On the Isle of Sound and Wonder (30 page)

The tiger purred softly, a low rumble that resonated in Mira’s bones.

“Have you been on the island all this long while? I never knew you were even here.” Mira shook her head slightly. The power flowed through the staff and into her palm like a steady river, but it made her feel as though she were dreaming.

The tiger nodded.

“Do you have a . . . a family? Are there more tigers?”

The tiger got up and moved toward her. Mira stiffened. Every instinct told her this was a wild beast with claws and teeth, and the simple conversation she was having with it a mere trick of her imagination. The tiger’s stripes shone in the reflection of bluish light from the staff’s runes, and as the tiger circled her, Mira found herself watching the ink-black stripes change and morph again as they had before. Then her eye caught a symbol she recognized, and her breath went out of her as quickly as a doused candle.

The runes on the staff.

“Who are you?” Mira demanded. “What are you?”

The tiger stopped circling and leaned close, pressing her gigantic head softly against Mira’s leg. Mira gasped as her mind filled with pictures: a spider’s web, a baby being born, a storm cloud filled with lightning, a metal bird flying through the sky, the glowing staff, dark arms covered in darker ink tattoos, a terrible shadow with grabbing hands, the island, a dry and crooked tree with a face peering out of the bark, and at last, Karaburan as he had looked as a child.

Mira stepped back on watery legs, away from the touch of the tiger’s head, gasping for air as her vision blurred with tears.
What is this? What is happening to me?
She fought to catch her breath, leaning hard on the staff for balance. “I don’t understand,” she coughed.

The tiger pressed in close again, still purring, and when the thick fur made contact with Mira’s skin, she saw again the baby being born, held by dark arms as the storm abated outside the window. She felt her chest tighten, her breathing shallow as she looked at the bed and saw the lifeless body of the woman—the duchess. Mira felt the swelling fear and sorrow that welled up within the midwife as she held the newborn and turned away toward the window, where a wild storm raged outside. The midwife whispered softly in a strange language that Mira did not recognize, and she watched the newborn stop crying, yawning into sleep, its skin as bright as the lightning that flashed beyond the windowpane.

The glow faded as the door opened and Dante came into the room, stunned with grief. He took the baby from the midwife and sent it away with a servant. Mira felt the midwife’s fear spike even higher, pulse racing, as Dante took the staff, the same staff as in her own hand now. The midwife’s hands buzzed with magic, an attempt to defend herself, but Dante moved without hesitation, and viciously struck her down.

“No!” Mira bellowed, her throat raw. Her stomach surged sickeningly, her skin crawling with gooseflesh, and she dropped to her knees hard, gasping and sobbing. The clarity of the visions paralyzed her, and she crouched, trembling. “No more, please, no more!”

Mira looked down at her hands, and for a moment her skin was as dark as the woman’s in the vision, covered in tattoos. She cried out and dropped the staff, pawing at her arms as though she could wipe the stranger’s skin away, but the tiger moved to support her, twining about her like a housecat would.

The contact sent another shockwave through Mira’s mind and body. She saw darkness and felt the world plunge and sway beneath her, and then there was a man in a small dark room with her. The smell of sweat and damp straw was overpowering, and her stomach dropped sharply as the man moved toward her, crushing her in the dark. She tried to push him away but he held her down, her mind spinning as the ship lurched around them.

Mira screamed in terror and pain, and the vision shifted sharply to the island, where there was a baby in her arms—a misshapen, blue-eyed child. She felt her own self slipping away.

1858

Thunder broke loudly nearby, and the cave trembled all around Corvina. She startled awake with a gasp, immediately reaching out to her son in the dark. Karaburan lay sleeping beside her on their thin bed of leaves and grasses, utterly unperturbed by the storm outside.

She put a hand to her heart to slow its wild pounding, and exhaled slowly. The rain never ended, it seemed. Perhaps it was simply the location of the island, its proximity to different air currents, which created the storms, or perhaps there were other forces at work. All Corvina knew was that the island was frequently plagued with rain, and she was grateful to have found the caves.

In fact, she had found that, despite the drastic change of living conditions from Neapolis to the island, somehow she and the boy were getting by. She often thought about what they didn’t have, only to find some of those very things on the island or washed up on shore, leftovers from previous marooned sailors or rumrunners or shipwrecks. It almost felt that the island was providing for them, that it wanted them to survive. She thanked whatever magic lay in the isle’s roots, and did not question it.

Corvina began to drift off to sleep again when the voice came to her.

Psychorrax. Psychorrax. Psychorrax.

She opened her eyes and reached for the spear she’d fashioned from a hearty branch and a tooth-like sharpened stone. She did not bother looking around the cave for an intruder; she knew exactly where the voice came from.

She gathered one of the lengths of canvas sail she’d discovered in the caves about her like a cloak and went out into the rain, her hand squeezing the hefty stick where she had begun to carve little sigils and signs in the wood. The spear warmed a little to her touch, but the buzz of power was no stronger than a single candle flickering in a dark house.

Corvina longed for her old staff. She’d spent decades honing it and carving it, feeding her energy into each line, each glyph. This spear she had roughly cobbled over the last three years was crude, and she had lost almost all of her own magic simply by trying to survive. The island cared for them in its own ways, and there were few natural predators to fear, but life was not easy, and often it was far from comfortable.

The truth of it was that when she had struck the deal with Aurael, she had lost much of her remaining inner power. It was a flickering ember now, clinging to life as the fire of her magical self died slowly.

At least I’m free
, she thought,
and no man’s slave. And Karaburan is a good boy.
She hadn’t wanted it to turn out this way, but she was grateful for the small things she did have, and loved her boy, even with all his peculiarities.

