The Floating Island

  “Don’t just stand there,” Char said, picking up a gingerbread drawbridge. “Buy something.”

  Ven stared at all the castle pieces, finally choosing a guard tower formed of boiled caramel sugar dipped into hardened chocolate.

  “Good choice,” said the gray-haired man behind the counter, smiling.

  Ven smiled awkwardly in return. “I’ve never eaten a guard tower before,” he said. “Makes me feel a bit like a giant, a rare feeling for a Nain indeed.” He fumbled in the envelope Oliver gave him for his scrip. “You—you do serve Nain, don’t you?”

  The confectioner’s face lost its smile. “Of course we do, lad,” he said seriously. “Your money’s as good as anyone else’s. That’ll be a copper for the guard tower.”

  “I’ll pay for his, too,” Ven said. He handed the man a gold measure of scrip.

  “I wonder if they make ships,” Ven said to Char as the shopkeeper made change.

  “Of course we make ships, lad,” the confectioner said, handing him back nine silver pieces and eight copper coins. “This is a port city.” He pointed to another table on which stood edible ships of every size and shape, with marzipan sails and gingerbread hulls, their riggings made of spun sugar.

  Ven continued around the shop, walking past a table spread with crowns, rings, and necklaces, the jewels all made of candy, and paintings of pretty places all done in colored sugar on a gingersnap canvas.

  * * *

  I could not believe all the marvelous things before my eyes; it was like something from a fairy-tale world. And the smell! I wanted to eat everything in the shop. And if Char had not opened the door at that moment and left, I think I would be there to this day, doing so.

  * * *

  “Don’t do that again,” Char said crossly as they stepped out of the cool shade of the confectionery shop back into the bright light of afternoon.

  “Do what?” Ven asked in surprise, his mouth full of caramel sugar and chocolate.

  “Don’t pay for me. I pay my own way.” Char popped the last of his gingerbread drawbridge into his mouth and wiped his hand on his shirt.

  “Sorry,” Ven said, embarrassed. “I guess I’m still bothered by us getting the same amount of money, when you served all that time on the Serelinda, and I just got pulled out of the sea and mopped the deck for a couple of weeks. It isn’t right.” He wrapped the remainder of his sugar guard tower in his handkerchief and stowed it in his duffel for later.

  Char shrugged. “It is right,” he said agreeably, heading down the street past a store full of colorful quilts and another filled with exotic birds. “Cap’n didn’t have any choice in that. It’s right, though it may not be fair. But then, life ain’t fair. It ain’t fair that some kids got no parents and others get two.”

  “What about you?” Ven asked. “Do you have parents?”

  “Naw,” Char said. “No one who had parents would have to work as a cook’s mate. At least, no one with parents who didn’t hate him.”

  Ven felt even worse now.

  “But I got two legs, and two arms, and two eyes,” Char said as they passed a bakery where the bread was sitting in the long front window, cooling. “And lots of folks don’t—you’ll see a bunch of them in the Sailors’ Rest. So I reckon I’m doing all right.”

  Ahead of them they heard music, and Ven looked around for the musicians, but none were in sight. The farther up the street they walked, the louder the music grew, until finally they stopped in front of a garden in the center of the road, brimming with red and yellow flowers.

  In the middle of the garden was an enormous sculpture of polished metal that was carved to look like a glade of trees, but in each branch and leaf were holes through which the breeze was blowing, playing a random melody of wind music. Char broke into a grin and pointed.

  “Look!” he said to Ven.

  In front of the garden Scroggins, the sailor they had traveled to the Floating Island with, was standing with his arm around a smiling young woman, a squawking bundle at his elbow.

  “This must be the place she sent the message from, the one he got on the island,” Ven said, walking closer to get a better view of the sculpture. “The holes in those metal trees make it play like a giant flute when the wind blows through.”

  “Criminey,” Char murmured.

  Ven noticed the breeze was tugging at Char’s kite. “Do you want to see if we can find a place to fly that before the sun goes down?”

  “Sounds like as good a plan as any,” Char replied.

  Together they hurried through the streets, heading toward the north end of town.

  Along the way they passed all kinds of people, rich families in splendid clothing, ordinary folk chatting among themselves, poorer people pushing carts and calling to their children, all of whom seemed comfortable walking the same streets. Most of them were human, but occasionally Ven saw a few other kinds as well. They passed two slender, dark men he recognized as Lirin, the people who lived in wide fields and forests. And across the street he thought he saw some smaller folk, but he was not certain, as they darted into a nearby store before he could catch a good look at them.

  As the sun was starting to go down, they passed an enormous section of the city that was walled off by a barricade, a stone wall more than a dozen feet high, with guard towers atop it. Soldiers patrolled the top of the wall, armed with crossbows. In the center of the barricade was a huge set of doors, bound in brass, beside which a gatekeeper sat.

  “What is this place?” Ven whispered to Char.

  “The Gated City,” Char answered, pulling his kite and duffel a little closer. “The Market of Thieves—you want to stay as far away from there as you can. Some folks go in on Market Day, the middle day of the week, to shop for all kinds of weird stuff that you can’t buy in a regular store. Me, I’d never need to buy anything so bad that I’d risk being stripped of everythin’ I own.”

