The little sailor’s truthtelling emblem became so famous, Emblemites would crowd ports when her family’s ship docked, begging for a bit of truth for themselves.
But, as she learned, the truth can cause more chaos than good.
She witnessed families torn apart, people gone mad, leaders fall, all because of her gift. The girl caused so much devastation that sadness consumed her, an inferno of guilt and worry constantly blazing in her chest.
To stop the pain, she asked a boy with a snowflake emblem to turn her heart to ice.
From then on, she spoke truths without feeling any sorrow at the ruin she left in her wake. She felt nothing at all. Then she left, in search of a place as cold as her heart.
She traveled north until the ice was as blue as a cloudless sky. And there she lives, still offering truths to those that dare the journey to find her—and who have had enough of lies.
15
The Truthteller
The compass never pointed anywhere but north, and they traveled farther than Tor could even picture on a map. Three days passed without encountering land, and the breeze became a chill.
Melda had finished her book on mermaids, but kept going back to different chapters, a pen in hand, writing in the margins. Tor got the sense that she was distracting herself from her arenahora, which had been reduced to just a few pinches of sand. Vesper looked more tired by the hour, as if the days out of the water weighed heavily on her. Engle slept soundly.
Tor had a habit of standing at the helm of the ship most of the afternoon, as if doing so would make them sail faster. He tugged on his connection to the boat, willing it to speed through the narrow channel they had just entered, between two expanses of snow that went on for miles.
“Would you look at that,” Captain Forecastle said, making everyone else stand.
Up ahead, glaciers floated in the water on both sides, surrounded by long shards of ice. Atop each sat a mermaid. They had ice blue tails and white hair that floated around them, the same way it would if they were underwater. Their fins were silver and solid, like freshly cut diamond. They whispered to each other in a language Tor didn’t understand.
“Melda?” Tor asked. “Are they in your book?”
She looked fascinated. “They’re wintresses. Mermaids who thrive in the cold and draw power from its frigidity.”
“Are they dangerous?”
She pursed her lips. “Only if you try to take their ice. They have quite sharp teeth and nails.”
“What do they eat?”
“Frozen fish.” She gave him a look. “Why, what are you thinking?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Melda. Would you say the ice here is as blue as the sky on a cloudless day?”
Melda let her eyelids droop, instantly recognizing the description. “You can’t be serious. We don’t exactly have time to spare.” She held up her arenahora for good measure.
“I know. But the truthteller might say something that makes a difference. That changes fate.” Tor swallowed. Most of the time he spent at the helm, he worried about the prophecy. It had predicted his death, which he had somehow survived.
And it had also predicted that their quest would be fruitless.
There had to be a loophole for that, too. Some way to get to the pearl before the captain, the spectral, and the traitor.
Melda didn’t look happy. But she let out a long breath and nodded. “Want me to come with you?”
“No. I think I have to do this alone.”
Tor stopped the ship and let Melda explain to the others where he’d gone. He stepped off the stairs and carefully onto a giant sheet of ice that had floated near their ship, mostly intact. It led all the way to the mermaids, sitting casually on their glaciers. He whistled, and Melda dropped the basket of frozen fish he had made appear just seconds earlier. The ice was slippery beneath his boots—one foot slid forward and his other leg buckled, but he steadied himself, worried about cracking his head open on the unforgiving ice.
The mermaids watched him curiously, hands busy braiding their floating white hair. Their bell-voices hitched as he neared, some barring teeth sharp as daggers.
Tor approached and placed the basket at his feet. He knelt, not taking his eyes off the mermaids in case they leapt to attack, and blindly reached for a fish. He picked one up by its tail.
The wintresses’ voices changed then, their chimes now rushed with excitement.
“I’m looking for the truthteller,” Tor said slowly, wondering if there was any way they could understand him.
One of the wintresses looked up at him, as if trying to understand. With surprising elegance, the others began taking fish from the basket.
Tor stared at the curious wintress.
She clearly did not speak his language. He gritted his teeth and began trying to pantomime what a truthteller was, but stopped when he remembered his emblem. He pointed at it, showing her the marking. Surely it would mean something to her.
Immediately, the wintress nodded with understanding.
She ducked under the water, and Tor had to run to follow, his feet slipping and sliding as he rushed to catch up. The sheet of ice came to an end, so he jumped on another, nearly falling into the water when it tipped to the side with his weight. Before he could plunge into the glacial waters, he leapt onto another shard of floating ice. The wintress did not look up or over her shoulder; she simply kept swimming, light blue tail moving swiftly behind her, at times splashing out of the water.
He knelt and used his hands to paddle the piece of ice closer to what looked almost steady as land, wide and solid in front of him. Just as he jumped and made it onto the field of ice, the wintress swam beneath it. Tor saw her through the frozen water. This new sheet of ice was
