Benedict spotted land just as the sun peeked above the horizon. I was asleep when the call went out, and the clanging of bells wove through my dreams, which were of starlight and the wind. I opened my eyes to find the crew scrambling up on deck.
“Land!” Benedict shouted. “We’re home!”
My heart leaped at the word home, even though Tulja wasn’t home, not really, not for me. But it was home for Finnur. There had to be someone here who could bring him back to life.
I ran up on deck and found the crew preparing to make port, so I grabbed a rope and started tying down the sails. We worked largely in silence, the gray dawn lighting our way. Asbera wasn’t on deck, but the captain’s quarters glowed with the light from a magic-cast lantern.
“How’s Finnur?” I asked Reynir when he joined me at the masts.
“Still alive.” Reynir nodded. “I watched over him last night.” He hesitated. “Asbera insists there’s no change, but I took his pulse and it was weaker than it was yesterday.”
I kept winding the rope around my wrist. “At least we’re back,” I said after a time.
Reynir grunted in response.
The Annika sailed through the still, calm waters of the bay, missing one of her crew and nursing another, but not trailing any monsters to land. As the docks appeared in the dim light, I checked over the side of the railing, afraid one of the monsters had found its way back to us. But there were only the dark waters.
“Listen up,” Baltasar shouted from the helm as we approached the docks. “Gather round.”
We did as he asked. The wind pushed us gently toward the shore.
“I know you’re all relieved to be home,” Baltasar said, his rough hands gripping the ship’s wheel. “But first thing we need to do is to send word to the priests. Finnur’s our priority, but you need to tell them about Harald as well. Reynir, I’m putting you in charge of that. Compose the message yourself. Benedict and Seimur, I’m asking you to rent a pair of yaks and take the message in person. You know how the priests can be.”
There was a stilted pause at Baltasar’s blasphemy. He pulled a couple of stones out of his pocket and tossed them down to Benedict and Seimur. “For the yaks,” he said.
They nodded.
“The rest of you can clear the boat. But stay close—head over to the Yak’s Horn if you want. Don’t know what the priests’ll need to get Finnur better. May be sending you out on errands.”
The crew muttered their agreement.
The Annika slowed as she sailed into the docks proper. I stayed up on deck to help with the wind, standing by the railing so that the crew could scramble up and around the masts. The light peeked over the horizon, illuminating the boats lined up in the bay. There were five of them, more than I expected. Fishing vessels, mostly.
Including one lined with spiky, Jolali-style icons.
I gasped and clutched the railing so that I could lean out over the water. The Penelope II. She was still docked at Tulja. They hadn’t left after all. Lord Foxfollow’s attack must have left them weak.
I whirled around. “Baltasar!” I shouted. “Baltasar, I may be able to help Finnur, faster than the priests.”
He had all his concentration focused on bringing us to the docks, like a good captain, and he didn’t look at me when he answered. “What are you on about, girl?”
“I know someone who might be able to help. I thought he’d be gone by the time we arrived, but his boat’s still here.”
“And who’s that?” Baltasar adjusted the line of the boat as we moved closer to land. “Your old captain?”
My blood vibrated in my body. Finnur; we’d be able to save Finnur.
“He’s a powerful wizard,” I said. “It’s worth a try, and he can come faster than the priests—”
“Right you are on that. Go fetch him when we get to land. I’m willing to try anything.”
I nodded and turned back to the starboard side. The Penelope II gleamed in the encroaching dawn as the Annika settled into her customary place at the docks.
When the crew were dropping anchor, I raced into the captain’s quarters, grinning with the good news about the Penelope II.
Asbera sat at Finnur’s side, laying damp cloths on his forehead. My grin vanished.
“What’s wrong?” I slid into place beside her. Finnur’s expression was the same, still that frozen terror, but his skin was pale and tinted blue. Horror crawled over me. “Sea and sky, is he—”
“Not yet.” She tucked a cloth around his throat. “His temperature has risen. I’m not a healer, but it feels too hot—”
I immediately laid the back of my hand against his cheek. His skin burned.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I babbled. “Maybe it means he’s coming back around.”
Asbera shook her head, her hair falling into her eyes. “It took too long,” she whispered, and draped another cloth, this time across his chest. “I know you got us here as fast as you could, but the priests will take at least a day—”
“We may not need the priests.” I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. She looked over at me, confused. “The Penelope II is still here. Kolur might able to help. I know he’s familiar with Mists magic.”
