The Map to Everywhere by Carrie Ryan
So instead, he changed the subject. At the end of the day, he was here for a job, and that meant performing a bit of recon. “That Bintheyr Map’s pretty spiff, huh?”
She slumped against the wall. “Yeah, I hope it is,” she said cautiously. “I need it to get back to my mom.… She’s sick.” She stared down at her hands. Her fingers twined together. “I’m supposed to keep her from getting stressed out, but…”
She cringed and glanced up at him. Her eyes looked wet. Fin bit his lip. He didn’t know how to comfort someone; it wasn’t like people confided in him all that often. Or ever. He tried to remember what Ardent had done to make him feel better. Cautiously, he reached out one hand and gave her a quick pat on the shoulder, then pulled it back in case he’d done something wrong.
Marrill smiled, but her words came out choked. “But I got stuck on the Kraken because I thought Ardent could maybe help her, but now he doesn’t know how to get back to Arizona—”
“Is that your world?” he interrupted.
She snorted and wiped at the edge of one eye. “Oh wow, I hope not,” she said. She giggled. “I mean, that’s in my world, but it’s pretty awful. But I’m stuck here unless I can find the Map, and my parents don’t know where I am, and my mom is going to be so worried, and that’s just going to make her sicker and…”
She clamped her lips shut and looked away, clearly trying not to choke up.
Something inside Fin ached. He could practically feel her pain, like it was his own. He couldn’t help but think of Mrs. Parsnickle—he’d have done anything to make her smile and relieve some of her worries. Now he had that same feeling with Marrill.
“Hey,” he said suddenly. “You know what just right now occurred to me? Maybe I could use the Map to find my mom, too! We can look for it together!”
Marrill smiled. She could probably tell he hadn’t just thought of that, but nevertheless seemed happy to play along. “Totally,” she told him.
The look she gave him made his heart swell. It had been so long since he had really talked to someone, really been heard by them, he didn’t really even remember what it was like. He could take a moment to bask in that, even if he knew Marrill would forget him someday, too.
He hadn’t lied to Marrill; they would find the Map. And both their moms. It was just he would have to take it and use it first, before she forgot him. But in the meantime, maybe, for the first time, he could actually see what it was like to have a real friend.
CHAPTER 20
Kraken vs. Kraken
Over the next few days, the Enterprising Kraken navigated the Stream. And the Stream did not stay, as Marrill had previously known it, like open ocean. Sometimes it narrowed into a fast-paced torrent, thundering through canyons made of silver glass, and Marrill and Fin had to batten down belowdecks to avoid what Ardent called “mirror madness.”
Other times, it flattened and broadened, becoming a slow, muddy river, and they could stand on the gunwales and wave at the friendly three-fingered sloth-folk, who hung their villages upside down from low-hanging trees. As much as she desperately wanted to get back to her parents, Marrill itched to explore all the amazing places around her.
They ate mostly prollycrab, pulled fresh from the Stream. “It’s short for ‘probability crab,’ ” Ardent told her, splitting open an orange claw and sucking out the rich velvet meat. “Because like the Stream itself, they embrace all probabilities.” He smacked his lips. “Ooh, this one is chocolate!”
“Rubbish,” Coll whispered, splitting off a deep blue thorax. “They’re called prollycrabs ’cause they’re prolly crabs, but everyone’s too scared to find out for sure.” A grimace passed over his face. “Ugh, sauerkraut.” He dropped the remains of the crab to the deck, where Karnelius sniffed at it before crunching at the shell happily.
During the day, Fin and Marrill explored the ship, or played board games with the pirats, or napped in the sun with Karnelius, or swung on a swing the Ropebone Man dropped down for them. They helped Coll make repairs when they could, sewing sails and hammering loose planks, and Fin even placed a new topgallant on the mainmast.
“The raised deck at the front of the ship is the fo’c’sle,” Coll explained as Marrill helped him run ropes through the side rigging (which she now knew were “deadeyes”). “Spelled ‘forecastle.’ The deck we’re on, right in the middle, is the main deck, or waist.” He pointed back to his captain’s wheel. “Up there where I stand is the quarterdeck. The covered part is the poop. Stop giggling.”
