Chapter 15: : Chapter 14

HIS MOTHER reached the Isle of Serein first. She hesitated for the first time on the shore, water splashing against her feet. She was far more solid now; looking at her was like looking at a frosted window. Ariel waited in the rowboat. Sauer, Gabriella, Vanni, and Eric were the only ones from the crew brave enough to go ashore. Even Max hid down in the hull with his paws over his eyes.

“Don’t trust it,” one sailor muttered as she helped lower the shore boat to the water. “No birds.”

She was right—there wasn’t a single bird on the island or gliding overhead. The thick wall of fog and wind probably kept them out.

Eric couldn’t sit still, tapping out his savior’s tune on his leg as they rowed the small boat toward the isle. Gabriella grabbed his hand.

“It’ll be fine,” she murmured, but she still nervously tugged at Nora’s green scarf holding back her curls.

“It’s beautiful,” Eric said, still shaking despite her grip. “There might be anything in those trees, though.”

As they got closer to the island, they reached where Ariel and his mother’s ghost had stopped. Ariel slipped from the other boat and climbed in next to Eric. He held up a dry coat he had brought for her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She held up one finger and bundled her soaked hair onto the top of her head.

“We couldn’t see anyone on the island from our ship,” he told her, “but the witch might be hiding in the lagoon or on the other side.”

Sauer’s crew was still readying for a fight and turning the ship for a broadside, and even Gabriella had borrowed a rifle for their trip to the isle’s shores. Ariel eyed it.

“She’s ruined a lot of lives,” Eric said. “I want to make sure she can’t ruin any more.”

The sword sheathed at his side felt heavier than it ever had before. He had been in plenty of fights, sparring and serious, but never had he killed anyone. This witch couldn’t be left alive. He knew that. She had killed. Worse than killed, even.

But the idea of plunging a sword through her chest filled him with dread instead of triumph. Even now, thinking about it felt like some distant nightmare, not reality.

“Let’s go.” Sauer checked their pistol and straightened their hat. “Stay vigilant. I know we’re here to fight, but first sign of trouble, remember that our firepower is on the ship.”

They barely had to row anymore. The currents around the island beached them on the white sand that formed the outer side of the crescent. When they reached the shore, the unnaturally warm water rippled around Eric as he climbed out of the boat. Seagrass greener than he had ever seen grew in the shallow water, tangling around his legs. Ariel trudged out of the surf with him.

The moment his feet left the water and landed on the dry sand, Eric turned to look at where they had left his mother’s ghost in the other rowboat, but her form had vanished. He took in a shaky breath, and Ariel took his hand.

“I’m fine, but thank you,” Eric whispered to her. “Are you all right?”

A few bruises were blooming across one shoulder where an eel must have hit her during her swim toward the rowboat, but she waved off his concern.

“And thank you for that.” Eric wrapped the coat around her and buttoned it beneath her chin. “Please don’t do it again, though. I couldn’t… I don’t want you to get hurt because I’m hung up on ghosts.”

It had been a brave, irresponsible thing to do. If they had lost track of his mother, would they have been in the fog forever? Would they have ended up on some other isle? Would the magic have spat them out? Would nothing have happened? It was better not knowing.

“I guess I should have let you come with us from the beginning,” he said. “You’re clearly at home on the sea and know what you’re doing. I am sorry for not believing in you.”

Ariel smiled up at him and pointed into the narrow line of trees. He took her hand. She was brave, and it made him feel braver.

“Stay close,” he said, and looked at the others. Gabriella and Sauer were inspecting the rocks a few steps from the water. Vanni had set up in the boat with a spyglass and a pistol. “Let’s go find this witch.”

Vanni stayed in the boat to watch their backs and start rowing if they needed to make a quick getaway. Gabriella followed Eric and Ariel, and Sauer brought up the rear, leaving a trail of stones behind them despite the island’s small size. Ariel peered up at the trees and raised a hand to Eric. He stopped beneath one of the larger fruit trees.

“Everything seems normal.” Eric shuddered. His quiet voice only made the lifeless silence of the island more noticeable. “We were definitely transported here by magic. Given how long we sailed and where we started, we’re too close to Vellona for this island to be undiscovered, but every map marks this place as open ocean.”

“It looks like a regular island, and I don’t hear anything that sounds like a witch,” Gabriella whispered.

Sauer swept the isle with their pistol. “Silence is worse. How do we know if she’s here or not?”

“We keep going,” said Eric.

