Chapter 9 Sunsets and Sandcastles
Sunsets and Sandcastles
I’ve never been so terrified in my life.
I’m holding on to Ken with every tatter of strength I have, thinking I really should have picked up some sort of sport or physical activity these past few years that didn’t just entail pacing while Callie quizzed me.
Maybe skipping PE wasn’t such a great idea after all (thanks, bee).
Wind whips past my cheeks, my stomach flips, I feel the last thing I ate sliding up my throat.
The world is streaking past me in sunset colors, and this is dangerous, and if I fall off this saddle, I’ll break my head open, and—
This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.
The thought shocks me… but it’s true.
I feel free. Uninhibited.
Then, I feel like I’m going to be sick.
I swallow down the bile in my throat and keep my eyes open to steady my senses. I focus on the breeze whipping my hair back. I’ve never gone this fast on land before, bolting across this endless, limitless stretch of ground, no end in sight, no mist hugging its borders. No rules.
This is even better than flying in the boat, I think, my arms locked around Ken’s waist as we race across the fields, as Sandy lunges in long strides, as my body jostles around, until finally I find a way to sink into the horse’s rhythm and move with it, not against it.
This is so reckless. I can’t believe I’m doing this.
I can’t believe I’ve never done this.
Sometime in the next few minutes, the horizon melts from fields of flowers into sparkling sapphire blue, and I gasp.
“Never seen the sea before?” Ken asks in front of me.
I shake my head. “Never.” This is nothing like the placid pink waters of the canals in Heartland. And not just because of the color—this is a wide-open expanse of ocean, no end in sight.
He lets out a low whistle. “Not even the beach?”
“Not even the beach,” I repeat, looking at the golden sand glimmering beneath the sun. Is it soft? Warm? I suddenly have the urge to sink my feet into it.
Ken scoffs, like the idea of not having beach in my life is unthinkable. “The beach is the best place ever,” he says. “Sandy doesn’t like it because her hooves get stuck.” As if in response, the horse snarls.
The idea of a horse named Sandy hating sand…
Nope. Not questioning it.
We stay along the more compact ground until the field turns to butter-smooth beach, hugging the coast. Sandy starts lifting her head in defiance the moment she touches a hoof to the surface. In a low canter, we finally reach a house.
Made completely of sand.
“I wish I lived in a sandcastle,” Ken grumbles, helping me down from the horse. “The Archivist is so cool.”
I slip off Sandy’s side, lips parted in awe. There’s a life-size sandcastle in front of me, the same scale as a normal house. I didn’t even think that was possible. Wouldn’t the material crumble? Get knocked down by the first large wave?
A slice of water surrounds it—a miniature moat, just a few feet wide.
Ken leaves Sandy with an apple, which she huffs at, then takes.
At our approach, the entire golden structure starts to tremble. I stumble back. Sand sputters everywhere before the front door begins to lower, forming a drawbridge across the moat we literally could have stepped over ourselves.
When it’s fully lowered, out walks a woman wearing a perplexing number of shells. She’s older, with white hair tied up, held back with a conch. Her skin is tan. She wears bracelets made of sea glass.
Her eyes widen when she sees me. Her gaze shifts excitedly to Ken. “Did she fall from the sky?”
He nods vigorously.
The woman shakes her head in awe. “Sky-splatter happens all the time,” she explains, stepping around me, as if shocked that I am still whole. Apparently, I’m not the first to arrive from another land. “But you… you are in one piece!”
“Yay…” I say, offering a beatific smile, as though my landing without breaking my neck had anything to do with me at all.
The Archivist links her arm through mine like we’re old friends catching up and motions us forward. “Tell me everything.”
Minutes later, we’re inside the sandcastle—okay, really, it’s more of a sandcottage—the walls so low that Ken has to hunch over in his seat. We’re drinking tea from chipped cups, a mismatched collection that the Archivist explains has been gathered over several decades.
“Found this one in a tide pool,” she says, pointing to the cup halfway toward my lips.
That might explain why the tea is slightly salty, even with three sugar cubes inside it. The Archivist offers a variety of tiny sandwiches, on sand dollar plates. I take a bite of one.
Also salty.
One of the sandy walls is covered in shells. “My library,” she says proudly, and I just tilt my head, trying to work that out.
“Other pieces of different lands often wash ashore here,” she says, gesturing toward piles of objects in the corners of her castle. “Recognize anything?”
My eyes rove over the objects stacked almost to shoulder height, but nothing looks familiar. I shake my head and push the sand dollar plate to one side, determined to get down to business. “Archivist, have you ever been to the other lands?”