She didn’t say anything, but a light came back into her eyes. A glimmer of hope.
“You should open up the windows,” I said. “Maybe the cold air will help bring the fever down. The wind’s still blowing out of the north.”
She nodded. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“I won’t be long,” I said. “I promise.”
• • •
I raced along the docks, my hair streaming out behind me. A few fishermen stood scattered around their boats, and old Muni with his fish stand was already set up in the usual place. They all stared at me as I ran past, but I didn’t care. I was only focused on getting to the Penelope II.
Her masts poked up against the horizon, dark against the pink dawn. Her sails were down. I breathed with relief—she wasn’t going anywhere yet. But I didn’t slow. My feet pounded against the old saltwater-soaked boards, and I sucked in cold salty air until my lungs burned. When I finally came to the Penelope II, I stumbled to a stop and I leaned over, trying to catch my breath. Everything was quiet here except for my panting. Even the ocean seemed to have fallen silent.
The gangplank was down, so I climbed aboard. No one was on deck, but I could smell the residue of magic, like burnt salt. A scrap of woven blue fabric had been nailed to the boards beside the ship’s wheel. A Kjoran protection charm—I’d grown so used to the Tuljan ones that the sight of it startled me. I wondered how new it was.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Hello, is anyone here?” I walked across the deck, my voice lifting with the wind. “It’s Hanna. Please! I have an emergency!”
No answer. I turned slowly in place. The waves sloshed out in the bay. A cold fear gripped at me. Maybe they weren’t here at all. Maybe Lord Foxfollow had killed them, or dragged them away to the Mists. Or done worse, somehow.
“Hello!” I screamed again, panic turning my voice ragged. I ran to the hatch and flung it open. The underbelly of the boat was lit with a faint blue glow. A lantern. I scrambled down, taking deep breaths every time my foot touched the rung of a ladder. “Kolur!” I shouted when I made it down. “Frida! Anyone?”
The Penelope II was not laid out like the original Penelope, and the corridors twisted off in strange narrow angles. It must have been the Jolali style, but the confusing layout just made me frustrated. I could hear the ocean everywhere, but nothing else, no human voices, nothing. “Kolur!” I screamed. My voice echoed like I stood inside a cavern, not a boat. Another side effect of the magic that had been done here.
“Be quiet.”
Frida. I recognized her voice.
I whirled around. I couldn’t see anything but blue-lit darkness. “I can’t see you,” I said, lowering my voice. “I need to speak with Kolur.”
“He’s resting.” Frida ducked through a low-hanging doorway. She was dressed in sleeping clothes. “What are you doing here?” She looked at me. “You shouldn’t come with us, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s too dangerous. Stay here until you can find passage home.”
Her voice was sharp-edged and it made me shiver. Too dangerous. At least they were being honest now.
“It’s not that.” I shook my head. “I need Kolur’s help. The magic he did a few nights ago, when Lord Foxfollow attacked—it hurt one of my friends.”
Frida froze. “How do you know that name?” she hissed. “Lord Foxfollow.”
“I know everything that’s been happening.” I jerked away from her. “Plus, I talked to him. He showed me what Kolur did, sending the monsters into the open sea. He sent them straight to the Annika.”
Frida’s hand went to her mouth. “No,” she said softly. “No, we didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t.” I slumped down. “But one of those monsters bit my friend and put him into a magic-sleep and I have to know if Kolur can help him. Please? They sent for the village priests, but it’s almost a day’s journey for them to leave their cave and I don’t think Finnur—that’s my friend—I don’t think he has enough time. So will you please let me talk to Kolur?”
The words spilled out in a tumble, and when I finished, I had to steady myself against the wall and catch my breath. Frida looked away from me, her hand still covering her mouth.
“What?” I asked breathlessly. “What’s wrong?”
The lanterns threw liquid light across us both. I wanted to scream. Finnur was dying, and Frida wouldn’t help me.
“Kolur can’t go to your friend,” she said softly.
“What? Why not?”
“Magic-sickness.” Frida looked back at me. “Parts of him changed—he can’t leave the ocean, not for the time being. Pjetur and I wove a spell to reverse the effects, but it will be at least a week’s time before he’s able to breathe air again.”