Sometimes, the Stream got even stranger. A sharp bend in the river led them into the heart of a city, and soon Marrill realized they were sailing in a storm drain. They all screamed when it emptied down into a sewer, where the air smelled worse than anything she could have ever imagined. Eyeballs on mushroom stalks bent their way curiously as the Kraken bobbed past, until the sewer finally emptied out into a stagnant, algae-covered pond.
“Where are we going?” Marrill asked Ardent, watching Rose wing ahead, a black dot in the clear sky. Every now and again, she’d double back and circle about the ship before taking off once more, just to make sure they were still following.
He just shook his head. “Far away, it seems.”
With a barge of bat-eared merchants, they traded prollycrab for speckled fruits. They drew fresh water when the Stream swept through the bottom of a well. The Giants of Gub granted them safe passage; Marrill would never forget the sight of Ardent standing on a chair on the forecastle, arms waving as he negotiated with an upside-down-faced monster five times his size. She spent much of her time sketching all the amazing things she saw with some pencils and a pad of paper Coll had dug up for her, new pictures to add to her collage when she finally did get back home.
But mostly, she hung out with Fin, Ardent, and Coll. She told them about her life and her world, and Fin shared stories about growing up in the Orphan Preserve and the pranks he used to play. Ardent went on at length about his theories on the transection of interdimensional tidal flows, and Coll shared old maritime legends about a great iron ghost ship that stalked the Stream.
“I’ve heard about that one,” Fin piped up when Coll finished one tale. “A big ship pulled into the Khaznot Quay for repairs not too long ago reporting they’d been attacked by the Iron Ship. They said there was a storm like the whole world was breaking, and then lighting flashed red and the Iron Ship appeared out of nowhere.”
Frowning, Marrill reached a hand down to where Karnelius slept on his back at her feet, and rubbed his belly for comfort. His tail twitched in response.
“Likely a bunch of swoggle sold by drunkards and madmen,” Coll said, shrugging. “I’ve been sailing the Stream for a long time and never seen hide nor hair of it. Skullraiders, yes. Albatross blizzards, sure. Pirhanabat infestations—too many to count. But nothing like any kind of iron ship.”
He yawned and stretched. “And on that note, sweet dreams,” he said as he made his way to the hatch leading belowdecks.
Marrill swiveled toward Fin and Ardent, her eyes wide. “Skullraiders?”
Ardent patted her on the head. “No need to worry about those. We keep the Kraken up to date with her vaccines and enchantings.” He stood. “Besides, with all the things on the Stream that can kill you, a bit of ticklish discomfort never hurt anyone.” He paused. “Mostly. Anyway, good night!” He called for the Ropebone Man to take first watch and headed off to his cabin.
Marrill didn’t quite feel reassured. Scoop-ing up Karnelius, she followed Fin inside and down the spiral stairs to the deck with their berths. His room was across the hall from hers, and he shuffled his feet a bit before saying, “See you in the morning?” like he was still unsure whether she would actually remember him.
She smiled, said, “Night, Fin,” and stepped into her room. When she’d left it earlier, it had been decorated in shades of orange and brown, the walls painted to look like she was in the midst of a herd of ponies. She could have done without the wooden floors covered in grit or the leathe
But tonight the room had rearranged itself into a kind of oasis. The walls were draped with soft fabric in blues and greens, and in the corner a trail of water slid down into a pool filled with flashing fish. Her bed was soft and smelled of grass, and she sank into it blissfully. Karnelius curled at her side, paws padding slightly against her hip. They were both asleep in minutes.
The next day, the Stream opened up again, stretching out from horizon to horizon. And by midday, Marrill was deep in the throes of the one emotion she never thought she’d encounter on the Pirate Stream: boredom.
“What d’ya think?” Fin asked, holding out a silver pepper shaker.
