Tes lunged up—or meant to. She made it halfway onto one elbow when a white-hot pain shot through her side and she half tumbled, half fell back with a gasp, knocking her head against the table as she did.
“Oh great,” said the woman, “she’s awake.”
The man swept forward, leaving the doormaker behind as he gently pressed Tes’s shoulder back against the wood.
“Lie still,” he said. “We’re trying to help.” And then, to her surprise he held up a single red lin, between his face and hers, and whispered, “You’re safe here.”
And before she could wonder who he was, and how he knew about her world, he pressed a cloth over her nose and mouth. It smelled sweet, and cloying. But the pain began to dim, and the edges of the world went soft. Tes looked up into the man’s face, and then past it, at the faint tendril of magic coiling through the air around him. Her fingers twitched, and she reached out, as if to catch it—but then her hand fell, and the room faded, and everything went black.
Part Eight
THE GIRL, THE BIRD, AND THE GOOD LUCK SHIP
I
HANAS
NINE YEARS AGO
Tesali Ranek had a wind-blown heart.
That’s what her mother always said. That her youngest daughter had been born with a breeze inside her. It was why she couldn’t sit still, why she was always escaping out of open doors, why she was always in motion, churning through the halls of the house, playing in the shop below until her father couldn’t stand her restless limbs, how near they got to the precious things on his fragile shelves, and he inevitably swept her from the shop, and set her free until dark.
That day, six-year-old Tesali had blown even farther from home, climbed up the cliff path, which was not a path so much as a ribbon of grass worn bare, a slippery road of shifting rock.
But it was worth it, for the view.
A breeze was picking up, carrying the scent of a storm, but when she scanned the bay, she saw the clouds sitting like distant ships. Plenty of time, she thought, clambering up the last jagged slope.
Hanas was a sea city, built along a series of rocky outcrops, big as giant’s stairs, that led up from the coast. The port sat in the bowl of the bay below, and the cliffs rose above, peaks trimmed with mossy soil. No one built along those cliffs—they said the rock was too fickle, too loose, prone to flaking off like pastry crust—but if that was true, she didn’t see why they’d gone and put all the buildings right below. The cliffs would stay put, they insisted, as long as they were left alone. But little girls were lighter than houses, so Tesali climbed, careful to avoid any stones that looked even a little loose, and when she reached the top, she stood, hands on her hips, and beamed in triumph, as if she’d conquered the city as well as the cliff, as if everything below belonged to her.
“I am the queen of Hanas!” she shouted, but the wind stole the words, plucked them away like a ribbon from her hair, and she flopped down, breathless, in the weedy grass, and watched the ships come and go, their sails reduced to tiny white pennants.
Tesali settled back, and stared up at the vast and open day until the air just above her eyes began to shimmer, and move, like fingers rustling a curtain. It was happening again. She squinted, trying to refocus her vision, but the shimmer only sharpened, drawing lines until it looked less like a sky and more like a tapestry. She waited for it to disappear, and when it didn’t, she squeezed her eyes shut, letting the wind pick up in her ears, in her bones, in her heart, and carry her away.
* * *
Drip.
A drop of water landed right between her eyes.
Tesali blinked.
She didn’t remember dozing, but the day smelled different now, and when she sat up, she saw that the storm had swept in, no longer a shadow on the horizon but a roiling darkness overhead, threatening to—
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Like a pipe about to burst, and sure enough, seconds later, the drizzle became a downpour, and she was up, half running, half sliding down the slope, as dirt turned to mud and the pebbles skittered beneath her shoes and the rain crashed down, her vision blurring in the storm until it didn’t look like drops at all but a thousand tiny filaments of light. She shook her head, tried to make her eyes work right as she raced home.
By the time the path became a street again, and the ground turned from packed dirt back to cobblestone, she was soaked through, her curls slicked against her face and neck, her dress clinging to her legs. Tesali passed a shop window, caught her reflection in the glass. She looked wild, and wind-made, and mad, and the sight made her smile.