15. A Hatchling and a Journey Across the Sand Isles
A Hatchling and a Journey Across the Sand Isles
SAPPHIRA
S apphira is becoming more involved as Isabel teaches her about foraging and helps her in the kitchen—cooking and baking, making medicines, and canning broths and jams.
She feels less like a princess and more like a freed, capable woman. Isabel and Kaelen are her family now.
Sapphira cooks beside Isabel, listening patiently while Isabel rambles about some creature or other. She laughs as Isabel—the perfectionist—corrects her work.
She grows closer to Kaelen, going on trips with him to the edge of Teotlnēchīcā to catch bigger fish off the Cliffs of Lazodez. They bring back prawns, crabs, oysters, and urchins. They eat the urchin in the Gulf of Kotsheda and bring the rest back for Isabel to make stew.
Sapphira teaches Kaelen a sailor’s song from back home while they sit on giant rocks in turbulent waters:
Captain, oh Captain, where say you, your men? The sailors set to sea, and I heard they did with ten.
He said they’re casting off the moorings, my first mate’s in the nest. The boatswain and the quartermaster are loving below deck.
They get out on clear waters, a song high in their throats, a maiden spotted in the distance, with the wreckage of a boat.
Captain, oh Captain, where say you, your men? The sailors set to sea, and I heard they did with ten.
Said the helmsman at the wheel, we’re steering toward the girl. Her song’s lovely as ever fire, and the ship is at a heel.
A storm has come a brewin’, her tune has not abated when the storm rises above, I lose sight of my first mate.
We’re battening the hatches, the gunners got a ram and sponge, we try to hold the sea witch off, but the crew just took a plunge.
Oh Captain, oh Captain, where say you, your men? The sailors set to sea, and I heard they did with ten.
The storm has now settled, and the siren is gone. But the crew is done, the captain’s alone, and ten’s now down to one.
Kaelen sings along, the sound of crashing waves around them. But afterward, he asks, “You said before you lived on an island most didn’t leave. So why would such a popular shanty be about a captain and his crew of sailors?”
Sapphira shrugs. She hasn’t thought much about it. “It must have been the pirates.”
“Pirates?” he asks, eyes widening. He makes her tell him all about the pirates before they leave.
They head home with their bounty, taking a long and scenic route.
Sapphira has begun to love flying. She’s still terrified, but it’s an exhilarating terror as she flies over the ocean, Kaelen’s wings nearly skimming the water, her arms out, and the wind blowing her hair as they pass over the twin mountains of Astralorn and Solarion.
Sapphira is having fun. She tells herself that’s all it is.
She isn’t thinking about home or trying to distract herself from what the elven-fae said.
There are people like her—people with her abilities—somewhere out there.
And she tries not to think about what that means. That she might be from this world.
Isabel hasn’t mentioned it either, though Sapphira sees the chimera giving her looks and knows she wants to say something. Her face gets all pinched up and sad, and then she just turns away.
That isn’t even the worst part. When they go into town, Sapphira sometimes gets the sense that someone is watching her. She’s probably being paranoid, but she feels eyes on her. She doesn’t want to think of what it means if someone actually is watching her—if the king’s men have finally found her.
But whether it’s her past or the future, she can’t run from it forever.
“Look what I found,” Sapphira says in a rush, jumping from Kaelen’s back as the takops transforms.
Isabel looks up from where she’s healing a withering Dryroit, it’s drooping buds regaining color, and up to the small bird cupped in Sapphira’s hands.
Sapphira’s eyes scan down Isabel’s exposed midriff and the curve of the approaching plump figure, the smell of mint and lemongrass wafting into her nose as Isabel takes the tiny thing from her hands.
“I think it’s a Hybller hatchling,” she says, tucking her hair back as she stares at the sky. Her long bangs are wrapped around her horns, and she’s wearing jewelry that drapes over her shoulders and wrists. Sapphira is mesmerized, watching as the woman’s bottom lip sticks out in a pout.
“It’s a bird?” Sapphira asks.
“An avine, and a very old species. It should be in the Arctic. I’m not sure how it got all the way out here . . . It will die in this climate. It’s too hot, and Cielo wildlife won’t support its diet.”
“Could you help it?” Sapphira asks. In her eyes, there is nothing Isabel can’t do.
Isabel shakes her head, her brows creasing. “I don’t know enough about them or Arctic wildlife to raise it. All I know is it should still be with its mother. But when it grows, it will get big, and so will its appetite. It’s a carnivore that would wreak havoc on the food chain here.”
