“Was your hair always that color?”
Now Finn smiled ruefully as he patted the crazy gray-white spikes. “No. It changed after the battle. I woke up and my hair had gone completely white. Now — will you try to connect with Jhi here in the Moon Tower?”
Slowly, Meilin nodded. She didn’t think it could really change her mind, but after his terrible confession, she felt she owed it to him to try.
“What’s the right way to do this?” she asked.
“It’s play,” Finn said. “There is no right way.”
Meilin had never been a playful child. There had always been combat to train for, languages to learn, skills to conquer. There might have been time for play, but she hadn’t been interested. Play had never changed the world.
She took another look around the room. Before, she had found it disordered and useless. But with deeper examination, she saw a kind of organization. Drums gathered near paintings that had to do with earth and objects made of leather and wood. String instruments were near metal sculptures and mirrors and paintings of water. Woodwinds, paper objects, and anything having to do with air seemed to be grouped together.
Somehow this made her trust the room’s purpose more. She had been educated in the usefulness of the arts. She would never be convinced there was a purpose for chaos.
Her eyes landed on an erhu, a traditional instrument from Zhong. She had received hours of lessons, but it had been months since she’d played. Taking up the bow, she crossed back to Jhi. Standing this close, Meilin could feel the heat radiating from the panda’s body and smell the wet bamboo scent of her coarse fur.
Jhi rolled her gaze toward Meilin.
“I’m trying,” Meilin said. “I’ll try if you’ll try.”
Feeling a little foolish, she began to play. At first, she could only remember her instructor correcting her finger position and her bow technique. But after a few measures, she began to feel something else. A wide-open peace. Meilin knew that the emotion was coming from Jhi. This was part of the panda’s power. Ordinarily this was where Meilin lost patience — she had no interest in being calm.
But she had promised Jhi she would try. Slowly the peace focused.
A very strange thing happened then. Meilin imagined she was surrounded by small, floating planets. Tinier moons circled some of them. She knew in a fuzzy, dreamy way that these orbs were her options. As the erhu sang sweetly in the background, Meilin realized that the closest little sphere represented the path back to Zhong. It was certainly the closest option, but it was also the smallest. And there were no other moon-choices floating around it.
With her decisions hovering outside of her mind, it was easy to tell that her plan to return to Zhong was logical, but reactive. And it was easy to see too that it left her with nowhere else to go.
Jhi’s power kept pushing at Meilin. She glimpsed the orb that represented the choice of going in search of Rumfuss. It was a troubled, stormy planet, but it was surrounded by more choices, and each of those was surrounded by even more. It wouldn’t be an easy choice, but it had more possibilities close by.
Meilin strained her neck to see it closer. Suddenly, in one of the orbs, she saw her father’s proud face. You’ve made the wise decision, he said, instead of the smart one. Well done.
Meilin stopped playing all at once. The mysterious orbs vanished. Jhi blinked quietly at her.
“What happened?” Finn asked. Meilin had forgotten he was there.
Meilin didn’t know how to explain it. The panda had helped her to think.
“I made a decision,” she said. “I’m going with you.”
5: Journey
IT STARTED TO RAIN. IT RAINED AS THEY FETCHED HORSES FROM the stables. It rained as they left Greenhaven Castle. It rained while they loaded supplies onto the boat to Eura. It rained as the ship shoved off from the pier and into the storm-gray water.
It rained on everyone, but it especially rained on Rollan. He didn’t get along with boats, so he stood at the railing and tried not to focus on his churning insides. He could bear being drizzled on if it meant he didn’t throw up on anyone. Essix found a perch on one of the masts, looking a little unsettled herself. Stuffing her head under her wing, she quivered sickly.
It was strangely quiet; he could hear the rain falling on the ocean. Although the ship had sails, they were tied tightly away on the masts. He couldn’t quite work out what propelled the ship. Far up ahead, though, he saw two odd waves breaking again and again. Water pushed by the ship’s hull, maybe? It didn’t seem very likely.
“Whales.” Abeke’s clipped voice startled him as she joined him. The rain dribbling down her nose matched the rain dribbling down Rollan’s. Uraza sauntered behind her, ears pinned in the damp, tail thrashing.
“Whales what?”
Abeke pointed. “Rockback whales. They’re pulling the ship.”
She indicated the odd waves. Now that Rollan focused on them, he could tell that they were indeed whales, not water. The beasts were as mottled gray and black as the stormy sea, and their spines were studded with stones and boulders. Like moving cliffs just beneath the water. They must have been longer than the ship itself.
Rollan was deeply impressed, but would have never admitted it out loud.
He asked, “How did you know?”
She didn’t seem as if she wanted to answer, but she pressed her lips together and replied, “When I accompanied the Conquerors to look for the first talisman, we traveled in a ship like this. I’d never seen anything like it. There is not much opportunity to travel by ship in Nilo, much less a rockback-whale ferry.”
For a few minutes, they both watched the rocky backs rise and fall. In the eerie hush, one of the whales called to the other. It was a hollow, echoey sound that seemed both very close and very far.
“Wow,” Abeke breathed.
“Creepy,” Rollan corrected. “Speaking of creepy, let’s talk about those Conquerors.”
It wasn’t the most tactful way to bring it up, but Rollan wasn’t really known for his tact.
Abeke raised an eyebrow but said nothing; it was hard to say if she was hurt by his words or hiding something. Rollan glanced toward the mast where Essix perched, her head still beneath her wing. Her intuitive power would have come in handy right about now, but she showed no signs of helping out.
“Well, you were fighting for them and all,” Rollan said. “I figured you might have the inside track on all things Conqueror.”
“I already told you how it happened,” Abeke replied stiffly.