She looked like she might say something else, but her gaze drifted to just above Tor’s head, to a row of shelves he had looked at earlier.
A tiny anchor sat on the middle shelf, right beside a miniature silver snowflake. Both were small enough to be charms on a bracelet.
“That’s what we need,” Vesper said, grabbing them. She turned to leave, then spotted Tor’s incredulous look over her shoulder. “Trust me,” was all she said.
And, since Tor had no plan of his own, he took the hourglass he had spotted, then followed her back down through the castle.
* * *
“Where is she going?” Melda asked with crossed arms and black brows in frustrated arches. Tor, Engle, and Melda had just rushed out of the castle, on Vesper’s heels. The waterbreather kept running, toward the cliff, with no signs of slowing down.
“I have no idea,” Tor said.
A few feet from the edge, Vesper stopped suddenly. Tor caught up with her, panting. Engle eyed the two charms in her palm.
He watched as Vesper took the tiny silver anchor between her fingers and threw it into the Lake of the Lost.
“Have you lost your mind?” Melda said. Vesper only smirked. She held her hand out as the tiny charm disappeared from view, Engle looking away as it sunk to the bottom.
Tor wondered what he had been thinking to trust a stranger.
Then the lake began to shake. Bubble. Tor took a step back as something broke through the gray water with a spray so large it almost reached them on the cliff.
A ship burst from the lake, bow first, before landing on its surface with another breathtaking splash. It looked huge even from hundreds of feet away—dark as night, with cobweb sails.
Engle blinked. “What did you say your second emblem did?”
Vesper folded her fingers back, stretching them each with a satisfying crack. “I can manipulate the size of things, make objects big or small.” She held her hand out, and Tor watched as the ship below shrunk until it was so small he couldn’t make it out, then floated up to Vesper’s awaiting palm. The tiny charm anchor from before was now connected to the miniature ship, by a chain that trailed down her thumb.
“How did you know the anchor meant there was a shrunken ship in the lake?” Melda asked.
Vesper shrugged, then held up her wrist. There was a bracelet there, holding half a dozen charms. “Because of my emblem, I can sense things that have been enchanted to be small. When we arrived on the cliff, I felt something in the water, and when I saw the anchor, I knew what it was. Some enchanted objects are locked and require keys of sorts to make them larger. The anchor is a key.”
“And the snowflake?” Melda asked, her voice tight.
Vesper handed the charm in question to Tor. The tiny flake glimmered once as it touched his skin, a most peculiar hello. “This contains enchantment that will ensure the Calavera don’t reach shore.”
It was cold in Tor’s palm. “How?”
“It will freeze them in place. But not forever. And we’ll have to get close enough for it to work.”
Melda frowned. “Then what do we do when they thaw again? Estrelle will still be in danger.”
Tor bit his back teeth together. He knew what this was—the beginning of another quest he didn’t want to be a part of. But Melda was right. The snowflake charm was just a temporary solution. “The Pirate’s Pearl would give them control of the seas, right?”
Vesper nodded.
He sighed. “Then we have to find it before they do. And use it to send them back where they came from.”
Melda turned away from him. He watched her hands reach for the necklace she no longer had, something she always used to do when she was worried.
Engle shrugged. “I was saying just this morning how much I miss adventure.”
At that, Melda glared at him. “I certainly don’t.” She faced Tor. “But I suppose we don’t have a choice, do we?”
“I’m in,” Vesper said, which didn’t do anything to dim Melda’s annoyance.
With that, they stacked their hands on the gold coin to return home. It glowed—and a breath later, they were in front of different water.
Estrelle’s Sapphire Sea was just as blue as its namesake gem. Shockingly deep blue, all the way until the horizon.
Blue all the way to a dozen ships, made from swirling smoke and bones.
“The Calavera,” Vesper breathed.
Tor’s grip on the snowflake tightened. Its metal edges dug into his palm. He had never seen ships so big. Even in its full glory, the Night Witch’s boat could have fit inside one of their hulls.
Engle swallowed, his vision seeing far past Tor’s own, thanks to his emblem. “There are hundreds of them…and they’re…they’re…”
“Dead?” Vesper said.
“They’re more bone than flesh!” he said.
Vesper nodded. “Their curse at work. They have to reach land to become whole.”
They were just a mile short of shore.
“Let’s go then,” Melda said.
There was a voice behind them. “Tor.”
His mother.
She stood there, holding something against her chest. A book.
“Mom, I have to go. We have a plan to stop the pirates, at least for a bit. And a ship.” He tried his best to stand very straight, chin high, like the leader he never wanted to be, though his fingers shook at his sides. “We’re going to find the Pirate’s Pearl ourselves and save Estrelle.” He lifted his palm, giving her a good view of the scar the Night Witch had left in the center of his palm, a vicious mark across his lifeline. “I might be the only one who can. I have to try.”
A tear shot down Chieftess Luna’s cheek, and Tor didn’t think he had ever seen his mother cry. “I know.” Worry lines etched across her forehead. Her hair, now gray after she gave the color to a goblin in search for her son, was tied back. “I know what you are now, and what you must do,” she said. She, more than anyone, knew the
