SIX

FIVE KINGDOMS

It was Hawk’s ship and his creepy little gold men who fished them out of the water. When Hawk saw Errol, he grinned ruefully.

“You were a worthy foe,” he said. “I hope now you can accept me as an ally.”

“I’m just—your guy shot me,” Errol said.

Hawk shrugged. “If you wish satisfaction, I understand. We can fight at your convenience. But if it’s all the same to you, I think it would be better to end the curse first and fight later.”

Errol nodded as if he agreed; he had a hard time believing anything Hawk said, and even more difficulty turning his back on him. Every time he caught sight of one of the bad cupids he itched to draw his sword.

It wasn’t a lot better with Nocturn. He’d never met her but knowing how she had treated Veronica didn’t endear him to her. As for Gloam—he had apparently been Vilken’s footstool up until recently. And they had all had a bad experience with Dusk. The only one he hadn’t heard anything bad about was Dawn. She was the youngest of the lot, maybe thirteen, with red hair and freckles. She was bubbly and affable.

Coming from this family, though, he was willing to bet she had her moments, too.

After they were all back on land, Hawk took his fleet back out, scouting to make certain Vilken’s forces were routed and not merely regrouping.

Food and drink were unloaded from the remaining ships, and soldiers began setting up camp around the castle. Several of Dawn’s retainers were—or at least claimed to be—physicians, and began tending the wounded. Aster was found to be weak, but physically sound. After a few sips of some sort of tea, she came back to weary consciousness. Errol wanted to talk to her, but Gloam was with her, falling all over himself with apologies for the part he’d played in Kostye’s Kingdom. He was a very talkative fellow, and Errol wasn’t in the mood for pointless chatter. He went searching for Veronica, but couldn’t find her, which worried him. When last he’d seen her, she had that look in her eye he’d come to recognize, the one that meant she was up to something. But if she’d wanted him to know what it was, she would have told him. He took it as another sign that their relationship was even more seriously damaged than he thought.

He hoped she wasn’t off to kill Nocturn or someone else. Everything finally seemed to be going their way, but at the same time, the peace felt very fragile. If anything happened to one of Dusk’s siblings, it was all sure to come apart.

Whatever “it” was.

He decided to look in on Dusk and see how she was. Maybe she could tell him more about what was going on.

Dusk had been stripped of her armor, part of which had been dissolved by some sort of acid Vilken’s weapon had discharged. She now wore a flowing robe over her bandages. Her side had been burned, and the pain had obviously been terrific, but she acted as if nothing had happened.

“What of you?” she asked him. “You were injured.”

“Yes,” he said. “But the armor heals itself, you know.”

“But what of the man beneath? You were bleeding.”

“It doesn’t hurt anymore, so I guess it fixes me, too. But there really isn’t any way to know.”

“What do you mean?”

That sort of pissed him off. Why was she taunting him?

She saw the look.

“Errol?”

“You know I can’t take it off,” he said.

She blinked, looking astonished. He realized she wasn’t faking it.

“Of course you can,” she said. “You have only to say the words.”

“Words?” he said.

“Oh. I suppose in all of the tumult I forgot to tell you,” she said. “You need only say bernas veras.”

“Real boy?” Errol translated. “Seriously?”

“You understand the reference? It was something Aster told me about, a story—”

“Yeah, I get the reference,” he said. “It’s just—never mind. Bernas veras.”

The last syllable was hardly out of his mouth before the armor simply fell off of him.

“Well,” Dusk said. “This is hardly proper.” She turned her head away, but he caught a smile as she did so.

“Oh,” he said, looking down. “Yeah. Sorry. Excuse me.”

He quickly put it back on and made a mental note to ask some of the guys if he could borrow a shirt and pants.

“Thanks,” he said, when he was decent again.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “We haven’t had a chance to talk, since, you know . . .”

“There is nothing to talk about,” she said. “I made a mistake, yes?”

