"Here, fish, fish, fish," Jenna singsonged as she leaned over the rail, the remains of a biscuit crumbling between her fingers to land in the water many feet below. "Come on."
With the passage westward blocked, they wouldn't be making it to Atteka anytime soon. In the meantime, they tried to make wise use of their time by training out on the open deck, and by fishing in order to add to their supplies. The ship was well-stocked, even when it came to feeding five, but the stores wouldn't last forever—and fresh fish tasted better than dried. If they could catch any, anyway.
"Patience," Piers told her, one hand resting lazily on the wheel. The ship was doing the steering for him. "It'll be worth it in the end. Though I'm not sure what fish live in these waters…"
He glanced at Kraden, but the scholar simply shrugged. He'd taken a chair up from below and sprawled out in the sun, thumbing through a logbook from who-knew-when. "We won't know until we fish one up, I'm afraid."
Sheba was draped across the rail, halfheartedly watching Jenna's attempts at fish enticement. She'd managed to get in a few good strikes during training this morning—she'd even knocked Piers down, once—and had decided that her work for the day was done.
Felix, meanwhile, leaned against a bulkhead and kept watch over them all from a safe distance. As long as he could see the horizon, he could tell himself that everything was all right. He hadn't slept well, but being out in the sunlight helped to chase away the lingering memories of darkness.
"Cure," he whispered, nearly inaudible, but it did nothing. His stomach churned, disgruntled, and he tried to will it to stay calm.
"C'mon, little fishies," said Jenna, leaning further over the side. Felix resisted the urge to yank her back from it. "I want to eeeeat you…"
"I wish we'd come across a date tree somewhere," Sheba sighed. "I miss fish with dates."
"Dates with fish?! That's disgusting! We need dill. Dill and potatoes."
That's how Mom had always made it, Felix remembered. He and Dad had caught the fish, and Mom had cooked them up…Jenna had always washed the potatoes, because she said cleaning fish gave her the creeps. Felix looked away, out toward the coastline. How things had changed.
"That's a waste of a potato," said Piers cheerfully, and both girls turned to stare at him. "What? The only thing good fish needs is a bit of lemon."
Sheba wrinkled her nose.
"It's delicious, I assure you. What do you think, Felix?"
The ship bobbed across a larger-than-average wave, and Felix put an arm out to steady himself. "They eat whale in Prox," he said, only half paying attention.
"Whale?" said Piers. "Really?"
Felix said nothing. He'd begun to regret eating breakfast.
Kraden chimed in. "You don't get whale near Lemuria?"
"Not commonly, no. I've seen them once or twice, but never up close. I think they have trouble navigating the currents."
"Fascinating," said Kraden. He closed the logbook he'd been reading, a finger stuck between the pages to mark his place, and looked at Piers over the rim of his spectacles, expectantly. "There's so much about Lemuria that we don't know."
Piers gave an obliging smile, and gazed out over the water. "It's a small, rocky island in the Sea of Time. It's shrouded in mist, and if you make it through that there are half a dozen treacherous whirlpools waiting to swallow your ship…we don't leave, much. I'm the first in many centuries." He fidgeted with the strip of cloth around his wrist, worrying at the knot. "We build houses of stone. My mother's house is one of the oldest. My uncle lives with us, and she's forever complaining about the mess."
"And your father?"
Piers's smile grew strained, just a little. "He died a very long time ago."
Kraden leaned forward, frowning. "But - I thought - "
Piers raised an eyebrow at him.
"Forgive me, but I thought that Lemurians were unusually long-lived, nigh immortal."
It must have been true, because Piers took it in stride. Behind him, Felix caught sight of Sheba mouthing the word 'immortal', and staring at Piers with renewed interest. Piers, at least, hadn't noticed.
"That may be so," Piers said, "but we drown just as easily as the rest of you."
"My apologies."
"You couldn't have known. And it was quite some time ago. Now, let's have a look at these fishing lines."
No luck. They continued to have no luck all the way back up the coast, and a stop at the next settlement they came across, on a small island at the mouth of the channel, confirmed that it wasn't just them.
"Ain't seen anythin' like it in years," said the island's lone inhabitant—an elderly gentleman, chewing enthusiastically on what looked like a clump of leaves—and spat, vigorously. "Channel got blocked, and the water's warmed up. Dead 'uns done washed up 'bout two months ago-" -spit- "-and since then we ain't had any catch to speak of, nosir. Now, can I interest you in some of this here kelp?"
