but Archer smacks them away. Even Gwen’s outstretched fingers sizzle, powerless.
“Where did you send it?” Archer is a wild thing, grabbing the oracle around her middle and bringing her down. I run behind him and use my scepter as a bat. No, no, no. He can’t hurt her. He can’t.
He turns to me and hits me right in the gut.
I fall to my knees. Need. Breath.
He holds his arms over his head, the crooked curves of his dagger facing down.
I step forward.
“Death sets fire to the eternal well, brother.” A slick wet sound fills the air.
“I am not your brother!” When my hand closes around my scepter, a great bolt of light shoots out into the sky. Then the sky spits it back in tiny balls of fire that singe the dry earth.
The oracle is slumped behind Archer. Her blood is red fire, dripping over her and into the ground. The flames sizzle, consuming and spreading all around.
I pull out my dagger and drive it through Archer’s chest. He groans at first, but then he returns it with a right hook. “Mother wishes to see you, so I can’t hurt your face too badly.”
He cocks his head to the side, predatory and seductive. Then he looks to Gwen and Kai and seems torn. Like he can’t decide which one he’s going to attack. “We will all be a family soon.”
Then he plunges into the black pool beneath the tree.
Smoke fills the sky, which feels too low and the land too small. Dry earth breaks off in chunks and sinks into the encroaching blackness. Eternity.
Frogs and even birds dive right into the mouth of the pond beneath the tree.
Something is quivering inside the trunk.
“Kai,” I say, in warning. Everything, the earth around us, is consumed by a black void, breaking off into space.
“We have to go.” Gwen sinks one foot into the spring. “Now.”
“We don’t know where that leads,” I say.
“The only other options are getting sucked out into a nothingness or burning up,” Kai shouts.
Birds and butterflies fall right from the sky, dead all around us. The leaves of the tree have caught fire. One lands right on Kai’s shoulder. It leaves an angry red blotch.
“Come on!” Gwen pounds the ground. It cracks beneath her fist, spreading under Kai. She slips and I scramble to my feet and yank her onto what’s left of solid ground.
The gnarly old tree stretches up again, and this time the branches pierce the sky. A branch reaches up and touches a star. The flame ignites and courses down the dry bark.
Gwen jumps into the pool.
I hold Kai’s hand and we run in together, sinking like stones down a black tunnel. But I keep my eyes open, skyward.
Even the sky is on fire.
The spring leads us back to the sprawl of shipwrecks and geysers.
The same fish. The same light. As if nothing has changed since we left.
But that isn’t right. Everything is changing.
I sift through patches of grass and try to find the door again but it’s gone. In its place is turned-over grass. I use my scepter to blast at the ground, showering us in slow-settling clouds of rock and sand.
Over by the biggest ship, in front of a sea garden of colorful plants, Kai kneels. She presses her forehead to the sea floor. Fish swim around her like a kindness of ravens around a graveyard.
“What should we do?” Gwen swims beside me.
“I think someone should go back to Toliss. Tell my grandfather everything that’s happened.”
“He won’t like that we’ve been to the spring. Or that it’s—gone.”
I groan, which sounds like gurgling. “It doesn’t matter. He needs to get the island prepared in case of an attack.”
Kai swims in circles around us as if she senses something in the water. “The fish, Tristan. They’re gone.”
I see him from the corner of my eye. The merrow has a long red face, eyes like ink smudges, and tiny rows of black teeth. Long red thorns protrude from his arm. In one sling, they shoot out at us. Kai swims to the right, but a thorn tacks her tail to the wood of the ship. She pulls, ripping the flesh bloody. In seconds, it mends again.
The merrow is about to blow on the golden conch hanging from his chest, when he goes into a frenzy at the scent of her blood. He swims after her and Gwen holds out her hands. A bright light bursts from her palms, throwing him backward. He spins and dives back for