This is the second book in the Barrier Island Trilogy. The first is Merrow's Cap. Mak-eh-nuk's Fin will be the third.

The formatting did not translate perfectly from the various word processing programs to the website upload, but it should not be any harder to navigate than Tom's Cove. And I've done that, with the Assateague Light going blink-blink... blink-blink in the dark. 

Much of this is rooted in my own experiences with the islands, kayaks, my own sled dogs and others, with privateers Pride of Baltimore II and Lynx, and with my own wild black mare.

​Email me with any comments! swordwhale@yahoo.com 

July: Assateague Island VA

I can see it all like a movie trailer, what happened last month.

It started with Morgan, Morgan the Merrow. Just in case you’ve been lost in Antarctica or something, that’s an ancient Celtic word for the people you humans call mermaids. Only, of course, they aren’t all Mer-maids. It’s just that humans seem to like the girls; they aren’t as scary or something, but...
...I digress. I do that a lot; stray, wander, ramble off the subject. Besides being a walking special effects department, it’s what I do best; talk. What? Oh yeah. They’re telling me to get on with it. Back to Morgan.

His name isn’t really Morgan, anymore than my real name is Zan, but you can’t pronounce his real name unless you have fins where your feet should be.
(Cue epic music...) Morgan, alone, leagues from his family, on a coming of age quest.
Trapped by a ship's crew, along with a dolphin, the bait used to bring Morgan close enough to capture.
Hauling himself and his dolphin friend over the side of a ship (which he can’t identify because he sees on land about as well as you see underwater without a dive mask) and fleeing into the sea.
Fleeing without his cap. It's what connects him to the sea, allows him to dive down into the dark where only Swordfish can see, to breathe the warm bright waters of coral reefs or the icy waters of the arctic edge. It’s a red knit hat, kind of like those hunting caps you can get at the outfitter’s stores in the fall. Or like those red ones the Cousteau team always wears on their sea-exploring expeditions.
Uh, forget I said that. About the Cousteau crew. Doesn’t mean anything.



The Merrow’s cap is stolen, and Morgan is stranded on a thin line of sand that, over the millennia, has rolled itself up out of the sea: a barrier island off the coast of Virginia. Assateague. Dolphins in the surf, piping plovers and sanderlings on the long line of beach, pelicans and gulls wheeling overhead, low dunes and beach grass, islands of loblolly woods, deer and wild ponies, miles of grassy salt marsh and hordes of blood-sucking bugs.
Cut to the team of sled dogs galloping over pale white drifts at dawn.
Yeah, sled dogs. Pale white drifts...
...of sand.
Camera pans east, we see the surf, and that the driver is riding on a wheeled rig, not a sled. Holly Harper sees something on the beach: a lone seal washed up, injured, apparently unable to return to sea. She investigates. She’s one of those rare humans who can see beyond the surface of things: wolf sight, she calls it. She sees Morgan for what he is and takes him home to safety on the tiny island of Chincoteague, tucked like an egg behind the dragon curves of Assateague.
The next day she comes home to a party going on in her yard. They are not surprised by a merrow in a hot tub. In fact, they were looking for him.
“We’re the Earth Life Foundation; one of those zillions of environmental groups vying for your tax-deductible donations. We’re a little different than most."
Yeah, you'd think the acronym, ELF, would be a clue.

Camera pans around yard, showing all of us: Bran the Ravenkin, Tas the Pooka, Shaughnessy who’s a marine biologist and filmaker when he’s not a whale, Earla the Dwarf, who makes the best brownies on the east coast and can build anything out of duct tape and number two fence wire. Surf the Wonder Dog, a big black and white Newfoundland who’s an expert at water rescue. Ian, the lone human in our crew, who knows our secrets, and has a few of his own.
Oh yeah, and me, Zan. Mirzithan, since you’re reading this, you know my real name, or one of them. You get to be a teenager for about seven years. I get to be one for about eighty.

  Holly offers us a free place to stay while we tried to solve the problem of the Merrow’s Cap. Who kidnapped a Merrow? Why? What does that mean for the rest of us who have to blend into the mundane world, pretending to be something we’re not. 
For Morgan, it means separation from his ocean world, his family.
And death. The cap can only be woven once, and the sea-songs woven into it. It cannot be replaced.
For the east coast, and the Chesapeake Bay area, it means a disturbance in the balance of the natural world; rain when there should be sun, too much sun when there should be rain, weird winds, wild surf and storms that won’t break.



Cut to a scene out of the wild wild west (only it’s in Delaware): Jason, world’s worst cowboy kid, failing once again to impress his dad. He’s roped a ranch dog into being a sled dog, sort of, to pull a wagon full of water buckets out to the cattle trough.
Big fight, lots of yelling.
Jason at school, harassed by the School Jerk. Jason, imagining if he were Sharkman, star of the comic book he and his buddy Heather are creating. He is, instead, a Land Whale, the fat, dorky kid who can never get anything right.
Jason, back at the ranch, making the million dollar mistake of leaving a critical gate open.
Big fight, lots of yelling.
The pink letter from Aunt Gracie: come to Chincoteague for the summer.
Cool, Sharkman in his natural environment. “I’ll pack my dive gear.”
Uncool: the Chincoteague cottage has no internet, no connection with his buddy Heather, no way to continue Sharkman’s adventures.



Cut to girl on horse, roping a calf (in Pennsylvania). She’s small on the big bay horse, but agile and balanced. A man sitting on a roan mare offers advice. 
Cut to family dinner, same girl, frowning as her dad explains that this summer they are going to be living on an island called Chincoteague. Everyone at the table is Signing, the Fisher family is Deaf.
“What about my rodeo?” Cait complains.
“It’ll have to wait.”

Cut to Epic Montage of a wheeling silver raven, of galloping wild ponies, and Cait galloping on a pinto mare... of an orca surfacing. Of Tas shapeshifting into a horse. Of Jason and Morgan fighting off pirates in a Zodiac, of Bri finding a red cap on a "pirate ship" named Roane in Mermaid City. Of night sea paddles and battles and a woman burning one silver feather...

Cut to me and Jason, in the Lady Niamh, her masts tall and dark against the stars. She spreads her great wings of canvas against the night sky and heads for the coordinates of the "pirate ship" Roane.
But the Roane is gone. She has upped her anchor and fled on the night wind. Her engines are stilled, Bran saw to that, but she is as swift under sail as her ancestors: the wicked fast Baltimore Clippers of 1812.
But the Lady Niamh wears that shape too, and we hope she is swifter still.  





Manannan’s Horses

red sky at morning, sailor take warning


Razed


The sun rolled up red out of a glass green sea. Came over the round edge of the world the color of blood, of storm warning. A sun the red of the Merrow’s cap, the stealing of which had spawned the pursuit the sun’s level rays lit. The cutlass shapes of tall masts and the birdwing shapes of sails caught the red rays, throwing shadows behind two ships, shadows that thrust and parried across the glowing dawn sea. The dark ship ahead was a wooden-hulled, two masted, square tops’l schooner, the Roane, named for the shapeshifting seal-folk of Irish legend. Her own shape was that of a Baltimore Clipper, the swift and agile privateers that had nipped at the heels of the British Navy in the War of 1812. Though she had been built nearly two centuries after those “sharp-built schooners” had faded into legend, she had all of the qualities that made them legend. She was flying on the wind, the way her ancestors had; her immense engines had been stilled the night before by one Brannan Hrafenson, Ravenkin.
He hadn’t meant to do it. He’d meant to pirate...or, privateer... an item stolen by those on the Roane; the sea-cap belonging to Morgan the Merrow. Things had gone differently than he’d planned. Or not planned. Plan was generally not a word used much in his vocabulary.
But that’s another tale.
On to this one.
The ship in chase was the Lady Niamh, named after the daughter of Manannan, who ruled the sea. She also wore the shape of a Baltimore Clipper, though her rig carried more square sails than Roane, making her a schooner brig. Unlike her somber, black-hulled relatives, she wore the blues and greys and greens of the sea. A landlubber would have seen that she was smaller than the Roane. A nautical eye would have seen her lean, low sea-hugging hull and her tall rig with its vast cloud of sail as a more extreme design; faster, more agile, but demanding great skill to sail her. To one who looked closely, and her crew never allowed any to look too closely, there was something about her lean as a racing dolphin hull. Something about her raked masts and lighter than osprey feather sails. 
Something uncanny.
As uncanny as her crew. They had sailed circles around British warships in the American Revolution, in the Napoleonic Wars. They had stopped slavers and pirates (the kind with cannons and cutlasses). They had ridden that wild interface between two volatile fluids; air and water, for millennia before cannons and cutlasses. But the battles of humans were not their real concern; their concern was the wind and tide and the sea itself, the creatures in it, upon it. This crew that moved with the grace of a tern in flight, with the surety of a blue whale wheeling across the ceiling of its world were, in the twenty-first century, part of an organization devoted to wild things and wild places; the Earth Life Foundation. If anyone paid attention to their acronym, ELF, they might have learned a great deal more about who these folk actually were.
But few remembered the legends. Fewer believed in them.



The Lady Niamh flew on the dawn wind, her hull knifing the waves with swordfish speed, heeled under the wind till the cannon muzzles tasted the sea. The wind blew broad on her port bow; halfway between directly ahead, and directly abeam. She flew close-hauled, swallowing that wind and converting it to pure speed. The miles wide gap between the Lady and the Roane was narrowing.
Two boys on the starboard rail peered ahead, one with binoculars, one with eyes unfazed by distance or the slanting rays of the rising sun. At their feet swayed an enormous black and white dog, a Newfoundland named Surf. Amidships were lashed two brightly colored kayaks, the vessels the boys and the dog had arrived on last night.
“Zan, can you make sense of what’s going on?” Jason asked. He lurched on the rail like a walrus on a rollercoaster.
Zan perched like a tern in the ratlines above Jason’s head; a lean, lithe boy with hair several shades redder than a fox. “From what our crew is saying, Niamh’s a leaner, faster design. And the Roane hasn’t got enough crew to sail her tight enough to outrun us.”
“Crap.” Jason said, disappointed, “We’ll be back by lunch.”
“Still, they’ve been outrunning us pretty well.”
“Not forever.” Jason said, “You know what would be cool? You should do an illusion, another ship...no, no, a BIG butt-kicking battleship. A whole fleet. No, wait...cooler yet. Do a starship, blasting out of the sky, raking them with laser fire.”
Zan grinned and his hands blocked out the scene, “Sharkman hulks over the controls, steely eyed. ‘Arm main torpedoes, Shadowfox.’ ‘Aye, armed.’ Shadowfox’s fingers fly over the touch screen, ‘target acquired’.” Between Zan’s flying hands the air shimmered, coalesced. Images floated there; Sharkman hunched over the control panel, his sidekick glaring at the computer, “...this will take some tricky flying. Carefully timed teamwork. Sharkman twitches the controls to port, dives...” A starship replaced Sharkman and Shadowfox, laying out a line of green laser fire.
“Whoa!” Jason said, “That’s exactly how I pictured it.”
Zan grinned, “I know.”
Jason’s look of astonishment morphed to annoyance, “You were reading my mind again.”
Zan looked abashed, “I didn’t mean to, not that way anyway. It’s just....you know. Look, as soon as we get back I’ll teach you to shield. Then nobody can read your mind.”
“Not even my dad?”
“Especially not your dad.”
“I still think you should throw a ship at them or something.” Jason said, peering ahead at the Roane.
“It’s kind of hard to do a whole ship. And all I got to work with here is water. Water isn’t my best element.”
“What do you mean?”
“It helps if there’s...” Zan frowned as if he couldn’t translate the images in his head into words Jason would understand, “something already there.”
“What about the thirty foot Great White that leaped out of two feet of water back in the bay?” 
“The shark wasn’t as big as a ship.” Zan said. “And it was moving fast. If you’d looked really close, it would have looked a little...uh, fuzzy. Like bad game animation.”
“Oh.” Jason said, disappointed. 
Zan looked away to the Roane, his own expression a bit crestfallen.
“It was really cool, though.” Jason said brightly. “I never noticed anything rough about it.” He frowned at the speck on the horizon, “Howcome we’re not headed directly for it? I mean, we’re kind of headed away from the Roane.”
“Where’s the wind?” came a voice behind Jason’s shoulder.
He turned to see Rhea, the first crewperson he and Zan had encountered last night. Jason frowned, spit on his finger, held it up. Not like he really needed any spit, the wind was pretty noticeable. “There?”
“If you were in a car, you would just point your bow that way,” Rhea pointed toward the speck that was the Roane, “and go. What are we missing here?”
“Oh. Engines.” 
Rhea nodded, held out two hands, “This is the Roane.” She waggled her left hand, “This is us. There’s the wind.” She nodded the direction the wind was whipping spray from. “We can’t simply turn into the wind, we’d be clapped in irons. Brought to a dead stop. But if we set our course the same,” her hands played out the scenario, “and tack whenever the Roane is perpendicular to either beam,” her hands zigged and zagged, “we will eventually meet them. No matter which way they turn.”
“Can’t we just lob magic missiles at them or something?” Jason said.
Rhea grinned, “That’s only in your fantasy games.” Her expression darkened slightly, “And in your modern wars, where you sit back and fire at each other from miles away. We must close with our enemy, meet them face to face.” She turned and headed forward, her bare feet making no sound on the deck.
Jason looked perplexed.
“Cannons.” Zan said, “All we’ve got is cannons.”
Jason peered at the distant speck that was the Roane, “Wonder what they’ve got?” 



‘What they’ve got’, the Niamh’s crew was unsure. It had been a brief message the ship’s griffin brought from the ELF crew ashore, a message containing an outline of the events surrounding the rescue of Bri, the Merrow’s Cap, and the taking of the Roane. Bran and Tas had seen the Roane’s nav room, but they didn’t have Earla’s skill with technology, or the ability to interpret it. And they were concerned with other things; Ian, and his healing, in particular. 
So the message had said nothing of the Roane’s odd technology. As far as the Niamh’s  crew knew, they were chasing a modern reproduction of a swift Baltimore Clipper, equipped with engines and computers, (now useless thanks to a certain Ravenkin),  and saluting cannons which fired powder and flour.   
Niamh’s crew was still as a windless day; a lookout high in the rigging, the helmsman tweaking the rope reins controlling the rudder, the others leaned at crazy angles on the deck, tilted like a ski slope. All quiet, waiting.
Slowly the speck ahead fell back till it was broad abeam. 
The crew erupted into mad action. The big grey tiller was hauled hard aport, cocking the rudder the opposite way, the long grey bowsprit swung like a unicorn’s horn to starboard. Sails were shifted, lines swiftly loosed, heaved, hauled and belayed again. Zan leapt in, adding his small strength to that of the crew. Jason hesitated, sure he’d slow them down or heave when he should be hoeing.
“Come on.” Rhea called, “grab here.” She placed Jason’s hand on a line, “With us now.” And she began a chant. The five other crew on the line heaved together, throwing their entire bodies into the effort. Overhead spars creaked, a square tops’l turned, caught the wind like birdwings.



Tack, turn, turn again. Niamh flew a zigzag course and the speck on the horizon grew larger. Tack, turn, heave haul. Closer.
Closer.
Several of the crew ran aloft now, armed with bows and long, antique looking rifles.
Jason leaned back, staring up at them with his mouth ajar.
“Marines.” Rhea said, trotting by, lightfooted, a bow slung over her back.
“They don’t look anything like those ads for ‘a few good men’, Zan observed.
“Depends how you define ‘men’”, Jason said. “If you mean human...”
“Where do you think your marines came from?” Rhea said, and swung aloft.
Around Jason and Zan, the crew was in motion, swift and cat-footed. along the Niamh’s sides, gun doors were lifted. Bronze cannons, half the length of a man, squatted on deck on their wooden carriages. The carriages, harnessed with heavy rope, were heaved into position. A girl in soft felt shoes came up from below, carrying powder. A pyramid of cannonballs sat by each gun, waiting.
“Cannons?” Jason said, his eyes traveled back to the sharpshooters aloft, “And Elves with bows and Pennsylvania longrifles?” It looked just like a scene out of a pirate movie, or a Sharkman adventure. 
Only Jason was in the middle of it. And in very real danger of being in the path of an object moving at a high and destructive speed. “Holy crap! Can’t we just pull out a bullhorn and yell at them to pull over or something?”
The speck that had been Roane was a speck no longer. Jason could count the lines in her shrouds. See the frantic movement of her remnant crew on deck.
“Hey,” Zan said, “they’re doing something with their cannons.”
He didn’t have time to contemplate what it was they were doing, a crewman caught Zan’s shoulder, “You’re better at channeling energy than many your age. Come. The captain needs you.”



Zan scanned the faces of people who had evaded and faced down battleships in a dozen wars. Who had freed slave ships and battled pirates; the kind with eyepatches and wooden legs. “Ahhhh, what do you want me to do?” His voice came out a lot smaller and less heroic than he would have liked. 
“Here.” The tall crewman placed him along the rail, a few feet from one of the cannons. Two others stood there, besides the cannon crew. “As we come alongside, we will raise a shield.”
“Against what? Her cannons are just for show, right?”
“Are they?”
Zan took his place with the others, glancing back down the deck to Jason, or where he had been.



“Come,” Jason heard a soft voice behind him, “we’ll need all the hands we have, and yours are strong.” He found himself swept along to a knot of people standing by one of the multitude of lines snaking down from aloft. “Just pull with us.” The speaker was a woman the color of a seal. She held a hand at the ready on a line. Jason followed it up, up up, but couldn’t make out what it was attached to.  


Niamh swept in on the wind, two cannons on the port side roared a warning to the Roane. If she understood the language of cannonfire, she ignored it. 
Then she answered it with some of her own.


“Ready...” The tall crewman next to Zan called out. He raised his hands, and the two beside him mirrored him.
Shields, yeah, shields were easy. Zan had done that a thousand zillion times.
On land.
Now there was nothing in the whole circle of the world except seething sea and sunlight. The nearest land was a hundred feet below. And thirty miles to the west. 
He had never been so far from it before.
Zan chewed on his lip and reached out with senses humans rarely developed. The land far below the rolling deck of the Lady would help, a little. What would be more help was the sun, burning higher and hotter as it swam up the blue ocean of the sky. Fire. That was his real element. Fire and light. He called on it, felt the warm dawn glow on his face, on the light wool sweater a crewman had given him last night, on the dark diveskin beneath it. He let it sink into him, into his center, he could feel the glow, the power waiting to be released.
“NOW!” 



The little knot of crew by Jason waited, still as a leopard poised to leap. “What are we doing?” Jason asked, but the only answer was a hand, raised in a quick gesture of silence. 
There was nothing silent about the Roane’s cannons or their aftermath.
Something whistled, then thumped, rumbled and splashed into the sea. The sea itself responded like a spooked horse, leaping, thrashing, fleeing away. The Lady reared, charged back down on course.
Jason opened his eyes, not remembering that he’d shut them in panic. Something like a transparent bubble, with blue lightnings dancing across it, stretched out along the length of the Lady’s side.
“Whoa!” Jason said softly. Cooler than anything in any of his video games. And a lot bigger.
Now the Lady’s cannon spoke. Something on the Roane snapped with a sound like a shot.
They were broadside to broadside, but the Lady was still flying.
“What?” Jason started to say, then someone was calling out an order over the noise, and the knot of crew around Jason were hauling on the line like madmen.



Zan breathed the energy from his hands. It sputtered like a candle flame in seawind. Around him, the others stretched out their hands, and the shield danced with lightnings. His own bit of the shield felt like a trickle of a creek flowing into a maelstrom. He could see the Roane’s cannons, just like ships would have had two hundred years ago. The kind modern tall ships had as part of their historical trappings. 
The kind generally reserved for saluting ports of call, with naught but harmless powder.
Three muzzles flashed. Zan could see no projectile, only a disturbance in the air itself. The kind of wrinkle in the mundane energy fields that he made channeling energy into his illusions.
Only bigger. Much bigger.
“Crap!” Zan said in a very small voice, and tried to pour more energy into the wavering shield.
He saw the leading edge of the Lady’s shield warp like the head of a pounded drum. It bulged like a pufferfish, and the sea to starboard erupted in a great spume of spray.
The Lady bucked, leapt, Zan riding her deck as easily as he had a galloping horse, bareback. The ship heaved, rolled and righted herself. She shook off the attack and plowed ahead.
But Zan was keenly aware, with the rest of his companions, of the great gash torn in the sea. Of the other things, large and small that the missile had killed. Of the stunning echo of that blast, heard for miles undersea. Of the scream, inaudible to humans, like a thousand horses neighing.



The leopard pounced. Jason found himself in the midst of a maelstrom of action; six people hauling frantically on a line. He reached as far as he could, grabbed a bit of empty line and hauled, trying to stay in rhythm. The last few cranks felt like they’d lassoed an elephant. They stepped back, reached for another line.
Above them, sails caught one last puff of wind.



“No way...” Zan didn’t have time to finish the thought. He felt like he could reach out and touch the Roane’s cannons. He could see the expressions on her crew. Watched one of them running forward.
The Lady swung hard aport, like a good cutting horse sending a cow back to the herd. She sliced across the Roane’s path. The sails luffed, the air fell out of them. The Lady’s wings became huge canvas air brakes. 
Zan saw the incredulous look on one of the Roane’s crew. On the face of the woman shouting commands.
Then the Roane’s bowsprit stabbed through the Lady’s foreshrouds and stuck there.
The Lady rocked hard, then righted herself.
The Roane remained firmly lodged.
On the Lady, crew lined up the cannons, fired down the length of the Roane’s hundred foot hull.
Green lightnings danced over her deck, her masts, rigging. A sound like snowcones in a frying pan reached the ears of Jason and Zan. 
“Whoo-OOO!” Jason shouted.
Zan yee-hahed back at him from his place just under the Roane’s bowsprit. Then he saw again the crewman he’d noticed running forward. His hands were on one of the little swivel guns on the Roane’s bow; cannons, the size of a big man’s arm, that could be swiveled in any direction. “Hey.” Zan said, grabbing the arm of the crewman nearest him. He pointed.
Above, one of the sharpshooters took aim.
Not fast enough.


The sea exploded like a bucking bronc. The Lady blew back, away from the Roane as if she’d been punched. Her deck heeled over, a slanting wall not a floor. Jason grabbed at a bit of neatly coiled rope. It snaked out of its coil, sending him sliding down toward the sea. Somewhere above him, the Sandtiger and Finrod came loose. The yellow kayak ricocheted off a skylight and Jason heard the sound of shattering glass. Finrod slid into the sea, the Sandtiger bouncing after it. Just below Jason, Surf sprawled against the rail.
The deck wavered for a few breaths, as if deciding between vertical and horizontal. It began to sink back toward horizontal.
FOOOOMP! The sea exploded again. No answering lion roar of the Lady’s cannon this time. And if the force field crew was still at work, Jason couldn’t see.
He was too busy trying to stay out of the sea.



The Lady groaned like a whale taking a direct hit. She lurched, staggered, nearly regained her feet.
Then the starboard rail sank below the waves.
Jason hit the water. A few yards away a black shape bobbed to the surface, swimming madly. 
Surf. Jason thrashed out toward him, and the big Newf turned toward Jason. Behind him the Lady groaned again, something snapped. A line, then another, lashed the water like whips. Someone was shouting. Something hit the water to Jason’s left, graceful as a diving tern. One of the crew, diving from the sinking rigging, he realized. There were other swimmers in the water. And the broad wings of the sails, and lines like giant squid tentacles, reaching for him.
Surf paddled past, Jason grabbed the thick fur just below the water’s surface and hung on, kicking hard with his own legs.
Beside Surf and Jason, one of the masts came down like a forest giant in slow motion, and with it, a vine-tangle of stays and shrouds and sheets. A line snagged around Jason’s leg, he struggled, one handed, to move it and finally tossed it aside. A loose sail floated in their path, like a wayward pool cover. He remembered tales of children being swallowed by pool covers. “Left! Left.” Jason shouted to Surf. Oh crap, maybe he doesn’t know left. Maybe it’s port and starboard. Or sled dog commands. “Port! Haw!” Jason shouted over the confusion around him, but the Newf was already swimming around the obstacle. Behind them, more shouts. Sounds of splashing. The great deep moan of the Lady sinking.
In a moment the sea was still again. The sun shone golden, higher and hotter now. Jason turned to see swimmers, a couple of boats from the ship, random deck debris floating. The tip of a mast, poking incongruously out of a calm sea. 
And the Roane dwindling into the golden horizon.
“Zan, where’s Zan?” Jason said to Surf, as if the dog would know. Zan could talk to the dog, understand what Surf was thinking. Not Jason. “Yeah. Lassie, go for help.” Surf kept swimming. Ahead of Jason bobbed a familiar shape, Finrod’s bright yellow hull. Jason flailed out and caught one of the grablines, heaved himself aboard. Surf followed. Jason picked up the paddle, lashed under the deck bungees. He searched the water frantically for a splash of red hair.
Around Jason the chaos of floating debris and swimmers and boats was congealing into something like an organized fleet. Someone shouted to him. Jason held up his hand in the diver’s “ok” sign, then patted the top of his head in the ok sign used for longer distances; like when you were floating in the water off the boat. 
Except now there was no boat. Just the little ones; the wooden lifeboats bobbing in the water, along with Finrod. Jason could see the bright splash of color that was the Sandtiger in the midst of the Lady’s boats. 
But he saw no flash of red hair. “Zan!” Jason yelled to the crewman who had called to him, “Where’s Zan.”
A girl’s head bobbed to the surface, looked around. Someone leaned out of a boat and spoke to her. She nodded and dove with the grace of a sea lion. Another head surfaced, and dived again. Two more.
“Freedivers.” Jason said to Surf. “They don’t need scuba.” There were human freedivers Jason had heard of who could reach three hundred feet. On one breath. These were Elves. If Zan was down there, they would find him, “Right?” He said to Surf.
Surf hunched soggily on Finrod’s bow, looking worried. “Roooo rrph rrrph,” he complained. 
Below Jason the sea was all bubbles and silt and blobs of air burping out of the sunken ship. Visibility inside the mask. They would never find anybody in all that.
He had never felt so stupid and useless in all his life.



Zan leapt like a panicked dolphin. Behind him the ship twisted and moaned, lines snapped. He heard the groan of falling timbers, the ice sound of shattering glass.
Jason! Where the hell is Jason? And Surf.
Zan hit the water like a rock. The PFD yanked him to a halt and threw him back up onto the churning surface. Then the water that was swallowing the ship began to swallow him too, drawing him under in the Lady’s wake. He held his breath, searching the patterns of the currents, drawing on what energy he had left. Thrash, kick, it was like paddling a kayak upriver, if you knew how to read the water, which way to point your bow, where to thrust your paddle.
But this was a dangerously strong river, the current sucking him back toward the dying Lady. He panicked, struggling against it, using up the last of his air.
Something brushed past his hand. A stray line from the ship. No. Something like the wisp of strong hair in a horse’s tail. 
Random debris, piece of sail or baggywrinkle. And it was going up and out. He grabbed at it and it surged ahead, like a spooked horse. He clung to it...
...and surfaced, gasping, riding the backside of a wave, away from the sinking ship. 
Waves? The sea was flat, except where it had been disturbed by the Lady’s death, and there it was ripples and swells. For a moment the wavecrest flew like a white horse’s mane, then it sank into the still dawn sea.
  “Jason!” Zan shouted. And saw him swimming with Surf a few yards from Finrod. He was looking away, and didn’t hear Zan.
A dark head bobbed up beside Zan, took a great draught of air. One of the crew women met his eyes, “Can you dive well? Come, I need you!” She breathed three more times, like a sealion diving, and vanished below. 
Zan stared after her, what? Not the time to ask. Or to try to guess how far and how long he really could hold his breath. He wriggled out of the PFD, and the sweater. Under it all he still had on the diveskin he’d been wearing since yesterday morning. He had left his light neoprene dive boots under Finrod’s deck bungees; just as well, he could swim better in bare feet. Zan yanked the knife off the PFD, took three deep breaths, blowing all the stale air from his lungs, oxygenating his blood.
He dived.
It was all murk and silt and air boiling out of the ship. Snapped lines snaked past him like reaching tentacles. Then he understood; someone had been snared by one of those tentacles.
Where are you? 
Here. Came the faint voice in his head. He veered left, his hand contacted a piece of wood the size of a young tree. He caught it, used it to pull himself deeper...easier, faster than swimming. 
She materialized out of the gloom, a faint dark ghost clad in pale underthings. Another ghost hung limp just beyond her busy hands. One of the crew, caught in the shrouds. 
How deep am I? It was dark and green as evening shadow under thick trees. Zan’s eyes could tell a laughing gull from a tern ten miles away, but here everything was a nearsighted blur. How far to the surface? Fear trickled in around his edges, like water around the hatch of a deep sea sub.
The girl slashed at a thick line, sawing with quick, sure strokes.
There was a lot of line.
Zan hauled on the crewman’s body, found another line holding it in place. Found something else; his spirit had not yet fled.
Not yet.
The knife from Zan’s PFD was small, not as long as his hand, meant for cutting fishing line. For opening clams. It was also Dwarf-made, sharper than shark’s teeth. He slashed at the line, then another.
He needed to breathe. The dark water and the drowned ship closed in on him.
Surface! Surface now! The creeping edge of panic flowed in on him like icewater.
He kept cutting. One more line. Tug, tug. Another line.
Surface!
The girl had sunk below him, sawing at yet another line with all the coolness of a seal on a Sunday dive. Zan tugged once more on the crewman. Hurry! He thought ferociously at the girl below him. She did not answer, saving her energy for cutting, for staying down. Zan sank, saw the cable the girl was working on, slashed at it with his Dwarf-knife.
It parted, the pieces floating off like dream smoke. Zan shoved off the sunken tree-like spar, grabbed the crewman on the way by and pulled hard for the surface.



“I don’t see anything, Surf.” Jason said. 
The dog leaned, nose reaching, reading the faint scents drifting up from below. 
Jason picked up the paddle and gave it a few strokes. Debris from the ship bounced off Finrod’s bow, loose lines snaked around the paddle blade. Jason yanked it loose and watched Surf’s nose, swinging like a compass. “Where’s Zan? You gotta clue?” He had seen it on the news before; dogs who could find dead bodies underwater.
Jason didn’t want to think too hard about dead bodies right now. “Where is he?”
The big Newf crouched on the edge of the broad-beamed kayak, peering down into the green dark, nose wrinkling, loose lips tasting the air. 
Jason paddled, following the Newf nose compass. “Maaaan, I really wish I spoke dog.”
“Erp!” Surf’s saggy lips and twitchy eyebrows made him look like someone’s very worried Grandma. His nose fell from horizontal to vertical; pointing straight down. He leaned farther over the gunnels, and Finrod tilted, the port side lurching out of the water.
Then the dog was over the side.
“Oh great. We find a boat and you leave it again.” 
Surf swam, turned to starboard and made a circle. He ducked his head under, then his whole body followed.
Jason stared in disbelief at the vanishing black bulk. Then he yanked off his PFD and followed.



How far is up? 
Zan could see light on the surface, like a gate to the spirit world. Light, life.
Blackness was beginning to creep in around the edges of his dark underworld. The one he was hauling was twice his size, weightless in the water, but dragging on Zan like a sea anchor.
Where was the girl? I could let him go. He’d float here. I’d get a breath, or the girl would catch him as she passes me.
What if she was caught? If she went deeper for someone else?
Zan kicked, hauled with one free hand.
Too far!
The circle of light above his head shrank, began to close. Was blotted out.
Something dark, with teeth, clamped onto his arm and hauled him skyward.



Diving in a mask and fins made you a whale, a dolphin. You could see, you could travel with the flick of a fin. Jason lumped to Finrod’s aft end, the yellow boat bucking under his weight. There, in the pile of gear stowed under the aft bungees.
The mask and fins he’d been using in the backwaters of Chincoteague about a lifetime ago. He hauled them on, wishing he was Sharkman. He was instead, Jason the Land Whale. 
It’s okkkkkkay, rrrrreally. I gottttta nattttturrral blubbbber layerrrrr.
He dived. It was the one thing he hadn’t hated in gym class; swimming, snorkeling, diving. The one thing he hadn’t looked absototally freaking stupid at. Even in the mask, Jason couldn’t see anything but green murk, and the black and white blob that was Surf vanishing below him.
A diving dog?
Jason dragged himself down with kicking fins and reaching hands. Something brushed past his arm, his ankle. Great, I left the knife on the PFD!
Green green green gloom. Lines snaking out of the depths. 
What if Zan’s caught in a line? I better go back for the knife.
A dark disturbance, thrashing by him on the left. Then a ghost rising out of the underworld right under him. Jason’s instinct was to panic, to shoot for the surface.
Sharkman would never panic. He would stay cool. He would meet this ghost face to...uh...skull, and deal with it.
Jason reached, grabbed what felt like a loose shirt. 
A shirt attached to a body.
GAAAAAHHHHHH!
Panic panic panic. 
No, wait, one of the crew. Don’t lose him now. 
Anyway, underwater, no one can hear you scream. Jason latched onto the shirt and kicked butt for the surface.



