“Shut up, Bleblehad,” the trees shouted as one. His branches drooped.
Marrill leaned toward Fin. “Am I going insane, or is this weird?”
“Definitely weird,” Fin agreed.
“I feel like they were really going for it a second ago, and now…” Marrill trailed off. “I don’t get it.”
“You did seem awfully persuasive there for a bit,” Fin agreed.
As she puzzled over what was happening, Marrill absently untied the knot of her bandanna to tighten it. A bit of rainbow fabric fell in front of her eyes. She couldn’t help it; she started laughing.
“Now you’re being weird,” Fin said.
She held the bandanna up, practically rocking with excitement. It was the siren silk AlleySalley had traded for her hair. The fabric that supposedly made anyone do what you wanted. She had assumed it was junk, but it worked!
“It’s this!” she whispered. “When I was talking before, it was in my face, I was talking through it!” Standing, she tied the scrap of silk over her nose and mouth like a robber in an old Western movie. “Um,” she said, thinking. “Everyone touch a vine to your trunk.”
Immediately, three trees slapped vines onto the woody protrusions of their noses, the fourth following a second later. Bleblehad slapped his against the Map Face, right atop a picture of an elephant that was sliding past. The others sighed as one.
“It works!” Marrill squealed, grabbing Fin’s hands and jumping up and down. Clearing her throat, she turned back to the Council. “Will you give me the Face?”
Overhead, the canopy rustled a long, drawn-out sigh. “Yes,” mumbled one tree.
“I suppose,” grouched another.
“If we have to, I guess,” said a third.
Marrill waited. Nothing happened.
“I think you need to actually ask them to give it to you,” Fin nudged.
“Oh,” she said. “Right.” She turned back to the trees and cleared her throat. “Ahem, uh, Mr. and Miss Council, um, if you would, I mean definitely do, um, please give me the Face.”
There was a low mumbling among the trees. “But we’ve held it for so long,” Meldonoch complained.
“And fought over it so hard,” moaned Slenefell.
“And seen so many things,” whined Bleblehad.
“Perhaps,” Tartrigian whispered sadly, “after all this time, we have seen enough. Perhaps it is time for us to let go.” Grudgingly, unhappily, each tree murmured its agreement.
“So the Grove shall Gibber no more,” Meldonoch pronounced. Their leaves made a mournful rustling, a wind whispering through birches in an old graveyard.
Leferia creaked the fifth and final assent. “Very well,” she said. “All at once, on the count of three.”
Marrill gripped Fin’s arm. The Face was almost theirs!
“One…” said Meldonoch. A quiver rippled across the Face as the branches released one by one, the parchment shrinking a little each time.
“Two…” Bleblehad breathed. Only a single branch from each tree still held on.
Marrill could practically taste the tension, bitter greens and honeysuckle sweet. “Come on,” she whispered through the siren silk. “You can do it. You know you want to.…”
“Three!” Leferia cried.
Four of the branches let go all at once. With a mighty whoosh, the Face snapped down to the size of a normal piece of paper, rolling itself up onto the last branch. Leferia, the branch’s owner, immediately shot out more limbs to grab it.
“Singing stars, it worked!” she cackled. “You let go! I can’t believe you all let go!”
A groan like a hurricane sounded from the other trees, drowned out by Leferia’s whoops of triumph.
“I have the Face, I have the Face,” Leferia chanted. Leaves showered down from her highest branches as she shook them, swaying back and forth in a little dance.
The others blubbered with disbelief and confusion. Leferia ignored them. She stretched the Face out before her, turning it so only she could see. The others launched vines and branches at it, but she batted them away easily.
“Ah-ah-ah!” she chided. “Might tear it, might tear it!”
“Oh, come on, Leferia,” moaned Bleblehad. “That’s not fair.…”
“You cheated!” Tartrigian accused.
Fin looked over at Marrill with raised eyebrows. “Did we just get played?” he asked.
Marrill swallowed. “Maybe?”
Leferia pulled Fin and Marrill closer, just beneath her laughing face. “Oh, children!” she chittered. “You wonderful dears!”