The world fell away. I heard a rushing in my ears like the air was pouring out of my body. I hadn’t seen that in the vision Lord Foxfollow gave me. Only the magic.
I pressed up against the wall, my whole body shaking, Sea and sky, we were lucky the magic-sickness hadn’t infected us on board the Annika.
“I’m so sorry,” Frida said. “I am.”
“You can heal him,” I said. “You’re powerful, I’ve seen it—”
She stared at me sadly. “I’ve never had the ability to heal,” she said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable, not against Mist magic. I’d likely cause more harm than good.”
Panic hammered through my thoughts. “What if we put Finnur in the ocean?” My voice echoed around the strange corridors of the Penelope II. “We could put him in a rowboat and Kolur could look at him that way—”
Frida shook her head.
“Why not?” My voice trembled. I didn’t want to cry in front of her, but I was afraid I was going to anyway. “Please, I swore to his wife—”
“He’s too weak to work magic,” Frida said. “Yes, he could look at your friend, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Not in his current state. It would destroy him, turn him into saltwater.”
I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. I stalked away from Frida and ran through the corridors, choking back my sobs even as tears streaked down my face.
“Hanna!” she called out, but I ignored her. I stumbled through the murky shadows until I came to the square of sunlight illuminating the ladder leading back up on deck. Finnur was going to die. Kolur couldn’t help him, and the priests would never get there in time.
The burden of my responsibility hung like a weight around my neck.
I climbed back onto the deck of the Penelope II. The sun had risen completely, lemony and bright like the summer sun back home. I felt like it was mocking me.
“Hanna, don’t go yet.”
I stopped. I almost recognized the voice. It was more human than I remembered.
Isolfr dropped down from the masts, landing softly on his feet like a cat. The sunlight refracted through my tears, and in that liquid haze, he shone the way he had when I first saw him.
“I was just leaving,” I said, trying to hold my head high. I turned away from him.
“Wait.”
There was an urgency in his voice that I didn’t expect. I stopped, staring off at the dock in the distance. The wind blew my hair into my eyes. I was blinded.
“My friend’s going to die,” I said. “I can’t stay.”
“What?” Isolfr walked over to stand beside me. I thought he was going to put his hand on my shoulder, but he didn’t. “Why? What happened?”
“Don’t you know?” I snapped. “Don’t you know everything?”
Isolfr looked down at his feet. His cheeks reddened. “Not in this body.” He lifted his eyes, peering at me through his lashes. “But I heard you yelling, and so I know that it must be serious.”
I hesitated. The wind blew harder, gusting in from the west. I thought I smelled summer on it, the fresh scent of berries and wildflowers.
And then I told Isolfr everything. I was desperate.
He stared at me as I spoke, not once looking away. His eyes were the same color as ice. They were the only part of him that didn’t seem human.
“I can help,” he said. “Take me to him. But we have to move quickly.”
I stared at Isolfr, taking in those blandly handsome features, those unsettling eyes. It made sense, in a way. Isolfr was not human, and Finnur had been struck down by inhuman magic.
“You don’t trust me,” Isolfr said.
“Why should I?” I snapped. “I won’t put my friend in any more danger—”
“I want to help him!” Isolfr shouted. “I want to help you.”
I’d never heard him raise his voice before, and I took a step back, shocked.
Isolfr seemed to shrink down inside himself, back to the soft Isolfr I knew from our time at sea. “I’m not from the Mists,” he said.
“You’ve certainly told me that enough times,” I snapped. “Not that you’ll say where you are from—”
“I’m from this world,” Isolfr said. “From the north.”
“Jandanvar?”
He hesitated, and that was how I knew. Somehow, he came from Jandanvar.
“I know what to do to help your friend,” he said.
The wind gusted again.
I nodded.
“Show me the way.” He ran toward the gangplank. I followed, too scared to let myself get hopeful.
“We kept him on board the Annika,” I said. “It’s moored at the usual place—the seventh dock.”
“All right, yes. I know where that is.”
We ran. I focused on the line of Isolfr’s back ahead of me. Then the Annika rose up against the docks. With the masts empty, she looked haunted.
Zakaria and Reynir were standing guard next to the ladder. They looked up at us as Isolfr and I skittered to a stop.
“Who the hell is this?” Reynir asked, jabbing his thumb at Isolfr. “Baltasar said you were going to get your old captain.”
“He couldn’t come. This is—Pjetur. He can help.”
