Page 3 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
“Wait, you aren’t taking me there?” I say, unable to hold back my surprise.
“What, did you think you were theonlyperson I’m supposed to test?” Davan says. “Get yourself to Nautica.”
“This is a test, isn’t it?”
He smiles then. “It’s the Elemental Hall.Everythingis a test.”
Chapter TWO
I drift on the waves, tired and thirsty, not sure if I will ever see land again.
The water stretches out endlessly around me. There is no sign of land on the horizon, no hint of which way I should travel beyond the map Finder Davan gave me. And that map makes no sense.
If it had been a simple chart, I would have been able to follow it, probably. The fisherfolk of my village tend to stick to the waters near the archipelago, but we learn the ways of the sea. My father has shown me charts since I was young, of Lumina and our enemies: Umbrae, of the islands that make up so much of our kingdom. Of the great, storm-tossed seas that form a barrier between the two, to be tamed only by the greatest of elemental masters.
None of those charts looked like this.
None of it seems to be to scale. Reading it like the other charts I’ve seen, I should be there by now. I should have made landfall days ago, although, in truth, I have started to lose track of the days.
These charts are a mass of swirling lines, like the contours used to describe hills and mountains on land. Only these lines are in an array of different colors: red and gold, blue, green, and purple. None of it makes sense. It’s as if a child has scrawled over the chart, creating weird, overlapping patterns, but this is clearlynotthe work of a child. It is too neat, too precise.
All I know is that my fresh water is starting to run low, and if I run out, here at sea, I might as well be in the middle of a desert. I’ve heard tales of the madness that comes on those who get lost at sea without water, of them trying to drink salt water to survive when their bodies demand anything to keep going. I don’t wantto die that way, lost in the middle of an ocean, parched and alone.
Perhaps you should turn back.
That thought comes in my mother’s voice. I should turn back, return to the village, tell my mother that I’m sorry, and that I was foolish. I should go back there and say that I will do everything she has set out for me, that I will find a husband the way she wants, that I will stay on the land from now on.
Just the thought of that makes me shudder, makes me want to rebel, but the problem with the ocean is that it’s too vast and implacable to rebel against. It doesn’t care about my fear, or my hopes, or my pain. It doesn’t care that I have to reach up to wipe away tears before they start, simply so that the water won’t run from my body. I need every drop right now.
I need to know where Iam.
This all feels like some horrible, deadly trick on the recruiter’s part, as if he has lured me out into the middle of nowhere simply to die. If I turn back now, maybe I’ll make it back to the village, but maybe I am already too far out. Maybe I will simply drift forever, the wind and the currents taking me where they will.
I feel as much as see something rising near the starboard side of my small boat. I see the moment the great form of a whale breaches the surface, many times larger than my boat, making me feel somehow even more insignificant than the ocean alone ever could. I feel the ripples of the waves beneath my boat’s hull, feel the way the whale’s presence knocks it back.
I know that, if it wanted, the whale could smash my boat with a single flick of its tail. It could rise up underneath me and capsize me. Its maw opens, revealing vast rows of sharp teeth. Is this a predatory whale, come to see if I might be something it can devour? It dives beneath the waves again, and now I’m sure thatit is doing it to get beneath my boat. I imagine it sinking down into the depths, lining up my boat above it, ready to strike.
I touch a hand to the water, reaching down desperately for whatever power allowed me to calm the waters before. From the instant I touch the water, it’s as if I know it and everything in it. I can feel that the ocean is not some flat, featureless expanse, but instead a living world of currents and still places, tidal shifts and different pressures.
In that instant, I know what the recruiter’s map is: it’s a map of the currents. No, notjustthe currents, because that would only lead someone with my particular gift to the Hall. But what if it covered the flow of different elemental forces? The patterns of the wind or the patterns of hot and cold?
That realization brings shock with it. I know how to get to the Elemental Hall. I can follow the path there if I only feel the currents.
I might shout with joy, except that I can also feel the shape of the great beast beneath, rising, ready to engulf my boat. Iwon’tmake it to my destination, because there is no way for me to survive the next ten seconds. I can feel terror rising in me, as rapidly as the beast below, making me shake as I sit there in the boat, feeling utterly helpless. Is this what oncoming death feels like?
The power in me seems to respond to my terror, and now the sea is anything but calm. Waves whip up, as high and as powerful as if I were in the middle of a storm. They pick up my boat and toss it aside, the movement so quick and powerful that I have to cling to the mast to keep from being thrown into the water.
It saves my life. I see the whale breach the surface, its vast jaws closing on empty air rather than on my tiny vessel. I hear its roar of frustration, feel the impact as it slams back into the waves. The roiling ocean buffets it, pushing it away from me.
Mostly, though, it pushes me away from the creature. The power of the waves carries my vessel away at terrifying speed, so that all I can do is cling on and hope that I do not capsize. I might have brought these rough seas into being, but I have no control over them now. Whatever power I have used, it is as much of a danger to me as the whale ever was, threatening to sink my small boat without a trace.
I fight to keep the boat upright, wrestling with it, trying to ride the waves rather than letting them wash over me. Each rises, mountainous, ahead of me. I point my prow into them, riding each to its peak and then tumbling seemingly endlessly down the other side. Again and again, I am convinced that my boat will be swamped, that I will go under, that I will drown or be eaten by some denizen of the sea.
Somehow, I keep the boat pointed ahead, fighting to survive until finally the waves subside.
I collapse in the bottom of the boat, breathing hard, exhausted by the effort of fighting against the waves. I lie there, the sun beating down on my skin, my boat simply drifting. I should feel broken and dejected, but instead, I feel a pure wave of elation. Elation at having survived, at having conquered both the sea and the monstrous whale that sought to consume me. Elation for another reason now, too:
I know how to get to Nautica.
