Chapter Six
The kelp forest was one of Marin’s favorite stops. She navigated to the buoy at the edge of the forest and tied off. Perri bobbed a distance away—it was too dense for him to venture in. Holding her fingers to her lips, she whistled sharply.
She didn’t have to wait long.
The caretaker of the forest surfaced off her port side. He was human from the waist up, bare-chested, with seaweed instead of hair. His lower half was a sea lion, wide and powerful. “You have our delivery?” His voice was deep and burred.
“I do. May I distribute it myself?”
“You may.” He handed her payment, coins gleaned from shipwrecks. Crusted with minerals, they worked as well as any other coins. She tucked them into one of her pockets.
As the kelp caretaker gestured to her to proceed, Marin kicked off her boots and then dove into the water.
She opened her eyes and felt the sting of the salt.
Ahead of her, the world was murky green.
The kelp forest was made of thousands upon thousands of ropelike strands of green that swayed in the current.
Sunlight, filtered, sparkled between them, bits shining through like between the branches of a tree.
Holding her breath, she kicked her feet as slowly as she could, trying to disturb the water as little as possible.
She wanted to see all of it before she needed to surface.
Her visits here never became part of the stories she’d tell at the docks. Not since Iovar. He hadn’t believed that this forest existed and refused to sail with her to see it—I should have known then. But she’d still been in so deep.
After that … this place felt too special, too … sacred … to be doubted ever again.
A little voice inside whispered that Dax would have liked to hear about it.
She hushed the voice. She didn’t even know if she’d ever see him again.
Her parents had seemed so sure that the revolutionaries had won and all would eventually be well, but had they?
Her gut said no, but she knew full well her gut wasn’t trustworthy. Regardless, was Dax okay?
She told herself firmly to stop worrying about him.
What happened to him wasn’t her business. He had friends, colleagues, mentors, whatever to keep him safe. She had her own worries and responsibilities. She didn’t know why she couldn’t get him out of her head.
Thinking of him, specifically of his smile as he fed squid to Perri, she opened the bag at her waist, and the acorns, pecans, walnuts, and beechnuts floated out.
And the kelp creatures came.
Made of seaweed, the green rabbits came first, running through the water as if over grass.
They caught the nuts as they tumbled through the water, and they danced around her in a fishlike school.
They were followed by the other kelp creatures: squirrels and badgers, chipmunks and ferrets, all shaped out of the same green seaweed as the underwater forest itself.
Her lungs began to burn. Marin knew she needed to return to the surface. Still, she lingered a moment more. She was hoping for a glimpse …
Ahh, there you are.
A kelp deer. Shy. Gentle. Rare.
It slipped around the ropes of kelp. She glimpsed its eyes, a stunning blue like the sea on the clearest of days. And then she had to kick to the surface. The deer fled as soon as her legs pumped and Marin shot upward.
She burst through the surface and inhaled.
Marin swam back to her boat and Perri. She hauled herself up and flopped onto the deck. This was her world: with Perri, out in the wonders of the ocean. Whatever was going on in Alyssium, it didn’t have anything to do with her.
Why was it, then, that she couldn’t stop thinking about a certain oblivious composer with so little sense of self-preservation that all his friends and mentors chose to lie to him in hopes of keeping him safe?
He’d better be okay. More sternly this time, she shoved her worry aside. They had more deliveries to make.
It was five more days before their route brought them back near Belde.
Marin didn’t expect to see the flag raised requesting supplies—it wasn’t the usual time for that—but maybe she could think of an excuse to stop anyway?
I might not know if Dax is okay or Rijes Velk, but I can check on the librarian statue.
It might make her feel better. Not that it was her business.
She didn’t want it to be her business. However, if she could think of an excuse to dock and just peek around …
She heard Perri trumpet. Ahead of her, he breached, leaping out of the water, and then he crashed down again, clearly signaling her.
There was a flag.
She grinned.
Well, that was a beautiful excuse to be nosy. She was invited.
As Marin sailed into the harbor, a woman wrapped in a heavy coat with a red scarf skipped down the steps to the dock.
The wind had picked up and was making her curls dance vertically around her head like cheerful snakes.
She bounced from foot to foot as she waved and waited.
A green tumbleweed of branches and leaves was blown down the steps.
