Chapter the Fourth,
The Third to Last Day,
In which an arrow stands alone.
I. Redirected
If the wind had altered its direction to guide them north or south or even west Jai and Ceder might never have noticed, for the scenery in every direction was the same endless backdrop of azure curtains. Lulled by the heat of the sun, they found refuge in the bottom of the boat with their heads tucked in the shade under the middle bench. Astray lay curled in the prow with Why sitting atop his head, reclined against one of the cub’s ears as though the butterfly was lounging in a favorite reading chair.
An abrupt thud shook them all from their drifting reveries. Astray was the first one up, vigilantly sniffing at the obstruction in their way—a wooden pole, standing tall and skinny in the empty sea. The wood was green, sickly, and twisted, like dried fish flesh. There was a white arrow affixed to the top of the pole by a rusty iron nail. The tip of the boat touched the pole, wedged into a small nook in the wood. Despite vigorous waves the vessel did not slide past the signpost.
“Jai, do you think we just happened to bump into the only pole out here in the entire sea? Not bloody likely,” Ceder concluded. Jai raised an eyebrow.
It was a vexingly simple sign. Astray looked around each side of the pole as if he might see something past the left that was invisible from the right.
“Not very helpful, is it?” asked Why.
“You can say that again,” said Jai, glaring at the butterfly and the arrow both.
“Why, be a dear and fly into the sky for us again,” said Ceder. “See if there’s anything this sign is pointing to.”
Why bowed to her and jumped into the air. With the first flap of his wings he gained the top of the white arrow, where he landed for a split-second in order to spring higher. As he pushed off, the arrow came loose and swung down to the left and up to the right, as slow as a pendulum, and whether from the wind or by its own volition the arrow fell down again to the left, around the bottom—pinned in place by the rusty nail—and up to the top, where it only preceded to fall one more time in a squeaking loop. At the top of the arrow’s last ponderous rotation whatever strength was left in the nail reaffirmed itself and the sign was still, pointed at the noonday sun.
“Ceder, good idea sending Why to scout,” said Jai.
She smiled shyly. “Thanks.”
“This will give us a chance to slip away before he comes back.”
“Jai! That’s not why I asked him to go.”
“But there’s nothing up there,” said Jai, craning his head to look where Why had gone.
“This arrow must mean something,” she asserted, as much to convince herself.
“To me,” said Jai, “it looks like it’s just an old, ramshackle, forgotten, ruined, stupid sign that doesn’t point to anything, anymore. Even if we knew what direction it used to face, we still can’t sail anywhere but where the wind takes us. Right?”
“I suppose so,” Ceder hedged, as if there was something more they ought to do at the pole before leaving. This was their first meeting with any landmark in the sea or sky—leaving it behind so soon felt too hasty. On the other hand, we can’t wait forever, she told herself. “We’ll push off and sail around the pole when Why gets back.”
“Ceder,” said Jai, “have you gotten the feeling at all today that we’re—I don’t know how to say it—being pushed east?”
“That’s called wind, Jai.”
“I don’t mean that. ‘Pushed’ isn’t the right word. Pulled, is more like it. Like we’re being drawn one way and one way only?”
Ceder shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe a little.”
“Well, I don’t feel it here,” said Jai, looking up at the twisted signpost.
Ceder nodded, and they waited. Why did not return. “I’m getting worried,” she whispered to Jai.
“I guess we don’t have any choice but to leave without him,” said Jai. “Too bad. Oh well, off we go.”
Astray leapt into Ceder’s arms, knocking her down on the bench. The cub gazed intently into her eyes, then leapt to the pole. With one look back to the children, he darted up the pole in an instant, circling around while he ascended as though a spiral staircase wound a welcome for him. At the top he disappeared.
“Astray!” Ceder exclaimed, perfectly shocked.
Both Jai and Ceder rushed to the pole and snaked their heads around either side, but their dark companion was nowhere to be seen, and still no word from Why.
“What should we do?” Jai asked Ceder.
“We have to find them. We can’t leave them here.”
“They left us here,” Jai pointed out with heavy emphasis, but Ceder turned a deaf ear.
She stared at the arrow with her head cocked to one side. “Jai, how many times did that arrow spin around when Why bounced off it?”