Marrill scrunched her nose, considering the object. “Definitely something alive,” she finally pronounced. For the past several hours, the two of them had been playing a game of Drop Things into the Pirate Stream and Guess What They’ll Turn Into.
So far they’d watched a shoe turn into a fish (boring), a towel morph into a small raft of tiger-roses (not boring), and a cup disappear into a high-pitched scream accompanied by the rattle of castanets and a driving bass beat (downright freaky).
“I’m going with deadly,” Fin said.
Marrill shrugged. “Just drop the thing, already.”
Fin did as ordered. The afternoon light glinted off the silver curves of the shaker as it fell. It splashed into the Stream with a hiss and disappeared. Marrill held her breath, waiting.
A faint purplish hue bloomed just under the surface, churning the water.
“Another dud,” Fin sighed. He turned back toward the deck, his eyes scanning for something else to chuck overboard.
But Marrill kept her eyes on the Stream. A dark shadow spread under the ship, and something about it made her uneasy. “Fin…”
He ignored her, digging through his pockets. “Seriously, what does it take to get a good solid explosion around here?”
As the shadow grew, the surface of the Stream puckered, as if something deep underneath were kicking upward. “Fin…” Marrill urged, her tone changed from warning to slightly panicked.
“I mean, sure, it was cool when that toothbrush turned into a picture of your face drawn in multicolored sparkles,” Fin continued, oblivious to Marrill’s mounting apprehension. “But I wouldn’t really classify that as an explosion per se.”
A long, thin band of shadow stretched out from the core, followed by another and another. And still the surface churned, waves beginning to rise. Marrill tugged at his coat. “I think maybe…”
But Fin wasn’t listening. He pulled something that looked like a yellowish baseball with wavy-looking arms from his thief’s bag. He sniffed at it, his expression contemplative. “Could create a nice reaction,” he mused. “Shame to waste a good tentalo when it’s almost ripe.…”
Meanwhile, the darkness beneath the boat grew larger and larger.…
“Fin!” Marrill finally screamed, grabbing him by the shoulders. He looked at her, clearly puzzled by her burst of emotion. Just then, an indigo tentacle the size of a telephone pole erupted from the water and waved toward the ship.
Fin’s eyes widened as his eyebrows snapped together. “Huh,” he said. “I guess we were both right.”
Two more tentacles joined the first, grasping at the railing. A massive head exploded from the Stream, bellowing an epic roar. Behind them, Coll shouted, “Kraken!”
Marrill’s heart stopped. The creature leveled its single enormous eye straight at her, no more than a dozen feet away. Its beaked mouth snapped open. In it, she could see nothing but blackness.
Pure terror raced through her. Fin had his hand around her arm and was tugging her away from the railing. The gesture was useless; at any moment a huge tentacle would crash down and crush the ship, drowning them all with one swipe.
For all that, Coll seemed shockingly unperturbed. “Ardent,” he called out with a calm urgency, “perhaps a moment of your time?”
The wizard had been sitting at his table, his legs crossed, staring wistfully at a hand of cards floating before him. He glanced up, his mind still obviously occupied with whatever he’d been thinking about.
“Oh,” was all he said. He casually waved one hand toward the giant beast. A shrill whistle cut through the air, and the giant octopus began to shrivel in on itself. A loud pop sounded, and a silver pepper shaker clattered to the deck, right underneath where one of the kraken’s tentacles had been poised to destroy them.
Marrill stared at Fin. Both of them wore the same stunned expression. Blood still roared in her ears, and her fingers shook from the jolt of adrenaline. She crouched and reached for the shaker. It was slightly dented and felt a bit slimy.
“Maybe we should find another game?” Fin finally asked, one side of his mouth twisted into a grin.
“How about some downtime,” Coll suggested, face hardened into a scowl. “Every fool knows pepper and the Stream don’t mix well,” he added under his breath.
When Fin announced he was off to round up the pirats for a game of hide-and-seek, Marrill waved him off on his own; she was too exhausted to deal with any more excitement just then. Instead, she picked up her pad and pencils, intending to draw the kraken while it was still fresh in her mind. But when she pulled up a chair beside Ardent, she was distracted by the playing cards hovering in the air in front of him.
