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Djaren stood in the boys’ dormitory, surrounded by strangers who were mostly taller than him. They were all staring. A moment of silence stretched, and then a light rap came at the window. It was dark outside, but Djaren could see Kara well enough. He jogged over to the next window down, and opened it. “Hello, Karo! That one is another gentleman’s window, and I gather he’s territorial about it. How about this one for us?”
It was just growing light, and the cave was already abuzz with girls preparing for another day of school when the Professor rose and cleared his throat. “I believe,” he said, wrapping his blanket about himself and addressing Temanava carefully, “that I may need to borrow some sort of shirt. I should like to go into town, I think.”
Continue reading “Chapter Fifteen — The Dark Port of Tairoru”
Kara hit the ground hard and lost her breath but not her wits. She rolled, avoiding the next hit. She was recognizing her opponent’s tells better, now. Bulo hadn’t been this hard to fight. He’d been strong and slow, and Kara had knocked him down in a swift and insulting defeat that the Red Ropes judged unfair. She hadn’t even crippled him. They were being babies about this. Perhaps it had been unwise, though, to go on and challenge the lot of them to combat in turns.
Continue reading “Chapter Fourteen — Kara and the Red Ropes”
Djaren’s first real qualms began at the heavy, iron-bound school gates. The walls, reasonably tall and fortifiable, were guarded by a single gatekeeper, who closed and locked the doors behind them. The world inside the walls wasn’t terrible. Across a broad lawn, neat paths led uphill to a coral-colored stucco building with two wings, and east and west to stables, vegetable gardens, a banana grove, chicken coops, and low barns. Everything looked orderly, boring, and very neatly kept up. At the distant end of the main building, two boys stood guard under a tree, while a third one climbed lightly up into a school window. Once he’d ascended, the other two took the door in the normal way. Djaren frowned, collecting the memory. Kara should be able to get in here without any trouble. What else did?
Continue reading “Chapter Thirteen — The Mission School and Its Inhabitants”
Jon slept fitfully through the day, curled up beside Tam, where he could hear and feel reassuring breaths whenever he woke. Tam was breathing normally now, and seemed ordinarily asleep, except for the bandaging across his pale pink chest, in stark contrast to the new red-brown of his face and his arms below the elbow.
Trimela was a smelly, loud, exciting mess of shanties, stilt houses, and graceful white hotels all tumbled together with tents, nets, drying racks, and tar boiling pits. Like most cities Kara had wandered through, there was a broad mix of well-to-do and poor, clean-scrubbed and filthy. It was a trade city, certainly. All sorts of people milled about, with different types of skin, hair, and eyes. The sailors almost as dark as boat tar were familiar enough, but the ivory-colored men with topknots and moon-shaped eyes, in their bright short robes, were unlike anyone she’d seen in Sarvarthi, or even Merigvon. Market stall goods were stacked in small piles instead of high ones, and merchants watched carefully over them, glaring at anyone who clearly had no money. Up over the crowds, people all in white with eerily pale faces, untouched by sun, peered from high hotel windows. Below, golden-colored people with tattoos exchanged haughty looks with darker wiry-haired people who looked more like Aruke.
For a long while it was hard for Jon to tell waking from dreaming, clinging to cold hands and rough plank, terrified of losing the Professor or Tam. The first time he opened his stinging eyes it was dark, and the second blink brought him a world of colorless gray. The ocean spoke, or it didn’t. He was in his bed at home with a fever, then buried in wet snow in the mountains, then fallen into a well. He reached out to find the sides and was on the plank in the sea again, grabbing frantically for the hands of his companions. He found them. The Professor, still lying lifeless, was looking at him with sad, empty eyes.
Continue reading “Chapter Ten — All Are Washed to New Shores”
Kara had gotten past her falling-out with the ocean. It made up for the giant waves and cold, thunderous vastness by being wonderfully warm now, and by letting its bright shallows be ruthlessly plundered for Kara’s gain. She loved diving. She found places no one else was able to access and deftly stole everything worth having in them. She was always in danger, a stranger in this world, unable even to breathe, but surrounded by amazing things. When her eyes began to dim, she could spin at the last minute and kick her way back up. Equally rewarding was finding Djaren near, impressed, envious, and frightened at how long she’d been under.
Morning surprised Jon, coming as sudden as night had, flooding his tent with amazing light that transformed everything it touched into something alive and miraculous. Also, it was hot. The tree cover had sheltered their tents from afternoon sun, but not from dawn.
Kara watched as people hurried to get supplies ready for landfall—several barrels of the precious fresh water, a lot of tools, and three tents. Professor Sheridan put tins of food in crates, and Djaren hefted a hatchet. “We could probably get our own food, really, hunting,” he said.
Continue reading “Chapter Seven — The Forbidden Isle of Tuwa”