For about three seconds Jason considered how creepy it was to haul a dead body into Finrod, especially one that should have continued living for a few hundred...or thousand, or something...more years. The big yellow boat bobbed placidly pretty much where Jason had left it, moored in a maze of flotsam and floating lines from the ship below. Jason floundered on the surface, kicking toward Finrod. Great! No PFD, and a whopping big sea anchor. He’s an Elf, shouldn’t he weigh, like, nothing? They don’t even leave footprints in snow, right? Jason gasped in a big breath and stuck his face under again; easier to swim this way. He thrust a hand out and caught Finrod’s grab line. “Now what?” 
A splash on the other side of the boat and a gasp. 
“Jason?” A familiar voice.
“Zan?”
“Surf!”
“Roof!”
A light form leaping onto Finrod, barely rocking it. Then Zan was hauling and Jason was shoving and the crewman slithered over Finrod’s gunnels. 
“Come on, stretch him out.” Zan said.
Jason found himself in the bow seat with the dead guy’s head in his lap. Zan stood amidships, feet on the gunnels, staring down at him. Surf climbed up and huddled on the stern, looking worried.
“Uh,” Jason said, definitely creeped out, “Should we try CPR or something?” The guy looked beyond CPR; pale and blue. Tentatively he reached for the guy’s neck, where you should be able to find a pulse. He didn’t seem to have one. He definitely wasn’t breathing. “I never took a course or anything, well, I saw it on TV...” His voice trailed off into uselessness.
“I know CPR,” Zan said, “But it won’t help.”
Jason’s hand on the gunnels was suddenly covered by a cold, wet hand. “Gaaaaah!”
Zan, kneeling over the crewman now, saw a girl, hair and skin the color of a sealion, floating alongside Finrod, her arm around another still form. “Stay with that one, I’ll return.” She swam off with her burden, easily as a seal, toward the cluster of boats from the Lady.
“Who?” Jason began.
“I helped her free this one. She must have gone deeper for another.” 
“Great, she leaves us with the dead guy.” Jason said in a voice the size of a minnow.
Zan looked down at the crewman again, ran a light hand along his face, down his chest. “He’s not dead, Jim.” Zan said matter of factly.
“Is this any time to be quoting Star Trek?” Jason said. 
Zan gave him a patient look, “If it was that easy to kill an Elf, we would have vanished in the Mesozoic.”
“There weren’t any humans in the Mesozoic...I think.” Jason said uncertainly.
“Right.” Zan said. 
“Shouldn’t we be doing something now?” Jason asked. “Like paddling over to the other boats.”
“He’s shut down, in hibernation mode.” Zan looked toward the other boats where more crew were being tended to. “He can wait awhile.”
“He can?” Jason eyed the ice-pale face, definitely creepy and dead looking. He focused on Surf’s warm fuzzy head. “Surf found you.”
  “Good thing. I almost didn’t make it to the surface. Surf grabbed me, hauled me up.”
“Surf dives.” Jason said in amazement, “I saw him go down. Weird, you sure he’s just a dog?”
“Newfs can retrieve stuff underwater, but Surf goes deeper than most, ‘cause he’s Shaughnessy’s dog.”  
“Oh yeah. A guy who can turn into a whale should have a diving dog.”
Jason glanced at the sun, then away from it to the far west where land lay, somewhere below the horizon. “How are we going to get back? Rope a whale or something?”
Zan made a face,  “We left the only whale on land.” Zan made a wry face, “And we left the only person who can rope anything on land, too.” 
“Yeah, Cait.” Jason said.
“Probably having steamed crabs and Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream for breakfast.” Zan said. “With double fudge topping. And whipped cream.”
“Don’t remind me.” Jason nearly wailed. “I’m starving.”
A ripple of water and the dark girl was floating alongside Finrod. Zan bailed over the side and the girl took his place amidships. She ran a light hand over the crewman's face, over his chest. Began singing something softly, like surf and gulls in the distance.
Jason stared at the guy’s face. He and Zan had only known this crew since last night. In the dark they were lean and quick and otherwise unremarkable. By dawn they had been chasing the Roane, and Jason hadn’t spent much time looking at faces. Now his artist’s eye was measuring this one, whether he wanted to or not. It wasn’t quite the weird, uncanny, otherwordly look he’d thought of as elf when playing D&D, or reading a fantasy novel. It sure wasn’t the Hunk of the Month from the latest teengirl magazine. It was the kind of ...yeah, beauty... you saw in a gull wing, in a dolphin leap, in a perfect, sharp-edged seashell. His face showed not even a shadow of beard, though he had no doubt been up all night flying the ship, like all the others. The rest of his skin showed only the faintest trace of hair, and his ears were in the shape of a new leaf.
The girl went on singing.
Jason frowned down at the Elf sprawled on Finrod’s deck. Then he heard a faint gasp, saw his chest rise, and fall. “He’s breathing! Is he gonna be ok?” 
“He held his breath as long as he could,” the girl said, “not long, only five minutes or so, he’s one of our newest crew members. He’s a landlubber,” she smiled, “hasn’t yet learned to freedive well.” 
“Hibernation mode.” Jason said. “Zan told me.”
“I called him back.” Her eyes turned to Zan, “But Zan freed him, brought him up. I knew there was another below.”
“I didn’t quite make it,” Zan said, “Surf had to haul my butt outta the water.”
The girl’s eyes turned to Jason. “But you trusted to follow the dog. And aided both.” She touched the one sprawled on Finrod’s deck, and Zan’s red hair.
Zan looked down, embarrassed.
The crewman blinked, opened sea grey eyes. 
“Sorry we couldn’t find you a bigger boat.” Jason said. He looked up to see one of the ship’s boats drifting just alongside. Two of the crew reached over and rafted the two boats together with their hands, and their missing crewman was hauled gently aboard.


Raised



The dark haired girl made sure the awakening crewman was safe in the lifeboat. Then Jason saw her breathe three times and vanish below again.
“Are there more below?” Jason asked. 
“No,” came a voice from the boat, “we have all been counted. She goes after other things.”
“What,” Jason said to Zan, “somebody forgot their vacation photos? Their toothbrush? Do Elves even use toothbrushes?”
Zan gave him a shove, and climbed back into Finrod. 
Jason lumbered up after him. Surf flumped down amidships as before. Jason eyed the other boats, their oars in the water, “Looks like it’s going to be a long paddle.” No one seemed to be making a move toward shore. No one was on a cell phone or marine radio. "Does anyone even have a marine radio? Or a cell phone or anything?" No one was sending up distress flares... probably didn’t have those either. Yeah, it would be a bit inconvenient for the Coast Guard to show up right now. Who sank what? Why were you chasing them? What photon torpedoes? You don’t need to see our identification. These aren’t the Elves you’re looking for.

No sign of the girl. Jason frowned over the side, nothing down there but green murk. He squinted into the sun, high, hot and yellow now. He stared at the lone mast tip, rising from the sea. “At least it’ll be easy to find her again.”
"Yeah, eighty feet of water, hundred foot mast. They won’t leave her.” Zan said, “Not all of the crew anyway.”
“Maybe they can fill her with ping-pong balls or something and float her again.”
“Yeah,” Zan said, “or pool noodles.”
“Pool noodles would compress.”
“Ping-pong balls would collapse.” Zan said.
“They were gonna use ping-pong balls to raise the Titanic.” Jason said.
“No way!” 
“Yeah, way.” Jason said, “Only they couldn’t have done that anyway, because she’s broken into two major sections, and a lot of debris. And now the bacteria are dissolving her into rusticles. In about eighty years she’ll just be a big rust stain two and a half miles down on the floor of the Atlantic.” He stared into the green water, “At least the Niamh is wood.” He paused, staring thoughtfully at the mast. “And in one piece. Mostly.” Jason looked at Zan, as if for an answer, “Right?”
Zan nodded, though his face didn’t look so certain. “That’s what the crew said.”
“Sooo, they can float her again.”
“Yeah, sure.” Zan said.
A ripple in the still water, and Jason was staring at a seal. “Hey, cool, look at that! Maybe we can get her to tow us back.” He wasn’t sure why he thought of her as her, but it seemed right.
The seal had something in her mouth, a bit of ship’s gear; a small flat box.
“Heeeeey, “Jason said, “That’s one of the crew, isn’t it?”
The seal swam to Galen’s boat and handed the object over. Galen opened the box and pored through the contents (which Jason couldn’t make out). Minutes passed. Then more minutes with the seal occasionally surfacing with more stuff from the wreck. 
Jason floated in Finrod with Zan and Surf, fidgeting. Wishing he could do something heroic. Something useful. Anything at all but float and feel hungry.
Float float float. The sun rose higher, hotter. Jason bailed over the side to get wet, then thought about the size of the sharks that might be thirty miles offshore. The kind that might find a recent wreck interesting; and a kayak the color the Navy or somebody used to call yum yum yellow. He floundered back into Finrod. He poked Zan, “Now what? Are we just going to float here for days?”


Sharkman and Shadowfox drift through an endless sea the color of ancient jeans. The sun burns white in the hot blue sky.
Water rolls to the ends of the world, but in all that vastness there is none to drink. The bloody pirates took the desalinization unit with them.
They gasp in the midday sun.
“Wait,” Shadowfox says, “I have an idea. But I need your supersuit.”
“My supersuit? Why my supersuit. Why not your supersuit. Why is it always my supersuit?”
“Yours is bigger.”



The seal girl was still diving, bringing up random items from the wreck. Someone passed the crew of Finrod some water bottles, food, and the Sandtiger. Zan found some of Earla’s fudge still safely ziplocked and drybagged in the hold. They floated and waited.
“Can’t somebody,” Jason wondered, “just go ooga booga or something,” he waggled his fingers, “and raise the ship?”
“What,” Zan said, annoyed, “you think this is like a video game or something?”


Sharkman balances amidships, arms spread wide, his supersuit billowing between them, catching the wind. Their small craft leaps over the waves, ploughing its way toward the distant shore.
“Nice shorts.” Shadowfox comments.
Sharkman glowers. The pink daisies were not his idea, but no one, not even Sharkman, argues with Sharkmom.



“There’s enough sail canvas and line floating around here to rig sails on the little boats.” Jason said, “Then we could just sail to shore.”
Zan pointed wordlessly, on one of the lifeboats, a mast had appeared, stays and shrouds had been fastened, and a yard was being run up with a broad wing of white sail. “I think they already thought of that.”
“I don’t think the whole crew’s going to fit in that.”
“They’re going to have to leave people here, to guard the ship, and to misdirect any watchers, or questions.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, there’s more boats.”
“Are they taking us with them? Or at least, making a grocery stop?”
Within twenty minutes, a small crew had manned the sailboat, Finrod and the Sandtiger were tied astern, and Jason and Zan were sailing for shore.



“Lift bags.” Shaughnessy signed. “Really big ones.” This in answer to what gear the ELF needed to take back to the Niamh to salvage her. Underwater, the bags would be filled with air from dive tanks. They would float, even more ferociously than helium balloons on land, and lift whatever they were attached to. The salvagers also needed dive gear, for those of the crew who could scuba dive better than freedive. The Lady Niamh’s lifeboats would provide enough boats to work from, and even Finrod and the Sandtiger would be of use, as well as Ian’s kayak Artemis, and Bran’s, named Sky. Morgan the Merrow, able to breathe both water and air again, would be of great help. Tas, more comfortable on land than out of sight of it, could still dive well enough, and her strength, that of a wiry little mustang, would be of great use. Earla the Dwarf would contribute one of her inventions; produced in twenty minutes from what looked to Jason like a blender, computer parts, and some sort of collision between a lawnmower and a weedwhacker.
“What does that do?” he made the mistake of asking.
She gave him a dark stare and loaded it in the red Jeep with the other gear. Her gifts were thoroughly tied to earth and rock, metal and mineral, and she would have preferred to stay on land, where those things were in abundance. Unfortunately, no one else knew how to work her invention, and she did not trust it to Elves, who tended to channel energy in inconvenient directions; like straight through the Groundhog’s nice new circuits.
They drove to the Town Dock, where the Niamh’s boats waited. Jason, Zan, Cait and Morgan huddled in the back of Tas’s van, trying to keep gear from tipping onto their heads. They had already told each other their parts of the story; how Jason and Zan had gone paddling and fought off the pirates of Wildcat Marsh. How Cait had gone riding on the mustang mare, Wolf, who began acting weird, like a hound on a scent, then teleported under the bridge and turned into Tas, who tried to stop a van crossing the bridge. A van that contained Cait’s sister Bri, and the pirates who had failed to kidnap Jason and Zan. How Cait had helped Tas find where Bri went. How Bri had rescued Morgan’s cap, and leapt off the Roane with it (and been rescued by Morgan). How Cait had rescued Ian, unconscious in the dark night sea because the Roane’s Captain Margo had destroyed his swordbrother Bran’s shapeshifting magic. How Jason and Zan had got the Lady Niamh on the Roane’s trail, only to be blown out of the water by...
“...some kind of magic cannons.” Jason said. “Or at least, magic cannonballs.”
Zan frowned at him, then at the floor of the van.
“You know what they are?” Jason suggested. “I mean, you squash energy around like it was Play-Doh.”
“Maybe.” Maybe I know, maybe I don’t. Maybe I can’t tell you.
“Or at least, where they’re from.”
“Where they’re from can’t be where I think they’re from.” Zan said.
“Where’s that?” Cait said.
“Maybe they’re the same as the Niamh’s?” Morgan suggested.
“Yeah, but...” Zan trailed off. “How could the Roane have stuff like that?”
“It’s Elf-stuff, isn’t it?” Cait said.
“Yeah, but getting it in...” he paused, three sets of eyes staring at him.
“Pointless to keep any more secrets now.” Morgan said.
“Getting it in this world is kind of hard.” Zan finished.
“Gateworld.” Cait said.
“What?” Jason said.
“At our big conference the other day, they said something about gates between the worlds.” Cait said.
“Whoa! Like an alternate universe or something!” Jason said.
“Whatever.” Cait shrugged. “Shaughnessy said water flows between the worlds. And he went somewhere, with most of the Roane’s crew, that he picked out of the sea, where Tas threw them, he went somewhere that wasn’t here. Maybe that’s where the Roane got her ammunition.”
“That means, she can go through the Gates.” Morgan said.
“Or someone came through the Gates to her.” Jason said.
“That narrows it down to a couple zillion or so.” Zan said.
“One other thing.” Cait said. She looked at Morgan. “Margo, the Roane’s captain. She’s met Bran before.” She paused for effect.
Morgan frowned darkly. Jason and Zan leaned closer.
“Two hundred years before.” Cait finished.
“What?” Zan said, “Is she one of us?”
“No. One of us.” Cait thumped Jason. “She’s the daughter of a sea captain privateer, in the war of 1812. He decided the other side would pay him more. They had a ship called the Nightwind. Bran said his ship, the Silver Raven, tangled with Nightwind more than once.”
“So what the heck’s she doing here?” Jason said. 
Zan frowned, as if he might know something.
“What?” Jason demanded.
Zan looked up, “Cursed Aztec gold?”



They had not, in fact, found any lift bags, at least, not really big ones. The ELF’s headquarters back in Pennsylvania, Hawk Circle Farm, had scrounged, and sent what they could, but the budget was as tight as ever, and nobody had expected to have to salvage a two century old ship. There were a few lift bags that Earla had rigged, (the main ingredients seemed to be fishing nets, trash bags, and tarps... and a lot of Dwarven duct tape) but not enough to lift a whole ship
The salvage crew floated at the edge of the tangle of line and sail. The top of the mainmast poked incongruously out of a calm sea. The foretop had broken, leaving most of the foremast below water. The Lady’s crew in the Niamh’s lifeboats, the ELF crew; Ian and Bran in their kayaks, Tas and Earla and Cait in one of the Niamh’s lifeboats, Jason and Zan in their kayaks (with the Official Ship’s Dog, Surf) and Morgan who, having regained his cap, had no wish to be anywhere but in the water.  Earla sat squarely in the middle of her boat, swathed in a very large (and buoyant) PFD, gripping the thwart and muttering something in Dwarvish, sounding a lot like a couple of badgers arguing. 


Fifty feet below the boats, something moved in the forest green water. Something big. It nudged the hull, the mast rocked slightly, a bit of line from the wreck wafted like squid tentacles. A vast shadow vanished, then reappeared. Jason leaned over the side of his Sandtiger, and stared down in amazement. The shadow moved, grew, came into focus.
A fin sliced the sea’s surface, a small dark shape, no bigger than a frisbee. It rose, grew, sliced up out of the sea till it towered six feet over the heads of those in the boats. A rounded swell of water ten feet in front of it shattered under a great blast of breath. The thirty foot bull orca rolled across the ceiling of his world and breathed. He vanished.
One heartbeat, two. A dark shape Eskimo-rolled to the surface and a man sat there in a lean, long canoe. Not a modern canoe; a great, solid seaworthy one, the kind that might have been seen many places on the Pacific Rim five hundred years ago. The man was tall and strong looking, and resembled the people; Maori or Chinese or Kwakiutl or Hawaiian, who had lived on the Great Sea humans called the Pacific. White streaks in his black braid resembled the eyespots of the orca who had just vanished.
“Whooooaaaa!” Jason said, “Cool!”
“What did you see?” Cait shouted at him with her hands. “Shaughnessy!”
He turned and smiled at her, signed back, “A sunken boat.”
“Bran said it’s only a boat if you can put it on a ship.”
Shaughnessy grinned, turned to the Niamh’s captain, signed so Cait could still see, “She’s mostly in one piece, that’s good. Masts intact, except for the foretop, most of the smaller spars will need repair or replacement. Lines and canvas torn, seams need recaulked and repaired. A few holes, broken strakes,  cracked beams. We can repair them in time. Interior’s a mess.” 
Captain Galen’s face, calm as the clear sky overhead showed a hint of relief.
Shaughnessy’s eyes turned to the salvage gear piled in the boats. His smile, meant for a human girl, gone, his face as still as an orca’s now.
“I know that look.” Zan said, “This isn’t good.” 
“I am only the sailor of the ceiling of your world,” Captain Galen signed to Shaughnessy, she used her voice as well, for those who were Sign-impaired, “you are the one who knows the depths of the sea, you and Morgan and the Seafolk in my crew. Where do we begin?”
“We can rig a cradle to hold the Niamh,” he signed back, “Earla’s ‘Groundhog’ can carry the lines under her hull, our divers can weave the lines. But we need more lift than these bags, and the strength of the Seafolk, can offer.” 
“Summon Manannan’s horses.”
Jason, Zan, Morgan and Cait turned toward the new voice; a slender girl from the Elvish crew. 
“Did he say horses?” Cait poked Zan. The Elf-girls’ voice was light and uncertain in Cait’s hearing aids, and she had spoken aloud to Galen, not signed to Shaughnessy.
“Yeeaaaah,” Jason said, “horses. What horses?”
Galen signed the crew-girl’s words to Shaughnessy.
“They do not come when you call,” Shaughnessy signed, “nor do they generally submit to harness.”
“We ride them,” Galen said, with voice and hands, “but only at their mercy.”
Cait poked Zan again, “What is she talking about? What horses?”
“Manannan is one of the Guardians of the Sea,” Morgan said, one hand gesturing out at the gently rolling swells. “Those are his horses.”
“I see water.” Jason said.
“Waves.” Cait said.
“Yes.” Morgan said. “Sometimes they look like waves.”
Zan straightened, remembering the feel of horsehair in his hands... thirty feet underwater. “Whoa, I think I...”
“...saw one.” Cait said suddenly. “When I was looking for Ian. Dark water, tossing waves, I couldn’t see his kayak, and he had fallen out of it anyway. I thought I saw a horse, a dark one, on the water. I thought it was just, you know, imagination.”
“It led you to Ian.” Morgan said.
“Yeah, that’s when I found him.”
"And one has already carried a message to the Ravenkin. A black mare traveled all the way to Hawk Circle to tell Bran to come to Chincoteague to find me." Morgan gestured to Shaughnessy, “They have already helped us. Call them. Anyway, they may come to the aid of a ship named for Manannan’s daughter.” 



Jason was a little disappointed. He’d escaped a summer of drudgery on the home ranch in Delaware... yeah, ranch, as in boots and chaps and sore butts and eight hundred pounds of Good Junk on the dash of the Ranch Truck... escaped when Aunt Gracie invited him to spend the summer on Chincoteague Island, Virginia. Escaped into a summer of shoveling more poop at the Pony Farm, peddling around on the Trike of Doom (a granny sized tricycle), not getting his Sharkman comic done (no internet at Aunt Gracie’s), and being the World’s Biggest Lardiest Member of Geekazoids Anonymous.
Then he’d met Cait, who could probably out-rope and out-ride most of the guys on the ranch (three times her size), and Zan, an Elf-kid who really could be grounded for a hundred years. And Morgan, who spent his time on land in a wheelchair, because it was kind of hard to walk if everything below your butt was a swordfish tail.
Yeah, summer had definitely got interesting. 
But he was a little disappointed. He’d hoped that the raising of the Lady Niamh would involve some big special effects scene, like out of a movie:
“All systems go?”
Sharkman rumbles into his com, “All systems go, Shadowfox.” The antigravity obfusticators hum. The sea trembles, ripples, undulates. The soundtrack swells, surges in a crescendo. Water boils up from the depths. Little fish skip across the surface, fleeing in panic. The lone mast tip wavers, rises. The...


“Hey Jase, Shaughnessy says this should fit you.” Zan leaned from his spot in the boat hands full of black and white neoprene. 
They had climbed aboard Shaughnessy’s big sea canoe, their kayaks tied off at the carved sternpost; Surf sprawled in his usual place on Finrod’s deck, awaiting orders to carry, retrieve or tow. Bags of dive gear; tanks, BCs, regs, weights, masks, fins, computers, dive slates, were stacked in orderly, shipshape piles. Zan had already wriggled into his wetsuit, a collision, nay, a train wreck of eye-blasting green, yellow, purple, blue and black. Shaughnessy sat in the bow, laptop in one broad hand, coordinating dive teams, dive schedules and other details with Captain Galen, floating alongside in one of Niamh’s boats.
Jason reached for Zan’s bundle, shook it out; a shortie wetsuit; short sleeved and short legged, looking like it had never been used. It was black and white, the same pattern as the world’s biggest dolphin.
Jason held it up. Squinted at it. “Heeeey...”
“Fins, Mask,” Zan gestured at a pile of dive gear, “That tank’s yours.” He pointed at a bright green one that had obviously seen a few... thousand...dives. 
“This looks like the stuff Shaughnessy wears.”
Zan looked away, toward the man in the bow.
“It’s patterned like an orca.”
Shaughnessy looked up from his laptop, gave Jason a dolphin smile. Nodded his hand in the “yes” sign to both boys.
“Yeah.” Zan said. “He made it.” 
“Made it?” Jason stared at the wetsuit, ran a hand over it. It gave him the same kind of slightly eerie feeling he got touching the sides of the black boat they were in now. Of the other boats, all black, that Jason had seen Shaughnessy use.
Shaughnessy signed something to them.
Zan translated. “Your people generally find it inconvenient, if I shapeshift stark naked.”
“Oh, yeah, so he makes clothes.” Jason said. “Sure, I knew that.” He thumped the gunnels of the big black boat, gently. 
Shaughnessy looked up again.
“This is part of him too, isn’t it?” 
Shaughnessy gave him long level look, unreadable as the still face of Orca.



There was a shortie and mask and fins for Cait as well. Cowboygirl Cait had played soccer and basketball with older, taller Hearing kids. She knew about horses and cows and ropes. She had pulled Ian, twice her size, out of the cold night sea and into a borrowed boat. She had helped Morgan tow it back to land, paddling Ian’s kayak Artemis while Morgan swam, though she had never paddled before. It hadn’t been as hard as she thought; like riding a good cowpony over rough ground.
Now she stared down into the green water and wondered what use she could be here. 
“Here, put these on.” Tas held out a bundle of gear; blacks and blues and a bright green that could probably been seen for a mile underwater. “And take those off.” She tapped one leaf-shaped ear, half hidden under a mane that was a patchwork of blond and white hair. 
Cait tucked her hearing aids into the drybag Tas proffered. She pulled on the short wetsuit and the mask and fins and snorkel. “Where you get these? They fit perfectly.”
Tas grinned, “Made them. Except for the mask and the snorkel. Got that at the beach shop.”
“Made them? Oh, when you shapeshift from horse to Tas, or from wolf, you have to have clothes, so you make them.” Cait ran a hand over what felt like the neoprene in any other wetsuit. “Is this magic?”
Tas gave her a mysterious look, “Everything’s got magic in it.”



“You’re diving?” Ian said. He floated in the water by one of Niamh’s boats, Artemis tied nearby. His solid, muscular frame, reminiscent of the Malamute dogs he loved so much, was already clad in full dive gear. The question was directed at Bran. “I thought you’d be on the surface, talking to the wind and the waves, with Morgan. Keeping the weather fair until we raise the Lady.”
Bran grimaced, hauling on a stubborn stretch of neoprene, his lean Elvish frame seemed to be at war with the brightly colored wetsuit. He didn’t look at Ian, only into the gently rolling sea. “Can’t.”
“Can’t, what do you mean can’t? You’re Ravenkin.” Grandchild of one of the Elders; Raven; Carrier of Sun and Rain, Sailor of the Wind.
Bran looked up and there was a sword-edge to his voice, “When Margo burned that feather...”
“I know, I felt it.” Ian had been unconscious, drifting far into the nightsea when Cait found him. It had taken her cowboy skills to bring his body back safely, and deeper magic to call the rest of him home. 
“...she destroyed more than one feather of a bird I’d followed for a lifetime. She took my...” and here he said a word Ian only half heard. An ancient word in an Elvish tongue, one that might have translated as chi, or maybe power, or even magic. But none of those all too human words were really adequate to fully describe the concept.
“Not all of it.” Ian said, and his voice sounded more like a question than a statement of irrefutable fact. “That bird is gone. But you could gain a gift from another?”
Bran gave Ian a hard blue gaze,  “How many engines can you lose from the airplane before it ceases to fly?”



Morgan swam over the wreck one last time, running his hands over the carved panels at bow and stern. Sweeping along the graceful curves of the hull, of the deck. Spiraling up the mainmast in a dance meant to tell Niamh that she would soon soar on the waves again. He breathed the cool sea water, something he had not been able to do for far too long. He tasted the scents floating from the drowned ship; wood and cloth and food from the galley and strange things of the land that he couldn’t identify. She had no engines, so there was no fuel fouling the clean taste of the sea; and the silt she’d stirred up in her falling had been washed away by the currents. He soared to the surface, leaping out in a shower of spray, splashing back with exultation. A sharp whistle caught his attention, he turned to see Shaughnessy signaling to him. He swam over to the black canoe and hung on the gunnels. 
“It’s time.” Shaughnessy signed to him.
“Where’s Bran?”
“You are the only one singing the weather songs. He cannot.”
“Me? Alone?”
“Yes.”
Morgan glanced at the horizon, remembering it alight with green lightning, Manannan’s horses fleeing before the storm. The storm had not quite broken; Bri had captured his cap, and leapt off the Roane, and Morgan the Merrow had followed her. The cap was back, hugging his sand-colored hair, and back with it was his ability to breathe under the sea. And to stir that sea into a frenzy or calm it.
Sort of. He was young, and imperfect in his knowledge of the songs. Of the deep sea magic. Now one of the Elders was asking him to keep the sea weather fair long enough to raise a whole ship. How long would that be? How long could he keep the skies fair and the waves gentle, alone. He scanned the busy crew in the boats, the blue sky, the sea rolling quietly, for now, out to the horizon.
“Ok,” he told Shaughnessy. “Sure.”
The jellyfish party in his guts was far less than sure.



Jason stared down into the green sea under the boat, “The water was fifteen feet deep where I dived before.” In the channel off Chincoteague, when Shaughnessy had taught him, only a week ago. “And it looks like he’s going to be busy coordinating this mess.”
“Yeah.” Zan said. “So stay with me, look at your gauges a lot, pay attention to your air. We got about twenty minutes at eighty feet, but your dive computer will...”
“I know, compensate if we work at shallower depths. It’s a wooden wreck, not a steel one, so the compass won’t be thrown off, so we should be able to set a course back to our boats.”
“Yeah. Sea’s calm, no current to worry about. Lots of floatin’ boats around the sunken one. No problem. Even if you can’t find your own anchorline.”
The anchorline from the floatin’ boat, a reference point to hang onto, to make a safe slow ascent. “Ok.” Jason said, feeling a bit less than totally ok.
“Ok.” Zan slid an arm into his own BC, lifted the tank onto his back, “And whatever you do, don’t panic. If you panic, you will die.”
With that, he backrolled off the gunnels into the great big green forever.



Laden with salvage gear, Ian and Bran sank toward the Niamh.
Flew, superheroes above a strange green world. They drifted out of a silver sky and landed, in slow motion, on the Lady’s deck, laying out their gear like a well-coordinated sleddog team, barely signing to each other. 
Ian floated off, deploying a line behind him, tied it off. He turned to see where Bran was.
He was floating above the deck, one of the lift bags in his hand. He was still, perfectly still, as if trying to remember what came next.
Ian frowned, something seemed off. Not quite...
Bran looked up at him, waved him over. 
Ian swam over, fins flicking like a dolphin in a hurry, and they began laying out the lines for the Lady’s cradle. 



The boats ranged around the wreck in a loose circle. Swimmers and divers freed the lines from the ship, the thousands of square feet of canvas, and rewove it all into a sling, a hammock, like the Niamh’s sailors often used, only now the ship herself was bedded in it. Surf swam back and forth, carrying floating bags of gear, lines, towing boats into better positions. Earla hunched in the middle of her boat, thumbs poised over what looked like game controls, staring at a computer screen. Ninty feet down, the Groundhog responded to her commands, and carried lines through the sand under the Niamh’s hull.
  Jason floated on the surface, staring down at a bright yellow line vanishing into green gloom; the black canoe’s anchor line. Above Jason was the great circle of sky, around him, a great silver circle of sea, and below, a great green underworld, unknown.
Kinda creepy.
He yanked on the BC, the inflatable vest that held the tank, and worked it into a position where it wasn’t trying to choke him. He breathed, the way Shaughnessy had showed him; slow, steady, never holding your breath (which could lead to an embolism). Sure, I can do this, no difference between twenty feet and forty. 
Sure.
Zan appeared off Jason’s starboard bow, signed “Ok?”
“Ok.” Jason dumped the air in the BC, breathed out, and sailed down, a skydiver, an eagle,  a superhero. The yellow line snaked away into forest green twilight. There was a silver hail of bubbles from other divers, the faint sound of a diver breathing. A sea bass, scooting away from the activity, a couple of tautog, the faint shadow of a barracuda at the edge of sight. The bright splash of color that was Zan, just an arm’s length away.
Out of the twilight below, a ghost appeared; faint, almost like it wasn’t there. Slowly it materialized, like a special effect in a movie. Then it was there, solid and real thirty feet below, the deck of the Niamh, the way it might look if he’d been high in the rigging.
“Wow,” he said through his regulator.
“This way.” Zan signed.



Cait and Tas hung near the surface for awhile, in masks and fins and snorkels, hauling gear and lines and tying knots with cowboy skill. Cait found she could stay down even longer than Tas, and reaching twenty feet underwater was no harder than reaching the bottom of the pool, or the river. 
Cait surfaced by the boat, Tas reached a hand over the gunnels, “Here cowgirl, climb aboard,” she signed. Tas handed Cait a bottle of water and some cowboy trail food, “Chow down. We got some more work to do here.”
“What’s this?” Cait lifted the end of a coil of rope.
Tas half smiled, “You know something about horse gear, right? How good are you at making harness?”



Bran and Ian drifted along the Lady’s hull, catching the lines the Groundhog brought as it emerged from its burrowing under the keel, carrying those lines up to the divers weaving them into the net that would lift the Lady. 
Ian reached for a line, squinting through the cloud of silt the Groundhog was raising, like a burrowing Dwarf in a mine. He turned, breathed in and floated up with barely a finflick (not wanting to add more to the silt cloud). He came out in clear water, hauling on his line and turned to look for Bran.
He wasn’t there. Not where he should be.
Something was wrong, the six foot moray eel in Ian’s guts said so.
He snorted an exclamation through his regulator and spun in a circle.
Nothing.
He tilted, stared down into the silt cloud, slowly dissipating in the slight current. He flicked his fins skyward and dived. He halted at the edge of the murky cloud, the line the Groundhog had brought him firmly in one hand; a point of reference. Shaughnessy had taught him to swim search patterns, and for humans, who were not blessed with sonar, a rope became a compass when visibility dropped to inside the mask. He swam in a broad arc, at the end of the rope, feeling through the dim water. It faded to clear as he came to the edge of the silt cloud, he shortened his hold and swam a tighter arc, then another. 
Fump, his outstetched hand ran into something not quite solid, not the wooden hull, not a fish or a spar or a rope. A diver drifting. Ian grabbed, shifted his grip till he found the front of the BC and lifted the diver so his mask and Ian’s were nearly touching.
Bran’s eyes were closed, but his regulator was still in his mouth, and he was still breathing.
Ian tapped him once. Nothing. He clamped a hand over the regulator, and lifted his buddy toward the ocean of air above.



Cait saw them emerge; a storm of bubbles followed by two heads, one sandy colored like her own, and one the color of the grey sea. She recognized Ian’s bright green mask, tank and wetsuit trim. And Bran’s shades of blue. 
“Not again!” She said out loud. Now it seemed to be Bran who needed rescue.
Tas looked up from where she was wrestling with some rope, she snorted something in another language, something better left untranslated, Cait thought. She was over the side in an instant, helping to haul Bran to the boat. Cait reached down, helping to heave Bran up.
Hunched in the boat, he flailed at them, “Go’way, ‘m fiiinnne.”
“Yeah, sure you are.” Ian said grimly, hauling him out of his BC and tank. “That’s it for you today.” His hands sailed over Bran’s body, half a foot away, like sonar. 
“Hey,” Bran said, looking pleadingly into Tas’ eyes.
“Yeah,” Ian said, “fine. More or less. As long as you stay up here, where there’s air for you to breathe when you pass out again.”
“You should have never gone down. But then, you’re a guy.” Tas snorted, “So, there’s eels in my gut, silt in my head, I’m running on two working brain cells, no problem. I can tough it out.” A hand flew at his head, like a mare making a point; kicking the herd stallion without quite touching him. “Birdbrain!”
“What happened?” Cait said.
Ian stared at Bran for a minute, something wordless passed between them. Ian looked up at Cait, “Your sister was there when Margo burned his feather.”
“She told me.” Cait said. About the inhuman scream that had shattered the Roane’s glass. About Bran huddled motionless in a corner of the tiny cabin, until Bri sang her ‘dolfin songs’. “I was there too, hauling you out of the water. So I know how bad it was. I thought he was ok now.”
“Mostly. But it’s like...” Ian paused, like he was trying to figure out how to explain it to a kid.
“Just tell me.” Cait said. “Like I wasn’t just a kid or something.”
Ian looked down into the water. “You know what that ship looks like?”
“Yeah. We went to a big tall ship festival once.” 
Ian knew that perfectly well, it was where Bri had found the Roane. He spoke, “It’s a forest of masts and yards and booms and other spars, all held together with a spiderweb of lines. How many of those lines can you break before the ship won’t fly?”
“Not too many. For our history class Dad told us how they fought the old sea battles; a lot of times you’d try to break the other guy’s masts and rigging. Then his ship was dead, whether you sank it or not.”
“Yeah,” Ian said, “You can’t break many lines, and you have to replace them. Well, he’s got more than a couple broken, and it’ll be a long time before we can replace them. If we can.”



Jason and Zan worked just over the ship’s deck, tying knots and hauling lines. Morgan flew around the ship, landing where he was needed, and occasionally racing to the surface for a breath of fresh air when the divers stirred up more silt than he could breathe. Shaughnessy, in human dive gear now, so he had the use of his hands, heaved on lines, tied knots with a surety that spoke of time spent with people who knew the ways of wind and sail and sea. Jason and Zan used their air and their bottom time and returned to their own boats, hauling lines and tying knots on the surface. Ian went back down, pairing up with Shaughnessy, then with some of the Niamh’s crew.
Finally the hammock was woven, the lift bags were attached, other lines reached out from the ship like the tentacles of an anemone; their ends tied off on the Lady’s boats. Shaughnessy returned to his original form; the one at home in a world with no fire or air or gravity. The one for whom hands were an alien concept, and there was no need to surface after twenty minutes to prevent decompression sickness. He swam around the ship, the clicks and buzzes of whale echolocation resonating through the last divers. 
Tell them it is time he told Morgan.
Morgan signaled to the divers still down and they began filling the lift bags. The Lady groaned in her deep sea bed, shifted like a dreamer in a nightmare.
Divers backed off. The lift bags hung limp, half full.
The whale nudged the ship, three times his length. She shifted, settled. Again.
The bags filled, the Lady heaved, but did not quite rise.
Now Morgan, we call the horses.



