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He would find her answers. They would get her voice back—they had to. He wasn’t sure if, even with all the love in the world, she’d care to live without the ability to sing.
Maybe if the Blackveil expedition returned—Karigan was Estral’s best friend. Maybe Karigan’s return would brighten Estral. But they’d had no sign from the expedition. Alton worried for Karigan. Stepping into Blackveil was placing oneself in mortal danger, and she’d been in there since the spring equinox. He loved Karigan, but his feelings had gone in a different direction than they had with Estral. Come back, Karigan, he thought. Estral needs you, and so do I.
He leaned over and kissed Estral’s cheek. She did not stir, and her soft, deep breaths indicated she was well asleep and would be for a while. It was time for Alton to attend to his duties, so he left Estral to her peace. He would check in often, and when she woke, he would get her to take broth as Leese instructed, and if love could heal, he would give her as much as was possible. He’d give her everything.
In the Present:
YOLANDHE’S ISLAND
Yap was left to his own devices as Yolandhe the sea witch tended Lord Amberhill in the cave. Yap did not stray far, meaning to keep an eye and ear open for any change in his master’s condition, or for any harm Yolandhe might tender him. So far, however, Lord Amberhill remained unresponsive, and all Yolandhe seemed to do was sing to him in wordless tunes and rearrange the furs spread over him to keep him warm.
So Yap roamed the shore looking for driftwood with which to make fires—not just for warmth and cooking but to signal passing ships. Not that any ships came close enough to Yolandhe’s island, thanks to the currents and superstitions surrounding the place, though he was sure she could sing them in if she wished. That was part of her power, drawing in the unwary to crash upon her shore.
He searched for flotsam and found pieces of their own ruined gig rolling in with the tide that also brought in lost fishing gear and an empty bottle or two. His rumbling stomach also kept him busy. He liked his vittles as well as any other fellow, but after he’d retched up Yolandhe’s treasure, it had left a yawning pit in his belly waiting to be filled. So he sharpened a branch with his belt knife. The branch he turned into a spear, and he attempted to stab fish in the shallows.
If there was land flesh to be had on the interior of the island, he had no idea. He didn’t know how to go about hunting, and he dared not abandon watch on his master. So he fruitlessly stabbed the water, nearly impaling his own foot in the process. It looked like he’d be eating dulse and mussels and snails again, which was getting a little old. It was more than he’d eaten, however, when he and his shipmates aboard the Mermaid had been trapped in the dead calm of Yolandhe’s spell for untold years.
When his spear failed once again, he was startled to see the sea witch’s reflection rippling beside his own. He glanced up. She looked outward, seemingly to gaze beyond the horizon. She stretched her hand out before her, fingers splayed, and she spoke-sang.
Yap prepared to run to take cover, for this looked like witchery, but he was too transfixed to move.
Waves roiled up before Yolandhe. Not huge, but larger than the others, and definitely not natural. They just hung there stationary. Then she jerked her hand back and a fish flipped out of the wave and smacked Yap in the face. He was too stupefied to catch it, but when he realized what was happening, he was ready to catch the next, and the next, and the next. Many others landed on the shore. It wasn’t that the fish were jumping out of the water, but that they were being spit out of the waves.
When Yolandhe released the waves, the fish stopped flying. She turned to Yap. “You will watch over your master tonight. I must cleanse myself in the moonlight.” And she walked away across a beach alive with flapping, silvery bodies.
“I’ll need to dry ’em,” Yap murmured. He may have a yawning pit of a belly to fill, but even he could not eat so much in a single sitting. Unfortunately, he had no salt.
Yolandhe paused. As if she knew Yap’s thoughts, she said, “There is a barrel of salt near the back of the cave.” With that, she vanished into the forest.
Yap set to work, immediately impounding as many fish as he could in a tide pool, and then gutting and boning the rest and spreading them to dry on makeshift racks of driftwood, even hanging them over the silvered branches of a still-standing, dead tree. He must work fast before the incoming tide reclaimed the tidepool and most of his bounty.
Hours later, he stumbled into the cave covered in sticky scales and viscera. In the back of the cave, fingers of the setting sun revealed a clutter of objects—wreckage, chairs, a chest, casks and barrels, coils of rope, and even a ship’s figurehead of an armored knight. Other items were lost among dusky shadows.
Instead of searching for the salt right away, he knelt beside his master who slept peacefully beneath his furs. Yap did not know what injury plagued Lord Amberhill, just that he did not wake. There was no wound Yap could see, but he knew not all wounds could be seen. Sometimes they were on the inside. They’d both been knocked around in the stormy waves after their boat had failed them.
Lord Amberhill’s hands lay across his breast atop the furs. On his thin, pale finger was the dragon ring with the ruby eye. The dragon’s tail wrapped around its neck, forming the ring part. The ruby, though, that caught the eye. Yap did not know if it was how the sun glowed upon it, or if it was some innate quality of the gem itself, but it flickered with blood-red intensity.
“Sir,” Yap said in a hushed voice, hoping against hope that Lord Amberhill could somehow hear him. “Sir, you’ve gotta wake up. This is the sea witch’s island. Y’know, the one that kept me and the other lads of the Mermaid trapped in the bottle. We gotta find a way out of here before she curses us, or worse.”