The trees followed the crescent shape of the Isle. The little wood wasn’t too thick, but it still felt dark and deep. Eric glanced over his shoulder, and the shore seemed farther away than he would have thought. Ariel ran her fingers over a grapevine braided into the branches of the trees, plucking a single grape and sniffing it. She dropped it to the ground and shrugged at him. A normal enough grape, then.

“Apples wouldn’t grow here naturally,” said Gabriella, tapping a fallen one with her boot.

Sauer twisted an apple from one of the trees, peeled the flesh back, and sunk their thumb through the meat of the fruit. They tossed it aside and wiped their hand clean. “This isle seems more like a pantry than a home, but I think it would be best if we didn’t partake.”

“Agreed,” Gabriella muttered, crouching next to a rosemary bush. She picked up a crab’s leg that was as long as her arm. “This one had to have been caught in deeper waters. It would’ve been huge. Bigger than any I’ve seen near Vellona.”

It was cracked and twisted at the joints like how Chef Louis prepared them for supper. Dozens more crab husks littered the ground beneath the overgrowth, and empty oyster shells glittered in the sunlight. Eric prodded the pile.

“Lots of shells,” he said, “but nothing alive here.”

“Not even bugs,” said Sauer.

They came to a veil of twisted branches and thick green leaves that separated the small fruit grove from the lagoon. Sauer pushed Eric behind them and readied their pistol. They held up three fingers and dropped one. Ariel gripped Eric’s hand. The second finger dropped. Gabriella brought her rifle to her shoulder.

Sauer shoved through the branches. The lagoon was still and empty, water lapping at the sand. No people, animals, or witches appeared. Only junk rested in it.

A sharp, bitter disappointment filled Eric. He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

“Let’s check the whole place,” he said. “Just in case.”

Surely she was here and hiding. But they crossed the Isle of Serein once more, even checking back in with Vanni, and found nothing other than an abandoned lagoon. There was no trace of the witch.

Eric had been so certain she would be here, that this would be the answer to all of his problems. She was supposed to be here. The disappointing silence of the Isle pressed in on him until all he could hear was the endless rush of waves and the pounding of his own heart. This was what Grimsby must have felt each time he set foot on a ship.

Uneasy, sickening dismay.

Eric had failed.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” said Sauer as they all came to rest near the grove of trees after their third pass, “but I’ll consider finding the island and not dying to a witch a win. What now?”

Eric sighed. Even now, upset by his inability to complete the task his mother had left for him, the lack of a fight made him breathe easier. There was less danger and less of a chance anyone would get hurt. He laughed and opened his eyes. Nothing was ever easy.

Happy to kill her. Unhappy to kill.

Were all his emotions contradictory and confusing?

“It’ll be all right,” said Gabriella, coming up alongside him. “If not today, then we’ll try again. There’s still a chance that this isle can tell us more about her.”

Ariel patted Eric’s shoulder and nodded.

“But where is she?” Eric asked. “What’s she doing? Does she even still come here? How are we—”

“You know I don’t have the answers to those questions, right?” Gabriella swept one arm up and around. “We’re working with the same information, Eric, and all we can deal with is what we have.”

Waving to the lagoon, Ariel beckoned for them to explore it more thoroughly.

Eric slumped. “You’re right. I guess let’s see what we can figure out about her from what’s here.”

“That’s the spirit.” Gabriella clapped him on the back. “Maybe she keeps a diary of all of her weaknesses.”

Eric snorted and walked with her to the lagoon. It was wide and deep, and a giant rock rose up out of the middle. He had seen it during their initial scouring of the Isle, but now he was close enough to see the damp stains on it as if something sat there often. Sauer and Eric rolled up their trousers to their knees, took off their boots, and waded into the crystal clear pool. The bottom of it was carpeted in emerald seagrass, urns, and antique pistols, none of it organized in any discernible way. Ariel and Gabriella walked around the edges of the pool.

“Something over here.” Sauer trudged to the deepest part of the lagoon and paused. “Huh. Well, the witch has taste, even if she is keeping it all submerged.”

Eric walked past a driftwood shelf of various cosmetics from every country and hesitated when he saw the little collection of art Sauer was standing over. It was in a small nook of rocks half-submerged in the water and shaded by a tall plum tree. A bench was underwater at the center of the nook, perfectly placed for lounging in the warm water and studying the pieces. Sauer pointed to a statue of a reclining god holding a shepherd’s crook and torn-open pomegranate in their hands.

“That was stolen decades ago,” they said. “Same as this.”

They tapped a cracked stone tablet sitting in the water like a gravestone next to the bench. A ring, as if from a cold cup, stained the top of it. Eric tilted his head to the side to study the slightly lopsided carving of a bound, bearded figure.