Kelp in hand, they re-boarded the ship, and pulled out the most recent map, hoping against hope that it might show them some option they hadn't seen the last two dozen times they'd looked at it.
"What about north?" Piers asked. "Up and over Angara? It would take longer, but…"
Felix shook his head. "No. I've been there. It's covered in sheet ice, now. We'd never make it through."
"Perhaps we ought to try anyway," said Kraden. "What else can we do?"
The world was changing. The land was moving. Alchemy was coming back, like it or not, because they were bringing it back. They'd started something, with the beacons, and while he'd known it was bigger than any of them he'd never thought that it might stop them before they could see things through.
Alchemy ran deep in Lemuria, Kraden had said. They might know what was happening.
Felix gazed intently down at the yellowed parchment, feeling smaller and more inconsequential than he ever had in his life, and finally spat out one word. "Lemuria."
The others all stared.
"We can try to find another way around but—look at the map. It's changed, but not that much. Unless the quake ripped Angara in half, we'll have to get past that rock sooner or later. And Lemuria is full of Adepts, isn't it?"
"It is," Piers said, cautiously.
Maybe they could tell him what the hell was going on. "Would they know how to get around it?"
Uncertainty flickered across his face. "I do not know." He hitched one shoulder, uncharacteristically sheepish. "I cannot say that it's come up before. But King Hydros is wise, and knows much more of Alchemy than I. He may have an answer."
As prospects went, it wasn't stellar, but it was something. Piers was already doing them a favor, and he hated to push for more, but they had no other choice. "Can we try?"
Piers took a long time to reply, and when he finally did he wouldn't meet any of their eyes. "Yes," he said at last. "I'm willing to give you passage. But—"
He fell silent. His face had gone a little pale, Felix noticed, and felt unease twisting in his stomach.
They watched and waited for a response, until Jenna couldn't take it anymore. "But what?"
Piers glanced up, briefly, met Felix's eyes for half a second, and looked away again. "I do not know how to get there."
What?
"What?!" Jenna exclaimed. "Aren't you from Lemuria? What do you mean, you don't know how to get there?"
Sheba studied him a moment, puzzled, and then turned to Felix. "He's telling the truth," she said, softly.
It was Felix's turn to frown at him. "Explain."
"Lemuria itself is—not easy to reach. Even if you find your way to the Sea of Time, there are the whirlpools, and a maze of rocks the size of mountains. We keep ourselves and our secrets well-hidden." He smiled, a little bitterly. "Too well-hidden."
"But you got out before!" said Jenna. "Can't you just retrace your steps?"
"That was…not entirely my own doing." They all stared at him, and he heaved a sigh. "I was at the mouth of the maze when the tallest wave I've ever seen swelled up, and took my ship with it. We went over the rocks, and I was knocked unconscious. When I awoke the ship was already beached near Madra."
Wonderful, Felix thought. "What were you planning to do when your mission was complete?"
Piers shrugged, looking down at the table. Under the tan his face had gone pink. When he spoke, his voice was very small. "I'd hoped that by making a map, I'd discover the way back."
A gamble—but it was Piers's only option, and if Lemurians were as long-lived as Kraden said they were maybe it wasn't even that risky after all. Given an infinite amount of time, Felix supposed it would be possible for him to scour every inch of the sea until he'd found the way.
They didn't have infinite time.
Jenna was glaring, but Felix couldn't find it within himself to be angry. After all, Lemuria was Piers's home. To not know where home was…
And it wasn't as though they had any other options, themselves, either. "Well, then," he said, trying to sound more confident than he felt. "We'd best get to it."
The next day they headed onward, sailing northeast, and once the ship was safely underway Piers sat down at the long table belowdecks to start the mapmaking in earnest. Kraden remained up on deck, carefully taking more measurements for him. It was strange, Piers thought, as he painstakingly inked a stretch of coastline. All his life he'd wanted nothing more than to see Outside, and then for the last two months he'd wanted nothing more than to go back home. And now, with no easy way to get there—he should be terrified, he thought, but it was almost…exciting. Something different, anyway.
