The Pirate's Wish (6 page)

For a long moment I stood there, my anger consumed by astonishment, and waited for her to return. But there was just the waves crashing up against the bottom part of the island, the wind rattling the pine trees. Nothing.

After a while, I set off down the beach, although I did pull out my knife. Just in case.

I walked for a good hour, working off the soreness in my legs and the ache in my head. I’d split open my hand when I punched Echo, but after a while the sting of that disappeared too.

“Girl-human!”

I stopped. The blaze of anger made a sudden, violent appearance. The damn manticore. She’d started this all, hadn’t she? All for a meal.

“Leave me alone!” I shouted.

The manticore trotted out of the woods, flicking up little sprays of sand with her paws.

“The Jadorr’a
sent me,” she said. “He said you were in danger.”

“Not anymore.” If I needed any more evidence that I repulsed him enough to undo the protective magic, it was right there: he hadn’t come for me himself.

“This is all your fault,” I said.

The manticore fell into step beside me.

“I know.”

I glanced at her. Her face looked strange. It took me a moment to realize that it was cause she looked guilty.

“He hurt you,” she said. “Soul-hurt.”

I kicked at the sand.

“As opposed to body-hurt.”

“Yeah, I got it. I ain’t stupid.”

The manticore stopped and nuzzled my shoulder like she was an overgrown cat. “I thought he returned your affection. Humans seem to care about happiness. I wished to gift some to you. In exchange for combing my mane.”

I scowled. “You had me do it so you could eat him.”

“Well, yes, that too.”

I didn’t say nothing.

“One does not negate the other,” she added.

“Well, you just made things worse.” Not exactly the wounding insult I’d hoped for, but I was too tired from everything to be clever.

“I know,” she said.

And then she knelt down in the sand. “If you would like, I’ll allow you to ride me.”

I stared at her. “Is this a trick?”

She peered up at me through the frame of her fur. “No trick, girl-human. It is a great honor to ride a manticore.”

“Are you gonna stab me with your tail once I get up there?”

“If I wished to poison you, I would shoot the spine into your heart from here.”

That was probably true.

“Come along, girl-human. We are far from your rock-nest, and I will not kneel like this all day.”

I looked at her, considering. My body ached and I was sick of walking. And it would be something to say I got to ride a manticore.

Besides, she still looked kinda guilty, and I realized I actually believed her: that she thought she had been helping – at least up until we cured the rest of the curse and she got to snack on him.

“Alright,” I said.

I swung my leg over her shoulder and settled myself between her leathery wings. She straightened up, tall as a pony. I wrapped my arms around her neck, leaning into her soft mane-fur, which smelled clean, like the woods after a rainfall.

“Do not fall off,” she said.

“Ain’t planning on it.”

And then she took off in a gallop, moving like liquid over the sand. A cold wind blew off the sea and pushed my hair back from my face. She let out this great trumpeting laugh that echoed through the woods, stirring up the birds, and after a minute I started laughing with her. The anger washed out of me, and the sadness and the fear and the humiliation. The wind coursed around us like we were flying, and it stripped Naji right out of my mind.

The manticore got me that gift of happiness after all.

Course, it didn’t last. We had to arrive back at the cave eventually, and as the manticore slowed to a trot, I could see Naji pacing back and forth across the beach. He was wrapped up in his black Jadorr’a robe and he looked like a smear of ink against the impossibly wide sky.

“You must disembark,” the manticore said, kneeling. I climbed off her and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“It was my gift to you.”

Naji had stopped pacing and he stared at me, his hair and cloak blowing off to the side. I trudged across the beach toward him, sand stinging me in the eyes.

“Why did you undo the protective spell?” The wind caught my voice and my question rose and fell like it belonged to a ghost. “The one that’s supposed to keep me safe from the Mists?”

“Have you gone mad?” Naji stared at me. “Why would you think I’d do that?”

“Because Echo showed up. That’s why I was
in danger
.”

Naji’s face went pale beneath his scars.

“I didn’t hand you over,” I said. “Obviously. But it was a pretty crap thing for you to just – expose me like that.”

“I told you, I didn’t undo the spell.”

“Then why did Echo find me?” I shouted, the wind ripping my question to shreds.

A peculiar expression crossed over Naji’s face. It almost looked like pain, like guilt or sorrow or even worry, but I knew better. “I would never do something to put you in danger.”

“Yeah, just to save your own skin. I imagine you were willing to put up with a headache if it meant getting back at me.”

“I had more than a headache.” Naji’s voice was low. “I would have come myself, but I didn’t think you wanted my help. I would gladly offer–”

“You’re right,” I snapped. “I didn’t want your help. I can take care of myself. You’re the one with the problem here.”

“I don’t want you to think I put you in danger,” Naji said. “It was… The magic must have weakened more than I thought– “

His words wounded me. “So you did weaken it, then.”

“No.” He shook his head. There was that peculiar expression again. “No, absolutely not. It was an… ah, emotional weakening.” He took a deep breath. “Intense emotional reactions can sometimes interfere with magic. It will sort itself out, I swear to you. But to have you so upset with me, my magic wasn’t as powerful…” His voice trailed off.

I focused my gaze on him, sharpening it. Anger built up in my chest again. “Upset with you?”

“Yes, when I, um, didn’t reciprocate–”

“Kaol, stop talking!” My hands curled into fists and I thought about pulling my knife out and stabbing him in the thigh, the way I had the night I met him. “Guess I just ruin everything, don’t I? Not like I fulfilled one of the tasks for you or anything.”

“I told you I was grateful for that,” Naji said quietly, but he didn’t look at me.

