Finally, she could go no farther. She fell to the ground, her lungs burning, coughing from the smoky air. She was in a little circle of standing stones, in the shadow of something that looked like the broken hull of a ship, half-buried in sand. Noa crept deeper into the shadow and drew her knees up, shaking all over. Would the threadbare people find her here? She could see nothing but ruins and hills of sand. This place was horribly silent. Her knee was bleeding—she must have skinned it when she tripped.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. She wanted Julian. She wanted Mom. She clutched at her charm bracelet, pressing the blue whales into her skin.
“Noa?”
“Julian!” Noa sprang to her feet. She didn’t see him, though she looked in every possible direction. “Where are you? Where am I?”
“Noa, listen to me.” Julian’s voice was muffled, as if he were speaking from behind a wall. “You need to go back to the place where you fell through.”
“Where I fell through?”
“Yes. Do you remember?”
“I don’t know. I ran for a long time. There were people . . . things chasing me. Can you come get me?” Her voice sounded high and shaky, like a little girl’s, but she was too frightened to care.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, Noabell.”
“Why not? Where am I?”
There was a slight pause. “Let’s just focus on getting you out,” Julian said, and Noa realized that wherever she was, it must be terrible, if Julian was afraid to tell her the truth. “Try following the sound of my voice.”
A tear trickled down her cheek. “But I can hardly hear you!”
There was a pause, and then something drifted toward her. A tiny glowing orb, like the lights Julian had put in her ceiling.
“Can you see that?” Julian said.
Noa’s heart leaped. “Yes!”
The orb gave a little bob, and then it began to retreat through the shadow, wavering like a lighthouse beam through fog. Noa raced after it. She saw several gray figures moving in the distance, but they didn’t catch sight of her. In her haste, she tripped over a block of stone carved with unfamiliar runes, wrenching her ankle. Her eyes watered from the pain but she forced herself to her feet and limped on.
Finally, Noa saw a hill looming up in front of her, which was crowned with the crumbling tower that looked like a fist. “I recognize this!” she cried. “I think this is where I came through!”
“Good.” Julian’s voice was a little louder here. “Now, do you see a door?”
“A door?” Noa blinked. “No—there’s just a lot of rubble.”
“Keep looking.” The orb bobbed reassuringly. “It’s there.”
Noa gritted her teeth. “Julian, I’m telling you, there’s nothing here!” Panic rose in her throat. Would she be stuck in this horrible place forever?
“How about a mirror?”
“A mirror?” Despite herself, Noa almost laughed. “Where do you think I am, a bathroom? I just told you—”
“All right, all right. How about a fountain? Or perhaps a small pond?”
Noa reminded herself that Julian was trying to help her, and was not deliberately trying to drive her mad. “No.”
“Hmm.” She could practically see him running a hand through his dark hair. “Try the shadows, then.”
“The sha—” Noa stopped. She saw the shadow rising above Julian’s head. She saw the creatures thrusting her through a cloud of darkness. “The shadows are a door?”
“Possibly. I’m going off myths and legends here, Noa. Just try one.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” Her voice was high and shaky again.
“Then we’ll try something else. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
That’s all well and good, Noa thought. At least you know where you are.
Still, Julian had found her, even if she couldn’t see him, so she knew everything would be all right. Julian could rescue her from whatever this place was, just like he’d rescued her that time she fell asleep in a rowboat and drifted out to sea with the tide.
“There’s one by this tower,” she said. She didn’t like the look of the tower—it seemed as if it could come down on her head at any moment—but there was a big, dark shadow beneath it, like the one she had seen in the castle.
She stepped up to it, and again she felt that odd sensation, as though the shadow was a curtain she could push aside. Something moved at the edge of her vision. She jumped, throwing her hands up in front of her, certain it was another gray, threadbare figure ready to drag her away.
An otter stared back at her, its dark eyes wide. It was an ordinary sea otter, its dark fur shiny, as if it had just hopped out of the water. In its mouth it held a fish, still twitching. Noa couldn’t imagine how it had found a fish in this lifeless place. But then, she couldn’t understand how she had found an otter there, either.
“Who are you?” she said stupidly. Surely this was some sort of magical otter, despite its ordinary appearance. The otter rose onto its hind legs, which didn’t make it much taller.
“What is it?” Julian’s voice said.
“I—I don’t know. But it’s not like those things that brought me here.”
“Well, if it tries anything, tell it to leave you alone. You speak their language—they’ll listen to you.”
Noa froze. “I what?”
She thought of how she had felt drawn to the book from Evert. How the words had begun to make sense the longer she stared at them.
She could speak the lost magical language, which meant she was a magician. Like Julian, and Mite, and Mom, and every Marchena before them.
Her head swam, and for a moment she thought she would faint. I’m a magician, she thought numbly. The words bounced around in her head, but she couldn’t make sense of them. It was impossible that she could be a magician after wanting it for so long; Julian may as well have told her she could
