FOUR

THE KINGDOM OF CORAL

It took long enough for the others to arrive that the anticipation began to weigh upon Aster. She had abandoned Errol and betrayed Veronica. When she and Dusk last parted, it had been as mortal enemies. Even with Billy’s support, she knew the reunion was going to be hard, especially since there was so much she didn’t know. She felt like she had been given a chance to set things right, and instead had only made things worse in hopes of saving her father, and she hadn’t even managed the trade-off.

Her concerns were nothing more than the first few drops of a coming storm when the ship landed and her father was brought down the gangplank on a stretcher.

He was pale and unconscious. They carried him into the shade of some willows and left her with him. She clasped his hand, and began to weep.

“Streya.”

Her nickname, barely breathed.

“Dad?” she said. “Are you talking to me?”

His eyes were open now,

“Streya, I’m so sorry. I did it all for you. I would have done more, if I had the strength.”

“I know that, Dad,” she said. “What’s happening? What’s wrong with you?”

“The curse I made,” he said. “That did all of this. It’s found me at last. I made some . . . bargains. I am in debt, you might say. And I have many enemies. But so do you, Streya. So do you.”

Looking into his eyes, she realized he was all there, all of him. She hadn’t seen him like that since she was eight. He had finally come back to her. Despite all of her screw-ups, he was himself again.

“We can fight,” she said. “I have learned much. I have spells—”

“You will fight,” he sighed. “But not for me. Vilken will come. He is not—who I remember. There is a thing in him, an ancient disease—but you know that, don’t you. He won’t be far behind, because this is the place, and he knows it.”

“What place, Dad?”

He tilted his head. “Where I met your mother. Where I came to love her. Where I met you. Where I learned what real, true love is, and what it can do. And where I made the curse. This is the place it all began, and this is the only place it can end. Vilken knows that, and he does not want it to end. He would have the curse become permanent.”

He closed his eyes and let his head rest. His breaths became more ragged, spaced further apart.

“I saw her from my tower,” he said. “Like a second sun, a sun that was not in the sky, but in the sea.”

“My mother?”

“Do you remember her, still?”

“A little. And the house with the garden. But is it here? I don’t see it.”

“It’s here and it isn’t here,” he said.

He squeezed her hand.

“There was a rumor, long ago, that I had removed my heart and placed it far away, in hiding, so that nothing could ever hurt me. Some called me bezhmirtes, “deathless.’”

“I’ve heard of that,” she said. “Of hiding one’s life from harm. I thought it was just a story. Is it true?”

“Things like that can be taken too literally,” he said. “It was true in a way. Before I met your mother—before I met you—I believe I truly was deathless. But without a heart, how is one day, one year, one century different from another? What is the point of an endless banquet if the food has no taste? I found my heart, and became mortal. I lost it again, Streya—but only for a short time.”

“You can’t die,” she said.

“There is no true death in the Kingdoms,” he said. “I have come to believe the closest thing to a true death is immortality itself.”

“Daddy, please. This was all for you. Everything I’ve done—”

“You’re still young,” he said. “There is more for you to do.”

He pulled her down, so he could whisper in her ear.

“The Names,” he murmured. “You are strong enough, although the peril is still great. I wish . . .” he trailed off and feebly touched the side of her face with a limp hand.

“I am proud of you,” he said. “You are more than even I imagined.”

In her hand, his became cold—not slowly, but all of a sudden. His eyes turned toward her one last time, and then they hollowed out.

“I love you, Streya,” he said.

His lips stopped moving. And his chest. Tears blurred her vision as his hand became hard and stiff.

The earth below him began to sag with his weight and began to tug at her. She gasped and pulled back, but he was incredibly heavy now, and instead she was pulled with him.

She screamed when someone grabbed her under the arms, trying to wrench her away; she clenched her fingers on her father’s, refusing to let go.

But her hand ran out of strength, and she watched her father vanish into the hole as Errol dragged her, still screaming, away. The earth closed back, grass and all, as if her father had never been there.

She turned and began beating at Errol’s chest with her fists, shrieking that she hated him. Billy came and pulled her gently away, and together they walked off. They sat down on a low hill nearby. She cried while he looked out at the sea.

