The healers commanded him to rest for twenty days, but by the fourth, Gele had forgotten what day it was. Boredom struck him like a vicious illness. And the only cure was companions like Emned, who came bringing food and gossip. Apparently, Nab had set out on a boat soon after his defeat, murmuring about a golden whale who wore moss and barnacles as clothes. Emned wore a smug grin as she told it, but Gele could not share the sentiment. The pain in his shoulder sapped the fun out of everything. He laid in his hammock all day, wrapped only in bandages. The rags were like snakes, coiling around him and constantly uncomfortable.
His bruises had stopped hurting, shifting from black back to yellow. Yet, the stab wound in his shoulder burned each night as the bandages grew larger and the ointments stronger. And unsurprisingly, his nose was left crooked, and a gnarled scar rested on the bridge between his eyes. Sawyer said they matched now, even if their noses were twisted in distinctly different ways. Clow, though, said that it reminded her of Melaopel and how she worried for him too. She dressed and redressed his injuries each time with an old story—but that helped more than any medicine. His mother left him alone most hours, though, and at night she visited friends on the beach, at Gele’s insistence. He wanted the time to be with the spirit and to rest.
When the stars were out, he would stay up until sunrise talking to Sawyer. Either Gele would beg for a story, or the pirate would beg to tell one. When he first laid down after his trial, she told him of her home, as she promised. “Allecrea,” Sawyer spat, voice dripping with spite. She took his wrist and helped him coat a stick with chalk. Together they drew a map of the continent, or they certainly tried. She showed him the coastline and all the little islands that hovered a few miles from the shore. There were too many cities to name. Sawyer only mentioned the important ones. First, there was Mehmaton, the biggest and most holy city, with a great spire dedicated as a shrine to a God and Goddess above the Second Sea. Then, Wilkin’s Port, a harbor on the far west side of the continent—like Gulw—was Sawyer’s birthplace. She told him of the coming ships, the people in the streets and alleyways, and the parks where she used to play. But, her voice went hushed and low when she pointed at the imperial capital of Allecros.
“The wizard’s city and alchemist’s sanctuary,” Sawyer said, not through her mouth but by looking into his eyes, “a dark place that bleeds dark oddities.” She had never been. Outsiders—thieves especially—were outcasts in a place of pure power. “It was the castle of the Alchemist King, who one thousand years ago built Allecrea with brass swords, oils that never stopped burning, and elixirs that turned people into beasts.” The pirate shivered as she spoke. “The magic never slept, Gele. It still lingers there, waiting for thieves like me to raid tombs welded-shut.”
“You died there, right?” Gele whispered aloud. “You said you were on the coast of Allecros when your fleet sank.”
“Yeah. . .” Sawyer rubbed her temple. “Hurts to remember, though. I was there for the magic in those vaults, chasing locked-up legends. Never made it to the walls, let alone the treasure. Allecros has these towers along the coast, like lighthouses. Burning oil sprayed from their tops. I knew about it, and I prepared for it. But, there was so much of it, burning atop the water, catching on the ships. We couldn’t extinguish all of it. Then it jumped to our clothes. That was what the Alchemist King used to take over the continent, and it got us too,” she spat. “We never stood a chance, especially when the Navy came to pick us off. Their ships were the same as sharks, proud and vicious, leaving no one alive.”
The second night, Sawyer stood on the ceiling, a trick she learned during the day. She fiddled with the badges on her longcoat and checked the stitching on her clothes. Gele assumed that they would never become more ragged as they were now. Like her body, the ghost had light and seafoam sewn into her clothes. Hazy trails of smoke coiled around her arms when she walked. And her hair, unkempt and messy, flopped when she moved her head even the slightest amount. Her hair rolled like waves when she floated from the floor up to the ceiling, then back down again.
“What legends do they have here? Of sea monsters and such?” Sawyer asked. “In the northern seas, where I sailed, they talked of titans trapped in glaciers, ice that touched both the top and bottom. Imagine scraping that off into a cup, making any drink magical in both taste and potency.”