Marrill could see the ink of the Face staining her wood, spreading out into the jungle from her alone now. Up close, a kindly green danced in the darkness of Leferia’s eyes. Marrill squinted. She could just make out fern leaves waving within them.
“Now,” Leferia said, “you really must tell me where you picked up that divine fabric!”
Marrill hesitantly pulled the cloth down over her chin. “This?” she asked. Leferia swayed forward, nodding in some unfelt breeze. “It’s siren silk. From, um…” She struggled to remember AlleySalley’s description. “Somemoreswag?”
“Swiggamore?” Slenefell wailed behind them.
Marrill nodded enthusiastically to her host. “That’s it!”
Tartrigian hissed. “Swiggamore silk is junk! It does nothing!” One of his branches made a halfhearted swipe at the air beside them. Leferia quickly swatted it back.
Fin chortled. “For do-nothing junk, it sure fooled you fools!”
Leferia giggled, a sound like wood squeaking. “Oh, you poor stupid, stupid things,” she said. “Maybe you should consult the Face on that one. Oh, wait, you can’t!” Her glee was infectious; Marrill could scarcely help but giggle a little herself. The venom in the others’ voices was giving her a real appreciation for their new host.
“Pay no attention to them, dear one,” Leferia continued. “If they could use the Face, they would know that this siren silk is truly enchanted. Any object can acquire magic, you know, like an old sweater builds up static.”
Marrill didn’t know. She looked to Fin, but he seemed just as clueless.
“Oh, it’s rare, of course,” Leferia said. “Takes truly concentrated acts and emotions to work. But if I remember correctly, the former owner of that silk suckered hundreds of gullible men into loving her, all while wearing this very piece of fabric. And she left every last one broke, depressed, and ruined.”
Marrill dabbed her hand against the rough edges of her bangs. “That definitely sounds like AlleySalley,” she murmured.
“All those lies and heartaches seem to have given this cloth some power. It only works on the dumbest of men, of course,” Leferia sneered. A cascade of voices sneered back.
She ignored them. “Well, now I’m queen of the Grove at last! I control the Face. After all this time, it is as it always should have been. And these saps can only sit and listen to rumors captured by the forest. If they’re lucky, maybe they can pick up some of the wonderful secrets that flow out from me, whispered back to them.”
At that, one of the trees—Bleblehad, Marrill thought—started crying. Now Marrill couldn’t help feeling a little bit bad.
Then again, Leferia seemed much nicer than the others. She just wasn’t quite sure how nice. “So, um. About the Face. It’s the only way I can find my way home—my mom’s sick and—”
“Oh yes,” Leferia said, sounding truly sorry. “I believe I’ve seen her once, in the Face. She’s not been doing well with the stress of it, is she?”
Marrill’s throat tightened. “That’s why I need the Map.”
Behind her, another one of the trees broke into tears.
“And my friend needs it to find his mother,” she added.
Fin stiffened beside her. Marrill put a hand on his arm to comfort him.
Leferia tsked. “Not sure about that one,” she said.
Fin looked at his feet. “Figured,” he said.
Marrill looke
d down, too, then quickly back up. The ground was still a long way off.
“Leferia!” Tartrigian gasped. His trunk shook oddly, his branches quivering. “Leferia, the forest is chattering!” Then he, too, started sobbing. Big wet drops of sap slid from his eyeholes, running across the warps of his face.
Marrill bit her lip. Now Leferia, too, seemed concerned. She paused, listening to voices only the trees could hear. In the silence, the fourth tree of the Council—Slenefell—began to cry.
Fin grabbed Marrill’s arm. His face was a mask of horror.
There’s no way that could be good. Her stomach twisted. “What is it?”
Leferia answered. “He has come,” she breathed. “He is here! How did I not see it? How did the traitor Face not show me?”
Alarm bells rang in Marrill’s head. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong.
“Who?” she whispered. “Who’s here?”
Leferia’s woody lips quivered. “The herald of the Lost Sun,” she spat. “The thief of the Map!”
“The Oracle,” Fin breathed.
Marrill frowned, confused. But she didn’t even have the chance to ask. Because just then, the Council, as one, screamed,
“Fire!”
