Sometimes, particularly after a long day of tramping through tide pools and crunching over lava rock, with her hair wound into fantastical tangles by the sea winds, her old princess life felt like a dream. At other times, she felt guilty for enjoying herself at all, because it seemed like a betrayal of Mom. On those days, she shut herself up in her room with Willow and refused to talk to anyone.
After a lot of huffing and sweating, Noa and Mite reached the peak of the volcano. Noa took out the Chronicle and tried to pretend she was alone, a general surveying her domain. The Chronicle was a roughly bound notebook where she cataloged her daily observations about the state of Astrae and its defenses, like a ship’s logbook.
She read over her observations from the previous days, which were neatly organized into categories like weather and lookout rotations and miles traveled. As she had suspected, the water temperature had remained steady, and there was no mention of strange currents. She squinted at the beach far below—she could just make out the tiny figures of the magicians, their hands linked as they chanted the spell to free the island again. The roiling currents were even more pronounced from above—they looked like dark snakes lurking beneath the water. The mystery island was densely forested with matazarno trees and bore no signs of villages or harbors. And yet they had run into a fishing boat, which could scarcely have come from anywhere else, given that there were no other islands within miles.
“It’s too hot up here,” Mite announced. “I want to go back to the beach.”
“Then go back to the beach,” Noa said. Mite sighed and kicked a rock. It rebounded off another rock with a crack. Mite kicked it again. Crack. Crack. Crack.
Noa tried to ignore her. She took out her map of Florean, which she kept tucked into the Chronicle.
The kingdom of Florean was made up of ten big islands and dozens of smaller ones, which jutted sharply out of the sea in a rough circle like bits of smashed plate. There were also countless islets, most of which were hardly big enough to fit a house and garden on. On the right side of the map was the edge of a blob labeled South Meruna, a huge, jungly continent of several kingdoms, all of which hated magic. Florean didn’t have much to do with them.
Some of Florean’s islands were basically just volcanoes and no good to anybody, coughing out ash and lava all day and night. Others were barren, with a lot of red rock and prickly pear cacti. The islands in the north of Florean were greener and often had forests; Astrae had been one of them before Julian enchanted it. Noa’s map was more than three years old, so Astrae was still on it. The poor island hadn’t known what was coming to it when the map had been drawn.
Noa tapped the map. Even if Julian had ordered Kell to speed up, they should be hours away from the nearest group of islands, the Nettles. It was possible they had run into an island that didn’t appear on the map. Possible, but unlikely, given the size of it.
Crack.
“Mite,” Noa said through gritted teeth. “Will. You. Be. Quiet.”
Mite’s face darkened. She was quiet for a moment, and then she picked up a stick and began hitting rocks with it, making even more noise.
That did it. Noa snapped the Chronicle shut and marched back down the trail, even though she hadn’t finished logging the day’s entry. She walked quickly—she was tall for thirteen, and could move fast when she wanted to. Then, once she was certain she was out of sight, she stepped behind a tree. A gecko hopped onto her shoulder, and she brushed it off.
Mite came running down the trail, panting, her cheeks red. Noa waited until the sound of Mite’s footsteps faded, then went back up to the top of the mountain and settled herself happily on a rock. It had been days since she’d had a moment to herself. She took out the Chronicle and continued cataloging in peace.
2
A Sea Monster Is Suspiciously Helpful
The magicians were still on the beach when Noa came down from the mountain an hour later. She felt a shiver of nervousness—she had expected Renne to have freed the island by now. The fishing boat was gone, whether because it had returned home or been devoured by Beauty, Noa didn’t know.
As if in answer to her thought, the sea serpent lifted her enormous head out of the water. Noa paused on the steps that led up a narrow sea cliff to the castle and motioned to her.
The serpent’s head dipped under the waves and surfaced closer to Noa. “May I help you, dear?” she inquired.
Noa tried to ignore the sandal stuck between Beauty’s teeth. “What happened to the fishing boat?”
“There was a little incident.” The sea serpent’s elegant voice rasped in her throat, barely louder than the waves on the shore. Beauty never raised her voice.
“Ah,” Noa said. “An incident involving the fishermen and your stomach? That sort of incident?”
The serpent made a shrugging motion with her huge, horned head. “They were terribly rude men, shouting at dear Renne like that. I’m sure he didn’t deserve it.”
“I’m sure he did.” Noa folded her arms. “Now, because of you, we can’t question them. Where do you think they came from? Is anyone living on that island?”
“I’m afraid we didn’t exchange pleasantries.” Beauty coughed, politely covering her mouth with the end of her tail. Another sandal plopped into the water.
“Well, what can you tell me?”
Beauty seemed to consider the question. Her eyes were the oily all-black of a seal’s, except that each one was as large as Noa’s head. “The island isn’t inhabited. The water doesn’t taste of men.”
Noa made a frustrated sound. “Then why was that fishing boat here? And for that matter, why didn’t Kell see the