Her sunny disposition turns sad. “I wish. There was once a time when travel between lands was possible… but now, it isn’t so easy.”
Fantastic. A knot of worry forms in my chest, knowing that’s exactly what I intend to do.
No use in hiding my purpose. “I need to get to a place called Dreamland. Can you help me?”
The Archivist nods, humming, before sipping from her tea. “Dreamland, you say?”
I nod enthusiastically.
“Yes, yes. I know it.” She takes another sip of her tea. Squints, in deep contemplation. She sets her chipped teacup down and pronounces, “Impossible.”
I blink. “What do you mean, impossible?”
She shrugs, shells clanking together with the movement. “Exactly what I said. Impossible. Don’t you have that word in your land?”
“Yes,” I say through my teeth, eyes narrowed.
“Then you know what it means! Impossible. Out of the question. Unfeasible. Not worth contemplating. Beyond the bounds of possibility. Irrational. Hopeless. Forlorn. Far-fetched. Unbelievable. Outlandish. Harebrained. Un—”
“I get it,” I say a little too loudly, setting my teacup down with perhaps too much force. Ken gives a slight startle. “But I can’t—I can’t work with impossible. I need to find my Fate. No matter what it takes.”
Silence follows, and I’m almost shocked by my outburst. By my conviction. But I didn’t disobey Robin and almost become sky-splatter just to give up at the first obstacle.
Besides… I have no choice. The boat is long gone, and Robin clearly can’t reach me for some reason, or she would have appeared by now, demanding I return to Heartland and Swancrest.
“How did you get here, anyway?” the Archivist asks.
“A flying boat.”
She lifts a brow. “That’s all?”
No, I suppose not. I reach up toward the necklaces. “These helped.”
At the brush of my fingers, they glow pink, and the Archivist’s mouth falls open.
She leans in close, then lifts a monocle made from a shard of sea glass to her eye.
With a scraping sound, the glass begins to extend, telescoping section by section until it nearly reaches my charms. She nods, satisfied with whatever it is she’s seen, and the elongated glass collapses in a flash with a high-pitched screeching sound.
She pockets the monocle and says, “Of course! You had a key.”
I frown. “What? No, these are—”
“A key,” she responds. “That’s how you got through the barriers in one piece.” She must see the complete and utter confusion on my face, because she says, “Each land has unique keys that allow your passage. If you find one… it will take you to the next land. Safely.”
Why would Robin’s and my mom’s necklaces form a key? It doesn’t make any sense.
“Here, look,” she says. She reaches for one of the shells stuck against the sand wall—and pulls.
To my surprise, it’s the end of a long scroll that keeps emerging—impossibly long for how thin the walls are—until finally, she sets it on the table with a thud, jostling all our teacups.
She yanks it open, and the parchment rolls and rolls, down the table, across the room, through the entryway, down the drawbridge, off into the sands.
I crane my neck to see it finally roll to a stop, right against Sandy’s legs.
The apple core drops from her mouth and gets coated in grains.
She looks down at her sand-covered snack and then up at us, displeased.
My gaze drops to the part of the scroll still on the table. It looks so similar to the mural on the wall in the library… a map. But this one isn’t missing nearly all its paint. It’s complete.
The Archivist jumps up and walks several paces, pointing toward somewhere on the floor midway between the table and door.
“So we’re here,” she says, tapping at a land symbolized by a sun. Her finger slides across the parchment, which is thickened by brine, yellowed by years. “You need to get here.”
There it is. The symbol with the six stars. Hope bubbles up in my chest.
Two lands sit between us and Dreamland.
“Can’t I just… land hop? Go directly from here to Dreamland?” I ask hopefully.
The Archivist just stares at me. “Do you have other keys you haven’t shown me?”
“Um… no?”
“Then no.”
Okay, then. Three more keys to find, including one here in Summerland, before I can get to Dreamland. That doesn’t seem so bad.
Optimism floods through me, a similar feeling as when I’m about to start studying a subject I know well. This doesn’t feel hopeless any longer. I have a plan. A way forward.
I look at the symbols of the places between us and Dreamland, searching for clues of what type of lands they might be.
One is a question mark. What could that mean?
The next is a leaf. That’s hardly any information to go off of.
Then, of course, there are the Dreamland stars, the ones mirrored in my necklaces’ charms.
“Do you know anything about these places?” I ask.
The Archivist just shakes her head. “I only know what washes upon my shores.”