Burning Kingdoms. Lauren DeStefano
wrap my arms around her waist and pull her into the tub with me. I was hoping to make her laugh, but she flops unceremoniously against me.
“Tell me another story from the history book,” I say. “What about the tree that grew endless fruit after the infestation killed the crops?”
“It wasn’t an infestation,” Pen says. “You always get that part confused. It was a drought. The lakes weren’t replenishing. The people were losing faith in the god of the sky. Fish were rotting in the sun.”
“And then?” I say.
“You know the story,” she sighs. She flails until she’s able to free herself from the tub. “I’m going to bed.”
She reaches her hand out to me, and I let her pull me to my feet. I’m not tired at all, but there isn’t anything more to do. The sooner we sleep, the sooner it will be morning. And maybe there will be some answers then.
Celeste still hasn’t returned by the time I turn out the light. Pen’s bed and mine are separated by a small table that holds a black book and an alarm clock. The ticking feels louder in the darkness, drowned only by Pen’s tosses and turns.
I don’t move. Guilt has made me fear the days to come. If experiencing this war is the price I must pay for my curiosity, then I accept. But Pen never asked for this. Nor did Basil and Thomas. And they’re all here, one way or another, because of me.
The door creaks open, letting in the faint glow of the fireplace down in the lobby.
“About bloody time, Princess,” Pen mutters. “Don’t even think about blinding us with the light.”
“It’s me,” Birdie whispers. “I’m sorry, but Father is still downstairs and I—I need that tree.”
She sounds as frightened as I feel.
I sit up. “Is it safe to be out there?”
“I don’t care about safe,” she says.
“We have something in common, then,” Pen says. “Take us with you.”
“Or you’ll tell on me?” Birdie says unhappily.
“Of course not,” Pen says. “I just think it would be the decent thing for you to invite us. We are letting you use our window and all.”
Birdie hesitates. “You won’t find anything suitable to wear in this room,” she says. “All these clothes belonged to my mother. Let me go see if I can’t scare up a couple of dresses.”
We stuff our beds with pillows. Birdie is impressed with the deftness by which Pen and I can descend the tree, even with the icy branches. “We’re all a lot of natural climbers,” Pen says, hopping to the ground. “After a while there’s nowhere to go but up and then back down again.”
“Where to now?” I say.
“We have to walk for a bit,” Birdie says apologetically. “But then we can take the ferry once we reach the harbor. Used to be it would close by nine, but since the war the king has resolved never to let the city sleep. Makes us superior to King Erasmus, he thinks.”
“Even if a bomb has just gone off?” I say.
“Especially then. The Cranlin will be open until sunup. That’s our cinema. Do you have moving pictures on Internment?”
I imagine an image, blurry and monochrome, like the school portrait of Daphne after her murder. I imagine the image moving, her stoic eye blinking, and it gives me a chill. “Sounds terrifying,” I say.
“Not at all!” Birdie laughs at Pen’s and my startled expressions. “They’re the bee’s knees.” She loops her arms over the backs of our necks as we trudge forward. “Seems I have a lot to show you, girls.”
She introduces us to the harbor, and the roaring body of water she calls an ocean. “Is that like a big lake?” Pen asks.
“Much, much bigger, and full of salt,” Birdie says. “And the sea has more creatures than lakes. Whales and sharks and mermaids—they have human hair, you know.”
“Of all things,” I breathe.
Birdie bounces on her heels, looking at the lights coasting across the water toward us. “That’s the ferry,” she says.
Pen elbows me. “Look!”
But I’m still trying to imagine what sort of fish could have human hair, and when I look at the water, every bit of light now seems like it could be filled with strands.
There’s a tea-steeped moon above us, cratered and beaming. Strange how it looks as near now as it did when we lived in the sky, even as the clouds meandered alongside the city.
The ferry pushes out into the water, leaving my stomach and lungs on dry land. How easily I forget this afternoon and all the fears that came with it. Pen and Birdie crowd me at the railing. We are looking for mermaids and fins.
Pen looks between the harbor and the city lights in the distance. I know her. She’s charting the course, memorizing the details most others would miss. She’ll be drafting maps of it for days. Even as a child she would pen maps of every place she’d been, on the back of her hand and on walls if she couldn’t find paper in time. It became a part of her, as obvious as the green of her eyes. And one day it became her name, and no one ever questioned it, it was that certain.
“There’s one!” Birdie points to where the water has become crowded with bubbles. There’s a head of hair as silver as the light on the water, and once it’s under again, there’s the flicker of a fin as long as my forearm. Pen squeaks with delight.
“They never come near land and you probably won’t see their faces, but they like to flirt.”
“Have you ever seen one up close?” I say.
“Once. I was fishing with Nim, and his hook got caught up in her hair. She let out this wail, I swear, that could be heard from the heavens. Scared him so much, he dropped the pole, which may have been what she was after. They like to collect human things. Which reminds me, mind your jewelry. I saw one jump up and snatch the beads right off a woman’s neck.” She presses her hat against her head at the memory.
Pen and I close our fists around our betrothal bands.
The ocean waves slap against the ferry, more turbulent than any of the lakes back home. It’s no wonder; the ocean is filled with so many creatures swimming about.
“There could be cities underwater,” Pen says. “A whole society with buildings made up of human things.”
“There’s more shrimp than you could ever eat,” Birdie says.
Pen makes a face. “Do those have human hair, too?”
Birdie laughs. Out here, her eyes aren’t downcast. She isn’t all “please” and “thank you” and “yes, Father” this and that. She tells us about all the sea creatures she can think of—hard little fish that look like stars and crawl like hands along the ocean floor, and whales that could swallow a village if they had a mind to.
“A fish big enough to swallow a person.” Pen is giddy. “What a hilarious way to die, in the digestive tract of a fish.”
“Whales aren’t fish,” Birdie says, which is all the more absurd a notion.
“You live in a strange world, Birdie,” Pen says.
The ferry comes to a stop, and once we’re on land again, I topple dizzily into the two of them, which sends us all into giggles. We collect a few stares from passersby, but they mean nothing. We are young and enchanted and clattering with beads. We are untouchable.
I find myself very aware of the ground under my feet. It’s unlike the cobbles back home. Rather, it’s solid and black, and its paths branch out like a flat tree, all of them leading to bright lights and music and possibility.
“Cinema’s