On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (17 page)

He had come so close to finally breaking him, that night in the thicket where the blackberries grew. Had Aurael been a younger, more sympathetic imp, he might have done things differently. He might not have used his beloved Mira as the bait for Karaburan’s fall from grace. He hadn’t meant for Mira to be truly harmed in any way. But things had gotten away from him so quickly—

“AURAEL.”

A sudden, bone-shattering gong sounded in his head, and Aurael dropped like a rock from the sky, landing in an unseen heap on the ferns. The birds and beasts of the island carried on about their daily business, as though the noise had never happened. Aurael rolled over onto his back, groaning and clutching his head with both long hands.

The spirit sat up, the voice in his head booming.
Yes, my lord Dante?
He gritted his teeth hard as a horse refusing the cold bit but anticipating the sting of the whip.

“ARE MY BETRAYERS SCATTERED SAFELY ON THE ISLAND?”

Aurael nodded, as though Dante could see him.
Yes, my lord. They are as broken shells upon the beach; the pieces which fit together are separate and confused and not to be reunited by natural cause.

“ON WHAT BUSINESS DO YOU ATTEND?”

Aurael did not hesitate to lie.
Laying the traps for the drunk ones—they found some of their wine casks in the wreckage and are praising their good fortune even now, my lord
. He did not want Dante to know that he was on his way to look in on Mira. Dante was convinced—or at least, he was pretty certain that Dante was convinced—that Aurael was blissfully uninterested in Mira or Karaburan, and his only wish was to serve Dante’s will to earn his freedom.

“THE TIME APPROACHES, AURAEL. WE MUST BEGIN. WHERE IS THE KING?”

He is trapped on a rock off the coast, master. The tide changed, and he cannot swim to shore. The sun brings him delirious visions, hunger, and thirst, and he lies there as if he were Promythia, and the eagle is coming to pick out his liver.

 “GOOD. BRING THE KING TO ME—ALIVE, BUT AS HE IS, WHETHER BLOODY OR NO.”

The airy spirit unfolded himself from the ground, his body shifting and growing and expanding like a hot air balloon. He stretched as high as his ties to the island and Dante’s power would allow him, and when his invisible leash grew taut, he sighed and soared downward again, seeking the unfortunate king.

* * *

“Mira,” said Ferran, after a while. “Just how long do you expect to hide me from your father?”

Mira heard him, but made no indication of it, and did not answer right away. She was fiddling with the gnarled braid of hair that hung over her shoulder. Some of it shone dimly in lighter gold tones than the rest, which was a softer honey color.
All my life, I’ve grown this hair
, she thought.
This braid, this tangled knot
. She pulled on it a little, and it resisted firmly as any sailor’s rope.

“Mira?”

It weighs on me. Like the monster, like my father.
She looked up, meeting Ferran’s quizzical gaze, his funny slender eyebrows reaching upward in wary curiosity of her stare.
Why should I keep it? Why should I carry it? I have new clothes, why not new hair as well?

“Are you all right?” Ferran looked concerned.

“I’m fine,” she answered him, and looked down at the larger chest. “Shall we pry this one, too?”

“It seems pretty secure,” admitted the boy, running his hand lightly along the back of his neck, red from the sun. He gleamed pinkishly all over, in fact, which made him seem the more wide-eyed, innocent, and childlike to her. His skin was unused to so much raw, open sunlight, and the glare off the water was powerful.

“There must be a weak point. It did sit on the bottom of the lagoon for much of a day.” Mira crouched to examine the large lock on the side. She was still testing the limits of the clothing Ferran had given her, and so far was pleased with the functionality of the trousers and the sleeves of the doublet, which could be removed at will. Crouching was manageable and comfortable. She would have to test it with tree-climbing, soon.

“Maybe,” agreed Ferran, kneeling on the sand beside her and feeling the edges of the trunk for weak spots. “It’d be a nuisance not to open it.”

