GUARD AGAINST IT AND PREVENT IT.
As freaky as all that was, Fin didn’t get the feeling the statues were supposed to be guarding against anything. They were horrific, more like something you’d fear rather than something you’d want looking after you. Each one was a replica of the statue in the reflecting pool—the crying man. The Oracle, he’d heard the Meressians call him.
He remembered what Stavik had told him, about the Oracle and the Meressians being at odds over some prophecy. And then it hit him: The Oracle was what the Meressians were guarding against.
“Weird,” he whispered to himself. The statues gaped at him with open mouths, a scream wide enough to swallow him whole. Fin shuddered at the thought. But it was none of his business, really—he was here to steal. And what really scared him was that there was absolutely nothing here worth stealing. The job looked like a bust.
He shook his head, bewildered. It couldn’t be. This was where the letter had told him to go. This was where the real treasures should have been hidden.
He watched as the glowglitters merrily chomped away at the darkness near the far wall, exposing the corner of a short metal box. Fin almost sagged with relief. A safe! He trotted over to it and skimmed his fingers along its still-shadowed surface, searching for a lock.
The edge of his palm banged against something sharp, and he shook his hand at the pain. “Come on, bugs,” he muttered, thinking about the army of angry Meressians getting ready to stream down on him.
Finally, a curious glowglitter lit on the safe’s handle and started munching. Fin poked it gently in the butt, trying to scoot it along so he could figure out what he was working with. Crystal, definitely. Some kind of gemstone. Faceted. He poked the bug again. It stopped, annoyed, then went back to munching.
Fin kept his eyes on the handle as the darkness peeled away. He could make out one pointy, wavy arm. Then another, then another. Six of them, all branched out from a golden center. A sculpted sun! When he grasped it, he could just slide his fingers between the sun’s rays. But when he tried turning it, it didn’t budge.
“No time for this junk,” Fin grumbled. He pulled out one of the knives he’d grabbed for Stavik and jammed it against the base of the knob. He pried at it hard, heart thundering in anticipation, until it came free with a pop and the door swung open.
The ship rumbled beneath him suddenly. “That can’t be good,” he muttered.
Quickly, he slipped his hands into the safe. But any hope he’d had of escaping with pockets full of treasure evaporated—it was practically empty! He swiped the only two objects inside and glanced at them: a crystal vial filled with water and a sculpted ruby key.
The Key! He had it!
He shoved it and the vial into his thief’s bag. He even snatched the sun-shaped doorknob; at this point, he’d take what he could get. After all, it didn’t look not valuable.
Just then, the reflecting pool crashed to the deck. Water splashed everywhere. Glowglitters scattered, a few of them spewing little black trails of darkness in fear.
The statues lining the walls groaned. Dirty brown water burst from the mouth of one, then from another across the chamber. “Shanks!” Fin shouted. The safe had been trapped!
Oily water from the Khaznot Bay poured into the hold from the statues’ mouths, splashing across Fin’s feet. Fear poured in with it. He gulped, imagining what this trap was really for.
Because at the Quay’s docks, the water was basically just water. But out on the open Stream, where the magic flowed fully, where this ship would normally be… well, his legs might be frogs by now. If he was lucky.
This was a death trap to end all death traps.
Then again, as Stavik always said, dead is dead is dead. And normal water or not, if he didn’t find a way out, that’s exactly what he would be.
CHAPTER 8
Ardent Explains Everything (Poorly)
The Pirate Stream? The hair on Marrill’s arms stood on end, and a prickling sensation trickled down her spine.
Everywhere she looked, they were surrounded by water—endless expanses of it. “But that doesn’t make sense.” She clutched Karnelius closer. Just a few moments before, she’d been standing in the middle of the desert, and deserts weren’t places well known for being full of water.
She turned back to the wizard, who still stood with his arms stretched wide, watching her expectantly. It dawned on Marrill that she had no idea what she’d gotten herself into.