  “Why is there such a place right here, at the north end of the city?” Ven wondered aloud.

  Char shrugged. “I guess a long time ago it was a prison or somethin’. Dunno. But keep moving; I don’t want to lose my kite or my pay.” Ven followed him, staring back over his shoulder at the Gated City, his heart pounding with excitement.

  Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw movement from one of the towers on the wall. Ven turned, and as he did, the setting sun cast a beam of golden light across the street, lighting the cobblestones and glittering in a rainbow flash. He lifted his hand to shade his eyes.

  For a split second he thought he saw someone beckoning to him.

  Ven squinted in the afternoon brightness, and came to a halt in the street.

  He imagined, for as long as it took him to catch his breath, that the figure was summoning him, its long shadow stretching behind the wall of the Gated City. He took a step toward it, and when he did, he could swear that the figure nodded and beckoned to him again, but it was impossible to see who or what it was with the glittering sunlight in his eyes.

  Char tugged impatiently at his shirtsleeve.

  “C’mon,” the cook’s mate urged. “Let’s get away from here—last time I was in this port, I heard seven sailors went into that place an’ never came out again.”

  Ven tried to see past the afternoon shadow, but whatever he thought had been there was gone now.

  “All right,” he said finally, turning back toward the wharf. He pushed Char’s pinching fingers away from his shoulder and followed him through the streets again.

  They continued walking north and west until they came back to the docks, where the traffic and activity was beginning to shut down for the night. In the distance Ven thought he saw an abandoned pier, and he pointed it out to Char.

  The wind along the water was stronger, and the two boys hurried to the end of the pier, which was solid but had holes in some of the boards, where it led out into the harbor.

  “Here, I’ll hold it and you run with it,” Ven suggested, reaching for the kite. Char nodded, and within
a few moments the kite was dancing over the blue-gray waves, dipping and nodding in the changing wind.

  Char offered Ven the string, but he shook his head, preferring to watch the sun sinking into the waves where the sea met the sky. Great dusty shafts of sunlight, burning brightly gold, stretched upward from the horizon behind the dancing kite. It was enough for him to just stand there and watch as the sky grew darker, the horizon fading from gold to fiery orange.

  Once it was gone, and dusk was beginning to set in, Char reeled the kite back in and sighed.

  “It’s getting late,” he said wistfully. “I think we’d better go get our places on the floor at the Sailors’ Rest.”

  Ven nodded, and turned to follow him, casting one last glance back at the darkening sea.

  In the distance, not far beneath where the kite had been flying, his eye caught movement again.

  Ven squinted and looked harder. Something was sticking up in the water.

  It was a tail.

  And it was waving at him.

  Then it disappeared.

  “Uh—Char,” he sputtered, “go on ahead and I’ll catch up to you.”

  The cook’s mate blinked. “You all right?”

  “Yes, I just want a few more minutes watching the sea,” Ven said. “Go on, and I’ll be right there.” Char nodded and headed back toward town.

  Once he was out of sight, Ven went all the way to the end of the abandoned pier, crouched down and spoke over the tops of the waves cresting under the dock.

  “Hello, Amariel,” he said, trying to contain his excitement.

  The merrow’s face broke the surface, water streaming from her hair and nose. She looked off in the direction where Char had gone.

  “What were you doing?” she asked curiously. “Fishing for birds?”

  Ven swallowed the laugh that came into his throat. “I can see how it might have looked that way, with the string and such, but no, we were just playing. It’s so good to see you. How did you find me?”

  “Followed the ship,” said Amariel. “And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I found a fisherman who knows how to cut gills!” she said, smiling but not showing her teeth. “His name is Asa, and he lives in the fishing village to the south of that big city. He sets out each day at dawn, but if we go to him early enough, he will do your neck, and then you can breathe underwater, and come with me to go exploring.”

  Ven winced. “I’d love to,” he said, fighting back his curiosity, which was itching so hard that his brain felt like it was burning. “But I have to wait for my papers to clear with the harbormaster. And I really should find a way to go home.”

  The merrow floated back in the water, confused. “Do you want to come into the depths with me?”

  “Yes,” Ven said sadly. “But I can’t today.”

  The merrow’s face took on a look of displeasure. “Hmmph,” she said. Then she floated back in the water, looking like she was preparing to dive.

  “I do want to go exploring with you,” Ven said quickly, trying to keep her from leaving so soon. “There’s just a few things I have to do first.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the merrow testily. “I understand.”

  “Will you come back?” Ven asked desperately.

  The merrow shrugged in the water. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. Goodbye.”

  “Wait!” Ven called, but he was speaking only to waves.

  He watched for a while, hoping to see her, or where she went, but it was getting dark, and the sea was too vast and too choppy to notice anything. Finally he gave up and started back to town.

  The lamplighters were busy lighting the oil streetlamps, climbing ladders that rested against the poles with a long tallow candle in one hand, when he returned to the main section of Kingston. Ven noticed how different the city looked in the dark. There was still a lot of foot traffic, as people made their ways home, or stopped by taverns for supper, but the shops were either closed or closing, and there were many shadows cast by the streetlamps.