“Beyond the western islands or maybe even up in the north, beastmen live there. But they have never bothered to build boats to come trade with us. Maybe the legends of hairless naked things never caught their curiosity.” Gele chuckled at the thought. “Emned told me of the krakens near the Shadow Isles, and my mother said mermaids play water flutes in deep dark trenches, where they speak in song. We would have to swim to find those. If only we could grow gills and tails.”
The talk of gills made Sawyer shudder. “My father told me about mud-people, golems made of clay. He said that if I played too much in the forest, I would be mistaken for one of them. Those things definitely live on land.”
“What about in the Second Sea?”
“Everything there is a legend. A priest of some new faith once told me the sun and moon were eggs, and our souls were sperm. Stupid joke, I smacked him for trying to flirt, but now I think there’s as much truth in that as the people who say the stars are fish and dragons. What are we to fish anyways? We eat them, sure, but are we monsters to them, cousins? If mermaids have fins and scales, what are we?”
“Dancers say we are earth, water, and wind when we dance. So maybe fish are the same as they swim, just water, along with everything else.”
“Fused together like smelted iron, the whole world,” Sawyer sighed. “Do you think so?”
“One week ago, I did not know of continents or pirates. I have never heard of golems or wizards either.” Gele looked upon her face. The scars looked pretty in the light that speckled her face. He did not like noticing that. Uneasiness festered in him. There was still so much he did not know of the pirate, so many unanswered questions that visions only worsened. Sickly blood is what he smelt when he looked at her, and always the stench of salt. “One week ago, I did not know you, Sawyer. I need to see more. Even if I must climb up to the Second Sea, I will know the answers to all these legends. I plan to do that now that I am a warrior.”
Sawyer nodded, “once you’re able, we’re setting sail to anywhere and everywhere.” Then, she floated down from the ceiling and whispered to him about all the different places to see until they both slept.
The third night was different. Sawyer lay right next to him. Gele knew it was not love, as Shuran and Emned once shared. Instead, it dwelled in his mind, floating in the forefront of his thoughts. Sawyer burst out laughing, reading his mind and his face. She assured him it would take more than one good fight for her to swoon over him, but she appreciated his comfort and closeness. “I was alone for years, maybe longer, and now all I have is one other person to talk to. Sorry, but you’re all I got.”
“I’m just not used to it,” Gele admitted, “it’s weird being this close to a ghost, a pirate too.”
“I can give you some room. There’s too many sailors and zero space on a ship. Circumstances trained me to ignore it.”
Gele turned his head away. “You’re fine. Stay there if you want.”
She stayed next to him, but she did not dare touch him. The bandages remained red from the fight, and the healers said never to disturb the dressings. He winced as he tousled in his bed. Something had placed coarse gravel in his wounds, or it felt that way. Sawyer groaned too at night, maybe from the same pain. Both ended up croaking, starting the chain of one calling the other old and weary.
“I spent seventeen years at sea, ever since I was a child, I’ll retire on land when I’m a crone, and that’s far from now.”
“You got onto a ship at ten, right?” Gele asked. His father asked him to sail with him at a similar age, but he refused.
“Yeah, but I lied to the Navy and said I was twelve and a boy. The lie survived through me dressing only in a sailor’s uniform and keeping my hair short. Each day I scurried on that boat like a rat, dying from the heat and the work. Captain and his dogs said the chores and the beatings made strong men, and if you disagreed? They caned or birched you. Then they acted like whippings made you more of a man,” Sawyer tsked. “My father never hit me, but he was surely sad to hear I wanted to become a sailor.”
“Your parents, they let their kid run off anyways?”
“Father and mother definitely cared, but I wanted the sea more than I loved them. Kids need to leave home someday, right?” Sawyer said, “I came back three years later. I was a pirate by that point. Little before that, our Navy ship was captured, and I gladly deserted to the black flag. Pirate life let me grow my hair out, and I could wear what I wanted. There I could be a woman. I could be myself. But believe me, it felt weird coming back to Wilkin’s Port. First time on shore since I ran away from home, and now I was a real thief. Even then, I ended up crying in my mother’s arms. Maybe I should have stayed, but I had a life on the water. Nothing could keep me from it. I never lost my love for the open sea, despite everything else.