“How did it get here?” Kaelen asks, coming to join them. Sapphira is surprised as he takes the avine from Isabel, cradling the gray ball of fluff.
“Poaching,” Isabel says, her voice hardening. “Hybllers are endangered. There are only a few colonies left. Someone took this hatchling from the Arctic for a reason. I’m unsure what it is, but it didn’t go as planned.”
That tone tells Sapphira everything she needs to know. This has just become a mission for Isabel, and she won’t stop until she has helped the Hybller hatchling. This means Sapphira will do whatever she has to do to help her.
Isabel is staring at the creature in awe, gently stroking a finger down its fuzzy back.
“It’s just a baby,” she says, softly. “You should see it full-grown, they’re majestic.
Carnivorous Avine that walk on all four and slide on their bellies to gain speed while hunt prey.
Their feathers are flat to the long, lean body, and they support themselves with their wing fingers.
But the babies… they have this thick layer of body fat and fur, which they lose in adolescence. ”
“Okay, what do we do?” Sapphira asks, overwhelmed by the depth of Isabel’s care for this creature, and the longing look in her eyes. “How do we get it home?”
Isabel’s eyes snap up to hers, confusion marring her brow. “Home? But it lives in the Arctic.”
“So?”
Looking up from the hatchling, Kaelen says, “When has anything like that ever stopped you, Isabel?”
Isabel rolls her eyes. “This is different. This is at the other end of Sule?hare?n, in the Dominion of Mork Kall.
Sapphira nods. “It will be a long journey. Are you up for that, Kaelen?” she asks, turning to the takops, who is rubbing the hatchling’s soft fur against his face.
His cheeks are pink as he nods, lowering the Hybller.
“Yes. But I still can’t stay in flight for long periods because of my injury. So we’ll have to walk part of the way.”
Isabel grabs Sapphira’s shoulders, turning the princess so they’re face-to-face. “You do not understand me, Sapphira Tuisaravere. The Hybller is from the Arctic .”
“Why is that an issue?” Kaelen, who has no idea what they’re talking about, scrunches his brow.
Sapphira has told him what she told Isabel about how she was a princess. But she didn’t tell him what happened in Oshmaliaen?s. Her eyes widen, her body growing cold. There are ice-wielders in the Arctic.
“M-my family . . . other people like me,” she says, her voice an awed whisper. “I could try to find them.”
“Yes,” Isabel says. “If you would like, we could ask around on our journey to Mork Kall and try to find where you belong.”
Sapphira is shaking with nerves at the thought. She knew she couldn’t avoid what the elves had said, but she thought she had more time to come to terms with it. Does she want to find where she comes from? It’s nothing she ever considered possible.
She never knew where her father came from or had any connections to his family. Her mother’s family never liked Sapphira’s father or Sapphira. After she died, they wanted nothing to do with her—none but Agath.
Agath was the second oldest of the late Queen Paloma’s sisters, of which she had three.
Paloma was the queen and sat on Dansui’s throne at only twenty when their father became too ill, his eyes milky white and no longer with sight.
Agath was younger than Paloma by a year but was the more scholarly of the two and loved her studies.
She was the favorite of the daughters, even over Sapphira’s mother, and their father spoiled her.
The second youngest of the girls was the quiet Kimona, who was as lovely as she was meek and left to pursue the arts.
She set out to Abyssius when she was only sixteen years old and studied as an apprentice to a great composer.
She ended up marrying his son. The fearsome Marjorie, who had less potential than her sisters but was always kind to Sapphira when she was a child and shared her mischievous spirit, now lives a humble life with a husband of her own and many children.
They settled in a small farm town in Percion.
Like most of her mother’s relations, Agath despised Sapphira, just as they had despised her father. Although none were as outwardly malicious as Auntie Agath, who lived to make Sapphira’s life miserable. Most of them were politely withdrawn and hadn’t come to see her since her mother’s death.
While Paloma was alive, Sapphira learned that her aunties and uncles urged her mother to leave her father, Froden.
She didn’t know his last name, just like she knew nothing else about him.
He had no family to speak of and took her mother’s maiden name when they married.
Sapphira always thought that was why her mother’s family hated him: He was a nobody who came from nowhere, and Sapphira was his no one daughter.
That wasn’t the only reason they had for despising her though.
They feared her because of the ice that chilled her veins.