Transcribed by Songsparrow, Seeker to the Old King

Skyclipse Dive, Age 5.6 U.C.

My King,

I fear this will not reach you before I die, if it reaches you. I’ve always preferred to count my eggs after they’ve been laid, but that’s not possible today. Today, the sun is warm, and the ocean is singing beautifully. I hardly have anything left to complain about. But that’s not the sort of story you’ve taught me to tell, so I will start from the beginning.

Since Mouse Writ arrived on Inlay nearly a fractal age ago now, he’s been steadily working towards taking over my apartments—honestly, I’m not sure what he plans to do with all the bobbles he’s bought when it’s time to move on to the next story. So when I received your order to leave for the north, I was not sad to see that steamy island go, or those cramped rooms with that pack-rat of a man.

Mouse Writ claims he’s been in your service for nearly three ages. I’ve never questioned your taste before, Sir, but there’s no sense in holding back now. He likes to say that stories are found in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected times, so there’s no sense in searching them out. I suppose that philosophy is what landed me on an overbooked passenger ship headed to the cape of Skyclipse Dive, and then on to Badgerpool. A town which, according to Mouse Writ, was demolished in a recent Calamity.

I can’t help but point out with hindsight, that a bit of searching on his part would have prevented my situation. But I’m trying to set myself free of grudges before I die, so all I will say is this:

Thank you for the opportunity to chase what eluded your most storied Seeker.

I’d gotten used to the bucket of heat captured on Inlay, so when we set sail, I was embarrassingly unprepared to face the winter sea. I was shivering on deck when I met a young woman, almost young enough to be called a child, who I will call Little Bird.

No, I will not be sending her name. I wrote to you last month that Mellow disappeared from the Writhe and Dive, and even [unnamed] has stopped his correspondence with me. Mouse Writ was unconcerned. But then you stopped responding to my letters.

Whether it came with that final story from Badgerpool or from a frozen island north of the Barrel, this was always going to be my last letter to you.

Little Bird noticed me on deck, dropping my pen from the numbing cold as I tried to write in my journal, she took me to her quarters. Little Bird was travelling alone, but rich grandparents had purchased her the only private room abord The Sheppard, aside from the captain’s own cabins. They were hardly larger than a broom closet, but still, they’d been stuffed to overfilling with trunks of blankets and warm clothes, as well as spring blouses, silk skirts which would have been instantly ruined in the constant snowfall, and shoes from the sturdy sealskin boots on her feet to delicate laced sandals which would have caught her a chill even in Capelle’s relatively temperate winters. Her grandparents didn’t believe in her travelling unprepared, and we took every advantage.

She lent me furs and soft leather gloves, so supple I hardly noticed them while gripping a pen. And in the evenings, after we’d waited in the long line of passengers for our dollop of greasy fish stew, we retreated to her room and draped ourselves in the fine silks and jewels (who travels alone on a ship of northerners with a crate full of jewels?). We told each other stories.

Don’t worry, none of them were yours.

“Once, there was a dragon,” I’d say. “And he’d filled his trove so deep with gold, he sometimes dove in for a swim.”

“But dragons can’t swim,” she’d say.

“Exactly,” I’d say. “Which is why the next thing he stole was a fisherman. He showed the fisherman his hoard and promised him as much gold as he could carry if he taught the dragon how to swim.”

“A dragon would never part with his gold. They’re far too greedy,” she’d say.

“That’s what the fisherman thought too. So, when the dragon wasn’t looking, the fisherman pulled the biggest hook he had from his belt and anchored it around a boulder at the far end of the trove. When the dragon climbed in and clung to the side, the fisherman said, ‘When you can dive to the bottom at the far end of the cave, I will have taught you how to swim, and our bargain will be fulfilled’.”

… and on we went, our story growing every time Little Bird tried to catch me in a contradiction, until all the threads tangled, and we toppled into laughter.

It was on such a night that The Sheppard sank.

At the time, I knew we must have bumped an iceberg—not unexpected since we were half a day away from Skyclipse—but it stopped Little Bird and I mid-story, for we felt the jolt in the planks beneath our feet. We looked at each other, both thinking the same thing; that knock had come from below.

We both stumbled as the ship stopped rocking on waves, and the sound of water disappeared, as though we had suddenly run aground. It wasn’t possible—we’d been on deck moments before with no land in sight. I told Little Bird to stay in her room, but when she followed behind me onto deck, I didn’t stop to dissuade her.

The deck was slippery with ice and we were still dressed for our evening, wearing the laced sandals and silk dresses from Little Bird’s grandparents. I’d been in such a rush, I’d only barely remembered to grab hold of my journal, and neither of us thought to grab our coats.

Clutching ourselves for warmth we shuffled for the railing. The crew were frantic around us, dashing from one side of the ship to the other, not glancing from their work once at the two women in summertime evening wear. We leaned over the railing on our bellies, looking directly down at the sea. Only there was no sea, because the ship was souring through the air, lodged atop a shiny mountain of black and white blubber. The creature was so vast, I doubt it noticed it had caught us on its back. Had it been volatile, it could have crushed us against the surface with a flick of its vertical tail. The fin moved slowly side to side, looking nearly as sharp as the black-topped peaks of Skyclipse disappearing in the south.