“I was twenty when I became a pirate captain and took the Harpy off in search of legends. That was when my name became constant in people’s whispers, and my family fled their home. Three years passed, and I had my hideout in the northern sea, next to the walruses and seals. We built it ourselves, in the ruins of an old castle. I was then called an Admiral, a queen of pilferers and flies. And then the Anima got me four years after that when I was twenty-seven, and my ships sank beneath my feet.”
“In that time, how many people did you kill?” Gele asked. He saw slaughter in faint visions he could only grasp at. A girl dressed in blood and bronze armor scratched runes into the soil. Ash and smoke still fumed up from the charred ground. Bones crumbled as she stepped on them, each taken by the cold wind. Sawyer had the same smile she wore when she looked at him—pride.
“Too many,” she scoffed, “listen, Gele, do you remember every meal you ate? Do you remember every time you danced? No, you remember the first few, the most grizzly, and the last few.”
“How many?” Gele had venom in his words. “You said you would tell me every detail.”
“Over a hundred, surely. Blood spilled out under her boot every time the Queen of Thieves took a step. Some of it through war or defense, some plunder, and other wicked things,” Sawyer said with an expressionless face and a narrow stare. “People, ships, and even a true sea monster, all gutted by either me or my commands. Too many stories and not enough time to confess it all in one night.”
“Start with the first, then.”
“I was eleven,” Sawyer looked away from him. “It was a friend who got hurt badly. A kid who couldn’t move his legs anymore. I helped him die with a shred of dignity, or at least that’s what the Navy kept telling me.”
“I’m sorry,” Gele whispered, seeing the boy’s face in the reflection of the ghost’s watery form.
“I just told you I was a mass murderer, don’t spit condolences my way.”
And Gele said nothing more until the morning came. Four dull days had crawled past him, and his wounds were far from healing. It was torture to stay inside so long. Part of him contemplated running again. He was about to bring the idea up to Sawyer, even if she probably already knew. He expected sourness when he glanced at Sawyer in the morning, but the two talked about their shared dreams, knowing they had the same one—though they remembered different fragments.
The sun had not fully emerged over the horizon when a loud knocking bashed against the door. Clow was the first to answer, but she immediately pulled back from the entrance, bowing her head.
“Gele of Melaopel!” The voice boomed, then simmered to a disgruntled growl, “my father has summoned you to the palace with the other new warriors. The initiation will be tonight.”
A hooded cloak of green linen hung over Nab’s shoulders, hiding his bruises and blemishes, with sparse paint covering where the kicks hit the hardest. When Gele emerged, Nab only gave him a quiet nod when his gaze crossed the dancer’s bandages. The hair on Gele’s chest and the back of his neck stood up. It was near impossible to read the warrior’s intentions. Quickly, Gele understood Nab was reading him in turn.
“Emned said you were out hunting a golden whale, too scared to show your face,” Gele said, putting on his scarf and skirt, the same he wore at the festival, still dotted with blood. Together, the two trudged across the footpath. Clow stayed at the house, already aware of what was to come. But Sawyer? She trailed a few paces behind, taking in the morning and leaving herself out.
“Dancers say lots of funny things, apparently.” Nab’s lips curved into a smile. Under the hood, his sparse gray hairs sparkled like silver—even in his own dark shadow.
“Words can follow music too, can’t they?” Gele smirked. “And how many songs are lies?”
“Too many, my daughter’s a singer, and the truth seems to be an ocean away from her. Soon she will go to Ail with a man who whispers to a red lizard around his neck. It’s an embarrassment to still have these wounds on her wedding night.”
“I would not have sunk my fists so deep if I was not so focused on an oar. More like an axe in your hands, and my neck a thin trunk. Good thing I did not stand still like a tree.”
“It’ll be a good story to share with the chieftains of Ail,” Nab laughed. “Now, Gele of Melaopel, where will you be going once your wounds heal?”
