the yardarms to secure the lines even further, keeping the Kraken steady in the fast-moving current still flowing around them.
“When we’re inside,” Coll said as they disembarked, “don’t touch anything.” He looked at Marrill with real severity. “I mean anything, got it?”
“Don’t touch anything. Got it.” She glanced toward Fin, making sure he’d heard the warning. But he seemed to be arguing with a new deckhand. Marrill was about to call
for him when Coll grasped her elbow, helping her down from the gangplank. The ground she landed on was oddly spongy, and she pushed against it, testing how bouncy it was.
Coll’s grip tightened, holding her still. “Or talk to anyone,” he added.
When he was certain she understood, he turned to assist Remy. “All the sailors the Sheshefesh has collected are still here,” he continued. “And they will talk to you. Ignore them. No matter what they say. Just remember, you can’t help them.”
“Don’t talk to anyone. Got it,” Marrill repeated, loud enough to make sure Fin heard as he bounded down the gangplank after them. She scarcely noticed the girl who followed him.
“When we reach the Sheshefesh, do not address it directly,” Coll finished. “It will speak to me, because I’m a navigator, and to Ardent, because even it respects wizards. If it speaks to anyone else, that’s trouble.”
Ardent nodded gravely. He stood up straight, lengthening his spine. His robe was newly washed and pressed, his cap clean and neat. Marrill had never seen him dress for an audience before.
Her insides squirmed. She wondered what exactly they were getting into.
Without a sound, the great coil they stood on lifted upward, carrying them to the main building. Marrill marveled at the architecture. Every swooping spiral seemed deliberate, every curved line designed with the utmost care and attention. Across every surface, images of mermaids and dragons and sailing ships were etched in dark ink, as if the building itself were tattooed.
And throughout it all, omnipresent, was the curling, knotting motif of ropes.
“As far as anyone knows, the Sheshefesh has existed since the time of the Dzane,” Ardent explained as the platform came to rest before a great wall made of coiled bulges that looked like pythons stacked on top of one another. A branch of the Stream swooped in above them, and the top of the wall was built to loop up and around it, allowing it to flow into the building. “Legend has it that from the beginning it made its home here, trawling its fingers in every current of the Stream.”
Marrill noticed Coll rubbing at the edges of his tattoo—it had grown so large now that lengths of inky rope spread not only along his hands and arms, but even reached up around his neck.
Suddenly she wasn’t so sure this was such a good idea. But then she swallowed, remembering the hole gnawing its way across the Face of the Map to Everywhere. The fate of the Stream depended on them finding the ink and getting to Meres before the Lost Sun.
The wall ahead shifted, bulges unknitting and pulling away from one another, opening up into a long, long gallery. As far as she could see, there were no doors, no windows—only the Stream-branch, flowing straight down the center of the ceiling, lighting the path in muted gold.
Before they went any farther a girl who’d been standing next to Fin stepped in front of Coll and held up a hand, stopping them. “Are you sure there’s not another way to get this ink?”
Coll’s eyes swayed like the sea as he glanced toward Ardent and then back at the girl. He plunged past her, saying nothing.
Marrill heaved a deep breath and followed. Her steps faltered, however, when she was met with the din of voices. All around, sailors were strung up against the walls, bound tight by ropy tendrils. They shouted to one another ceaselessly. At first Marrill thought they were wailing in agony, and she shuddered with pity and a burst of cold fear. But then she listened closer to the words that twined like tentacles through the air all around them.
Twice the whale done rise, and twice I slipped right past ’er…
Then the mate says, the mate says, ‘Then who’s got the jib!’ GET IT?
A storm the likes of which we never seen, and the manatee, oh, the fangs on the manatee…
Now the Stagorn sirens, they sing a little higher on the ol’ octave…
Marrill shook her head. “They’re telling stories.”
Coll looked back at her. “Of course they are. Don’t listen—ninety percent of it is complete swoggle.”
“But…” Marrill said. “But they’re laughing.”
“Guess some of it’s really good swoggle,” Fin volunteered.
Coll cupped his hand over his mouth. “A lot of them are just being polite,” he whispered.
A cacophony of stories wheeled around them as the crew of the Kraken marched down the hallway. The whole place smelled of brine and sea breeze. Dangling seaweed clung to the lines that held the sailors tight, and water puddled on the floor.
The coiled rope theme was everywhere—in the loops around the jawing sailors, inscribed on every surface in knotted designs suspiciously similar to the living tattoo that now threatened to cover Coll completely. Even the walls and the floor bulged like gigantic ropes laid next to one another.
