Tress of the Emerald Sea

“When I spied on them for you the other day? I caught a little bit about ‘secret meetings’ and ‘being rid of them finally.’ That was before they got to the juicy stuff I told you.”


That sounded bad to Tress, but also too vague. She stood up again, pacing through her small quarters, listening to the scrape of spores on the hull outside. “We don’t know enough, Huck. We don’t know why the captain wants to make the others into deadrunners. I mean, she wants to order them to do something dangerous, but why?”

“Yeah,” Huck said. “I’m baffled too. Reminds me of a friend of mine. He was a character, I tell you. Once, he was offered cheese—by the way, we don’t like cheese as much as people think. Wonder how the rumor started. Anyway—”

“I think,” Tress said gently, “we should stay focused, Huck. We need more information about the captain.”

Huck dropped his crust. “Okay, I suppose,” he said. “I mean, if you really want me to…”

Tress immediately felt guilty, remembering his earlier objections. She had no right to ask him to put his life in danger.

“Never mind,” she said, tucking an unruly strand of hair behind her ear. “I think there’s another way.” She looked in the secret compartment under the bed, then brought out the little box full of midnight spores.

“Tress…” Huck said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m completely out of my element, Huck,” she said. “I’m just a girl with a fondness for cups. I have no special training, no special experience. I can’t outmaneuver Crow unless I use the resources I have.” She held up the box. “My only real advantage seems to be the fact that I’m slightly less terrified of spores than everyone else.”

“Yeah, but midnight spores? Shouldn’t we…you know…work our way up to something like that? You don’t start by running a full regalthon. You jog a little first.”

“A what?”

“Regalthon,” he said. “Forty-mile race, held every year on the king’s birthday.”

“Forty miles?” Tress said, fishing in the various drawers in Weev’s cabinet. Hadn’t she seen a silver knife in here? “They’d run out of land and fall off the island if they raced that far. Do they go in circles?”

“Oh, Tress,” he said, “most islands aren’t the size of the Rock, you know.”

“Really?” she said. She pulled the knife out of the drawer. “You mean there are some that are forty miles wide?”

“And bigger,” he said. “I think one over in the Zephyr Sea is sixty miles across.”

“Moons!” she said, trying to imagine that much land in one place. Why, in the center, you might not be able to see the sea at all! She shook her head at the crazy thought and pulled out a few waterskins.

After that she knelt by the bed, picked out three black spores, and set them on the mattress. Huck backed away, towing his crust of bread.

She took a deep breath and thought of Charlie. She could do this. For him, and for the people of the Crow’s Song. Solve the mysteries on this ship, protect the people here, and they would point her in Charlie’s direction.

She raised an eyedropper and released a drop onto the spores.





THE MIDNIGHT ESSENCE





I assume you have no idea what a Luhel bond is. Don’t feel bad. At this point in the story, I was concerned with trying to figure out how many different shades of orange I could wear at the same time. So we all have our priorities.

Most aether spores—like the verdant spores and the zephyr spores—don’t involve any kind of bond. Using them is a simple matter of cause and effect. Compressed aether drops to the planet in the form of spores, and a little water encourages it to grow in an explosive burst.

Midnight spores are different—in fact, they’re closer to how the aethers are supposed to work. Bringing midnight spores to life creates a temporary bond, a kind of symbiosis between host and aether. Unlike the Nahel bond, which trades in consciousness and anchoring to reality, the Luhel bond trades in physical matter. In this case, water.

Tress felt it as a sudden thirst, a drying of her mouth. She reached for the waterskin, then paused, transfixed by the motions of the spores.

They bubbled and undulated, melting and then enlarging like an inflating balloon. In seconds the puddle of goo—though it had begun as three tiny spores—was as large as a person’s fist. There it stopped growing, blessedly, though it continued to writhe and distort. For a moment a tiny face appeared— stretching out of the black pus. Then it melted back in.

Offer, a thought impressed on Tress’s mind. Trade. Water. Give water.

Without knowing what she was doing, Tress agreed.

Midnight Essence, in all its different forms, looks for a pattern, a model. It often takes a cue from its creator or host—and in this case Tress glanced at Huck, who had backed all the way across the bed to the far corner, clutching his crust of bread before him like a somewhat-snacked-upon shield.

The Midnight Essence pulsed with purpose, elongating. It formed a black tail. Four paws. A face and snout…a body like a deformed tuber. Soon Tress found herself regarding a small creature that looked almost like a rat dipped in black paint. Except the hair seemed more a texture to the skin than individual hairs, and there wasn’t enough detail on the toes and the face.

It was too smooth. Jet black and glossy, as if made of tar. Or carved from a tub of lard by a talented artist with no other way to express themself. It scurried back and forth across the bed, trying out its legs—and again, the motions were almost ratlike.

Though her thirst was increasing—and strangely, her eyes were beginning to feel dry—Tress couldn’t stop watching it. She took a drink—and found herself slurping down the entire waterskin. She hadn’t thought there would be enough room in her stomach, but once she was refreshed, the Luhel bond strengthened. She’d given it what it wanted, and in so doing gained some measure of control over it. She lost sight of the world around her, her vision fuzzing.

Then she was the not-rat. She could direct it, see through its eyes, smell what it smelled. She immediately made the thing jump toward Huck, who squeaked and ran under the bed. It was fun for reasons she couldn’t explain.

But no, she had work to do. Yes, important work that involved scampering across the bed and leaping onto the floor. When she hit, her feet squished into her body, and she had to pop them out again. After that, she scrambled to the door and squeezed under, coming out as goo that oozed back into shape.