Chapter 2

Quixotically, unpredictably, it suggested another life. A dream of wealth and extravagance and recognition of talent and gifts given for those talents. Strewn at his feet.

He looked at the pearl. It developed a voice, a hum; it sang to him, a wordless peal of high exquisite music in his hand.

He dropped it, shaken. That’d been the tune he’d written for the last midwinter masque, when they’d ended with a dance; his occasional partner-composer Felix Fellini had sent over a delicate wild fantasia of melody, and Cade had put words to it, a song of wintry folklore and elfin legend with a giddy chorus. Felix liked difficult twisty compositions; Cade liked writing tunes the Court could actually sing. Between them they’d woven a musical.

And the pearl had sung it back to him.

He stared very hard at it, as it lay on cold grey rocks. It did nothing more: it was a pearl.

“I think,” he said aloud, “I might possibly be insane.” Surely that happened. From grief. From an odd hollow lack of grief, as if he’d been emptied out. From the inability to write. Twenty-two years old, he’d be a tragic cautionary tale, a genius burnt out too soon. Trapped by an inn’s cashbox. Never living up to the glorious promise of his youth.

The pearl said nothing.

Cade extended a finger. Nudged it. Still nothing.

“Well,” he sighed, “you’re no help, are you?” A larger wave hit the rock three down from his. Icy ocean exploded over his shoulder. He started to swear at it in gutter Firezi he’d learned from Felix, felt emotion ebb and drain away, and gave up.

“I might not be,” said the rocks, holding out a thick woolen blanket, “but would this, at all?”

Cade attempted levitation, flailed, slipped on wet stone. Jeremiah’s hand caught his wrist, pulled him to safety. They stood blinking at each other for a moment under slate-slab sun; Jeremiah’s mouth quirked. “I should’ve known you hadn’t heard me. Thinking?”

“Trying not to.” He scooped up the pearl, an impulse, and tossed it into a weather-beaten trouser-pocket. “Are you done already? It’s still early, isn’t it?”

“After three, now.” Jeremiah put the blanket around his shoulders. Jeremiah Carver thought of details like that: caring for the world. “I’ve got the afternoon to help out. Whatever you want.”

Cade, feeling prickly and spiky and black-mooded as a sea-urchin, grumbled, “I want to not be snuck up on, thanks.”

“Sorry about that.” And he was. Sincerity in those soft brown eyes, in broad shoulders and strong arms. They’d fallen into bed the night after Marian Bell’s funeral, after Cade had drunk too much local moonshine and run out into pounding rain and stood with his face turned to the sky, shaking with too many emotions. Jeremiah had followed him, had touched his shoulder; Cade had turned and kissed him fiercely, angrily, smothering the storm with fire. Jeremiah had kissed him back, or had let himself be kissed, or perhaps there’d been no difference; he’d come upstairs to Cade’s room readily, and had knelt and been shoved to his back and touched Cade’s body with endearing solemn awe.

Cade did not know what to think about this. Some days he wanted to shove Jeremiah away and run; some days he wanted to lean into that firm chest until he could stand on his own. Some days this emotion felt newer than it should, as if he’d never quite had feelings before, or not these feelings, at least. He avoided dwelling on it.

Unfair and knowing he was being unfair, he muttered, “Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t. I can make noise.” Jeremiah offered him a smile. “I’m having the advanced class read Spense’s Fairy King,like you recommended. They’re liking it. I am too.”

“Mmm,” Cade said, noncommittal; and discovered that he could not precisely meet that gentle schoolteacher’s gaze. Jeremiah organized the island’s one schoolhouse and multiple levels of ability with the tender efficiency of a beloved general, and had ever since taking it over from the now-retired Miss Beatrix, who’d taught them both arithmetic and letters and book-lore.

Cade had loved every drop of story. Had pleaded for more. When that wasn’t sufficient, not enough tales of magic and fairies and faraway lands, had scribbled his own. Had left Gull Skerrie at the age of seventeen, accompanied by a band of traveling musical players and his parents’ best hopes for a life beyond rocks and fish stew, and had not looked back.

Jeremiah Carver had been a year behind him in school, stoic and silent and seemingly etched out of stone: big and calm and deliberate. Cade hadn’t known him well then, not beyond the simple fact of another boy in the school-crowd who’d listened wide-eyed to made-up stories about pirates and sea-treasure and merfolk. Jeremiah, he’d discovered since returning, had begun helping out at the inn several years ago, when Leigh Bell’s hands had first begun to shake and his chest to ache.