The Map to Everywhere by Carrie Ryan
“Um…” Marrill shifted Karnelius in her arms, wincing at the pain from the recent cat scratches on her palm. Maybe if she just played along, she would get to the bottom of this. At the very least, she’d end up with a story to tell her mom over dinner tonight.
She wasn’t getting much information out of him so far. She thought for a minute, contemplating her next move. An idea came to her. “Tell you what,” she called up. “If I agree to answer a question of yours, will you answer a question of mine?”
“Yes!” the old man cried. “Well, that’s my end of the bargain. Your turn to answer.”
“Wait, what?” Marrill asked. She rubbed her neck, which had grown stiff from looking up. Suddenly, she realized what had happened. He had answered a question of hers. She stomped her foot, but only succeeded in splashing herself. “But that’s not fair!” she cried.
“Fair?” the old man mused. “Well, probably not, I suppose, but they’re your rules. Besides, when speaking with wizards, one must be precise. Wouldn’t want to end up with a scalp covered in rabbits when what you really wanted was a baldness cure. A head full of hare can be devilish to keep fed, you know.”
He trailed off for a moment, then shook his head, returning his focus to Marrill. “So, did you see a scrap of paper hereabouts?”
Marrill narrowed her eyes. It occurred to her that she’d been approaching this conversation as if it were normal, when absolutely nothing about this day was even remotely normal. She thought for a moment and then grinned.
“Yes, I did see a scrap of paper,” she answered simply. The old man looked down at her expectantly. “We traded an answer for an answer,” she said triumphantly. “Now, if you’d like to make that same bargain again, I’m sure I can find another question for you.”
Laughter echoed from somewhere behind him. “She got you there, Ardent,” the hidden voice remarked. Marrill struggled to swallow her giggles.
“Quite so!” the old man—Ardent, apparently—said. “I accept your terms, young lady, but I’ll start this time. Where, perchance, did the paper go?”
“Last I saw, the wind was carrying it that way,” she told him, pointing her chin beyond the ship, to where the lake shimmered into the distance.
The old man followed her gaze. Then, out of nowhere, he started shouting to his companion. “Coll!” he ordered. “Turn us around. Or heave to or whatever you sailors call these things these days.”
A low grumbling began in the bowels of the ship, a kind of groaning as it started to turn, trying to navigate the shallows. Waves radiated out from the hull, crashing against Marrill and sending her off balance. The ship floundered, and Marrill heard the hidden voice—Coll’s—yell, “Sorry! The Stream’s shallow; current’s grown pretty stagnant. We might be stuck for a minute.”
Marrill juggled Karnelius so that she could free up an arm. “Wait!” she called out, waving to get the old man’s attention. “You didn’t answer my question! Where did you come from?”
The old man looked down at her and smiled. “Why, the Pirate Stream, of course!” And then he disappeared.
“Wait!” Marrill called again. “What does that even mean?” The ship rocked again, sending waves that splashed up to the hem of her shorts and crashed against the storefronts behind her. “Hello?” she called up at the empty railing.
She sloshed closer, easing her feet along the pavement to make sure it didn’t drop off. But it never did. Even next to the ship, the water only came up to her knees.
She studied the hull, trying to make sense of how such a massive boat could sail through such shallow water. Barnacles clung to the damp wood, up to the level of her nose, and she suddenly realized they were looking at her.
She bent closer. Green bodies peeked out from iridescent turquoise shells that shimmered as if coated in glitter. Also they had eyes. And feathers. She blinked in surprise. The little creatures let out a series of tiny chirps in response, and tucked themselves away, leaving only little wispy frills sticking out.
Marrill thought back through the dozens of books she’d read on the world’s strangest animals. She’d never heard of anything like these before.
Karnelius released his claws from Marrill’s shirt for just long enough to take a swipe at one. She yanked him out of range before he could do any damage. “Bad cat!” she quietly scolded. But then, she thought as she stared at the iridescent creatures, touching them was kind of irresistible.