Reynir narrowed his eyes at me.
“We don’t have time for this! Move!” I shoved Reynir aside, and he let out a surprised cry of protest that made Zakaria laugh. But neither of them tried to stop me.
I let Isolfr climb up the ladder first. Please don’t betray us, I thought. Please please please.
The deck was empty except for Baltasar. He sat over by the ship’s wheel, smoking a pipe and staring off into the distance. He glanced at us when we scrambled on board.
“This is Pjetur,” I said before he could ask any questions. “He’s not my captain, but I know he can help.” I hope he can help.
“Where is he?” Isolfr stopped in the center of the boat and sniffed at the air. “He’s far gone. I need to see him now.”
“Captain’s quarters.” Baltasar blew out a ring of smoke. “Sure hope you can help him, boy.”
Isolfr nodded. The way the sun shone on him, he didn’t look human at all but like some manifestation of the spirit world, a creature of light and magic.
A creature of wind.
I went very still, thinking of the north wind, the whistling, whispering voice, the way it had cradled me down from the stars—
No. It couldn’t be.
Isolfr disappeared into the captain’s quarters. Baltasar studied me through the haze of his pipe smoke.
“What is he?” Baltasar asked.
I decided not to lie. “I don’t know.”
Baltasar turned back to the sea. “You better get in there. He might need your help.”
My entire body felt shaky and indistinct, and the world didn’t seem real. But I nodded and walked over to the captain’s quarters with careful, quick steps. Cold, brittle magic was already seeping out through the walls. It wasn’t human magic. But it didn’t belong to the Mists, either.
The door swung open when my hand passed by it.
The scene inside the room was a quiet one, not the wild display of enchantment that I’d half expected. Asbera stood pressed up against the far corner, her arms wrapped around her torso. Finnur’s shirt was peeled away from his chest, which gleamed pale and weak in the lantern light. I slid over beside Asbera.
“It’s that boy,” she said, her voice flat. “The one at the mead hall. I don’t remember his name.”
“He didn’t give you a real one.” I hesitated. Isolfr was tracing patterns on Finnur’s chest with his fingers, runes that I didn’t recognize. They glowed in the darkness. “His real name is Isolfr.”
“He’s not human.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
But Asbera didn’t seem to be talking to me, not really. “He’s kjirini.”
“What?”
Asbera blinked. Isolfr ignored both of us, all his concentration focused on painting those runes on Finnur’s body, working with light and magic.
“It’s a Jandanvari word.” She looked at me. “I don’t know how to translate it, not exactly. Sometimes they use it to mean ‘wind,’ but a particular kind that sweeps in from the north.”
I went very still.
“It also means ‘magic,’ ” Asbera said. “But a certain ki—”
And then Isolfr began to sing.
Asbera cried out and grabbed my arm. She never finished what she was going to say.
Isolfr’s voice was not a human one, and he did not sing a human song. The notes were low and whistling and mournful, somehow just like the wind, and it filled up the room with a presence strange and eerie and—familiar.
The north wind.
And so, I finally understood completely: Isolfr was the presence in the north wind; the presence in the north wind was Isolfr.
I didn’t know how and I didn’t know why, but I knew.
Magic materialized on the air and dotted across my arm like snow. Asbera moved to my side. I wrapped my arm around her. We pressed close together.
Isolfr’s voice grew louder. The music seeped into me and drew out my emotions: loneliness and fear. Homesickness. A yearning for something beyond home, for something larger than just me. Tears streaked down my cheeks. When I looked at Asbera, she was weeping too.
Across the room, Isolfr flickered. In one second he was Pjetur, a dull and handsome human boy, and in another he was Isolfr, shining like the moon, sharp-eyed, elven, too delicate to be real. He shifted back and forth between the two. The song grew louder and louder.
And then Isolfr’s hand slid into the skin of Finnur’s chest.
Asbera shrieked and moved to lunge forward, but I caught her and held her tight. This was not evil sorcery. I could sense it deep inside me, a hard echo inside my bones. It was the magic of the north wind, the magic that brought me home from the in-between world, the magic that drove the Mists away outside the mead hall. He was helping.
Isolfr’s hand disappeared completely.
He shut his eyes and flickered once, and then remained Isolfr, his skin glowing with foreign light. The song shifted, abruptly, into something faster and more howling. It didn’t even sound like music anymore, just the shriek of wind in a storm. The enchantment in the room thickened. The walls rippled like sails. I squeezed Asbera tighter.