“It’s one of the northern gods, I think,” said Sauer. “I have a print similar to it.”

“This is from Sait,” Eric said, and pointed to a large portrait. The figure in it was an opera singer and fencer who had vanished into the countryside after her wife passed. “What’s it covered in?”

He touched the cloudy white coating covering the picture and caught part of it under his nails.

“Wax,” he muttered. The other portraits were covered in it, too. “Well, this witch likes her art.”

“Same here.” Sauer ran their fingers along a small statuette of two men, one in the ancient armor of the kingdom to the southeast of Vellona carrying the limp form of the other.

Eric cleared his throat. “Maybe steal it after she’s dead.”

“There’s an idea,” muttered Sauer.

“Eric?” Gabriella called, and got his attention. She used a stick to prod a rock near the narrowest part of the island, where only a reef white as teeth separated the sea from the lagoon. “I think there’s a cave under here.”

“Is there an entrance?” Eric waded back toward her.

Gabriella shook her head and tossed the stick aside. “Under the rock, I think, but it’s too big to move. It looks like it was placed here on purpose, and the ground beneath it is scratched.”

From the other side of the pool, Ariel waved her arms. Eric met her at the edge of the lagoon. Her damp skirts made it hard for her to walk in the loose sand, and the green fabric stuck to her legs and looked like a tail. Eric offered her his arm.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, leading her away from the water.

She held up two fingers and pointed to the opposite side of the pool, where he hadn’t searched yet. There was no art displayed there, but there was a large, flat rock near the water. Eric circled the lagoon to it and laughed. Set into the rock was an old sea glass bottle of ink, and a fish skeleton rested next to it, the spine whittled down like a nib. A leaf of fish skin thinned and smoothed like vellum with the words seared into it fluttered on the rock. Eric touched the bone nib.

“The ink’s still wet,” he said. “Whoever wrote this was here recently.”

Sauer looked up from their inspection of the driftwood shelf. “Then they might return even more quickly or be gone for ages. I understand wanting to wait to see if it is her, but the idea of remaining on a powerful witch’s island overnight does not fill me with confidence.”

“That’s fair,” said Eric. He rubbed his face. “All right—I don’t know how close my mother got to finding and killing her, but I doubt she made it this far or knew what the Blood Tide was before she died since she didn’t leave it in her note. We know how to find the Isle and avoid the ghosts now. That is more than we knew before. We can leave, lure the ghost ship to us, and trigger the Blood Tide again tomorrow, or something. Let’s make this as worthwhile as possible for now and figure out everything we can about her.”

Sauer nodded and used a mirror and hooded lantern to flash some sort of light signal at the ship, and they hummed happily at the quick flash of light that came in response. It wasn’t any code Eric knew, but he guessed the three long flashes and three short meant “all clear.” From this distance, Eric could barely make out Nora holding a large lantern aloft on deck.

“Sea’s clear,” they said. “Nothing approaching and no changes on the island except for us.”

“Well, we know she’s made other people angry, at least.” Gabriella leaned down and read the note again. “People she knows well enough that they don’t sign their names.”

Ariel sniffed the ink, wiggled her fingers, and pointed at the sea. It took Eric a moment and some more gestures to get it.

“That’s squid ink?” he asked, and she nodded. “Why would someone use pure squid ink?”

He circled around the rock and nearly tripped over a chest half-buried in the sand. It was an old thing, thick wood carved so carefully that the pieces slotted together and there was no need for metal hinges. Eric touched the lid and came away with wax under his nails. It was thickest around the lid.

“I think I found something.” Eric tried not to let his hope leak into his voice. This was the sort of chest people kept important documents and supplies in on ships. Watertight and buoyant, it would survive anything. Surely this was full of documents too fragile to be left in the elements. “It’s covered in wax, too.”

Gabriella, Sauer, and Ariel joined him. Eric got on his knees, running his hand along the whole of the chest. It was as wide as his wingspan and would have reached his thighs if it hadn’t been buried.

“There’s a sigil,” he said, feeling the edges of an indention in the wax. It covered where a lock would have been. It was a series of odd circles in a pattern he didn’t recognize. “I can’t tell what it is.”

Ariel leaned down next to him, her chin near his shoulder. She touched the indentation.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked.

Nodding, she drew an octopus in the sand. Eric chuckled.

“The suckers. Of course,” he said. “It’s the imprint of an octopus tentacle.”

“She’ll know it’s been opened,” said Sauer.

Gabriella shrugged. “Our original plan was to kill her. Does it matter if we break into a chest?”

