The Perilous Sea (The Elemental Trilogy #2)

“Please let me know if I can help in any way,” he said solemnly. “It is still as dangerous as ever for you out there.”


She wanted to hold his face in her hands and tell him that it was not danger that she feared. No anymore. But she only nodded. “Thank you. I had better go now—cricket practice in twenty minutes.”



When Iolanthe arrived at practice, to her surprise, Kashkari was already there, dressed in his kit, no less.

She shook hands with him. “Are you joining us, sir?”

“According to West, when they drew up the list for the twenty-two, I was number twenty-three. Therefore I will be playing in Wintervale’s stead until he is no longer incapacitated.”

“I’m surprised you were willing to leave his side. How is he today?”

“I was with him for some time just now. He woke up for a whopping thirty seconds.”

“That’s something.”

“That is something indeed. And he seemed to be in good spirits, though he was disappointed not to see the prince.”

A few other cricketers arrived, followed by a man hauling a heavy-looking black case. The man opened the case and began assembling a contraption—a camera.

“What’s going on over there?” she asked Kashkari. “Is that Roberts?”

“That’s Roberts. This is his last year and the third time he’s been chosen for the twenty-two, but he hasn’t made the eleven yet. Rumor has it he’s been talking about having a photograph taken so that whether he is selected for the eleven or not, it would appear as if he had.”

Iolanthe snorted. “You have to applaud that kind of initiative. Although—” She turned to Kashkari. “Don’t you know whether he makes the eleven?”

Kashkari could have dreamed about that, for all she knew.

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Never dreamed about the Eton and Harrow games.”

“What do you dream about then, other than coming to Eton? And have those other dreams come true?”

“There was one time when I was little, when I dreamed of a birthday cake for my seventh birthday. Mind you, birthday cakes are not the norm. In our family we always made Indian sweets for birthdays. But on my seventh birthday, I was indeed served a Western cake with candles blazing on top, just as I’d dreamed.”

Her younger self would have found his gift fascinating. But now her view of seers and visions had been colored with a sharp prejudice. The entire point of life was the ability to make one’s own choices. Foreknowledge of anything—especially the circular kind, such as Kashkari’s presence at Eton because he’d dreamed of it—was terribly limiting and ran counter to the concept of free will.

“But did you want a birthday cake?”

“I didn’t think so much of whether I wanted a birthday cake. At that point, only one other of my dreams had come true—that my grandmother’s old classmate would come to stay with us. So I was far more interested in whether this dream too was prophetic.”

“Have you ever thought about a different life for yourself? One that doesn’t involve leaving your family to come to Eton?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it.”

“Do you regret the path not taken? The dreams, they don’t allow you any choice, do they?”

“It’s a very Western point of view to see visions of the future as eternal truths chiseled in marble, which must not be tampered with or otherwise disturbed. We view a vision more as a suggestion, one among many different possibilities. After I had a slice of that birthday cake, I asked if I could also have some ladhoos—this dense, round confection that I adored—and lo and behold I was given a plate of ladhoos too. And when it came to Eton, I never viewed those dreams as binding. The question was always, did I want to have this adventure, and in the end I decided, yes, I did.”

“So there were dreams you ignored?”

“Well, there was one I had more or less decided to ignore, as an experiment, because it had seemed both stupid and utterly insignificant. I’d seen it a few times in the past two years. I would be in the prince’s room at night, with a number of other boys. And then, I would roll up the sleeves of my kurta and climb out of the window and down the drainpipes.”

Iolanthe started.

“I wear my kurta only to bed—meaning it was past lights-out. It just didn’t seem like something I would do, climbing out of a window for mischief in the middle of the night. But when the scene unfolded in reality, it had to do with Trumper and Hogg and their rock throwing. Suddenly it seemed like a very worthwhile thing to do, going after them.”

And by doing so, he had revealed himself to be the “scorpion” the Oracle of Still Waters had spoken about, someone from whom she could seek aid.

“Was I there in your dream?”

“You were speaking just before I climbed out the window. I was never able to recall what you said, but yes, you were there.”