“Julian.” She went to his side. “What you’re seeing isn’t real. You have to keep the ships moving.”
“He’s hurting you,” he rasped, his eyes wide and unseeing. “He’s hurting you and Mite. And I’m—I’m gone. I can’t protect you. Gabriela—”
“It’s not real.” Noa shook him, even as another powerful vision overwhelmed her. She saw Xavier’s mages setting fire to Astrae. She saw the forest burn, and the apple orchard. The tidy houses in the village reduced to blackened shells. The tortoises, birds, and lizards all fleeing the flames that gobbled up everything they touched until Astrae looked like Evert before Julian had turned it right side out, a barren, lifeless thing.
No. This was what Gabriela wanted. She wanted them to lose the ability to think or plan, to feel nothing but fear. Noa was afraid. Her hands were shaking and it felt like there was some cold, clammy creature crouched on her chest, weighing her down, making it hard to breathe.
But she could still think.
The fake krill vanished, then reappeared again. The blue whale let out a long, melodious cry that had a querying note in it. Xavier seemed to have seen it, and was trying to move his ship away. Julian crouched on the ground, his head in his hands.
“Julian, remember when Mom was sick?” Noa said. “Remember how scared I was? You told me it was okay to be scared. That it was okay to feel whatever I wanted. But to also remember that you were there and you weren’t going to leave me. Remember?” She touched his shoulder. “Me and Mite aren’t going to leave you. Whatever happens, we face it together. Just like we always have.”
Julian lifted his head. His gaze was unfocused, but at least he seemed to be listening to her.
“One step at a time,” Noa said soothingly. “Just stand up first.” She helped him to his feet. “Now look at the whale. Can you lure it underneath Xavier’s ship?”
Julian drew a breath. He repeated the incantation, and the krill stopped flickering in and out of existence. They drew together like a wave.
“Good,” Noa said, even as another horrible vision filled her thoughts, this time of the assassin from the palace creeping toward her with the long knife. She forced herself to focus on Julian. “Keep doing that.”
Julian’s hand was squeezing hers far too tightly, but Noa didn’t protest. He continued to chant, his voice low and uncertain. The blue whale dove deeper and deeper until it was barely a shadow beneath the waves. But even as she rejoiced, Noa became aware of a crashing sound in the forest.
She screamed.
A huge spider emerged from the trees. Its limbs were black and furred with hairs thick as rope. On its back was a red splotch like an eye.
Mite took a step toward the spider. “Patience!” she shouted. Her face broke into a grin.
Julian wasn’t looking at Xavier’s ship anymore. He was staring at the spider, his face frozen. “Mite, get back!” He ran toward her, and the spider reared up on its back legs.
“No! Bad Patience!” Mite said in the same sort of voice Julian used with Reckoner when he wet his blankets. Then she said something else in a language Noa had never heard before. It was a strange, whispery language—almost musical, but in an uncomfortable way, like a lullaby sung backward. The huge spider froze, its many eyes fixed on Mite. Then, in a puff of black fog, it disappeared.
“Patience!” Mite ran forward. She leaned over something in the grass. “There you are! You’re all right.” She turned to Julian and Noa, beaming. “I knew I would find her! Although . . . I guess she found me.”
They stared at her.
Mite frowned. “What?”
“Mite,” Julian said in a wondering voice, “I think you can speak the language of fear.”
“Really?” Mite’s eyes were round.
“Could you . . . could you read the page I brought back from Death?” Noa said.
“Yeah,” Mite said with a shrug.
Noa gritted her teeth. “Then why didn’t you say something.”
“You didn’t ask,” Mite said. She paused. “Does this mean I’ll explode more?”
Noa burst into laughter. It had a wild edge, but the sound was a balm, and Julian smiled, too. She looked down at the beach, and her heart started thudding again. There was another cloud of fog moving toward them. “Mite, see if you can tell that fog to go away. Can you try?”
Mite set her jaw. “Okay.” She turned to the fog and yelled something at it. But even though she was yelling, there was still a whispery quality to the words. The fog seemed to tremble. It didn’t dissipate, but it froze at the base of the mountain.
“She’s holding it off!” Noa cried. Julian was already chanting again, and they watched as a second blue whale appeared in the distance, drifting closer to Xavier’s fleet. Xavier’s ship gave a sudden jolt, as if something enormous had brushed up against the bow. Several mages were so startled that they fell overboard, and sailors raced back and forth across the deck.
Julian’s chanting grew more confident, and the krill cloud grew thicker. In the second before it happened, Noa saw Gabriela dive overboard, abandoning King Xavier as he stared, motionless in his confusion.
Then King Xavier’s ship simply tipped over.
Noa had been expecting something more dramatic. The whale rising up from the deep with its mouth open, smashing a hole in Xavier’s ship, or slashing its tail down and cleaving the bow in two. But the whale didn’t even lift its head above the waves. Noa saw only the curve of an enormous back that lifted the warship several feet above the water and then sent it slamming back down on its side. The whale may not have even known the ship was there.
The other warships were making a run for it, but the captains were so frantic that two of the ships rammed into a third. Noa wondered if they thought