Jai replayed the scene in his mind. He counted on his fingers. “Three. Or four. No, three. But maybe four.”
“And how many times did Astray circle around the pole when he climbed to the top a moment ago?”
Jai considered, then shrugged dismissively, implying he could figure out the right number if he really tried. “Who cares?”
The black tattoo on Jai’s forehead suddenly flared like fire in the night. He fell forward off his seat and screamed in agony, clamping both hands over the symbols embedded in his brow. In the next instant a scarlet light flooded over the boat. Ceder stared at Jai, horrified and frozen with fear. He writhed back and forth, his eyes crazed like a rabid animal.
“Jai!” Ceder shrieked, but she did not know how to help him. Steam rose around the boat where the red light touched the sea. Ceder began to sweat. The heat was choking. She knew this must be the searchlight from Sorid’s tower that Why had warned them about; their master had found them, after all.
She grabbed a hold of the wooden signpost and pulled the boat around to the right. She could feel the red beam on her back as she did so—it felt as though the heat was melting her tunic to her skin. She knew they would survive no more than a few moments in the severe temperature, and yet now that Sorid had found them, there was nowhere to hide—the beam would focus on the wooden hull like a concentrated sunray on an insect until it burst into flames.
Ceder bit her lip as she pulled the boat around the pole in a slow, counterclockwise circle. Once around and nothing happened. She looked down at Jai. He was tensed up in a ball, every muscle in his body contracting in pain. Sweat poured down Ceder’s face as she pulled the boat around the pole a second time. In a swoon she put a hand to her forehead, feeling a swiftly spiraling sense of nausea.
The red beam intensified as if all the power of the sun was redirected at the pink boat. The steam surrounding them was as thick as fog and it burned Ceder’s arms to reach over the water to grab the pole, but with her last scrap of will she pulled them around the signpost one more time.
The sea before them was no longer empty.
No more than half a tail from the signpost was a well built of gray stone, much the same as a thousand wells in meadows and glades the world over but that this well rose from the sea itself, which is not the sort of location usually in need of a ready water supply.
The red beam vanished. Cool wind swept the suffocating heat and the lethal steam away in the blink of an eye. Jai sat up slowly. The marks on his forehead were black and lifeless once again, but the pale skin around the dark ink was swollen raw. Without a word he joined Ceder in the prow of the boat.
Music filled the air, or perhaps the water, for it was so soft and subtle that if the children strained to hear the melody over the ambience of the waves, the tones seemed to melt into the sounds of the sea. When Ceder returned her concentration to the well she thought she heard the music again—bubbling voices singing cascading scales of liquid notes, and the plunk of harps and golden strings below the surface—but when she closed her eyes to listen more clearly the voices sank under the spray.
Before the children could s
peak their astonishment Why reappeared and flew to the ribbon in Ceder’s hair. He stroked his beard furiously, as if he was waking up for the first time all over again.
“Where did you go?” Ceder asked him.
“I must have flown too high. Yes, that’s it. I looked down and saw the pole, but the boat was gone. How could it be gone? I must have fainted, but falling always seems to wake me up, and here you are. Yes. Obviously. I’m not crazy.”
A proud roar called their attention back to the signpost. Atop the pole, curled around the white arrow like a fetch of living shadow, Astray sat watching the children. Even with the sun at his back, silhouetting him in sharp contrast, neither Jai nor Ceder could attach their sight to the outline of his form before they found themselves rubbing their eyes and drifting away into half-solid daydreams. The cub roared again, playfully, then leapt from the top of the pole straight at Ceder. She flung her arms up in time to catch him, but fell back on the bench, off balanced.
In the brief span of their approach to the mysterious well, Jai realized that he was far thirstier than he had been at any other point that day. Unwilling to take his eyes off their destination, he fumbled for his satchel and retrieved one of the enchanted eggs. He handed the other to Ceder and they both drank gratefully.
“What is a well doing out here?” asked Jai, breaking the silence.
“I don’t know,” said Ceder, “but if the people who built this are the same ones who designed that signpost, I’d say we might be here a long time trying to figure it out.”
