Rijes nodded. “People think pleasure is the source of happiness. I have found that it is not. It is purpose. Purpose and passion.”
“Yes!” Ree said.
Marin smiled at the passion in his voice. She tried to remember the first moment she’d seen the sea—she couldn’t. It had always been there. She couldn’t remember a day where the sea hadn’t been just outside her window, just a few steps away. She did remember climbing up to the roof with the winged cats to watch the waves. Pa had worried about her up that high when she’d been so little. Ma had simply found her a ladder.
Purpose and passion—yes, that’s exactly it.
“A few days after we were awakened, we followed Laiken. Hewas going to his tower—the workshop where he lived and where he developed his spells—and we walked outside the greenhouse for the first time. It was spring so it was just as green outside the greenhouse as within it and I wasn’t impressed. Until we came out of the trees and saw the blue.” He sighed. “I’d never seen anything limitless before, and that’s what I saw. Potential. Out there… I just knew there were adventures. A chance for me to find…me,I guess. Inside the greenhouse, I was one of many. But that blueness, it called to me.”
They watched Perri play in the waves while they all were silent, lost in their own thoughts. The sea serpent had found a herd of merhorses and was merrily swimming around them as they cantered through the waves. Their jeweled scales glistened in the sunlight, and their manes tossed rainbow sprays of water into the air. Perri mimicked their whinnies and neighs, sounding as if they were having an in-depth conversation. It was possible they were.
“I tried to explain to Laiken and to the others,” Ree continued. “They didn’t understand. I’m a plant. I’m supposed to be where the soil is. I’m not supposed to wander. I’m certainly not supposed to want to be on the sea… And I couldn’t explain it, especially since I hadn’t even seen a boat yet. I didn’t know it was possible to venture out on the blue as far as I wanted. To the horizon and beyond.”
“But you eventually saw a boat,” Rijes prompted.
“It wasthisboat,” Ree said shyly. “You, Marin.”
He hadn’t called her “Captain.” It was a first. She rather liked it.
“I didn’t know it at the time. I just saw the silver sails, and I saw you, moving around the deck, and I knew… but I thought it was an impossible dream, even before we all fell into the deep sleep.” To Rijes, he said, “Laiken forced us all into an unwaking sleep. He thought he was protecting us from the world, when all I really wanted was to be out in the world.”
Rijes nodded. “I may not have yearned for the sea, but I do know a bit about caging things out of fear, thinking you’re protecting them.” Her gaze shifted to the horizon, northward. “The Great Library ofAlyssium was built to protect the knowledge and the stories of the Crescent Islands. It wasn’t ever supposed to keep those spells and dreams and memories from the people. Its purpose was to preserve it allforthe people.”
Marin had never thought of the Great Library as a place for the people. She’d only ever been allowed at the docks, like the conservatory. Its treasures weren’t for the likes of her. Had they once been? That must have been a marvelous time. “What changed?”
“Fear is a jailer,” Rijes said. “People who have power are often afraid to lose it, and books are the greatest power—they are the culmination of many lifetimes. They grant access to worlds, dreams, thoughts, and wisdom beyond what a person can possibly experience in the span of their own years. Whoever has books has the power to be greater than themselves, to connect themselves to all who have come before and draw strength from them.”
“Like the sea,” Ree said. “It connects me to something greater than myself.”
Marin hadn’t thought of the sea that way, but he was right—she did feel that way. When she was on the ocean, she wasn’t trapped in the limits of her own body and experiences. She was connected to something larger, something eternal. She was connected to all the other sailors who had come before her. To her parents. To their parents. To every islander who’d left their home in search of a place they felt trulyhome.
For some, like her, like Ree, thathomewas the sea itself, as unpredictable and dangerous as it could be.Also as beautiful and wondrous.She watched Perri play with the merhorses and smiled.
“Books are like the sea,” Rijes agreed, “with depths and secrets and currents and moods.”
“They’re just not wet,” Ree said.
Rijes laughed. “I said you were wise, and I stand by it.”
The shrub scooted closer to the librarian. “What happened at the library?” he asked. “Why don’t you want it to be your home anymore?”
It was a good question. Not one that Marin would have felt comfortable asking—it was a very personal question. She’d seen how passionate Rijes Velk was about the library and about protecting both her books and her librarians. She thought of Terlu, the former statue, and the lengths to which Rijes had gone to save her.
“The latest emperor was afraid,” Rijes said, “and his fear spread to and was stoked by the people he surrounded himself with. They saw themselves as separate from the people of the Crescent Islands, better than. Over time, this false perception of difference grew, and they began to see the people as the enemy. So they tightened their grip. You can see it in the laws they passed. At their core, their actions stem from a very human belief that if you can control everything, you can keep death at bay—a belief that you can control your destiny by controlling all around you.”
Marin snorted.
With a nod to her, Rijes said, “Sailors know this is nonsense better than anyone.”
“The wind, the waves, the world—you can’t control them,” Marin said. “We sail on only by the grace of luck.” She glanced at Ree. “Skill helps. Knowledge too. But in the end, the sea decides whether we live or die.”
Looking out at the waves, Rijes said, “Emperors don’t sail, and so they forget that. They think they can control the currents of time and the hearts of people, and they cannot. The imperial government passed law after law to tighten their grip. Access to spellbooks, history books, folktales became more and more restricted. Only the right sort of people were allowed within the walls, and that…” She sighed heavily. “I blame myself for not fighting it harder.”
“If you had, you wouldn’t have lasted as head librarian,” Marin pointed out. She knew about people who grasped for power, for control. On a far smaller scale than an emperor, Iovar had tried to tear her down the second he felt she was slipping from his grasp.
“Indeed,” Rijes said. “That was what I told myself.”
“So, what changed?” Ree asked. “Why don’t you want to continue being a librarian?”