The sun was riding down the western sky, flaming it into campfire colors, still, the Lady Niamh sat on the bottom, like a stubborn pony refusing to move. Cait rode in one of the Niamh’s boats, her hands sore from tying knots all day. It was a good sore, the sore of a job well done. The coil of rope was gone, transformed with knife and knot into an array of horse harnesses. The harnesses were simple; a sort of collar of thick-braided rope and traces. They had been passed to the other boats, and those in them who knew something about horses. Two remained in the boat with Cait and Tas.
A call echoed through the sea. Cait, her hearing aids back in place, felt it more than heard it. A rumble-hum, far below the threshold of hearing. The sea, calm all day, because Morgan had sung to it, began to toss like a restless horse. The boat beneath Cait rocked, rolled, pitched like a pony with too many flies. The sky stayed clear, the wind was soft, but the waves rose higher, peaked and broke like horses’ manes.
They were horses’ manes.
All around they reared out of the sea, manes flinging foam. The forms of breaking waves became horses’ heads and necks and shoulders. They leapt up, manes and tails trailing waterfalls of spray. They galloped across the grey-green plain of the sea, feet splashing up foam trails in the flattening sea. They tossed their sea foam manes of white and grey and nightsea black and came to stand in a circle around the sunken ship. They did not stand like hardworking cowponies; heads low and quiet, tails swishing at an occasional fly. The horses of Manannan stood with shifting feet, bodies tensed to flee, heads high, ears radared in on the circle of boats and the people in them.
“They look like they’re watching for four-fanged horse eaters.” Cait signed to Tas. “You sure this is a good idea?”
“Not at all.” Tas said. 



“Whoa!” Jason said, eyes wide with amazement. He backpaddled as one of the horses surged up beside the Sandtiger, rocking it hard and sending a wall of spray into his face.
Zan reached into the bow seat of Finrod, “Move, Surf,” and hauled a coil of rope out from under the Newf’s hairy bulk. Zan heaved half the coil of rope into Jason’s sprayskirted lap. 
“And we’re going to do what with this?” Jason said, his voice less heroic than he would have liked.
“Rope some wild horses.”



The sea colored horses of Manannan shifted and seethed, some flowing back into waves for a moment, then back into horse form, some rearing and breaking like surf. 
Tas and Shaughnessy and Morgan, rocked in their boats, or in Morgan’s case, in the sea, hands out, singing to the horses. One of the Niamh’s crew stood in her boat, joining the song. Cait glanced at the compass Tas had given her; she and Tas were due west. Shaughnessy was across the circle, due east. Morgan to the north, and the red-haired crewwoman from Niamh to the south. Four directions, like the way Native American people did things at the powwows Dad took the family to. And a big circle, kind of like the powwow’s dance circle. The horses were already dancing, it seemed.
The trick would be to catch them, and get them to dance in the right direction.



“Rope? I don’t rope! I’m lousy with rope!” Jason said, “And I like nice quiet cowponies. Well trained, quiet...”
Zan paddled off, his stroke low, and quiet, but strong, the distance between Finrod and Sandtiger was widening.
Jason dug in with his own paddle, and the Sandtiger shot forward toward the ring of horses from the sea.
The nearest ones, greys tinged with green and the warm colors of the setting sun, snorted and spooked sideways, spraying wave foam. 
“Oh yeah, this is gonna work real well. Where’s Shaughnessy, can’t he talk to them or something?”
“There, on the other side of the circle. And Tas, and Morgan too.” Zan gestured. “And a girl from the ship. They’re already doing all the talking they can.”
“Oh, good. Then it’ll be fine.”
Thirty feet away, a big dark grey horse reared, plunged sideways and fell as a breaking wave, roaring in Jason’s direction. He hauled hard on the paddle and drove the Sandtiger’s nose toward the oncoming wave. She plunged up over it, soared down the back side, sinking her nose in the wave trough. She and Jason came up sputtering. “What was that!” He yelled at Zan.
“Nothing, just a little discussion with one of the other stallions.”
“Oh yeah, this is gonna be fun.”



The song ended. The girl from Niamh held out her hands and the horse nearest her stalked up to the gunnels of the little sailboat, splashing the sea’s surface as if it was a puddle. The redhaired girl laid a hand on the white mare’s head and she bowed it slightly. Someone passed the rope harness to the girl and she held it up. To Cait, it looked a little like the mustang trainer at the wild horse center cautiously sliding a saddle blanket on a wild horse for the first time. Only he had a corral, and the mustang was tied with a rope already. Here there was nothing but the open sea, and the only rope would be attached to the Lady Niamh.



Morgan knew the horses of the sea, he had raced them before. Sometimes they even let him win. 
Morgan had never ridden them, or roped or harnessed or held them; Merrows had no reason to ride them, the way Landfolk rode ordinary equines. They had always swum beside them, among them.  
Now Morgan had to ask something difficult of them.
He swam to the dark grey mare. Her legs were ‘feathered’ in long hair, like some land horses; hers flowed into the sea, small whitecaps breaking as she moved. She lowered her head to sniff at his red cap, peeled back a lip to nibble at his sandy hair. He lifted a hand to her silky neck. “Lady,” he told her, “we need your help.”



Zan had spent a lot of time talking to land horses, that was easy, ridiculously easy, they were one of his favorite animals. This was different; fire and light were his elements, not water, and these creatures were the essence of the power of the sea. Softly he spoke to them of the Lady, lying on the bottom, how their strength was needed to lift her back to the world of light and air.
A dark stallion, coat glittering with the faint green flashes of bioluminescence, snorted, threw his head and plunged away when Zan proffered the harness.
“Oh that’s encouraging.” Jason said, from a few yards away.
“Mrrrf.” Surf agreed.



Tas knew horses better than humans. She had spent thirty years following a mustang mare, a spotted mare with a wolf’s head marking on her chest. She wore an ‘elf-braid’ from that mare’s mane in her own. She wore her shape when she chose. 
These horses were different. They were the raw power of the waves, the spirit of the sea, made visible. Would they speak to her the way land horses did?



Cait had ridden roping horses and cutting horses and barrel racing horses, quick horses that could turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. Horses that could read the shift of a rider’s weight, the lift of a rein, or the twitch of a cow’s ear. Cait had learned to read their body language as easily as she read Sign language, or the body language of someone speaking English. 
She studied the small band of mares, staring at her as she rocked in the bow of the Lady’s boat. Their ears were radared in on her, interested, not afraid, curious. 
“I wonder what you eat?” Cait said aloud. “Wonder if you’d like alfalfa treats? Or maybe it’d have to be shrimp?” She dug in the pocket of her PFD, there was still a granola bar there, in its ziplock bag. She pulled it out, unwrapped it and held it out to the nearest mare.



Morgan’s mare lowered her head and allowed him to slip on the harness. He sang to her; seasongs, songs of calm blue skies and clear nights and gently rolling water. Of the Lady, soaring on the wind and waves. The mare ducked her head, nosing his cap, and followed him as he handed off the traces to one in the boats. The crewman in the boat tied the traces off to the line that led to the Niamh.



Cait’s band of mares was all the colors of the sea; greys and white and one dark as the sea at midnight. Dark as the sea in the deep abyss, where light never came, where sperm whales dived to fight giant squid, where fish with glowing lures waited for unwary prey. Where a visitor must peer out of a tiny porthole in a can-sized submarine to catch a glimpse of things ghosting out of the dark. The circle of mares raised their heads, nostrils flaring, sniffing this stranger from the land to the west. Silver as morning mist, grey as storm wave, white as wave crashing on beach; they stared, ears and eyes reading Cait, but none stepped forward. 
“I wish I could sing, like Morgan.” Even like Bri. She thought about that, maybe she could; with her hands. She raised them and sang a Sign song, one her dad had adapted from one of her own favorite country singers.
Then the nightsea mare took a step; one foot splashing down on the surface as if it was only a wet meadow. One foot, then another, she stepped forward and stuck her nose into Cait’s hand, blew out a breath that smelled of salt air and seawind and distant places. She nuzzled Cait’s hand with a velvet nose, took the proffered granola bar.
Behind Cait, Tas’s eyes went wide with wonder, but she remained silent.



The dark stallion with the green flashes of comb jellies in his coat danced away from the circle, tossing his head, then snaking it low, as if to drive his mares back to sea. One of them, a strong looking, pale grey mare met his snaking head with bared teeth, reminding him of his place in the herd. She was lead mare, and she would decide where the band went today.
Today, they would raise a ship.
Zan slid his boat up to the grey mare, she stood still as stone, waiting. Zan stood, held out the harness; I heard your screams, I know dark magic was used, I heard the Lady’s dying groans. I know who she really is. We will raise her. We will stop the dark magic. Will you help?
The mare turned her head, gave him a shove with her nose.
He grinned and slid the harness over her head.



Jason floated, full of uncertainty. He saw the others find a horse, slide the simple circle of rope over their heads. He was sitting at water level in a kayak, the horses’ heads towering over him even higher than they ever did on land.
And it was scary enough on land.
Maybe he didn’t need to rope one. He glanced around at the others, a circle of horses stood already, their rope traces sweeping curves, like Lady Niamh’s running rigging had been. Sweeping curves leading back and down to the sunken ship. 
One more horse, ahhh, who needs one more horse? They got enough.
A shout, half a dozen waves away, Zan yelling, “Jason, got one yet?”
Cait, across the circle, making the last adjustments to the harness on a black mare.
And beyond her, Bran and Ian and Shaughnessy and Tas, the Captain and crew, all nearly ready.
Only Jason hadn’t roped a wild horse of the sea. Jason, who couldn’t rope a haybale.
From across the circle, Shaughnessy looked up, his sea-grey eyes met Jason’s. Jason thought of the wetsuit he was wearing, made of the same stuff as Shaughnessy’s boat and gear.
Magic stuff. Sea stuff.
Jason eyed the seething waves, the horses still loose, the ones harnessed, shifting their feet, manes and tails flowing into the sea, or out of it. None of the loose ones looked very catchable. “There’s gotta be one of you guys who’d help me out here.”
She bobbed up beside him so fast, Sandtiger nearly went over; her deep golden coat, splashed with white on legs and round belly, made her look more like one of the island ponies than one of the horses of the sea. She was built like the Chincoteague ponies too; smaller, sturdier, with a mass of black and white mane. She eyed Jason, then stood facing him, as still as Tank, the best cowpony on the ranch (the only one who hadn’t ditched him). She watched him, ears forward, legs planted square, like a halter horse in a show. Only the halter horse wouldn’t have had water flowing from her mane and tail into the sea.
Jason slid the collar up to her nose. She remained motionless.
“This is cool, right? You’re going to help bring the Lady back, right?”
She gave him a shove with her white nose.
“OK, ok, I’m hurrying!”



One by one the lines from the Lady were tied onto the traces trailing from the horses’ harness. Harness made from the broken lines of the Lady Niamh herself. Those who had harnessed the horses; Elves from the crew, Tas and Cait and Zan and Jason, Morgan, Bran and Ian; floated by their heads, waiting for the signal from Shaughnessy and Captain Galen.
The black fin sliced the water, the whale rose, breathed, sent out a call even the people on the boats could hear.
Jason and Zan could feel it through the plastic hulls of the kayaks.
Cait could feel it through the light wooden hull of the Niamh’s boat. “The song of the sea,” she whispered to no one.
The nightsea mare nodded as if she understood, ducked her head and threw herself into the traces.



In her deepsea bed, the Lady groaned, shifted, a dreamer awakening. The wave horses who had sunk her in their fear, in their own agony, now drew her up. Inch by inch, foot by foot, fathom by fathom she rose. Rose unsteadily as a dancer too long in a sickbed. Rose like a fledgling learning to fly. The masts tipped, wavered. The horses heaved, first north-northwest, then east-southeast. The masts straightened, rose like trees growing from sapling to forest giant. Then came the bow and the deck. Still the horses heaved, harder now, for the lift bags were no longer of much use, and the Lady was full of water, lurching unsteadily just below the surface.
One more great effort, the horses leaped, surged into great waves pouring outward in a circle from the ship. Niamh rose, water pouring from her decks, from her holds. She rocked, tipped, her masts swinging like a compass needle.
The needle zeroed in on the sky’s zenith and steadied. 
The sea went still, silent. The ring of horses halted, as if by an unheard signal. They looked back once at the ship. A ringing neigh went out, and the horses of Manannan melted from their harnesses. Poured through the rope collars, broke into waves and vanished, as if they had never been.


Grounded



“Looks like the horses drew most of the water out of her.” The dark seal-girl, Foka, leapt down lightly into the Lady’s boat, delivering her report to all within hearing range.
Cait frowned, she was too far away for her hearing aids to pick up the words, and Foka hadn’t signed. Beside her, Tas stood and signaled to Shaughnessy. Cait saw her translate the words to him, and saw that Tas stood so Cait could see them too.
The sun was sailing out over the continent, headed for California. The stars had drifted up out of the east on the wind and were glittering over dark, rolling sea. The Lady rocked a bit unsteadily in the slow swells, but she was afloat. Crew scrambled from the lifeboats back on board, plugging holes and manning the bilge pumps to remove the last bit of the sea from the Lady’s hold.
Cait, Jason, and Zan floated in the boats, eating the weirdest picnic ever; healthy looking stuff Ian had brought along from the Wren’s Nest, ship’s stores salvaged from ninety feet below, marshmallows toasted over a small camp stove, a cheerful yellow glow on a boat thwart, in the middle of a seascape of night blues and steel greys. The moon, shaped like the Niamh’s sleek hull, was sailing down in the west, following the sun to Texas, Hawaii and the waters of the Pacific that Shaughnessy knew so well.
Under the starlight, the lines that had held Mannanan’s Horses were reconfigured. 
“What are they doing?” Cait wondered.
“And how are we going to get the ship back... tow it with kayaks?” Jason said.
“We got a thirty foot whale.” Zan suggested. He frowned, it was a bit much, even for Shaughnessy. “Looks like one or two of the Niamh’s sails are ok. But I think you’re right, we’re gonna tow it.”
“Oh goodie.” Jason yawned.
“The horses are gone.” Cait said wistfully. She wanted to see them again, see them rise up out of the sea, manes blowing spray. She wanted to ride one across the rolling waves, leaping like a dolphin.
“Maybe Shaughnessy could go to Chincoteague and rent a tugboat. Or a fishing boat, or something.” Jason said.
Zan didn’t answer, he seemed to be humming something to himself.
“What are you doing?”
Zan didn’t answer. He was too busy singing his earlier sea-song, the one that had called to a grey mare. She was gone with the others, he was sure. But it wouldn’t hurt to try.  



The night sea rolled on under the boats, Morgan sang to it, to Manannan, to his daughter, to their other names that he knew, to keep the sea calm a little longer, to let Niamh limp back to safe harbor. He could hear Shaughnessy and the others talking about how to get her back. They could use ship’s boats and even kayaks and one lone whale, but it would be slow. It might take longer than this stretch of calm sea and friendly tide and good wind.
Then he heard a whoop from Zan. 
A grey mare, the color of moonlight, was trotting across the waves toward them. The same mare, it seemed, who had come to Zan’s call when raising the Niamh. 


“Where’s the rest?” Zan asked, handing the rest of his picnic over to the mare. She snorted as if that was a ridiculous question. You need more than one? She ate the last marshmallow, toasted dark, the way Zan liked them, then trotted off.
“Heeeey, that’s not fair...” Zan began to say.
The mare melted, blew away like a breaking wave in wind. The blowing spray leapt higher against the starry sky. It wafted, congealed, condensed into a sixty foot tall mast, raked hard aft, and a long boom extending past her square stern.
A sailboat floated there, bobbing on the sea swells, her pale, fifty foot hull hugging the water, her bowsprit pointing toward Chincoteague like a unicorn’s horn.
“A skipjack?” Cait said. 
“Skippy-what?” Zan said.
Cait sign-spelled it, “They were oyster dredge boats on the Bay.” She looked almost sad, “When we were in Norfolk, someone told us there’s hardly any left now.”
“Dredge.” Zan said, “So that means they’re designed to pull something.” 
 

They drifted past the south end of Chincoteague, faint grey ghosts in the night. Only the night birds saw them. The lights of the cars passing on the causeway didn’t stop or waver in their single-minded quests to just get where they were going. Most boats were either sleeping at the docks, or gone to sea; the very few making their way up or down channel could be misdirected into seeing only passing fishing boats in the dark. Up the channel went the strange procession of one skipjack with its crew of three, one ghost grey ship, and one thirty-two foot orca pushing from behind.
As they reached the road that ran from the Mainland to Chincoteague, the procession halted. The low arc of the drawbridge loomed before them. Somebody would have to open it for the Niamh’s  hundred foot masts, and for the skipjack’s fifty foot one. While the crew in the boats maintained the illusion of a couple of fishing boats (the skipjack needed no illusion), others signaled for the draw to open. The bridge turned like a compass needle, leaving the channel and the sky above it open for the passage of the strange fleet. Slowly it cranked shut again, with no idea what the sun would find in Wildcat Marsh in the morning.

 

In the shallows off Wildcat Marsh, Shaughnessy stopped and whistled something to Morgan, and to the skipjack horse.. 
“We can careen here.” Morgan told Captain Galen. “The bottom is good, and we’ll be able to float out again on the high tides of the full moon.”
Orders were called out in soft, song-filled voices. Crew moved about the Lady’s deck, making preparations. The raw muscle to careen, Tas and Shaughnessy, prepared their lines. In the boat occupied by Jason, Zan and Cait, Rhea stood, listening to a called order from the ship. She turned to Jason and the others, “Come, you can help me bury the dead man.”
Jason, half asleep, sat up hard, “The what?” 
“Huh?” Zan said, looking like he might, at last, be a little seasick.
Cait snorted, grinned a slightly superior grin. 
Rhea caught the grin and returned it with a wink.
“My dad told us about this in our history class.” Cait said.
The dead man was a large log, buried in the sand, to hold one of the lines that would moor the ship. The ship would be heeled over, first one way, then the other, her hull rolled out of the water so she could be repaired. It was the old way, the way the Lady was used to.
Anyway, nothing in Chincoteague would be able to lift her out of the water and drydock her to effect repairs the modern way. Cait, Jason and Zan manned shovels and dug first one hole, then another. Surf plunged in beside them, digging furiously, flinging sand on all three of them. The stars wheeled across the sky, night birds wheeled across the bay. Cait looked up at them. “Wish Dad would let us stay up this late for something other than living history lesson.”
Jason yawned, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been really dry. Yesterday? The day before? He ached all the way through and he was pretty sure he was about the color of a well-cooked crab.
Zan groaned and flumped down with something less than Elvish grace, bare feet dangling over the edge of their hole at the edge of the marsh. “Are we there yet?”
“No!” Cait and Jason said together.



Sharkman heaves another mighty shovelfull of sand. 
Shadowfox collapses in a heap at the edge of the formidable pit, his shovel falls limply at his side. “Tell me again why you forgot the Supermolinator?” 
“I didn’t forget it. If we brought the Supersecret Supermolinator into this low-tech world, there’d be super repercussions.”
“Yes; piracy, black markets, evil corporations taking over the world, destroying the gentle farmers and fishermen and cowboys and their bucolic lifestyle.” Fishercat assures him.
Shadowfox glares at the hole, still too shallow for their needs, “Then, let’s go get some bucolic cowboys and fishermen to dig this hole!”


Ed Williams came up the channel at dawn, his jon-boat thumping merrily over the light chop in Chincoteague Bay, coolers and fishing gear rattling in the bottom of the boat, his niece and nephew (on vacation from Annapolis) yawning and swaying on landlubber legs, pointing at pelicans and terns and skimmers unzipping the bay for breakfast. Their chatter suddenly stopped and they stared north, then exploded into excited babble.
An entire pirate ship lay marooned, heeled hard over on its side, just off Wildcat Marsh.
By ten o’clock, every small boat (and a few larger ones) in Chincoteague (and a few from the mainland side of the bay) without a better mission had come up to Wildcat Marsh for a look-see. Yep, there it was, just like out of Treasure Island, or one of those movies, careened with its masts pointed seaward like trees half blown over in a storm. (Of the Chesapeake Bay skipjack there was no sign, the lead mare had gone back to her herd.) The crew was crawling over the big ship like seagulls on a fishing boat with a fresh catch. A few of them stopped work and explained how they’d been caught in a squall (out at sea aways, it hadn’t broken on the island), got some damage and had to limp in here to Chincoteague Bay to fix things. Hope you don’t mind. Nope, nope, it’s fine. Fine looking ship, one o’them historical societies? Oh, yes, Earth Life Foundation, you’ve heard of us? Well, no. Well, look us up on the web, lots of information on the site; (your contributions are tax-deductible). 
Rhea and a few others fielded questions, deflected potential official problems, and shanghaied a few volunteers.



As the weeks progressed toward the fourth of July, the ranks of the volunteers swelled. 
And no one in the ELF could find where the Roane had gone.
Carpenters, weekend sailors and handymen offered their services. A troop of sea scouts came down from Cambridge to help. A handful of folks who’d helped build a historical ship up in Chestertown showed up. Some folks who had an even older era ship (a Viking longship in Oakley) came to wield hammer and nail and drill and drawknife. Cait’s father came when he wasn’t working on his college program, Cait (sometimes with Aaron and Bri in tow) came every day with Zan. Morgan slept, ate and breathed The Lady, often finding his lunch in the rich waters of Chincoteague Bay, sleeping in the shallows under the shadow of the Lady’s hull, trying to learn the weird art of wielding human tools. When mundane volunteers were around, he wove his disguise of a deeply tanned, blond surferdude.
A few of the local girls seemed to take notice.
Earla grumped about the sog and the mosquitoes, but offered a frightening array of highly efficient tools, and her skill with them. Tas, Ian, and Shaughnessy heave-hoed where more muscle was needed. Carlos, the Roane sailor who’d returned with Shaughnessy, set out on a new mission; the ELF provided him with land gear and supplies, and he set out to see if he could find any traces of the Roane.
The fourth of July fireworks lit up the carnival grounds where Pony Penning and the Firemen’s Carnival would be held at the end of the month. A few locals and tourists lit up other parts of the island with their own fireworks. Zan staged an impromptu display in Wildcat Marsh as the crew finished the Lady’s new topmasts.
One repair down, a hundred and forty-seven to go.
After two days of Jason forgetting to show up at the Pony Farm, his former employer gave his job to a thirteen year old girl suffering from acute horse fever. Jason’s Aunt Gracie didn't mind, he seemed to be getting a better education working with the ELF. And the ELF had plenty for Jason, and Zan and Cait to do besides repairing the Lady, there were more martial arts lessons, hikes through the Assateague wilderness, snorkeling, diving and kayaking in the waters around the islands.
And plenty of good healthy food cooked up by Ian and Earla.
Jason was beginning to feel a bit less walruslike.
More like...yeah. Sharkman.
Aunt Gracie wrote to Jason’s parents that he had met a pair of home school teachers and become involved with an environmental group, “he’s getting a wonderful education this summer”.
Little did they know.



Jason perched on the gunnels of the Lady, trying to figure out how to operate a nineteenth century drill. “Wow,” he observed, “we’ll get her back in the water in no time. Then we can chase down the Roane for good.”
Bran looked up from his work; shaping a spar with a drawknife. “You mean the human version of no time.” Something about his expression suggested otherwise.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Jason frowned uncertainly. The Niamh didn’t exactly look like a shipwreck, not the ones from the movies and books on pirates Jason knew, anyway. But she didn’t look like she ought to either. To Jason she looked like a beached whale. In the sea she had been a keen and deadly beauty, all the colors of sky and sea; now she looked beat and broken and grey.
Something about Bran looked the same way: grounded as thoroughly as the Niamh. He looked older, greyer, even though somehow his hair had gone darker; streaked with pale threads. His usual cockeyed grin was gone, replaced by a grimmer, darker look. Like the kind of raven you’d find lurking on a tombstone in an Edgar Allan Poe poem.
Neither Bran nor the Lady looked like they were going to fly anytime soon.
Bran fixed Jason with a somber blue gaze, “there’s more to fix than meets the eye. Even with all this help, we are definitely running on Elvish time. And there’s the usual problem with boats.”
“What’s that?”
A glint of his old swashbuckler smile returned, “It’s a big hole in the water into which you pour endless amounts of money.”
“Oh.” Jason frowned, “Can’t the ELF just ship you some cash?”
“No.” The grin was gone again, “There are forests to save, legislators to move, laws to pass and reject, reefs to protect, rivers to restore, thylacines to find. There isn’t a lot of cash left to salvage the Niamh, or go chasing after ghosts named Roane. People have been helpful, but we need to buy certain kinds of wood, of line, of canvas. And only the wood grows on trees. And some of those trees are pretty far from here.”
“Oh.” Jason said. 



“Sharkman, you’re definitely over budget on this expedition.” The Secretary of Supplies for Superheroes Inc. sniffs and adjusts his spectacles.
“But, but...”
“But nothing, we’re putting you on a monetary diet. Nothing but pennies.”
“But, but all I have for this mission so far is my cape.”
“Sharkman doesn’t wear a cape.” Manta whispers in his ear.
“Shhh, he doesn’t know that.” Mola rumbles.
Fishercat trades glances with Shadowfox, “Does this mean we have to get real jobs?”
Shadowfox shakes his head. “Bruce Wayne doesn’t have a real job. Neither do the X-Men or Don Diego Vega.”
“Who?” Fishercat asks.
“Shhh.” Shadowfox makes a ‘keep it secret’ face. Then he inscribes the air with three swift strokes of an invisible sword, “shh, shh, shh,” making a Z.
“Ohhhh.” Fishercat says. “Wait, Spiderman has a job. So does Superman. They work for newspapers.”
“They probably don’t sleep much.” Sharkman fumes, yawning. 



A few days later, Jason, Cait and Zan were sitting by a campfire blowing in the wind from the sea as a park naturalist told the tale of the ten ironbound chests hidden somewhere on the island. Cait had heard it before, with her brother and sister, and had forgotten. Jason and Zan had never heard it at all. 
Ten chests of pirate treasure. Ten chests never found.
The naturalist was saying; “Charles Wilson was a South Carolina sea captain who ventured into piracy in the 1730s. He was eventually caught, tried by the Admiralty Court, and hanged in London, in 1750. Almost two centuries later, in 1948, a letter was found in an old trunk in Germany. The Naval Records Office in London confirmed its authenticity. In part, it read; There are three creeks, a hundred paces or more north of the second inlet above Chincoteague. At the head of the third creek to the north is a bluff facing the ocean with cedar trees growing on it about 1 1/3 yards apart. Between the trees are buried ten ironbound chests...” 
Zan saw Jason’s face shift into aha! mode, and he knew without looking past the surface of Jason’s wide-eyed expression what he was thinking.
Zan was thinking it too. He glanced at Cait. 
Her eyes narrowed as if she was working on a problem...
...like how they could find those ten ironbound chests. Plenty to fix her, to put her back at sea and on the heels of the Roane, to catch the ones who’d stolen Morgan’s cap, kidnapped Bri, nearly killed Ian, sunk the Niamh and destroyed Bran’s magic.
Zan glanced at Cait and Jason, a silent nod of agreement went round their small circle.
And plenty of gold left over for the Sharkteam.


“How do you find something that nobody else’s been able to find for three hundred years?” Cait asked.
“Magic. We got a shipload of Elves, somebody’s gotta have a Find Treasure spell up their sleeve.” Jason said, looking hopefully at Zan.
Cait snorted, “That’s just in fairy tales. Or those silly games you guys play.”
“They’re not silly.” Jason said. “They’re intellectually stimulating exercise for the imagination.”
“Too bad they’re not more exercise for the rest of you.” Cait observed.
Jason glowered, unable to think of a sharp comeback. Once more, Sharkman is sucked into the Geekazoid Zone by Wonder Lass and her verbal Lasso of Doom.
“Actually,” Zan said, “There is a Find Treasure spell.”
“Hah!” Jason said, “I knew it!” He made a Victory Face at Cait.
“Sort of.” Zan said, “but it’s not something Elves can do, we just talk to trees and stuff.”
Jason’s Victory Face faded.
“Who, then?” Cait said.
“Earla. If it’s got anything to do with rocks or minerals or gold or buried stuff, it’s a Dwarf thing.”



Earla heard their request, blurted out by three people at once. She crossed her formidable arms and studied them the way parents do before announcing that you’re grounded for a month. She uncrossed them long enough to Sign emphatically along with her words; delivered with the finality of a battleax stroke. “You know that treasure hunting on the island is illegal.”
“What?” Zan said.
“What?” Cait said, certain her hearing aids had got salt water in them again. But she’d seen the signs too, it looked all too much like Dad making a proclamation. Usually one that involved study, toil and drudgery. 
“No way.” Jason said. 
“Way.” Earla said.
“Nobody has to know.” Zan suggested.
“I would know.” Earla said. Her arms crossed again, a fortress gate against breaking the rules.
“Human laws.” Jason suggested, “probably doesn’t apply to Dwarves.”
Earla glared down at him. She was a head shorter, and she was actually looking up, but to Jason, it felt like down.
Defeated, Sharkman slumped into a Wren’s Nest chair.
Cait and Zan exchanged glances. Zan shook his head minutely. Once Earla had made up her mind, you had as much chance of going around her as you had of paddling past an annoyed hippo in a very small stream.
She glared up-down at them all, “Don’t they have a job or three for you on the Niamh?”
“Not today. They’re waiting for some kind of supplies from the mainland.” Cait said.
“Hmmmph.” Her severe expression lightened a little, “It’s the weekend. You need to get out of the swamp for awhile. Go somewhere drier.” She rummaged in the refrigerator and thrust a package at Cait. It smelled like a whole kitchen full of grandmothers making cookies. “The lighthouse is open. You can see the world from up there.”  



It was an alien object in this horizontal landscape of sand; a tall tower made of brick carried from the other side of the great Bay. The lighthouse stood on the highest point of the shifting sandbar that was Assateague; a hill twenty-two feet above sea level. The red and white striped tower rose another one hundred and forty-two feet above that, sending out its double flash signal every five seconds, all night, every night; blink-blink, blink-blink, a marker to passing ships, a warning of the shifting shoals of sand that marked this coast. On some days, you could climb the tower; winding up the spiral iron stair, like the inside of a whelk shell, to the hot glass room that housed the double rotating lights. If you made it to the top, you got a sticker that said so, as well as a lot of useful information that you’d probably forget by next week. 
Cait realized it was the highest point on either island, like looking down from a mountain top onto a living map. She wanted pictures, and from the walkway or the glass light room, you could take a whole panorama of the islands. You could see the puzzle shapes of the bayberry bush and salt meadow hay and loblolly woods. You could see where the herds of ponies were grazing, the cars going over the bridge from Chincoteague to Assateague, the boats on the shallow bay. With binoculars, or a zoom lens, you could see all the way to the sea.
Morgan was just plain curious about this human contraption; familiar contraption, but only from the outside, and from a great distance. He had seen its blurrily blinking light from the sea. He’d peered through his glasses and clearly seen the light flash across the marsh grass and trees as he rode across the islands. Several people had explained electricity and rotating lights and spiral stairs and iron reinforcement, and that the stone for the foundation and the bricks for the tower had come from elsewhere, but he wanted to see it, touch it, feel it for himself. 
For Jason the tower echoed of other, older towers; towers with princesses locked in their tops, towers from which dragons sailed. Towers from which superheroes flew or leaped on slender threads. He thought of the view he’d had from the rigging of the Niamh, or what he’d seen floating far above her when she lay on the bottom of the sea. 
Then he thought of Bran, and how he felt now that he couldn’t fly on his own wings.
Zan stared up at the candy striped tower; it was there again; an odd tingle he’d felt before when he saw it from a distance, when he passed the trail up to the light on his way to the beach. None of his people had suggested that there was anything special about the light or its location. And his own skills and senses could be erratic. But there it was, every time he looked at the light; a feeling, like an old, faded scent, an echo of something humans would have called magic. 
Morgan, on new fat oversand tires made by Earla, made it up the sandy trail through the woods to the  entrance; a small shed built onto the front of the lighthouse. Beside it another shed once had held oil for the old Fresnell lamp, now it held art shows on weekends. The entrance room was smaller than the ones in the Wren’s Nest, tidy displays about the history and construction of the lighthouse lined the walls, a small room to starboard held a tiny gift shop. Fans blew the hot July air across the line of people coming down from the top, and waiting to go up. Morgan remained, stuck in the lobby, trying to make sense of the construction diagram.
The brick red spiral stairs were not exactly wheelchair accessible. 
Jason, Zan and Cait headed up the stairs, Zan leaping up two at a time, Cait trotting behind.
Sharkman lumbered abaft, wishing he had anti-gravity thrusters, but plugging ahead anyway. Jason had got to the third landing when he realized he wasn’t wheezing quite as hard as he’d expected. Maybe all the holes I dug and stuff I hauled for Niamh were better than a gym. Or maybe it was Ian and Earla’s healthy cooking; Jason had started noticing what Ian was eating and trying it. It wasn’t half bad. Whole bad would have been ok, if it made you look like Ian or Shaughnessy.
Cait stopped at each landing, peering out the arched window with her camera. To Jason, the windows looked like something from a castle, something you should be able to shoot a bow from to fend off invaders. Only these had glass in them; slightly wrinkly glass, as if it was real old. At the bottom, the windows were set into brick walls eight feet thick, each window its own little arched room. As they climbed, the walls got thinner, the window recesses got smaller, the trees receded below until the marshscape spread out beneath them like a living map. 
In the lobby, Morgan was peering through his glasses at the construction diagram, a young lady tourguide helping him understand it all.
Maybe missing the climb wasn't so bad after all.
He learned that the inside of the light was a straight cylinder, while the outside walls were shaped like a cone. Merrows didn’t build, not towers or houses or ships, so he wondered why the odd shape of the walls. Gravity, Tourgirl explained, it had to do with gravity and strength. The tower was shaped like a fat brick version of a ship’s mast; thicker at the bottom for strength and support, and thinner at the top for less weight. Something one who lived underwater never had to think about. 
The spiral stairs wound upward on an iron pole like ship’s mast, about as thick as Morgan’s tail at his butt, if he’d had a butt. The stairs ended in a breezy, fan-swept room the color of a battleship’s bridge. A tourguide was explaining how the original tower had been built in 1833, “only forty-five feet high, it wasn’t very effective in warning ships of the dangerous shifting sand shoals that protrude from this section of the coast.”
“I’ll bet it was a lot easier to climb.” Jason whispered to Zan.
The tourguide continued, “In 1860 work on this tower was begun, stopping only for the Civil War. Because of the shifting sands, the island has grown nearly five miles since that original 1833 light was built at the end of the island.”
“So,” a bright looking ten year old girl observed, “the light stays in one place, but the island moves around it.”
“Yes.” Tourguide lady said cheerily, and began saying something about a Presidential yacht that ran aground in 1891, “right out there.” she pointed seaward.
Zan had inched around to the steep steps that led through a small hatch to the glass room housing the lights. Cait had all the info she needed in her pamphlet and the pictures she’d taken of the displays downstairs Dad and Mom would want a full report on the light as a home-school project. Jason wanted to ask what a schooner rigged steamship looked like (Tourlady was still talking about Presidential yachts) and if it looked anything like the schooner-brig that was careened in the bay, but the other two had already vanished through the hatch into the light room. He followed, heaving himself up into the heat and sunlight of the light tower.
“Wwwoooow,” he said. The heat hit him like a blast of jungle air. Light poured in from the four directions of the compass. The two huge lights sat, silent and still, on their platform in the center. Beyond the glass walls lay a full circle of sky above; and below, trees and grass and shrub and water wove together like fudge-ripple ice cream. He could see the thread of the bridge from Chincoteague to Assateague, the tiny lever of its car gate tilted up like a knight’s lance, allowing tourists to pass. He could see the pinto patches of ponies grazing in the distant marsh. A speedboat, like a movie miniature, laying a spume of white up the channel, and far to the east, a haze of pale blue and gold; the beach and the sea beyond.
Cait was stalking along the narrow ledge, pressed against the glass with her camera; click click click, recording the whole circle of the world on film. Around the narrow walkway, up over the short ladder that ran across a part of the lighting gear, stepping across the gap in the walkway made by the stairs ascending from below. Click click click.
Zan had made noseprints on all the windows, and was turned now, staring at the lights with an expression that, to Jason, looked like he was in another world.
Jason poked him in the shoulder, whispered. “Remember what Earla said, don’t fry anything.”
“Huh? Oh yeah. No problem. It’s pretty basic tech, not like a computer or anything.” He frowned at the lights, as if he was seeing something Jason couldn’t.
“What?” Jason said, poking him again.
Zan shrugged, “Nothing.”
Cait passed them again, inched by, flattened against the glass, Jason sucked in his gut (is it smaller? yeah, my shorts are kinda loose, crap! hope they don’t fall down in the middle of the world’s biggest glass room). Click click click. (Or in front of Cait’s camera). Someone came up from below, stared out the window, climbed back down the stairs. Jason wandered to the other side of the light tower and stared out toward the sea. Behind him, Zan had stopped to watch ponies, and Cait was somewhere on the other side. Her camera had stopped clicking, Jason could see her just standing there, staring out over the trees.
Jason thought of Morgan, stuck in the lobby with a bunch of tourists. Wish there was a way to get him up here. Then he thought of Bran, and the Lady Niamh, both grounded. He squinted his his eyes into the west, trying to catch a glimpse of her, but she was on the far side of Chincoteague. If she wasn’t careened, we could probably see her masts sticking up. She’d be as tall as the trees. Taller. Well, she wasn’t now, she was a grey hulk abed in the marsh; like an old lady in a nursing home. Jason stared north; the green treeline and blue water gradually faded into sunwarmed haze. Wonder where that treasure is? Or if it’s still even there? Ten chests of pirate gold would solve a lot of problems.
But they were long gone, Assateague herself had turned and twisted and shapeshifted over them, hiding them forever from the knowledge of Man. 
Well, maybe not from the knowledge of Elves or Dwarves.
The sun and heat coming through the glass made the air seem to waver, heat rising up off the sun-heated sand outside made the air waver there too; the trees seemed to dance faintly in the sun. The old lightkeeper’s house, now housing park volunteers and interns, wavered too along with the cars parked near it. Flickered, like a TV station that wouldn’t quite tuned in.
Then they vanished. Gone, in a veil of loblolly trees. Jason blinked. No cars. He turned, his wide, startled eyes locked on Zan. Zan was still frowning at the lights.
Light. One great big one in the center of the tower. Stacks of glass prisms arrayed to catch the light and send it out to sea; and in all the other directions at once.



