My mind is in the Border Sea and my allegiance belongs to the Lady Leviathan, but they in turn are owned by Garth Nix.

I begin with the canonically-heartbreaking penultimate scene in Drowned Wednesday, where Arthur faces her beside Suzy, Leaf, and the Carp…

Healing

"Be as you were," Arthur commanded, pointing the Third Key at Lady Wednesday. "When you were never hungry, when the Architect was still here."

Her limbs slimmed again, but she didn't uncurl. "Poisoned…by Nothing…"

"BE HEALED IN BODY AND MIND!" The trident heated and trembled violently in his hands, but he held it firm, envisioning the ruptured worldlet in her stomach vanishing into the Void without a trace. "Be cleansed of Nothing, of hunger, of everything!"

The tiny Rattus Balaena fell from her mouth. With the Key, he directed it to one side before it became full-sized, and kept it afloat as the Rats and an exhausted Doctor Scamandros launched and scrambled onto an inflated raft. Then it crumbled to Nothing and was banished.

When he turned back to Wednesday, she was on her feet and smiling. "I'm healed, Lord Arthur. Of everything." She pirouetted, arms flung wide and head thrown back. "I'll never eat again!"

"I doubt that," someone said in the huge group of Denizens treading water a short distance away.

"Return to me, my Followers! You are no longer in danger!" bellowed the Carp. A cacophony of splashes drew nearer in response.

A winged golden shark appeared on the horizon and arrived in a few leaps, circling above them like an excited puppy before transforming into a winged woman and swooping down to clasp her lady's hands.

"Your lonely days are over, my Dawn." Wednesday turned to Arthur. "I will need a new Noon and Dusk."

"I was thinking of a professional sailor called Sunscorch for—"

"NO!" two voices called in unison.

Two Followers of the Carp swam forward – a black-haired female Denizen and a blonde girl who had to be a Piper's child. Arthur lifted them, along with Leaf and Suzy, from the water to stand beside him. "Who are you, and what's your objection?"

The Denizen knelt, facing Wednesday. "I am Chiasa, former First Mate of the Cuttlefish. I have sailed in your service all my life, until Feverfew sank my ship and enslaved me in your inner worldlet. But I long to leave all land and ships, to roam across and within the Border Sea, and to work by your side tending is as best we can. I beg you to take me as your Noon."

The girl remained standing, then knelt when Chiasa poked her shin. "I'm Jennie Barnacle Scraper, former ship's boy on the Cuttlefish. I never served you before, 'cause I'd have just been serving myself to you as a snack, though I ended up in your stomach anyway, but I go where Chiasa goes and now I want to go under the sea and be your Dusk. "

"No Piper's child can be a Time," Wednesday said disdainfully. "An impossible job for you, and undignified for me. But you may be my Noon, Chiasa."

Arthur turned to Scamandros. "Doctor, would you like the job?"

"Dusk." A sun appeared on Scamandros's forehead and slid down to disappear below a sea-horizon by his left ear. A crescent moon rose from the sea by his right ear. "I would be honored, Lord Arthur."

"But—" Jennie protested.

"You could be a Tierce like me," Suzy suggested.

"What do you do?"

Suzy grinned. "Whatever I want, mostly."

"You would not do 'whatever you want' as my Tierce," Wednesday said. "You would be my messenger throughout the Sea, House, and Secondary Realms, and help Noon in every way you can."

"Great! I get along with everyone." She leaned close to Arthur and whispered "Even the Raised Rats."

Yes, Arthur thought. The Rats are hated by Wednesday and her Dawn, but friendly with all Piper's children. It would be good to have someone in power who valued them as allies and would have no wish to antagonize them. "What do the rest of you think?"

Chiasa smiled. "Jennie Barnacle is as tenacious as her name and as smart as a Denizen, and has always been curious about you, milady. She would serve you well."

"Then you may be my Tierce, Jennie," said Wednesday. "But if you prove more trouble than you're worth, I'll eat – no, feed you to her." She pointed at Dawn, who obligingly took winged-shark form for a moment and then became a woman again, still baring her teeth in a grin.

Chiasa sighed. "I wish I could do that,"

"You and Dusk can learn," said Dawn. "Teaching you would be my pleasure."

"Can I learn, too?" asked Jennie.

"No. But with the Key, you can be made able to breathe water as well as air. Lord Arthur, will you do so?"