“Brace yourselves in case it’s magic.” Eric dug his fingers into the wax and cracked open the lid. It stank of salt and stagnant water. A shiver washed over him, small and quick like the air before a storm, and the ground shuddered. Stone ground against stone, and the lagoon rippled. Something large and swift slammed into the reef separating the water from the sea, breaking free. A tail broke the surface and vanished. The lid to the chest popped open.

Ariel shot to her feet.

“What was that?” Sauer asked, pistol raised.

Ariel carefully pushed the barrel toward the ground. She drew a fish in the sand with her toe.

“If you’re sure,” said Sauer, but they kept their pistol in hand and swept their gaze around the Isle.

“I don’t see anything.” Gabriella climbed on top of the rock to look around. “Whatever is in there, look at it quickly.”

The chest was stuffed with letters and maps. Eric shuffled through the top few and pulled out one with his mother’s name on it.

“‘We have no desire to see our world descend into war once again and possess neither the resource nor the stomach to engage in such a bargain,’” Eric read aloud. “The next part is smeared out—the ink got wet—but it says, ‘We will not disregard our deal with Her Majesty, Queen Eleanora’ here and there’s a signature at the bottom. Benjamin Huntington, Duke of Wright.”

Wright was up north in the kingdom of Imber, on the other side of Sait, and it had kept its deal with Eric’s mother to not call in Vellona’s debts until the storms let up. That had to be what this letter meant.

Sauer whistled. “Bold of Imber to refuse an offer from a witch like this.”

“These must be all of the deals she’s made or tried to make. Dozens of letters from different kingdoms,” Eric said, picking up a different one. “Some offered her holdings in exchange for favorable weather. Some money. A lot of them are from Sait. They’re giving her a title once her duty is done—one guess as to what her duty is.”

This witch wasn’t just the cause of his curse, but of every problem plaguing Vellona. Eric had been right—Sait had allied itself with a witch—but the idea of telling Grimsby had lost some of its appeal since finding the Isle and losing his mother’s ghost.

“She’s the reason all of Vellona is suffering.” Eric’s hands shook, and he pocketed the letters from Sait thanking the witch for her work with the storms. “The date they sent this means the storm they’re talking about is the one from last spring in Brackenridge. Fortyseven people died in the storm alone, and they’re thanking her.”

Ariel laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, but the touch only set him more on edge.

“I didn’t realize I could hate someone this much,” he whispered.

Ariel’s hand slid from his shoulder, and she took the letters from his hands, handing what Eric hadn’t read yet to Gabriella.

“For a sea witch,” muttered Gabriella, rifling through the papers, “she isn’t offering any of the kingdoms better sailing conditions or fishing. I wonder if the sea doesn’t care for her much.”

Ariel snorted.

“Why does she even want a title, though?” Eric asked. “She’s a witch.”

“It’s a different kind of power.” Gabriella stepped down from the rock. “To be recognized as noble isn’t the same as being skilled enough at something to put fear into people.”

“She’ll have land in Altfeld, too,” said Sauer, tapping a letter Eric hadn’t read. “They’re giving her a holding on the coast once she gives them Riva.”

Eric looked up at Sauer. “You see anything about the ghosts or curses?”

Knowing why Vellona was being targeted was all well and good, but it didn’t help Eric or the kingdom. He needed a way to stop her.

He rifled through the rest of the letters and maps, and Sauer read the ones written in Altfeld’s language.

“It looks like she was getting ready to send this one out,” they said. “‘The harvest has been bountiful, and the beauty of souls is that they require no maintenance other than a space to store them before use. My fields are full and lovely this time of year and far more valuable than your gold and coins. Call on me again once you know the true value of souls, handsome.’”

“Let’s take the letters back with us,” said Eric. “They’re proof of who’s been working with her and why. Gabriella, can you carry them?”

She nodded and gathered up the letters and contracts. Eleanora’s name at the bottom of the chest caught his eye. Eric pulled the paperlike fish skin free from the pile. At the very top was his mother’s name, and beneath it was his. There were only three others on the list, each one a ruler in another kingdom. His mother’s name was crossed out.

“This is—”

The scent of rot choked him. Ariel gagged, covering her mouth with her shirt. A loud echoed on the Isle, and a series of sickly splattering sounds followed it. Eric leapt to his feet. The trees were withering and their fruit browning in seconds. Sauer grabbed Eric’s shirt.

“Time to go,” they said. “Kill her later.”

Eric nodded. They couldn’t fight whatever was happening here.