Morgan felt it first; like the surge before a really big wave, a surge in some of the energies around him, the ones humans seemed to be mostly unaware of. Then the wave hit, washed through the lighthouse lobby; the air wavered slightly, as it does over a hot parking lot in summer. The displays, and the fan wavered.
And ceased to exist.
The handful of tourists in the lobby started to turn, frown, realize something had happened, but what...
Morgan gestured, whispered hasty words in his own tongue. The lobby returned to normal. Or at least, it looked that way.



Up in the glass tower, Cait was staring down at something on the ground.
“Holy.... what did you do!” Jason stage whispered to Zan.
Zan stared at the weird lens, out at the marsh, back at the light, flickering and fratzing like a bad TV channel, his own eyes lemur huge.
Cait looked up, startled, strode toward them along the narrow catwalk.
The air wavered again in the heat, and the double rotating lights were back.
A clatter from below, voices, and three small kids climbed up into the tower, one wearing a bright cartoon shirt from the latest family movie.
“I think we should go now.” Jason said.
But Cait was already thundering down the spiral stairs as if chasing something. 
She galloped up to Morgan, signed, “Come on.” and grabbed one of the handholds on his chair. 
Jason and Zan followed her lead and heaved Morgan back down the steps to the sand outside.
Cait vanished around the side of the building.
Jason, Zan and Morgan all traded apprehensive looks. Nobody seemed to want to be the first to speak. 
“Ididn’tdoit swear Ididn’tdoit nothing’sfriedstillworking ‘s’okallright?” Zan blurted out.
“Didn’t do what?” Morgan demanded.
“The light went all wonky.” Jason said, still wide-eyed, “wait, you saw it too.”
“I saw something.” Morgan said cautiously. “What did you see?”
“The cars,” Jason said, “the ones by the lightkeeper’s house, they went away, with the house.”
“Went away?” Morgan said. “Like the fans and the displays in the entrance.”
Jason and Zan traded glances again. 
“What do you mean the light went all... winky?” Morgan said.
“Wonky.” Zan said.
“It looked different.” Jason said.
Zan turned, so that only Morgan could see, and not the few tourists up at the light. “Like this.” And a miniature of the weird lens appeared between his hands.
Morgan stared at it.
“Like you would know...” Jason began.
“That’s the Fresnel lens.” Morgan said.
“Bay-smell?” Jason said.
“Fray-nell.” Morgan repeated.
“What?” Jason and Zan said together.
“It’s one of the original lenses for the light. The original tower had an Argand lamp system consisting of eleven small lamps, each with its own reflector. In 1867 this tower was finished, and the light was a first order Fresnel lens and a single oil lamp housing four wicks; they used fish oil, or whale oil. In 1933, they changed to three, hundred-watt electric light bulbs, flashing, powered by a generator, still with the Fresnel lens. A directional coded beacon was installed in 1963 when electricity first came to the island; two large drums each with a thousand watt light bulb, aligned twelve degrees apart to create a double flash every five seconds. That’s what’s in there now.” He pointed skyward.
Jason and Zan stared at him. “Where do you get this stuff?” Jason said.
“While you were sweltering in your glass tower,” Morgan nodded at Jason’s dripping brow, “I was asking questions. The tourguides were most helpful, the women seemed to find me... interesting.” He smiled broadly, like a Hollywood star.
“Wait, you did it...” Jason suggested.
“I undid it. I kept the tourists in the lobby from seeing anything beyond what they expected, and made them forget what they did see.”
Jason looked at Zan.
He shrugged, spread his hands out in a gesture of innocence.
“That was like a time warp or something.” Jason said. “Vanishing cars, disappearing house, the old lens. Maybe we were in, like, what was that date again?”
“1867, that was the earliest use of the Fresnel, and the Lightkeeper’s House was built in 1910.” Morgan frowned, “I felt a surge of... I don’t know what the word is in your tongue, I guess there isn’t one. What you call magic is too poor a word.”
Cait trotted back from the far side of the light. “Gone.” She said, “And not even tracks.”
“Gone, what gone, who gone?” Jason said. “Where gone?” 
“The nightsea mare. The one I called when we raised the ship. She was here, under the tower. I looked down and there she was, looking up, like she wanted to tell me something.” 
“I wish Shaughnessy was here, we could ask him about this.” Jason suggested. Shaughnessy had gone somewhere on a mission as secret as anything Sharkman might attempt.
“No, no wait.” Zan said. “I’ll be...”
“Bran would know,” Cait began.
“... grounded for a hundred years! They’ll never let me go anywhere cool again!”
“Grounded.” Jason agreed, “Bran sure is. I don’t think he can do much of anything right now.”
“But Bran would know what this is.” Cait said.
“We’ll all be grounded if they find out about this,” Zan said.
“Yeah, you’re right, grownups always complicate things.” Jason said.
“That was a lot weirder than what usually happens when I fry something.” Zan said. “But I swear, I didn’t do it.”
“Nobody said you did.” Cait said.
“It wasn’t you,” Morgan said. “It didn’t...” he frowned, searching for words, “feel like when you do your delusions.”
“I think you mean illusions.” Jason said.
“Whatever.”
Zan looked relieved. “But no one, Bran, Earla, Shaughnessy, even Tas ever mentioned anything weird about the lighthouse.”
Morgan traded stares with Zan.
“No fair using telepathy when there’s people here who can’t.” Cait said.
“Whoa.” Zan said. He looked to Cait like one of those cartoon characters who’s just had a light bulb go on over his head. 
“What?” Cait and Jason said together.
Morgan looked from one to the other, hesitating.
“It’s a Gate, isn’t it.” Zan said.
“Gate to those alternate universes you were talking about before, right?” Cait said matter-of-factly, as if she was talking about pick-up trucks or cowboy boots. “When they were trying to figure out what Margo was after with the Roane, somebody said Merrows can sing them open, only Morgan can’t, any more than I can play violin.” She looked at Zan, “What do you know about them?”
“I’ve been through them before.”
“I have too.” Morgan said, “some in my clan can open them.”
“But, why doesn’t Bran know about this one?”
“Bran knows about Gates?” Jason said.
“He’s a Gatesinger.” Zan said. “Was. Before a certain pirate mangled his magic.”
“My sharksense is tingling.” Jason said half to himself, 
“Yeah. Something like that.” Zan said, “He can tell where they are.”
“Well, maybe it’s not a Gate, then.” Jason said.
“Something else.” Zan said.
Morgan stared up at the tower, glowing red and white in the sun, cheerful as Christmas. “I think we need to find out what.”
“How?”
“What if it didn’t have anything to do with any of us?”
“Everybody else in there was human.” Morgan said. “I was in the entrance, I saw everyone who went into the tower. None of them could do that kind of magic.”
“Neither can we.” Cait said.
“Maybe it’s like weather or something, it just happens.” Jason said.
“No, weather doesn’t just happen. You can see the patterns of air and heat and water. That’s what Bran told me, anyway.” Zan said. “Weather always has a cause. So does magic.”


Bran was perched high on the grey side of the Lady’s hull, flanked by a couple of Sea Scouts watching him closely and trying to match his skill; one he had practiced (though they did not know) for nearly a thousand years. In his hands were a mallet and iron wedge. He and they were hammering strips of loosely spun cotton into the seams between the hull planks. Every inch, Bran kinked the cotton, like a kink in a drinking straw, it would prevent water from traveling along the seam. Later, a layer of oakum, tarred rope, would be caulked into the seam as well. He was focused on his lengthy, tedious task, and on his attempt to bring it to a new generation, so he barely noticed Zan and Cait climb up beside him. She balanced as easily on the slanting hull of the Niamh as easily as she did on a pony’s back. Jason heaved himself up behind them, panting. 
“Ummm, you know that fantasy role-playing game we’ve been doing?” Zan began.
Bran didn’t look up, he didn’t need to, to know the question had nothing to do with gaming. “Yeah?”
“Gates.” Zan said. “You’re old enough to know everything about them, right?”
Hammer hammer caulk caulk. “Yeah, I started playing back in the Pleistocene.”
“I was thinking Triassic.”
Jason snorted, stifling a laugh. The two Sea Scouts’ eyes went from Bran to Jason. The girl giggled.
“There’s different kinds of Gates, right?” Zan said. “The kind that need the songs, the kind connected by water...”
Bran’s eyes stayed mostly on his task. He motioned to the two Scouts to keep hammering. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see Morgan below. “This would be a question about your Merrow character, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“It takes many years of study to learn the songs. Even for the Gates of Water. Even for a Merrow.” 
A different voice, “What about...”
Bran glanced up in time to see Jason teeter on the curve of the Lady’s hull, as if he’d been shoved sharply. 
“...gates that lead somewhen.” Jason blurted, inching away from Cait.
Bran went back to caulking; “There are none that simply lead somewhen.”
Jason frowned, “You mean time travel isn’t possible?”
The other Sea Scout piped up, “What gaming system are you using? Of course there’s time travel!”
“The problem with humans is they think time is a line.” Bran said.
“Well, what is it then?” The girl Sea Scout said.
“An ocean. A universe.” Bran said. “An infinite number of universes through which we move, one frame at a time, like cels in an animated movie. For some, the direction one moves is unimportant.”
“What?” Jason, Cait and the Scouts looked incredulous.
A shadow of Bran’s swashbuckler smile appeared, “It’s a theory.”
“Too hard to explain to us silly humans, maybe?” Cait signed, so only Bran could see.
Bran looked almost hurt, then signed back, small and secret, “You’ll get it in a few thousand years, I think.” Hammer hammer caulk caulk. 
“So, about this game.” Cait said out loud. 
Bran replied without looking up, “Dragonkin opened most of the Gates. Those require the songs, and lead elsewhere.” His face went thoughtful, “Now, the Gates of the Dragon Mothers; the Elders of the Elders, the Dragons themselves, opened those. Those are the dangerous ones. They can put you into otherwhere, or otherwhen, or both at once. Time traveling in your own lifetime creates hazardous paradoxes. Characters with lenthy lifespans, say, Elves or Dwarves or Wizards, only set up appalling paradoxes, being in two places at once in the same world.”
“But it wouldn’t be the same world, would it? It’d be different freeze frames in that animated movie, right?”Jason said.
Bran looked up at him, one eyebrow cocked in annoyance.
“And doesn’t time travel itself create paradoxes?” Jason said. “Like, if you’re not careful you could keep your grandparents from meeting, then you’d never exist. But then you wouldn’t time travel, so you wouldn’t keep your grandparents from meeting, so you would exist, but then you’d time travel...”
Cait reached out and gave Jason a punch in the arm. “How do you open the Dragon Gates?” she asked.
Hammer hammer caulk caulk. “Not with songs. They’re medicine wheels, compass roses; four characters, four elements, four directions. If you’re all in the right places, it opens.” Hammer hammer caulk caulk, kink.
“Then what?” Jason said, “How do you get it to send you where you want to go?” 
“When.” Cait said, punctuating the word with the Sign.
“It’s not meant to send you where or when you want to go, it’s meant to be an oracle.” Bran said.
“Huh?” Jason said.
“A point of reference, a directional beacon.”
“Huh?”
“You ask a question, it gives you an answer.”
“Wait, you said they send you otherwhere or otherwhen.” Jason said. “So they send you somewhen or somewhere, or somewhenwhere...what... something.”
“Where the answer is.” Bran said.
“Yeah. Ok. I get it. Sure.” Jason said, sounding not the least bit sure at all.
“Yeah. Cool.” Zan said, “Hey, can I borrow your kayak? Cait needs it. We’re doing a little scientific expedition into Oyster Bay later.”
“Yeah.” Jason agreed. “Before the game.”
“Ok.” Bran said. “I know Cait won’t lose her, wreck her or come back with dead crabs under the seat.”
Zan’s face registered embarrassment, “I meant for them to be live crabs.” He uncoiled from his crouch and vanished over the side of the Lady’s hull. Jason lumbered after him.
“Cait.”
She turned, caught Bran’s deep blue gaze.
He signed again, so just she could see, “Follow the Nightsea Mare. Trust her.”
 
“Bran said, they’re medicine wheels, compass roses; four characters, four elements, four directions. If you’re all in the right places, it opens.” Cait said.
“There were only three of us at the top. And it only sort of worked. We’re missing one.” Zan said. “Fire,” he pointed at himself, “water,” he pointed to Jason, “and,” he peered at Cait, a guess on the edge of his tongue.
“Earth.” Morgan said, “like Tas. She said you have the same birth moon as her.”
Cait shrugged, she’d never paid much attention to that sort of thing, but it was a good fit. Cowboys and dust and good solid ground under your pony’s feet.
“That doesn’t work.” Jason said, “Morgan’s water too. We need an air sign.”
“Sign?” Morgan said.
“Zodiac sign.” Jason said.
“Zodiac?” Morgan made a boat shape with his hands and a questionmark with his eyebrows. He remembered all too well being chased by one.
“Not the boats,” Jason said, “astrology.”
“Astronomy?” Morgan said.
“Astrology. One language humans have to describe the Universal Laws.” Zan said to Morgan’s quizzical expression. “It’s their study of birth moons; three are earth, three are fire, three are air, three are water.”
“Air.” Morgan said.“Then probably a quarter of the people in the tower were air.”
“Oh maaaaan, you mean we gotta go back and figure out everybody who was in the tower that day?” Jason said.
“Let’s start with our own team.” Cait said, “One of us has to be air. Maybe not somebody who was in the tower.”
“Yeah.” Zan said. “Who’s air?”
“Bri? Aaiiir-on?” Morgan said, emphasizing the first syllable of Aaron’s name.
“No, I remember their birthdays,” Zan said, “Bri’s water too, and Aaron is earth.”
“How about Bran. He’s the real air sign.” Cait said, moving her hands like wings.
“Yeah, but.” Zan said. “he can’t time travel in his own lifetime.”
“How long is that?” Jason said.
“Pleistocene was only a slight exaggeration.”
“We don’t know it involves time travel.” Cait said.
“Well, just in case.”
“And if magic came in gallon jugs, Bran’s would have about a teaspoon left.” Jason said. If we took him, we’d probably fry more stuff than you.” He eyed Zan. “Probably fry lighthouse tech in two centuries.”
Cait’s eyes fell on Morgan, a creature of the sea, several miles from it at the moment, breathing air as easily as any mammal. “Wait a minute,” Cait said, “Morgan, when were you born?”
“I don’t know. We don’t count the years, not the way your folk do.”
“Not the year. The month.” Jason said. He glanced at Zan, “Or maybe that Zodiac thing doesn’t work for Merrows?”
“It works for all living things under the sun.” Zan said. “What month?” he said to Morgan.
“The second moon of winter.”
“What does that mean?” Jason said.
“Winter Solstice, end of December, that marks the beginning of winter, that’s Capricorn. Next moon; Aquarius.” Zan said.
“See,” Jason said, disappointed, “Water.”
Zan gestured, and an illusory light bulb appeared over his head, flicked on and glowed as if he was a cartoon character with a sudden enlightenment. “Uh uuuhhh. No no no no noooo. Aquarius is an air sign.”
Lighthouse Quest required darkness, bikes, three kayaks, two sled dogs and one Newfoundland. And the sort of gear Jason associated with characters in fantasy role-playing games; rope, rations, water bottles, two bows (Cait had learned the art from her dad, Zan had basically grown up with one in his hand), and the bo staff Jason had managed not to damage anyone with yet.  
“What do you think we’re going to find?” Jason wondered. ”Orcs or something?” He also wondered if all this stuff was going to fit in the boats. It was easier in the games he’d played; your character just had some sort of Bag of Endless Holding.
  Zan shrugged and added a really big dive knife to his collection of stuff. Morgan had thrust something into the cockpit of Sandtiger wrapped in an old wool blanket. It didn’t quite look like a spare paddle.
“Dude,” Jason said, “is that a sword?”
Morgan gave him the kind of ultra-patient look twelfth graders give lesser beings, like middle schoolers.
“Swordfish clan?” Zan suggested.
“Oh. Duh.” Jason frowned, “I don’t remember him coming with one.”
“He didn’t. Doesn’t until he finds one on his quest.” Zan said. “But I came with one.”
“You have any practice with it besides video games?” Cait asked.
Zan ignored her and stuffed the unwieldy package into the forward hold.
After six tries.
The bo was another conundrum. The nine foot length of the Sandtiger was interrupted by a cockpit. The six foot bo would never fit inside. Finally Zan arranged it on Sky’s deck, poking out past her bow like the bowsprit of a sailing ship.
Long ago, Earla had improved on the concept of the kayak wheels sold in outfitters’ stores; you put them under the stern of your boat, picked up the bow, and wheeled your boat across the parking lot or the sandbar you’d got stuck on. Earla’s had the additional advantage of attaching the boat, like a weird trailer, to a bike. The dogs could trot along on leashes, until everyone reached the channel. Surf could pull Morgan on his offroad chair.
“Tell me again why we need sled dogs?” Jason said as he swerved his bike to avoid B’loo’s black furry butt. B’loo’s other end had temporarily glued itself to an interesting smell in the grass along the road..
“You want to drag boats from the water to the light, and from the light to the water?” Zan said. “It’s like...”
“Fifteen hundred feet.” Morgan said.
“Yeah.” Zan said. “Through brush and woods. Up hill.”
“Tell me again why we’re taking boats into the lighthouse?”
“Have you noticed?” Cait said, “It’s an island. We’re surrounded by water.”
“We might need them.” Zan said.
“For what?”
“For whatever’s on the other side of the Gate.”
“If we can get it to do whatever it is it that it actually does.” Jason said.
“You heard Bran,” Cait said, “You ask a question, it gives you an answer.”
“Nobody asked a question earlier today when it went all wonky.” Jason said. “And what kind of answer? A message in a bottle? A crazy old wizard appears?” He waved his hands as if doing a spell, crunched his voice into Crazy Old Wizard mode, “Go a hundred paces north of the second inlet, there you’ll find the treasure.” His voice returned to normal, “Maybe it’s really some other kind of Gate.”
“Someone must have asked something. It’s a Cubicle.” Morgan said. He saw Jason’s bemused look, verging on a snicker, and quickly shifted word gears, “Coracle.”
“That’s a little round boat. We’re headed to a big round tower.” Zan said.
“I think you mean Oracle.” Jason said.
“Whatever.” Morgan said, “It responds to a question. Who asked the question?”
Everyone stared at each other, no one thought of an answer. Or the question, either.



Morgan led the way across the channel from Chincoteague to Assateague, leaping through the dark water, turning, swimming circles around the slowpoke paddlers. The July night was cool and windy, no problem for a Merrow, but the paddlers without tails had opted for wetsuits; Zan in a light wetsuit in his usual stardestroyer explosion of colors (Bran had made it for him last year), Cait clad in the shortie wetsuit Tas had shapeshifted for her, Jason in the black and white orca patterned one Shaughnessy had given him. 
Zan plugged along in the stern of Finrod, encumbered by dogs. Cait paddled Sky, her holds were laden with most of the expedition gear. Sandtiger too was stuffed with stuff, and on the stern perched Morgan’s chair, folded into a nearly seaworthy package. It raised the Sandtiger’s center of gravity just enough that Jason was finding it difficult to balance in the channel chop.
“Couldn’t Morgan have just swum his own chair over?” Jason complained. “Earla made it weatherproof, didn’t she?”
“Yeah,” Zan said, “but Merrows aren’t used to carrying stuff. He’d probably drop it, like, forty-eight times.”
“Would not.” Morgan said. He punctuated his words with a backflip, soaking Zan.
“And it’s more hydrodynamic on your boat.” Zan sputtered.
“What?”
“Like aerodynamic, only wetter.” Zan said. 
Morgan vanished underwater with a slap of his tail.
Jason thrashed his paddle out in a hurried brace against the wave Morgan had kicked up. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
They came ashore at the feet of the loblolly wood. The tower was hidden behind the trees, but above them, the sky glowed with the passing light beams; blink-blink... blink-blink. They had seen the last of the headlights vanish back through the park gate, to Chincoteague’s motels and bed and breakfasts and rented cottages. The knight’s lance gate had been lowered at ten, guarding against tourists until dawn.
Plenty of time to get to the tower, climb it, and unveil its secrets.
On the beach at the edge of the channel they slipped dogs into harness; weight-pulling harnesses, not the light sledding harnesses. The two seventy-five pound dogs, B’loo and Liuk, would each help pull Sky and Sandtiger. Surf, at nearly one hundred and fifty pounds, could pull Finrod, as well as help Morgan across the sand. Zan quickly found a deer trail, leading up toward the light. Around them the tree shadows shifted in a dance choreographed by the lighthouse, the twin beams turning like spokes of a vast wheel of light. 
They climbed up out of the woods onto the open sand on the crown of the lighthouse hill. Cait trotted up the steps and stopped before the locked door, she turned, studied the three boys below her, “Ok, who remembered to bring a key?”
They exchanged nearly panicked glances.
“Key?” Morgan said.
“Yeah, Humans like to lock things so other humans don’t run off with them.” Cait said.
Morgan looked up at the tower, “Kind of hard to run off with that.”
“There’s stuff inside it.” Cait said.
“So,” Jason said, “who’s got an Unlock Door spell?”
Zan and Morgan exchanged glances. 
“Teleport?” Jason suggested.
Zan shook his head. “That’s, like, fifteenth level. I’m only seventh.”
“You gotta be kidding.” Cait said.
“I could break the glass. Then we get in through the window.” Morgan said.
“No no noooo!” everyone else said at once.
“Wait.” Zan elbowed Cait aside, peered at the lock, laid a hand over it. “I need something like... an awl.”
Jason slogged back through the sand to the boats, “Bow check, bow check, bo check, sword check, rope check, quest rations check, mighty-fine big whopping dive knife check. No awls.”
“We got three boats full of stuff. There’s gotta be some kind of little pointy thing in there.” Zan said.
“Your head,” Morgan suggested.
Cait reached into a pocket, held out a small object. “How about this?”
Zan took it, broke into a grin. “Swiss Army knife. Perfect.” He held it in his hand and Cait could see his lips moving. Then the knife glowed slightly, shifted and...
“Hey! You didn’t say you were going to change it!”
It looked like a set of keys.
“That was my grandfather’s!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll put it back. It’s just...” he frowned as if he couldn’t find the words to explain it, “an energy field laid over it.” He held it out to the lock. Frowned. tried another key. Frowned. Tried again.
Frowned.
Fifty-two waves of his hand later, and approximately five hundred different illusory keys, the former Swiss Army knife slid into the lock.
Click.
The door swung open. Zan withdrew the key and stared at it.
“What are you doing?” Cait asked.
“Saving it on Braindisk.” Zan said. He handed her back the knife, now an ordinary, slightly worn multi-tool pocket knife.
“You’re like my brother? You have photographic memory?”
“Sometimes.”
They heaved Morgan up into the lobby, now dark, and stuffy without the cooling fans. Went back for dogs and boats and hauled all of them into the entrance, shutting the door against Siberian escapes, and random investigating Park Service. Zan turned and put a ward on the door, just to be sure.
Jason flicked on his headlamp, turning the switch to red mode. “Cool.”
Cait turned hers on too, and the crossing beams made the empty lobby, and the dark stairwell beyond look like an eerie set from a horror film.
“One question.” Jason said, his light glinting sanguinely off the iron staircase, “How’re we gonna get Morgan up there?”
“I can climb.” Morgan said defensively. 
“You can?” Jason said disbelieving.
“Not all the beaches we haul out on are sand. Sometimes we have to climb rocks.”
“Not very far.” Zan said.
Morgan glowered at him and adjusted his own headlamp. “Human stairs. Piece of steak.”
“I think you mean cake.”
“Eat what you want. I want steak.” He slid off his chair at the foot of the spiral stair and drew himself up the first few steps. “No problem.”
Zan trotted past him, Cait on his heels. Jason lumbered up behind, paused, then stayed just behind Morgan. Morgan hauled himself up, one step at a time, holding with one hand while he reached with the other. The problem was the narrow, smooth, spiral pattern of the stairs left little place to prop his tail as he reached for another step. By the first landing he was breathing hard. He stopped, shook out his arms.
Zan pattered back down the stairs, crouched above him. “We could get some rope from the boats.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Surf doesn’t like to climb this far, but we could help pull you...”
“I’M FINE!” Morgan insisted.
He heaved himself up the next few steps, Cait and Zan started aloft again, but slower. Jason stayed near Morgan’s tail.
Second landing, almost there. Morgan reached, missed, fumbled and slid by Jason like a torpedo. Jason reached, fumbled, missed and watched in horror as Morgan slid around the bend in the spiral and vanished with a clangity bump and a shout.
Jason thundered down the stairs, Cait and Zan passing him in a few strides.
They found Morgan clinging to the rail on the first landing, a shower of silvery scales littering the stairs above him.
“You’re bleeding.” Cait said. Then she ran down the steps to the boats.
Zan and Jason knelt by him, their red headlamps made everything look bloody. Jason reached up and flicked his light to white mode to better assess the disaster. “You ok?” He said to Morgan, “Anything broken.”
“No.” He sat up on the landing, bending his tail, leaning over it with his head down like someone curled over their knees. 
“It’s a hundred and fifty feet to the top.” Zan said.
“A hundred and forty-two.” Morgan corrected.
“Whatever, Science Guy. You’ll kill yourself if you slide from up there.”
“Rope.” Jason said. “We’ll rig a safety line. We can’t really tow you the whole way. But I know you can climb.”
Morgan raised his head, his breathing lighter now. “Yeah. Ok. Fine.” He grumbled. Then he glanced up at Jason’s worried expression. His own softened. “Good idea Sharkman.”
Cait returned with a first aid kit from the boats. Together they checked Morgan for leaking body fluids; nothing more than a few scrapes and one nice gash in his arm. It didn’t need the ER.
They finished wrapping him up, rigged up a lifeline. Right before Jason turned his headlamp from white mode to red, he looked down at the steps. “You think the Park Service will notice the blood and fish scales?” 
Cait stared at the iron steps under her light,  “The steps are the same color as dried blood. By morning it’ll blend right in.”



Step by step they inched up the tower, all three of the ones with legs hauling on the lines attached to the one with fins. 
“We’ll probably get up there, and find out this thing runs on eye of Newton or tick’s tongues or something.” Jason said.
“Then that’ll be easy.” Zan said, scratching something crawling across his neck. He grabbed, flicked something small into the abyss below them. “There’s three kinds out there, last time I looked, and all of them are hiking in my shorts.”
“What if this Gate thing only goes one way?” Cait said.
“Then you won’t have to worry about finishing your homework.” Zan told her.
“You know, this used to be underwater.” Cait said. “Before the barrier island rose out of the sea.”
“Then we won’t have so far to drag the boats.” Zan said.
“Of course, back in the ice ages, a bunch of water was tied up in glaciers, so the beach was actually out there a couple of hundred miles.” Cait pointed east, toward the sea.
“I knew we shoulda’ tried to cram a couple of ponies in here.” Zan said.
“Great for you guys with legs.” Morgan observed.
“You could ride sidesaddle.” Jason suggested.
Morgan glared at him, then fell silent, concentrating on pulling himself up, iron step by iron step. It wasn’t like hauling himself up a few feet onto a rocky shore, or an island. There, he at least had the sea to help him; he could wait for the right moment, for a wave to lift him. Here, he waged a battle with gravity for one hundred and forty two feet.
Straight up.
He thought about the lobby, and whether it would have worked just as well for him to stay there. After all, something had happened earlier that day when he was only in the entrance. But Bran was a Gatesinger, and if what he’d said was true of this tower, then Morgan the Merrow needed to be in the right place at the top.
Then what?
He hauled himself up, leaning against the pull of the rope anchored by his three friends, his arms getting wobbly with effort, his tail cramped, kinking and sore from rubbing against the iron stairs.
“One more flight, Morgan,” someone said as he collapsed on the last landing. He lay, flattened on that landing, eyes closed, trying to catch his breath. Trying to ignore the multitude of aches that had blurred into one massive ache. Then he remembered; he’d have to get back down.
Up into the round watchroom below the light, the one the color of a battleship’s bridge. Through the opening above, the light flashed; blink-blink, blink-blink. Zan stared up at it, “It’s on.”
“Well, duh.” Jason said.
“I mean, the light platform in the middle is moving, a couple of gazillion watt bulbs will be burning holes in us every five seconds, and anybody below will be able to see our shadows.”
“Oh.” Jason frowned up at the blink-blink room. It looked a lot brighter close-up.
“Nineteen miles out to sea.” Morgan said.
“What?”
“That’s how far you can see the light. And I think the only reason you can’t see it farther is because the Earth is round, and the lighthouse disappears over the edge.”
“Great. Sharkman and crew cinderized by death ray. News at eleven. Maybe you can put a sunglasses illusion over it.”
“Maybe it wouldn’t work then.” Zan said.
“Maybe it’d work if we stayed here?” Cait suggested. One hand was foraging in her backpack. A moment later it emerged with four objects. Sunglasses. She held out three pairs to the boys. “Thought these might be useful.”
Jason took one pair, amazed.
“Brilliant, Fishercait.” Zan stalked around the edge of the room, pondering. “I wonder if you’re right. If it would work if we stayed on this level. Almost at the top. Maybe it doesn’t matter how high up we are, only where we are. Four of us, four directions. How many different ways can we be lined up...” he frowned harder, pulled off his backpack and found a pen and paper. He began scribbling with Jason peering over his shoulder.
“Twenty four.” Morgan said.
Zan and Jason looked up, startled.
“Twenty four.” Morgan repeated. “Twenty four possible combinations.”
“Wow. Crunches clams and numbers.” Jason said.
“OK Calculation Lad, what are they?” Zan demanded.
“First, we should make sure where the Four Directions are.” Cait had already pulled out her compass. She frowned at it; the needle was behaving oddly.
“Iron staircase. Big iron mast in the middle. Iron reinforcing in the walls. And there’s all that lighting equipment overhead. Anytime you run electricity through a wire, you create a magnetic field. Maybe that’s messing it up.” Zan said.
“Or maybe it’s like the Bermuda Triangle. They say compasses and stuff go all weird there.” Jason said.
Morgan gave him a sharp look, as if he knew something. “I don’t need your strange land tools; east is there,” he pointed, “west, north, south.”
“You sure?”
“We do not always navigate by stars and moon.”
“Ok, great. Problem solved.” Jason moved to the north position and waited.
“We have to do this in some kind of order.” Cait said, “and mark it off, so we don’t waste a lot of time repeating things.”
“Right.” Jason said.
“It’s harder for Morgan to move, so he should just stay at each compass point, while we move around.” Cait said.
The boys nodded. Morgan hauled himself to the north position. “There are six possible combinations of your positions.”
“I think I need a map.” Jason said.
“I do not understand the human need for lines on paper.” Morgan said. “You go there, there and there, then you change to there, there and there.” He pointed. “Easy.”
“Whatever you say.” Jason said.
Cait looked at her watch, “I’ll keep track of the time. We still need to get out of here before the park opens at dawn.”
With Morgan at north, the others switched positions; one, two, three, four, five, six. 
Nothing happened.
Morgan moved to east. The others juggled themselves through the semi-dark, lit by flashes of the rotating lights above.
Nothing happened except that Jason tripped loudly over Morgan’s sprawled tail, and required the assistance of Cait and her first aid kit.
Morgan moved to south. The rest played musical positions, their fishbowl world flashing from sun-bright to dark side of the moon every five seconds. 
Nothing happened. Except Zan remembered he had some chocolate in his pack. He pulled it out and passed it around. “Chocolate increases magical energy waves.” He explained.
Morgan gave him a withering look, the kind reserved for geeky little brothers, and hauled himself into the west. 
Nothing, naught, nada.
“Maybe it doesn’t work that way.” 
“Maybe it only works during the day.”
“Or on full moons.”
“That was last Friday. There was no full moon today.”
Again they juggled positons.
Zip. Zilch. Zero.
Cait looked up into the glass top of the tower, the great lights wheeling in their eternal guardianship. “Guess we have to go up there.”



First, Zan laid an illusion on the outside, timed with the light’s actual rotation, so their shadows wouldn’t be noticed.
Then they rigged the ropes again, helped haul Morgan through the hatch. He pressed himself up against the glass, his tail squashed against the window, as far from the rotating lights as possible. Jason crouched against the window, staring out, away from the blinding double flash. 
“I can’t see you!” came a shout from a few feet away.
“Can you hear me?” Jason hollered. 
“What?”
“CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”
Cait flinched, eyes and ears both overwhelmed, “LIKE FOGHORN!.” 
“Morgan, where do you want to start? We’ll maneuver around you.” Zan said.
Morgan inched a few feet along the narrow ledge by the glass windows. “Right here.” East. He plastered himself against the glass, tight as a limpet on a rock.
The others arranged themselves with maximum bumbling and bumping in the dark-light, dark-light; north, south, west.
  “Maybe you could just fry it,” Jason panted to Zan.
“And I’m going to tell the Coast Guard what?” Zan said. “What otherdimensional gate? What Elves? What Merrow? What pirates?”
“What about your illusion? That would still be on.”
“It only deflects the light the lighthouse is already putting out. I need something to work with.” He inched to starboard, squinching his eyes shut against the light. 
“OW!”
“Sorry.”
North west south. Passing anyone required the person by the window to flatten themselves into the glass and suck in their gut, while the other tiptoed precariously past the giant moving lights. Jason tiptoed with the grace of a bounding dumptruck. 
“Oh, ooops. Cait, are you...?”
“Mmmph!” She smashed up against Zan, something crunched underfoot.
“Sorry! What was that?”
“Just my M&Ms.”
West north south. Everyone had to step across the hole in the floor where the stairs came up. And time it to when the hole was visible in the day-night of the lights. 
“Ok, rotate!”
“Which way?” 
West south north
“Left.”
“OW!”
“Your other left.” 
“Here?”
“Your other other left.”
Then there was the stile; the short steel ladder on the far side that spanned part of the lighting machinery. Everyone had to blunder up. over and down the few steps, steps that vanished and reappeared like a special effect under the flash of the lights.
“GAAAH!” Crash. 
South west north, . 
“Ooooof!”
“Morgan, is that you?”
“Aaagh!”
South north west
“Morgan?”
“If it’s not, this thing just threw us into the scaly monster universe.”
“What’s wrong with my tail?”
“OW!