“Well—mistake? I don’t know. But it’s just that—”

“You’re loyal,” she said, her voice rather flat. “That is your nature. I must respect that loyalty—as you must respect mine.”

He immediately felt a little wary. The last time her “loyalties” had come into play, things had gone poorly for the rest of them.

He was wondering how to frame a question about that when Nocturn arrived. She looked like a spooky, dark-haired version of Dusk. He kept expecting her to smile and show vampire teeth.

“Vilken?” Dusk asked.

“His fleet is routed. As for he himself, it isn’t clear. I did a Night Spinning on the matter of his demise, and it was inconclusive.”

“A shark ate him,” Errol said.

Nocturn looked at him as if he had entered a fancy restaurant wearing camouflage and a trucker’s hat.

“For one such as he, that is hardly proof of his death,” she said.

“She’s right.”

He hadn’t seen Veronica arrive, and he now began to wonder how long she had been there, outside of the tent flap. Had she heard his conversation with Dusk?

“You don’t think he’s dead?” Errol said.

Veronica shrugged. “I don’t know for sure. But my gut says no.” She nodded at Nocturn. “You’re a bitch, by the way,” she said. “Just so you know.”

Nocturn looked daggers at her.

“I remember you.” The black-haired woman said. “You wouldn’t happen to know what became of my prisoner, would you?”

“You mean Haydevil?” Veronica asked. “Oops. I sort of let him go.”

Errol sighed. So that was what she had been up to. He’d hoped to free Haydevil by negotiation.

Nocturn swore something under her breath and reached for her sword. “Nov, that will be the last of you, I think—”

“Nocturn,” Dusk snapped. “Stay your hand. Haydevil? You had him prisoner? Why didn’t I hear of this?”

“He has been a thorn in my side,” Nocturn said.

“You kind of moved into his house without permission,” Veronica said. “I don’t blame him. Anyway, he’s our friend. Ask your sister.”

“Yes,” Dusk agreed. “He has been helpful to us in the past. Nocturn, forget this, and think instead of the task at hand.”

Nocturn’s expression suggested she wasn’t in such a forgiving mood, but then she shrugged.

“You’re right. And if on nothing else, on this the nov and I agree. We must act quickly. The Five Kingdoms. We must employ them immediately and end the curse.”

“Kingdoms?” Errol said.

“She means the little marble-things,” Veronica explained.

“Indeed,” Nocturn said. “Aster unrolled the Coral Kingdom to reveal this island. We discovered the Kingdom of Silver on Haydevil, which led us to this place. I myself possess the Kingdom of Obsidian. Hawk has the Copper Kingdom. The Kingdom of Gold, I assume in is your possession, Dusk.”

“It is not,” Dusk said. “It was taken from me when Vilken made me captive. He must have had it. Which means—”

“Yeah,” Veronica said, “On that subject.”

She opened her fist. On her palm rested a gleaming sphere.

“The Kingdom of Gold!” Dusk exclaimed. “You found it!”

“Careful,” Veronica said. “It has shark vomit on it.”

Dusk closed her eyes and sighed in relief.

“Thank you,” she said. “Without you—”

“Let’s just do this, okay?” Veronica said. “I’m a little tired of all this honey-talk.”

Dusk nodded. “Gather everyone in the castle,” she said. “Whether Vilken survives or not, there are others who would frustrate our designs. This is best done now, while we have the means and are unopposed.”

“I’ll go find Ms. Fincher,” Errol said. “I’ll get Aster, too.”

Delia entered the garden, seeking still and quiet. Her mind was unable to stop replaying the motion of the last few . . . hours? Days?

Time had so little meaning without clocks and sunsets.

She hoped to find a little solace here but found that Aster was already present. She hesitated a moment, debating whether to go in at all and was just deciding not to when Aster noticed her and beckoned for her to enter.

“This is nice,” she said, at a loss for how to start a conversation that might be the very one she was dreading.

