“Everybody, please stay calm,” Alex said, not feeling calm in the slightest. “We will get out of here.”
Samheed stopped in front of Alex, his face intense. “How?”
Alex flinched. “We’ll fix the ship and wait for Simber.”
“Fixing the ship will take forever!”
“We’ll get it done, Samheed,” Alex said through clenched teeth.
“Yeah, well what if Simber doesn’t come? We’re stuck here!”
“Sam,” Lani said. “Take it easy. We’ll figure it out.”
“Of course we will,” Ms. Octavia said. “We always do.”
But her words didn’t sound as sure as everyone wanted.
Copper spoke up. “In fixing the ship, we just have to be efficient with timing. We can do the salvaging and repair work during the morning reprieve from the storm,” she said. “And any leftover material we have each day, why, we’ll drag it into the shelter so it doesn’t blow away, and work on it in here. That way the next day we’ll have material to build with as soon as we can head outside safely.”
She paused, and then leaned forward, putting a gentle hand on Samheed’s shoulder. “You don’t know me very well. And maybe I seem weak because I was a captured slave to the pirates. But I promise you that I know what I’m doing. I know how to fix ships, and so do Sky and Crow.” She looked at her children, and they nodded solemnly. “You have to trust us and Florence. Together we can get this done.”
“And what about the rest of the time?” Samheed prompted. “Sit in this cave? Endlessly? I’ll go crazy. I’m already going crazy just thinking about it.”
“The rest of the day we’ll do what we do best,” Alex said. “We’ll make spell components. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m almost out of them, and we lost a whole crate full of them when we wrecked.”
The others checked their supplies and reported minimal components remaining. “What are we going to use to make them?” Lani mused. She peered out the door as the rain pounded the rocky ground like a million footsteps. “All there is here is rocks and moss.”
Alex’s face was troubled. “Then we use rocks and moss,” he said weakly. “I can think of five new spells to create without even trying.”
Samheed smirked, clearly calming down a bit. “Oh yeah? What are they, Stowe?”
Alex could feel his ears growing hot. Of course Samheed was going to call Alex out. That’s what Samheed did. And that’s why Alex liked him so much, even if Sam was a little intense. He scrambled to think of something to say as a retort. “If I told you, you might steal my awesome ideas,” Alex said.
Samheed laughed. “Nice try. Come on. What are they? You don’t even have one, do you.”
Lani hid a grin. The two had been sparring since they were boys in Quill, and clearly it wasn’t about to change now.
With all eyes on him, Alex knew he had to say something or risk looking stupid. Even if he couldn’t make the magic work, he had to save face and show his leadership right now.
He coughed to stall for time, shuffled his feet, and finally blurted out the first thing that came to him. “A flying carpet. That’s one idea.”
Samheed blinked. “A flying rock carpet? Ha! Yeah, that’ll work.”
Alex shook his head as the idea took form in his mind. “No, you dolt,” he said, and stood up a little straighter. “A flying moss carpet.” And then, as it dawned on him, he added triumphantly, “And that, my friend, is what will help us get off this island.”
Liam Does the Dirty Work
After Aaron gave him the impossible task of stealing components from Artimé, Liam Healy retreated to his room at the top of the stairs, in the palace tower. It was a room chosen for him by Eva Fathom, who had become his dear friend in the short time they’d spent together. She’d given him this room because it was the highest point in all of Quill, and anyone who spent day after day awaiting death in the Ancients Sector before finally being rescued deserved to have a high point in life.
Above him, the point of the tower held up the barbed-wire sky that covered all of Quill. If he stood by one window, he could see nearly all of Quill spread out before him. And if he stood on his tiptoes by the other window, such that his hair brushed the sloping ceiling, and pressed his face against the top pane of glass just so, he could barely see over the wall to the sea.
He didn’t bother to look at it now, though, for he was quite perturbed about the task at hand. Instead he arranged his chair by the window, just outside the realm of the sunlight that streamed in, sat down, and thought about how he could possibly convince anyone in Artimé—through brutality or otherwise—to give him multiple magical spell components and tell him how they worked.
Brutality was clearly out of the question. It was only something Aaron had suggested, and something Liam would have done without much thought in the past. But Liam was done with that life. And once his eyes had been opened, he realized he hadn’t really liked hurting people in the first place. In fact, he now looked back in horror at the attacks he’d made on Artimé when he was a Restorer, and at doing one of the most horrendous things a human could possibly do—hold another human hostage and treat her, well, treat her terribly. He had pushed aside their former friendship, and worse, intentionally ignored the fact that she was a human with feelings and goals and . . . and a life. An actual, good, helpful life to live. A life completely unlike his own had been.