41

Ash

Kaylin’s not paying attention. He keeps looking over the railing, down into the sea as if Tann will erupt any moment and devour us in a single bite. He’s distracted, even as he explains, again, what happened while we were procuring Kutoon’s whistle bone. I’m not sure why he’s on edge, or so fixated on the water. Tann’s gone. Escaped away in a rowboat, as he explained.

Kaylin shakes his head whenever any of us ask exactly how Tann was wounded. “He didn’t die by the sword I plunged into him. But I don’t think we’ll see him for a spell.”

Captain Anders claims Kaylin saved the Dugong and her crew, taking on the Aturnians and sinking the warship. “How,” I have to ask. “With your bare hands?”

But I don’t hear Kaylin’s answer.

“He had my help.” Salila’s honey milk voice wafts into my mind, making me jump a mile. Then I look up at Marcus’s face. It is him she’s talking to, or maybe De’ral. Definitely not me. Damn this medallion. I hear and see way more than I’m meant to.

“But is it the medallion?” my inner voice asks.

That thought makes me even more uncomfortable. “I thought you were supposed to be minding Tyche and the bones,” I cut in, so they know I’m listening. No telling what kind of thoughts the Mar might share with Marcus’s phantom. I saw the attraction when we escaped Aku and there are things of an intimate nature I do not want to hear. And can’t unhear if I do!

“I was minding the child.” Salila laughs, the sound of a hundred tiny bells chiming. “I can do more than one thing at a time, starfish.”

“I’m sure you can.”

Captain Anders approaches. He brings a distance viewer and a dour expression. Our merriment fades as it is passed around. We sailed seven days straight to reach Kutoon from Nonnova, keeping close to the coast as we rode the northwest current. There were signs of storm damage, eroded dunes, and fires burning far inland. But now, as we sail to Tangeen, we take our last look at the shoreline before entering the southern current. The land looks worse than before. So much worse.

As I focus the glass, my heart pinches. “Why have the white sand beaches turned black? Ash from the fires?” But I know it’s not that. Through the round and bobbing lens, I see the truth before they speak it. Shearwaters. Thousands of them, wings splayed, stabbing into the sand, beaks turned upward from bent necks. All dead or dying. Tears well as I hand the viewer over to Piper. “What’s happened to them?”

No one can answer until Anders says, “Blame the uncanny weather for this. The sea air heats, the forests burn. Far north the glaciers melt. Affects their migrations. They left too soon.”

“We’ve noticed changes,” Marcus says. “But the shearwaters?”

“Been falling from the sky like rain, exhausted from the shifting headwinds. What you see is only what’s washed up on shore.”

All eyes turn skyward to the second sun. So much loss and death. “We have to stop it!” I say to them all.

“We will, Ash.” Marcus puts an arm over my shoulder. “We will.”