He was using wind-magic, but not any that I’d ever seen.
And then, with a gasp and a cry, Finnur sat up.
Asbera screamed and tried to lunge forward again, but I stopped her. I didn’t want her interfering with Isolfr’s spell—his hand was still tucked inside Finnur’s chest, and the magic still vibrated around us.
Finnur’s twisted expression hadn’t changed, and even though he sat up now, he was as still and waxy as before. The light in Isolfr’s skin pulsed. His song fell away, and the silence was like the silence in the eye of a hurricane. He stared at Finnur straight on.
Asbera whimpered.
Isolfr took a deep breath. He seemed to suck in all the air in the room. The lanterns flickered. The walls flapped and snapped, no longer wood but fabric. Asbera grabbed my arm so hard that her nails dug into my skin. But I didn’t move. I could only watch Isolfr, transfixed by this strange wind-magic.
With his free hand, Isolfr opened Finnur’s mouth.
And kissed him.
But it wasn’t just a kiss; I could hear the air passing between them, a roaring rush like being caught in a wind tunnel. The air in the room grew thin and weak. It was hard for me to breathe.
Isolfr snapped his head back and yanked his hand, completely unbloodied, out of Finnur’s chest.
There was a long, terrible pause. Asbera sobbed.
And then Finnur blinked.
“Finnur!” Asbera ripped away from me. I didn’t stop her this time. Finnur looked over at her, dazed. Then he smiled. It was a smile to light up the darkness.
Asbera threw her arms around him. “I thought you were going to die,” she said, sobbing into his hair. “I thought I’d lost you forever.”
“I thought of you,” he whispered. “While I was trapped. Sometimes I saw your face—”
Asbera kissed him.
Isolfr was lying on the floor of the cabin, stretched out, pale. He looked like Pjetur. I knelt beside him. He dropped his head to the side and blinked up at me.
“Is he alive?” he asked.
I nodded. “And awake.”
Isolfr smiled and turned his gaze back to the ceiling. “That was more difficult than I expected. The poisons had gone in deep.”
I hesitated. Asbera was still weeping behind me, but I could hear the happiness in her tears. I felt that happiness myself. Finnur was alive.
Isolfr had saved him.
“We should give them some time alone,” I said.
Isolfr nodded, though he didn’t move. I stood up and held out my hand. When he took it, his skin was cold to the touch. I pulled him to his feet. He was lighter than I expected. There was something intangible about him. Like air, magic, wind.
He didn’t let go of my hand once he was standing, and he leaned up against me for balance. I could feel him shaking.
Asbera and Finnur ignored us both; they were too wrapped up in each other to care that we were still in the cabin. So I just led Isolfr out onto the deck. The captain’s quarters looked the way it always had, out here. Baltasar was gone. I wondered if the spell from the cabin had frightened him.
“Will they be safe?” I asked. “With the magic-sickness?”
Isolfr nodded. He stumbled over to the side of the boat and slumped down, his back pressed up against the railing. He took a deep breath. “It’s not true magic-sickness. It’ll fade in time.”
“Not true magic-sickness?” I frowned. The air was warm and unmoving, like summers in Kjora. I sat down beside Isolfr. “If you don’t mind me asking—what kind of magic was that anyway? It felt like it belonged to the wind—”
“It did.” Isolfr looked at me, his eyes clear and pale and icy. “But not the sort you can do. The sort I can do.”
I stared at him for a long time, trying to work things through in my head.
“Your sort can stop the Mists.”
He nodded.
“It comes from the north wind, doesn’t it?”
He sat very still. I didn’t think he was going to answer. But then he nodded again.
“So it was you,” I said. “The night the Mists attacked in the form of the Nalendan. You saved me.”
“No.” Isolfr gave a weak laugh. “No, I helped you. You were holding your own quite well, but human magic—” He shrugged. “You have a talent.”
I shrugged, but I looked away from him, my cheeks burning.
“Thank you,” I said, speaking to the air. The ocean glittered around us. “Thank you for everything.” Everything was such a simple, meaningless word, but I didn’t know how else to say it.
He seemed to understand.
“It was my pleasure,” Isolfr said.
• • •
Two days later, we held a funeral for Harald. I thought it would be at sea, because he died in the water, but Tuljans honor their dead with fire and smoke.