She realized that she had something in her hand, something that had not been there before.

She shouldn’t have said that stuff to you,” Veronica told Errol, once Aster was out of sight. “If you hadn’t pulled her back, she would have gone with him. She would be dead, too.”

“It’s true,” Dusk said, folding down cross-legged to sit with them.

“It’s okay,” Errol said. “I know how she feels. When my father died, I stayed. I stayed until everybody was gone, even my mom. I stayed until the bulldozer started pushing the dirt in. You know, the first couple of handfuls of dirt went in at the funeral. I guess it’s symbolic, or something. In the movies, it’s usually some guys with shovels that finish the job. But not for my dad. It was a bulldozer. Like they were building a parking lot. It wasn’t quick as what happened to Aster’s dad, but it wasn’t any better. The sight of red clay still makes me want to vomit. If I’d had somebody to take it out on . . .”

Veronica kissed him on the cheek.

“You did,” she said. “You took it out on yourself.”

Errol nodded ruefully. “Maybe. Anyway, we’ve got bigger problems, don’t we? If this Vilken character is coming, we’ve got to get a plan together, and fast. I don’t think the—what, thirty? Of us are going to able to handle him. Not without Aster’s dad.”

“You said a mouthful right there,” Veronica said. “I couldn’t stop him. Maybe Aster can, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“We’re supposed to do something,” he said. “With the orbs, to end the curse. Her dad said we were in the right place.”

“Yes,” Dusk said. “But we don’t have the orbs. Vilken has mine. Kostye had one, which Vilken presumably also has. Aster had one—”

“Which I ended up with,” Veronica said. “Haydevil took it. I don’t know if he still has it.”

“I don’t know who has the other two,” Dusk said. “The point is, we don’t have them, so remaining here can have no purpose. Given time, we might be able to find and acquire the orbs and learn the secrets of this place. But we will not have that time if we wait here for Vilken.”

Errol sighed. “I hate to admit it,” he said. “But you’re right. I’ll go talk to Aster. The sooner we got out of here, the better.”

Aster wiped her tears and rolled the orb in her hand. It wasn’t the silver one she had possessed twice before; it shimmered; pale rose, saffron, carmine, gold. It was like the first light of day, the dawn rolled up into a ball, a fire deep in the sea . . .

It pulsed in her hand and sent tingles up her fingers, into her chest.

When you find your heart, the woman had said.

When Billy showed up, she’d thought she understood those words. Now she understood she hadn’t.

“The Kingdom of Coral,” she sighed.

“It’s pretty,” Billy said. And . . . big. Inside.”

“Is it,” Aster said. She stood up and turned slowly, to face the way the ball was tugging her. When it stopped, she let it slip from her palm to roll on the ground.

As it rolled, it grew—baseball sized, basketball, beach ball and then very, very quickly much bigger. Its diameter expanded far faster than the distance it was traveling. In an eyeblink she was inside of it, as was Errol, a few yards away, looking astonished, and soon the whole island. The inside of the sphere was a faint pink film, retreating in every direction.

The hill, the trees, the sea were all the same, but the quality of the light was different. The sun wasn’t to be seen, neither could they see the stars for the golden light that rose up before them, painting the clouds above in the colors of dawn. The horizons, on the other hand, were indigo and grey, with strange coils of cloud rising up to reflect the light on their tops, like a forest of titanic fiddlehead ferns.

It was like a sunrise in the middle of the sky.

The light came from a castle on the highest hill of the island, which had been bare of any built structure a moment before.

“The Isle of the Othersun,” she said. She sank to her knees, and put her head down, not even understanding what she was feeling.

She heard birdsong, a lilting, four-note melody that repeated itself, broke with a little trill, then started again. It was no bird that lived in Sowashee, nothing she had heard on any of her journeys. But knew it from when she was a girl. And the flowers, like jasmine, but also like lavender—those were familiar, too.

She was here, at last, a place she had only barely known she missed.

But it was too late. Her father was gone.

“All for nothing,” she said. “For nothing.”

“Think so?” Veronica asked.

