Page 29 of Heir of Autumn
And the boat just barely held on to the water, skidding at terrifying speeds across the waves. Frederick had turned Sylvain’s lovely little pleasure vessel into a jet ski, a motorboat, things I’d only ever seen in movies. Action movies, at that, the kind with explosions and high-speed chases.
Behind us, the water churned, because we really were involved in a high-speed chase of our own. Tentacles rose out of the water and smashed at the waves. The kraken was coming. Again I reminded myself to hold steady. Iron will. Iron stomach.
“Don’t throw up,” I whimpered. “Don’t throw up, Locke.” From somewhere near my ear, Satchel screamed his little head off.
The boat tore onward through the waves, carving a path as Frederick’s incredible torrent of air powered us like a missile, a bullet in the ocean. I had to hand it to him and his impressive sense of direction. I could barely make heads or tails of which way was which, but he’d correctly remembered the path back to the isolated cluster of tiny, rocky islands where we’d left Namirah and Evander.
At first they only looked like dots out on the rocks, a pair of marooned lovers. I wondered what they’d talked about, if Namirah would later consider killing me for leaving her alone with the evil twink. I mean, I would have hated it myself. They saw us coming and leapt to their feet, waving their arms wide in the air, shipwreck survivors breathless and grateful for rescue.
But they must have heard all the screaming. They turned to each other, body language clearly signaling confusion from afar, even if I couldn’t see the expressions on their faces. They must have understood one thing in particular about the leaf-shaped torpedo still heading for their island: we couldn’t really slow down.
“Get ready to jump in,” I shouted, sure I couldn’t make myself heard over the roar of Frederick’s magical wind, the violent seething of the waves. “Can’t stop. You’re gonna have to fly in.”
At least some of those words must have hit home. Our boat was close enough that I could tell their looks of confusion had turned into looks of anxious uncertainty. Good thing they could both fly. Time was of the essence. Also, they’d had enough time to recover their arcane essence. Hopefully. Ideally.
Namirah went first, taking a running start, transforming smoothly into a hawk at the peak of her jump. Evander went next, a cloud of butterflies catching him midair. Both their bodies hit the deck of the boat at about the same time.
Namirah snarled as she fought to disentangle herself from Evander, the closest they’d ever been. The rest of us screamed as Frederick powered our enchanted motorboat past our rocky, temporary island retreat, ever onward.
With shaking hands I reached into my backpack, determined to find something that could help. Far too complicated to get Sylvain to transform the boat into something that could take us up into the air and away from the kraken’s clutches. Great risk of drowning while the leaves rearranged themselves, too.
I struggled to keep the grimoire steady so I could at least force myself to read the words, but I hadn’t even turned that many pages when I noticed a strange new phenomenon. The book had laid flat to the page with the unicorn sticker on it.
The sticker was glowing again. This time it emanated a ray of light from the tip of the unicorn’s horn. It shone into the distance, like the beam of a lighthouse so powerful that it cut through the sky even in the bright of day.
“That’s it,” I cried out. “The fourth unicorn. Follow that light!”
Sylvain wrestled with the sail. Calm and collected as ever, Frederick simply bent his hand at the wrist, redirecting his conjured wind to adjust our trajectory. I wished I could be like that, so cool and level-headed even with the threat of death by kraken on our heels.
“Um, Locke?” Satchel tugged on my shirt. “We’ve got a little problem. We’re heading toward more guardians.”
I turned to him, finding his face ashen and riddled with concern. “How many?”
“Lots,” Satchel said, his fingers in a tangle, his voice soft and low. “Lots and lots of guardians.”
12
It was another island,the endpoint of the rainbow lancing forth from the unicorn sticker’s horn. Like a searchlight it guided us to something I could only describe as a pirate’s cove, much, much larger than the cluster of islands we’d previously encountered. You know, the one that turned out to be a sleeping kraken?
“This had better not be another water guardian fake-out,” I told Satchel. “The kraken was bad enough. If this entire thing turns out to be an underwater sea monster, we’re more than dead.”
“I told you, it’s not,” he said, huffing as he pointed. “Look.”
Tentacles wavered from out of the choppy seas close to the island shore, our horrible welcome committee. From the way they were spaced apart, it looked like there were at least two more krakens waiting for us, and who knew what else besides?
But the unicorn sticker’s light never wavered. It led straight onward, past the sandy shore, right into the heart of the island. That was where our damsel in distress awaited. I gulped.
“Full speed ahead, Frederick!” I shouted. “Everybody else, hold on to your butts!”
Frederick uttered a piercing cry. The wind howled. The boat sped forth at such a violent speed that I could imagine the roar of engines in my ears, something on the verge of exploding. Sylvain’s teeth were clenched, as were his fists, as if every fiber of his being was engaged in keeping both himself and the boat held together.
“We’re close,” I murmured. “We can do this. You can do this.”
The boat hit dry land — and only kept skidding forward, cutting through the sand until it scraped to an abrupt stop. With our feet back on solid ground, Sylvain breathed a huge sigh of relief, waving his hand and disassembling the boat. Instead of returning them to his body as armor, he directed them at the shoreline, hundreds of leaf-shaped blades pecking and slicing at the tentacles dancing above the water. Shrieks of pain and anger emanated from beneath the waves as the krakens shrank away from the assault.
Right behind us was the first of the kraken we’d encountered, stopped only by the embankment of sand. The one with the essence leeches, and the same one that had chased our boat all the way to this cove. I knew these creatures could breathe on dry land — Ermengarde Frost said so — but good thing they couldn’t actually clamber onto shore even if they wanted to. One of its tentacles curled into something resembling a balled-up hand. It shook it at us like a fist. I flipped the kraken the bird.
We ran helter-skelter further inland, the island resembling exactly a pirate’s cove the deeper we went. Spires of rock rose out of the sand like fangs and broken teeth. The crags and cliffs surrounding the sand were pockmarked with skull-like formations, shaped from caverns that resembled eye sockets and yawning mouths.
