From their first day on the sea, it had been clear their lives were in Nell’s hands. And what capable hands! Watching Nell captain Maysha was like watching a weaver weave or a blacksmith smith. She could chart the stars, tie a one-handed knot, balance barefoot on the edge of the dhou without holding on to anything.
Her magic didn’t hurt, either. Nell could do things Mia had never imagined: extract salt from seawater to make it drinkable, catch fish by chilling a modicum of ocean until their heartbeats slowed. A few days into their voyage, she had plucked a floating sea urchin from the water, crushed it down to powder, and used her magic to melt a sprig of seaweed into paste. After blending everything into a pale yellow cream, she had handed it to Mia.
“To protect you from the sun,” she’d explained. “So we don’t exhaust ourselves healing you fourteen times a day.”
Now, as Mia smeared the cream onto her cheeks and forehead, she braced herself for the inevitable gibe from Pilar.
“Still smells like fish carcass,” Pilar said, right on cue.
Mia turned to Nell. “Could you do my shoulders?”
Their benevolent captain smiled. “Of course.”
As Nell’s rope-callused fingers massaged cream into her shoulders, Mia closed her eyes. She had tried dozens of times to re-create the night they fled the snow kingdom, when Nelladine had touched the indigo frostflower inked onto Mia’s wrist, spilling warmth over her skin. Results should always be reproducible: that was a cornerstone of the scientific process. Over and over, Mia had entreated her friend to touch the moving fyre ink again. When that didn’t work, they would try the other wrist. Then hands. Then arms. Then shoulders.
“Magic?” Nell asked, accurately predicting what Mia would ask next. Magic was a critical variable in the equation; they’d tried it both with and without.
“Yes,” Mia said. “Thanks for asking.”
Nell’s hands stilled. Mia knew she was channeling all her magic into her fingers, trying to spark sensation. Hot, cold, tingling, soothing—whatever Mia requested, Nell would attempt to conjure. Once or twice Mia had thought she detected the faintest flicker of feeling. Her heart would soar. Finally, finally she had climbed out of the dark box. But the sensation was so ephemeral she suspected her own yearning was yielding a false positive.
“Can we try the enthrall?”
Nell hesitated, the way she always did when Mia asked to be enthralled. And, like always, Mia had her defense at the ready.
“You told me magic is about being attuned to other people. That you must only touch them if it’s what they truly want. It’s what I truly want.”
Nell sighed. She reached for Mia’s inked wrist with one hand, her heart with the other.
Nothing. No thrill of sticky heat, no melted chocolate, no warm honeyed hum.
“Look on the bright side, Rose,” Pilar said. “You’re immune to magic.”
“Yes,” Mia said, unable to mask her frustration. “But I’m immune to everything else, too.”
“Don’t give up hope.” Nell gave her arm a squeeze. “We’re not far from Pembuk now, and there are powerful Pembuka elixirs, all kinds. Like the one your mother gave you that got lost in the avalanche. They could help you, really they could.”
Mia had a hard time believing anything could help.
“Want me to massage your shoulders, Nell? You’ve been doing so much for me.”
Nell shook her head. “I’m perfectly fine.”
Sometimes when Mia looked at Nell—she was afraid to even think it—she felt a softening in her belly. As if a tiny knot had been untied somewhere, a satin ribbon unfurling. The thought frightened and confused her, but it calmed her, too.
In those fleeting moments, she wondered if perhaps the enthrallment had worked a little after all.
“She’s quiet today,” Nell said, assessing the smooth black sea. Mia had marked this many times: to Mia, the ocean was an it; to Nell it was always a she. So was Maysha. Their first day at sea, Nell had told them, “A dhou moves and breathes, same as we do. Why shouldn’t she have a name?”
Pilar groaned. “I hate when it’s quiet. With no wind it’s like we’re treading water. At this rate we’ll never get to Pembuk.”
“We will.”
“But I can see land now.” She waved an impatient hand to the north. If Mia shielded her eyes from the sun, she could see a sandy blur in the distance. That had been true for days.
“Why don’t we find a harbor?” Pilar said. “We could eat something that isn’t fish.”
“We’re close, I promise. Don’t forget I know the Pembuka coast better than you do. We’re looking for Pata Pacha, the cove I sailed out of four years ago. We’ll make landfall and take a caravan to the first of the glass cities.”
Pilar yawned. “I’m bored.”
“How can you ever be bored on the ocean?” Nell said. “Sailing gives me the same feeling as when I throw a fresh slab of clay on my potter’s wheel. Anything is possible, and everything can shift. The sea is always changing, always transforming.”
“But isn’t that what makes it dangerous?” Mia said, loathing the sound of her own voice. Sometimes she felt as if Pilar had stepped into the role of rash, petulant child, whereas she’d assumed the role of cautious, fretting mother.
“I don’t think so, no,” Nell said, “though I suppose it depends on your definition of dangerous. The sea swings high and low, wild and tranquil, but she is always honest about who she is.”
Like you, Mia thought. Nell laughed and cried so freely, her emotions crashing over her like giant waves before dissolving into sea-foam. She spoke the same way, sentences flowing into one another, words rising and falling in a fluid tumble. Mia couldn’t imagine being that free with her feelings. She wasn’t sure she’d want to be.
“The sea doesn’t pretend to be sweet and docile when she doesn’t feel like it,” Nell said. “I’d choose the ocean any day over Prisma.”
Mia cocked her head. “Prisma?”
“I thought I’d told you about the island! Very controversial in the glass kingdom, some think it’s an abomination, some think it’s a gift. The Isle of Forgetting, they call it. Home of the glass terrors. I told you about those before, didn’t I, Mia?”
“You didn’t tell me,” Pilar grumbled.
“It’s a natural phenomenon. The wind whips up the sand and the sun melts it into a glittery glass cyclone, and when you look into it you see your life . . . only it isn’t really your life. All the grief and sadness are gone, along with the mistakes you made, the people you lost, so you’re looking at the life that might have been, the better one, and you don’t just see it, you’re inside it.”
Pilar shrugged. “Doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Sure it doesn’t. Until you walk toward the whirling shimmer of glass with your arms wide, heart open, and you don’t even feel it when it slices you apart.”
Mia shivered. “Why would anyone go to Prisma?”
Nell blinked at her for a moment. Then she turned away, hoisting herself up into the bow.
“Ask the Shadowess,” she said.
This had been happening more and more: little moments where Nelladine pulled back and drew into herself when one of them mentioned the Shadowess. Strange, considering it was Nell who insisted on taking them to the Shadowess. “The only person who can help,” she’d said as the glacier crumbled around them.