“Who’s there?” says Mother Nine. She’s at the top of the ladder again, tilting her ear toward the skydoor.

There’s a muffled sound from behind sea-eaten wood, but it’s sucked away by the wind. She must not be able to hear, because she unclicks the time-stiffened locks. The wind grabs the skydoor from her hands. I gather my skirt out of cobble-mud, getting to my feet. I peer through the skydoor, but I can only see a deep-blue and deepening sky.

“Who’s there?” says Mother Nine again.

This time, a boy answers — I can hear his words if I listen carefully enough. Listening’s one of the things we learn in the cloister, and not just listening with your ears, either — listening with your whole body. Listening with your bones.

“Bly,” the boy says. “Bly’s my name.”

Mother Nine’s foot slips, and I think she’s about to fall back, meet Teeth Row with a crumple and snap. But she collects her limbs again, gripping the ladder.

“They say to make gold of music is to kiss the clouds,” the boy continues. “Those are the First King’s words. But I’m sure you know that, Ninth Mother. Obligations are kept to the sea and to kings. My name is —”

“I know,” says Mother Nine. She sounds defeated. “Your name is Bly.”

I don’t understand why she’s listening to him. She doesn’t listen to anyone unless their words are written as law. Unless they’re giving us food in exchange for shimmer. But she’s staring through the opening of the skydoor as if there’s a ghost hovering beyond it. The Ninth King’s ghost.

I wait. I consider kneeling again, but I want to be ready for whoever’s there — if Mother Nine lets him in, that is. I still can’t see his face. The wind outside the cloister whines and hisses, slapping at stone.

Mother Nine climbs to the ground again. “Please enter,” she calls.

The boy lowers himself toward Teeth Row, step by step on the creaking ladder. Lit shards of hushingstone set his face to glowing from below — brown skin and pursed lips. Black curls adorn his head. His eyes are dark.

Just like mine.

Just like the eye of the Master on the other side of the wall. The one who heard me singing. It can’t be him. But it is. It is.

Don’t tell, Delphernia.

The wind catches the door again and flings it shut over the boy’s head. He jumps, but he keeps climbing down. And then we are held, the three of us, in the cloister’s quiet: me, and Mother Nine, and a boy who could have me killed.

He approaches me, ignoring Mother Nine. His clothes are simply cut and pale, unembroidered, and his shoes are crafted out of gold. He wears no bells, but unlike Mr. Crowwith, silence doesn’t follow him like a hungry mist. No — he has music in him, I can tell, and not only because of the stone-flute that’s sheathed at his hip like a weapon. His hands are always moving, moving, as though he’s trying to sculpt something out of air.

He looks at the trees and then lifts his eyes toward the Sea-Singer’s carved portrait, which flickers in fickle light. A shadow passes over his face like a cloud covering the skydoor on a summer day — dark for a moment, then light.

I swallow the heat in my throat, looking down like a good turnaway girl.

“I’ve always wanted to visit this place,” he says. “I watch it from the beach and I think, Who lives there? It’s as though the stone is speaking to me. Calling me.”

What is he talking about? I lace my fingers.

“Look up, please,” says the boy. His voice cracks. “Eyes are two doors and they lead to the place where the soul was born.”

My eyes meet his exactly. It’s like someone measured him out using me as the pattern. He looks about my age, too.

“Your name?” he says.

“I’m — I’m Delphernia Undersea,” I reply.

The name of a turnaway girl is like two halves of the same broken stone. The first name is what the Mother hopes for the girl. And the second is what she dreads. Mother Nine has never explained to me what Delphernia means, but Undersea is from her dictionary of failures. Under the sea. Undersea. A prophecy of drowning. What’s more, a turnaway girl’s name only means something to the Mother who named her. It’s not meant to be used outside the dome of the cloister. But this boy seems to think my name is worth something, no matter where it’s spoken.

“Yes,” he says. “You will. You will follow me into the sky.”

Mother Nine stomps over, her shoulders wide as walls. “But you haven’t tested her,” she says.

Bly looks past her. “That won’t be necessary,” he says. “She’ll do as gold does to the palm.”

I’ll do — like I’m a pot or pan. The words make me scowl. But my eyes meet his again, and I take back my spite. Because he looks at me like I’m not a turnaway girl. He looks at me like I’m a person — a Master, even. Someone with a voice and words to speak with it.

“She’ll be no use to you,” says Mother Nine. “Your drawers will be empty of gold.”

“Her usefulness will be for me and the wings of birds to decide,” says Bly. A pained smile tweaks his mouth.

He looks up at the painting of the Sea-Singer again, then narrows his eyes at Mother Nine. They hold a stare between them for a long, long time. Mother Nine’s jaw tightens, but she nods and takes a step back.

Then she says, “Grant me one thing. May I talk to the girl alone?”

“Words are never alone when they are spoken,” says Bly. “They carry their echoes with them.” But he walks back to the ladder and leans against it, watching us. Watching the cloisterwings, too.

Mother Nine crowds me with her sleeves.

“Delphernia, the safest place for you is here,” she whispers, “in the cloister.”

The scabs on my fingers itch. My thumb’s bandage draws taut. I have to stop myself from laughing. If I don’t leave the cloister now, I will live here forever. I’ll be slapped until I’m nothing more than a scrap. That doesn’t seem very safe to me.

Mother Nine glances up at the skydoor. “Delphernia,” she says. “Trust me.”

She reaches for my hand — the one with the torn thumbnail — but I rip it away. My pierced ear hums with new blood. She’ll take no more skin from me.

“A Master has chosen me, Mother Nine. Hasn’t my decision already been made? Should I not walk the path I’ve been given?”

It’s a trick of nerve, my tongue. Because she might tell me that this Master — whoever he is — is not one of the seventeen best. He’s not wearing bells, after all, and Mr. Crowwith doesn’t seem to know he’s here. But she is as speechless as an othergirl.

I look up at the Sea-Singer. My prayer worked.

The cloisterwings shift and shuffle. My heart splits. I’ll never see them again. Not if I leave. I want to run, kiss the bark of the hollow tree one last time, and brush the cloisterwings’ heads with the tip of a finger. I want to tell the birds I’m sorry they’ll never be free. I want to find the girl-Master’s stone-flute in the lungmoss and keep it for myself.

But Bly is waiting.

“I am sorry,” I whisper to the cloisterwings. The three words, so useless, are like kicks to my shin.

I do not run to the hollow tree. I ignore the whisper-room’s door, like a scar in stone.

I take my stiff new dress, my hurting hand. I take my bruises. I take my voice. I walk toward the ladder.

Toward Bly.

The boy with black eyes.

The boy who knows my secret.

I climb the first worn rung behind him, watching the heels of his golden shoes scraping at salt-weakened wood.

I fill my lungs.

It’s time I met the sky.