SERA WAS PERCHED IN THE CROW’S NEST OF THE MAIDEN’S Wail when the Pelagan coastline came into view.
She liked it here best, where she was high up and could see for miles. They had been at sea for fifteen days since fleeing Kaolin and Xavier McLellan. Sera still shivered remembering that night—the theater with all those people staring at her, the way the sprites had burst forth from beneath her dear Arboreal friend Boris, Errol the mertag clinging to her back as he shattered the glass ceiling, running across the rooftops of Old Port City until they reached the Seaport. She could still see Boris’s beautiful silvery bark charring as the sprites lit her leaves and branches aflame, still feel the twist of anguish that the gentle tree had sacrificed herself to give Sera and Errol the chance to escape.
But the only thing Sera could do to honor that sacrifice was to be free, as Boris had wanted. To find the tether that connected this planet to the City Above the Sky and return home.
“Land, Sera Lighthaven!” Errol cried out as he erupted from the water, his filaments flashing in shades of pearl pink and lilac. Then he vanished beneath the waves.
Sera swung over the rail and climbed down the rigging to join Leo McLellan where he stood alone on the deck. His sister, Agnes, had been welcomed warmly by the sailors, but not Leo. Violetta had made it clear at the very start that if he gave her crew any of that “patriarchal Kaolin horseshit,” he would promptly be thrown overboard. They tolerated his presence because he was a guest of hers—the Pelagans thought Sera was Saifa, the goddess of life. Sera did not know how to explain to them how wrong they were.
“Pelago,” she said eagerly, jumping the last few feet and landing lightly on the deck. “We’re almost there, Leo.”
“I never thought I’d see it,” Leo confessed as he tied back his thick black curls with a leather thong. His hair had grown long and unruly over the course of the voyage. He’d complained about it for days until Sera told him she thought it suited him quite nicely. It made him look freer, somehow, and different from the person she had met back in Kaolin. He never mentioned cutting it again after that.
“I wonder what it’s like,” Sera said. She hadn’t realized how uncertain she’d been that they would ever reach the country at all. But even now that they had, the island of Braxos where the tether was planted was still miles away, far to the north. There was a lot more journey left to go.
“Did you see?” Agnes came running up to them, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. “It’s Pelago! We made it!”
“You will love the city of Arbaz, I am thinking,” Vada said, sauntering up behind Agnes. “It has the largest market in all of Pelago. Even the one in Ithilia cannot compare. Though don’t tell the Ithilians I said that.”
Vada was the only sailor who treated Sera like a normal person, the only one who actually called her Sera and not Saifa. Sera had a suspicion that Agnes had much to do with that—the two girls were very close and had grown closer over the voyage.
“I can’t wait to see it,” Agnes gushed. “And Leo, Eneas said his sister works in the market; perhaps we’ll be able to meet her.”
“Sure,” Leo said, tugging at his shirt, “we can meet whoever you want, as long as I can get some new clothes.”
Vada grinned. “You are not enjoying Jacoba’s leftover things?”
Agnes choked on her laugh. Leo had been wearing one of the tallest sailor’s hand-me-downs, since his fancy clothes from the theater were entirely inappropriate for life on a ship.
“Surprisingly, no,” Leo said dryly. “At least, not after two weeks in them.”
“You know, I think you will be looking very fine in Pelagan clothes,” Vada said. “You have the figure for them.”
“Fashion is the least of our concern,” Agnes said, tucking a loose strand of hair up into her bun. “And it’s Ithilia we need to get to, not Arbaz.”
Ithilia was the capital city of Pelago, on a different island called Cairan. Pelago was nothing but islands, and even though Sera had been looking at maps of it for two weeks, she still felt disoriented by them all. When she had gazed down at this planet from the City Above the Sky, Pelago had seemed so small, a collection