She bit her lip so they couldn’t see that her chin had begun to tremble. In the course of her family’s numerous adventures, she’d been thrown into many strange situations, and she’d learned how to handle them. But then, her mom and dad had always been nearby, or some other responsible grown-up.
And this was something entirely different. “Who are you, really?” she asked.
“I am the great wizard Ardent,” the old man said. He bowed with a flourish, the hem of his purple dressing gown waving around his bony ankles. “You may have heard of me?”
Marrill stared at him blankly. “Or not,” he said, deflated.
Ardent kicked the folds of his robe aside and motioned to the boy, whose right hand draped lazily over the wheel. Marrill noticed he had a tattoo of an intricately knotted rope twined around his knuckles. “And this is the captain of this fine vessel, my good friend and journeying companion, Coll.”
Marrill choked. Captain? He was barely older than she was; how was he a captain? She remembered the way the ship had floundered when she’d first seen it. Maybe he wasn’t a very good captain, she decided.
Coll looked like he was about to say something, but Ardent didn’t give him the chance. “And this,” he said, sweeping his hands around at the various masts, their sails straining against the wind of the approaching storm, “is the Enterprising Kraken, the greatest sailing vessel the Stream has ever known!”
Overhead, the ship’s rigging all squealed at once. Marrill looked up, and her eyes widened. Above them, the ropes rising from either side of the deck came together almost like long legs, pulleys making knees and a waist. Similar weird formations ran in from the front and back masts, making rope-and-pulley arms. It all twisted together in the middle, so that the whole thing resembled a giant person made of twined rope.
Marrill squinted. In fact, it seemed that someone had painted a face on a paper plate, and fastened it in place on the rope that stretched from the “body” to the top of the mainsail. The painted smile bobbed cheerily as the ropes squeaked through the rigging.
“Pardon me,” Ardent said, with a polite bow to the rope figure. “And this would be the Ropebone Man,” he said, waving from Marrill to it. “Generally in charge of the rigging and whatnot. Would be quite hard to sail a ship this size without him.”
Marrill wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Ardent must have noticed the confusion on her face. “I mean with only the one sailor,” he said, as though that were the question on her mind.
“Now,” he said, “that brings us to the two of you.”
Marrill hesitated. This was all so strange and absurd that it didn’t feel real. Except that every sense told her otherwise: the snap of the sails overhead, the smell of the approaching storm, the sharp sting of her cat’s claws digging into her shoulder, and the ache in her arms from holding him for so long.
“I’m Marrill,” she said, clearing her throat. “Marrill Aesterwest. And this is Karnelius.” She waved one of his paws at them in a halfhearted hello. Her cat squinted at the wizard through his one eye and hissed.
“Well,” Ardent pronounced, “we certainly weren’t expecting to be adding to the crew. But since you’re here and we’re not where we were, welcome aboard!”
It took Marrill a moment to untwist what he’d just said. When she did, her eyes widened in alarm. “Karny and I are not a part of the crew,” she protested. “And I’m really sorry, but I want—no, I need—to get back home.” After a beat she added, “With you.”
Ardent smiled, but it was straine
d. That alone filled Marrill with concern. “Right,” he said. “Home. Well. That’s an interesting conundrum now, isn’t it?” He tugged at his beard, clearly uncomfortable, and glanced at Coll.
Marrill’s unease intensified. She didn’t know what a conundrum was, but it didn’t sound good.
Coll tilted his head at Ardent. “He’s referring to the tides. Navigation can be tricky on the Stream.”
“Stream?” She looked around at the water stretching out in every direction, the waves nearby rising to white frothy crests. “This doesn’t look like any stream I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, I’ll leave that to the wizard to explain,” Coll said.
With a small measure of relief, Marrill said, “Yes, please!” An errant wave struck the bow, and she set Karnelius down so she could brace herself against a nearby mast. Immediately, he scampered off and crouched by the door to the ship’s cabin.
