Fallen Thief Read online

  “Three,” the boy grunted.

  She took two more apples at random and tossed him the lune.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” Lynette yelled as Mira and Kay ran off.

  “Got to go—the apples—” Mira said lamely over her shoulder as Kay dragged her out of the town square.

  “Smooth,” Kay laughed.

  “They know we’re lying!” Mira hissed, her face burning with shame.

  “Well, you know we can’t tell them what we’re doing, anyway!”

  Mira sighed. “All right. Let’s just find Peter.”

  They reached the puppet shop, and Mira threw her thoughts to Peter to come outside. When his pale face appeared at the window of the workshop, Mira thought frantically, Eola’s here. We’re going to Nesston, and watched with amusement as Peter’s jaw dropped. A few minutes later, he bounded out of the front door, his bow and quiver over his shoulder.

  “We’re not going off to hunt the Grimmir. Not just yet, anyway,” Kay said, nodding at the bow.

  “We can’t be too careful in a cursed city,” Peter said simply.

  “Let’s hope you don’t need it,” Mira muttered.

  “We’ll definitely need this, though.” Peter tugged on the wooden whistle he had around his neck. Mira smiled. It was the whistle Alexandra had made for them to call for Eola when she was within earshot.

  They hurried through the streets to the Mosswoods without another wasted moment. Once they reached the trees, Peter began to whistle for Eola. They walked until they reached a clearing near the creek and waited. It wasn’t long before they heard the steady beating of powerful wings rush through the air.

  When the great winged horse descended gracefully before them, Mira exclaimed and ran towards the beautiful creature she had gotten to know so well on her journey across the kingdom. Eola tossed her silky mane happily as they approached. Mira stretched out her hand and ran it over the smooth pelt on the horse’s neck.

  “Hello, again,” she said, staring up at Eola’s eyes. “Thanks for coming all this way.”

  “You know, Mira,” Peter said as he patted her snout, “I think you might have been right. She really could’ve been in the Espyn Forest if it took her this long to get here.”

  “Guess you got to know her pretty well,” Kay said, taking out an apple from their bag and holding it up for Eola. She gobbled it up in a single bite.

  Mira watched the horse as a twinge of sadness plucked at her heart. Was Alexandra the last person who had rewarded Eola with an apple? She couldn’t remember. A rustling at her side made her look down to see Peter pull out the map from his quiver, unraveling it against the ground. He fished in his vest pocket and then set down a small, round compass in the middle of the map.

  “We’ve got to go east,” he said. “Once we see the Twin Mountains, we can follow the river down to Nesston.”

  After Eola finished her apples, they helped each other onto her back. Kay took the lead, as he had often done before. It was comforting, riding Eola again. When they kicked off and shot into the sky, Mira let out a laugh, leaving all her troubles on the ground behind them.

  They whipped over the treetops and passed over small villages, following the main road below. Their clothes billowed in the cool wind. If it wasn’t for the way they were huddled together on Eola’s back, Mira thought she’d be quite cold. It seemed autumn was almost upon them.

  Beyond the villages, the road cut through hilly lands that were thick with trees. The road became harder to see as grass and weeds and vines had begun to cover it up with no one there to keep it groomed.

  “It’s like we’re back at the Espyn Forest,” Kay said as he looked down at the trees. “I can’t see signs of buildings anywhere.”

  “Look, there!” Peter yelled from the back. He let go of Mira to point to their right. “Those are the peaks of the Twin Mountains! We’ll reach the river soon.”

  Sure enough, it wasn’t long before they heard the sound of rushing water.

  “There it is!” Peter said. The trees parted below them to reveal a massive river, wider than any Mira had seen.

  They stayed close to the treetops, following the wide twists and turns of the river, but Mira quickly realized that the faint sounds of rushing water weren’t just coming from the river below them.

  “Do you hear that?” she said as the sound grew louder.

  A moment later, they reached a bend in the river that led to a wide-open space, where the trees lined the edges of the water and suddenly fell out of sight. All Mira could see was the bright blue sky ahead.

  “It’s a waterfall,” Peter breathed.

  Indeed, the flowing water broke over the rocky edge ahead and fell into—what? Mira’s heart beat faster as they approached the precipice, and she craned her neck to catch her first glimpse of a waterfall.

  With a few more beats of Eola’s great wings, they bounded over what felt like the edge of the world. Mira’s jaw dropped as she looked out at the land before her. The sudden drop in the land below them sent the water crashing down into an enormous lake. Along the edge of the lake was a mixture of tall buildings and trees.

  As if it was growing straight out from the center of the lake, a circular tower rose from the water, a single row of stepping stones leading to it from the lakeshore. Mira held her breath. There was no mistaking it. This was the sorcerer’s tower.

  As soon as she laid eyes on the ancient building, there wasn’t a doubt in Mira’s mind that the sorcerer was real. As the legend promised, it looked as if it was beginning to crumble, with part of the pointed roof missing. There were holes in different spots around the tower, where the pieces of stone that had once held it together had fallen over the centuries.