Arthur hesitated. He'd done what was necessary, but was reluctant to inch farther toward becoming a Denizen. "I'm…afraid of sorcerous contamination…"

"Do this for my loyal Follower," commanded the Carp.

Dawn frowned. "If you won't do this small bit of sorcery, how do you intend to restrain and rule the Border Sea?"

"I don't. I'm going home, after giving stewardship of the Key to—" He stopped. He'd been about to say "Dame Primus," but the team of five people around him knew and loved the sea far better, and he trusted one of them far more. "Scamandros. Are you willing?"

"I – of course, if you wish it."

"You can't do that!" screamed the Carp, its moustache-tendrils writhing.

"Your first part didn't want the job when given it." Ignoring its protests, he pressed the trident into Scamandros's hands, speaking the words which transferred his power. Everyone immediately sank, until Scamandros raised them again.

"Ships coming," said a Rat on the raft, peering through a small telescope. "Five of ours, and a strange one…with the Mariner aboard!"

"I hope they'll take us all to Port Wednesday," said Arthur. "Then the Carp can join Parts One and Two of the Will, and these three thousand Denizens can—"

"—start rebuilding," Scamandros finished. "Without a – well – with these changes, much of the land will no longer be submerged. Buildings converted to ships can perhaps be re-transformed, and their operation resumed; ships can be built for the lifelong sailors who've lost them. I will come to check the progress later, but will first secure the boundaries of the sea while my companions spread the word of our lady's return. Miss Jennie, I will now ensorcell you to breathe underwater and find for you the waterproof stick-on wings which I believe are somewhere in my coat. Then I must rest."

"So must I," said Wednesday. "I can't remember the last time I stopped eating for even an hour."

Wednesday lay floating, eyes closed, savoring the sky's warmth on her face, the feel of her hair swirling gently around her, and the absence of hunger-pain in her belly. Her Times lounged on the Balaena's raft a discrete distance away. Scamandros dozed, tattooed fish drifting across his face, as the others sat gazing out to sea. Everyone else had left.

Tears sparkled in Dawn's eyes. "It's so good to see her happy, free of the need to eat."

"That's silly," Jennie grumbled. "Eating is fun."

Dawn glanced sharply at her. "Eating may be fun. Incessant, insatiable hunger is agony, especially when you spend thousands of years able only to feed it with slimy little fish and wriggling sea-bugs."

"Insatiable," Chiasa mused. "But now she can eat to satiation, and eat good food. I hope she'll enjoy doing so someday."

Dawn snorted. "Don't hold your breath."

"I won't need to hold my breath," Jennie declared. "Not ever again." She stood and dove into the sea.

Chiasa sprang up with a curse and looked down. The girl hovered several feet deep, chest moving as if she breathed. Soon she surfaced. "See?"

Chiasa hauled her out by the shirt, nearly capsizing the raft. "Don't scare me like that again!"

"Then don't get scared again, because I won't drown. I can live in the sea if I want, like those scaly people we saw in the Stomach."

"They're called Nisser, I told you. Wednesday's guards, who all were eaten."

"Not all of them," said Dawn. "Some were far enough away when she transformed, and have been living in the most barren parts of the sea, where she never went to feed. Now we must find them and take them back into her service."

"Wonderful!" Chiasa's eyes gleamed. "I always liked them."

"Mind you, much more of the sea has since been made barren by our lady's feasting. We must tend the remaining populations of sea life fish and help them spread again. There's so much work to do…"

Chiasa put an arm around Dawn's shoulders as Jennie leaned against her other side. "Together we'll get it done."

Spoiler: In this rewrite, Dame Universe-Destroyer won't get her way, and both Wednesday and the House (including its sea) will survive. I'm working on backstories now, and might write further adventures for the dream team. Suggestions are welcome.

I named Chiasa after the black swallower Chiasmodon niger, a deep-sea fish able to swallow animals four times its size, and Jennie after the insatiably gluttonous canine heroine of Maurice Sendak's lovely book, Higgledy Piggledy Pop!

I don't know if any Piper's children had followed the Carp, or if a Key can make someone (besides the wielder, as we saw in Superior Saturday) breathe underwater, or if non-Trustee Denizens besides Wednesday's Dawn can learn to shapeshift. But as they say in the House, I don't give a Raised Rat's whisker. Apologies to the Rats.