She tried to keep her hands clenched into fists to avoid the temptation. But it was too much. It was all just too weird. Carefully, she snuck a finger out, holding it over one of the frills until the creature let out a squeak and eased from its shell.
“Hello, little fellow,” Marrill cooed, giggling as its feathers tickled her skin.
“Oh dear,” came a voice from above, startling her. “You didn’t let it touch you, did you?” The old man leaned dangerously far over the railing, staring down at her.
“I…” She slipped her hand behind her back. For a moment, she considered lying. But something about the man’s expression worried her. “Just a little,” she confessed.
“Oh dear,” Ardent said again, his forehead wrinkling in a frown.
Marrill’s heart rate spiked. She had the uneasy feeling that she’d done something terribly wrong. “Why? What’s bad about touching them?”
The man cleared his throat before answering. “Oh, nothing,” he said with a nervous smile. “Incidentally, you’re not allergic to poison by any chance, are you?”
CHAPTER 5
Guarding, and Other Ineffective Jobs
Most folks thought guard duty was boring. Not Ghatz. Guarding was in his blood. He traced his line back to ancient times, when Ghatz the Original had guarded the last tub of honey in the entire Khesteresh Empire against an army of angry bees. His own father, Ghatz Sr., had nobly guarded the Saint Nolywere Bridge, which kept the Khesteresh safe from the skink-riding plantimals of the Longtooth Kingdoms. And Ghatz himself had once guarded the imperial treasury of Khesteresh, up until it was sacked by plantimals. And now, even though the Khesteresh Empire might be a skink-infested ruin, Ghatz kept right on guarding.
Only now he worked for the Meressian Order, who had arrived just in time to save some of the Khesteresh Empire’s greatest relics from plantimal handicles. Grateful as Ghatz was for that, most of the time it didn’t quite live up to the old days. The Temple Ship stayed hidden on the deep waters of the Stream, and though he did his best to walk the deck and frown at any suspicious shape on the horizon, it was hardly real guarding. Up until recently, that is.
The sun shone bright on the wharf, and Ghatz squinted against it. His partner, Hersch, stood at stern attention next to him. In front of them, the ramshackle buildings of the Khaznot Quay leaned toward the docks like a pack of criminals getting ready to pounce. It was a thieves’ paradise, a den of smugglers and pirates without morals or inhibition. In short, it was the perfect place to guard against, and Ghatz was on high alert.
“Hello!” a voice chirped next to him. Ghatz jumped and looked down. It was a skinny little kid, with olive skin and dark hair. How could he have slipped up without being noticed? Ghatz cleared his throat to cover his embarrassment.
“Who goes there?” he demanded. He gave the kid his best guard-eye.
The kid shrugged. “Just a kid,” he said. “Prolly don’t remember me, huh?”
Ghatz looked to Hersch, who shrugged. “Remember you from where?” he asked.
“No trub,” said the kid. He gave them a big innocent smile that made even Ghatz feel comfortable. Not enough to let his guard down, of course, but comfortable nonetheless. “Ever seen a brine butterfly?” the kid asked.
The comment struck Ghatz as odd. He looked up at the sky and rubbed his chin. Overhead, the masts of the Temple Ship branched into a million intertwining limbs, each covered in tiny, leaflike sails. Those little sails always reminded him of butterfly wings. And of the brine butterflies of Khesteresh, in particular. Somewhere inside h
“Funny you bring it up,” he said. “Used to love the little puppers when I was a kid.” He tapped Hersch’s arm. “You ever seen one?”
Hersch glanced at him quickly, then looked away. “We’re on duty,” he whispered. “But no,” he added sheepishly. “Sort of always wanted to.”
“Lucky chance,” the kid said with a smile. He pulled a small glass jar from a bag at his waist and held it up. Inside, bright blue liquid sloshed about. “They were unloading a batch of ’em down the wharf a ways and I got to snitch me one.”
“Weren’t we just talking to someone about this?” Hersch asked.
“Shhhh!” Ghatz hissed as the kid unscrewed the lid. He leaned forward in anticipation.
The kid moved slowly, with the grace of a master showman. He twisted the jar hard, and the lid came open with a loud pop!