He'd been at it for about an hour when Sheba flopped down into the chair opposite, resting her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, her face the very picture of innocence. Piers hadn't known her for very long, true, but even he knew when something was up.
He felt her gaze boring into him, but didn't look up from his parchment. "Can I help you?"
"You're really old, aren't you." It wasn't a question.
He raised an eyebrow, and kept drawing. Yes, the coastline dipped inward, just there… "You're really rude, aren't you."
She grinned. "You don't mean that."
"Don't I?"
"Nope!" She slid forward, leaning over far enough to put her at eye level with him, and he quickly moved the inkwell out of range of her elbows. "How old are you, anyway? Older than Felix? Older than Kraden?"
That was, actually, a good question. He had no idea how old the scholar was—at least several hundred years, he assumed. He looked to be several thousand, but they said outsiders aged differently. "Old enough to know how to respect my elders."
Her grin widened, wickedly sweet. "How am I supposed to respect my elders if you won't tell me how old you are?"
"I'm older than you," he said. She couldn't have been more than forty, at most. "That should be enough. Didn't your parents teach you manners?"
"I don't have parents," she said. "I told you, I fell out of the sky."
He wondered, yet again, what she meant by that. She'd said it before, true, but people didn't just fall out of the sky. No matter. "They haven't got manners there?"
That gave her pause. She spent a moment contemplating it before finally declaring, "Nope!" and bounding away.
Gods help him, he thought, he'd never been that young.
With Piers inking the map, and Kraden taking the measurements, Felix had been recruited to handle the tiller again—though, with the Lemurian ship's abilities, handling the tiller amounted to nothing more than standing at the wheel and being ready to run for Piers if anything catastrophic looked like it was about to happen.
On the one hand, he almost hoped it would, because then he could hand the wheel over to someone who actually knew what he was doing.
On the other hand, nothing was currently trying to kill them, and Felix rather liked it that way. His churning stomach reminded him that he still wasn't fond of the sea, but out here on the water with nothing else around them, he could almost imagine it being…peaceful.
The hatch to the main cabin clattered open, and Jenna emerged. She waved up to Sheba in the crow's nest, who slid down to meet her, grinning. "Any luck?"
Jenna shook her head. "No. I asked him if they wore real clothes when he was young or if everybody just walked around in animal skins, and he looked at me like I had three heads."
They'd been playing guess-Piers's-age for the last several hours. Felix had originally thought it was harmless, but if they were going to bother him while he was trying to work on the maps…
Sheba threw her head back in mock exasperation. "Agh, no! You went too far back! Maybe I'll ask him if they had lanterns when he was a kid. Kraden, when were lanterns invented?"
Kraden looked up from his logbook, perplexed, but Felix interrupted before he could answer. "Enough."
Both girls spun around to look at him.
"He's helping us. Don't aggravate him." The last thing they needed was to wear out their welcome.
Sheba tilted her head, eyes narrowing. "Don't you want to know?"
"No." It didn't matter how old Piers was, he had a ship, and without it, they had nothing. "And if I catch you pestering him about it you're standing every watch by yourself for the next week."
She pouted dramatically at him, lower lip stuck out so far he was surprised she didn't sprain something. "Spoilsport."
Felix had thought that was the end of it—until dinner that evening. Fish, rice and pickled vegetables together was practically gourmet, all things considered, but even so it was an exercise in willpower to make himself eat it. His stomach had to get used to the sea eventually, he thought. He just wished it would hurry up. His plate was only half-gone by the time the others had all finished eating, and he pretended not to notice Kraden to his left, watching with concern.
At least the rest of them seemed oblivious. On his right, Piers sat thumbing through Kraden's geographical observations for the day, preparing to add to the map, and the girls sat across from them. Jenna had stacked everyone else's dishes up, and was waiting, impatiently, for him to finish.
"You know what else I miss?" Sheba said, sighing wistfully. "Cookies. Those little cookies with the sesame seeds all over them. They're the best."
"No," said Jenna. "My grandma's are the best. She makes them with honey."
"I must disagree," Piers told them both. "Aniseed cookies are clearly superior in every way."
Jenna elbowed Sheba in the ribs, sharply. "You're right," she hissed. "He is old. No one under fifty likes those things."
Elements help him, Felix thought, he couldn't take them anywhere.