Morgan carefully slid around to the next position, and everyone juggled again. 
And again.
Zan sat, leaning against the window, breathing as if he’d run a marathon.
“It’s not going to work.” Jason said. “Maybe all that stuff earlier today was just a fluke.”
“We’re only halfway through.”
“It’ll probably be the last one we try.”
“Well duh, we aren’t going to try any after the one that works.”
Morgan reached the stile, contemplated the three iron steps up, and back down. Dark painted, half visible in the blinding flash of the lights. “Why are we doing this?” He asked.
Everyone stopped and stared at Morgan. 
“Because it’s there.” Jason said tentatively. When mountain climbers got asked why they wanted to freeze their butts off at 25,000 feet, that’s what they always said. 
“Why,” Morgan said, “did it begin to open in the first place?”
“Because we were there?” Jason said.
Morgan gave Jason the kind of look teachers give you when you’ve given an answer that’s just left of clueless, “It responds to a question. Once more, who asked the question, and what was it? Or, what one do we want to ask now?”
Everyone stared at each other through the blink-blink of the huge lights. The only answer was the hum of the lighting gear.
“I think Jason already said it.” Zan said, his voice slipped into Crazy Old Wizard Mode, “Pirate gold.”
Jason’s eyes went round behind his sunglasses, “Whoaaa. Yeah.”
  “What is so important about something no one has used for three hundred years?” Morgan said.
“We’d be rich.”
“So?” Morgan said.
“We could fix the Lady.” Cait said.
“And some other stuff.” Jason added, unwilling to say what he’d really like to spend a treasure on. Everybody would think it was stupid, probably.
“You land folk are so weird.” Morgan shook his head. “No one thought to ask; where is the Roane, or, what is she looking for, or even, how to find what Bran has lost?” He hauled himself up the three steps, stopped at the top, trying to figure out how to slide down the other side without getting body parts too near the turning lights. He slid back down the first side, reversed and hitched himself up backwards, then carefully, painfully slow, down the other side.
He found the third direction of the compass rose.
Cait, Jason and Zan moved through their dance again, Morgan’s question burning as bright as the flash flash of the lights. 
  
At first, Zan wasn’t sure it was anything beyond imagination and wishful thinking; a slight shift in the hum of the lighting machinery.
Then it went silent, and the lights went still.
Light. One big one in the center of the tower; a giant crystal puzzle of stacked prisms shining out into the night. The color of the light was now the color of fire, of whale-oil fire. They could all feel the draft of oxygenated air flowing up through the ventilated walls, feeding the oil lamp fire, and rising out of the ventilator ball above them. 
Four pairs of eyes at the four directions stared in awe. The silence was broken by a voice. “Now what?” Jason said. They traded glances without answers.
“Will it change back if we move?” Cait asked.
“I dunno,” Zan said, “let’s find out.” He stepped lightly along the walkway to Cait’s position. Nothing happened. “Let’s go below, anyway. It’s kind of bright up here.”
They let themselves back down into the battleship bridge room. Now it was empty of Park diagrams and displays. The few items scattered around it looked utilitarian, things used in the daily maintenance of the light.
“Did it occur to anyone that there might be a lightkeeper?” Cait said.
“Ohcrap.” Zan said, and vanished down the stairs on light, swift feet. A few minutes later he returned. “Nobody here, just our dogs, our boats.” He paused for dramatic effect, “And the black horse outside the door.”
“Black?” Cait said, black was a rare color in the Assateague herds. She had seen exactly one this summer. But why would she be here? Especially if here was somewhere, or somewhen else.
Follow the Nightsea mare. Trust her. Bran had said it to Cait, only Cait, why? What did he know?



“Come on and see.” Zan said.
“Wait. What about me?” Morgan said.
“We should have brought the Sandtiger up here.” Jason said, “Then he could surf down the stairs. I saw it in a magazine somewhere; guys in whitewater boats stair surfing in office buildings.”
Cait gave him a silent look; boys can be so preposterous. She unslung her rope from her shoulder and reached for Morgan.
An eternity later they had let Morgan down the stairs into the lobby. He hauled himself up into his offroad chair, waiting at the foot of the stair, and wheeled to the door. 
Jason was already bounding down the steps. 
“Wait!” Cait called to him. She ran back to Morgan, but he was at the door, pouring himself out of the chair and down the steps. She heaved the chair down after him, plopping it into the sand. The two Siberians came down the steps like a furry tidal wave, followed by Surf (with less speed and more dignity). Zan came next, hauling the nearest kayak, Sky.
There was a muffled thunder of hooves on sand, and a dark equine shape vanished into the woods, pursued by B’loo and Liuk.
“WAIT!” But nobody was listening to Cait. They were all staring up at the night sky, at the trees.
“It all looks the same.” Zan observed.
Jason turned around, his eyes grew huge in alarm. “Except for the light.”
It was gone.


Forward Into the Past



Gone; the light, the lighthouse, the interpretive signs scattered around it. Nothing there but a sandy hill surrounded by loblolly woods, three boys, one big blue kayak, a wheelchair and a Newfoundland dog.
For a small eternity, the world contained no words, no explanations, and especially, no lighthouse.
Then, sliding out of thin air three or four feet above the sand came Finrod. Thump, onto the circle of sand in front of the non-existent lighthouse. Finrod was quickly followed by Sandtiger, and an annoyed and rumpled looking Cait. She trotted down an imaginary set of steps and saw the boys’ expressions. She turned, looked up, and up, and up at empty, dark sky.
She strode back to the imaginary steps, held out a foot, and walked right through where they should have been. Then she walked all the way through where the lighthouse should have been. And back again. She stared wordlessly at the boys.
“Well,” Jason said, “we won’t have to worry about homework now.”
“No!” Cait said, “Just surviving!” She turned on Zan, “And your dogs have run off chasing my horse!”
“They do that.” Zan mumbled, “They’ll be back. I think she can take care of herself. Anyhow, she’s one of Manannan’s horses, not yours.”
“Did any of you think to ask Bran how to get back through one of these things?” Cait yelled.
“You could have.” Morgan said. “And maybe one of us was supposed to stay in the lighthouse.”
Cait fell silent.
“When you shoved the boats out, you could see us, right?” Jason asked.
Cait nodded, sharply. “Looked like it was supposed to. Who’d think it would go away?”
“Well,” Zan said, “if it sends you somewhen before the lighthouse existed, then it’d raise a lot of questions. I mean, a hundred and forty foot tower going blink-blink, blink-blink blink-blink.” His hands twitched like a blinking light (or a convulsing squid), a small version of the light tower flashed between them. “Anybody in twenty miles could see it.”
“Nineteen.” Morgan said. “And it’s a hundred and forty-two feet high.”
“Whatever.”
“Questions. If it’s supposed to run on questions, who asked what question? I don’t remember anybody asking a question.” Jason said.
“Except Morgan questioning us about questions.” Zan stalked to the edge of the woods and peered in, as if listening. 
“Maybe it reappears after we answer whatever the question is?”
“It’s supposed to answer the question. We’re supposed to ask it.” Cait said in exasperation, punctuating the words with karate-hard signs. “And... I bet... the black mare had something to do with how it works. But,” she glared at Zan, who was supposed to be, as far as she knew, wrangling sled dogs, not letting them run off and harass wildlife. “She’s GONE!”
“Well, then we should go look for her.” Zan said.
“It’s a big island.” Jason said.
“Unless it’s, like, a thousand years ago, then it’s smaller.” Zan said, eyeing Cait.
“Unless it’s like, a thousand years from now, then it’s bigger.” Jason said.
“Or not.” 
“Zan!”
Everyone turned, the voice was Morgan’s. “You can track best. You’re light and swift of foot. Follow the dogs and the mare and see where they are.”
Zan stared at him, the request had sounded a bit too much like an order. “Aye aye Captain.” He gave Morgan a withering look and stomped off to Sky. He rummaged in it, produced his bow, and trotted off into the woods. 



The trail was clear enough for even Earla the Dwarf to follow, a chaos of churned sand, broken twigs and disturbed wildlife. Zan ran light over the sand, bow in his left hand, headlamp on red mode (where it would disturb the wildlife less, and accord him better night vision when he turned it off). The black mare’s trail plunged ahead, along something that looked like a well-used deer trail, then dashed out of the trees, through thicket and shrub. Zan ducked low, like a deer, sliding between snaggy branches and grabbing briars. The leaf canopy opened, the sky spread out overhead full of familiar stars. Zan ran on, the shrubbery became scattered, the sandy areas wider, more desert-like. Zan topped a dune and the sea spread out before him. A dark sea, with no lights of passing ships, of distant cities down coast. He turned to the four directions; no lights of park or distant town. No lights of cars, no lights at NASA’s Wallops Island facility. 
None of that had been invented yet. Or it never would. Or it was already gone.
It could be anywhere, or anywhen.
Then he saw the ship. Up coast, against the moon rose tall masts. Not the two hard-raked masts of the Roane or the Niamh, three masts, slightly raked, square sails furled on yards. A ship at anchor, waiting for something.
For what?
He ran down the dune, picked up the mare’s trail again.
He realized it had begun circling back whence it had come. 
Then it vanished completely.
A minute later, in the midst of the shrub zone, he saw a white shape, like a big feather boa, bouncing above the grass and vanishing again. He whistled, the feather boa emerged, attached to Liuk’s butt. Then a black feather waved above the grass, and B’loo and Liuk ran up, full of burrs and ticks and marsh mud.
“Great bunch of scouts you are; no clues, no answers, and no black mare.”
Liuk paused, ears cocked as if he had an idea, then he bounded off. Zan ran, following the bouncing white flag of his tail, back on the deer trail, a deer trail going up, definitely up through the woods. The woods opened out into a sandy hilltop.
Morgan and Jason sat there, B’loo and Surf between them, kayaks scattered about like a windblown fleet. 
Cait stood apart, the black mare behind her, standing where the lighthouse should be.
Zan trotted up, panting. He pointed, “Found her.”
“Good work, Kemosabi,” Cait said, “she’s been here since you left.”
Zan plopped down on the sand, “So, she tell you how it works?”
“You’re the one who speaks horse.”
Zan heaved himself up, walked ten paces toward the mare. 
She snorted and circled around the space once occupied by the lighthouse, tail high.
Zan returned to his piece of sand. The mare returned to stand behind Cait.
“Guess she likes you better.” Zan said.
“Now what?” Jason said.
Zan lay down, “I’m taking a nap.”
Morgan slid across the sand, heaved Zan up, “Not now.” He studied Zan, “She showed you something. What?”
“She showed me a wild goose chase through wood and dale and fen and shrub and briar and eighty-five kinds of blood-sucking insects.”
“I thought you could do a repellant spell or something.” Jason said.
“Oh, yeah. Next time.” He glared at Morgan, “I was kind of in a hurry.”
“What...” Morgan repeated, shaking Zan, “what did you find besides bloodsuckers?”
“Ship! There was a ship offshore. North. A big three-masted ship.”
“From when? What kind?” Cait said. If Zan could tell what kind it was, he could tell what place and time they were in.
“I don’t know.”
“Wait, you saw it. Did you save it on braindisk?”
“Huh?”
Cait made a key turning motion with her hands.
“Oh,” Zan held out his hands, thought fiercely. The air between his hands wavered, swirled like smoke, then coalesced into the ship.
“Three masts, square sails, full-rigged ship.” She frowned at it,”Not as old as Godspeed,  Susan Constant, or Kalmar Nyckel.”
“Who?”
To the boys’ confused looks she said, “the first two are from Jamestown, 1607. Kalmar’s from New Sweden, 1630’s. They call it Wilmington Delaware now.” She looked pointedly at Jason, who, she thought, ought to know the history of his home state. 
He gave her a blank look.
“All those ships are high, castley, wedding cakey looking things, lots of carvings, figureheads, stuff like that.” Cait pointed at Zan’s illusion, “That isn’t exactly like the Roane or Niamh Baltimore Clipper type either. Those were smaller, two-masted, usually schooners.” 
“Where do you get this stuff?” Jason said.
Cait made a wry face, “I live with my teachers. We spent a long weekend in Mermaid City learning all this, remember?”
Mermaid City; Norfolk, Virginia, where Cait’s little sister had found the Roane.
“So when are we?” Jason prompted.
Cait shrugged. “I don’t know everything.”
“Pirates.” Jason said suddenly, he eyed Morgan, his voice falling into Crazy Wizard mode, “oh great Keeper of the Tower, tell us where be the ten ironbound chests of gold and multitudinous jewels.” He waggled his fingers for effect.”
Cait stared at him, “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Out of my head.” He shrugged.
“Yeeeaaaah.” Zan said, “the pirate gold! That’s the ship it came on! That was seventeen, uh...later than Susan whatzerface anyway.” 
“What if it isn’t?” Cait said.
“Why wouldn’t the lighthouse just tell us where the chests are, instead of sending us to when they arrived?” 
“Why not have asked an intelligent question, like where the Roane is?” Morgan said in exasperation.
“Because we need the Lady to catch the Roane. And we need the gold to...”
“BOYS!”
Everyone turned to see Cait, standing by the black mare. “We should follow her.”


“You should name her.” Zan observed. The black mare waited for them at the edge of the clearing that held a lighthouse in another time. 
“Why?” Cait asked, “Does that do some kind of magic?”
Zan shrugged. “It’s easier than saying, ‘yo, black mare lady’. It won’t change whether she comes or goes or stays. She chose you. And I don’t think it’s all about the granola bars.”
Cait nodded. A good cowpony needed a good name, just like the boat she and Tas had borrowed a few weeks ago to rescue Bri. She’d named the boat Little Fishgirl, after Bri. That boat had carried them well. She ambled over to the mare, “What you think?”
Manannan’s Mare snorted gently, shoved her nose against Cait. 
“Black Beauty, the Black Stallion, the Black Mare.” Zan said.
“Overused.” Jason observed, “Zorro’s horse was Tornado. Maybe she’s like, Cyclone or something.”
Zan made a face, “Nooooo, no no no. Bad omen.”
Both looked at Morgan, the one who should know Manannan’s horses best.
“If I suggest a name, more things will break.”
“How about Dusty, or Misty or...”
“Chasseur.” Cait said with certainty.
“Cha...what?” Jason said.
Zan’s face wrinkled into a question mark.
“She runs on water. Chasseur is a boat, and a ship. When we were in Norfolk, we toured the Pride of Baltimore II.”
“Oh yeah, Bran’s told us about her. She’s a Baltimore Clipper too.”
“Her ship’s boat is Chasseur. But it’s named after the original Chasseur, a famous privateer of the War of 1812. Means ‘chaser’ or ‘hunter’, in French.”
“Cool.” Jason said. 
“Too bad she doesn’t have cannons.” Zan said.
Cait made a you are a dork face, she pointed at the mare’s lower legs; the straight bone between the knee and fetlock forward, and the hock and fetlock aft. “They’re called cannons. Remember?”
“Oh.”
Jason snorked, saw Zan’s embarrassed face and shut up.
They hitched kayaks to dogs, and began the slow hike down to the water, following in the Chasseur’s hoofprints. Zan unhitched the dogs, traded glances with Cait. She went to the mare, put her hand on her shoulder. “Now what?” Cait asked. Maybe Manannan’s horses understood English.
Chasseur walked west, onto the water. She stood there, a few yards offshore, the rolling water rippling around her legs the way windblown grass ripples around the legs of land horses. She looked back at them, the way she might at a clueless colt.
Zan’s hands paused on the dogs’ harnesses, “I was going to put them back in the lighthouse,” he began. 
“And we’re going to put ten ironbound chests where?” Morgan said.
Zan stared at Surf’s vast bulk taking up half of Finrod.
“Wait,” Jason said, “he turned out to be pretty useful, twice. I think we should take him. And I don’t want to let the other two here, harassing rabbits and stuff.”
“What if we don’t come back this way?” Cait said, “They should go with us.”
“We’ll build a raft or something for the chests.” Jason agreed, “Or commandeer one of the pirate boats.”
“Or something.” Zan said.
Morgan shook his head and plunged into the water.
The black mare moved farther out into... onto...the bay at an easy walk. The kids slid the kayaks into the dark water, climbed aboard. The wind blew briskly from the south, and even along the shore the wave horses were tossing their manes. Cait and Jason snapped on their spray skirts. Zan, in the rather wet Finrod, had pulled himself back into his light wetsuit against the cool night.
Chasseur trotted off, sending up fine splashes of water, the way a land horse sends up sprays of dirt. Paddles sliced into the water like wingfeathers in air, and the small treasure-hunting fleet streaked south.
 
“South? Why south? I thought the treasure chests were buried north of Chincoteague?” Jason said. “I distinctly remember that ranger program...”
“Yeah. Three creeks, a hundred paces north of the second inlet above Chincoteague. At the head of the third creek to the north is a bluff facing the ocean with cedar trees growing on it about 1 1/3 yards apart. Between the trees are buried ten ironbound chests.” Zan’s voice had fallen into Lecture Mode. “At least that’s what Charles Wilson wrote.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “that’s what I thought. North. So why are we going south?” “Because she is.” Morgan nodded at Chasseur, “And she’s smarter than you.” He splashed down, flipping a small wave over Jason’s sprayshirt.
South then; along the marshy edges of Assateague, the grassy marshes of Chincoteague just across the narrow channel. South against the sharp breeze blowing up from the Carolinas. South under a sinking moon, and a spray of stars. Morgan leaping ahead, tasting the water, listening to the news of the sea. Zan just behind, reading the shape of the currents and wind. Then Jason, Sharkman in his natural habitat, yeah! The Sandtiger was part of him now, like fins or a wetsuit, he was a creature of the sea, just like Morgan. Even Cait had settled into the rhythm of Sky over the waves; cantering like a good cowpony. She started humming a Garth Brooks song; “like a bird upon the wind, these waters are my sky...” Sky, Sky was the name of Bran’s blue boat. Bran, no longer riding the wind.
That’s why they were here, right? 
Right?
South, away from the mysterious ship, moored off Assateague’s beach.
Chasseur’s course drifted west, following the bend of the channel.
Jason said into the dark, “Tom’s Cove should be right about...”
Instead of the low sweep of sand and grass called The Hook, encircling Tom’s Cove, there was moonlit water, with the white manes of Manannan’s horses breaking upon it.
“...there?” Jason said tentatively.
It wasn’t there. The Hook was gone.
“Hang on!” Zan called out.
Jason could see Finrod sweep up over a wave bigger than the chop they’d been riding. Then it hit Sandtiger; like they’d crossed a barrier in the sea. Like the night they’d been swept offshore, and Jason had been swept out of his boat. Morays circled for a moment in his gut.
Morgan leapt far ahead, shouted something Jason couldn’t hear. The dark shape of Chasseur was still trotting ahead; straight into open water. Jason’s hips moved like a hula dancer, his paddle swept out instinctively, like a dolphin’s fin. Sandtiger charged the waves.
Beside him Cait wobbled in the sudden shift in the shape of the sea. 
“Think like you’re riding a cowpony!” Jason called.
“I know!” Her paddle splashed inexpertly into an oncoming wave. She bobbled, but caught herself.
Then they were in the open, a thousand miles of sea to port, a shore of high dunes and crashing surf to starboard.
“Where’s The Hook?” Cait said.
“It hasn’t been invented yet!” Jason said.
“What?”
“It didn’t form until... uh... I forget.” Jason said, “But the lighthouse was built on the end of the island, and some of the houses on Chincoteague are older than The Hook and Tom’s Cove.” 
“Where do you get this stuff?” Zan said.
“Park program.”
“Great.” Zan said, “Glad our taxes are proving useful. Now what Mr Wizard?”
Cait pointed at the black mare, she’d picked up the pace and was cantering over the waves. But she’d turned west again, and was headed inland.



Inland, around the end of Chincoteague. Then north along the west side of the little island. At least that’s where Jason guessed they were.  It didn’t look at all familiar: no docks, no fishing boats with their big whiskery things poking into the night sky, no rooflines, no bridge.
And especially, no lights.
“Where is everybody?” Jason said.
Cait frowned, “That ship Zan saw has to be eighteenth or nineteenth century.”
“Well, that narrows it down.” Jason said.
She ignored him, “I’m trying to remember what Dad told us about the history of the island. There were European settlers here for a long time, almost as long as Jamestown. And there were Native People here before that.” She was silent for awhile. 
Zan fell back beside them.
“What do you know about the island?” Cait asked him. “When are we?”
Zan shrugged, “Ask me about trees, mosquitoes and wild ponies. I don’t know nothin’ about the people history.”
Silence. Paddles hitting the water. Except Zan’s; he always paddled like magic.
“I remember. There are people here.” Cait said. “But not the town like we know it. Scattered farms and houses. It’s the middle of the night, so they’d be in bed. They wouldn’t even have lanterns or candles on.”
“Yeah.” Jason said. Then he had a ridiculous thought, “You think we brought enough batteries?”



Up the channel between the sleeping marsh and the sleeping scattered farms. Zan decided a yum yum yellow plastic kayak (not to mention the bright blue Sky, or the virulent colors of the Sandtiger), might draw more attention than necessary. Kayaks might be older than Chincoteague, but plastic hadn’t been invented yet. So he wove an illusion, turning their ‘yaks into traditional skin and frame boats. Except for Finrod, which he turned into an excellent small wooden dory. Their own clothes were easy...
...if he only knew what century clothing he needed to copy. He flicked through a few possibilities, frowning as Cait and Jason’s illusory clothing flickered from Robin Hood movies to the Three Musketeers, from old westerns to Zorro, from half remembered pilgrims to Daniel Boone.
“Zan!” Cait shouted at him, glaring at what he’d just turned her shorts and t-shirt into.
“Sorry.” He waggled his fingers, mumbled something, and finally settled on Generic Pirate Clothing for all of them, like he’d seen in his favorite film.
Zan didn’t mess with Morgan. He could take care of himself. And Zan didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Morgan’s reaction if Zan dressed him in something stupid. Anyway, he was mostly underwater, no one would notice. 
They drifted along the silent, dark shore, Chasseur trotting ahead, kicking up puffs of white spray. 
She stopped, head high, ears radared in on the shadowy marsh to the east. She gave a warning snort like a cannon blast and thundered off west over the bay.
Surf let out a warning “roof!” The other two dogs cocked their ears like radar dishes toward shore.
“Now what?” Jason said. 
Shapes separating themselves from the dark shoreline. Small boats, like the Niamh’s ship’s boats. 
“Whoa.” Zan said. He backpaddled, skewing to a halt. Jason and Cait piled up behind him.
Morgan had vanished along with Chasseur.
“Who are they?”
“Kind of late for Chincoteaguers to be out in this century.”  
“Whatever century it is.”
“Pirates.” Zan whispered, “that’s who’d be out this late.”
He had no time to finish the rest of his thoughts, the boats pulled close under the hard pull of oars. Behind the kayaks, another boat slid out of the dark marshgrass. 
A shape rose up in the bow of the nearest boat, it was flanked by two others, wielding weapons, not oars. “Avast!”
“Are those pistols?” Jason said.
“Well-aimed and loaded,” came a voice from the boat. It sounded female, and like the voices of Captain Galen and the crew of Niamh, it was colored by its origins in another time
“Who are you and what ship are you from?” That voice too was female.
Jason sat, mouth ajar. “We, uh, we’re not from any ship.”
“We’re from the island.” Zan assured them.
The aft boat drifted closer, another voice came out of the dark, this too, female, though it sounded younger. Much younger. “You’re not dressed like any islanders. And your accent is strange. What country are you from?”
“Delaware?” Jason suggested. “Whaddaya mean my...”
Zan poked him, hard. Whispered, “In two hundred years... or three, or whatever, the language changes a little.”
The closest boat moved closer, close enough for one of its occupants to poke Zan with an oar, hard. “What strange kind of craft are those? There’s nothing like those on this island. And where are your oars?” The shadowy figure seemed to be studying the kayaks, then Zan’s ‘dory’.
And the kayak paddle he was still using to power it.
“What?” Zan said. Then he looked back at the two kayaks. Something northern explorers would encounter...when? He wasn’t sure, but certainly kayaks wouldn’t be a familiar sight to Chincoteaguers of any generation before the twentieth century.
Or pirates either. “They’re kayaks, such as the Inuit of the Frozen North use.” Zan said.
“I doubt you have come that far, in...” the shape shifted on the bow, as if studying the small boats before her, “...those. Who are you! What are you doing here.”
“Following a wild black mare.” Zan said. He heard the click of at least one pistol cocking.
“On the water?” First Voice raised her hand, “There are only three, and they’re small. Bring them aboard. We’ll take them and their strange craft back. ‘Ware the dogs.”
The dogs had gone quiet, watching the encircling boats with interest, but no longer barking. Surf’s nose was working though, as if he scented something familiar.
The circle of small boats tightened. Three boats, three or four well-armed oarsmen in each one. 
Then, the nearest one vanished. 
It was replaced by a startled looking flock of three pelicans. On the other boats, there was the sudden boomph-splash of dropped oars.
Then Morgan spiraled out of the sea and whopped First Voice across the head with his tail. She flailed, tumbled into the channel. The boat rocked, went over. A pistol went off into the air. The pelicans thrashed and shouted. A wave erupted at the gunnels of the second boat, it too went over in a grand thrashing of legs and arms and waves and one Merrow tail. Then came the sound of splintering wood.
Cait hoisted her paddle and swung it at the nearest pelican. Morgan had thrown confusion into the pirate crew with his timely illusion, and it had worked. Still, those pelicans were armed to the teeth. Beaks. Whatever.
Jason followed her lead, nailing Pelican Two. Surf plunged off Finrod with a great spaloosh and grabbed Pelican Three by its immense beak. There was a moment of shouting and thrashing, then the sight of a pirate with Surf’s jaws locked around his arm.
“Come on!” Morgan was yelling. 
Surf let go and swam for Finrod.
Cait whapped Surf’s pelican-pirate, one more time for good measure, and paddled hard after Morgan. Jason followed her, his paddle working like falcon wings.
Gradually the shouts and splashing faded behind them. “Where now?” Jason said, “They know we’re here. They’ll come looking for us.”
“Maybe not. They were looking for somebody from a ship. Maybe that ship Zan saw.” Cait said.
“They’re raiding Chincoteague.” Zan said. “That’s their ship.”
“No, no.” Cait said.
“They’re waiting on another ship to help them pirate the whole island.”
“What’s here to pirate? Just a bunch of farms.”
“Maybe they’re getting supplies, water and food and stuff. That’s often what pirates stole anyway.” Zan said. “Stuff to re-outfit their ships.”
“Where’re we gonna go?” Jason said.
“Into the town.”
“Were you listening to Cait’s History 101? There is no town. They’d find our boats, anyway. Follow us.”
“Where’s Chasseur?” Cait said.
“What?”
“The horse we were following?”
“Yeah, she was a big help.”
“She’s a guide, not Lassie the Rescue Dog.” Cait pulled ahead. The mare had shown up on land, once. Maybe that’s where she’d gone. Or not. Where was she?



They paddled north, it was the only direction that made sense. South were pirates, east and west was land, and way east was another pirate ship. Maybe. And it was the direction Chasseur had been heading.
“If we see one of those farms, we should bail out and tell them about the pirates.” Jason said. He’d just about convinced Morgan, Cait and Zan that this was a good plan when Chasseur showed up, trotting out of the dark bay to the west. She eyed them, head high, ears like stiff little radar dishes. Cait rummaged in her snack drybag and produced a granola bar. Held it out. The mare stalked across the water, accepted the gift. She turned and trotted north.
“Now what?’ Jason said.
Zan shrugged and dug in, paddling north.



The moon had sunk below the western horizon, only the sweep of the Milky Way overhead lit their way. The sky shone a few shades lighter than black. The shoreline was a dark smudge of loblolly woods against the iron grey of sky and sea. The black mare eased into a canter, then a gallop, and vanished into the dark.
Then, out of that long low smudge of shoreline rose a familiar sight; the tall, spikey cutlass shapes of masts.
“Raked masts.” Zan whispered, “Like Niamh.”
Cait pulled binoculars out of her cockpit; “Yeah, like Niamh, or the Roane.”
“What do we do, go back? Tell the Chincoteaguers they’ve got a pirate ship in their bay?” Jason said.
“I think we need a closer look.” Zan said.
“What closer? You’re an Elf, you can see just fine from here!” Jason said.
“It’s kind of dark.”
“Send Morgan.” Cait said.
“Me?”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “stealth Merrow. Like in all those spy movies: where the hero uses a drysuit and a rebreather...so there’s no bubbles, and he sneaks up on shore, then unzips his drysuit, and he’s got a tux under it.”
“Whatever.” Morgan said, he’d apparently been watching the wrong movies.
“Nearsighted stealth Merrow.” Zan said. 
“Ok, so you paddle up there yourself.” Morgan quipped.
“Uh, you’re faster.”
“You admit it?”
Zan glared and said no more.
“Just go, Morgan!” Cait said.
“Ok,” Morgan said. He studied the other three, “what about you, whose going to protect you from those in the boats, if they return?”
“We’re fine.” Zan said, “just go.”
“Yeah,” Jason said, “we got it covered.” 
“Right.” Morgan said, looking unconvinced, and vanished underwater.



He reappeared ten minutes later, popping up beside Jason.
Jason responded with a “GAAHHH! and a, fortunately, badly aimed paddle.
“SHHHHH!” everyone else told him.
Then, “What did you find?” Cait asked.
Morgan’s face was pale in the dark, but his sea-colored eyes were as dark as the water around him, and as readable. “Come on, follow me.”
“What?” Zan said.
“Yeah, what?” Jason added.
Morgan was gone, a trail of splashes all they could see.
“Come on.” Cait had already turned Sky in Morgan’s wake. Her paddle dug in and she began to fade into the dark.
“What... HEY!” Jason called. Cait kept going. 
Zan heaved to and paddled. “Beats me,” he called over his shoulder, “but I’m not staying here waiting for Pirate Pelican Patti and her passle of pilfering picaresque picaroons to return.” 
“Picky WHAT? Is this any time to be... hey wait up!” Jason yelled.
Zan paused long enough to throw an illusion over them: he felt that pelicans had, perhaps, been overused, so he made it appear as if the ship was being stormed by a flock of geese. The masts grew, loomed against the dark treeline. No light shone from the ship. No sound came from it. It might as well have been a ghost. 
Closer they went. Now they could see small details; the pale stripe below the gun doors, the broken bowsprit, lines no longer arrayed in shipshape fashion.
“Big ship out there, in one piece.” Jason observed softly, pointing with his paddle, “little ship here, all broken. Hmmmm, what does that say?”
Cait frowned, “No flag. Was there a flag on the other one?”
“No.” Zan said. “But they’d run up fake flags all the time. Bran told me.”
If there was a name on the ship, they couldn’t see it in the dark, not from here. Not that that would help.
“Where’s Morgan?” Jason said suddenly.
The answer came with a splash and a hail, “Ahoy the ship!”
“What is he doing!” Cait said.
He was floating just under one of the forward cannon doors, shouting up at the deck a few feet above his head. The hail was answered by the sudden appearance of a dozen shadowy figures along the rail.
Well armed figures. The flock of geese behind Morgan heard the click of cocking pistols, the shink of drawn cutlasses, and something Zan identified as the creak of a swivel gun being turned to bear on them.
“Where’s your First Mate?” Morgan was saying. “Tell him I want to speak with him.”
“Who are you?” came a voice. A distinctly female voice.
Cait traded glances with Zan and Jason. Part of the same crew as the pirates in the marsh? She signed her idea to Jason, small and secret.
Sound like girls. He Signed back, same those (he pointed south) boats. 
Zan drew Finrod closer to the ship; why was Morgan looking for the first mate? And why were Surf, Liuk and B’loo staring up at the deck, with big stupid doggy grins on their furry faces?
For an answer, Morgan said his name. His real one. 
Cait smacked her hands over her ears, her hearing aids ringing. Jason felt the reverb through the Sandtiger’s hull.
“Whoa.” Zan said, ducking. 
Somewhere on the ship glass shattered.
Another shape appeared at the gunnels of the ship, appeared with the swiftness of a bird in flight. He or she was a tall shadow against the starlit sky, one arm was noticeably bandaged. “Do you have any idea,” a male voice said, “how hard it is to procure glass?”
“Sorry.” Morgan said. “I forget how fragile your land stuff is.” 
Surf broke into a concert of deep ringing barks. They were answered from on deck by a chorus of high-pitched yaps.
Morgan was swimming in water deep enough to float a hundred foot ship, only his bare upper chest and shoulders visible, and his red knit hat. 
“What is a Merrow doing  here?” Tall One asked. "And one of my own folk." The other crew turned and whispered to each other. 
“Apparently,” Morgan said, “we are looking for you.”
Zan’s confused frown began to shift, melt into stunned surprise.
Cait saw his face, punched him in the arm, “What?”
Zan stood up on Finrod, and the crew of the dark ship had the unique view of a Canada goose saying, “Bran? Brannan Robinson?”