“I remember it,” Aster said. “From when I was a little girl. Sometimes—back in Sowashee—sometimes I started to believe it was only a dream. Something I imagined or made up. Sometimes, after Dad got bad, I began to think maybe none of it was real. That I was crazy, like he was.”

“But you weren’t.”

“I might have been better off if I was,” she said.

“Are you all right?” Delia asked, knowing it sounded inane.

“No,” Aster said. “I’m really not. Dad—you didn’t know him when I was little. He loved me so much, sometimes it was hard for me to understand. But the thing I did know was that I was the only one he had. My mother was gone; he never talked about any other family. He never had friends. Only me. But I could also tell he had given up . . . a lot. But I never knew what it was. I still don’t. You never understood why I wouldn’t apply to colleges. Do you get it now?”

“Yes,” Delia said. “You didn’t have any other goals.”

“That’s right. I was going to fix him, and he was going to be my dad again, and we were going to live happily ever after. And if I couldn’t have that—”

“Then you didn’t want anything,” Delia said. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry I got you pulled into this,” Aster said.

“Don’t be,” Delia said. “I would rather . . .” But she couldn’t think of any way to say it that wouldn’t sound trite and stupid and somehow the moment seemed to rise above something one might find on a dime-store gift card.

“Did you love him?” Aster asked.

Delia realized she was crying, but she didn’t make any effort to hold it in.

“Yes,” she said.

Aster was silent for a bit. “This is weird,” she said.

A laugh coughed up out of Delia. “Yes,” she said. “Very inappropriate.”

“I think it’s okay,” Aster said. “I don’t imagine you’re going to get your old job back.”

“Right,” Delia said. “Probably not.”

“Thank you,” Aster said.

“For what?”

“For being with him. I’m glad he had someone who cared about him besides me. It makes it a little easier.”

“I hope so,” Delia said.

She heard a soft clearing of the throat, and saw Errol was standing at the entrance to the garden.

“Time to, you know, save the world,” he said.

“We’ll be right there,” Aster told him.

This would be the weirdest group photo ever, Errol thought. The brothers and sisters and Aster, with their various forehead birthmarks. The bad cupids and Nocturn’s gaggle of bat-wannabees, a boy in wooden armor, Billy looking out-of-place in one of Gloam’s dandified outfits, his high school guidance counselor wearing a peasant dress.

All standing around a chick in a glass coffin?

Say “cheese.”

But no one said much of anything. He had expected some sort of incantation, boiling green liquid, incense. Why, he wasn’t sure; he’d seen plenty of magic by now, and none of it was like that. On the other hand, he had never been around when something really big was being done, like taking a curse off of the entire universe.

What happened was that Dusk opened her palm, revealing the silver sphere. She gently rolled it onto the ground as Aster had, with the same results; it expanded quickly, and the light changed once again; the weird glow in the castle was gone, replaced by a setting sun in the west. Then Nocturn rolled hers, and night fell. Not instantaneously—the setting sun simply very quickly finished its journey. The moon rose, full, with the same unnerving speed.

Then it was Dawn’s turn, and night became morning, with the sun peeking up in the east.

Hawk was next, rolling out the Golden Kingdom. The sun charged up to midday, and the earth shifted under them. Errol realized that they were no longer in the seashell mansion but were instead within the golden walls of a gigantic castle, with all sort of towers and minarets climbing skyward.

And the glass coffin—it wasn’t glass anymore. It wasn’t the same thing for two seconds in a row. In one blink of the eye it was a body wrapped in cobwebs, in the next, the sarcophagus he had encountered outside of the city of pyramids, the woman with the porcelain face, then a sort of mermaid with a snake’s body, a shining tree with golden fruit. The images shifted, went faster and faster until they became a column of rainbow light that was soon too bright to look directly at. He felt heat on his face, growing hotter.

Then the light dimmed and the heat backed off, and the images and effulgence resolved into a woman. It was not the woman they had seen in the coffin. Not Aster’s mother.