The creature must have only emerged for a breath or to gather its bearings, because the captain had hardly given up on ordering the crew when the creature dipped its long nose, pointed and grey like a shark’s, back into the water and began to dive.

The world tilted, the wood slipped, and The Sheppard groaned as we knocked loose from our foothold on the creature’s back. We caught air, and in that moment of weightlessness, Little Bird and I caught each other, and I wrapped her in my arms. A heartbeat later, we smacked into water. Cold shards seemed to slice through to my bones, stealing all my air in a single shocked cry. Then when the water softened, it sucked us deeper. We hung just high enough to avoid the path of the creature’s tail as it propelled downwards. The shadowed ghost of a man was kicking below us, and he was not so lucky. His body silently crumbled in half on impact, all the air exploding from his lungs, and he spun away sinking akimbo in the dark.

Little Bird grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled. We kicked for the surface, while all around us bulky forms fought to free themselves of the heavy furs pulling them deeper. Though I could not feel anything beyond the heat at my center, I kept my arm linked with Little Bird’s as we kicked, scared that if we become separated, a desperate soul might grab hold and never let go. The air in our lungs gave out still several feet below the surface, and we broke into the winter air coughing up seawater. Around us was nothing but water and sky, land lost.

The Sheppard was gone, but several trunks had escaped its hold and floated to the surface. Working together, we were able to shovel the contents of two into the ocean and flip them, so they floated on pockets of air. We found a delicate balance on top of them by holding onto each other. Little Bird was just small enough to curl entirely onto the wood, but I was not so lucky. Blame it on my mother’s long legs or my father’s inflexible joints, but I could not entirely curl my feet onto the trunck without tipping it over. So, I let them hang. It wasn’t long before they began to pulse with scorching heat before disappearing from my senses entirely.

The Sheppard could not have been knocked far off course when it sank, but the current that squeezes between Skyclipse and Inlay is the most ferocious water on the Sledge and it had spit us beyond the Barrel into uncharted ocean.

There’s not much to tell of those days spent on the water, other than we were thirsty, and too cold to sleep, and our fingers and toes turned black. In my case, the blackness nearly reached my knees. I remember staring at them as they dipped in and out of the water, and not noticing until it had disappeared with the next wave, that one of my toes had fallen off.

All my toes, except for the largest on my left foot, on which I’ve worn a gold ring since I was a baby, had withered and dropped into the sea by the time our trunks bumped into ice.

Little Bird, though small due to age and stature and frozen nearly as stiff as I was, did not let me die on the ice sheet.

“An island’s right there, Miss Bird,” she said as she crawled on her hands and knees over the ice, one arm hooked in mine and dragging me. I told her to leave me, but she refused to listen—a willful child, and strong. Unused to being denied anything. “It’s right there. We’re almost there. It’ll be better there.”

It was better there. We melted snow in our mouths and got our first drink in days. I instructed Little Bird on how to build a snow burrow. I packed snow into bricks and slid them towards her to stack above the hole she’d dug.

“I-is it alright that they’re b-b-black?” she asked me over and over through chattering teeth. “I can’t feel them. And your l-l-le-legs, Miss Bird…”

Frostbite this extreme was beyond the scope of my survival training, so I told her it was alright that our fingers and toes were black. And I didn’t talk about my legs, which at that point still showed flushed red flesh down to the backs of my knees.

I slid on my belly into the burrow, but with no body heat, it was still too cold to keep us alive, so I had to send Little Bird out once more for branches, the driest she could find in the snow. We didn’t have an ounce of magic between us, so it was after hours, long after the sky grew dark—or maybe that was just in my head, it was so cold—that Little Bird cried out in victory. A single spark had flown from the branches she’d bene rubbing in her hands. It took several hours more for her to send a new spark onto the pile of brush she’d pulled together. At least, I think that’s what happened. I remember waking up warm, a fire sending rivulets of water trickling onto the floor of the burrow. Little Bird was curled into my side, weeping through grit teeth and cradling raw red fingers to her chest as her blood thawed.

A week later, and our bellies were filled with fat fish Little Bird had found slumbering in one of the island’s frozen pools. We’d kept the fire burning, afraid if it went out, we might not be able to start it again. Each night we lit a second fire on the beach, hoping to see the lanterns of a ship—any ship—on the horizon. The color started returning to Little Bird’s toes and both of our hands.

A week after that, and I concluded that the flesh below my knees would not make the same recovery. Each day, I’d watched it turn gangrenous. The little white bones on the tops of my feet were showing. The feet were starting to turn into a liquid. I was dragging around a body that was half-corpse. I’d be a full-corpse soon if I didn’t act quickly.

I tried to hide what I was doing from Little Bird. The girl had proven her strength, but I didn’t want her involved. But I had no legs to walk on, and though she was born to sheltered blood, it wouldn’t have taken a fur trapper to follow the trail I left behind when I crawled on my elbows back onto the ice, to the two trunks we’d floated in on, still sitting at the edge of the ice sheet.