Ghatz and Hersch drew in their breath simultaneously. Nothing happened.
“Shy girl,” the kid tittered with a nervous smile. Just then, the liquid congealed and pulled together. First one long leg emerged, then another, and another. Ghatz practically shook with excitement—it really was a brine butterfly! The creature pulled itself free, brilliant blue wings unfolding, until it perched on the lip of the jar and shuddered slightly in the breeze.
“That’s something!” Hersch said, leaning forward. “It’s awful pretty.…” He reached out a finger to stroke the butterfly’s translucent wing.
Ghatz shot out a hand to stop him. “Careful, Hersch,” he barked. “They get scared easy. She’ll burst right into salt water if you touch her wrong!”
Out of the corner of his eye, he barely noticed the kid nodding in agreement, even as the jar dropped from his hand.
The butterfly startled, flapped for another perch. Ghatz ducked around her. Hersch didn’t. She settled straight on his nose, her wings brushing against the ends of his eyelashes.
“Don’t… move.…” Ghatz whispered. Hersch quivered with each brush of the wings. His face contorted. His eyes went wild with panic. Something was coming. Ghatz sucked in his breath.
Hersch looked like he was about to cry. And then he could resist no longer. He sneezed.
Ghatz let out a shriek as the terrified brine butterfly exploded into salt water, splashing all down Hersch’s face. “I told you not to touch her!” he shouted, batting away Hersch’s efforts to wipe himself off. “Don’t mess with her or she’ll never come out again!”
“I didn’t do nuffin’!” Hersch protested, his eyes red and teary from salt. Ghatz fussed around him, completely devoted to saving the butterfly. For a moment, neither one of them was paying the slightest attention to his guard duty.
And that moment was all Fin needed to slip past them, out of their minds forever, and onto the Meressian ship.
Fin couldn’t help smiling. It had taken him most of the morning chatting with those two to find the soft spot, but it had been worth it just to see the looks on their faces!
As he scrambled up the gangplank, he examined the Meressian Temple Ship. It was mostly built of dullwood, of course. Dullwood was the only stuff in existence too boring to be transformed into something crazy by the magic waters of the Pirate Stream. It was therefore essential for any good streamrunner. “Can’t sail a chicken,” as the sailors down at the docks would say, accompanied by the fervent nods of anyone who had sailed out too far in a normal-wood boat only to watch it sprout feathers.
But dullwood was the only thing dull about this ship. Living in the premiere smuggling port on the Pirate Stream, Fin had seen a lot of strange vessels. Most ships, though, looked something like ships. This one looked almost like, well, a forest.
First of all, she was circular, more a flat-topped bowl than the normal ship shape. Second, her masts pushed from her deck randomly, as if they’d grown there, and each one branched out toward the top, their limbs tangling in a dense canopy of leaflike sails. Carvings etched the sides of the ship, from waterline to mast tip, full of strange places and weird people and things Fin had never heard of.
Those carvings were a bit creepy, no doubt, but they made a grade-A climbing surface. And Fin would take climbing creepy carvings over sneaking past the guards on deck any day. In moments, he’d shimmied across a big, ugly-looking fish, traversed a horse with the tail of a peacock, and pulled himself through a nearby porthole.
Inside, a sharp, spicy odor punched him in the face. Apparently he’d found the ship’s mess. Low dining tables filled the room, and shelves full of flavor bottles lined the walls. In the middle of it all, a huge metal cauldron bubbled. The sign hanging over it read THIEF STEW.
Fin gulped. Very funny, he thought. Then a wicked idea crept into his mind. Whatever might actually be in the thief stew, it was the crew’s dinner. He searched through the pockets of his coat until he found the puke pills from Ad and Tad’s. He unwrapped a few with a mischievous grin and dropped them into the boiling cauldron. “Now that’s thief stew,” he said, chuckling.
He was just about to slip through the doorway when he heard a voice outside, saying, “Clear the workmen off.” He pressed himself flat against the wall, holding his breath to stay as still and quiet as possible.