It rolled down the dock and stopped next to her.
Closer, Marin saw the woman’s face: round flushed cheeks, lavender skin, and bright eyes. A familiar face, though Marin had only seen it cast in wood. She nearly laughed out loud. He did it. That’s the statue.
Or not the statue anymore. Clearly flesh. Awake and alive and all of it.
You did it, Marin thought at Rijes Velk. You saved your lawbreaking librarian.
And I helped.
On the heels of that realization, she had another thought: No one can know.
Transporting a statue and a letter wasn’t a crime, but if an imperial investigator thought that Marin had done so with the intent of aiding and abetting a criminal act, if they believed she’d known about Rijes’s plan and the spell in the letter …
As Silver slid beside the dock, Marin realized she was going to need an extra second to process her reaction or it would be written all over her face. She tossed a line to the non-statue and said, “Tie it off, would you?”
The woman caught the line awkwardly, then knelt and tied it to one of the clamps on the dock while Marin took a moment to study her.
The tumbleweed of greenery that had followed her down the steps was clumped by her ankles, but other than that, she seemed ordinary enough.
No residual statueness. And more importantly, no spark of recognition.
She doesn’t know I’m the one who brought her here.
How could she? She’d been a statue, and Marin hadn’t seen the gardener when she’d made the delivery. If there was to be any backlash for the lawbreaking … It can’t fall on me if no one knows I was involved.
A little of the tension in Marin’s shoulders unknotted. All she had to do was pretend she had no idea who the former statue was. I can do that. “You the one who raised the flag? What do you have for me?”
With a perky smile, the former statue said, “Hi! Thank you for coming. It’s really nice to … Well, lovely to meet you.” She pulled a letter out of her coat pocket.
Suddenly, the leafy clump of green at the woman’s feet spoke. “I’m Ree. And you … wow. Hi. You’re a sailor.”
Startled, Marin laughed. “Hello, Ree. Yes, I am.” Just an ordinary sailor with no idea that the woman in front of her wasn’t supposed to be alive. She remembered what Rijes had said about the former librarian’s crime: that she’d made herself a friend. And here was a clearly enchanted plant.
Exactly how many times had the law been broken on this island?
Granted, it was an island known for its late floral-minded sorcerer. Perhaps this sentient bush was a legacy from his magic. It was possible that this woman was innocent. Or innocent-ish.
Marin said, “You could’ve just left the note in the box. That’s what the gardener does. You the new gardener? What happened to the other one? He okay?” Did the gardener know how very illegal all of this was? Did he care?
“He’s fine. I’m…” She hesitated.
Marin waited to see how she was going to finish that sentence. This woman was a terrible liar. It was plain on her face that she wasn’t going to cough up the truth. Marin supposed that at least showed some self-preservation instincts.
“I’m a friend. I’m helping with the greenhouse.”
“Huh. Good for him.” Marin smiled as friendly a smile as she could.
The woman really didn’t seem like a criminal.
She was too innocent, too open, too happy.
It was easy to see why Rijes had wanted to help her.
She was the kind of person you wanted to help, because if you didn’t, it probably meant you were some kind of soulless monster who was cruel to flightless kittens.
As casually as she could, Marin glanced at the letter before tucking it into a pocket.
“Not a supply list? He usually leaves a list of what he needs—flour and wax and yeast and such.”
“It’s a letter to his family in Alyssium. Do you know how long it’ll take to reach them?”
She clearly had no idea about the revolution, but why would she?
She’d been made of wood. Marin wondered what effect the defenestration of the emperor would have on cases like this.
If the revolutionaries had won, who was in charge of that part of the government now?
More importantly, who was in charge of the imperial investigators?
Her parents seemed to think there were no more imperial investigators. Were they right?
“Not to pressure you, but if I could give him an idea of when to expect a response…”
The shrub, Ree, blurted out, “I love the sea.”
He was the cutest. She had the sense he’d be staring at her with childlike adoration if he had eyes. But he was only a bundle of branches and leaves. She didn’t even know what kind of plant he was. “Me too, my new friend. Me too.”
The woman smiled down at the shrub fondly. “Ree would like to accompany the letter, to make sure it reaches its destination. If you don’t mind the company.”