“Right, well. Hmm.” Ardent frowned in concentration. “This would be easier if I had my treatises,” he murmured, tapping at his chin a few times as he easily moved with the rocking of the ship. He shook his head sadly. “Regardless, I shall do my best.
“Imagine a river of creation,” he began, “that flows from the beginning of all things to the end of time.” He drew his hand through the air, and a sliver of silver liquid spun from his fingers, growing wider and deeper as it went, until a miniature river flowed between them. “Entire worlds, universes even, spring up from it like cities on its shore.”
Houses and towns and planets appeared along the image’s silver water. Marrill gasped, stunned. She reached her hand out toward the replica river, wondering if it felt as real as it looked.
Ardent batted her away. “The first, and most important, rule is to never touch the Pirate Stream,” he warned. “Her waters are the purest form of magic. You wouldn’t want to grow scales or explode, would you?”
She gaped at him, her eyes wide. He didn’t seem to be joking. And when she remembered the feathers that had sprouted from her wrist earlier, she realized that he might not be. “No, I’m not generally okay with exploding,” she told him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Few are,” he said wistfully, as if he had personal experience in the matter.
He cleared his throat. “Now, as I was saying, most rivers flow into each other—water likes to come together as it makes its way to the sea, you know. But sometimes, very rarely, but sometimes, a stream will just up and split off from a bigger river, running off in its own direction for reasons known only to itself. And when it does, that stream is known as a pirate stream.”
To illustrate, he drew a finger across the top of the silver river, then snaked a small strand of water out into its own little branch. “It’s in books,” he explained, as if that made it all make sense.
She stared at the floating image, forehead furrowed, trying to understand. The phrase sounded familiar; she remembered her father saying something about a pirate stream when they were hiking up the lower Colorado River in the Grand Canyon when she was eight. But as far as she knew, those waters weren’t the kind that made you grow scales or explode.
“You, my dear,” Ardent continued, “sit on the piratest of all pirate streams!” He held his arms out wide, indicating the endless expanse of water churning furiously beneath the storm. “This is the Pirate Stream, the one and only offshoot from the River of Creation!”
Marrill glanced around again, trying to match up what he’d told her with what she saw with her own eyes. “This still doesn’t look like any stream I’ve seen,” she said at last.
Ardent shrugged. “The Pirate Stream flows fast and free when compared to the River of Creation, a steep mountain creek compared to a slow coastal river. But even so, the Stream touches all worlds, at some place and some time. Not to mention the many, many worlds that exist only as islands within the Stream itself. So, yes, it’s fair to say it’s a bit on the large side.”
Marrill frowned as the bow of the Enterprising Kraken crashed through a big wave. Questions rushed into her head. “If we can’t touch the actual water,” she said, “how come I could stand in it back at the parking lot? And what about the spray from the ship?”
“The spray’s too busy deciding whether or not to be air to bother us,” Ardent told her, waving his hand as though it wasn’t important. “Really takes a good, solid splash or dipping before things get worrisome. As for the water you stood in, well, it was just water. It usually is, where the Stream touches a world. Usually.”
A flash of lightning broke across the sky, sending thunder over the waves. “Some rain coming,” Coll said, still slumped on the wheel like he didn’t have a care in the world. He caught her eye briefly. “Don’t worry, we’re heading around the storm, not going in.”
Ardent nodded in agreement. Still, he pulled out a length of twine and tied it around his head to keep his cap from blowing away. “So that should pretty much answer all your questions. It all made sense, I take it?”
Marrill stared at him. “Not even a little,” she admitted, feeling defeated. “And you still haven’t explained how I’m getting home. Because I am getting home.”
Ardent cleared this throat. And then cleared it again before glancing at Coll, who merely cocked an eyebrow. “Well, the thing is,” he told her, “it may not have seemed it, but your world is far removed from where we are—the Pirate Stream proper. Getting back there wouldn’t be easy under the best of circumstances. Add to that the rather peculiar nature of the Stream lately, and well, I’m not quite sure how we got there in the first place. It’s not exactly somewhere Stream folks ever go.”
