Island of Fire

When he opened his eyes, his fingertips were empty. In the space in front of him, Sky stood, still as a mouse.

“It’s done.” A grin spread across Alex’s face. “Check the mirror,” he said, remembering that’s what covered the wall where the secret hallway stood.

The girl put her fingers to her neck, and then ran to the mirror and stared. She traced the scars. A tear fell from the corner of her eye, and then she turned to Alex. “Alex,” she half mouthed, half whispered, nearly choking as her voice struggled to make sound once again. “Thank you.”

It was the most beautiful sound Alex had ever heard.

Lessons in

Warblish

Every day, whenever Lani could find a moment when no one was watching, she sent out the seek spell. And every day, when no one came to rescue them, she lost a little more hope.

She was assigned to work in a fire cave, melting gold coins

and making thorn necklaces. There were five or six other workers there around Lani’s age, and they showed her how to use a mold to form the long, thin, sharply pointed strings of gold. While the strings were still hot, the workers loosely weaved several of them together in a curved shape, making sure the pointed ends were at the proper angles to easily be inserted into someone’s neck. It was the most horrible job Lani could think of.

The cave had a hole in the high ceiling, which let in some natural light. It also let out the smoke from the fire. It was beastly hot in there, and terribly sooty. The others talked now and then with gestures that Lani didn’t understand, but most of the time everyone plodded along, making gleaming golden thorns, lost in their own thoughts. It was beyond frustrating. Lani wanted to scream, to tear the thorns from her neck and yell and stomp her feet and just hear something again besides the rare voice of an unthorned supervisor. She wanted the young women she worked with to be as angry as she was. But they weren’t. They were complacent.

Days passed. Lani went from the women’s bunkhouse to her job in the fire cave, and back to the bunkhouse. Her “leash” kept her tied to the complicated wire system above her head as she slept, bathed, and worked. Whenever she walked from one place to another, she strained her eyes, looking for any sign of Samheed, worried that he was still locked in the dark cave all alone. As much as she wanted to try to rip the wire off of her with her bare hands, she knew there was nowhere to escape to. And she wasn’t doing anything without Samheed. They were in this together, to the end.

As she worked, an empty feeling made her chest ache, and tears burned her eyes. She couldn’t get the image out of her head—the man shoving Samheed to the ground, and Sam lying there, not moving, as the hulking beast dragged her away from him. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. What if, after all this, she’d never see him again? What if . . . what if he was dead? She couldn’t bear to think about it.

At night, his name was on her lips as she tossed and turned on her cot. She clasped her hands together and held them to her cheek, eyes closed, pretending she was holding Samheed’s hand. Wishing with all her might that when she opened her eyes again, he would be there.

But of course he never was. It was on her second week outside the dark cave, after a long day of hard work, that a woman summoned Lani and a blondhaired girl who was also tethered to the wire. Lani didn’t know the girl’s name, and no one knew Lani’s, either—there was really no reason to learn anyone’s name when you couldn’t speak. The woman led them out to the main hallway and to a small room with boulders for chairs. A few people sat there. As the girls entered, they were ushered to one side of the room. Lani looked around at the others and her heart jumped to her throat. There sat Samheed, also tethered to the ceiling wire on the purple line.

His head was bowed. He hadn’t seen her. Lani stared at him, willing him to look up. After a moment, he did.

His eyes were vacant at first, but when he saw Lani, they filled with recognition and longing. Lani swallowed hard and tried to smile, but only the corner of her mouth quivered. Her heart fluttered. She hadn’t really seen him since the day they’d been captured. They held one another’s gaze, telling stories with their eyes, until a voice startled them from their private, silent conversation.

“I am Whimbrel,” a woman said. “Your behavior has earned you all the right to learn how to speak in our island’s sign language.” She wore no thorn necklace, but scars marked her neck where one most certainly once had been. “The language is for communication only when necessary, not for idle chatter. Anyone caught using the language excessively will be sent to the dark cave.”

The handful of tethered people in the room didn’t react. The threat of the dark cave seemed to be the punishment for everything. In their handbooks, in their instructions for their new jobs, in the dining hall. There was nothing much worse than the dark cave, it was true. But they’d all survived it, apparently.

“In a few years, if you have proved yourself loyal and worthy, Queen Eagala will consider removing your neck device, as she has obviously done for me,” Whimbrel said, her voice brimming with pride. But then her face grew dark. “However, if you try to remove it yourself, you will suffer a terrible fate.”

All pairs of eyes in the room opened wider. This was news.

The woman hunched over and said in a low, sinister voice, “The birds of Warbler are spies for the queen. They can track you by your thorns. If anyone but the queen removes your necklace, swarms of Warbler birds will come after you, no matter where you are.” She bent farther toward the group and whispered, “And they will peck your eyes out.”