“I have my reasons,” she says, rather mysteriously. “Now go.”
She pushes me through the gate and into the Sea God’s palace.
14
The Sea God’s hall is empty. The throne, where he was sleeping the night before, is vacant. Somehow I’m not surprised, though I wish it were a simple matter of finding the Sea God and forcing him awake to break the curse. The noon sun has reached its apex in the sky, pounding heat against my neck. I have a sinking premonition that he isn’t here—in this hall, or in the many courtyards.
The Red String of Fate tugs at my hand. I look down, noticing a subtle shift in its direction. Before, it had angled to the left as I moved across the city and Shin remained in place, but now it’s a straight line, and … it’s rippling. The color of the ribbon shifts from pale pink to deep red, like a wave cresting toward me.
Shin is coming.
Namgi must have sent a missive, alerting him to my escape. Or he sensed the change in my direction. He’ll be here soon, to take me back to Lotus House, where I’ll have no hope of discovering the truth about the Sea God.
I search the hall. There must be some hint as to where an errant god might have disappeared to. Yet there are no doors in the walls, and when I reach for the windows, my fingers barely brush the closed shutters. There’s only the dais and the throne, and behind both—the great mural of the dragon chasing a pearl across the sky.
The dragon in the mural is not true to life, perhaps a fourth the size of the real one. And yet the depiction is mesmerizing, each scale painted a different shade of the sea, from deep indigo to jade green to viridian blue. I draw closer to the mural, reach out a hand, and press it to one of those smooth, glittering scales.
The wall gives beneath my hand, revealing a hidden door.
I step through it into a garden.
Birdsong lilts through sun-dappled trees. A stream nearby gurgles merrily. I look for signs of the Sea God, but the garden appears abandoned.
I follow a worn path overgrown with weeds and grass, passing crumbled rock walls and moss-covered statues.
Speckled sunlight winks through the trees. At one point, I glimpse a meadow in the distance, with a broad swath of flattened grass, as if a large creature had recently been taking a sunny nap.
I’ve walked a fair distance when I come upon a pavilion, built beside a small pond. Its design is similar to the temple of the fox goddess, with a winged rooftop and four pillars at each corner. The wooden steps creak as I make my way up them; inside, the floorboards are rough with sand and dirt. I place my hand on a pillar, warm from the sun, and look back the way I came. The Red String of Fate is now pale pink. I wonder if Shin has arrived at the palace, only to find the doors barred.
I close my eyes. It’s quiet. Peaceful. The silence in the Sea God’s hall felt empty, but here the silence feels expectant, like a held breath.
Out of the stillness comes the peal of a chime.
I feel the blood drain from my body. I turn toward the sound. Behind the pavilion is a pond filled with small white objects. It takes me a moment to realize what they are.
Paper boats. Hundreds of them, overlapping one another in the water.
I step off the platform and walk to the pond’s edge. My toes sink into the warm, silk-smooth mud. There’s a boat caught in the reeds. I lean down and pick it up. The paper is rough against my fingertips, the bottom soggy and dripping.
Slowly, I unfold the boat. My fingers brush against the first character scrawled across the surface, written in black ink. Darkness rises up, consuming me.
* * *
When I open my eyes, the world is covered in white. At first I think it’s snow. The fine residue coats the leaves on the trees, even the bark of their branches. But it’s not cold. And there’s smoke in the air, dulling the brightness of the sun.
It was noon when I entered the garden, but now it appears to be dusk. Did I faint beside the pond?
A flake of white drifts downward, and I lift my palm to catch it. From this close, I can see that it isn’t white at all, but gray with flecks of black.
Ash.
Ash everywhere, falling from the sky.
There’s a muffled cough behind me. I turn to see a young woman kneeling by a stream, though this stream doesn’t appear like any that I saw in the garden, its waters muddy and brackish.
“Please,” the girl says, “I beg of you. Save my child.” Her trembling hands spread across a bump beneath her rough dress. Tears stream down the girl’s face, which, even from this distance, is frighteningly gaunt.
A small fire crackles beside her. I watch as she takes a short stick from the pile, blowing out the flame at its tip. She then pulls a paper scroll from beneath her short jacket, spreading the paper on her lap. With the blackened coal from the fire, she writes shaking words onto its mottled surface. When she’s finished, she folds the sides of the paper, creasing each line carefully until it takes the shape of a boat. Raising it to her lips, she kisses the boat gently with parched lips and places it upon the water.