“Veronica,” she said. “I’m so sorry. Errol—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

She hadn’t known she needed to be forgiven. Despite everything she’d said to Veronica, all of her justifications, she knew she had betrayed Errol. She had striven so long with a single purpose, told herself anything was justified so long as she achieved it. That the end justified the means.

Now that the end was no longer possible, all she was left with was the means. It made her feel dirty.

Was this how her father had felt, these last nine years? If so, how had he borne it?

“Everyone,” Veronica said. “I’d like to speak to Aster alone for a few minutes.”

Billy took her hand, but Aster patted it.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t go far, okay?”

“Okay,” Billy said.

Once the others were at a discreet distance, Veronica sat down in front of her.

“Errol means it,” she said. “He understands.”

“Do you?”

Veronica shrugged. “Here is what I understand,” she said. “I spent a long time not caring about anyone or anything besides where my next . . . meal was coming from. Your dad, your whole quest—never meant anything to me. He wasn’t my dad, and I didn’t know him. But Errol means something to me. Unfortunately, so do you. So I stuck around, you know?”

“I know,” Aster said.

Veronica leaned close. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

“You know what he likes, don’t you? You know what he does. His pleasure—his existence—is about our pain. Causing it, remembering it—but more than anything, possessing it. I went to a museum once. I don’t remember much about it except this one exhibit—a stuffed lion. All that it had once been—all that life, that power—just a sack of skin with glass eyes. The fur was worn through in places, and its hair was falling out. I started crying, and nobody understood why. They thought it was because I knew it was dead—but that wasn’t it. And now I know all about that; I used to keep the bones of the men I killed. I polished them, when algae and stuff crusted on them. I played with them, like a kid plays with blocks. When they were drowning, taking that last breath, I was already dreaming about how their bones would look in my collection.

“Ever since you brought me to life, I’ve had to fight against that. I’ve been becoming something else—not a nov, not human. It’s like I keep coming to forks in the road. At each fork, there’s a road that leads to what he is, and a choice that leads me—someplace else, I hope. So far, I think I’ve made the right choices—because of you guys.

“Your father may be gone, Aster. But the Raggedy Man is still around, and he’s not going to stop. I know that because I understand him. The girls he has right now—that’s only the beginning. I can’t stop him by myself—I tried twice. But you, Errol—together we might be able to. And ending the curse—that’s probably a good start.”

Aster remembered him climbing up on her, the knife in his hand. Only her father’s spell had stopped him, and now her father was gone.

“I’m scared of him,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” Veronica said. “But you’re mad at him, too. Aster, that’s the part of you that gets things done, no matter what—we need that now. We may lose anyway, but with you all whiney and sad, we don’t have a chance.”

“It feels like we’ve already had this talk,” Aster said.

“Yep. Is it working this time?”

Aster shrugged, stood up, and faced the light. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s find out.”

On first sight Errol thought the castle was built of white stone, but as they drew nearer, he realized it more resembled a shell. It wasn’t made of shells—he couldn’t see anything that looked like an oyster or a clam or a conch—but it looked like a huge, weirdly shaped shell itself, a little rough and bumpy. Once they passed through the round gate, the impression was heightened, because inside the walls were smooth to the point of being glassy, and were various shades of pale pink, rising up in places to form delicate-looking, spiral towers.

The courtyard was filled with light. Bright, but never blinding. Even in the very center, from which it emanated.

A few yards in Aster stopped, and they all halted with her, waiting.

After a moment she nodded and continued on. When they got closer, Errol saw why she’d paused. She had just lost her father, after all—and now this.

Dusk had once told Errol that souls began in the highest Kingdoms and worked their way down. Some—the lucky ones—got recycled back to higher Kingdoms at some point and became part of a cycle. But some ended up in The Reign of the Departed, his world.

People on Earth knew about the Kingdoms, sort of—fairy tales, myths, religion—he figured that those were fractured memories of this place. Whether it was because the damned souls carried foggy recollections with them to their new and final lives, or because of people like him who had been over and back, he didn’t know. But there was some connection, that much was clear.

As clear as the glass coffin he was staring at, and the beautiful woman inside of it.

