TANWEN
We scrambled to the west beach of Kanac without any idea what we were doing. Karlith limped behind with Gryfelle.
Were we sprinting to our deaths?
I skidded to a stop in the white sand behind the others. Warmil drew his sword. My father nocked an arrow on his bow. Diggy crouched like an animal ready to spring, a knife in either hand.
“Dylun? Warmil?” Fear seeped through my voice. “Father? What are we supposed to do?”
The black mass of strands was a heartbeat away.
“Try to think of them as strands like all others,” Warmil shouted above the whip of the wind. “Fight them with yours like you did before.”
Yes, except those strands had overwhelmed us on the Cethorelle. Fighting them one by one hadn’t worked, and this gathering looked many times larger than the mass that had attacked us.
Mor stood beside me. The black cloud rolled closer. It blotted out the sun an inch at a time until the world turned gray.
We weren’t going to make it through this. The certainty of death enveloped me, sorrow swallowing all my thoughts. It pressed in on me, squeezed until I couldn’t draw a full breath.
“Tannie!” Mor was reaching out his hand to me across the whipping wind and the darkness and the terror.
“We were so close, Mor,” I said desperately.
Everything we had been working toward, the cure we had sought, the desperate attempt to save me and Gryfelle, had been for nothing. We were all going to die on a Kanaci beach.
“Tannie.” Mor’s voice was firm but tender. He still held his hand toward me, and I saw my sorrow reflected in his eyes. “Together?”
Yes. Together.
I forced my mind to work through the problem. What were these twisted things? Stories? Ideas? Yes, ideas about pain, heartache, destruction, domination, greed. Who knew what else.
So we should counteract them with the opposite. Counteract them with the good.
I grabbed Mor’s hand, and I felt that familiar click of our gifts linking. Our eyes met, and he nodded.
What was the best, most wonderful thing I could imagine?
A world with none of the evil things that comprised the mass of smoky strands now upon us. Not a world where good always won, but a world where good didn’t have to fight because it was all that existed. A world with no sickness, no pain, no death. Only love and joy, flowing straight from the origin of goodness. People would live with each other and not grab for power or give in to selfish desires. Only love. Only joy. Forever.
White ribbons of light poured from me and Mor. Not quite as impressive as that beam from the cure, but close. Our white ribbons of love and joy were joined by splashes of color from the colormasters and streams of orange coils from Zel, the only other storyteller present.
I smiled to think of his wife, Ifmere, and her beautiful orange hair. This seemed to be becoming Zel’s signature story strand, and perfectly so. Ifmere and their baby boy were never far from his heart, so what else would come out when it was time to fight for what he loved?
Our light and color and hope poured out down the beach toward the torrent. Strands of life to beat back those of pain and death. The mass retreated back to the ocean, and for a moment, I thought we had managed it, just like that. We had saved ourselves and the island and Diggy’s friends, and Diggy herself.
But then it redoubled its strength and surged toward us.
I gripped Mor’s hand as tightly as I could, but it didn’t matter. A ribbon like liquid metal came straight for me. It wrapped around my waist, and I let out a scream. It didn’t just look like burning metal. It was burning metal, and it seared my flesh.
“Tannie!”
“Tanwen!”
I couldn’t tell Mor’s shouts from Father’s. I was twenty feet in the air, a searing stream wrapped around my waist. I screamed again and then went numb, unable to think of anything to counteract the pain or the fear. I just let the strand dangle me there, and again the thought flittered through my mind: Why wasn’t it killing me?
Then I remembered. We were the weapon. The strands weren’t there to kill us. They were there to capture us and bring me and Mor to their source. To use us.
But what about those who weren’t useful weapons? What of Father? Gryfelle?
I came back to myself, pain and fear be blazed.
I didn’t try to filter anything. I let my first thought of happiness form itself into a strand and made no apologies for it.
It was a future with Mor. Maybe a future telling stories together. Maybe one sailing around the world. Perhaps both. But no curse haunted this idea. No conflict or twisted-up feelings. Only happiness for everyone. Maybe it was the story of what might have happened if I had met Mor when we were younger.
Maybe Mor and I would have fallen in love before his ill-advised courtship with Gryfelle. Before Brac got it fixed in his mind that he and I should be husband and wife. Then Mor and I could have adventured on the seas in his father’s ship. We might have entertained the crew together, and Gryfelle would never have been cursed or forced away from court life. She would have met a brave knight or wealthy nobleman and entertained the court and His Majesty, King Caradoc II with her beautiful songs.
And Brac would have his Pembroni farm girl, just like he wanted. She would love the hum of life in a small village, like he did. Or had, before he joined the guard. They would have a hundred little ones, and Mor and I would come to the naming ceremony for each and bring presents from around the world, and I would kiss those little babies and love them like they were my blood, because Brac and I shared a bond as strong as that.
