The woman’s eyes widened. “By the grace of the goddesses,” she murmured. “You are indeed a Byrne. I would know those eyes anywhere.” She frowned. “She can come. You stay. We don’t take Kaolin men on this ship.”
“But—”
“Please,” Agnes begged. “Our father will kill him if we leave him behind.”
For the first time that sentence did not seem like an exaggeration to Leo.
“Agnes!” a voice called, dancing across the wind. “Leo! I’m here, I’m coming!”
“Sera,” he gasped, his knees melting with relief. He whirled around as one of the sailors muttered something in Pelagan.
Sera raced up to them like a silver-gold blur and stopped short, panting. “I’m here,” she said. “We made it.”
Her dress was torn and dirty, the pile of curls on her head coming undone, and she had tied her skirt up, leaving her long legs bare. Leo had never seen a woman look so wild and untamed. The sirens grew closer.
Errol slid off her back, his filaments flashing as he crawled to the edge of the dock. Several of the sailors cried out at the sight of him, and he slipped into the water with a loud plop.
“He is happy to be back in the sea,” Sera said. Then tears filled her eyes. “Boris is gone, though. Her sprites turned to fire. She asked them to, I think. She burned herself to give us time to escape.”
Leo did not quite understand the tightness in his throat, the ache in his chest. He had never thought of the Arboreal as anything but a tree. Or maybe he had. Maybe his feelings toward Sera had radiated out, to Errol, to Boris. Maybe he was seeing everything differently now.
Agnes seemed to know what to do better than he did.
“Oh, Sera,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.” She wrapped her arms around the girl, and Sera’s shoulders trembled for a moment before she pulled herself together.
“So this is a ship,” she said, staring at the schooner in wonder.
Leo turned back to Vada and her mother. All the enmity in the sailors’ eyes was gone, replaced with expressions of reverence. But not for him or for Agnes. It was Sera they were staring at.
“This is her,” Agnes said boldly. “This is the friend I told you about. She’s special, and she needs our help. So you must—”
To Leo’s immense surprise, Vada’s mother dropped to her knees, Vada and the other sailors quickly following suit, falling to the ground like dominoes.
“Thaeia,” Vada’s mother whispered, touching her forehead with two fingers.
“Thaeia,” the others repeated, making the same gesture.
“What are they saying?” Leo whispered to his sister, knowing she spoke some Pelagan. But it was Sera who answered. He should have figured. She could talk to everything.
“They are calling me goddess,” she said.
Agnes gasped. Leo shook his head slowly back and forth. “What?” he said dumbly.
Vada’s mother stood. “Thaeia,” she said, “I am Violetta Murchadha, of the island of Feinlin. I have sailed the seas between Kaolin and Pelago since I was only a child before her first bleeding. I have weathered tempests that would make grown women weep. I would be honored to bring you to Pelago. The Maiden’s Wail does not look like much, but she is as sturdy a ship as any you will find, even by Pelagan standards.”
“My goodness,” Sera said. “That is very kind of you.”
The sailors looked at each other, confused, and Leo remembered they would only hear gibberish.
“She said that’s very kind of you,” he explained.
“How is it that a Kaolin man can understand the words of a Pelagan goddess?” Violetta said, aghast.
“I think that’s a story best saved for when we are far away from Old Port,” Agnes said.
One of the sailors said something in Pelagan, and Vada snapped back at her. Then Violetta began barking out orders, also in Pelagan, and the sailors darted up the gangplank.
“What’s happening?” Leo asked.
“That one said it is bad luck to start a voyage at night,” Sera said. “And then the younger girl said, do not be an idiot, Saifa will protect us. And then Violetta told them to ready the sails and some other things I didn’t quite understand.”
Errol’s head popped up from the water, his filaments flashing red and gold.
“Errol is ready to leave,” Sera announced.
Vada appeared on the deck, her arms folded across her chest. “Well?” she called down to them, and Leo got the sense that she was teasing his sister and it made him feel protective of Agnes in a way he couldn’t quite explain. “Are you coming, little lion?”
Agnes’s lips twitched and she looped her arm through Sera’s. “Ready for a sea voyage?” she asked as they walked up the gangplank.
Leo felt a small sting of jealousy until Sera turned back to him. “Come on, Leo,” she said, holding out her hand. He hurried forward, then stopped, reaching into his pocket and taking out the star necklace.
“Here,” he said. “It’s time you had this back for good.”
Her eyes sparkled as she took the chain and slipped it around her neck. She tucked the pendant beneath the satiny folds of her dress.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Then she curled her fingers around his and they boarded the ship together.
The Pelagan sailors were expert and quick. Not ten minutes later, they had hoisted anchor and cast off, the lights of the Old Port docks slowly fading in the distance, the wail of the sirens swallowed up by the sea.
Leo watched the only home he’d ever known disappear into the darkness, and he felt ready to embrace this new life he’d chosen, no matter what fate had in store for him.
43
Leela
THE STAIRS WERE COLDER THAN ANYTHING LEELA HAD ever felt before. It was a cold that burned.
They were steep and spiraled, so that she had to grip the walls with her hands to make sure she did not fall.
Mother Sun, she prayed. Where are you taking me?
She could not suppress her wildest hope—that Sera was down here, wherever here was. After all, Estelle had come back after Kandra thought she was dead. And Leela had heard Sera’s voice twice now. She had not been imagining it. Plus, those visions, and the way the moonstone was reacting to her . . .
Colored lights began to shine at her feet as she descended, and when she finally reached the bottom of the stairs, she gazed around in wonder. Great columns rose up, glowing blue from the inside. There were paths that wove through them, emitting pale green light, snaking around pools of crystal-clear water that studded the floor; through them Leela could see straight down to the planet below. There was no sound of birds or hum of insects. There was no life at all. What was this place?
Then she looked up.
It was as if she was upside down. A forest sprawled across the ceiling, lush trees and wildflowers and brambly bushes growing toward her. It was disorienting, like standing in the sky. Leela followed one of the green paths. As she moved out away from where she imagined the temple must be above her, the trees grew shorter and stunted, the wildflowers withered, and the bushes became thorny and brittle. Whatever this sky forest was, it was dying.
The silence around her was unnerving, as was the crumbling foliage above. The farther out she traveled, the worse it became, until the ceiling was nothing but ash and mold.