  Eola took them over the lake towards the ancient city. With a start, Mira realized that most of the buildings were covered in ivy—some of them even had entire trees growing out from inside them, the branches poking out of the windows or through the roofs. Nearly everything was covered in green.

  Eola descended between the buildings and landed on a wide street. Mira, Peter, and Kay hopped off and stared at their surroundings in silence, taking it all in.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Mira said finally.

  “Like a fairy story, isn’t it?” Peter said, nudging Mira in the side.

  “Let’s see what we find inside the tower,” Kay said, beaming with excitement.

  They began making their way down the street. Mira had to remind herself to look down every once in a while so that she didn’t trip on any vines, but it was hard. The city felt grand, like the Ripple, but somehow more important, for it was filled with lost memories—some that needed to be remembered.

  As they moved through the abandoned city towards the lake, Mira was struck by the countless reminders of the merrows among the buildings. There were seashells embedded into doorframes, fountains with statues of fish and summoning merrows adorning it, and they even found mosaics of merrow families, their colors faded after their many years in the sun.

  “Look at this one,” Kay said, waving for the others to peer into the open courtyard of one of the buildings. The vines had crept over the stone benches and along the edges of the walls. But on the wall opposite the entrance was a large mosaic showing a merrow woman sitting on the edge of a pool. A single tail made out of pieces of mirrors dipped into the water as she sat beside a little girl. The little girl stood next to her, pressed against the merrow woman as they read a book together. Behind the little girl kneeled a man, his hand on the girl’s shoulder.

  “They look like a family,” Mira said.

  “Of course,” Peter said, his voice hushed with awe. “Lots of merrows lived among humans in the past. It looks like this mosaic is showing a merrow woman, a human man, and their child.”

  Mira stared at the mosaic. She had never thought about the children of both merrows and humans.

  “I wonder if their children lived in the water or on lan
d,” Mira said softly.

  Peter shook his head. “They didn’t have the same powers as their merrow family members, according to one of the books I read. They couldn’t breathe underwater or throw their thoughts…”

  Mira tore her eyes away from the mosaic child when she noticed the others already walking around the building towards the lake and hurried to follow them. At the edge of the water, they faced the crumbling tower. The waterfall sent a cloud of mist up in the air behind it, making it look like a scene from a dream. Now that they were closer to the tower, Mira understood why no one had dared touch it. Some of the stepping stones that led to the front door were missing as if they’d sunk into the depths of the lake. Nothing about it was inviting, but Mira wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  “It looks really deep,” Peter said, leaning forward to gaze into the lake.

  “Try not to fall in,” Mira said easily, hopping onto the first stepping stone. She jumped from one to the next until she reached a particularly long gap in the path to the tower.

  “Go on,” Kay said, right behind her.

  Mira glanced over her shoulder and saw Peter still standing on the first stepping stone. She turned back around and made a big leap—and just barely made it onto the stone, her boot slipping into the water.

  “You know we can swim, right?” Kay said.

  “I know,” Mira snapped. “We can’t go walking back into town with all our clothes dripping wet, can we?”

  “They’ll dry during our flight.”

  Mira supposed that was true, though she didn’t look forward to the cold winds. She and Kay jumped the rest of the way to the entrance to the tower. Peter waved at them to go on from the edge of the lake, clearly giving up. Once they reached the tower, Mira pushed and pulled on the rusted doorknob, but the wooden door wouldn’t budge.

  “It’s locked,” Mira grunted, letting her hand drop to her side.

  Kay pointed down at the lake. “We might be able to find a better way inside if we go down there.”

  Mira leaned over to see the stone wall of the tower continuing down into the depths of the lake. Through the ripples, she noticed little circular holes set in the wall: windows.

  “Of course,” Mira breathed, “the sorcerer was a merrow! There must be a way inside the tower underwater.”

  “We’d better tell Peter,” Kay said, already hopping atop the stepping stones back to land.

  “Couldn’t get in?” Peter asked when they reached him.

  “We’re going to try to find a way in from underwater,” Mira said. She sat down and began taking her boots off, no longer caring about getting wet. Once she was done, Mira leaned back on her hands and looked at Peter, who was squinting up at the tower. She followed his gaze and nodded. “I suppose you could fly around the tower with Eola and see what’s through those windows.”

  Peter turned to her, frowning. “Did I say that out loud?”

  Mira laughed. “I can practically read your mind sometimes, Peter.”

  “Anyway, that’s what I’ll do,” Peter said, shrugging. He began making his way back into the city, where Eola was wandering the empty streets. “Let me know if you find anything!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Sure,” Kay said as he rubbed his hands together with an eager twist to his lips. “Let’s go!” He hopped over to the stepping stones, barefoot, and dove into the water.

  Mira hurried after him into the lake. The moment the cool, fresh water touched her skin, she felt a sense of calm she didn’t know she had been missing. She closed her eyes, enjoying the tickle of the cool water running through the gills that instantly formed behind her ears. Her fingers and toes gave a slight tingle, and when she opened her eyes, she found thin webs between each of them and tiny silver scales running up from the fins on her feet. Kay swam into her line of vision and gestured enthusiastically at the water around him.