Gele glanced out upon Galu’s beaches and the gray sea that bordered them. The question uprooted everything. Anywhere, he wanted to say, for the answer had never mattered until now. All he had heard and all he had talked about before were stories and secondhand accounts, but soon he would have to pick one and meet it. “South,” he finally spat, gazing towards the shore and watching the foam tumble onto the land. The beach called for him, waving fingers made of bubbles and speaking to his instincts and heart. The Sea of Shrouds, a dull blanket of faded color, promised something the Second Sea could not, tangible beaches to walk on. No stories, only land that could be reached. Monsters, surely, but something else across the horizon. It was here, on this beach, that he set off and nearly died. “I will go south from here to explore new lands beyond Galu.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“To Vall?” Nab asked, “we already know of Vall. That is until they sheltered themselves in their forests. A haunted ruin where war has chased the people into the forest. A great empire eons ago, now a land of ghosts and jungle.”
“There has to be something beyond that,” Gele shrugged. “Something farther than that.”
“The King may be eager to hear of new lands to trade with,” Nab replied. “When you are initiated as a warrior, you will present this idea to King Peal himself. You did not bore him at the festival, so be proud of that when you speak.”
“Then we must hurry to the palace. I want to plan my voyage soon, so I can set sail once the bandages come off.”
The footpath became short and rugged when Nab forced Gele to match his pace. For an older man, impatience still fueled his blood. He knew all the shortcuts through grottos and old trees. Even with his injuries, he climbed down steep slopes with no slight grunt or groan. Gele kept up with the warrior, despite his own burned with aches and pains.
Up in the canopy above, a spirit floated atop the leaves, jumping from treetop to treetop. Sawyer tried to ignore him as if she was with the forest, as a fragment of the wind. Gele could feel her thoughts but could not separate them from the glimpses of violence he witnessed. They haunted him, slicing through the forest each time he saw her. So Gele stuck to the trail, and she hid in the wind, and the two did not dare meet until the palace came into sight.
Sawyer! Instincts pulled Gele away from his mistrust. Something was up there in the Second Sea. The morning and its sunshine vanished instantly, snuffed out like a candle. Shadows dripped over Gulw. A waterfall of blackness fell over the houses and swallowed the people. Nab retreated to the trees. Gele ducked down behind a tall rock. And Sawyer remained above the trees to see it with her own eyes. Gele could hear screams in the distance and children crying. Then, a lull of calm. A Mola? A millstonefish so far from Allecrea? Sawyer thought, giving him its name. Gele glanced up and saw a stupid animal. It floated up in the Second Sea like a rough and ugly cloud. Wide and flat, the creature swam on its side, its body just a plate of gray flesh with two tall fins stretched out like crooked knives. A blank stare looked down at Gulw, the eye large enough to crush the pyramid palace and half the city. Its mouth gobbled up invisible things, either krill or clear-skinned fish. From below, it was like another moon, causing an eclipse.
“Just an earthfish,” Gele muttered Galu’s name for it. “A floating world.” The creature was as large as Galu, maybe larger. In the advent of spirits awakening, things from far above the water came down to the far reaches of the Second Sea. Galu always feared dragons, leviathans, and other monstrous things. The giant beasts, Gele presumed, needed to warn humans that their souls, although plentiful and magic, could not match the might of things bred in the ocean. We are just tadpoles. Gele guessed the fish’s thoughts, although he believed more strongly that the Earthfish was simple-minded and brainless, not magic at all, only big.
“Seems our cowardice was for nothing,” Nab tsked. “Come, we’ll walk through as everyone is reeling to avoid attention and gain admirers from the ones who raise their heads.”
“Have you seen an Earthfish before? What did you call them, Molas?” Gele thought, acknowledging the spirit.
“They’re rare, for sure,” Sawyer said, still looking up. A violet radiance coated her seawater skin, acting as a lantern in the newfound night. “Only seen them about a handful of times. They live in warm water exclusively, I’m told. In Wilkin’s Port, people talked of the Millstonefish or the Mola, two creatures under one name. Millstone nights are calm and uneventful there.”