II. Darkness in the Depths
The well was no more than arm’s length across. The foundation looked like it should have been battered apart by the elements long ago, but there it stood against an ocean of odds, its moss-covered gray stonework and simple wooden roof enduring for untold time. As to what it was doing there in the middle of the sea, neither Jai nor Ceder could fathom. They looked to Astray, whose ever-confident body language was quickly becoming a source of reassurance for the children, but the cub betrayed no clue to what he knew. The phantom music grew louder near the well, as if the abyss was lending its great volume in harmony, but when Jai and Ceder looked inside, the song was gone as if it never was.
The brim of the well was as tall as the children’s waists as they stood up in the boat. The roof—two angled and conjoined boards of moldy wood held up by two flimsy posts—was higher than their heads. There was an unadorned, corroded iron winch fastened to one of the posts, attached to a taut, fraying rope; the rope ran over a rickety pulley hanging underneath the center of the roof and then trailed down into the hole. There was no water in the bottom of the well for as far as Jai or Ceder could see.
“Why, go take a look down there,” said Jai. “See if there are any coins at the bottom.”
“Jai!” Ceder scolded him.
“Absolutely not,” said the butterfly in a fatherly tone, “I don’t want you two getting lost again while I’m gone,” but he was stroking his beard more nervously than before.
Astray jumped to the well’s ledge as soon as the boat was close enough. The cub immediately shoved his nose against the handle of the winch, straining to move it, but ultimately he was far too weak. He gave up the futile effort and stared back at Jai with begging eyes.
“Okay, watch what a real man can do,” said Jai, spitting into his hands and rubbing them together. He grabbed the handle, guessing to turn it counterclockwise like the secret entrance around the signpost. It would not budge. He tried turning it the other direction but the gear was stuck so tight that he nearly ripped the skin off his hands. Astray watched this spectacle of failure without sympathy.
“It’s completely useless,” Jai said to Ceder, blowing on his palms, “just like the arrow on that stupid pole.”
Ceder ran her hands along the smooth stones of the well, tracing her nimble fingers through the sea-cement that filled up the cracks in between each rock. “Strange,” she said, “this feels familiar, somehow.” She looked up underneath the roof at the pulley, trying to reason out the mechanics. Finally, she grabbed the rope and tugged it upward, testing its weight. “We might be able to pull this up by hand,” she told Jai. “It’s not all that heavy.” She yanked it up again to show him.
“I guess it’s the only thing left to try,” he admitted, looking at his already blistered hands in despair, “but I have a feeling that hauling in a tail’s worth of wet rope is going to be a lot easier said than done.”
“You can climb down instead and have a look around, if you like,” countered Ceder, her hands fixed for pulling.
Jai blanched at the alternative. “What if we haul it up and there’s nothing at the end but a plain old bucket?”
“Then I’ll stick it on your head to stop you complaining.” She tugged the rope again, hefting it up a good two fins. “A little hard work never killed anyone.”
“Tell that to all the tunnel-minnows that died before we were even born,” Jai groused.
Suddenly the winch began spinning and the pulley screeched like a banshee as the rope wound around the axle. Ceder and Jai both jerked back and fell to the bottom of the boat.
Unflinching, Astray remained statuesque on the lip of the well, staring into the abyss. Ceder rose to the cub’s side and peered timidly into the hole. “Jai… something’s coming.”
Jai leaned over the edge with her. For a few short moments the darkness in the depths of the well was impenetrable.
It appeared at first so small it was impossible to say what it might be, but it grew like an unimpeded ripple in still water as the winch raced like a runaway wagon wheel; before Jai or Ceder could recoil from the speedily ascending object, in the next breath it was underneath their noses, where it stopped as abruptly as it had started. Hanging from the fraying rope was a mildew-lacquered bucket boasting a scale’s depth of muddy water. In the muddy water was a dead, green fish with two blubbery whiskers protruding from the corners of its mouth.
Jai let out a disappointed sigh.
“It’s just a dead fish,” said Ceder, leaning away from the bucket. “What do you think we should do with it?”
“Do with it? I don’t know,” said Jai, wondering whether he should stick it with his knife or not.
“I don’t know either,” Ceder said at last.
“Eat it?” suggested Jai.