There was a procession from the Annika, the whole crew draped in garlands made of dried flowers and summer moss. Harald’s family was there too. They were yak herders, land people. His younger brother was only ten or so, and he ran to the edge of the docks and stared out over the sparkling water.
“The first time he’s ever seen the ocean, probably,” Asbera said softly. “It’s rare for us to come so close to the edge of the land.”
Because Harald’s body had been lost to the Mists, his friends carved an effigy of him instead. They scraped his features into a post of soft pine and painted in his skin and eyes and hair. The effigy was laid down on a cloth of woven yak fur and scattered with the same white flowers the Tuljans tossed at the Nalendan. Protection, Asbera explained. To draw his soul out of the underworld of the Mists.
Finnur was quiet in that time before the procession started. He hung back, sipping a cup of mulled wine to stay warm. Asbera and I helped in the preparations, me following Asbera’s directions for how to drape the garlands and how to scatter the flowers. But Finnur just watched us.
“He’s been like that since he woke up,” Asbera said. We were lighting the candles for the procession, one after another, with natural fire and not a bit of enchantment. “He saw things, you know, while he was under.” Her voice hitched. “He was in a prison, he said, wrapped up in cold gray mist. He couldn’t move, but they showed him things, showed him terrible things happening to me, to our children—we don’t even have children.” Her hands were shaking. Gently, I took the lighting candle away from her.
“He’s back now,” I said. “I’m sure it’ll take some time, but he’ll get better.”
Asbera looked up at me.
“He’s got you,” I said. “He’ll be fine.”
She smiled, wavering and thin. But then she asked, “Why did this happen to us?”
I paused for a moment, thinking. Then I set the candles aside and hugged her. “Bad luck,” I whispered. “But Kolur will be gone soon. He’ll take the Mists’ interest away with him.”
Asbera wiped at her eyes. “I hope so.”
I hoped so, too. But at the same time, the thought of Kolur leaving almost made me sad.
The procession started. Musicians led the way, playing the clanging, droning song I associated with the costumed men, although no one wore costumes. Harald’s effigy followed, carried on its pallet by three of the crewmen and Baltasar. Then his family. Then the rest of us. We carried our candles close to our chests and stayed silent as the music led the way, winding us through the village. People stepped out of their shops and threw white flowers as if we were the Nalendan. They watched us with solemn faces.
Eventually, we came to the open fields. Here, villagers stood outside their tents, all of them holding their own candles. By now, it was almost dusk and the candles glowed like stars in the purple twilight. I had never seen anything like it, all those licks of flame gathering toward us as we moved deeper into the fields.
Our procession grew as we twisted through the tents. The music never stopped, but it still wasn’t enough to cover up the occasional bursts of throaty sobs.
We walked, and walked, and walked, until we came to a clearing paved over with smooth flat stones that were blackened and charred.
The music stopped.
For a long time, nothing happened. We stood in a ring around the stones, me and Asbera and Finnur all side by side. The only sounds were the wind through the grass and the muffled hush of weeping.
Then Baltasar and the crewmen set Harald’s effigy on the stones. They stepped back, and Harald’s mother took their place. Her whole body trembled as she knelt beside the effigy and anointed it with oil. She had covered her face with a scrap of tattered old lace, and in the flickering candlelight, she looked like a ghost.
She was the first to touch her candle to the effigy. The flame caught and trembled, and she blew out her candle and then stumbled back, into her husband’s arms. Baltasar went next, and then Harald’s father and brother. Then the rest of us. One at a time, villagers touched their candles to the effigy, even as it was already consumed by flames. By the time it was my turn, I could only see the fire. But Asbera whispered in my ear, “Just hold your candle to it,” and I did, grazing its tiny flame against the fire’s huge one.
I felt something, a tremor of magic inside me. The release of a small part of Harald’s soul, from the Mists back to our world.
I stepped back into the cold night air, my face stinging with the fire’s heat. I blew out my candle. That was a sort of magic, wasn’t it? That transfer of a small light into a large one.
We watched the fire burn. It rose higher against the starry sky, letting off flares of sparks and a great tail of dark smoke that, to my surprise, smelled sweet, like incense. Finnur stared into the fire, the light staining his skin orange. His eyes seemed to glow. Looking at him gave me a hollow feeling, but then he reached over and took Asbera by the hand.