“We know them well here, though it’s easy to confuse them with other monsters at first. They visit maybe once or twice a month. But they ward off far more frightening things. The legends say it tastes like bile and rotten meat, learned from a man who found one that fell from the sky. Sea monsters can’t be bothered by such a putrid meal.”
“The magic of the Mola is praised, even among arrogant wizards,” Sawyer said. “I like to think of it as our shield against the Second Sea.”
“But it is not always here,” Gele replied as he followed Nab into Gulw.
The sounds of hammers and the forges’ heat pulled Gele into a world he had forgotten since childhood. He remembered following Shuran and Emned through the crowded streets. Time had kept Gulw static as if he had walked into that pleasant past. Light from the workshops replaced the sun, making every stone house a star in a new sea of shadows. The lane of artisans led straight to the palace. So, Nab walked ahead, avoiding the smiths and their families. Gele stopped to look upon the pigskin aprons and the bronze and iron amulets they wore. Mothers in silk skirts and copper necklaces sat with children, holding babies to their breasts. And weavers argued with traders, trying to bargain for new threads and textiles. The Earthfish did not scare anyone now. All it accomplished was pausing daily life for a minute. Now Gulw just worked in darkness, with children playing the same games and workers stuck in the same tasks. All the while, Nab guided Gele to the palace, where giant green bonfires began to burn. The smoke—born from roasted roots soaked in perfume—aimed to scare the giant away. Its stench burned Gele’s broken nose and watery eyes as he reached the pyramid.
“The other new warriors are inside,” Nab said as he stepped up the basalt steps. Little men holding spears were carved into the stone. Centuries ago, these were heroes, but time had too many warriors to remember and forgot the few legends over the many faces. But still, tiny rubies rested on the figures’ heads, and greened copper tipped their spears. Braziers at the top of the stairs held the beautiful emerald fires. Crackling, they applauded Gele as he walked past. Half-decayed stone statues guarded the flames and looked out across Gulw with headless stares. The seabreeze weathered their bodies, but the people remembered the old kings. Songs lived longer than stone.
“Old house,” Gele whispered as he looked upon the moss-covered walls. Grass sprouted from the cracks in the steps, with wildflowers poking out. “I do not remember it like this.”
“One day, I’ll wear a crown, and I’ll rebuild my home’s glory,” Nab sighed as he spoke, “Father is focused on growing Galu and too obsessed with the magic he harnessed in his youth, never taking the time to look upon his own house. There’s respect in that. Our ports have never been so crowded, but what do the ships see when they come?”
“Wise,” Gele said, “didn’t expect that from the man I fought on the altar.”
“I have time to think about it while out hunting whales. I have been the ship that comes home to more moss than before. And I have spent decades being unable to fix it. Building, Gele of Melaopel, I want the people from outside Galu to see us building. That’s the most a man can do in one life.”
“Then why not become a builder yourself?”
“Because I am already a hunter, and that is what everyone sees of me and has since I was your age.”
Gele only nodded and harvested a warning from his declaration. “I will have to tell the King I wish to explore the South, right?”
“Not yet. You will know when he asks you.” Nab led Gele through a gateway of gold and platinum, with blue gems and curtains of pearls. The inside of the pyramid immediately split into a labyrinth of corridors and tunnels. From the entranceway, Gele was looking deep into an ant colony. It was an ancient place, with every little room and crevice holding a purpose crucial to Galu. This included the cramped room Nab ushered Gele inside, where no torchlight flickered or shined. Six men sat in a circle on a red stone slab, their backs to each other, already waiting in the dark. “Join them,” Nab commanded. The tone he held before vanished. The prince had returned to the palace and his station. Gele glanced back at Sawyer as he stepped in, wait for me, he told her with both his thoughts and his expression. She leaned against the wall, nodding to him, watching as the heavy doors creaked and slammed shut.
Gele dug his fingernails into his palm just slightly, regaining some kind of focus. He felt the darkness slither around him, like a million tiny bugs crawling over him. All there was after being consumed was the faint panting and fidgeting of the other men. They became bugs too, and he melted with them, forming a single ooze in the shadows. The stillness was all they needed until a drum began to play.
