Chapter Seven
The wax myrtle was clinging to the top of the mast and singing at full volume:
“The sea, the beautiful sea,
So bluuue, so truuue,
You think you stole my heart, but I gave it to thee!”
He warbled on the last note, and Perri sang a matching trill before diving beneath the waves. At the helm, Marin smiled. She’d never met a … creature? being?… She’d never met a being so full of joyous life as this clump of shrubbery.
She called up to him, “Hey, want to review the lesson?”
“Yes!” He bounced in place and then extended a leafy branch to his left. “Port!”
“Correct,” she said.
He extended another branch to the right. “Starboard!” Then: “Forward! Aft!”
“Good. Now, directions with respect to the wind,” Marin said. “The wind is coming toward you, and you steer the bow through it?”
“You’re tacking,” he said.
“Good,” Marin said. “If I turn to the port side…”
“Close-hauled on port tack,” he said as she demonstrated. The sheets were trimmed flat, and she held them there for a moment before shifting them.
“Close reach!” he called. “Next is beam reach and then broad reach.”
“Excellent, and what happens if the wind is dead astern?”
“That’s jibing, and we don’t want to do that,” Ree said. Holding on to the mast with a few of his branches, he swung himself in a circle. Wind flowed through his leaves. A few were plucked off and flew over the waves, swooping and spinning.
“And why don’t we want to do that?” Marin asked.
“Because we could capsize if we mess it up.”
The lost leaves settled on the surface, floated on the waves for a moment, and then were swallowed by the blue. “Yes, and why don’t we want to capsize?”
“Because we’ll look like idiots, and dolphins will laugh at us.”
“Precisely.” She eased the sheets into a broad reach, and the sailboat shot across the sparkling sea. They’d lucked out—the sea was being kind for Ree’s first sail, with a steady wind and cloudless skies since they’d left Belde. “You’re going to be an excellent sailor, Ree.”
Wrapping a branch around the mast, he slid down until he plopped roots-first onto the deck.
He crossed to her, keeping his root ball tucked beneath him and using multiple branches as if they were many legs.
It was always fascinating to watch him move around.
It seemed arbitrary which branches he used for what, and she couldn’t figure out if he considered himself to have any up or down.
Aside from his root ball, which he held together with soil, he was symmetrical in every direction.
She also wasn’t entirely certain where to look when she talked at him, since he had no eyes, so she typically picked a few leaves, whichever ones were wiggling the most when his voice emanated out of him.
That seemed the most polite. “Do you really think so?” he asked anxiously.
“You pay attention,” Marin said, “and you respect the sea. That’s all it takes.” Also, it helped if you had a boat or a friend with a boat, which he did. “Have you ever heard the story of the old woman who loved the sea?”
He shook his leaves no.
“My ma told me and her ma told her that her ma said, so it must be true…” That was the traditional opening for any tale that wasn’t fact but was still true, and she’d always loved it.
“Once there was a woman who’d never seen the sea, but she dreamed of it.
Every night, her dreams were filled with blue. ”
Listening, Perri drew closer.
Marin grinned at the sea serpent. “Pale blue like the shallow water, blue-black like the sea at night, turquoise, black-green, and the frothy white of breaking waves.”
“How had she never seen the sea?” Ree asked. “Didn’t she live on an island?”
“She lived under the island, in the caves below. She spent her days chipping jewels from the rocks, and she spent her nights with the bats and the snakes. She didn’t know she could leave. No one had ever shown her a way out. Years passed, and she grew old, then older still.”
“Did she wilt?” Ree asked.
“Yes. Her hair thinned, her skin wrinkled, and her bones ached, and one night, when she couldn’t sleep because of the aches and pains in her back and legs, she followed a bat through the caves—and she emerged out under the night sky.”
“Ooh,” Ree breathed. “I like stars.”
“So do all sailors,” Marin said. “If you want, someday I’ll teach you how to navigate by them.”
He bounced up and down on the deck. “Yes, yes, yes!”
She smiled. Bringing Ree on board had turned out to be an excellent idea.
Marin had had no idea how much she’d enjoy having an apprentice, especially one as eager as the wax myrtle.
“The old woman saw the stars above her and thought they were jewels. She wanted, more than anything, to chip them from the sky. But she couldn’t reach them above the island—so she looked out at the sea.