I knew, looking at them, that it was enough.
• • •
That night, the Crocus was hung with dozens of tiny floating lanterns, the deck covered in dried sea lavender. Seimur played Tuljan songs on a carved guitar while Benedict sang along, both of them perched on the empty helm so their voices carried across the deck. All of the moored boats were lit up that night. A funeral in the evening and a celebration at night. It was the Tuljan way, Asbera told me.
I sat in one of the chairs that we’d dragged up from down below and sipped a glass of honeyed mead, watching as Asbera and Finnur spun each other around in an elaborate Tuljan dance. All of the Annika crew was there, and most of the folk from the docks and the people who lived in their tents out on the tundra. Almost all of them were clapping and stomping time to the music as Asbera and Finnur danced. It was reassuring to watch: Finnur’s skin was full of color, and he moved with a liquid grace that didn’t suit someone who had, two days ago, been trapped in an eternal sleep.
Finnur tossed Asbera up in the air and caught her at the waist. Everyone erupted into cheers, and Asbera laughed and covered Finnur with kisses. The music jangled on.
Cold whispered against the back of my neck, just for a moment, and then it was gone. I glanced up and saw Frida crawling up the ladder, her hair twisted into a dark, knotted braid.
Isolfr was with her.
No one else had seen them yet. I stood, mead sloshing over the side of my cup. Frida lifted her hand in greeting. Another cheer went up and rippled into the night.
“You still haven’t left,” I said when Frida and Isolfr walked over to join me.
“No,” Frida said. Isolfr didn’t look at me, only watched the dancing, the lights shining in his eyes. “Kolur hasn’t recovered.” She smiled. “He can at least come out of the water for a bit at a time now. So it should be soon.”
Isolfr looked over at her when she said soon, and then over at me. His expression was grave. “Yes,” he said. “Soon.”
“Don’t look so sad,” I told him. “You’re at a party.”
“I’m not sad.” He smiled. “But I don’t go to many parties.”
Frida shifted her weight. “I’d like something to drink.”
“Talk to old Muni there.” I pointed up at the bow of the ship, where Muni was perched with a great towering barrel. “He’s got the mead.”
Frida thanked me and slipped off into the crush of people. Finnur and Asbera were still dancing, both of them spinning wildly in tandem, although now their crowd of onlookers was dancing, too. For a moment, Isolfr and I watched them in silence.
“Finnur and Asbera haven’t noticed you’re here yet,” I said.
“I haven’t let them.”
I looked over at him. He looked like Pjetur, more or less, but the light of the lanterns seemed to strip his disguise away, revealing the imprint of his real features.
“Why not?” I said.
“I don’t want to steal the attention away from them.” Isolfr nodded. “It’s their party.”
I wasn’t certain if I believed him, but I decided to accept his answer. After a pause, I walked back over to my chair and sat down. Isolfr followed and crouched down beside me, one hand on the armrest.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” he asked.
“I don’t know any of these songs.” I took a drink of my mead. It had cooled in the chilly night air. “And I don’t know any Tuljan dances.”
“So if you were on Kjora, you’d be dancing?”
I smiled a little. “I guess.”
Isolfr was looking hard at me. He squeezed the armrest. “How much longer until you’re able to go home?”
Silence. The music played on, Seimur’s singing growing louder and more riotous. In the flash of dancers, I spotted Frida spinning around with Reynir. She held her drink high over her head, and her mouth was open in a continuous laugh.
“What did you tell her and Kolur?” I said. “About being able to heal Finnur?”
He stared off into the darkness beyond the boat.
He sighed. “I made them forget.” He looked down at the floor. “I—I actually made all of them forget. Asbera and Finnur and everyone else in the village.”
“You what?” I sat up, knocking my drink over. It spilled across the floorboards in a gleaming amber strip. “Why? Why would you do that?”
“It’s easier.” He kept looking down. “They think the priests healed Finnur. What does it matter?”
“You didn’t make me forget.”
“No.” He looked up and his face was nothing like Pjetur’s. I was transfixed by it, caught in a spell. I couldn’t look away.
“Stop that,” I said.
“Stop what?”
“Holding me in place like that. Whenever I see the real you—”
“I can’t help it,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t take your memory away because—because I need you, Hanna.”
I closed my eyes. The music flowed around us, and so did some vague, unfamiliar magic. His magic. I wondered if he’d made us invisible to the party. If we were shades now, or spirits. Ghosts.