Zan waved his illusion away. Or at least the goose part. The part of the illusion that hid the yumyum yellow and retina blasting plastic colors of the other ‘yaks, and the wetsuits, PFDs and other modern gear, he left intact. He swept the water with a few swift strokes and hauled up alongside the ship. Now he could see the name, on a simple carved wooden nameplate across the bow. “Silver Raven!” he shouted jubilantly.
“How do you know us?” Bran demanded.
“You told us not to tell you.”
“What?”
“I mean, from what you told us...”
By then, Jason was at Zan’s elbow, punching him, “Shhhhcht!”
“What!” Bran repeated.
“If we told you,” Jason intoned, “it would imperile the existence of the universe as we know it.”
There was a long moment of Bran scrutinizing them, as if trying to see through them, then, “bring them aboard.” Beside him several crew swung over the side, onto the channels, hands on shrouds. One reached out for the bow of the Sandtiger, caught it. Jason swung the kayak around broadside, bumping against the Raven. Hands reached for him, hauled him up. In moments, Cait, Zan, the dogs and the boats were aboard. Morgan was the last up, pulling himself up over the channels, grabbing the shrouds and hauling himself aboard. The crew stared, a few sharp whispers were heard. They stepped back, giving him a respectful amount of room.
But none seemed overly shocked to find a boy with a fish’s tail on their ship.
Cait studied the crew, the starlit sky gave just enough light to see their body language, their expressions of fatigue and surprise, the details of their clothing.
And the fact that they seemed to mostly be women. And girls. No few of them seemed to be Cait’s age, or not much older. A few were even younger.
Surf came to Bran grinning a great soggy Newf grin. Bran sank his hand into the Newf’s fuzzy head fur, his eyebrows cocked in bewilderment. He studied B’loo and Liuk, “Northern dogs.” Bran said. “Here?” Out of the shadows sprang two small canine shapes, like Holly’s huskies, only cat-sized, and black. They danced around the huskies, Surf, Cait and the boys, sniffing and barking excitedly. “Down Chaser, hush Hunter,” someone said. They sat, staring up at Cait like two curious little foxes.
Bran studied the four adventurers; the same Bran who’d taught them the bo-staff routine, who’d lent Jason his dive gear, who’d commandeered the Sandtiger from a yard sale, who stuck action figures on the dashboard of his Jeep.
Not the same; this one had edges like a cutlass blade, and his English, like the others, didn’t sound quite the same as twenty-first century English. He was rumpled, smudged, his clothes stained and torn, his arm bandaged. He looked like the ship. Above, spars dangled at the wrong angles. Shreds of sail hung like ghost curtains. A morass of lines hadn’t been sorted into shipshape order.
“What happened?” Cait asked. Then she had an idea. “The ship, the one offshore?” Out of habit, she signed it at the same time she said it.  
Bran’s eyes went to her hands, his face had the expression of Hearing folk who didn’t understand what her hands were saying. He heard her words though. “What ship offshore.”
“This one.” Zan stepped forward and held out his hands. The ship he’d seen materialized between his hands.
“It’s her,” someone behind Zan said. Others muttered in agreement.
Bran’s eyes went to Cait, Jason, Zan, Morgan, Surf. And the boats. “A Merrow. One of my own people,” his eyes fell on Zan, “In company with two children of Eve.” He eyed Cait, “One who knows Signs unknown to me.” He patted Surf, eyed the other two dogs, “And dogs who seem to know me. And your appearance, and that of your craft,” he nodded at the boats, “odd as it is, is not what it seems.” His expression carried a fair amount of suspicion.
“The problem with humans,” Zan suggested, “is they think time is a line.” He paused, waiting for Bran’s reaction. 
The reaction was to step up to Cait and touch the shoulder of her Generic Pirate Shirt. Something like half-concealed surprise ran across his face. He turned to Jason, did the same. Turned back to Zan, caught up a handful of illusory pirate shirt...
...and felt what was under the illusion. Astonishment unfurled in Bran’s eyes. “This is mine...when?” He closed his mouth on the rest of the question, then said in a voice low enough so the crew couldn’t hear, “Gifts from Pooka, Ravenkin, and one of the Elders. Ones I know.”
“You told us...”
Bran held up a hand, cutting off the rest of Zan’s sentence. “Where is she?”
“Uh, the pooka?”
“The ship. The one who seems to have found us after all our evasions.”
“You have paper?” Zan asked.
“A limited supply, why?”
“I could draw you a map.”
He motioned to someone behind him, “Bring the chart.” He hesitated, “And the Captain.”
A minute later a young girl reappeared with the chart, and the Captain at her heels. She was lean as a wolf, middle aged, dressed much like the rest of the crew. Her dark hair was pulled into one long braid. She looked as smudged, torn and tired as the rest of the crew. The girl spread the chart out on a hatch cover by the binnacle, just in front of the tiller. Zan knelt, staring at the unfamiliar lines of two familiar islands. “We came this way...” his finger traced their path backwards, around Chincoteague. “That must be where the lighthouse was.”
“It’s here.” Morgan said, placing his own finger farther south.
Zan gave him a skeptical look.
“I was the one looking at maps while you were mangling the space-time continuum.”
“What?” Bran began, then held up a hand blocking Jason’s open mouth from spilling any more information. “Lighthouse?” Bran said, “what lighthouse?” 
“It’s...” Jason started to say.
Cait poked him, hard.
“1833.” Morgan said. “It wasn’t until...”
“MORGAN!” Cait glared.
He ducked and shut up.
Bran glanced from one to the other. “Belay that. The less you tell me about the non-existent lighthouse, the pooka skin, and why you have sled dogs and kayaks on a summer island in Virginia, the less trouble there will be.” Bran said, meeting Cait’s eyes for a moment. “Just tell us where the ship is.”
“Maybe it would help if we knew where we were.” Jason said. “Or when.”
“July, 1814, Chincoteague Island, Virginia,” the Captain said, her eyes, sharp as hawk’s, went from Jason, to Cait, to Zan, to the boy with the fish’s tail on her deck.
  “We know the Chincoteague part.” Jason said.
The Captain’s eyes went to Bran, one brow raised a millimeter in a questionmark.
He shook his head, turned to Zan, “Where was the ship?”
“I tracked the black mare here...” Zan traced his likely path from the vanishing lighthouse, around in a vast circle, and back. “I must have hit the beach there. The ship was...”
“What mare?” came the voice of the Captain.
“No island pony.” Bran stated, eying Cait.
“No.” Cait said, wondering if she should say more.
Bran gave her a minute shake of the head.
“...there.” Zan finished, poking his finger down on the spot he hoped was where he’d seen the ship.
The Captain leaned closer, “She could get in one of those inlets...”
“What inlets?” Jason said, “There’s only the one at Ocean City...” He saw Zan’s expression and shut up. Then he leaned closer and saw the map; Assateague was not a penninsula or a single long island, but several smaller ones, broken by inlets.
“The island’s changed.” Zan said, and ducked away from the Captain’s sharp glance.
This time she remained silent.
“Too shallow, here.” Bran touched the waters south of the inlet. 
“We still cannot get out past her.”
“And she cannot get in.”
“She might yet send boats, or a land crew.”
“Boats, boats boats!” Jason said suddenly, “three boats attacked us as we came around the end of the island!”
“They’re probably headed this way.” Zan said.
“We fought them off!” Jason said, “Morgan kicked their butts.”
Bran gave them a sharp look, “Three?”
“What kind of boats?” The Captain’s question was soft-spoken, but it had steel at its center.
Zan’s swashbuckling smile faded, “These.” He made a small illusion of the boats as he remembered them.
Bran’s eyes widened, “What...did you do with them?”
“Uh, we left them there.”
Morgan’s grin had faded too, “Two definitely are still there. On the bottom.”
“Those are our boats.” Bran said levelly.
“Ohcrappola.” Jason said.
“They were scouting for boats from that ship.” Bran’s finger landed hard on the chart, the spot occupied by the mystery ship. “Hoping to stop them if they decided to come up the channel looking for us.”
“I don’t think we killed anybody.” Zan offered.
Morgan, sitting on the deck gave an embarrassed half-smile, “I think one will still float.”
Bran closed his eyes in the kind of eternally patient grimace parents do when you’ve backed the car into the neighbor’s new fishpond and you’re twelve. He opened them, cast a hard blue gaze on Morgan. “You’re the fastest of this lot,” his hand indicated Zan, Jason and Cait, “and, I suspect, responsible for most of the wreckage, which,” his eyes seemed to reflect more light than was possible on the dark deck, “I hope is minimal! Go back, collect my crew, and bring them here, in one piece.” He pointed to Finrod, “Take that, you might need it.”



It had been easy to disperse the boats, to leap out of the element Morgan knew so well, and knock the teetering little floaty things over. These sailors weren’t quite like the folk he and his brothers had pulled from the wreckage of the World War II fleet; full of fear in a world not their own. The Raven’s crew knew something about the sea. Of course; they had a Ravenkin on board.
But they only knew the surface. They were still only skating across the thin ceiling of the world he knew, still unsure of what lay below.
Morgan found them, rowing with two less boats and a few less oars, returning north to warn Raven of new dangers. Remembering how often he’d nearly been beaned by oars when he popped up alongside boats, he surfaced a few yards off and hailed them.
They reacted much as he’d expected, with drawn cutlasses and cocked pistols.
“Avast!” Morgan called, “I bring orders from Captain Claiborne! “We know the position of the other ship, you are to return, now, to the Silver Raven.”
At first they looked very much like they wanted to finish the fight, with the score tilted in the other direction. 
“Nonono no!” Morgan backed off frantically, like a dolphin doing a backwalk on his tail. “Bran needs you back at the Raven, in one piece. I do not wish to damage you further!”
They paused, faces filled with doubtful looks.”Why should we not fill you with holes and send you to the deeps from which you came?” someone said.
Morgan shove Finrod, still disguised as a dory, toward them, “I brought another boat.”
“Hmmmmph!” someone snorted.
“Indeed, why should we trust you?” The speaker was a tall dark skinned girl in the bow of Boat Two, her head wrapped with a length of cloth.
“We didn’t know who you were. We thought you were pirates.” Morgan said, “From the ship offshore.”
“Privateers,” the dark girl said. “We work in the service of freedom.”
“Aye, Diana,” came a third voice, then to Morgan, “Whom do you serve?”
He studied the intent faces on the dark boats before him. Something about Diana seemed familiar, as if he had met her before.
No. Of course not. The Raven sailed in the first half of the nineteenth century, well before Morgan’s time. He looked into the strange green eyes of a teenaged girl, and suddenly knew.
Even her name was nearly the same as the one she...he used in a later time; d-ian-a.



“We have two here who can do illusions.” Bran said to Captain Claiborne. He indicated Zan and Morgan, back aboard with the rest of the Raven crew. “And two more who can lend a hand where others have lost the use of theirs.” He nodded at Jason and Cait, and at a few of the crew, besides himself, who wore bandages. He smiled at Surf, the first raven-smile Jason and the others had seen in this century. “And you look like you might know the ropes.” He frowned at B’loo, a crewwoman was pulling a length of chewed line out of his jaws. “Looks like the rest of the pack just like rope.”
Cait looked skyward, at the tangled rigging, “Wow, wish Dad could see this.”
“You bring your camera?” Jason said, “I did.”
“Just one question,” Zan said, “How do we get back?”
“Worry about that later.” Cait said, “anyway, I remember somebody saying Bran is a Gatesinger.”
“Not for Time Gates, or whatever that was.” Zan said.
“Cool.” Jason said, “Sharkman, Trapped in Time, News at Elven. Hey, no school. No homework. No dentists.”
“Oh they had dentists,” Cait observed, “ they just didn’t have novacaine.”
Jason grimaced, “Do they have a head? It’s been awhile since Sharkman hit the Port-a-Pond.”
“It’s at the front of the ship, that’s why it’s called a head.” Cait said.
A minute later Jason had found it, and a second conundrum, “Hey, where’s the toilet paper?”



It was up to Zan and Morgan to make a hundred foot ship disappear. Hundred and seventy feet, if you counted by her sparred length, including the immense bowsprit (now broken) poking forward and vast mainsail boom hanging aft, over her stern.
“She’s pretty close to shore.” Zan said, “And this shore’s all wooded. We could just make her look like a tree island.”
“Sure.” Whatever you think. Morgan could see neither tree islands, nor ship from any distance. And his power of illusion was limited to changing the appearance of himself. But he could feel the energies Zan was channeling, and here there was a great deal of water energy, and Morgan could add power to Zan’s magic. The finished illusion was visible only from a hundred feet out, not by the crew working frantically to repair the ship. Then Morgan swam down-bay to keep watch for any boats which might come from the other ship.
He still had not heard if that one had a name.
The crew broke into small parties; some to bring spare spars and line and canvas from the Raven’s hold, some going ashore to cut small trees for the rest of the broken spars, some to begin stitching and patching and re-rigging.
Cait found herself busy with rope again. Line, if it’s on a ship, Dad had said, and has a job, it’s a line. She used the knots he had shown her, the ones she’d practiced in ‘Mermaid City’ at the Norfolk tall ship festival. The ones she’d practiced for extra credit for her home school project. She’d got an A. She’d used some of those knots to help raise the Niamh; weaving part of Niamh’s rope hammock, lassoing the horses of Manannan. She paid close attention to what the rest of the crew were doing, learned a few new knots. The crew was not quite what she’d expected to find, not what she’d learned in her history studies. Bran was the only male on board (besides the boys, and dogs, she’d come with), except for one small boy whose mother was the bosun. The rest were women of all ages, all shapes, sizes and colors. There were widows and orphans, freed slaves, recent immigrants who decided privateering might be more lucrative than indentured servitude, girls from old colonial families who threw off the yoke of marriage and second class citizenry. Two sisters from a Native tribe Cait didn’t recognize; probably because they didn’t exist anymore in her time.
Her time, would they ever get back to it? And where was Chasseur?










Night Wind



Morgan swam around the blunt end of Chincoteague, felt the current change, the water grow swift with the urgency of the sea. He surfaced and stared at the pale, blurry shapes of the sand dunes on Chincoteague’s seaward shore. His father had told him of this; how the islands of sand turned over in their long sleep, shifted shape, grew beaches and lost them with each winter storm, with each shift of the tide. He floated in big swells that had rolled from the far shores of England and Spain. The warm, shallow waters of Tom’s Cove would not be here for another, what did the Captain say? What year was that again?
What did it matter.
There had been no small boats from any ship or shore in the channel. Morgan dived, listened to the seatalk: the sigh of wave on sand, the flick of fish, the rumble and croak and drum of their talk.
Something was missing.
What?
Morgan lay on the bottom, his swordfish eyes seeing clearly in the dim moonlight filtering down from above.
What was missing?
Then he knew. Like Tom’s Cove, engines hadn’t been invented yet. The sea was relieved of their noise, grumbling, like a headache, always in the background.
He thought of the tales his mother had told him; of messages sung across leagues and leagues of water. Of how you could float in certain places and hear the songs of whales on the other side of the world.
His mother, father, brothers. They were all out there somewhere. Now. He could stay here, in this time and place. He could finish his quest, find them in the great sea.
Would they know him?
Would he meet himself in two hundred years?
He shook his head to clear it. They had been sent here by the clavicle, coracle, whatever the lighthouse was. There must be some way to get back. Meanwhile...
He surfaced, looked north where Zan had seen the ship. Morgan, of course, could see nothing. Unless he got closer. Yes, closer. He’d go have a look at their mystery ship. Maybe he could tell Bran more about it than Zan had already seen.
Maybe he could make it hard for that ship to follow the Raven. Maybe there was some way to disable it. Not the way Bran had disabled the Roane; none of that technology was on this mystery ship. Wait, rudder. That’s what Shaughnessy had been trying to damage when he ran at the Roane, in the channels of the Virginia Barriers. 
Morgan swam north, listening to the break of waves on the beach to port, to the speech of the deeper sea to starboard.
Then something interrupted the sonic picture. Morgan swam closer, under the hull, longer and broader than the hull of either Roane or Raven. Around the anchor cable, and chain, and the great chunk of iron holding her fast. He popped up at her waist, looked up and up. A line of black cannon muzzles poked out of her sides, and above that, more cannon muzzles on deck. Three tall masts made dark shapes against the sky. He could hear the sound of feet making drum sounds on the deck, the creak and groan of the ship, like a vast dragon of the sea. He listened to the sounds of the men’s voices above him; they spoke the same language as the ones on the Raven.
He fiddled with the rudder, not sure how he could damage it. Swam around the anchor cable once more.
Surfaced. Stared up at a tall stern, like a castle he’d seen in Holly’s books. Windows open for air. Muffled sound coming from the aft cabins.
And a name, written high on her hull, under the windows. Carved in elegant letters, painted in expensive gold paint.
Nightwind.
 
 
Zan clung with feet, legs and one hand (one for the ship, and one for yourself), the other busy with a knot and a spar. A few feet away, a nimble, dark-skinned woman cast an eye on his work the way a mother might. “Ok?” He asked.
“We’ll make a sailor of you yet.” She smiled. Her face showed broken teeth and scars and hardships from an earlier part of her life, but her spirit shown bright as the sun Raven had carried into the sky. Her voice had colors and cadences different from the varieties of American English Zan was used to. A voice from another time.
“How long you been with the Raven?” He asked.
“Not long enough. Wish I’d found her sooner. Or she’d found me.” She studied Zan, “Long enough to have seen things I never thought I would.” Her gaze was curious, warm. Unafraid. A boy with a fish’s tail, and one twice her own age were just other wonders, like red sunrises or careening across the waves under a dark blue sky.
Below, Cait and Jason were bending a new sail onto a yard. Surf was retrieving things, carrying line or spars or tools from one end of the ship to the other. The two little black Schipperkes, Chaser and Hunter, had found no more rats in the bilges or holds, so they had returned to their deck duties as small furry alarms against invaders. B’loo and Liuk, they considered to be invaders; worthless as ratters or retrievers or watchdogs, eaters of Schipperke dinners, and perpetrators of large furry underfootness. They voiced their displeasure.
For their part, B’loo and Liuk ignored the yapping of Lesser Beings who probably couldn’t pull a doll sled. At some point, one of the crew noticed the two huskies, still in their harnesses, and found a use for a couple of out of work sled dogs. The harnesses’ ancient Siwash design, and modern blue nylon webbing caused some curiosity, but not as much as neon colored plastic kayaks would have. The inch wide blue nylon looked much like canvas (in an exceptionally bright color) and the fake sheepskin passed muster as real. Cait found she could handle the dogs now as easily as Zan. Good thing too, he was still busy aloft.
Zan tied off his last bit of line. A gust of wind off the sea ruffled his wild red mane. The topmast swung as the water beneath the Raven shifted. He frowned down at the dark bay water. The mast he was riding swung again as the deck rolled beneath him. He hitched himself up a few feet farther. The wind puffed, swelled, gusted again. This time with teeth in it.
“Hey!” someone called, “come down before she throws you down.”
Perching at the top of a hundred foot mast was a new experience for Zan. Perching at the top of hundred foot trees, or two hundred foot trees, was not. He ignored the worried voice of the woman below. Another foot and he could see over the trees to the sea. Yes, there. The faint lines of the Nightwind’s masts, still moored offshore. Still waiting. He’d heard her name minutes after Morgan had gone south, to guard against boats from that lurking dragon. 
And if what Bran remembered two hundred years from now was right,  Nightwind contained one Margo Pyle, who would ultimately steal Morgan’s cap, and destroy Bran’s own magic.
The mast swung again, like a huge vertical compass needle. Zan hitched downwards, found the shrouds and began sliding down. Now the water was rolling beneath the Raven’s hull. “Is the tide coming in?” Zan asked the nearest crew. 
Young, slender, blond as moonlight, she frowned east, where the wind was howling from. “No, it should be falling...”
At that moment Bran landed on the deck, his booted feet an exclamation point to his sentence; “Where’s Morgan!”



Nightwind... Morgan remembered where he had heard that name before. In a conversation in Holly’s backyard, not long ago.

Bran made a face as if he’d tasted two century old coffee, “There are things you need to know about her.”
The circle fell silent, and all eyes went to Bran.
“She’s the daughter of a sea captain, captain of the Nightwind, in...” Bran frowned, “...we call it the War of 1812 now.”
Around the circle eyes went wide in astonishment.
“1812?” Ian said.
Bran gave him a long, level look, as if he should remember, then turned to the others. “The Americans called it the Second War of Independence.” Bran continued, “The British called it the Napoleonic Wars. As far as they were concerned, they were fighting to destroy a tyrant, fighting for everyone’s freedom. They saw the Americans as ‘plunging the parricidal weapon into the heart of the country from whence its own origin was derived’.
“What?” Ian said. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“The London Times.” 
“Parry what?” Earla said.
“Parricidal. As in killing your father.” Bran went on, “The Americans were divided in opinion; anger at the British blockading of the Bay, the coast, the trade routes, interference with their trade, impressment of their sailors, seizing of American vessels involved in trading with the ‘enemy’. Some American companies didn’t mind, too much, losing the odd ship or sailor, small price to pay for the profits to be made. New York and New England developed a lively smuggling trade, supplying the British armies in Canada.”
“Didn’t we try to invade Canada once?” Ian said.
“Several times.” Bran continued, “it ended in a bloody stalemate.”
“And eventually, the longest unfortified border in the world.” Holly observed.
“Yes. Fortunately, for most humans, the people you’re trying to kill this week are your brothers next week. Ultimately, the British decided they needed to chastise their wayward teenager, sailed into the Bay, up the Potomac, and burned much of Washington.”
“And were repulsed at Fort McHenry, in Baltimore, when they tried to ‘wipe out that nest of pirates’.” Holly said. 
“Privateers.” Bran emphasized.
“Whatever.” Holly said, smiling. To the questioning looks of some of the group she added, “rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, and all that. Some guy named Key wrote a poem about it.”
“Yeah.” Bran’s expression darkened.
“You were there.” Holly said softly.
He nodded. “A bit closer than Mr. Key.” He nearly smiled, “Europe, at least, took us a bit more seriously after that.”
“So how does the Nightwind, and Margo, fit into this epic picture?” Holly said.
“Captain Pyle, of the Nightwind, learned the other side was more profitable. He was particularly successful at stealing American ships.”
“Don’t you mean commandeering?” Ian suggested.
Bran didn’t smile. “He took a particular dislike to The Silver Raven.”
“Because you were better at stealing ships than he was.” Ian said.
“Commandeering.” Bran stated with emphasis. “We commandeered ships. And we traded cannon fire with him no few times.” 
“War of 1812. That explains her fashion sense,” Tas said, “and possibly her choice of a wooden tall ship instead of a modern yacht. What it doesn’t explain is how she got here, or how she got a modern reproduction of a Baltimore clipper. She’s human, not some kind of half-elf or ghost or zombie.”
“What IS she doing here?” Ian said.
“Beats me.” Bran said.”I don’t even remember her.”
“You remember the ship, but not her?” Holly said. “And how would she remember you, if it was her father’s shi...” Holly’s eyes widened. “Wait, she was on it?”
“Humans change so fast.” Bran frowned as if trying to remember, “Right before she annihilated my last feather she said ‘I was running powder to the cannons when we fought you. I was learning the art of catching the wind when we chased you. I learned the arts of sword and sail from men who are dust now. I was there when you sank her’.” Bran glanced at Ian, as if Ian should remember too. Then his eyes strayed to Morgan, and looked away quickly.
“When I demanded your release, she said she had a two century old score to settle with you.” Morgan said. 
Holly nodded, “Hell hath no fury like a woman who’s had to wait two centuries for revenge.”
“She wasn’t after me.” Bran said. “Well, not entirely.”
“You sure?” Ian said. “Sounds like she had plenty of fuel for revenge.”
Holly and Morgan looked equally skeptical.
Bran’s eyes went to the Merrow, “I still think she wanted Morgan all along.”


Nightwind. There it was, the beginning of so much grief for Morgan and his friends in two different centuries. Anger welled up in him, shapeshifted to rage, primal as a hurricane. A hurricane frozen in indecision. He stared up at the great black wall of the hull. He was helpless to do anything to that monstrous bulk.
Or was he?
He swam around the hull, just under the waterline. Drifted along the length of the keel. Found the anchor line trailing off the bow, reaching down to the great piece of iron sunk in the sand below. 
The anchor cable was not all made of impenetrable iron; quite a lot of it was rope. He tried biting through it, only to discover it was, like Niamh’s standing rigging, layers of tar and cloth and smaller rope. He spat out his first taste, ground his teeth on a mouthful of sand to rid himself of the foul taste. 
He needed a knife. He needed the sword Zan had packed in Sky’s hold. He had not thought to sling it over his back in the way his family slung theirs, when they carried them.
He needed a blade. And there were plenty on that ship.
The ship that also contained one Margo Pyle.
The wind was off the sea, and with a little help from one Merrow, the ship could become one of those hundreds of skeletons lying along Assateague’s shoaly coast. The coast the lighthouse warned them of. Or would, when they built it nineteen years from now. He studied the depth of water below the hull, the rise of her wooden sides at their lowest point, amidships. Far higher than Raven, or Roane, or Niamh. But the shrouds holding the masts came down over those wooden sides in the same way. And there were more of them, closer to the water. He could leap that high.
He dove, then shot to the surface, through it, in a silent silver shower of spray. He caught the base of the mainmast shrouds, where they ran through the black board called a channel. He hung there a moment, listening, hoping they would not notice the odd distortion in the air around the big, black-backed gull. Hoping they would not notice even the gull. 
They didn’t.
He hauled himself up, up, to where he could peer over the edge of the rail. The deck was quiet, a few men here and there, watchful. Sounds from below, the faint sounds of sleep in the night. 
Morgan knew, from the Niamh’s crew, that all sailors carried knives. A few of those on deck carried longer steel as well; swords. He could see them as the men passed close to Morgan’s position. A slow smile crept onto Morgan’s face. Part of his coming of age quest was to acquire one. Here it was. A privateer’s prize. One man passed by again, pausing to peer toward Assateague’s treelined shore through a long spyglass. Maybe he was some kind of officer, Morgan thought. His clothing was fancier, an elegant coat despite the warm July night. His way of moving suggested he was in charge. All Morgan needed was for that man to come a bit closer.
Closer. Closer. Then he turned and strode to the other end of the long deck, became a blue blur in Morgan’s vision. Another crewman wandered close enough for Morgan to reach out and touch him, but his was only a small, blunt pointed working knife.
Morgan’s eyes were filled with a much larger prize, but Sword Man stayed at the far end of the deck.  Morgan frowned. How to get him over here again. Going aboard himself was right out. He’d had enough of being aboard Margo’s boats. 
What were they watching for, waiting for? The Raven? They expected her to come out of her safe harbor? The Nightwind would never make it up the channel without running aground. She had enough small boats to sneak up... but they wouldn’t have the cannon power of the Raven.
The Nightwind needed to be knocked out of her near slumber. Morgan called out, a challenge, a commentary on the stupidity and weakness of his foe. 
He said it in his own language.
He heard the satisfying sound of glass exploding. Of running feet. He saw blurry shapes headed toward him, where he hung, eyes just level with the rail. The man in the coat was there, peering seaward, eyes wide, but in control. 
“Down here.” Morgan said. And swung the sword out of its sheath as he helped the officer over the side.
It took moments to slash through the anchor cables. He could hear the muffled thunder of feet on deck, the shouted orders as he surfaced. He saw the slow swing of the hull as Nightwind caught the current and began to slide shoreward.
Then the rattle of chain, the splash of water, and the faint thud of a vast piece of iron hitting the sand below.
Bloody hell. They have two anchors! Of course, just like Niamh, or the Raven. He could even remember the symmetry of the two huge iron shapes on the bow of the Roane. Morgan swam under the thundering confusion, swung at the second anchor line. Swung and swung like a starved swordfish slashing through a school of baitfish. The cables parted.
Nightwind continued her drift shoreward.
Not enough. They might be able to free her. After all, when the Niamh was repaired, they would be able to free her from her sandy bed.
Anger and panic clouded his mind like silt. Think think! What can one lone Merrow do!. 
There were storm songs, and he had not yet learned them. They were dark, dangerous music, reserved for the Merrow equivalent of a PhD. But he had heard them; the singing up the storm songs, and the calming songs (those he had learned some of). He could sing enough of the storm songs to drive Nightwind onto the sandbars.



“You sent him down the channel.” Zan said. “Where would he be?”
“Not where he’s supposed to.” Bran turned, shouted something to the crew still aloft.
Then the whole ship erupted like a kicked hive of bees. Zan found himself pulled along in the seething mass of motion. Someone grabbed his arm, “Here, hold this,” and he was helping with something he’d only thought of as an outworn cliche; battening down a hatch. 
Cait and Jason fell into the maelstrom of frantic action, furling, lashing, battening, securing. The dogs were sent below, then the crew followed, drawing the last hatch shut overhead, leaving only a skeletal watch on deck..
Cait huddled in the dark, lit only by a few deck prisms; sound muffled and distorted, even with her hearing aids, her sight muffled and distorted by the near perfect dark below. She could feel the ship roll as the water rose under Raven. Somebody gripped her arm, like a panicked squid. She shook him off.
“It’s just me, Jason,” he shouted into her hearing aid.
“Something’s up.” Cait said.
“Storm coming.” Jason said. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he could feel it, as if he really were Sharkman, tuned into the sounds and feel of the surrounding water.
“Yeah.” Zan said, wobbling a moment as the ship rolled.
  “We’re behind the island. Both of them. We should be ok, right?” Cait said, loud in the dark. Her eyes were beginning to pick up shapes in the dark, lit by the faint moonglow of deck prisms. 
“Yeah. Sure.” Jason said, “and I’m sure this crew’s ridden out bigger storms than this.”
A small warm glow erupted to their right, Zan’s face showed above it, his hands cupped around something like a candle flame. Without the candle. “Yeah, we should be ok.”
“What about Morgan?” Jason said.
Zan freed one hand, glanced at the crew, crowded into the belly of the ship, he Signed, a language none of them, even Bran, would know; “Morgan’s the one making the storm.”



Morgan sang the songs, what he knew of them. The wind off the sea seemed to stiffen, like a big cat waiting to leap on a deer. It snarled, shoving the water up before it. It howled.
With the wind and the rising water came the horses, answering Morgan’s song. The horses of Manannan who had sunk Niamh in a panic, magicked by the Roane’s weapons. The horses who’d come to the songs of the Elves and Morgan himself and raised the Niamh. They came, wave crests tossing on the rising storm wind. Rearing up out of the sea, killer waves that surfers dreamed of, that fishermen feared. A perfect storm caused by none of the patterns of light and dark, heat and cold, air and water moving around the earth. The waves reared and shapeshifted and the horses danced there; greys and pale moon on sand colors, wave foam manes flying as they leaped.
The ship’s crew stared in disbelief, scrambled uselessly in all directions.
The horses crashed against wood, their hooves making wave thunder. No sail would carry Nightwind seaward. No number of small boats could pull her to safety.
Her keel dragged against the soft sandy shoal, the first of a long line of wave ripples of sand standing out from Assateague. The wave horses lashed, Nightwind slid across the bar, and onto the next, shallower. The waves pounded. Timber broke. The crew scrambled to set the small boats in the seething water, but they were broken too, swallowed by the sea. 



Below, in the near-dark hold of Raven, everything seemed still as a breathless night. Cait frowned, patted the side of her head. Her ears acted like she was on a rollercoaster, the whole world felt out of balance. Then she realized, she was on a rollercoaster; the Raven, tossing on the strange tide.
Jason and Zan could hear the hum of the wind, caught in Raven’s rigging, thrumming down the masts to the big wooden drum of her hull. 
“You might as well sleep while you can.” Cait turned to find a middle aged crew-woman gesturing at a couple of empty hammocks. Jason had already burrowed into one. Zan nodded and piled into another, taking his small candleglow with him.
Cait’s hand was on the edge of hers when she heard the sound, right above her head. Even with the low grumble of sound that was Raven tossing in her sleep, the hum/gurgle of the wooden hull, and the crew murmuring, she heard it. She felt like she might have heard it without her hearing aids; a noise like someone pounding on a huge drum; one she was inside.
But not drumbeats. Hoofbeats.
A square of night sky appeared as the hatch cover was hauled off. Zan sat up in his hammock, startled, Surf let out one deep roof.
“Cait!” Then Bran coming down the gangway ladder. “Come!”
She jumped up and followed him on deck.
Chasseur stood there, sea water flowing from her tail, through the Raven’s scuppers into the sea, her hooves firm on the shifting deck as if she was standing in a green pasture under the sun. Her eyes had a blue sea-gleam in them, the way land horses eyes looked sometimes when you shined a light on them in the dark, but there was no light here but the light in her sea-eyes. She lifted her head higher and stared at Cait.
“What?” Cait signed it as she said it, wondering if the mare understood anything a mere human could say. She turned to Bran, “What?” she repeated, signing it out of habit. He didn’t understand, Bran who knew all kinds of languages. Of course, he hadn’t learned American Sign Language yet. It hadn’t been invented yet.
“She’s your Guide.” Bran offered no more advice.
“You said to follow her. Trust her.” Cait said half to herself.
Bran’s eyebrows tilted up, like a raven changing course on the wind.    
“Ok.” Cait walked to Chasseur, held out a hand. The mare nosed it. “I wish I spoke horse.” Cait said, “like Tas.” Somewhere in her center she felt a warm glow, and remembered she was still wearing the wetsuit Tas had made. Pooka skin, black as the mare’s hide.
The black mare poked her nose against Cait’s neck and blew a breath, warm and smelling of sea. Then she did something Cait hadn’t imagined seeing her do. She bowed, folded one knee beneath her and bowed. Her withers were lower now, easy to walk right up and slide on. Is that what she wants? Then what? Where to? Cait glanced back once at Bran, he looked as surprised as Cait. He raised a hand as if he was going to say something. Or stop her. Or...
She didn’t wait to find out, she grabbed the black mane, wet with the sea, and swung up. Chasseur wheeled like a barrel horse, swiftly, in perfect balance. She took one stride, two, lifted and leaped over the Raven’s rail and into the sea.


  
Morgan could only watch; at first jubilant, as the Nightwind slid toward her death on the shoals. It was more amazing than the craziest CG effects in the best video game ever. He leapt with the leaping, charging horses of Manannan, whooped on the wind. 
The wind blowing harder, fiercer, roaring like a great cat.
Roaring out of control.
Fierce vengeful joy faded to stunned amazement. Then a sinking dismay as he began to hear the screams of the crew over the fury of the storm.
Then another sound came to his keen ears; the high thin cry of a child.



Jason was already sitting on the edge of his hammock, watching Cait vanish through the hatch. He reached over and poked Zan, “Now what?”
Zan sat up blearily, flicked his fingers and the candle glow appeared again. He could hear the roar of the wind, feel the spray coming down the hatch and from somewhere else in the wooden hull. Someone thundered down the gangway ladder, “You two, on deck, now.”
Bran’s voice.
“Now what? Zan repeated.
They blundered above, found Bran, Diana, and the Captain on deck, wind and spray howling around them. Jason squinted into the wind, found it full of blowing sand and stinging salt. He turned away from it. “What’s going on?”
“We’re going to stop a storm.” Bran said.
“We? What’s this we, Kemosabi?” Zan said. “You’re the weather wizard.”
Bran ignored his protest, took Zan’s shoulders and shoved him into place at the base of the mainmast. “You, here.” Bran did the same with Jason, “You, here.” Diana had already taken up a position on the far side of the main from Jason. The Captain stood off, watching, exchanging only a few terse words with Bran.
“Ok, he can do magic.” Jason said, pointing at Zan, “and you can do stuff with weather. But what can I do?” He glanced at Diana, as if he also wondered what use a teenaged human girl was either.
Bran hesitated a beat, as if Jason’s knowledge of his weather wizardry had startled him. Then he explained. “She’s earth, Zan is fire, I am air. You,” Bran said, “are water, and your Guide was ancient when mine first took flight.” Bran said. He took up the fourth position at the base of the main. Now the four of them looked like the compass rose.
Or the medicine wheel they’d formed in the lighthouse.
“What do I do?” Jason said.
“See the wind and sea calm.” Bran began singing.