“The repairs aren’t complete yet,” a second voice said. “And it’s almost lunchtime, so—”
“We’ve no choice,” interrupted the first voice. It was raspy and thick, and felt like a cheese grater on Fin’s eardrums. “There are rumors the Oracle’s already in the Quay, and we can’t risk him getting on board. We push off now.”
Fin gulped again and shifted until he could catch the reflection of the two speakers in a row of pots hanging on the far wall. The first voice belonged to a tall, thin creature with deadly-looking thorns covering his body. Bet he doesn’t get involved in many tickle fights, Fin thought.
“We never should have made port here to begin with,” the thorny guard said. “Every cutpurse in the city’s been eyeing us like a roast chicken for days now.”
“At least it’s a nice afternoon,” offered the second, a hulking figure with a face that looked more bullish than humanish.
The thorny guy shook his head, exasperated. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t place my hope in the Oracle stopping for a picnic. Now, get moving,” he ordered before walking off.
The guy with the bull face started after him, but then paused and doubled back toward the mess. “Maybe just one little yummy for my gummies,” he said to no one, tiptoeing quickly into the room and heading for the pot of thief stew.
Fin flattened himself against the wall, every muscle frozen. Bull Face lifted a steaming ladle full of the soup and took a long, loud sluuurrrrrrrrrpppppp. He smacked his lips a few times and turned to leave. When he reached the door, he let out a massive, satisfied belch, then continued on his way.
Too close, Fin thought, slumping against the wall. He waited for his pulse to slow before slipping out of the mess after Bull Face and pushing his way through the narrow door at the end of a hallway.
He found himself on a catwalk over an open gallery so giant it practically filled the whole ship. At its bottom, fires burned in censers all around, casting a red-orange glow on the huge masts that extended through the deck above to the base of the hull below.
In the middle of the chamber, a massive statue of a man cloaked in white robes and holding out a great golden chalice towered nearly to the ceiling. Several stories below the rim of the golden chalice, a reflecting pool was set into the floor, its water shimmering in the firelight.
But even that wasn’t what really caught Fin’s eye. Because scattered throughout the gallery were hundreds of display cases, filled with untold riches of every kind imaginable. It was a horde of loot like he’d never seen.
Fin nearly salivated at the sight. He took a moment to focus. These were certainly the treasures the letter had mentioned. But he needed to find that key. And according to the letter, it along with the ship’s true treasures was
He scanned the gallery, searching for any sign of the vault or the “starry sky” the letter had talked about. Nothing. Not that he was surprised—if he could have seen it so easily from here, it wouldn’t have been very well hidden. And if he was going to learn where his mother was, he was just going to have to go down there and find it. He glanced around for the quickest way to the main floor.
A series of catwalks and ladders ran around the walls of the massive chamber, creating a maze of ups and downs, sideways and crossways. And each and every one, he swiftly noticed, teemed with purple-clad guards, all headed in his direction. It was lunchtime, and he was standing between the Meressians and the mess hall.
There was no time to lose, and no place to run. With no other option, he flung himself over the rope railing and into the darkness.
If there were three things every orphan in the Khaznot Quay knew, the first was how to climb. Too many times, Fin had hung upside down from makeshift arches, the muscles in his arms and legs quivering and aching, waiting for a crowd (or a town watch or an angry mark) to slip past. He breathed a silent thanks for all those bad memories as the guards walked past where he was dangling and headed in to enjoy their thief stew.
Fin grinned. They had no idea what they were in for.
Once he was clear, Fin carefully lowered himself from one catwalk to the next, making a slow descent to the bottom. Finally, he dropped to the floor, just next to a fancy-looking glass display case. He couldn’t resist taking a peek inside.
A brace of spiff-looking knives waited for him, all silver blade and pearl handle. They looked just perfect for climbing, jimmying, and all-around thieving. He knew he shouldn’t; he had a key to find, real treasures to pilfer. But he did need to get a gift for Stavik.…
“I’ll be taking those,” Fin whispered to himself. A quick check for traps turned up a gossamer line running down through a little hole in the base to a vial of purple mist. Sneeze Breeze.