“Not this again,” I said.
He put his hand on my arm, and I was shocked at how cold it was. Like ice water. I looked over at him.
“I’m not here because I want Kolur to win back the Jandanvari queen,” Isolfr said. “I’m here because we can’t let the Mists through to our world—”
“This isn’t your world.” I snatched my arm away from him.
“Yes, it is.”
The party twinkled on without us.
“You aren’t human,” I said softly. “That’s all I meant—”
“I’m not human, but this is still my world. My home. And I won’t see it destroyed by Lord Foxfollow.” Isolfr stared at me. “That’s what he wants, you know. The queen of Jandanvar will bring him here, and then he can hurt everyone the way he hurt Finnur.”
I trembled, remembering the horrors of the prison where Foxfollow held Finnur. I thought of Asbera weeping at Finnur’s side as he screamed in silent anguish.
I thought of that happening to everyone, north and south, east and west.
“You know that I’m right.”
“Why me?” I was shaking—I was cold, despite the heat globes drifting around the party. But I knew I wasn’t at the party anymore. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep warm. “What do you need me for? I’m no one special—”
“You have ties to the south wind,” Isolfr said. “And you have a talent for magic. You’re exactly who I need.”
“But I’m not even a proper witch. Just a fisherman’s apprentice.” I glared at him. “And you wanted Frida in the first place—”
“And I was too much of a coward to work with her, yes. Is that what you want to hear? That every time I look at her, I remember what she did to my brother?” Isolfr’s eyes shimmered, and for a moment, I was afraid he was going to cry. “I am a coward. That’s why I need you. Because you’re brave.”
I stared at him. “I don’t think you’re a coward,” I said.
“He’s tried to do it before, you know.”
“What?”
“Lord Foxfollow. He’s tried to come into our world before. And he was stopped. Twice.” Isolfr straightened his shoulders. His Pjetur disguise was melting away. “You’re named after one of the people who stopped him.”
I realized then that I couldn’t hear the music anymore. The party had receded into the darkness. Isolfr and I sat on an island of shadow, and the Crocus and all my friends were a dot of light far in the distance. But I didn’t care.
“What are you saying?” I said.
“Your mother served aboard the Nadir, didn’t she? Surely she told you the story about how Ananna stopped the Mists from crossing over into our world.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories.” I felt very cold. “Are you saying that was Lord Foxfollow? The lord she defeated?”
Isolfr nodded.
“So you want me to help you because Ananna and I have the same name?”
Isolfr scowled. “No. I want you to help me because you’re talented and brave. I already told you that.”
“Fine. But I’m not Ananna. She was a pirate queen when all that happened.”
Isolfr leaned close in close. He smelled of honey and ice flowers. “How well do you know the stories?”
“I know them fine.”
“Then you should know she wasn’t a pirate queen when she defeated Lord Foxfollow. She was your age.” Isolfr leaned back.
I stared at him. “What? Are you sure about that?”
“Of course. The problem is that story usually gets entangled with her later adventures. But she was your age when she sent Lord Foxfollow back to the Mists. Now it’s your turn to do the same.”
I looked away from him. All around was a thick inky blackness, darker than night, and the faint glow of the party.
“All I want,” I said, staring at that glow, “is to go home.”
Isolfr grabbed my hand. This time, I let him. His sharp inhuman features gleamed like a star.
“I swear to you,” he said, in a voice like ice and snowfall, “that I’ll see you safely returned to your family. All I ask is that you sail to the north and stop Lord Foxfollow from permanently entering our world.”
For a moment, I was struck dumb. Isolfr squeezed my hand tighter.
“Make sail with us,” he said, and this time his voice was normal, musical, the voice I knew. “Make sail with us and join your magic with mine. It’s the only way.”
The only way. I looked at the party again, shrunken and bathed in light. It seemed like a wizard’s trick, a toy to enchant children. I thought about the jar of stones sitting aboard the Cornflower. Half empty. Nowhere close to enough to buy a ship and a crew.
I thought about the chill of speaking with Lord Foxfollow in the in-between world. I thought of the torment he had visited upon Finnur.
I’d never thought of myself as brave.
I looked at Isolfr. My heartbeat rushed in my ears.
“You can’t guarantee my safety,” I said. “But I’ll go with you anyway.”