“Auuuguuacoublrgh,” said the fish, vibrating to life. It flopped spasmodically around the dingy bucket. “Eat it? Eat it? Eat it? What do you mean, eat it? Eat this!” The fish kicked his tail, lobbing an oily blob of mud at his perceived assailant.
“Blarg!” squealed Jai, goop in his eyes.
The not-quite-so-dead fish exploded with laughter.
“Bravo! Bravo!” applauded Why. “This guy’s got great timing! Enlist him at once!”
Astray put a paw over his face and shook his head for shame.
Jai scraped the mud out of his eyes and used one of the enchanted blue eggs to pour clear, cold water over his face until all the sludge was washed away. He shook his hair dry and then turned to the not-quite-so-dead fish with an angry glint in his eye.
The not-quite-so-dead fish stared back at Jai. His eyes bulged as he drank in the vision of the boy’s tattooed skin. “By the Holy Sight of Silver, those marks on your face chill my gills.”
“Thanks,” said Jai. “It seems the hospitality around here is about as deep as your bucket.”
“Easy, boy, I meant no harm. And if you’re done tidying up, put that egg away—such sacred water is not to be squandered.”
“It’s my egg, I’ll do what I want with it, and this water never runs out anyhow.” Jai’s grating thirst was beginning to get the better of him, his temper shorter than a candlewick. “You’re the one who just splashed me with mud, so chew on your fat lip until I’m good and ready for you.”
“I always forget,” said the not-quite-so-dead fish, turning one opaque eye to Ceder, “how insolent the little boys come.”
Ceder giggled and clapped a hand o
ver her mouth. Jai glared at the fish.
“Nonetheless,” and here the not-quite-so-dead fish ceased flopping about his bed of mud, “it is, of course, my bottomless pleasure to welcome all of you to my humble well. I am called Wishfish, the most wise and mystical of all fish!” He paused to see if the children were inclined to believe him. “I must tell you I am quite impressed whenever anyone makes it this far. That sign out front fools most fish away. It is a simple device, true, but it is strong enough to move mountains.”
Jai grunted his disapproval, but when he saw Ceder puff up her shoulders and smile proudly—for she had solved the riddle of the arrow before Jai even knew it was a riddle—his rising temper began to dwine.
“Impressed, but not surprised,” said the Wishfish. “After all, they told me to expect you: a girl and a boy, intrepid, perseverant, and hopelessly, aimlessly, unequivocally as lost at sea as fish on land.”
“I beg your pardon,” Ceder interjected, “but who told you to expect us?”
“The King and Queen, girl! Who else? I’ve never seen them act so secretive, constantly looking to the sky as if they were a pair of roosters waiting for the sun. The King and Queen, can you believe it? Here, last night, the first time in a thousand years! Even for the Wishfish it is an honor to swim under the same stars as a unicorn. And to think they only stopped to see me… to tell me about you!”
“Unicorns?” Jai asked, realization dawning.
Ceder was quicker to piece the story together. “The King and Queen—they are dolphins, black and white? With horns—” she illustrated, tapping her forehead where Jai’s knife had scarred her, “—right here?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” grumbled the Wishfish.
“What did they say?” Jai asked impatiently. “Where are they now?”
“Gone a dark road,” the Wishfish answered grimly, and Jai and Ceder were instantly reminded of Why’s report that there was an ominous highway—a ribbon of shadow—under the sea.
“Please, what did they say?” Ceder pressed. “How can we find them again? We have so many questions.”
“But I’m a fool,” said the Wishfish. “See how I waste our precious time together, and I haven’t even asked how fare your own travels?”
“We’ve been—”
“Silence, girl! There’s no time, now. We must be quick, then you’ll have to scurry off to Coral Wing.”
“What do you mean ‘we must be quick?’” asked Jai. “We’ve got nowhere to go. We have all day.”
The fish turned his gloss-eyed gaze up to the comet in the sky. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. At the castle, the Coralute will receive your questions, but, for now, let me tell you that the King and Queen are in the highest danger and it is no accident—do you hear me?—no accident that you have found my abode when their need of aid—nay, the need of all the open sea—is at its greatest.”
“I just realized something,” said Why, jarring everybody from the emotive spell of the fish’s speech, “your name is Wishfish. This is a well. Therefore, this must be a fishing well! The children have been complaining of hunger. Perhaps you will allow them to catch something to eat?”