“’Ey!” one of the bound men called to them. “Ahoy, sailors! Come abaft, an’ have a seat. Join us and tell us some new tales, ’ey?”
Coll’s arm shot out before Marrill moved. “Don’t. Don’t talk, don’t engage. Remember, there’s nothing you can do to help them.” He held her gaze for a long moment as the stories rattled around them.
Marrill nodded intently. But when she finally looked away, she realized that Fin, without anyone paying attention to stop him, had wandered over to one side. An old sailor was talking to him, spinning him stories. With each word, Fin leaned in a little farther. He didn’t seem to notice that all around, the knot-drawings on the wall were moving, slithering closer inch by inch.
Alarm rushed through Marrill. “Fin!” she shouted. “Watch out!”
Fin’s head snapped back. Behind him, just beneath the still-talking sailor, a knot-drawing uncoiled swiftly. A thin spine appeared on its end as it popped out of the wall and reared to strike.
“Unfortunate flaccidity!” Ardent called, dropping his hand through the air. The spine drooped, slapping Fin across the back of the neck like an undercooked noodle.
“Shanks!” he shouted, darting away. “What was that?”
Ardent humphed. “You’re lucky Marrill called my attention to you, young man,” he said. “A moment later, and you would have been… infected.”
“Infected?” Marrill gasped. She looked from side to side. The inky drawings were shifting all around, gathering in the shadows beneath the sailors, scooting stealthily across the colonnades that made up the walls.
Coll nodded gravely as Fin rejoined the group. “Aye. We’re at the heart of the disease. One strike, and you’re infected for good.”
Remy put her hands on her hips. “I thought you got that thing willingly. I thought you came here for the ‘gift.’” She made dramatically overemphasized air quotes with her fingers.
“I did, yes,” Coll said. “But I was already infected, by then. You don’t need a tattoo for it to get in you. The disease, it starts in the stories—and the stories are how the Sheshefesh makes itself known in the world.”
Marrill’s eyes grew wide. If she hadn’t seen the things she’d seen, she would have thought he was speaking figuratively. That there was no way a story could literally infect you. But on the Pirate Stream, well… she’d once tossed a grape into the Stream and it transformed into confusion. It had taken them forever to figure that one out.
The sailors all around strained against their bindings. “There’s a reason mothers keep their children away from the docks,” growled one.
“The sailors’ stories,” another wailed, “they get into your head.” The chorus of voices rose together.
The promise of adventure.
The life of exploration.
The lure of the Stream and the sea.
“They pull you in,” one said, “and then it’s in yer blood. Ye’ve no choice but to sail, and sail ye must.”
The promise of adventure.
The life of exploration.
The lure of the Stream and the sea.
“And the more you sail,” said another, “the better you get, the more stories you hear, and you’re deeper lost yet.”
The promise of adventu
re.
The life of exploration.
The lure of the Stream and the sea.
“Until one day, you hear the tallest tale,” one said.
“Or ye meet a man with a strange tattoo!” yelled another.
“Or you find a story etched on driftwood!” a third added.
Coll leaned in, cutting them short. “The tallest tale of them all… a secret known only to the greatest captains who ever sailed a ship.”
“The Sheshefesh,” Marrill breathed.
“The Sheshefesh!” the sailors all cried.
“Just so,” Coll said. “And so… you come.”
The raucous atmosphere grew strangely somber for a moment. A low groan whispered throughout the chamber. Marrill could have sworn she felt the floor shift, ever so slightly, beneath her feet.
“We should hurry,” Coll said. “The Sheshefesh is waiting.”
CHAPTER 19
The Shell Altar
Fin rubbed at the welt where the limp tattoo-spine had slapped across his shoulders. He couldn’t help staring at the undulating lines of ropy ink stretching up the back of Coll’s neck and down to his palms. If it weren’t for Marrill and Ardent, he’d be carrying one of those now. He’d be cursed to never have a home, never settle.
Not that it would be much of an adjustment. Though not having a home had to be better than living in a pen, he reminded himself. He shook his head, pushing away the thought.
“You okay?” Marrill asked, stepping over to inspect the welt. Fig peered out from behind her shoulder carefully, her eyes echoing the concern.
He nodded to them both. “No trub,” he said. Then he frowned, glancing between Coll’s tattoo and the coiled drawings shifting menacingly along the walls, their thin spines poised to pounce. “Think that’s the ink we’re looking for?”
Ardent shrugged. “Of a kind. They’re drawn from it, certainly. But we need to find a source that’s a bit less… malignant.” He reached the end of the hallway and paused in front of a massive circular door. “Ah, here we are.”