When Little Bird found me, I’d managed to tear one of my nails from its bed prying at the metal bands holding the trunk’s planks together. I hadn’t gotten a single nail out, so I’d laid down, and decided succumbing to the cold might not be the worst way to die. She’s such a smart girl. She didn’t say a word, only left and came back with the wooden spear she’d been using to punch holes in the ice for fish and a flat stone.

I should have thought of that, I thought. But as I watched her methodically demolish the trunk, emerging with splinters in her fingers and a straight band of shining steel, I suspect I would have only gotten in her way.

In the burrow that night, we took turns running a stone along the metal band’s length until it was sharper than even the Assassin of Samwhin’s blades.

“Once, there was girl, stranded and alone on an island amidst a snowy sea,” I’d say.

“I’m not alone, Miss Bird,” she’d say.

“So, every night, she lit a fire on the beach, and though she was alone, and though she’d seen no ships for more nights than she could remember, she stayed warm and alert, and never gave up hope that one day, she’d make it back to her home on Capelle.”

“Don’t say that.”

“She stayed strong, and resilient, and she caught fish. And though she was sad she was alone, one night a ship saw her fire and took her home.”

Morning came, and I didn’t let myself wait. The frostbite was above my knees. I considered once more crawling away and freezing to death, but Little Bird had taken to curling around me for warmth when we slept, and strength forages strength. If Little Bird survives this, it will be because she’s strong.

We sat in a cleared patch of snow, and I sent Little Bird away to retrieve a burning log for… after. Something to cauterize the wound. I told her I would wait until she returned to begin, but I lied.

I waited until I was certain Little Bird was far away sifting through the logs on the beach, and I clutched the metal band at either end, hovering the saw we’d made over my thigh, just above the knee.

I told myself I wouldn’t scream.

I failed.

It was all red pain and steamed blood.

In that moment, I thought about a man trapped in a cave, hiding from his death, and a woman with a monster lurking in her shadow. I would survive this, I would, I would, I would…

I passed out. I don’t think I even hit the bone.

When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to be awake and alive. Fire was sizzling under the roof of our dripping burrow. It was near enough that had I rolled to the side I would have burned, but it still wasn’t warm enough to stop my shaking. Little Bird was curled into my side, but she wasn’t asleep. At the bottoms of my thighs was a scalding heat unlike any pain I’d ever known. My throat was too sore to scream.

“I did it,” she whispered. “So, you have to live now.”

I am trying, but I’ve made her no promises. Another week has passed, and with each day, the pain has grown. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it has. I’ve spent the past five days, sitting with my lower half buried in the snow. The pain is manageable, but I worry.

I’ve been dreaming about crawling inland and hiding behind one of the island’s skeletal trees, snuggling under a blanket of snow. In my dream, the sky is painted with strokes of glowing green and purple lights, and each stripe begins with a mouthful of sickle-like teeth.

I’ve done an adequate job of hiding my pains from Little Bird. I can tell because she spends more days on the beach now, less concerned with watching me. She’s been piling the fire higher and higher, searching, always searching the horizon for ships, even in the day, when there’s no chance of someone spotting her. The opportunity for me to disappear is there.

But strength forges strength, and I’ve never been one to wait for the stories to come to me. A ship may come. There is still a chance.

But I fear my time is running out. Yesterday I awoke to a new pain and checked the flesh around my stumps—the blackness is back, creeping up my right thigh, thin red lines up to my hip. I must not have cut high enough.

Little Bird doesn’t know. And she won’t tell her. Even if I thought I could make the cut again, I doubt I’m strong enough to survive it this time. I can’t remember how I did it the first time. Everything is so fuzzy now.

I have no bottles to float this message in, so I will have to leave it with Little Bird, should I die. Though I have warned her to send it from afar, and not under her own name. Mouse Writ would call me over-cautious.

My one regret, My King, is that I never made it to Badgerpool, to find the story you’re so eager to collect. I hope you find it, whatever it is you sent us out here for. I hope you find it, and I hope it kills you, as it has me.

With All My Heart,

Songsparrow

Seeker to the Samwhin Throne

Little Bird, remember the story? Once, there was a brave young woman, stranded in a winter sea. Despite her fear and her sadness at having been left alone, she was stronger than any dragon. She was braver than a knight, more determined than fate, and smarter than the oldest witch on Sledgegrass, and she was going to survive.

Every night, she kept her fire burning. She built it so high, it kissed the stars. No ships came, and no ships came, but she didn't give up. And when she made it home, she finished her own story.

It’s true that this letter was not found floating in a bottle.

It was folded in an envelope along with a large golden ring amidst the papers hidden in the Old King’s study. The letter’s seal was unbroken and stamped with the oyster crest of Capelle. I would like to believe that it was sent to the Old King by Little Bird, after she made it home.

I suspect I am the first person to read it.

Signed,

Mercurial Lascar, Age 1.5 Until Calamity