Jai rolled his eyes, but Ceder slapped her forehead and said, “Of course! This is a wishing well! How did I not see that earlier?”
Why cleared his throat. “Well, you could wish for a fish.” His purple cheeks flushed like tiny cherries.
When the children looked back to the Wishfish, he was locked in a staring contest with Astray, whose emerald eyes seemed to expand and contract as the cub communicated some silent message to the keeper of the well.
“Wishes, are they real?” Ceder asked the Wishfish. “Can it be true?”
The fish flopped back and forth uncomfortably under her gaze. “To tell you they are real is to blind you with light, to tell you they are not is to blind you with darkness.”
“Then how are we supposed to know what’s real?” asked Jai. “Our old master spoke nothing but lies and showed me nothing but shadows on the wall, the King and Queen never said a word to us, and here you are, claiming to know something we don’t, but you won’t tell us what it is.”
“The Land of Lin is like the sea, boy—everything you behold is only the surface. What happens at the bottom will throw bubbles and waves to the top, and this is all we are shown—shadows and words, bubbles and waves. But you must remember: below your boat lie deep waters!”
“And what of wishes?” Jai asked. “We need so many things—we need food, we need a bigger boat, we need to find land, we need to find help. Can we wish for them all?”
“Careful, boy. Fish who have many wishes will find themselves tangled in many nets. Mind your heart, and one wise wish will suffice.”
Jai looked doubtful.
“In any event,” said the fish, “I don’t think you could afford more than one.”
“Huh?” said Jai.
Ceder looked up. “Are you saying you sell them?” she asked, incredulous. “But you can’t sell wishes.”
“Why do you think people toss a penny into every backwater hole they stumble across?” The fish flopped himself back to an angle where he could see both children clearly. “The truth is, nothing in the sea is free,” the keeper of the well intoned with ancient resolve, “not even for the King and Queen.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” asked Jai.
“It means,” Ceder said with frost in her voice, “that he wants us to haggle over the price of his make-believe magic.”
“When you’re only open for business three days every thousand years, you can’t afford to give anything away,” said the fish with a satisfied grin, his fleshy whiskers curling up like a well-oiled moustache.
“But we don’t have anything to give you,” said Jai, doing his best to slide his satchel—aglow with the enchanted eggs—under his seat without the Wishfish noticing. “I suppose our butterfly could perform for you,” he offered as a diversion, “sort of like a clown or something. In fact, you can just keep him.”
The not-quite-so-dead fish turned to Why, who was flying hither and fro above Astray. When he realized he was being scrutinized by the authoritative Wishfish the butterfly nearly fell out of the sky, but eventually managed a mid-flight bow, which turned into a somersault, which turned into three. The not-quite-so-dead fish gave Why a supportive wink.
“That will not be necessary,” the Wishfish said to Jai. “And let me inform you, boy, that this handsome butterfly is not yours to broker any more than a runaway slave is the property of his former master, so mind your words. If you want a pet, get a goldfish! I’ve heard they live forever. And if I desired those eggs, rest assured I would already have them from you—”
“You said we had to be in a hurry to save the King and Queen,” Ceder cut in, flushed with frustration, “but you want us to stand here and argue over the cost of a wish! Why should we trust you, after all, and not chop you down the middle and eat you for lunch?”
The fish turned to Astray with a baleful expression. “Alas, I spoke too soon. It seems the girls are as rude as the boys, these days.”
The cub gingerly walked around the lip of the well next to the bucket.
“In any event,” said the fish, unperturbed by Astray’s proximity, “we have already agreed to a price that is most fair.” He gulped. “Most fair indeed.” The Wishfish looked up blankly at the stalking cub.
Before the children could get their questions out, Astray lifted his flower necklace with one paw and bit off three heart-shaped, pink petals.
“You know the rules, I presume,” said the Wishfish.
Jai put his hands on his hips. “We play by our own rules.”
Ceder shook her head.
“You don’t know the rules?” The fish was flabbergasted. “Don’t you ever read?”
Both children shrugged.
The Wishfish took a deep breath. “Wishing is serious stuff. That’s why I’m here, to make sure nothing goes wrong. It should be obviou
s how important that is!