She was tall, clothed in a shimmering gown of yellow-white. Like Aster’s mother she was blond, but her hair was even lighter, almost true white. She wore a white crown with a hundred little points flaring out. She was beautiful, and she was also terrifying.

Hawk dropped to his knees, quickly followed by all his siblings, including Dusk.

“Majesty!” Hawk said.

Errol watched them, wondering what the hell was going on. Who was this woman? He had seen the sarcophagus in the mash of images. Was it her, the one who had saved him from the ghul, given him the feather?

“Rise children,” the woman said. “You have done well. You have done very well.” Her words were music; Errol had never heard a more perfect voice. To his great surprise, she took a step toward him.

“Errol,” she said. “So pure of heart. My true champion.”

She turned to Veronica. “And you, darkling. You found your way here. I am so proud of you.”

Veronica’s eyes were wide; she was trying to keep her face otherwise expressionless, but to Errol she looked troubled.

“And you, Aster,” she said. “Most of all. You brought me back, when so much stood in your way. Yours is the greatest sacrifice.”

“Who are you?” Aster asked.

“She is our mother,” Hawk said. “The queen.”

“Aster!” Ms. Fincher said, but the queen waved her hand, and she caught at her throat, unable to speak. Aster blinked and opened her mouth, but she, too was waved to silence.

“I don’t understand, Mother,” Dusk said. “Have we not done what was needed? Is the curse not broken?”

The queen’s smile was so radiant it made Errol’s legs quiver.

“The curse cannot be undone,” she said. “The world you were born into will never exist again. But you and I, my children, can remake it. Better. Brighter. It can be ours.”

“How?” Hawk said.

The queen pointed at Aster. “Aster is the issue of the curse. She is the very nadir of it. Her blood will change the world and heal it.”

Errol got that. He didn’t need to be a genius to see where this was going. He drew his sword.

“Yeah,” he said. “Hell no.”

“Errol,” the queen said. Her voice was gentle, full of care.

“There is a place for you at my side. You need never return to the dead world from which you come. Your soul, like ours, can be eternal.”

That stopped him. He remembered the white lady coming for him. The terror, the absolute certainty that when she ended him, nothing would remain. No ghost, no spirit, no soul. To live forever, to be free of the fear of facing her again, this time for real—it sounded good.

Yet, his father had been there, too, and his father should have been just as dead and gone. Maybe he was; maybe none of that had been real.

But maybe it had. And maybe it didn’t matter anyway.

“There are worse things than dying,” he said. “And what you’re asking me to do is one of them.”

He started forward, but one of Nocturn’s goons seized him from behind. Billy jumped forward and knocked Gloam down before charging the queen, but three golden arrows appeared in his chest. His eyes went wide, and he dropped to his knees, looking more puzzled than anything else. Aster ran toward Billy, but Hawk grabbed her by one arm, and Nocturn by the other.

“Dusk,” the queen said. Errol struggled, but he couldn’t break free of the men holding him.

Hawk forced Aster to her knees and pushed her head down, exposing her neck.

“Dusk!” Errol shouted. “No!”

Dusk drew her sword. She shot Errol what he took to be an apologetic glance, before raising her weapon to cut off Aster’s head.

Instead, Dusk punched Hawk in the face with the butt of her weapon, and moving very quickly indeed, slapped Nocturn on the side of the head with flat of her blade. She yelled something, and a sort of shock ran through the air. Aster gasped for breath, and shouted a word of her own.

In an instant, a whirlwind sprang up around Aster, sweeping everyone outside of its eye away, the queen included. Nocturn staggered into the wall of wind and was gone. Errol charged forward, balled up his fist, and hit Hawk with every ounce of strength he had, and he too vanished into the screaming cyclone.

Now only Aster, Dusk, Veronica, Billy, and Errol were visible, although a terrific light was growing in the direction the queen had been blown.