  He decided to cut through an alley to get to the Sailors’ Rest more quickly. He was only a few streets away when someone grabbed him from behind by the shoulder.

  Ven felt the air rush from his lungs as he was slammed up against a brick wall in the alley.

  A face he had seen before appeared over his. The eyes were red and gleaming angrily. The stench of rum filled Ven’s nostrils. He blinked, trying to remember where he had seen the face. Then it came to him. It had been glaring down at him from the deck of the Serelinda, the same anger twisting it into a mask of hate.

  It was Mr. Whiting, the passenger Oliver had turned away from the boat to the Floating Island.

  “You’re a brave young man, walking alone in the alleyways of a port city after dark,” Whiting said angrily. “Or maybe you’re just foolish.”

  Ven tried to twist his arm free of the man’s grasp, but it was no use. He stared back into Whiting’s dark eyes, the way he had seen his brother Luther do, but his heart was pounding too hard to be convincing.

  “Listen to me, you Nain brat,” Mr. Whiting hissed. “You cost me what may have been my only chance to visit the Floating Island. And that loss cannot be measured, do you understand?” Ven nodded. “You can never make up for that loss.” His face twisted. “But you will pay for it, mark my words. You will pay.”

  “Ven?” Char’s voice rang out in the cobblestone alley, a street or so away. “Ven, where are you?”

  Mr. Whiting’s eyes narrowed. “You had best hide, boy,” he said softly. “Dogs are fond of Nain meat. And I own a lot of dogs.”

  He stepped aside, then melted back into the dark shadows of the alley.

  A moment later, Char appeared around a corner.

  “Ven! There you are. I got us some room on the floor at the Rest,” he said. He looked at Ven oddly. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Ven said, trying to sound calm, though he was trembling and confused. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He followed Char the rest of the way to the inn for sailors. Both boys kept their heads low and their eyes on the floor as they passed tables of grizzled men, many missing legs or eyes, as Char had said. Ven did not recognize anyone from the Serelinda, and the realization made him nervous. He and Char found a corner near the fire in the main room of the Rest, pulled thin blankets from their duf–fles, and settled down to an uneasy sleep.

  His dreams were plagued by Fire Pirates and shadows that lurked in alleyways.

  Somehow he was certain that he had not seen the worst of what remained hidden yet.

  10

  The Crossroads Inn

  THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER A LOUD AND SLEEPLESS NIGHT IN THE Sailors’ Rest, Ven and Char walked to the south gate of town, looking for a ride to the Crossroads Inn.

  When they got to the gate, there was no one there except the gate guard and the town crier, who was polishing his bell.

  “Oliver said it was only three miles or so,” Ven said, looking down the road. “We could walk.”

  “Let’s wait for a little while,” Char grumbled. “My feet hurt.”

  “Were you born in Kingston, Char?” Ven asked while they waited.

  Char shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve been passed around a lot. Only been here once that I remember. Never been to this inn before, but I hear it’s the place kids without parents go.”

  A few minutes later the crier began ringing his bell, announcing the morning’s news. The sleepy streets seemed to waken. Shopkeepers opened their doors, fish and flower sellers appeared with carts, and the children of the city hurried from door to door, laughing.

  “A merchant or farmer should show up soon, and then maybe we can catch a ride in his wagon,” Char said.

  As if by magic, the boys heard a clopping sound coming down the street. A wagon came into sight, driven by a man with a thick beard. It was filled with spools of wire.

  “I’ll go talk to him,” Char said.

  Ven nodded, th
en turned back to watching the wakening city. He saw a group of women greet each other at the well as they drew water up in the bucket, and townspeople begin to visit the store fronts.

  “Her-aaaaa-chhoooOO!”

  Ven leaped straight up in the air at the harsh, violent sneeze behind his ear. He turned quickly around to see a young girl with dirty blond hair wiping her nose.

  Her hand had been in his pocket.

  Ven reached out and grabbed her arm as she turned to run. “HEY!” he shouted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The girl twisted her wrist, broke free of his grasp, and ran away down the street. Once she got out of reach, she turned and thumbed her nose at him, then hurried around the corner out of sight.

  “Ugh,” Ven said. The back of his neck was wet.

  Grimacing in disgust, he brushed the snot off of his shoulders and back, then took off his cap and shook it. The albatross feather fluttered in the wind.

  “Well, well,” he said to himself, running his finger over the feather, “the thief must have had her nose tickled. I guess the luck from the albatross is still with me. It saved my wallet.”

  “Ven!” Char shouted from down the street. “Hurry! I’ve got us a ride!”

  Ven put his hat back on and jogged over to the gate, where Char was standing beside the wire wagon.

  As he approached, he saw the bearded man’s face change.

  “Not him,” the man said quickly to Char. “There’s no room for him.”

  Ven froze in the street. Char looked at Ven, then back at the driver.

  “Whaddaya mean?” he demanded. “I told you I had a friend.”

  The driver’s expression turned sour. “There’s room for one. You can ride, but not him. Get in.”

  Char’s face held a similarly sour expression. “All right then,” he said. “He can ride, and I’ll wait.”