She didn’t know what a sea was, but she knew it wasn’t like the solid stone that she’d always known beneath her feet. It moved. It swayed. It swelled.”
In rhythm with her words, Perri moved, swayed, and rode the swells of the waves. He’d always liked her stories. She wondered if that was one of the reasons he’d stayed with her instead of going off to find other sea serpents. Did sea serpents tell one another stories? If so, did he miss them?
“In addition to swaying and swelling, the sea also reflected. The old woman saw the stars, her jewels, reflected in the waves, and she thought, Aha! If I can travel out onto the moving ground, I can reach them.” Marin paused as the wind shifted and she adjusted the sheets.
As soon as the lines were secured, she continued.
“It took her weeks, months, years to figure out how to construct a boat and even more years to figure out how to sail it.”
“Because she didn’t have you,” Ree said. “A real sailor.”
“She didn’t have anybody. My ma and pa taught me how to sail.
She had to learn it all on her own, the way the waves would move beneath her, the way the wind would push her, the way the storms would punish her.
” She’d always admired the old woman in the story—to take to the sea with no tales to guide her. It was either brave or foolish.
“What happened after she learned?” Ree asked. “Did she reach the stars? She couldn’t have. Could she have?”
Sure, Marin supposed she could have, but that wasn’t the tale she knew. “She didn’t. But she followed them the rest of her days. My ma told me and her ma told her that her ma said she was happy, and so she must have been.” The traditional ending, which she also loved.
Perri leaped out of the water, arched in the air—his sinewy body a rainbow of iridescence—and then dove into the waves with barely a splash. He approved of the story. Marin looked at Ree, waiting for his reaction.
“Wait. That’s it?” Ree said, his leaves spiky. “What’s the moral?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Marin said. “I don’t think it has one.”
“It’s a story. It has to have one.”
He sounded so affronted that Marin considered it before replying. “Why does it?”
Ree shook his leaves hard. His branches quivered. “Because that’s what stories are! They’re supposed to tell you what to do.”
Swallowing a smile, Marin shook her head. “Not the best ones. The best ones just sit inside you and make you feel things.”
The shrub snorted, which was an interesting sound that came with a lot of rustling of leaves. He sounded like a miniature forest inside an equally tiny tornado. “Well, I feel dissatisfied.”
“All right, then, what do you think it means?” Marin asked. She tried to keep the amusement out of her voice. She didn’t think Ree would like it if she laughed at him.
He was quiet for a while, considering the question. “Maybe … follow your own happiness? She left her cave and took to the sea, even though she didn’t know how. She just knew she wanted it. Like me. Do you think that’s right?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
She had no idea. “I think you’re brave like she was.”
He squeaked, “Me? Brave? I’m not brave.” Then, in a small voice: “Am I brave?”
Raising his head out of the water, Perri blew bubbles at the bush.
“See?” Marin said. “That’s two votes for brave.”
“Huh,” Ree said, and then he climbed the mast again to the very top to think about all of it. Marin kept sailing toward Alyssium. If Dax was at the conservatory dock, maybe she’d tell him that story and ask what he thought of it.
The city was on fire.
Marin saw the smoke first, black clouds staining the blue, then the outline of the city. She felt her stomach clench, and she gripped the mainsheet, prepared to switch directions … then hesitated.
Maybe it’s not that bad.
From this distance at least, it didn’t look as if the fire was everywhere.
It could be contained. She knew the city had plenty of sorcerers who could suppress fires.
She’d seen them call torrents of rain from the sky and waterspouts from the sea.
In a few seconds, it could be doused, and then she’d feel ridiculous for turning around and failing to make a delivery.
Ahead of her, Perri lifted his head out of the water and trilled a question. He then added another cascade of notes.
“I’m sure Dax is fine,” Marin told him.
But she wasn’t sure.
She couldn’t tell if the smoke was anywhere near the conservatory.
Or the library. Or the florist shop, where they were supposed to deliver the gardener’s letter (which, she’d confirmed when she read it, was about greenhouses, not about former statues or illegal spellcasting).
It could be a localized fire, under control and about to be extinguished.
Or … not. Rijes Velk had specifically warned her not to return too soon.
This could be part of the chaos she’d predicted.
I knew Ma and Pa didn’t have all the information.
She should have trusted her instincts, the pessimistic ones that said it was too soon. She’d wanted to be wrong this time, though. She’d wanted the revolutionaries to have won and for the world to be a better place.