“Let me try the lock.” Mira held out her open palm to him.

“With the knife?”

“Unless you have another set of tools I don’t know about.”

Ferran blushed—or was it simply more sunburn? It was a strange thing, this boy and this situation. She had often wondered what it would be like for a foreigner to wash up on shore of their island, for her to have a conversation with that stranger, and learn things of the outside world. She had not thought that one would actually come, let alone that it would be a young man about her own age, whose features reminded her too much of a handsome, but still ungainly, young animal, like the baby foxes she saw from time to time in the forest, or a dolphin’s child in the lagoon.

He handed her the pocketknife and she turned it over a few times in her hand before opening it to reveal the blade. She carefully set about prodding the lock’s opening with the blade’s point, and after several moments, there was a click.

Ferran looked thunderstruck. “What! Don’t tell me it’s already undone!”

Mira pulled a long face to resist smirking a bit. “Hm,” she grunted, and tried to lift the lock. It was still attached, but definitely seemed looser. “Don’t twist yourself up,” she told him archly, secretly pleased that she had gotten lucky with it. His expression of disbelief amused her. A few more minutes passed and there was nothing, so Ferran got up and wandered off a little, stretching his arms and legs as he moved.

“What have you been doing all this time?” he wondered aloud, and Mira glanced at him over the dunes.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he called back, “what do you do all day? Swim, eat fresh fruit, drink fresh water, swim some more, have a nap? It sounds so boring. Restful, maybe, and relaxing, but boring.”

Mira stopped poking the lock with the knife and gave him a hard stare. “Is that what you think I do?” she demanded.

His expression shifted immediately to contrition. “No, I mean, I just . . . I have no idea,” he shrugged helplessly. “But I’m curious.”

“When we came here, my father brought books,” Mira began. “A great many books, in fact. I have read them all, some of them twice, some of them ten times. I know the names of the stars and constellations, I know the names of the plants and animals on this island, and some that aren’t here, too. I know the history of Alejandra the Great, and Djengos Con, and the story of Homer’s Oddity. I know how to cure minor ailments with herbs, and treat a snake’s bite or a jelly sting. I build things and take them apart and build them again, but differently.”

She glanced at him. “I understand that the Earth is built on hot magma and stone, and that the oceans are bigger than any one piece of land, and that we revolve around the sun, thanks to Capricornus’ model. I have read that airships are the height of technological and military advancement, but yours was the first I have ever seen so close. There are terrors beyond this island that I cannot fathom from so far away, and there are wonders, too. So I read, I consider, I observe, I annotate. I build, I seek, I understand. I swim and climb and run and hunt and study. I wait. Someday, I will leave this island and walk the entirety of the world.” She looked down, lightheaded as a young bird fallen from its nest. There was a pause.

 “Walk the whole world?” Ferran teased.

“And fly, and run, and swim, and sail,” she added. “Did you know that when some fish are kept in a small place, they only grow as big as the space will let them grow? That is why some fish are enormous. Because they have the entire ocean to grow into.”

“Whales are quite large,” admitted Ferran.

“Whales aren’t fish,” said Mira quietly, looking at him with her head tipped back a little. His expression shifted as though he wasn’t clear if she were teasing him or not. Mira lowered her chin to meet his gaze more squarely. “They breed live young. So do dolphins.”

“How do you know that?” Ferran sounded intrigued.

“I’ve seen them. They sometimes come to the edge of the lagoon to birth in shallower water. It helps the babies, who are prone to not understand which way is up when they’ve first come out. The others gather and push them up to the surface to breathe.” She indicated this process with her hands, one palm down, the other sliding in underneath it to push it upward in the air.

Ferran gave a stunned sort of laugh. “Extraordinary,” he muttered.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know that,” confessed Mira, taking up the knife again to pick at the lock.

“I told you, I don’t study much of the natural sciences these days,” Ferran said defensively. “My father put me on a political track. Theology, philosophy, and the strategies of war.”