“Now, you must be advised of three things: one, that no magic may last more than a thousand years. Such are the laws in the Land of Lin. Second, if you tell anyone what you wished for—anyone at all—then I can’t be held liable if it doesn’t come true. Lastly, if you are not absolutely clear in your heart what you desire, you’re going to be in for some big surprises and likely a thorough disappointment. Do you both understand and accept these terms?”
Jai and Ceder nodded enthusiastically, their heads so full of possibilities their necks could barely support them.
“Listen closely: you will know what to do at Coral Wing when you arrive there. Understood? Good. I am sorry we could not linger and talk more of sweeter things. Wherever your journey takes you, I personally wish you the best of fortune, for whatever my own wish is worth, which isn’t as much as it should be, seeing as I’m not allowed to buy and sell from myself.”
Astray dropped the three petals into the bucket of mud.
“What then be your wishes,” boomed the fish in a voice suddenly fit for a circus ringleader, “oh, masters of my well?”
III. Gone Like the Night
Astray nimbly bowed his head and held it low. When he raised it, the Wishfish nodded, opaque eyes brimming with power. The cub jumped back to the boat and looked to Ceder.
Why could not abide the silence and the seriousness that accompanies the choosing of wishes; moreover, the butterfly seemed not to have noticed that he had been excluded from the group’s collective bargain, so he flew away to find something more entertaining to do up in the sky, which consisted chiefly of singing bits and pieces of made-up songs to himself and swinging his cane around like a cutlass.
“Ready?” Ceder asked the Wishfish at last, stepping forth to the bucket. The fish stared at her, unmoving again, as if dead. She gulped and closed her eyes, then bent her head over the well as she had seen Astray do. She focused on her wish in the center of her heart, mindful of the Wishfish’s third warning; the music of the well suddenly returned to her and she could hear every note as clear as a bell. The fish nodded. Ceder smiled and sat down.
Jai needed no further time. “Ready.” He stood up over the edge of the well and looked at the fish for one short second with a self-assured look in his eyes.
The Wishfish nodded. “So be it! So be it! So be it!”
The winch came loose and the bucket dropped out of sight like a stone, the rope uncoiling too fast for the children to grab with their bare hands. Jai tried to catch the handle but it was spinning fast enough to break bones.
“What’s happening? What did you wish for?” Ceder shouted above the noise of the rusty iron gear.
“Not this!” cried Jai with his hands in his hair, his eyes agog, his mind disbelieving and confused and angry all at once.
Before either of them could think of a way to jam the pulley or to slow the rope the entire well began shaking and shuddering. Jai pushed the boat back to a safe distance a dozen fins away.
Ancient dust shook free from the rocks within the well and fell into the abyss. The wooden roof creaked as its foundation flexed and stretched. The big stones fell in on one another, building on top of each other, restructuring this way and that like some fantastic, living kaleidoscope.
What floated before the boat afterward was no well, but a cobbled dome of precisely packed gray rock. All told, it was no larger than the well had been and it had the same old-fashioned, familiar feel to it—the moss, the wave-washed and faded stones, the mud and sea-cement.
A boxy head emerged from under a hidden covey in the stone dome. The texture of the face bore a striking resemblance to the grain of the wood that had constituted the roof of the well. “Gahhhhh,” the creature yawned. “My lord. So soon?” It blinked a sleepy blink as it took them all in with one jade eye, then head and dome together sank below the surface and swam off due west.
Jai, Ceder, and Astray watched the creature’s underwater shadow travel away against the wind. The sea was empty and the well and the signpost were gone like the night, with not a solitary fish or wish fulfilled in sight.
The Year One,
For a thousand years the King and Queen never forgot the night when a pair of dolphins found a boy and a girl sailing east together across the sea, watched over by the West Wind alone. They always wished it could have lasted longer, tugging at their hearts like a half-remembered dream.
Their long-awaited night was pronounced by the light of a comet in the sky where the mountains met the sea. The King and Queen knew what they had to do. They departed for the western coast at once.
She would find the one who fell off the turtle’s back.
He would find a fish who was willing to do anything for an apple.
They would meet at the Riverlilly to play their part. After which they had a dark road to go, but they would travel it together, fin in fin.