The wizard stepped forward and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was that touch, more than anything, that caused her throat to tighten. It made her feel safe; it reminded her of her father. Her vision blurred, but she refused to let the tears come any farther.
Ardent’s smile turned down with sympathy. He looked to Coll again, clearly urging him to say something. The captain nodded, if a bit reluctantly. “He’s right. Tides in this part of the Stream are erratic and have a fairly long life cycle. I’ve been sailing the Pirate Stream for…” He ticked one, two, three on his fingers, then shrugged. “Well, for long enough to know my way around, and I’ve never been down that particular branch before—maybe no one has.”
He jutted his chin toward the horizon. “We were trying to follow that bit of map and caught an unexpected eddy in a current I’d never seen, almost certainly the result of the passing storm.”
At the mention of the storm, Marrill glanced at the dark clouds churning behind them. Her breath hitched at how menacing they appeared, but neither Ardent nor Coll seemed to be concerned in the least.
“And add to that the spring tide and winds coming out of the Breathless Strait,” Coll continued, “and those conditions might not arise again for… well, ever.”
That got her full attention. Marrill’s eyes grew wide and she stumbled back, feeling faint. The rocking boat only added to the lightness in her head. She could barely force herself to say the words, as if uttering them would make them true. “Ever? As in, I’m never going home?”
Coll looked to Ardent, who chewed his lip, watching the sky for a long while. At last, he gripped her shoulder tightly, reassuringly. “We will get you home, dear. I promise it. I just don’t know when.”
CHAPTER 9
The Master Thief Thieves Masterfully
Fin whistled to his glowglitters as water gushed into the Meressian Temple Ship. “Come on, come on,” he muttered as they flittered back to their jar. “No rush here,” he told them. If they caught his sarcasm, they ignored it.
He glanced around the hold anxiously. If he didn’t want to drown, he needed to find a way out, fast. Maybe he could float back up through the hole from the reflecting pool? But before he took three paces toward it, someone familiar fell through, landing with a splash.
It was Bull Face. In one hand, he held a wicked-looking blade. With the other, he swiped at his running nose.
“Give back the Key,” he grunted, his voice thick and stuffy.
“Are you headsoft?” Fin asked. “We’re going to die down here!”
In response, Bull Face charged. Fin ducked out of the way just as the gleaming blade swung past him. He skittered—as best he could skitter in two feet of rising liquid, anyway—behind a water-spewing statue.
“The whole ship will sink now, you fool thief!” Bull Face warned. His skin had taken on a distinctly greenish hue, and his lips were turning a deathly shade of pale. “It’s designed to protect the Key at all costs. Oh, Hedgecaw will kill me.…”
For a moment, just a moment, Fin considered it: Give back the Key, head home. Probably get locked up, forgotten about, maybe starve until someone decides the jail needs a cleaning. Still, he’d be alive.
Alive, but no closer to finding his mother. He couldn’t afford to lose this lead. Besides, Fin thought, he wasn’t the Master Thief because he gave stuff back.
“Quick-like, or we all go under!” Bull Face snarled.
Fin shrugged. “You look like a champ swimmer,” he offered.
Bull Face swung again. Fin jumped. This time, the blade slashed high after him, the Meressian’s reflexes almost as fast as Fin’s.
Almost.
The blow missed Fin by inches but smashed clear through the head of the statue he’d ducked around. Where its mouth had been, a huge hole now gaped in the hull, letting even more water pour in.
Fin gulped. They’d be under in minutes! His eyes raced around the hold. No exit. None. No openings at all except the stupid gap in the ceiling and the hole gushing in water from the bay.
Bull Face raised his sword. Fin noticed the waver in his hands, the tremble around his belly. “Guard… against it.” The big guard shuddered, his lips barely able to form the words. “And… pre… ven… GYACK!”