“You sound as though you don’t like that much.” Mira cut her eyes sideways at him. He was staring out at the water, probably thinking of his father again. She studied his expression, noting the mixture of regret, shame, and grief that formed on his face every time his father was mentioned.

“No,” agreed Ferran, moving to stand in the shade again, leaning on the roughened bark of a tree. “ ‘All knowledge is worth having, but some things are more worthy than others.’ That’s what he would always say when I told him I wanted to travel abroad, study more languages, explore.” He kicked at the sand halfheartedly. His boots, undoubtedly made of very fine leather, were already beginning to look decades older from the salt, sand, and sun.

“We share that,” observed Mira, focusing her eyes on the lock. “That longing, wanting to learn.”

“I feel like a caged animal.”

Mira looked up at this. She recalled several sketches in a naturalist’s journal her father had, drawings that depicted a tiger, a peacock, and an elephant in some Anglish king’s menagerie. In each illustration, the animal in question was housed in an elaborate cage embellished with curlicues and jewels, and each animal had its mouth open in a cry of protestation.

“I have never known a cage,” she replied, at length, “except for this island.”

Ferran furrowed his brow in sympathy. “And now it’s my cage, too.”

A strange silence passed between them, the words having lost their momentum, and Mira continued to fiddle with the lock and the knife.

“Mira,” said Ferran again. “How long can this go on before your father finds out I’m here?”

“A while,” she insisted, not looking up.

“Mira. There is so much you haven’t told me.”

She almost met his gaze then, so sudden was the concern and anxiety in his voice. She pressed the tip of the knife a little harder against the inner workings of the lock.

“Mira, I’m stuck here. Please. I need to know. You don’t have to tell me everything, but why are you so worried about your father?”

The lock clicked and sprang open, startling both of them. Mira almost dropped the knife in surprise. She glanced at Ferran as he moved closer.

“You’re sure this one isn’t yours?” she asked him. He shook his head.

“Might be my father’s,” he murmured, repeating his earlier impression. “I don’t know. It’s bigger than most of our regular trunks. Here goes nothing, I guess,” he added, reaching for the lid and pushing it up and back. The hinges creaked in protest, and the heavy lid thumped backwards onto the sand.

Mira stared, her jaw slackening. Inside the trunk was a man.

1846

“My ass is sore,” groaned Dante as he slid from the saddle and swung to the ground. His mount sidestepped, making him stumble on already rubbery legs as he reached for the reins.

“You’re the one who insisted on riding,” laughed King Alanno as he stepped out of the little cart, handing the reins to the boy who sat on the bench beside him. “Hold these still, Stephen. Can you do that?”

“Yes, milord,” answered the young valet. Stephen was a stout lad of twenty who wore the livery of a groom, but was really more of an all-purpose servant. “I’ll keep them still.”

“Good lad.” Alanno smiled and adjusted his wool driving cap. “Shall we inside to see what our maestro has made?” He rubbed his palms together eagerly.

Dante regarded the king with a wry expression. Although Alanno had just turned thirty a week ago, he still had the spritely blue eyes of a child, and his handsome bearing and fit form from his love of sport gave him a lean and youthful appearance. Despite being five years younger than the king, Dante always felt that he looked like the older of the pair of them, and more than once on casual outings such as this he’d been mistaken for the more important man in the room. Alanno thought it was funny, but it embarrassed Dante every time.

Dante tied his dark brown mare to the hitching post nearby, and she immediately dropped her head to graze at the sparse but bright green grass that grew within reach.

“Ah!” sighed the king loudly, stretching his arms wide. “I love the country!”

“No, you don’t,” Dante reminded him.

“Be quiet, Duke Fiorente! I am your king, and if I say I love the country, then so I do! Also, it is my birthday, and so you must agree with me.” Alanno’s voice boomed in the open air.