They were remarkably detailed, each depicting a different, intricately drawn face. They weren’t playing cards at all, she realized, but portraits. “Who are they?” she asked.
The old man scooted over to give her a better view. “Old friends,” he said. “Wizards I used to know and study magic with, on occasion.”
Marrill scanned them. One in particular, a sharp-featured woman with a tight but pretty smile, stood out. Not least because the creases on the card showed it had been handled more often than the rest. “Who’s she?”
“Ah,” Ardent said. His voice was calm, sad even. “You honed right in on it. Good instincts, young Marrill.”
He flipped the rest of the cards down, and they floated into a pile, leaving the portrait of the woman alone before them. “This,” he said, “is Annalessa. She’s the reason I seek the Map to Everywhere.”
“Really?” Marrill asked. This was getting juicy! She folded her hands in front of her, listening. “Tell me more!”
“Annalessa and I were very close once,” he told her. He held up the picture, and turned it. With the motion, Annalessa seemed to open her mouth and laugh. But then the tight smile was still there, and Marrill couldn’t say for sure if it had ever left. “We sought the answer to a great question together. But I sought it in my study, among books and experiments, while she pursued it across the Stream.”
“So she was awesome and you were boring,” Marrill summed up. “Go on.”
Ardent nodded, mouth twitching in a barely repressed smile. “Quite. And when she came to me for help, I… was perhaps a bit hasty in declining.”
“So she was cool and you were a jerk,” Marrill said. “Go on.”
Ardent cocked an eyebrow at her. “Being right won’t save you from a wizard’s wrath, you know,” he said. Marrill made a quick zipping motion over her lips. “Anyway,” he went on, “one day she sent me a letter. A letter containing something she would never have sent me if she were not truly, seriously in trouble. And that is why I must find her.”
“So that’s why you’re looking for the Map,” she surmised. “What did she send you? What kind of trouble is she in? What will you do if you find her?”
Ardent stood, slipping the card into his pocket. “Wizards get to keep some secrets, you know,” he said. “But fear not, I will clue you in the moment it involves you.”
That moment, obviously, wasn’t now.
CHAPTER 21
Fin Talks to a Tree
Fin stepped out onto the deck and blinked against the sunlight. The ship had slowed. Around them, green blossoms scabbed over the golden Stream water. Knobby wooden roots jutte
Overhead, he caught a glimpse of Rose winging her way past, weaving through the treetops. Insects buzzed, and strange whispers and whoops sounded in the distance. They were a far cry from the safe, familiar perils of the Khaznot Quay.
“Finally,” Marrill said, emerging from belowdecks behind him. “I was starting to think I’d be stuck on this ship forever!”
Fin forced a smile. “Oh yeah, that would be…” He didn’t need to finish. He hung back as Marrill headed toward the bow, where Ardent stood watching the water.
A dull ache tugged at his gut. Of course, he was glad they were moving on with the quest. It was just that he’d kind of enjoyed the last few days. It was nice having someone he didn’t have to constantly introduce himself to, someone who wanted to spend time with him.
And as soon as they found the Map, that would all be over. One way or another, they would split up, and it would be just him again—forgettable Fin.
He took a deep breath and bounded up the stairs to the quarterdeck, where Coll carefully weaved the ship through the maze of root and tree.
“So,” Fin announced. “Where we headed?”
Coll jumped and jerked the wheel, then struggled to pull it back before the ship could hit anything. “Stestor’s bones, kid!” he cried. “Don’t sneak up like that!”
He angled a long look Fin’s way. “Who’s this, another one?” he asked the air. “Are we growing stowaways today? You didn’t come out the bilge, did you?”
Fin shook his head. “Don’t worry, we’ve been over this before. I’m Fin, I’m forgettable, I’m part of the crew now. We do this most every time we meet.”
Coll turned back to the wheel. “Sounds familiar,” he said. “Just maybe wear a bell or something.”