CHAPTER 27
The Weeping Trees
Fin’s gut turned to stone. The crying, the fire—it was all too familiar. First the docks at the Khaznot Quay, and now the Gibbering Grove. The Oracle had followed them!
The big scary girl tree bent forward, bringing her face closer. “My forest is burning!” she shrieked, so loud it made Fin pop a finger in his ear. “You have to save it!”
Marrill grabbed his arm. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Who’s the Oracle?”
“A bad guy who does bad stuff,” Fin told her.
“A wizard of darkness!” the tree wailed. “He’s come for the Face and will stop at nothing to get it! And he’s burning down my forest!” Her sobs grew, joining with the cries from the other trees.
Marrill’s grip tightened on Fin’s arm. “What’s happening?” she asked, eyes wide and afraid.
“It’s the Oracle—he’s making them cry,” Fin explained. “Wherever the Oracle goes, everyone around him bursts into tears.”
Her forehead furrowed. “Then why aren’t we—” she started to ask. But then with a gasped “Oh!” she let go of Fin and dropped to her hands and knees. “Leferia!” Marrill shouted, knocking against the branch to get the tree’s attention. “Stop listening to the vines! They’re carrying in the sorrow from wherever the Oracle is.”
“Stop listening?” Leferia screeched in horror. “You mean, not hear things?”
Fin nodded, catching on. “You have to,” he told her. “The magic is coming in over them, that’s how he got the other members of the Council!”
A fat tear escaped from Leferia’s eye hollows and her canopy rustled with a deep sigh. “V-very well,” she said. “I-I’ll try.…”
As the tree sniffled, Fin scanned the horizon for smoke. “We have to get out of here—wait, what are you doing?” Vines wrapped around his waist, tugging him into the air. Marrill let out a small shriek as she followed.
“Getting you out of here!” Leferia explained. “But first—” A small tendril dropped down from the canopy in front of them. Curled up in its tip was the Face of the Map, rolled into a tight scroll. The vine shoved it toward them. Fin blinked in shock.
“Take this with you,” the tree said.
When he didn’t move, the vine shook the scroll at him. Hesitantly, Fin reached out and grabbed the Face, but the vine didn’t let it go.
Marrill stammered a halfhearted “Are you sure?” Fin’s gaze flitted to his feet, and then to the ground that was way, way too far below them.
“No, I’m not sure!” the plant-lady, Leferia, snapped. All around them, the sound of crying grew stronger, echoing up from the rumor vines and joining with the sobbing Council trees. Leferia sighed. “But the Grove will never be safe so long as the Face is here. You must take it before the whole island is lost!”
The vine released, and the Face came free in Fin’s hand. He shoved it into a pocket in his coat as quickly as he could. “Okay, then, back to the Kraken, right?” he asked.
The vines holding them reared in response, like an arm preparing to throw a ball. Fin gulped and braced himself. He had a bad feeling he was the ball.
“Wait!” Marrill yelled. “What about Ardent and Coll? We can’t leave without them!”
“Right!” Fin quickly agreed, fiddling absently with the strings of his skysails. He’d actually forgotten about the rest of the crew; he still wasn’t used to having to worry about others.
“Oh, for…” Leferia muttered. “Fine.” Around them, vines rustled and whispered, carrying the question back and forth through the Gibbering Grove. “I’m told they’re lost to the rumors,” she said a moment later. “I will guide you, but you have to make it quick!”
The vines holding them began swinging forward, as if Fin and Marrill were weights on the end of a long, long pendulum. As he dropped, Fin’s stomach lodged into this throat. Then he hit the bottom of the arc, and his stomach ended up around his knees as he veered upward.
“Wait—can we talk about this just a second?” he squeaked as the vine began to loosen its grip.
“No!” Leferia answered. And then he was airborne.
Fin could scarcely tell where his scream ended and Marrill’s began. They tumbled through the air out of the Gibbering Grove. The briar lake passed in a flash. Green leaves and branches loomed up in front of him. He struggled to straighten, to pull his skysails before it was too late.