The four of them ran back across the island. Vanni waved from the rowboat, face white with fear. Before their eyes, the Isle of Serein died. Green mold grew across gnarled trees, letting out puffs of sickly gray spores. Swathes of flies and beetles scurried over the sand, splashing into the rising tide. The group made it to their rowboat as the weakened trees behind them fell over. The seagrass was brown and wilted.

“Get in!” Sauer yelled, waving to Nora on the prow of the ship. “Row.”

But Vanni was already rowing the boat frantically. Eric had one foot inside when something made him pause, and he pulled his foot out of the boat. He heard a familiar voice calling his name. It tugged at his heart and awoke a desperation so deep in him it hurt.

“My mother,” Eric said, voice wavering. The world blurred and quieted until there was only the voice and his need to find her. “I forgot about my mother.”

“What?” said Gabriella. “She’s not here.”

“Don’t you hear her?” he asked, turning away from the boat. “There.”

A ghostly figure rose from the sea. Grass as green as young wheat rippled around her, blades twisting about her legs. The sea boiled where it touched her, and Eric struggled to race through the water to her. A headache picked away at Eric’s focus. She held out her hand to him, and Eric reached out to her.

“You have to save me, Eric.” Her fingers passed through his. “Please. Help. A deal. She’ll give me back for—”

A body slammed into his back. Red hair spilled over his shoulder and arms locked around his chest. Ariel’s check pressed against his shoulder.

she tapped against his chest.

The shock, the pain, the memories—this wasn’t his mother. It was a lure.

“You’re not her,” he said to the ghost. “You’re not her and you don’t know anything about me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, sweetling,” his mother’s ghost said. “Please. Help me.”

Eric took a step back. “My mother never called me that.”

The ghost cocked her head to the side and froze.

“Well, then,” she said in a voice so unlike Eric’s mother’s it chilled him to the bone. “You’re a rude one, aren’t you? I was curious as to what would happen if one of my little ghosts encountered someone they knew before I got ahold of them. Disappointing that it lets them fight my control, but here we are, face to face at last. I suppose her leading you here was good in that regard, at least.”

“You!”

Glorious, terrible clarity cut through every thought in Eric’s mind, and he threw himself forward. He barely felt Ariel slip from his shoulders. His fingers tore through the ghost, catching nothing. The ghost laughed.

“Give her back,” Eric forced out through gritted teeth. “Let my mother’s soul go!”

His fist passed through her again, and Ariel’s hands gripped his other arm “Give her back. Let her go,” the ghost said, rolling her head back and forth. “So contradictory. Do you even know what you want?”

“Shut up, you monster!”

Here she was, the witch, before him finally, and he couldn’t even touch her. The rage of uselessness burned in him. His heart thundered in his chest.

He had found her, and he could do nothing. No matter how much he wanted to kill her, he couldn’t.

Weak. Inadequate. Powerless.

“If you wanted a monster, all you had to do was ask.” Suddenly, her eyes were black as pitch and her mouth was a slash of red. The form wavered. “So hurtful.”

“Hurtful? I’ll show you hurtful!” He yanked away from Ariel and splashed toward the ghost again. “Where are you, you coward? Face me as yourself instead of using my mother’s face for your sick games!”

“Oh, I would, sweetling, but I’m a bit tied up with more important business. Politics—you know how it goes,” she said, and rolled her eyes. “But I should be in Vellona soon, and I would hate to get there before you. I mean, what would I even do?”

Fear froze him in place. She laughed at his horrified expression and shrugged, peering at him over a raised shoulder.

“So help me, if you do anything else to Vellona, I will kill you.”

The witch wearing his mother’s face laughed. “Anything else? But I’ve already done so much for it, and I have so much more planned since you’re gone. See you soon, lover boy. I think I’ll retire this ghost. Back in the bank with her, so to speak.”

The ghost winked at him. Her face shimmered, fading back to Eleanora’s stoic form. A ribbon of seagrass grew around her, coiling like a tentacle, and it burrowed into her chest. Her form spun and shrunk, bones cracking and mouth open in a silent scream. She condensed into a single smear of bright white light beneath the water. When it dimmed, all that was left in her place was a ragged brown blade of grass with two branches like flailing arms. It shimmered with trapped magic.

The fear and fury holding him in place snapped. Disappointment washed over him, and suddenly, he was exhausted. This trip had done nothing but turn the witch’s attention toward Vellona, and there was no point in having gone after her if she hurt anyone else. What good was he if he had put Vellona in danger? His vengeance wasn’t more important than his people.

A new dread gripped Eric.

“We have to go!” He grabbed Ariel and ran back to the boat. “She’s heading to Vellona. We have to get there first.”