Riven Isles

42 | Add Celebration to Injury

My eyelids drag open like sails—fighting my pull, fluttering. Lanterns strung across the cracked clay ceiling cast soft, warm light over the walls. It shifts mesmerizingly in the night, keeping the dark outside the carved-out windows at bay. Long white clouds drift over the glittering lagoon, moving slowly and serenely on the circulating air cast by the pouring falls. Moonlight outlines the clouds with a silver sheen and dances over the ripples of the dark waters. Inside the long, undecorated room, the floor is packed with bodies, lined in neat rows on woven mats. I start, sitting up, blinking quickly. My hands pat frantically around my body, making sure that I have not ascended. At a closer look, all the chests around me move with idle breaths. I sag with relief and search for the faces I know best. Thenshie has her freakish webbed hands on someone's face.

Next to me, Simon sleeps, slumped against the wall without a mat, his arms wrapped around his self. Elian is on the other side of him, running a needle and white thread through his torn purple scarf. He smiles at me, then his eyes fall fondly to Simon. It crosses my mind that I do not know where I am, nor how I arrived here, but grief strikes me with one great blow and those things do not matter. I hug myself, fixing my eyes on the mystical night out the window. He is really gone. Yet, the smallest, youngest part of me—the same childish heart that stole my voice at my mother's death, and allowed me to soak in every word of the captain's when he made me feel important—twitches with a hope that he might surprise me one last time. I imagine his silhouette standing in the doorway, making some grand entrance. I imagine the scent of his spiced tobacco filtering through the window, and the sound of Dorian's lullaby plucked on his banjo strings.

"The celebration," I say, drawing Elian's attention. I frown, sniffing. "The captain said that when we won, there would be a celebration."

Elian puts his fingers to his lips, nodding to our mutual friend between us. A large and thick bandage is taped over one of his ears, partly hidden by his sandy-colored curls. It stretches under his chin and wraps around his skull like a bonnet. "There is a celebration." Despite his indication for me to speak quietly, he speaks oddly loud, unaware of it. "At least, there was. They've grown quieter now. We could hear the music and the applause and so forth before, but I am sure that many have left. It's quite late, Walt." He points past me.

I follow his finger to a different window. Past dark spires of clay poked with empty holes, far along a slithering dirt path and beyond a patch of forest and a curved stone bridge, lively blue and orange lights illuminate a flat hilltop, the highest point of the largest isle. Twisting grey columns stand around the grassy mesa, as off-balanced and unusual as the buildings of the village with wide bases and tapered tips.

My fingers wrap around my blanket. Professor Woods' jacket. Frowning, I look to Elian.

"He looks so calm, don't you think?" the cook's assistant murmurs. His words garble, as if drunk.

I blink at the professor. His hair is a mess, the oil losing its shape, each strand finding its own way. Stubble roughens his jaw, circles ring his closed eyes. His clothing is rumpled, his shoes scuffed, his face dirty. "I guess so," I reply half-heartedly. I fold the jacket over my arm and lay it beside its owner, careful not to accidentally nudge him with the tweed. Why would he have left it with me? His arms cradle himself as though he is cold.

I see my scroll, tucked in the crook of the professor's elbow. I frown and start to reach for it but hesitate. A second scroll lies near my feet. I reach for that one instead and unroll it gingerly. It is mine—it is the one to hang in the captain's cabin when we, or I, build it. I roll it again, my fingers tightening around the sealskin. I will cry, I think. I want to. Not yet. The captain... I would like to dance where he could not. I would like to give him the dance that he imagined at the top of that hill, the way he told it to me. He said he would dance with everyone.