“You’re kidding,” he heard Veronica breathe.

He watched Aster move up to the casket and place her hands upon it.

“Oh, God,” Errol said. Because it was Aster lying there, eyes closed, arms lying at her sides.

The perception lasted only long enough for him to swear; then the differences began sorting themselves out. The woman looked a little older than Aster, maybe twenty. She and Aster shared the same high, broad cheekbones and sharply pointed chin, but there was something of Aster’s future in them, too. And this woman had hair so golden in color it deserved that adjective. She was dressed in a long, shimmering, sleeveless gown the color of a primrose whose every border was embellished with flowers. An eight-pointed star gleamed on the woman’s forehead.

“Is that . . . ?” he began.

“My mom,” Aster said.

She didn’t look dead. Her cheeks and lips appeared flushed—but of course she was also glowing.

He could see it was all too much for Aster.

“Come on,” he said to the others. “Let’s have a look around.”

Aside from the open gate they’d come through, each of the other walls had entrances. Errol and Veronica went through the one on the north.

It was less a castle, he saw, than a mansion, and not a particularly big one, given some of the places he’d seen lately. It wasn’t kept up. Flowering vines had climbed in through the windows, snaking their way on floor, walls, and ceilings, seeking the light in the courtyard. With the flowers came bees, butterflies, and aphids. Small brown lizards had in turn followed those in, and there was sign of larger, four-footed animals. Birds nested on the sills of upper windows.

They found stairs that turned upward into one of the spiral towers, where again the scale proved deceptive. The upper story was only a few feet wide and opened to the sky through graceful ogee arches.

“It’s not a real castle,” Veronica said. “More like a big playhouse made to look like a castle.”

“Yeah,” Errol said. “I noticed that too. Which is bad, because it means it probably isn’t defensible. Not that I know a lot about defending castles.”

“Dusk does,” Veronica said.

He blinked. “Maybe,” he allowed. “Probably.”

“Maybe you should go talk to her about this, then,” she said.

Veronica’s expression was hard to read. He felt like he was working without a net, and not for the first time. He’d thought—hoped—the kiss he’d shared with Dusk would go away, but the unspoken lie between him and Veronica kept growing.

“I’m not in love with her,” he said.

“I thought we were talking about castles.”

“She kissed me,” he blurted. “Or I kissed her. There . . . uh . . . was a kiss.”

Veronica frowned a little and looked out the window.

“I guess I knew that,” she said. “You two are so weird around me. Of course, there would be lots of reasons for that, like her attempt to murder me, and all, and you being so cozy now.”

“Yeah,” Errol said. “There is that.”

“I was planning on killing her,” Veronica said. “I thought about that a good bit, I can tell you. I had a couple of different ideas about how to do it.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I needed her to get to the Raggedy Man, and I wanted to kill him a lot worse. I also wanted to clear the rest of this up. Then I started thinking—maybe you need her. After this is all over, if we’re any of us still in one piece.”

“I don’t want her,” he said. “I want you.”

“Well,” she said. “Maybe I don’t want you. Did you ever think of that?”

It felt like a gut punch. One he deserved.

“Yeah,” he said. “When you abandoned me back in your boyfriend’s gypsy carnival and ran off with him.”

Even as it came out, he wondered what he was doing, why he would say that.

Her mouth formed a little “o”, and he could tell he was about to get it, but then she sighed.

“That’s right,” she said. “You got it just right. Sorry, Errol.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said. “I was just mad. I don’t really think—”

“You ought to,” she said. “It’s been great. First boyfriend since coming back to life and all that. But it’s time to move on. For both of us.”

“You aren’t serious. Veronica, I love you,” he said.

“Good for you,” she said. “It’s great you’ve learned how to say it. But right now, there are more important things to worry about than who loves who.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like that,” she replied, pointing.

Ships outlined against the dark horizon, at least half a dozen of them.

“Oh, crap,” he said. “That was fast.”

“Yep,” Veronica said. “Come on.”

But before she could go, he caught her by the arm and kissed her. To his relief, she kissed him back. But he wasn’t sure it resolved anything.

“We’ll talk about this later?” he said.

“If there is a later.”