The rain fell lightly but steadily as Corvina passed out of the forest and toward the copse of thin, unwieldy trees on the rocky edge overlooking the beach. Below was the water’s edge, where she had given birth to Karaburan the night that Aurael had rescued her from the slave ship. And it was here, at the edge of the overlook, where Aurael’s tree remained.

Psychorrax.

Corvina stopped near the tree, her face a mask of a defensive frown. The rain fell lightly around her, the night made darker by the storm clouds covering the moon.

“What do you want?” Corvina asked, already knowing the answer.

The thin and twisted branches of the tree swayed in the dark, and the weather-worn bark of the trunk blurred in the shadows, forming a face.

“Corvina,” sighed the face in the tree with Aurael’s voice. “How kind of you to come. “

“You woke me up,” replied Corvina flatly. “Now what is it?”

The tree face shifted and took on a demure and apologetic expression. “I am sorry to have troubled you . . . maybe it was your subconscious? Your guilt for leaving me alone out here keeping you awake?”

Corvina squeezed the spear in her hand. The glyphs did not glow as the ones on her old staff had done, but she did feel a tiny nudge of warmth in reply to the squeeze. The magic flickered almost nervously at being so close to Aurael’s prison.

“Aurael, you know full well how long it has been, and how I have tried so hard to free you. I have nothing left to give. I keep my child healthy and safe as any mother does, and that’s all I have. I am tired. Aren’t you?”

The rain fell between them in the pause that followed. Aurael’s tree expression squeezed into a pinched, haughty look of suspicion.

“Well, yes, I’m extremely tired of being trapped in this tree,” Aurael sniffed. “And your insistent ingratitude is quite tiresome. I saved you, Corvina. You and your baubled brat. And you’ve done nothing but flout your freedom in my face ever since!”

Corvina knew he wanted a rise out of her. She squeezed the spear again to dull her anger, although there was tension in her jaw and shoulders. He was being perfectly childish. His sudden shifting moods made Corvina feel as though she were speaking to an entire collection of commedia dell’arte masks. Aurael shifted as easily from one vice to another, as slippery as an eel, and villainously cunning.

“Aurael, I tell you again: I have nothing left. I have used all I have to try to free you, and what’s left I’ve used to stay alive and protect my son. I have nothing left in me now. You have to let it go. I’m sorry.”

Aurael’s brow bent inward sharply, his scowl deepening in the tree bark. “I have been in this tree for three years! Don’t you care? Do you have any idea what this is like? Of course not! You have your freedom and your precious son.”

“Freedom?” cried Corvina, stamping her foot on the wet earth. “I am trapped for the rest of my life on this island! And my son will likely never know the outside world! You think this is freedom simply because it isn’t a slave ship? This is purgatory. Of course you don’t understand. But you will,” she realized, tipping her head back a little to look at him from a new angle, his frown seeming fretful and worried now. “You’ll understand someday, Aurael. You did save my life. And you did help my child into this world, although it was your magic that shaped his deformities. But I am not strong enough to free you from this tree. There is nothing left that I can do.”

There was another pause as Aurael stared at her. Thunder growled overhead, like a hungry belly, and Corvina’s thoughts shifted to her son asleep in the cave. She should return and see to him.

“I’m sorry,” Corvina said again. “The work of your faerie lord is too powerful for me to undo. We’re stuck here together.”

Aurael’s tree-face twisted and wrinkled like a raisin, sour from his defeat. The tree swayed in the rain, and he said nothing. Corvina sighed. “Good night, Aurael,” she said, and turned to head back to the cave.

“Corvina,” called the spirit, and his voice was so thin and pleading that she stopped. There was a note of desperation, of fear, that she hadn’t heard from him before. “Corvina, please . . .”

She turned to look back at him, and his expression was like that of a child not wanting to be alone in the dark. “What is it?” she asked, warily.

“There are things on the island,” he blurted, as though he’d been afraid to tell her. “Things you can’t always see. You can hear them sometimes, or feel them, but . . .” His eyes darted past her, then off to the right. “Please, I’m—I’m sorry I’ve been horrible. And I’m sorry for Karaburan, too.” He sounded pained, like a violin string stretched and about to break.

“I can’t help you,” repeated Corvina, though he had begun to worry her. “I’m sorry, Aurael, there’s just nothing I can do now.” What did he mean by things on the island? She had felt something when they’d first arrived, and yes, the birds and insects of this place made stranger noises sometimes than ever she’d heard in her travels.

“I know,” choked Aurael, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I know you can’t, I know. Please, I’ve been trapped here for three years, and we’ve fought and squabbled, and I’m so alone. I apologize. I am sorry for everything I’ve said.”

Corvina furrowed her brow. He sounded genuine, and that made her even more worried.
Something is wrong
. She was sure that he was indeed lonely—she recalled how vibrant and bold he’d been when he swooped into the ship’s cell to rescue her. Now, he was just a knot in a tree trunk, warped and weathered.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked quietly. “You already know there’s nothing I can do to free you. And you don’t eat or drink, so I can’t exactly feed you. What do you need?”

Aurael seemed to be holding back tears. Corvina waited while he gathered himself.

“It is foolish,” Aurael whispered. “But I have not felt anything but the bare elements in so long. Occasionally, a bird will come and sit on these branches, but not often. Will you put your hand on the bark? Just . . . touch the tree?”

Corvina lingered, uncertain, but considerably less wary now that the request had been put into words. She had feared something less mundane. “But you’re an air spirit. Can you even feel?”

“I have never been one to crave physical contact,” confessed Aurael, closing his eyes. “But I’m also used to not being frozen in one place like this. There are sensations when flying, or soaring under the water, or passing through solid walls. Air has its own way of touching things. I have felt nothing but the bark of this tree for three years.”