Doooom. Doooom. Doooom. The drums seemed to say. A simple beat left to fester in the air kept Gele sane as he waited for it to start or end. The noise came from the ceiling, where the patter of footsteps was both quiet and all too loud. In Galu’s recent history, however long that was, the initiation for warriors prided itself as a well-kept secret. Only the result was known: men drenched in red. Gele sat blind to the ritual unraveling around him. Would he have to fight these other men? Where would the blood come from? Something would happen soon if it did already begin.
All anxiety over the initiation swelled when Gele saw the women dressed in black silk climb down from the rafters. Like spiders, they fell with white thread. They locked all the men together with a long chain made of tin and copper, shackling their wrists and ankles. Then, the women gagged each man with a cloth rag. Gele struggled at first until a woman slapped him. His face stung. Instincts screamed at him to run away. Sweat poured down his face. He tried to free himself, rattling the metal web. A hand smacked him again. For a second, he could not breathe. He could feel the walls closing in, the air growing tighter. The space became oppressive in the dark. When he blinked, Gele saw the Anima again. Then it vanished, just a vision. Was he underwater now? Something dripped on him. Rain? Gele could not see. He tried to look up, but a slap stopped him. Too dark. Even the bottom of the sea had speckles of light coming from above and below. He saw burning cities, pirate ships, and purple ghosts at those depths. No, he rejected that. Biting down on the cloth rag, Gele lifted his head. Why would he falter now compared to what came before?
The dripping continued, splashing onto his back, where he was not allowed to look. A strong metallic smell smothered him—blood. Gele dared to gaze up again. Punished for it, Gele grit his teeth and endured, trying once more. Then he saw it. A dolphin carcass, pale and bloated, loomed over him, suspended on black ropes and silver chains. The mouth and eyes had been sewn shut. Strange runes covered its belly, but Gele could not read them before a hand hit his cheek. He kept his head tilted towards the floor, where they wanted him. Yet, the stench around grew more suffocating, and Gele gagged as he heard someone stab the corpse with a gross slumpk! Then there was the tearing, which summoned a waterfall of disgusting red ooze. Meat fell onto Gele’s shoulders and drenched his hair. He heard jangling above him, the sound of metal brushing together like tree branches in the wind. Too scared to look, he covered his eyes.
“Gele!” A shrill scream cut through the nausea and the shivering. “Gele! Where the hell are you?” Sawyer’s voice rattled as Gele saw purple light crash through the dark black wall—he had forgotten a wall was even there. She had her hand on her belt, where an empty scabbard and holster waited. The Admiral could only rely on older instincts without a sword or a gun. She raced to Gele’s side and wrapped her arms around him.
“Why did you come?” Gele tried to think. “Sawyer, why?” Gold coins and pearl necklaces plummeted from the ceiling, pelting him. Jewelry and gemstones rained down on him, tarnishing as they touched his blood-soaked skin—so much treasure and just as beautiful as the maggots crawling in the rotten meat. In the mess, rubies, garnets, and emeralds were all wasting away, their bright lustrous color sinking into the carrion pool. The emeralds especially, so green, like grass intermixed with sunshine, boiled together into something so fragile. Gele was too sick to understand what he saw anymore.
“I heard you through the wall. I heard chains, and I smelt blood. I feared the worst—spells, rituals, chimeras.” Sawyer looked at him. The shock on her face, she tried to hide it. Then, covering her mouth, she took in the state of the room. “You’re alive. That’s what matters.”
“I suppose I am a warrior now,” Gele thought, his mouth still gagged. He had gotten lucky that nothing but his own spit had splashed on the cloth. “Nab must have been the same once. My father must have been the same once.”
Sawyer gazed around at the women dressed in silk and shadows and the men decorated with entrails, gold, and her purple light. “Reminds me of somewhere homely and just as twisted as embalmed porpoises.” She shook her head. “We need to get you out. . .”
Deaf to the spirit’s words, the women hoisted Gele to his feet, rough and hurried. They removed the chains from his hands and feet and replaced them with a heavy wreath of pine leaves and brass bells. Then, in a single line, they walked the new warriors out of the palace and into the sun.