Chasseur leapt onto the wind-whipped surface of the bay and headed straight for the wooded shore, kicking up gouts of spray in her wake. She hit the narrow beach and kept running, Cait crouched low over her neck, hands tangled in her wet mane. Ahead was a dark wall of trees, and the mare headed straight for it. Cait ducked into her mane, flattening herself as close to Chasseur’s back as possible. The feel of her stride changed, a thin branch, fluffy with pine needles scraped across Cait’s back, then another. She glanced up through flying horsehair and saw dark and darker flashing past. More swoosh of pine branch, the momentary stick and pull of greenbriar, something Cait hoped wasn’t poison ivy. The sudden startled thunder of hooves and flash of dark bodies as a band of ponies dashed out of the way into a thicket.
Dark ponies, not the pintos I’m used to seeing. No time to think about why, a sudden dodge, duck, twisting along a trail, thrash of branches, sputter of wind and rain through the trees.
Then the open, more light, low shrubs, pale sand between. Then more sand and a straight run up the dunes and down onto the beach.
No beach, only a wild wash of waves coming from every direction. Chasseur stretched into a gallop over it all as if it were only a field of grass blowing in the wind. Bigger waves were chewing up the beach farther out, but Chasseur ran over them as if they were green hills under the sun.
Cait clung to her, sure if she fell, the mare would keep going, and she did not want to fall in that maelstrom. 
Now she could see the vast bulk of the ship looming like a nightmare in the breakers. She could see the smaller dark shapes struggling to get to shore, and the few straggling forms that had made it to the dunes.
Where are you going? To the ship? To find Morgan? To stop him?



It was, somehow, frighteningly familiar. Morgan rose and fell on the crests of the waves, staring in horrified fascination at the wreckage. Then he remembered.

The sea had been filled with the noise of engines for days. It grew, like thunder before a storm, then the storm roared overhead; a vast fleet of ships, larger than the greatest of the whales. The Merrows watched, listened, from the twilight deeps.
“Are they the good guys, or the bad guys?” Morgan asked.
“We don’t know,” his mother answered. “It is their war.”
“Theirs,” snorted one of the brothers, “but it affects all of us. All of the sea.”
The steady roar of engines was interupted by a new set of sounds, sounds made by a ship Morgan had glimpsed before, one that moved beneath the waves.
Then there was fire and thunder and the shouts of men, and one of the great ships falling into the sea.
The Merrows were not Guardians of Men, but when a foundering life crossed one’s course, one could not ignore it, so they swam into the midst of that maelstrom of fire and fear and falling wreckage. 
“Why are they so afraid?” Morgan asked. And he learned how different these folk were from his own. He knew they needed air, like the dolphins he and his brothers disguised themselves as, but dolphins were not afraid like this.
The brothers pulled many from the wreckage that day, pulled or pushed others toward boats, or other flotsam. In the dark hours before the moon rose, an exhausted Merrow child let his illusion slip. Two men clung to a sinking bit of wreckage. One saw Morgan for what he was, not his vanished disguise, he panicked and thrashed away into the dark sea. Morgan did not see where he went, though he felt how terrified he was, and how near the man was to the end of his strength. The other stared into Morgan’s sea-eyes, his own wide with disbelief...then with the kind of fear men had when they looked into the heart of the sea.
He had pulled that man, and others to safety then. He had seen their fear.
He was seeing it again.
Are they the good guys or the bad guys?
They looked and sounded the same as any other humans.
Morgan heard the cry again, the one that sounded like a child. He set his teeth and dove, heading as fast as he could toward the sinking ship.


Chasseur galloped into the midst of a seething mass of waves leaping and clawing at the ship. She flattened her ears and lashed out with her head, snapping her teeth. The waves reared back, Cait saw the shapes of horses form and melt away as the water retreated. Chasseur climbed swiftly up the backside of a big swell, stretched her stride and stepped onto the rolling deck of the Nightwind. More of a cliff than a deck, a cliff littered with broken, fallen trees and tangling vines. The mare trotted over them, easily as a land horse on a trail, then stood still.
As still as one could be on a two hundred foot deck rolling in storm swells.
“What? What’s here?” Cait could only hear the white noise roar of wind and wave, but she was used to using her eyes, to seeing things most people missed. The mainmast leaned out, smashing into the big waves the way the bowsprit might have in storms when the ship was afloat. At the base of the mainmast was the fiferail with its belaying pins and coils of line, all a tangled jungle now. In the middle of it Cait could see a flash of color that wasn’t the ship. There, huddled against the mainmast, was a small girl.
Cait squeezed her legs against Chasseur’s sides, scooting her seat against the mare’s back, move forward. Chasseur stepped lightly forward, over tangled line and a fallen spar the size of a tree. Cait reached down, unsure what would happen if she dismounted. “Come on!” she shouted into the wind.
The girl remained huddled in her jungle of line and broken wood. Cait thought of the Plains Indians and their buffalo hunting style, of Zan and his trick ride. She grabbed a handful of the mare’s long mane and wound it around her hand, then leaned farther. Chasseur sidled up another foot. Cait grabbed the girl’s arm and pulled. Hauled her across the black mare’s withers and hung on.
Chasseur wheeled, danced over the tangle of gear on the deck of the dying ship and leaped into the sea.



For men who spent their lives on the water, they swam incredibly badly in the water. Morgan grabbed the first he came to, threw an arm around his upper chest and swam hard for the beach. The man thrashed at first, in terror, Morgan tightened his grip and hauled him into a wave running up the beach. The man floundered, crawled up out of the swash and fell onto the sand. Others came from higher on the beach and dragged him back to higher ground. 
Another, and another, and another. Some drifted, some fought, some stared in disbelief when Morgan’s tail broke water. Morgan had swum storms before, leaping with his brothers on the frenzied storm crests. 
In open ocean, where there was only the wind and the water. Here was a dying ship; sail and line and spar and broken wood, cargo, cannon, and other debris turning the seething sea into a grinding maw. Here were tar and powder and churned silt making the water a choking cloud to breathe. Loose spars and barrels thundered in on the tide, ground into the sand, into any bodies in the way. Canvas and hemp line made a kraken tangle, dragging the unwary to the bottom.
Morgan twisted and leapt through it. Took the thud of loose spar, and the slice of sharp things unseen. 
He might have left them. He might have headed farther out, where the sea was clean.
You know the Rule of Three. Whatever you do comes back in threes.
Bri. Bran’s last feather. Ian.
Three. And his own cap. 
He couldn’t flee, he couldn’t quit.
One more, dragged from the bottom, thrust back into the spray whipped air. One more dragged from the path of a tree-sized yard. One more pulled from tangling line.
Then, a sound above the roar of the storm, a faint drumming, like the sound of the island ponies hooves on sand. Morgan stopped, floating on a swell, howling wind whipping foam off its crest. His arms locked around a boy who looked not unlike himself. The boy hung limply in his arms, yet breathing, Morgan thought.
A black mare stood on the side of the wave, staring at him, head high, wind whipping foam off her mane toward him.
The lump on her back moved and Cait raised her head, shouted at him over the wind, “You have to stop it!”
“I can’t!” He couldn’t. He didn’t know the words, the notes, the rhythms to calm these waves, this wind. He had triggered it, but it had long ago galloped out of his control.
Maybe out of anyone’s control. 
Cait saw the young man in Morgan’s arms, glanced toward the shore. She said nothing more.
Morgan saw her feet move against Chasseur’s sides. The mare spun and headed shoreward. It was then he saw Cait was carrying someone. 



Cait thought Chasseur would stop on the beach, or above it, where the waves weren’t reaching. She could see the shapes of the men who had clawed their way out of the sea’s grip and onto shore. Or the men Morgan had carried, like the one she’d seen him with just now. The child in her arms didn’t fit on a warship any more than the women on the Silver Raven. Not according to what her dad’s history books said, anyway. There had been boys, powder monkeys, young sons of well-to-do families working their way up the ranks to being masters and commanders. What was a ten year old girl doing on Nightwind?


Another and another and another. Morgan found them sinking, thrashing, floundering in the surf. He dragged them up and shoved them in on the tide. He ached from swimming so fast, from dragged the inert bodies of men yet living, from being smashed by seething debris. His lungs ached from the dirty water, from the spray whipped air, from going between the two a hundred hundred times.
Finally he could find no more living bodies; only those who had tried to breathe water and failed. He found one of the Nightwind’s open hatches, and tried to venture inside. But the ship was still thrashing in her death throes, the narrow entrance and the loose debris made going inside impossible, even for one who could breathe water.
No one would have survived inside the ship anyway. Morgan fled.
He didn’t even remember when he’d dropped the sword.



“You remember the ship, but not her?” Holly said. “And how would she remember you, if it was her father’s shi...” Holly’s eyes widened. “Wait, she was on it?”
“Humans change so fast.” Bran frowned as if trying to remember, “Right before she annihilated my last feather she said ‘I was running powder to the cannons when we fought you. I was learning the art of catching the wind when we chased you. I learned the arts of sword and sail from men who are dust now. I was there when you sank her’.” Bran glanced at Ian, as if Ian should remember too. Then his eyes strayed to Morgan, and looked away quickly.
Cait had been there for that conversation too.
And now she knew why there was a ten year old girl on Nightwind.
She really didn’t have to ask her name.



Raven was singing up a storm. Or singing it down, trying to, anyway. Raven knew weather; he could see the wind, see its patterns, see what was coming. But this was no ordinary storm, which he understood, which he’d sailed through, sung into calm. This was a Merrow storm, one gone totally out of control. The forces humans called magic had summoned it, and only those forces could quiet it again. He needed a Merrow or two. Or twenty. He had two human teenagers and one young Elven illusionist.
Not enough, not enough. These were Merrow songs, songs he knew something of, but not enough. 
It would have to be enough. Undoubtedly, if left to its own whims, this storm would relieve the crew of Raven of the depredations of Nightwind. Undoubtedly it would also relieve the farmers and fishermen of Chincoteague of their entire island.
Silver Raven’s mainmast was one huge tree grown out of the earth with the energies of the sun, it thrust up into the wet sky, down below the waves, through the hull into the keel. She was part of all four elements; earth, fire, sky, sea. Like the four at the base of that mast.



Chasseur thundered up the last reaching waves, over the dunes, over flowing water from overwashes between the dunes, and onto sand lashed with rain and spray blowing off the sea. Cait was no longer merely clinging to her, but riding her, using weight and leg to steer her. She seemed to be responding, or maybe it was just that she wanted to go the same direction as Cait. The small girl before Cait was quiet, still. 
Terrified.
Cait saw the dark shapes of men through the rain, back in what the park ranger had called the shrub zone, the swath of big bushes between the dunes and the woods. The mare slowed to a trot, ears pricked toward the surviors of Nightwind’s demise.
Then she stopped.
Cait studied the vague shapes through the rain. Then she dug her heels into Chasseur’s sides and sent her forward to them.
They stood, peering out from under bits of sail, blankets, anything they’d managed to pull out of the sea.
Cait rode forward another few steps, called to the nearest men, “Where’s your Captain? I have his daughter!”



This was crazy. Sharkman definitely knew nothing about magic. Sharkcycles, Crapzilla, antigravity obfusticators, all in a day’s work. But standing at the base of a hundred foot lightning rod in a storm, while Bran sang stuff that sounded out of the Dark Ages, was like trying to remember all the dates in the War of 1812.
Which was precisely where Sharkman was.
Holycrapzilla. 
See the sea calm, Bran had said. Right, that was easy when there were forty foot swells trying to break over your head. Ok, slight exaggeration, but not much. Jason stared up at the mainmast, its top lost in the rain and fog. Green flashes announced the presence of lightning somewhere overhead. I really hope Bran knows a deflect lightning spell or two. He glanced over at Zan, half hidden, at the next compass point on the mast. Zan’s eyes were closed, as if he was concentrating. He was silent, not singing like Bran, but a faint glow was dancing up from his feet, across his body and up the mast.
Jason blinked, whoa. He couldn’t see Diana, on the other side of the mast from himself, he couldn’t hear her either. It was amazing he could hear Bran, with all the wind and thunder. The Captain had vanished, presumably to do something Captainish, leaving the magic to the Elves.
And the dorky kid.
What am I doing here? Whatthe heck use is one dorky kid.
FOCUS. The voice didn’t come through his ears, but from somewhere inside his head. It sounded like Bran, except he was still singing.
Or maybe it didn’t sound like Bran at all. More like Shaughnessy. 
Huh?  Jason was still wearing the wetsuit he’d come aboard in. The one Shaughnessy’d made as he shapeshifted from whale to human. It had kept him warm all the way here. It almost felt like it was glowing now.
See calm. See blue skies. See mirror flat sea.
Maybe if I could draw it. 
What do you see before that?
He saw the picture in his head, of course. Then he drew it. Then he made it real, on paper at least.
See it. Make it real.



Zan had been part of magic like this before. Zan had done magic with Bran before. 
This was entirely different from anything he’d ever done before.
He squinched his eyes shut, trying to lose the noise of the storm, the thunder, the roar of wind. Trying to find that quiet place inside from whence came the “magic”.
The deck rolled under his feet, the rain poured on his bare head, dripping his red mane into his eyes, the wind howled around his ears.
Wish I was like Cait. In the silence you could find the faint trail of the energies you were trying to channel.
He tried to follow Bran’s song. Tried to see what Jason was seeing. Tried to grow roots into the earth like Diana.
He’d done magic with her before, or later...in the twenty-first century. But it was different here, with her in a different form, shapeshifted the way humans did. She had different gifts from Ian, though her aura and spirit were the same. Zan couldn’t quite get in sync with her as he had with Ian.
He opened his eyes and got a faceful of salt spray and rain.
See it calm. Sing it down.
He concentrated, found the faint firefly glow of the energies he needed. Found them in the green fire flashing overhead. 
The thing about illusions is; if the illusionist is asleep, unsconcious, or dead, the illusions vanish. They vanish equally well if the illusionist is paying more attention to something else. There was no one to see the tree island waver, vanish and become a sharp-built, two-masted schooner again. There were other crew on Raven’s deck though, only a couple, but enough to see the illusion on the kayaks slip. The traditional skin boats wavered, shifted to plastic; bright blue, neon green and yum yum yellow. 



Several of the Nightwind’s crew came forward. One reached for a bridle that wasn’t there, paused, hand hanging in midair, eyes wide in amazement. The mare laid her ears back and warned him off.
“What? What did you say?” one of them said into the wind.
Cait saw the man’s face, saw his lips move, then realized she wasn’t hearing the sound of the storm, she was hearing static. The sound of water frying her hearing aids.
“Captain Pyle!”
“What of him?”
Cait couldn’t see what he was saying, only that it looked like a question. “Margo!” She said and held the girl toward them so they could see her face.
“Where did you come from ?”
Another question, one Cait couldn’t hear. A ring of men had formed, a circle with Cait at the center. They were closing in, tighter. She suddenly thought of the old westerns with the wagon train surrounded by Indians. Or the Indians surrounded by cavalry.
“Is there shelter? A farm? Where?”
They looked desperate, afraid. Shocked, soggy, dead tired, some with wounds hastily wrapped. Chasseur moved uneasily under Cait, stepping from one foot to another, ears pinned.
Drop the girl, leave now, go to the Raven. Let these take care of her.
Chasseur backed up another step, two. Someone grabbed at the mare’s forelock, as if to hold her. She reacted like a lightning strike snapping her teeth shut on his arm. She wheeled then, without any prompting from Cait, took two thunderous strides and sailed over the heads of the men with the woods at their backs.
Cait clung, wrapped around Margo, slipped, regained her balance. Chasseur galloped, and Cait saw grey rain and flashes of darker shapes that might be candleberry bushes or wax myrtle. Then darkness rose before her, and Chasseur was back in the woods, sailing along a trail Cait couldn’t see, thin branches whipping off Cait’s back. Then out into lighter grey, water underfoot, and the black wall of the Raven’s hull. She slid to a halt on the deck by the mainmast.
Four figures stood around it, faint lightnings dancing through them, up the mast, and into the grey sky.
A sky lighter, with only a fine mist falling out of it. The green flashes of lightning were dancing farther out now, over the mainland, moving west toward where Montana and Wyoming would be in a few decades. The Raven rolled with less vehemence. 
Bran lowered his hands, closed his mouth, stared at Cait and the black mare. His mouth made word shapes, but Cait couldn’t hear them. She handed Margo down into Diana’s waiting arms. Zan and Jason came, staring up at her in amazement.
“Where’d you find that?” Zan said, then when he saw her expression he signed it.
“On Nightwind.” Cait said. “Before she sank.”
They exchanged glances, looked back at Cait for an explanation.
Of course, they hadn’t been there that day in Holly’s yard. They hadn’t heard Bran’s tale about Margo. They didn’t have a clue.
For that matter, neither did Bran.



Morgan dragged the last crewman onto the beach, let the wave wash carry him back out. Back out beyond the wreckage strewn waves. Waves that had begun to relax into long rolling swells. The wind was fading, the green flashes of lightning retreating over the mainland. 
Raven magic. Raven, Thunderbird, singer of storms himself. Of course, he could calm them too.
Morgan glanced toward the end of the island, and the channel that led back to the Raven. There he would likely find a storm he didn’t want to weather just now. 
If the Raven was still afloat. 
She’ll be alright, won’t she? She’s behind both islands. Yeah, right, just fine. And it looks like Bran did something to protect her.
He thought of the time, only a month ago, or two hundred years from now, when he had lashed out in anger and broken Ian’s foot. Bran had unleashed no physical storm, just one of the mind. Now Morgan had broken much more than that. More than just the Nightwind.
Right now, he was too exhausted to think too closely about what Bran would have to say about that. 
He turned his face to the grey east and swam.
Space Time Conundrum



The girl looked around, wide-eyed. Bran could feel her relief at being on a ship that had more water on the outside of the hull than on the inside. He could also feel her fear.
“Welcome aboard the Silver Raven,” he told her. Behind him, Captain Claiborne pounded up the gangway at the heels of a young crew woman.
Diana set the little girl down on the deck, and the girl’s fear morphed into anger. She named them pirates and brigands and other things no ten year old should know. Her words showed a long association with mariners unused to small children or polite company.
Bran and the Captain suffered it for a long, patient minute, traded glances, then waved the child below in Diana’s keeping. The Captain vanished again, below.
“Whoa,” Jason observed, “I’d be grounded for a month.”
“Ground...what?” Bran said.
“Groun...” Jason frowned, apparently in the nineteenth century, parents locked their kids in the brig or something. “Never mind.”
“Something to do with that space-time conniption you were mangling, I suppose.”
“Continuum.” Zan said.
“Ah.” Bran cast an eye amidships and saw an amazing sight.
The wonders of plastic.
“What...” he intoned, “is that?”
“Crapzilla.” Jason breathed, staring at Sandtiger’s brilliant blue and neon green hull. And Finrod’s yum yum yellow hull, no longer looking anything like a dory, and eighteen feet of bright blue called Sky, which Bran himself would buy in two hundred years or so. He shot a look at Zan, staring lemur-eyed at the twenty-first century anachronisms.
“Zan.” Jason stage-whispered. “ZAN!” 
Zan looked.
Jason pointed to their clothing which had ceased being Generic Pirate Movie, and were now spandex, neoprene and eyeball blasting colors unknown in the nineteenth century.
“I really can’t multitask.” Zan said. He waved his hands and their clothing morphed back, to something closer to what the Raven’s crew was wearing. 
Bran paused, one hand on Sky’s plastic hull. He withdrew the hand and eyed Zan.
Zan’s fingers waved, and the wood and skin boats were back.
A long, long look passed between them.
“Seriously...if we get back and the Star Spangled Banner is something else...” Jason said.
Bran strode back to them, paused in mid-stride, called an order to one of the crew on deck. “I need some spare canvas. Enough to cover...those.” He pointed at the disguised anachronisms. His eyes went back to Zan, “You’ll have to sleep sometime.” 
“Sleep, what?” Jason said in confusion.
“The illusions only work if I’m paying attention to them. If I’m asleep, or unconscious or dead. Poof!”
Bran called to the retreating back of the crew woman on the sail cloth mission, “And some appropriate clothes for these three.”
Cait slid off Chasseur, it felt strange to be standing. Still moving, though, with the gently rolling deck, almost like being on a horse. Horse, wave-horse, ship, all the same thing. “What about Margo?” she said out loud.
Jason and Zan exchanged looks. “Margo?” Zan said. Then Signed it, when he saw her tap her ears and make the “died” sign, like two fish flapping on a boat’s deck.
“You know. That Margo.” Cait signed it, knowing Bran couldn’t read it.
“Crapzilla.” Jason said out loud.
“Margo.” Bran said. “That’s her name?”
“She’s the daughter of the captain, Captain Pyle.” Cait said. She knew the shapes of the words, she hoped her voice wasn’t too loud, or too soft.
Bran let out a long breath. “The Captain.”
Zan signed it to Cait.
“I suppose you didn’t see him?”
“No. A lot of his men were on the beach, up behind the dunes. The ones that got ashore. The ones that Morgan pulled out of the wreck. I tried to take Margo to her father, but no one on the beach knew where he was. They almost kidnapped me, too. Wanted me to take them someplace safe, like a farm or something.”
“Whoa.” Jason said, “There’s a whole shipload of guys from the other side... what about Chincoteague? What if they come in and raid the whole island. Carry off all their stuff.”
“In what?” Zan said, signing at the same time, “Nightwind’s trashed.”
“I didn’t see any of their small boats either.” Cait said, “They had pieces of sail and spars that washed up and some barrels and stuff they’d salvaged already. But no boats.”
“They must have got wrecked too.” Jason said. “Anyway, there’s a lot of water between them and Chincoteague.”
“There’s people on Assateague though.” Cait said.
“What?” Jason said.
Cait shot him a shhhhh look. Signed without speaking out loud. “Too bad you didn’t come along on my dad’s history lesson. There were settlers on both islands.”
Bran’s eyes went from one to the other, raven keen, but he didn’t ask. “The Nightwind crew has more to fear from the enterprising islanders. They’ve salvaged wrecks before. Some say caused a few. The crew might salvage what they can as it washes ashore, then try to signal a British warship, one of the many ranging the coast and Bay. If the islanders don’t get there first.” He paused, thinking, “Perhaps we should see that they get there first.” He turned to Cait, If you can find your horse, ride and find the nearest settlers and warn them.”
She nodded.
“I doubt any of the crew’s weapons survived the deluge; swords sink swiftly and powder will be uselessly drenched.” Bran said, “And it’s summer, they won’t die of exposure. If they are diligent, they will find water, firewood and food. But they are not our problem. We have a cargo to deliver.” He cocked an ear toward his feet, and the muffled sounds coming from belowdecks.
“What are we gonna do with her then?” Jason said. He shot an apprehensive look at Zan.
Zan signed back, “We should stick her somewhere she’ll never find her way out of.”
“Like one of those alternate universes you told us about?” Jason signed.
“Something like that.”
Bran’s eyes went from one to the other. “Have you any brilliant plans you want to share?”
“Cait should just take her back to her father.” Jason signed it too, for Cait.
“She already tried that. Nobody’s going back to Shipwreck Camp now.” Bran frowned into the distance, “Better for her and better for them if we take her up the Bay. Leave her with a trustworthy household who can find her relatives. And the daughter of Captain Pyle may assure us of safer passage.”
 


It was grey mid-day above, but belowdecks it was twilight. Not altogether dark, the hatches had been opened to let in the air, decks above and below had been swabbed, tidied, put in ship-shape order. The last repairs were made. Cait, Zan and Jason were given spare clothes by the crew, cotton and canvas in earthy tones. their own things they stowed in the kayaks, hidden under a bit of spare sail canvas. The cook fed them a hearty mid-day supper. Then they piled into hammocks and fell asleep.
Out in the marsh, a black mare grazed on the salty grass, still half covered by the storm surge.
Farther out, where the water flowed clear of silt and sand and runoff, clear of wreckage and surf thunder, Morgan drifted to the bottom and slept.



Cait woke to a cold wet nose in her hand, dangling out of her hammock. Surf stared back at her, his droopy eyelids making him look eternally worried. She rolled out of the hammock, saw warm light slanting down the hatch from above. She found her sandals, found Jason, snoring still, poked him awake. She could smell something cooking in the galley. “Come on,” she told Jason, “breakfast’s cooking.”
Breakfast. Or supper, or something. Cait poked her head out of the hatch, the sun was low in the west, the late July evening was hot. At least the mosquitoes hadn’t figured out how to fly from the marsh to the Raven’s decks. 
Zan joined them in a few minutes, bearing supper, or breakfast, or whatever it was, hot from the galley stove. Aloft, a handful of crew were finishing repairs.
“Now what?” Jason wondered, then remembered to sign it for Cait.
“They’re gonna sail up the Chesapeake.” Zan said around a mouthful of white goo. Some kind of mystery porridge, he thought. 
“I know that part. Up the Chesapeake with a hostage who’s gonna remember Bran in two hundred years and kick his butt.” Jason had a chunk of something that looked to Cait like hard tack, the classic sailors’ hard bread. 
“Did you bang it?” she asked.
“Huh?” He stopped with a chunk halfway in his mouth.
“They always banged it on the table, or gunnels, or something.”
He gave her a look of pure cluelessness.
“To knock out the weevils,” she added, deadpan.
Jason hurriedly set down his seabiscuit and turned to the mystery goo. At least he couldn’t see any weevils in that.
Zan reached over and tapped Jason’s hardtack, something small, white and boneless wriggled out of it and strolled across the deck. Another, considerably larger, followed. “And they’re off!” Zan said in his Announcer Voice. “And it’s J-bear in the lead and...” he looked up to see Jason’s totally grossed out expression. “Well, who’re you betting on?”
“Uh.” Jason pointed vaguely at the strapping huge one, already in the lead.
The little one seemed to kick into warp drive at that point, passing the first. The large one, left in the rear, fell victim to a passing shoe.
Splooch.
“You should always choose the lesser of two weevils.” Zan signed/said, without missing a beat.
Cait groaned.
“Maaaan, I hope those were some of your illusions.” Jason said.
Zan said nothing, just grinned a pirate grin.
“I really really don’t want to eat any more of that... whatever it was.”
“Seabiscuit.” Cait said.
“There better not be any horse in this!”
“That’s where the racehorse got his name, dodo,” Cait said, “all that horse family had sea names; Hard Tack, Seabiscuit, Man-O-War.”
They fell silent for a few moments, chewing. Then Jason said, “How’re we getting home?”
“We should go back and try the lighthouse again. Or at least, where it was.” Zan said.
“Island’s crawling with guys from Nightwind. We should go with Bran.” Cait said.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Zan signed it and said it too, “Bran’s headed the wrong way, away from Chincoteague.”
“But he can sing open Gates.” Jason said.
“Not this kind.”
“We don’t know for sure what kind it is.” Cait said.
“Yeah we do.” Jason said. His voice shifted, eerily like Bran’s, “now, the Gates of the Dragon Mothers; the Elders of the Elders, the Dragons themselves, opened those. Those are the dangerous ones. They can put you into otherwhere, or otherwhen, or both at once. War of 1812? I think that qualifies as otherwhen.”
Zan shook his head, “I’m positive he just knows about them, he doesn’t know how to work them.”
“I bet he knows somebody who knows somebody who does know how to work them.” Jason said. “And I bet they’re as alive here as they are in our time.”
Zan’s eyes widened, “The Grandmothers.”
“What?” The other two said.
“Hawk Circle. It’s been around forever. Well, almost.”
“The farm in PA?”
“Yeah. We go with Bran to Baltimore, and...”
“...paddle up the Susquehanna.” Jason finished with a look that clearly said you’re a squid-head.
“Nah, we get a carriage or a stagecoach or...” Zan looked perplexed.
“And we’re gonna do what with the Merrow who has to some with us?” Jason said, “Not to mention the sled dogs, the two hundred pound Newfoundland and three kayaks. And the swords and bows and scuba gear in them.”
“You brought scuba gear?” Cait said incredulously.
Zan shrugged, “Ya never know.”
“Aerial reconnaissance.” Cait said suddenly.
“Huh?” The boys said in unison.
“Rebel blockade runner.” Cait said. 
Zan waggled his fingers and the opening scene of Star Wars flashed between his hands: a tiny ship fleeing before an endless battleship.
“Not that one.” Cait pointed up into the rigging, “this one.”
The boys stared at her, then Jason’s face spread in a grin. “Yeah. War of 1812, British blockades, blockade runner!”
“What was that about aerial reconnaissance?” Zan said.
“How do you think the Silver Raven avoids blockades, warships and other trouble she can’t outgun?” Cait’s hands made bird shapes.
“Bran.” Jason said, “except he’s grounded. In both centuries.” He made bandage wrapping motions around his arm. “The Raven doesn’t have her raven anymore.” 
“Yeah,” Cait said, “but she’s got two illusionists.”


Bran heard them out in his small cabin aft of the mainmast. There was just enough room it it for one bunk, a couple of clothes hooks on the bulkhead, a sea chest and a tiny writing desk. The three kids crammed into the doorway, Zan first, words spilling out like excited puppies.
Bran leaned on the bulkhead, face skeptical. 
“We get you to Baltimore. You find someone who can get us to... where we need to go.” Cait finished.
He studied them for a moment. “These are uncertain times. I may not be able to find... someone who can return you to...ah, your port of departure.”
“We’ll take our chances.” Cait said.
“Better than staying here.” Zan said.
Bran still looked dubious. “I do not know how you travel in your land, but here it can be expensive.”
“Pirate gold.” Jason said suddenly. 
Bran’s expression shifted minutely. If he’d had wolf ears, they would have pricked up. His eyes at least, seemed to catch more light than was possible in the twilight cabin.
“We know where there’s a whole treasure; ten ironbound chests, buried in the 1730s, right here on Assateague.” Zan said. “Privateers can always use more booty, right?”
Bran’s eyebrows crept up a notch.
“We split it.” Cait said.
Bran’s eyebrows fell a notch.
“Crapzilla.” Jason said, “you need a Dwarf to find it though. The directions are so old, that the island doesn’t match the map anymore.”
Bran’s eyebrows crept up another notch. “We don’t need a Dwarf. We have a Merrow.”
“They can find treasure?” Cait asked.
“You didn’t know?”
“Morgan keeps saying stuff like; what’s so important about something no one has used for three hundred years?” Jason said.  
“Three...? Bran gave him a sharp look.
“Longstorysomeothertime.” Jason said quickly.
Bran turned to Cait. Made a few halting signs. When she returned a blank look, he turned to Zan. “I know half a dozen kinds of Sign, but not hers. Tell her to find her horse. She can find Morgan fastest. Then we’ll see about our treasure.”
“Our treasure.” Cait emphasized the our with a sign.
Bran nodded, maybe a little too hastily.
“Cool!” Jason and Zan backpedaled out of the cabin. Cait was already running up the gangway. Jason glanced back once at the little writing desk. There was a quill stuck in a holder on top of it. A big grey quill. 
Sort of the color of Bran’s hair.
No, not quite. This was more warm grey goose color, not the bluish stormcloud color of Bran’s feathers. 
Bran’s feathers. In the twenty-first century, gone. But some of them, the rest of them, were here... He had to have more than the one he was presumably wearing.
But where were they? 
Yeah, right. We need to pirate a couple of feathers from Bran....to give to Bran.

Morgan woke to the sound of a drum; boom... boom... boom. He blinked in the green twilight, no fish noise that. He looked up to where the lowering sun was making the surface glow seventy feet overhead. A dark shadow interrupted the wrinkled glowing surface.
BOOM!
Now what? Morgan surfaced slowly.
Cait sat there, a couple of miles offshore, lounging on Chasseur’s back like a cowboy. The mare stomped again. Boom, a splat of saltwater caught the light of the sinking sun.
“What are you doing here?” Morgan said.
Cait frowned at him, tapped her ears and made the ‘died’ sign again.
Morgan signed it, “What are you doing here? Is the Raven ok?”
“Yes. Where you been? You better hurry back or you’ll miss the boat.”
“Boat? What boat? We don’t need a boat. We need a lighthouse.” He wasn’t sure about the sign for lighthouse, so he made the convulsing squid shape Zan had once, in time with the Assateague light’s blinks. Nightwind was sunk, Silver Raven was safe. Maybe they could go home now.
Without talking to Bran about Merrow storms.
“We’re leaving. We’re going inland, up the Bay. They have a cargo to deliver to Baltimore.”
“How are we going to get home?”
Cait shrugged, “Bran, maybe he can find somebody who knows how to get us home. If not, we stay here, become privateers. Maybe I’ll ride west and be a cowboy.” She grinned.
Morgan didn’t grin back. He stared out to sea.
“Come on.” Cait said out loud. 
Morgan looked past her, inland, then the other way, to the open sea.
Cait saw it. “What’s out there?”
“My family.”
“You don’t exist yet.”
“We have always existed. Just not in these forms.”
Cait made a face that said you’re weird. Out loud she said, “They don’t know who you are.”
“They could send us home.” Morgan’s face showed less certainty than his emphatic signs.
Cait snorted, Chasseur echoed her, like a cannon shot. “Maybe take you a year to find them. Anyway, sounds dangerous. Longer we’re here, more we mess up time.” She studied him, “You’re afraid of what they’ll say about you making a storm that ran away like a wild horse.”
He glowered at her.
“Come on. We need all four of us. Bran needs illusionists to get him past the blockades, since he can’t fly ahead and see where the warships are.” She smiled like she had a secret. “And you’re the only one who knows how to find the pirate treasure.”
“What?” Morgan closed his mouth on more words Cait wouldn’t hear. She wouldn’t see his protests either, she’d already turned and squeezed the black mare into a canter toward shore.



It was harder to find a farm than Cait thought. There were no blacktop roads crisscrossing the island, both islands, there were settlers on Assateague and Chincoteague. No broad dirt roads like her great grandfather might have ridden, only a few sandy paths. Gulls wheeled in the sky, deer flashed away from Chasseur’s path; only the native whitetails, not the tiny spotted Sika that the Boy Scouts would introduce in the twentieth century. She spotted herds of ponies in the open places, all bay and brown and chestnut; none of the flashy pintos and palominos and golden buckskins of later years. She rode past fields of corn and other crops in the last light, and white flocks of sheep. Then ahead, a small house, a cabin really. A yard fenced with rail and brush, another small fence with two oxen in it munching hay that looked like it might have been cut straight from the marsh. Smoke rose from the roof, though she couldn’t see a chimney. Maybe they just had a smokehole, her father had said something about that; the early houses being real simple. She called out. “Hellooooo! Anybody home?”
A man came to the door, a woman peering over his shoulder.
“I came to warn you. There’s a big ship washed up on Assateague beach, right out there.” She glanced at the compass she’d brought from Sky, “There, that way.” She pointed. She told them about the crew, and the wreckage, and to tell their neighbors.
The man said something, but Cait couldn’t hear it. She smiled, “Hurry!” she told them, touched Chasseur’s side with her heel. The black mare spun and galloped away.
She found a few other scattered farms, a cottage along the edge of Chincoteague, facing the mainland, they had a boat and would go over to Snow Hill. Another fisherman set out straight away to rouse the militia. Another swift gallop, another wagon track, vague path, fisherman’s trail, sheepwalk. Another message delivered.
“I feel like Paul Revere. None if by land, a hundred and fifty by sea.” Cait thumped Chasseur on her damp neck, “Don’t you ever get tired? I am!”
Chasseur snorted, shook her mane.
“What you think? We told enough people?”
For an answer, Chasseur pointed her nose toward the Raven and broke into an easy rocking chair lope.