A slash of green whipped through the air, snagging around his ankle, and then he was falling again, gaining momentum. The vine swung him around and released him, sending him head over heels across the forest. “Urgh,” Fin gurgled.
Tumbling through the air next to him, Marrill hollered and whooped. “I’m the king of the jungle!” she cried when the next vine caught hold and flung them out again.
“So sorry for the discomfort,” Leferia’s voice spoke, coming from the leaves running up and down each vine. “Emergency and all.”
“No… whoa!… problem… wee!” Fin told her.
“Will someone… oop!… please tell me… agggh!… what’s happening now?” Marrill called beside him. “Who is this guy? How is he so powerful?”
The vines swung them wide, then handed them off once more. Every time they dipped through the forest, Fin could hear weeping and cries of “Fire!” drifting up from the undergrowth below. As they soared over the canopy, he caught sight of smoke rising in the distance, growing closer by the minute.
“He is the Meressian Oracle,” Leferia said. “Long ago, he tried to gain ultimate power, to become one with the Pirate Stream by drinking its water. It drove him mad.”
“But… ungh… Ardent told me no one could survive that,” Marrill protested.
“Indeed,” replied Leferia. “But long ago, a master wizard named Serth believed himself strong enough to succeed. A group of powerful wizards met on the island of Meres to help him try. Hold tight!” Their vine wrapped itself around a tree trunk, shooting them in a new direction.
Fin tried to take deep breaths to calm his growing nausea. “So what happened?” he asked, as much to distract himself as anything.
“He succeeded,” Leferia answered simply. “Such as is.” She sounded sad. “The Stream water allowed him to see the future, but it drove him mad in the process. Almost there now!”
As the air grew thicker, the vines began slinging them lower, through whipping branches and past clinging ivy. “Serth became known as the Oracle, and his raving became known as the Meressian Prophecy,” Leferia explained. “His Prophecy is doom for the whole of the Pirate Stream. And now he seeks the Map to fulfill it!”
Fin glanced at Marrill as they somersaulted through the air. He wondered if he looked as green as she did. “So what exactly does this Prophecy say?” he asked.
“Oh, that…” Leferia trailed off. “Well, it’s very long, you know.”
“Better make it the short version, then,” Marrill said, hand over her mouth as she flipped from one vine to the next.
“Right, of course.” Leferia’s leaves shook with a sigh. “The short version. The short version is… also… very…” She paused. “I mean, there will be some stuff… probably.…”
“You don’t know it, do you?” Fin asked.
“It was boring!” Leferia wailed. “Long and boring. And there was a Badger Pageant going on at the same time!”
Before Fin could say more, the vines slowed to a halt, dangling them for a moment before setting them gently on the ground.
The world spun around Fin, and Marrill stumbled, falling to her knees. In the undergrowth, a thousand voices howled in warning or sobbed with tears.
After a moment, Marrill shook her head and pushed to her feet. “Look!” she said, pointing. Sure enough, Fin could make out a flicker of orange through the leaves ahead. Already sweat was beginning to break out across his forehead from the heat.
“I hear your friends,” Leferia told them. “The wizard is this way.…” she said, and a vine split off toward the fire. “And the sailor is this way.” Another vine dove into a dense thicket.
One led to sure danger. The other looked safer, sort of. “We have to split up,” Fin said, his mind racing. “I’ll take Ardent. The fire’s too dangerous.”
Marrill started. “I beg your pardon?” she said, crossing her arms.
Fin threw up his hands in frustration. “Marrill, I don’t even have a pardon. Now is not the time to be begging for it.”
She rolled her eyes. “I mean, why do you think I can’t handle the dangerous one?”
“Oh,” Fin said. He chewed his lip. No time to argue, he figured. “Sure, good point. I’ll take the easy one. Lead on, Leferia!” With that, he charged into the brush.
“Up over this wall,” Leferia directed. “Through that hallway, across the battlement!” Her directions made almost no sense; all Fin could see were trees and mounds of dirt.
Still, he followed her voice as best he could. He clambered up and over a tangle of bushes so thick he couldn’t squeeze between them. Then ran down an alley of trees leaning into each other, then scrambled up to the top of a long hill.