Gele begged for the Earthfish to still be there, but to his dismay, it had drifted far from Gulw. Instead, there were the curious glances of Gulw’s onlookers. The crimson men with bells around their necks attached more eyes with every step. Trapped in the parade, Gele held his head low, letting his wet hair hide his face. His eyes looked through Sawyer’s as he tried to wriggle out of his skin. Yet, when he did, he could not recognize himself. Was he the fourth man in line or the fifth? Each new warrior stood disgraced in the same way, painted and isolated, indistinguishable. It was then he noticed the gawking spectators. They were from the warriors’ families, dressed in the world’s splendors. I am here to be looked down upon, Gele realized, so if I ever try to reach the height of the palace, I can be reminded of this moment.
“Bring them here, in front of Gulw and me.” A familiar groan took over his ears. Never before had sound slipped through the air like a thick haze. King Peal, the walking corpse, stood with his crown polished and new.
The Beckoning had turned his body to water, he had thought. He was mud now, sickly putrid mud. The night at the altar made him a warrior, and what was he now? He was a warrior, with guts and bells strangling him. A mighty warrior who set himself on a path to the south seas, then to the Second Sea, if he did not die here.
“You next,” the King said, pointing at Gele with long slender fingers. “Who are you, and what will you be?”
Gele stepped forward, bells ringing around his throat. Someone came and undid his gag and pushed him onto his knees. Gele shivered as he looked up at King Peal. Nab was standing beside his father, wearing no expression, whether smugness or pity. It all dwelled inside the man and nowhere else. “I. . .” The sun shone in his face, slicing through the Second Sea, where the Earthfish once protected him. The water was green today, like emeralds. Why did he think of emeralds? Could he only compare the world to useless treasures? The initiation soiled everything, even the Second Sea. He wanted to think of anything else, but a pain in his stomach, the aches of old bruises, stopped him. An ignorance limited him. All he knew was Galu. Teeth gnashing together, Gele buckled and fell onto his instincts. His heart thrashed inside of his chest, trying to break out. One more time, he glared at all the people watching. What did they think of him? What were they saying in their minds? Scrambling, he climbed to his feet and began running, pushing past the crowd and vanishing among the people. Sawyer called for him, but her voice disappeared in the cacophony of laughter and shrieks.
Gele did not stop until he was back where he started. He leaped over the shrubs and ducked under the branches. In his haste, he even trampled flowers his sister cared for long ago. All the while, he blocked everything out, wishing to vanish into the forest. But the ringing bells kept pulling him back. All that was left now was the silver beach. It had waited for him, knowing he would eventually return to the seafoam that once held him close.
“Are you going for good this time?” Sawyer stood on the sand, halting Gele as he contemplated escaping into the gray shallows. “You have no boat, and I know more than anyone it’s impossible for you to grow fins.”
“Every time you talk, you put in a mystery that I can’t understand,” Gele hissed. The bells chimed as he turned away from her. All he knew about the world was from his home and the fragments fed to him by her. “No,” he wiped his eyes, “I don’t get the whole truth. I don’t deserve it. I ran away again.”
The spirit, grinding her teeth, pointed at him with her mangled hand. “Then let’s run. As you tried before, it won’t matter what they think of you once we go. Call yourself a warrior out on the sea, and no one will be there to say that you’re wrong.”
“Is that how pirates are?”
“I called myself a King, a Queen, and a monster out there,” Sawyer said, “a pirate was what I knew I was the moment I was out there. So yes, you can be free there, Gele. We just have to go.”
“Even with all that blood on you, you forget Nab nearly killed you just a few nights ago.” A voice cut through the murmur of the waves. Emned walked across the beach, her skirt and scarf dancing in tandem with the seabreeze. In her hands were two waterskins. “I’ve been waiting for you, Gele.” Her scarlet eyes glowed like a harrowing sunset, flicking to the side as she spoke. “Do you and your phantom want to partake?” She said with a grin, offering one of her waterskins.