“Aster!” Dusk yelled. “The Kingdom of Coral! Roll it back!”

Aster, wild eyed, didn’t seem to understand her. But then she opened her mouth and called, beckoning with her hand.

The wind and light died away to nothing. Dusk’s siblings and their minions were scattered all about the great courtyard, but the queen still stood, looking very, very angry. She raised both of her hands and began to speak. Even then, it sounded lovely, like singing.

The world closed in around Errol and his companions. Everything distorted as if they were inside of a goldfish bowl, looking out.

Then everything stopped.

They were standing on the island, but there was no seashell castle and no golden palace. It was exactly as when they had first arrived. And in her palm, Aster held the Kingdom of Coral, again the size of a shooter marble.

She tucked it into her pocket and dropped down beside Billy. He didn’t look calm, as he usually did. He looked like someone bleeding out from three arrows wounds ought to.

Aster was weeping. “I don’t know how to save you,” she said. “I don’t have any spells for this.”

“It’s okay,” Billy said. He looked terrified, but he reached up to touch her face. “At least I saw you again.”

“Aster,” Dusk said, stepping forward.

She held a small phial in her hand. Errol recognized it.

“The water of health,” he said.

“I used the rest,” Dusk said. “I tried to revive my mother with it. It didn’t work, although it did awaken her from her deepest slumber—and I suppose, led us to these straits. But I never used the last dose.”

Errol saw, then, that Dusk had her other hand pressed to her side. It was completely red, and her gown was soaked with blood.

Aster noticed, too.

“I may live,” Dusk replied. “It bleeds, yes, but the blade may have missed my organs. Take it. Please. I cannot redress all I have done, but this I can do for you.”

“Thank you,” Aster said. She took the phial and knelt beside Billy, pouring the liquid between his parted lips. Then she pulled out the arrows. Billy screamed until he passed out.

Dusk turned her gaze to Errol and collapsed.

When he reached her side, she was still breathing, and her eyes were still open.

“My armor!” he said. “If we put it on you—”

“Only you may wear it,” she said. “It is part of you.” She clutched his hand. “Errol,” she said. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know they meant to kill Aster, not until right before you did. You must believe me.”

“I believe you,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I believe you?”

“Because I have lied to you so often,” she said. “I thought my reasons were sound. I told myself I was doing what I must. Our mother promised to restore the world, to set things right. She is my mother, and I believed her. Forgive me.”

“Sure,” Errol said. “But you need to hang in there. You’ve survived a lot worse than this.”

He noticed from the corner of his eye that Veronica was also kneeling down next to her.

“Apologize to me,” Veronica said.

Dusk was noticeably weaker with each passing second. Her eyes were half closed.

“I am sorry, Veronica,” she said. “What I did to you was unforgivable.”

“Uh-huh,” Veronica said. She took a deep breath. “You may not like this.”

Dusk, wheezing now, lifted her hand toward Veronica.

“It is our time of reckoning,” Dusk said. “I understand.”

“It is,” Veronica said. “So I hope you understand.”

Dusk nodded.

“Veronica—” Errol began.

“Stay back, Errol,” Dusk said. “It is what must be.”

It wasn’t a spell, but he nevertheless felt transfixed by the certainty in her tone.

Veronica bent, cradled Dusk’s head in her hands, and kissed her. Dusk groaned, lay back, and was still.

Horrified, Errol watched Veronica rise, unable to process what she had done. What he had let her do.

Veronica let out a slow breath and turned to him.

“I have to go Errol,” she said. “I can’t explain.”

“What are you talking about?” It wasn’t what he wanted to say. But what he wanted to say, he couldn’t even wrap his head around.

She smiled sadly, then kissed him, too. Her lips were very warm.

She turned, ran, and dove from the cliff. Errol chased after her in time to see one leg kick above the water. Then she was gone, except—he thought he saw something else, an ocean swell, but with something beneath it, something big.

Then, that too was gone.