  The last time they had been underwater was in the merrow-made pool that held the prisoners of the Shadowveils, but it couldn’t have been more different from the wondrous scene in front of her.

  There’s a whole city down here! Kay’s voice rang in her head.

  The tower’s base ran straight down to the bottom of the lake. Surrounding it were pointed structures made of the same stone of the tower, some with roofs, some wide open like courtyards, and some in the form of narrow tunnels between the structures.

  Mira swam through it slowly, marveling at the beauty of the underwater city. It must have once been bustling with merrows. The ancient homes were made out of rocks, stones, and shells that peeked out from underneath a thick layer of moss and algae. Although most of them were built on the lake floor among the swaying plants, the tunnels that connected some of the rooms extended both upwards and sideways, giving the buildings very odd shapes. In the distance, Mira saw the bubbling rush of the waterfall, where a contraption that looked like an underwater mill spun with the force of the crashing water.

  It seemed these lake-dwelling merrows were fond of the glowing algae that she and Kay had once found lining the walls of the cave, for much of the surfaces that were under shade gave off a slight bluish glow. The rest of the surfaces were nearly entirely covered in green, with endless vine-like plants growing out of the ground and poking out of the windows of the abandoned homes. It was hard to imagine the place with merrows swimming about and living in those homes, with children playing through the plants, some poking their head above the surface to speak to the humans on land…

  With a start, Mira wondered what her life might have been like if she lived in a place like this, with merrows just like her and Kay, and merrow parents who would have taught them how to swim and metamorphose and throw their thoughts—and what else? What had her home in the depths of the ocean looked like? She tried to imagine the sorts of underwater games she might have grown to love instead of her usual games of chase and climbing trees in the woods.

  Then she remembered Appoline, her beloved mother, and swallowed the rush of unfamiliar emotions that were running through her chest. All she knew was she loved being Appoline’s daughter, and she would never want to change that.

  She absently followed Kay as he snaked through the city until they were face-to-face with the long, cylindrical tower.

  Let’s see if there’s a door.

  Mira was shaken out of her thoughts by the sound of her brother’s voice in her head. She nodded, and they split up to swim along the side of the tower. Mira found a circular door made of rough stone halfway along the wall.

  Kay, come here.

  She ran her fingers over the stone while Kay swam over.

  There’s no lock, she thought. Together, they pushed against the door, but it didn’t budge. As Mira felt the edges of the door, her finger caught a particularly sharp shell that jutted out from the decorations.

  “Ouch!” she squealed, grabbing her finger.

  Then she clapped her hand over her mouth.

  What? Kay’s voice rang in her head.

  “How—?” she began, then gulped in water in surprise. “Kay!”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “I’m speaking underwater!”

  He frowned, opened his mouth hesitantly, and said, “Not possible.” He blinked in surprise when his voice came clearly. “How?”

  Mira laughed.

  “I don’t think we ever tried it after we got comfortable with the water.”

  She rubbed her cut finger absently and turned her attention back to the door, too excited to be distracted by such a small thing. They swam to one of the windows that peppered the tower wall.

  “These windows are too small to go through,” Mira said. “But, look, the room’s completely empty.”

  Kay leaned in to look.

  “I don’t care,” he said, shaking his head. “We didn’t come all this way just to peek into the sorcerer’s tower. Let’s find something to break the door open.”

  Mira turned to one of the houses. Sh
e swam inside through one of the windows and looked around the rooms, suppressing a shudder when she realized the last time a merrow was in there was before the disease wiped out the entire city. She slowed her pace as though she was stepping into a room as significant as the Throne Room in the Royal Palace, though nothing about the little house was grand. Still, she supposed it was important enough to the merrows who had once called it home.

  She reached what must have been a kitchen, for she found a box full of silver forks and knives. She smiled at the familiar objects in such an unfamiliar place and picked up a knife. It no longer seemed sharp, but it looked quite sturdy. She swam back to the tower door to see Kay already aiming a hammer at it.

  “I guess that’s a way to do it,” Mira said with a chuckle.

  “Yeah, I found this in one of those houses…” Kay began and then noticed the knife she was holding. “Perfect!” he exclaimed, holding out his hand for it.

  Mira handed it to him, and he placed the point right at the edge of the door, against the doorframe. He brought the hammer down on the handle, and the knife plunged a bit into the crack. Kay grabbed the handle tightly and twisted hard. With a crumbling sound, the door gave in, and he pushed it open.

  “How did you know how to do that?” Mira asked in surprise.

  Kay gave her a smug smile. “Fishermen can catch things other than fish.”

  “What—like treasure chests that you have to pry open?”

  “Well, sometimes the fishermen found chests that washed up from old shipwrecks. Most of them were filled with soggy papers or kitchen supplies.” He slid the knife under the leather bracelet he had gotten from the traveling merchant, Zarek. “I learned that trick from Demetrius.”

  With that, they swam inside the sorcerer’s dark tower. The few beams of light that came in through the windows revealed a bare room, about the same size as the Fabler’s cottage. There was a small opening right in the middle of the ceiling, which led to the floor above. Through it was an equally bare room with a circular door on the ceiling, no doubt leading to the world above the lake.