Perhaps in this story, Mother had lived. She and Father never would have been separated. They would be enjoying the glow of having raised their child and gotten through their hardest years of work. Father would take Mother to visit his friends all over the world, and that world would receive them differently because there would not have been intervening years of war and oppression.
And then maybe someday, Mor and I would add a little babe to this world—this fantasy world that was happy and warm. One or maybe two or maybe even seven.
None of it was real, of course. But that didn’t matter. The strands—azure, violet, rose, gold, pine, scarlet, and every other color one might imagine—swirled around me. Where it touched the molten metal, the metal sizzled, then disappeared. Like snipping one thread at a time until none remained and I was no longer bound.
Then I fell from twenty feet.
At the last second before I was about to hit the beach and break all my bones, something caught me, light and airy. The cushion held me a moment, then dropped me gently into the sand. I looked up, and there stood Mor, his hands out still, his fingertips pinked slightly where the strands had burst from them.
He pulled me up, and as I steadied myself, I surveyed the scene. My heart fell.
The mass was back over the beach now, and our efforts only drove back one small section at a time. It wasn’t enough. We would never force the cloud of ill intent to retreat completely. Not at this rate.
“It’s not trying to kill all of us,” I told Mor. “I don’t know who they’re after for sure, except I know they don’t mean to kill me and you.”
“Because we’re the weapon.”
“Yes.”
Mor looked out over the beach. I could see realization hit him. “The others . . .”
“Yes, anyone who isn’t useful to whoever is controlling this mess will be killed.”
“Gryfelle. Diggy.” Mor’s anger was growing—I could feel it in his words.
“My father.” I grabbed Mor’s arm as a thought struck me. “If they have any idea of what Diggy can do, they’ll want her too.”
Perhaps it hadn’t occurred to either of us until I said that, but suddenly I wondered where Diggy was. Because even if she didn’t care much about our mission, she did care about Kawan and his mother and keeping them safe on this island.
I spotted her, not too far down the beach.
She wasn’t brandishing knives. Perhaps she had realized there was no person to target. At least not nearby.
Such intense sorcery done from a distance? I had never realized power or malice so strong existed in the world. Gareth’s greed and self-serving deeds seemed commonplace by comparison.
But, though Diggy had sheathed her knives, she was still in the thick of it, and I squinted to try to figure out what in the world she was doing.
Zel shot a ribbon of blue light toward the smoky mass. As the ribbon sailed over Diggy’s head, she reached up and snatched it from the sky. Suddenly Zel’s strand wasn’t just blue light. It was blue fire. She hurled the blue fire toward the mass, and a big chunk of the dark cloud disappeared.
I should be running, helping, making my way back toward the strands, or at least I should be tending the searing flesh around my midsection. But instead, I stood stock-still, unable to take my eyes off Digwyn En-Lidere. I’d never seen anything like it.
Dylun fired off a splash of glowing green colormastery, and Diggy snatched that from the air and turned it solid, like a spear, except it glowed green and crackled with lightning. Diggy cried out and hurled it toward the mass. Another chunk retreated.
But even with Diggy’s ability, whatever it was, we weren’t making enough progress.
“Mor?” I had to shake him to get his attention, for he, too, was focused on Diggy. “Mor! It’s not working!”
“I know,” he said finally.
“We have to help! We have to save Gryfelle and the others.”
He paused, looked at Diggy again, and said, “Aye. Let’s go.”
Mor and I ran with purpose, like we were going to singlehandedly drive back the entire cloud of strands. But then we stopped. We saw the very last thing anyone had expected. Even stranger than Diggy and her strand-stealing.
Gryfelle was on her feet and walking down the beach, straight toward the cloud.
“Gryfelle!” Mor shouted.
“What is she doing?” I yelled.
We both ran. Toward Gryfelle as she glided toward this beast.
She must not realize its power. She must not know what she’s doing. She won’t survive.
We ran harder.
I could jump and throw my body over her. Shield her from the thing. Even if Gryfelle wasn’t useful, I was. This mass of evil wanted me, and I could use that. I could cover Gryfelle and give Mor a chance to do . . . something. Anything.
And then a solution began to form in my mind. The cure. Of course. If we could just get half a minute to hold it in our hands the way we were supposed to, perhaps Gryfelle and I could be healed. It didn’t always work, Dylun said. But it might work. If I could get to the box that held the orb, I could revive Gryfelle. She could help us fight. Maybe those ancient strands would even lend aid.
But the same moment the thought came to me, Gryfelle stopped and turned. She locked eyes with me, then with Mor. She was clear. Lucid. More than she had been in weeks.
She smiled sadly.
“No, Gryfelle!” Mor shouted. “No, no, no!”
He and I were almost there. Nearly close enough to touch her. Just about able to help.
But she smiled again, and her eyes sparkled with tears. “Good-bye, my friends.”