I whirled away from him. I couldn’t look at him another damn second. My whole body was shaking. This was why I hadn’t kissed him for so long. Because I knew this would happen. My kiss was so repellant that it shut down all his damn spells.

“Maybe I’ll just leave,” I said, speaking to the sea, my back still turned to him. “Maybe that’ll make things easier.”

“Ananna–”

I didn’t let him finish. I walked away from him, past the manticore and into the woods. He didn’t follow.

I slept outside that night, in a nest of pine needles and fallen tree branches that the manticore had stacked up deep in a clearing in the woods, not far from the shack. I could smell the smoke from the hearth. Naji’d been tending the fire the last few days, making sure it smoked proper and didn’t go out. I didn’t know if he tended it tonight. I didn’t care, neither.

I fell asleep early, after eating some berries and caribou, and curled up along the manticore’s massive shaggy side. Her heart beat against the walls of her chest, slower and heavier than a human’s heart. There was something comforting about it, like a drum beat setting time to a story.

I woke up in the middle of the night.

The manticore was still sleeping and the forest was quiet as death, which set my nerves on end. Forests ain’t never quiet, not even in the middle of the night.

I peeled myself away from the manticore and scanned the darkness. I was still wearing Naji’s charm even though I’d wanted to take it off – but the thing had kept Echo from touching me enough times that I figured that was the kind of stupid Mama would’ve slapped me for. And as I crouched there in the shadows, I was more grateful for it than I cared to admit.

“It really doesn’t seem fair, don’t you think?”

Echo.

My blood froze in my veins, and I leapt to my feet, all the muscles in my back and my arms tensing up. Her voice was coming from all over the place, like she’d melted in with the forest.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” she said, “that you can strike me in the face, and I can’t even touch you.”

“Seems plenty fair to me,” I called out, managing to choke back the quiver in my words. Echo laughed. The trees rustled a response. I beat my hands up against the manticore’s side, but she didn’t move.

“I’m afraid that won’t work, Ananna. We hold sway over the beasts of your world.”

“The manticore ain’t no beast.”

More laughter. I shoved up against the manticore and kicked at her haunches. But she just slept on.

“This is growing tiresome,” Echo said.

“I know,” I told her. “Suggests you ought to just move on, don’t it?”

Something flashed behind my eyes, and next thing I knew I was standing on the beach, in the cold open wind, next to the bonfire.

This was the closest I’d been to it since the day Naji set it to burning. It was bigger now, the figures writhing in its flames more defined. I could make out the features of their faces. Those faces weren’t something I wanted to see.

“This is much better, don’t you think?” Echo stepped into the hazy golden light. It shone straight through her so she glowed like a magic-cast lantern. “Easier to see each other.”

I kept my eyes on her, even though the fire flickering off to the side made me want to turn my head. Both times we’d gotten rid of her involved hitting her unawares: Naji with his sword, me with my fist. So I did the first thing that came to my head. I lunged at her.

She glided out of the way, and I landed face-first in the sand behind her. I didn’t waste no time feeling sorry for myself – a sucker punch don’t work more than once that often – and twisted around so I could see her again. She floated there beside the fire, her arms crossed over her chest.

“What do you want?” I said. “You know I ain’t gonna hand over Naji.”

She sighed. “I really wish you would stop saying that.”

She kept on sizing me up, and I knew there wasn’t nothing she could do or else she would’ve done it already.

“We just gonna stand here till the sun comes up?” I asked. “You wanna place bets on what side of the island it’ll be? I bet it’s over that way.” I tilted my head off to the left. “Ain’t seen it rise over that half of the island in a while. Figure we’re due.”

“That wasn’t my intention, no,” Echo said. And she gave me this hard cruel smile that I didn’t like one bit and gestured at the fire. “This is lovely. The assassin’s handiwork, yes? I’ve seen this sort of magic before. It’s rather unstable.”

She glanced over at the fire. “You don’t spend much time here, I’ve noticed, watching the flames. They’re quite remarkable. I’m sure my lord could teach you to do this sort of thing, if you were so inclined. Our world is the world of magic, did you know? It’s the place all your magic is born.”

“I already know one way to build fires,” I said. “I don’t need another.”

“This isn’t a fire,” she said. “It’s far more dangerous.”

That was when I looked. I tore my eyes away from her and looked at the fire. It’d been tickling there at the edges of my sight all that time, like an itch I wanted to scratch, and I finally turned my head and looked.

It swallowed me whole, all that golden light. Sparks and a warmth like the bright sun at home. The pale northern sun didn’t even compare. And here: Naji’d brought a piece of that familiar sun here, he’d set it to burning on the sand.

The bodies in the flames swirled and danced and called me over.

Echo was up close to me, whispering in my ear, and the fire burned away the coldness of her breath. “You can create that yourself. He’ll never teach you. But we can. I can. You can carry that light with you everywhere you go.”

I stared at the fire, my hands tingling. I tried to tell her I couldn’t do magic. But maybe I could, if I was part of the Mists.

“Who wants to be a pirate when you can be a witch? The most powerful witch the world has ever known. You won’t just control the seas, you’ll control the pulse of life. That pulse is what makes these flames burn. It is what gives power to that silly trinket around your neck-”

That brought me out of myself. She wasn’t offering power, she wasn’t even offering magic. She was after Naji. Always had been.

And the fire, for all its beauty, for all its magic, was still fire. It would only burn me if I got too close. Just as it had done Naji.

I dipped forward and yanked a stick out from under the fire. It was hot, but I didn’t drop it; no, I spun around and flung the stick and the lick of flame at Echo, and her eyes went wide with surprise and then with anger, and then the stick sliced straight through her and she turned to mist and disappeared.