It was dark when Chasseur leaped over the gunnels onto the Raven, dripping cool water from Chincoteague Bay. Morgan followed, hauling himself up by the main shrouds. Jason and Zan stopped, a length of heavy line in their hands, and stared.
Morgan leaned against the rail, closed his eyes. He was still aching from bruises, sore muscles and cuts from shipwreck debris. The sound of booted feet on the deck made him open his eyes. The Raven’s Captain stood staring down at him. 
“Fortunately,” the Captain said, “I had people on board who could calm wave and wind and,” she frowned as if remembering something she’d been told, “wild horses of Manannan. Keep them from swallowing both islands and this ship as well as the one you apparently meant to wreck.” Her eyes had the kind of light seen in storm clouds.
Receding or coming storm clouds?
Morgan studied the caulked seems between the deck planks, the shape of a coil of line by his tail. “I meant to drive her onto the sandbars,” he said weakly.
“You did that well enough it seems. You nearly drove the sandbar right over all of us. And you also, by Cait’s account, killed off a fair number of her crew.”
Morgan looked up, “They are the Enemy, are they not?”
Another voice broke in, Bran’s. He had come up the gangway behind the Captain. “This week, they argue with their brothers here. Tomorrow they will all be friends again.” His expression was less severe than the woman beside him.
It was true, Jason and Cait and Zan knew, though Bran couldn’t know it; in a hundred and thirty years, the same people would fight beside the Americans against others in the war in which the very young Morgan had been a rescuer.
‘We,” the Captain said, “have run the blockades, carried cargoes, commandeered merchant ships. We have used misdirection, speed, agility, fair winds, and a few Raven tricks. Unlike others in this war, we have not usually been dealers of death.”
Morgan thought of the words Bran had told them, the words Margo had said to him; I was there when you sank her. Well, Bran had not sunk her. A storm had. Margo, if she was one of those on the beach, would know nothing else. Morgan looked up at Bran, wishing he could tell him. I saved you her wrath, her revenge. What he did say was, “I pulled most of them out of the wreckage, onto the beach.”
The Captain opened her mouth, as if to deliver another broadside. Bran raised his hand, gently, warding off the verbal blow. His expression seemed more like the swashbuckling privateer Morgan remembered from the twenty-first century. “What he has seen, and felt, is enough. There will be no more storms.”
The Captain glanced at Bran, back at Morgan. “Well, we have survived. And we have need of your talents.”
Morgan let out a breath, nodded.
Then from below came a shriek, a thud, crash, shout.
“Bloody hell.” Bran said, “What’s that blasted sea dog spawn up to now?”
“Who?” Morgan said.
“The child Cait pulled from your wreckage. The Captain’s daughter, Margo.”
“Mm...m...Margo?” He had been picturing the one who had stolen his sea-cap. The one who had kidnapped Bri. Who had burned Bran’s last flight feather, which magic had backlashed and nearly destroyed Ian as well. 
Not a tiny kid.
“You know her?” Bran’s glance had a keen edge to it.
Morgan’s mouth hung open, not at all sure how he could answer that.
"Longstorysomeothertime." Zan said.
“Space-time continuum.” Jason said quickly.
Zan added. “If we told you, we’d have to wipe your memory banks.”
“My what?” 
Jason and Zan exchanged panicked glances.
“I think,” Bran said, “the sooner you are off this ship, the safer the...space time conundrum...”
“Continuum.” Zan said.
“Whatever...will be. Try to at least pretend that you belong here, until we can figure out a way to return you.” With that, he turned and strode aft.
Cait punched Jason’s arm, they had forgotten to sign, and she’d been left out of the conversation. “What?” she demanded.
“Huh? Oh.” Jason signed, as best he could, what had happened.
“I think conundrum might be right.” Zan signed to Cait and Jason. He eyed Morgan’s stunned expression. “Weird karmic time loop paradoxes.”
“What?” Cait signed.
“Margo’s peeved, messes with Morgan, Ian, Bran and Bri, nearly kills them all.” Jason explained, Zan signing the translation, “Morgan’s peeved, time travels, sinks her ship. Margo’s peeved, wrecks Morgan and friends. Morgan’s peeved, sinks her ship. Margo, peeved, wrecks Morgan and friends...”
Zan stuck his hand over Jason’s mouth. “I think we get the picture.”
“You guys are so weird.” Cait signed, the ‘weird’ sign a wriggling oddity under her chin. She crouched down next to Morgan, said, as softly as she could, “You ok?”
He nodded, but his face looked less certain. He looked up and caught Zan’s eyes. They held what looked to Cait like a silent conversation. Finally Morgan said, “I’ll go back to Shipwreck Camp and find her father.”



“You can’t go without fuel.” Cait handed Morgan something from the galley; salt beef, different from the steak he’d burned on the grill back in Holly’s yard a month ago. Or two hundred years from now. The time thing was weird, Cait didn’t want to think about it too much. It got tangled in her head like the rigging of a wrecked ship.
Morgan took his breakfast, “Thanks,” he signed. If he thought it tasted odd, or that it lacked the tenderness of twenty-first century backyard barbeque he didn’t say. He finished it and slid over the side into the dark.
“Be careful.” Cait called after him.
He nodded and dove, leaping like a dolphin down the bay.
Around the end of Assateague, the sand dunes of the seaward shore of Chincoteague to starboard. Then up the coast with the speed of Swordfish to where the sea still tasted of tar and powder and death. To where the waves still washed with silt and debris. At least the kraken tangle of line and sail had mostly washed ashore. He swam over cannons, half buried in the sand. Cannons that would be swallowed by the island herself in a few years. In his own century, where would they be? Inland, under the quiet woods, or out there, under the clean clear water of the open sea?
Morgan rode the surf in as he had so many times here and on other beaches. He hitched himself up on the sand, peering inland at a dark blur, listening hard. He thought of his friend, caught by men on a long ago beach...or a beach not yet made. A Merrow who had discovered that human fear could turn to deadly violence. He glanced back at the surf, wondering if he should have brought Cait and her nightsea mare. 
No, this was his mission.
Still, he did not want to go too far inland. Too far from the safety of the sea. He called into the dark. “Captain Pyle! Captain Pyle, where are you? I have a message from your daughter!’
Silence. The cries of gull and tern. The distant hoot of a great horned owl. Owl. A bird familiar to Morgan from any shores. One of the Guardians of the Gates to the spirit world.
Or just a bird defending her territory.
Then movement, dark against the dark line of distant loblolly and wax myrtle. The scrunch of sand under foot. Morgan hitched back, closer to the safety of the sea. How fast were these men? How fast was he?
Muffled voices, then a surprised “Mermaid?”
“I am no maid.” Morgan snapped. 
“I saw one leaping in the storm that sank us,” someone said. The voice sounded unfriendly, accusing.
“One dragged me to shore,” came another voice.
“They can sing up storms.” 
“That’s why we sank.”
The sentences came thick and fast, layering over each other like waves racing up the beach on a spring tide. Morgan could no longer understand them, but he felt their anger, fear, dismay, suspicion. Of disbelief, there was none. This was an age when at least some sailors knew that when a map said “here there be dragons”, there really were. That if you sailed too far, you might find the edge of the world. A Merrow on the beach was no surprise. 
A Merrow on the beach was vulnerable. 
“Belay that!” The voice was stern, commanding. The Captain, Morgan hoped. Then they would be rid of Margo, she would not grow up to seek out a Merrow, or a Ravenkin. Perhaps the time stream would fix itself. It would be over.
The figure strode to within ten feet of where Morgan lay, half in the swash zone. “What message?”
“We found Margo Pyle. My friend saved her from the wreck. She is safe with us on the Silver Raven.”
There was a long moment of the man studying him. Morgan couldn’t see his eyes, but he could feel the strength of his gaze, of his ability to command, even in the face of such a disaster. What would he say if he knew it was I who called up the storm?
“Keep her.” The man said with finality.
“What?” Morgan said in shock.
“It was always a bad idea, to have a girl aboard, even if the Captain wished her to learn all the skills of a boy. You are a creature of the sea. You should know that it is bad luck to have a woman aboard, even one so small. The luck has been proven. Take her on your own ship with its outlandish crew of girls.”
“But... your daughter...”
The man laughed, “Mine is safe in London, being schooled in the proper ways of being a Lady. Captain Pyle is dead.”
Morgan coiled on the sand, the wavelets washing over his tail, his mouth ajar. He could not think of what to say to that. He knew what it would mean in two hundred years. Finally he said, voice cracking like a stepped on crab. “What of her family then? There must be some who would take her?”
“No,” the man’s voice softened, only a little, “that is why she was here. There are no others.”



He climbed back aboard Raven and delivered the news. “Maybe you could keep her with your crew?” Morgan suggested.
Bran cast a wary glance beneath his feet. It was quiet below now, but only because the child had finally succumbed to his magic backed suggestion to sleep. “No.” He said flatly. “We will find a family willing to take her then.”
Morgan wanted to tell him, tell him to do something else, tell him what would happen in two hundred years. He could not.
Bran studied him for a moment, looking as if he wanted to ask how do you know her? What do you know of her? What has she done? Will do? He remained silent. At last he said, “You know of the buried pirate gold the others spoke of?”
“I have heard the tale.” Morgan paused, “On this very island.”
“We have a use for it. And you are the one who can find it.”
“Me?” Morgan was incredulous.
“Ah, you haven’t learned that song yet. I know it, but it doesn’t work for Ravenkin, only your folk.”
Morgan nodded. He still couldn’t fathom what the use of something no one had used for three hundred years....or one hundred... would be. But then he didn’t understand stuffed whales with fur, or much of what he’d seen on TV.
“Come then, I’ll teach it to you.”



The treasure hunting party set out. The kayaks were lowered into the water, in their ninteenth century disguises. Surf and the two sled dogs were installed in their former place in Finrod.
“Tell me again why we need sled dogs?” Jason asked.
“It’s buried on land.” Zan explained.
“Duh!”
“Morgan has to find it.”
“Yeah, and...”
“What happened to the wheelchair?”
“Uh... the wheelchair?”
“You know, the one Earla made from stuff we salvaged?”
“Uh, yeah! The one that was raising Sandtiger’s center of gravity to the point of stupidity.”
“The one you apparently left lying in the marsh.”
“You never mentioned it. Neither did Morgan.”
“BOYS!” Cait yelled.
Zan pointed at a roll of canvas under the feet of one of the dogs. “Dogsled.”
“Huh? It looks like one of the ship’s hammocks.”
“It is.” Zan’s face went thoughtful, “Less like a dogsled, I guess, and more like one of those cheap toboggans, the kind that’s just a sheet of plastic you slide down hills on.”
“And where are we gonna find snow? In July?”
“Not snow. Sand. Morgan lays on it and the dogs pull him where we need to go.” Zan’s face held a self-satisfied expression.
“Where do you come up with this stuff?” Jason said.
They paddled north. Jason in Sandtiger, Zan in Finrod with the dogs, his bow, and his sword, Cait still in Sky, (the bo staff yet protruding from her bow) feeling odd, now that Sky’s real owner, Bran, was rowing behind Cait in the last ship’s boat from Raven. Bran wasn’t actually rowing, his bandaged arm would have made him row in circles. She smiled, thinking about it. Diana rowed, along with one other crew member. 
Morgan leapt ahead, singing the song Bran had taught him, tasting the water, listening to the whisper in his heart. Feeling the faint tug of something he didn’t need or care about. 
His friends cared though, so that was enough.
North, in ever shallower water. Morgan paused in his song, glanced toward the dark wooded shore of Assateague, hoping the Nightwind’s crew would not see them in the dark. Hoping they hadn’t salvaged any boats from the wreck. The island was silent, except for the sounds of gull and owl and foraging deer and raccoon and fox. The letter, found in the lid of an old trunk in Germany in 1948, confirmed by the Naval Records Office in London as authentic, mentioned three creeks lying north of the second inlet above Chincoteague Island. Creeks, inlets. On Assateague? On the mainland? Bran thought he remembered the inlets, sea passages from ocean to bay, on Assateague from the early 1700s. Inlets came and went, opening in one storm, washing full of sand in another. He thought he knew where the creeks had been too; narrow arms of the bay leaking back into the marshes of Assateague. One of them had gone far enough into the center of the island to end in a cedar woods, and a sand bluff facing the not too distant ocean. Even though the island had shapeshifted under the caress of wind and tide since then, Bran thought he could get them all pretty close. Morgan would do the rest.
Except he’d never sung this song before. He’d never searched for the debris of human civilization except with eye and hand, in the shipwrecks he’d encountered, already on the bottom. Sometimes the song sputtered like a candle flame in wind. Sometimes the faint pull of the treasure seemed to be coming from somewhere it couldn’t be.
Maybe the horses of Manannan would know where it was, but Chasseur had vanished. Maybe into the dark marsh to graze. Maybe out to sea to fish, he had no idea. 
He was on his own.
“Morgan,” the voice came from well astern. He twisted in mid-leap, swam back to the ship’s boat where Bran leaned over the gunnels. He cocked his head, birdlike, questioning.
Morgan shook his head, a land creature movement, not one used much undersea.
“Your mind is too cluttered.” Bran said. “See, feel the whole web of the island, the bay. The ten ironbound chests are like a cannonball in the middle of a ship’s hull. An interruption in the energies of the marsh.”
Morgan let out a frustrated breath. Nodded curtly and turned north again. For awhile he was silent. 
Silent. He only knew this place with the distant sounds of engines; boats, cars. The faint background hum of radio and television and cell phone energies. The taste of steel and diesel and other things he couldn’t name. It felt different now. Cleaner, quieter. He listened. Felt. Tasted.
He started the song again. Now he could feel the way the way water and land wove in and out of each other. The roll of the waves and the roll of the sand rising out of them. He could feel the sweep of gull wing and the muffled thunder of pony feet. The stretch of loblolly reaching into the sky, and the reach of roots holding the dunes in place.
There...not far, a hiccup in the pattern. A dissonance in the song’s reflection. He kicked it into warp drive and swam.
“Morgan! Wait up!”
The wavering line of the marsh grass gave way to a narrow cove.
No, a creek. A creek leading back into the marsh and the woods beyond. Morgan could see the dark blur of trees, high against the night sky. He could feel the pull of the object of their search. There there! Just like Bran said. Just like a cannonball in the ship’s hull. A big butt-kicking one. He swam up the creek till the bottom became too shallow to swim. He stopped, pulled himself out of the water, up onto the grass.
Something moved in the bush, just beyond. A shadow. Then another. He could hear them, smell them.
Men? The Nightwind’s crew come for their own purposes? Across the wide, shallow bay? Had they salvaged ship’s boats?
Morgan lay, propped on his arms, utterly still, scenting the land breeze.
Not men. Something unfamiliar, unknown.
Something dangerous.



He heaved himself backward, a great twisting leap into the water. Morgan thrashed back through the shallows, down the creek toward the boats. “Stop, stop! he called to them.
The kayaks wheeled on the waves and circled him. Bran’s boat came up like a wall, blocking farther retreat. “What?”
“I...I don’t know. Something. Someone. Not someone. Some thing.” Morgan pointed wordlessly. Then he began to feel foolish, here, in open water, where he could feel, smell, sense the approach of any creature. Where all he could feel was the echoes of fish, rays, the small sessile things on the bottom, drifting sea nettles and moon jellies and plankton.
Bran cocked his head toward Morgan, then toward the creek, twisting into the darkness of marsh and wood. He stared into the dark for a minute, motionless, then he reached for something lying at his feet. He flowed up into a stance like a crouching cat, his hand moved.
Blue light bloomed on the edge of the circle of boats; a thin line, like frozen lightning. Or one of the magic weapons from one of Morgan’s favorite video games.
“Whoaaaaaaaaaaa!” came Jason’s voice out of the dark, “is that a magic sword?”
“Call it what you will, magic, wizardry, sorcery. None of those are what we call it.” Bran said, “Her name is Skyfire.”
Only Zan didn’t seem too surprised.
“Go.” Bran said to Morgan, “Lead the way.”
Reluctantly Morgan turned, swimming slower this time, making sure the boats were right on his tail. The creek narrowed, became shallower. Mosquitoes came from the grass and shrubbery, braved the open water of the creek and descended on Morgan. 
“Gaaah!” He flailed at them ineffectively.
Diana heaved an extra stroke or two on the oars, and slid up beside him, wide eyes scanning the dark edges of the marsh for trouble. Bran leapt out into a foot and a half of bay water, weird blue sword in hand. “What?”
Morgan flailed some more.
“Oh.” Bran’s sword lowered, he whispered something into the night air and the mosquitoes vanished. He turned to the dark land, stood quietly, listening. “Show yourselves,” he said levelly.
Brush crackled, twig snapped, the grass at the edge of the water crunched underfoot. From the shadows of tree and bush forms emerged. They looked, to Jason and Cait, man-tall. But they did not move like men.
And they had tails. Long ones, sweeping sword curves thick at the base and sharp at the end.
It occurred to Jason that they looked a lot like the tails of certain small dinosaurs; like Utahraptor or Deinonychus. 
They stepped into the open, star light and light of low curve of moon, and the light from the blue sword finally making them more than shadows.
Humanoid, more or less. Or what might have happened if Deinonychus had evolved into something humanoid. A bit more muzzle than humans. Normal sized arms, long humanoid legs. As they moved, Cait could see they stood on their toes, like dinosaurs, and one toe carried a sickle shaped curve of talon the size of a Bowie knife. And they had feathers; bodies patterned by short feathers in dappled tree shade colors, manes and crests that rose and fell like some birds’. Different shaped crests, like humans with different hairdos. They wore nothing and carried less.
The leader stepped forward and spoke, “Brannan, Ravenkin. Keeper of Skyfire. Sailor of sky and sea. Descendant of the Carrier of the Sun. Singer of Storms. Minstrel of Fair Winds.”
Bran nodded faintly, rolled his eyes, as if he wished the speaker would dispense with formalities already.
“ I am Raszkathz, daughter of Ashnarii, Keeper of the Lost Gates of the East, the Secret Gate of the West. The...”
Her voice droned on into the background as Jason leaned over to Zan, he signed, “Who are these guys?”
“Girls. The guys are smaller.” He signed it so Cait could see it.
She stared at him, then at the creatures on shore. She almost smiled.
“What brings you here?” Raszkathz, daughter of Ashnarii was saying.
“Since when are you the guardians of lost human treasure?” Bran countered.
A snort, derisive, “We care nothing for your rocks and metals and toys. You should know this.”
He seemed to nod in agreement, “Doesn’t explain your presence in a very wet place.”
Raszkathz, daughter of Ashnarii’s face contorted in what might have been a grimace for her kind, extracted a foot from muddy marsh. “It is those four who concern us.” She pointed at Morgan, Cait, Zan and Jason.
“They have been a conundrum.” Bran agreed.
“Continuum.” Zan whispered.
Jason read Zan’s face. A face that said he knew something. “What?” Jason prodded. “What are they?”
“Orcs.” Zan said.
“Orcs?” Jason’s face showed a mixture of disbelief, horror, and excitement. 
A hiss came from one on shore.
“I wouldn’t use that word in their presence,” Bran warned. “It carries too much of the weight of humans’ injustice, savagery and brutality toward them.”
Jason thought they looked about as vulnerable as a hungry velociraptor. “What then?” Jason said.
“Children of the Dragon.”  Bran said. “Dragonkin.”
Zan signed it to Cait, floating on his other side.
“Whoa.” Jason eyed the feathered creatures onshore. He blurted, louder, “Dragon Gate. Hello!”
  “Dragon Gate?” Bran said.
Raszkathz answered, “They activated one long unused. Because humans had built their own construction on top of it, it had nearly been forgotten.”
“Would this be about a lighthouse that doesn’t exist?” Bran said.
“Yet.” Zan agreed.
Morgan swam closer, “When, where are you from ?” He asked them.
Another hiss, a rumbling noise neither Elf nor Human could translate. “Where. When. That has no meaning,” Raszkathz said.
“They travel through space-time at will.” Zan said. “Like the dragons.”
“You do not belong here.” Raszkathz, daughter of Ashnarii said. “We will return you where you belong.”
“You’re not just gonna hand us over to them, are you?” Jason said to Bran.
He shook his head. Held up a hand in a gesture meant to stop further comment. The unbandaged one, the one carrying the sword.
More hisses, rumbles and creaking squawks from the orcs. 
Dragonkin.
“I have a better idea.” Bran said, One that will benefit both our parties. Save you further excursions into the damp. Save you the trouble of dealing with our young. Especially since one of them is of the Seafolk.”
Mutterings, rumblings. Of dissent? Agreement? Or did they just not like Merrows?
Bran shot a glance at the four adventurers, his eyes went back to Raszkathz, he grinned a raven grin, “They can be quite a lot of trouble. And I doubt also that you want to deal with their Guardians; Manannan’s Horses,” he eyed Cait, “and Shark,” his eye fell on Jason.
Jason poked Zan, “What is he doing?” he signed.
“Convincing them they don’t want us.”
“Can’t he just stop them from shanghaiing us?”
“Maybe.”
Bran was saying, “Send one of yours with us. She can send them back when it’s time. I have need of them for a little while.” Bran paused, “And if they found, and activated a Dragon Gate, don’t you think there was some cosmic purpose behind it?”
If Raszkathz, daughter of Ashnarii thought there was, she didn’t say. She did say, “You travel by water.” It was stated the way one might say you eat pig guts for breakfast.
“Inland.” Bran said, “To Baltimore. Not that far on the water. You can open Gates anywhere.”
Rumbles. Mutterings. Something that sounded like a sparrow strangled by a fox.
Out of the night blue bay, Morgan said, “What do you know of Margo Pyle and the Roane?”
Silence. Total utter silence. Feathered crests rose at alert.
“Margo...and what?” Bran said. “What horse...”
“We will send Ashnareth.” One stepped forward. The others faded into the bush as if they’d never been.



O.R.C.S.



“You’ve been tracking them for awhile.” Bran said. His voice suggested it was more than a suggestion, less than an accusation. 
Ashnareth gave him a level gaze, eyes shining like cat’s in the dark, like the bioluminescent green glow of dinoflagellates and combe jellies. “They were hard to find.”
Jason had a sudden mental image of orcs ‘porting through the space-time continuum, popping up in the middle of sea battles with wooden ships and cannons, space battles with lasers and photon torpedoes, in stone age villages, in undersea cities.
Zan held his hands up and the whole scenario played between them in 3D and living color.
Ashnareth was unimpressed. “Your attachment to temporal space is so limiting.” She sniffed and stalked up into the woods.
Bran watched her go, then eyed the crew still adrift in their kayaks. “Get Morgan and the dogs and come.” Diana had already dropped the anchor of the ship’s boat and was shouldering gear, along with the other crew woman. Bran kept his sword, flickering with faint blue lightning, in his hand. Diana came and slung a gear bag over his shoulder, but he held only the sword.
“Are they dangerous?” Jason signed it too, making sure Cait could see. He nodded after the retreating Dragonkin.
“Yes.” Bran said. “So is the sea. The sky, fire, sharks.” He eyed Jason.”Unless you understand them. They do not practice deceit. They have no need to accumulate wealth, status, power. They simply are.” He paused, “and they swim exactly the way sharks don’t.”
They unloaded the treasure hunting gear from the boats; shovels, a few of the ship’s hammocks, a few water skins against the warm night and hard work, and a small wooden bowl to water the dogs. Their weapons they slung on their backs and at their hips; Jason took his bo, Zan his bow, and Zan handed Cait his sword. She had learned fencing from her father, and more serious swordplay from Bran, between bouts of working on the Lady Niamh. The Raven’s  crew had brought their own weapons; a variety of cutlasses and pistols. Diana seemed to have an inordinate number of them slung about her, and stuffed in boots, shirt, holsters and slings. 
Jason said to Zan, “Where’s your arrows?”
“Don’t need any.”
Jason didn’t ask any more, just broke into an appreciative grin, trying to imagine what kind of cool effects an arrowless bow would produce.
Cait and Zan harnessed the dogs, hooked the gangline ot Morgan’s hammock/sled. He slithered aboard. “Mush,” he said.
“It’s ‘hike’ Jason told him.
“Whatever.” 
“It’s...” and here Bran said a word which Jason could never have reproduced in several Elvish lifetimes. Bran saw Jason’s querying look, and finished, “...at least among the Inupiat.”
“Easy for you to say.” Jason said. Diana handed him another bundle of gear, he heaved it over his shoulder. He felt like a cross between a fully armored knight and someone decked out to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. “You know, all Indiana Jones had was a hat and a bullwhip.”
“Who?” Bran said.
“Never mind.” Zan said.
“Is this something I’ll find out about some century?”
“Yeah.” Zan thought of Bran’s vast video collection. And how Bran always beat him at movie trivia. And his extensive action figure collection. “Absolutely too much about.” He led the dogs up a few feet, stretching the gangline. Cait waited beside him, “Ready Morgan?”
He nodded.
“Which way?”
He pointed, straight ahead, up the sandy slope through the woods. The dogs started off, slow but sure, the rest of the crew behind. Morgan hung his arms over the sides, pushing against the sand the way a surfer paddles against water on a surfboard. The mosquito spell Bran had sung seemed to hold for the entire party. Jason could hear a faint hum, just out of reach, feel the soft flutter, like snowflakes, against his face, but none landed, none bit. They found a deer trail through the bushes, then more open ground with scattered, twisted trees and bayberry. 
Morgan stopped the dogs twice. Thrice. Lay against the sand, listening. Feeling for that dissonance in the web of the island’s life. There. Up toward the thickest stand of trees. No bluffs now, they were long worn away by wind and storm, leaving only a rounded hill. The original cedars had fallen, been replaced by loblollies and a few scattered hardwoods. Morgan stopped again, far from the water now, he wasn’t so sure of where the treasure lay. The others waited, silent shadows in the dark.
Waiting.
Waiting.
At last Bran said. “You’re the only one who can find it.”
  If he had the freedom of water, the ability to move in all seven directions, he would have circled; in the four flat directions of the compass rose, then in the other directions; up, down and center. But he could not. He was landed, beached, in a tangle of wood and brush. The dogs waited, panting. “Go that way a little farther.” Morgan said uncertainly.
Cait and Zan started off, leading the dogs. Ducking under branch and parting prickly greenbriar.
Now the glow of the treasure seemed to be coming from behind.
“That way.” Morgan pointed.
Or from over there. Or there. Back and forth they went, following deer trails, pony trails, no trails at all. Sometimes Bran would go ahead, and the woods seemed to part before him.
Morgan came no closer to pinning down the precise location of the treasure.
“Whoa!” Morgan called out. Dogs halted. Cait and Zan halted. Bran and his crew halted, all stared at Morgan. At the edges of the shadows Ashnareth waited, silent, without comment.
Morgan frowned into the dark, feeling stupid.
“Sing the last part again.” Bran said.
“Will it help?”
“How will you know unless you do it?”
From somewhere came a wrinkled, gnarly voice, “Do or do not, there is no try.”
Bran gave Zan and Jason a startled glance, cocked a querying eyebrow.
“Zan!” Jason gave him a quick shove, “Anachronism alert!”
Zan shut up, Bran resumed parting the shrubbery, occasionally glancing back at Morgan, his expression silently asking this way? 
Morgan sang the song again. And again. He stopped the dogs, heaved himself off the canvas hammock, onto the sand. The same sand that he swam over in the sea. This sand had rolled up out of that sea eons ago, and would return to it. Part of the sea... part of the sea... part of the sea... he sang.
Then he felt it. The cannonball in the ship’s hull. There it was, right under him. A darkness in the warm energy of the island. A break in the web. “Here,” Morgan said breathlessly, “Here!”
They dug. Morgan could feel the iron and disintegrated wood of the chests, the silver and gold in them, the gemstones of the earth, carved and polished by humans to suit their ideas of beauty. Not too far down, the island had blown away from the burial in the eighty years it had lain there.
Far enough. In video games, your character ran effortlessly through his world, his mountainous pile of magic items summoned into existence only when needed. Treasure leapt out of hidden places when your character nailed them correctly. In movies, heroes braved intricate traps, mysterious maps, hidden clues, and at least one really good villain, beating them all to find the treasure. 
Here was only a sandy hill in the dark. Sand and a lot of digging. And the thing about sand is, much like water, it runs back into the hole you have been taking it out of.
“What we need,” Jason said between breaths, “is one of those big vacuums like undersea archaeologists use.” He threw a shovel full of sand over his shoulder, only to hear an exclamation from Diana.
“Oooops. Sorry.” 
“Where’re you gonna plug it in?” Zan said.
“How about a Move Sand Spell?”
“You clearly don’t understand the rules of magic.”
“Can’t be any harder than weevils.” Jason thunked the shovel back into his hole. Plunk!. Jason stopped, staring down in disbelief. He thumped the shovel down again, plunk! He turned to Zan, already staring wide-eyed at Jason’s hole. “Does that sound like sand to you?”
“Noooooo, I don’t think so.” Zan plunged his shovel into Jason’s hole, then both were digging like crazed badgers.
Cait had by now excavated a hole even larger than Jason’s. The others, too, were beginning to hit things not sand. Even the dogs were digging. Only Ashnareth stood aside, wondering at the insanity.
They piled it onto the hammocks, hiked it down to the boats, one load at a time. It was just like the letter, found in the trunk, had said; bars of silver and gold, diamonds and jewels to the sum of 200,000 pounds sterling, Charles Wilson.
Without the rotted and disintegrating chests, it could be loaded into the holds of ship’s boat and kayak.
They were headed back up the hill for another load when something crunched in the brush below them. “We’re being followed.” Zan said. 
Bran motioned for him to go back down the trail. Zan went, silent as a fox.
The rest stood, ears and eyes straining into the dark. 
Waiting. Waiting.
Finally Zan reappeared, trotting back up the trail, a shadow looming behind him.
“Chasseur?” Cait said. “What you doing here?”
For an answer she stalked up the trail ahead of them, pausing once to look back as if making sure they were with her. Ashnareth stepped aside to let her pass, and kept her distance from Manannan’s mare.
“She seems afraid of the horse.” Cait observed to Bran.
Bran nodded, motioned to Zan to translate, “Sea-horse. Water is the most powerful stuff on earth. Ashnareth knows that. And water is not her element.”
The mare stood while they unearthed the last of the pirate booty. She faced away, toward the sea, scenting the wind off it. Then she spun, scenting something from the south.
She let out an explosive snort, like a cannon.
Even Cait could feel it. The party stood at the alert, weapons in hand. Ashnareth stood sniffing the wind from the south.
“The Nightwind’s crew?” Jason said.
“They have more important things to worry about.” Diana said. ”Like finding water.”
Then came a sound, utterly alien to the crew of the Silver Raven. Utterly familiar to Jason, Zan, Cait and Morgan.
  The roar of motorcycle engines.
Cait saw the stunned expressions of the others, “What? WHAT!” she demanded.
Zan made the ‘motorcycle’ sign, his hands revving an imaginary throttle on handlebars.
“Here?” All Cait could think was that motorcycles were illegal in Assateague’s backcountry. Who would be riding them through a hole in time to find... us? The treasure?
Ashnareth replied to all the ‘whats’ with a low grumble, her mane of feathers stood straight up, making her look bigger and more fearsome than ever.
To Cait, that didn’t look promising. Whoever was on the bikes wasn’t out for a Sunday charity drive.
“What is that?” Bran said.
Zan shot a startled glance at Bran who could make motorcycles do crazier things than his helicopter. Yeah, in two hundred years. “Come on,” Zan started moving downslope, “to the water!”
Bran’s eyes went from the distant snarl, growing ever louder and closer, to Zan’s near panicked face. “What...?” Then he saw Ashnareth’s expression, one of passionate ire. “Go!” He told the others, “Move!” 
The dogs kicked into high gear, trotting down the slope, then breaking into a gallop, dragging Morgan with them. The black mare leapt past them, thundering down through the woods. Cait and Zan hot on her heels. Bran and the Raven crew took up the rear, one last small chest in a ship’s hammock, dragging behind. Ashnareth waited, watching the compass point whence came the ever increasing roar.
Out into the open of the marsh bordering the creek where the boats waited. 
Too late, a semi-circle of three bikes sat between them and the creek, rumbling like hungry dragons. The muffled roar of the distant others broke into thunder even Cait could feel as four more broke through the trees. 
Five more. 
Six. 
Seven. Zan reached and cut the dogs loose. He paused and mumbled something at them, waving his hands in what looked to Cait like a spell. Diana unsheathed a sword and tossed it to Morgan. He was still nearly as bad at catching as throwing; he rolled out of the way, letting it fall by him, then scooping it up, coiled like a snake about to strike.
Zan raised his bow, Jason gripped his bo, “What are a bunch of offroad cycles doing here? Did Ashnareth just poot us back into the twenty-first century?”
“I don’t think so.”
The cycles roared closer, then halted, rumbling ominously. The riders were all clad in black leathers; twenty-first century motorcycle leathers, heavy boots, black helmets, faceplates dark as the space between the stars.
Ashnareth stepped forward, snarled something in her own tongue.
The reaction of the nearest biker was instantaneous; he tried to run her down. She leapt up, lashing out with one great sickle claw. The rider’s head whipped back, he flipped neatly off the bike. His helmet split, fell off.
The face visible in the glow of Bran’s sword wasn’t human, not at all. It was the same as Ashnareth’s, weird feathers and all.
“O.R.C.s.” Zan said, as if he’d known all along. 
Jason stared in disbelief.   
“Get it?” Zan said hopefully, “Off Road Cycles. ORCs.”
Jason didn’t have time to contemplate the awfulness of the pun. Or the fact that none of them had any tails. The nearest bike was heading at him full throttle.
Then it was all roaring chaos chewing up the night. The wheeling flash of Skyfire, the sizzle as she bit into bike and rider, the clank and boom of Diana’s cutlass and pistols. The flame-flash of small meteors flying from Zan’s bow. Bigger flashes of flame and smoke accompanied by a faint sonic boom. This time Chasseur did not vanish, the black mare was everywhere, breaking on the bikes like a wave, drowning engines, kicking riders from their seats, denting helmets. A rider swung by Morgan, swept low as if to swing him up into the bike’s seat.
Morgan jammed his cutlass into the wheel, rolled away as the biker did a fine 360 degree flip in midair.
Cait saw one bearing down on her; to run her over? To grab her and flee? She didn’t have time to think why they were here. Don’t think Bran had told her once, long ago, or two hundred years from now. Just do. The biker ORC swept at her, she stepped aside, swung the sword. The bike went down in a magnificent wreck of flying marsh mud and smoke.
Jason’s was on him. It was different standing in Holly’s torchlit backyard, practicing a bo staff routine till the moves came without thinking. Utterly different from standing in a marsh, where someone had dropped the mosquito spell, and a guy on a big bike was coming at you in the dark at forty miles an hour. The ORC leaned, reached.
Jason planted the end of the bo like a pike, let the ORC’s momentum carry him straight onto it. The ORC’s adherence to twenty-first century safety standards of helmet and leathers were no match for the ancient technology of a really big stick.
Whammo! The whole mess blundered into the marsh goo. Something in the bike fratzed, sporked and died in a thin trail of grey smoke. 
The ORC thrashed under the bike but stayed pinned. Jason stood over him, the jagged end of the shattered bo pointed at what he hoped was a vulnerable spot. “Don’t move!” Or what? Flipping a guy off a bike that was bent on running him over was one thing, but killing him outright? Jason didn’t want to think about that too much.
Around him the chaos abated. Bikes lay flattened in the grass. Bodies lay strewn about. Bodies in dark leather and helmets, some moving faintly, some not. 
Someone laid a hand on Jason’s shoulder.
“Gaaaah!”
“It’s me, dude. We got ‘em.” 
Jason turned to see Zan and the dogs, Cait standing behind him, the black mare peering over her shoulder. Beyond, Bran and the Raven crew were rounding up any orcs who could move. 
Ashnareth growled something into the night. She went from dark mound of dead bike and downed rider to next dark mound, poking and prodding. Some rose, some didn’t. The ones who rose seemed smaller than Ashnareth, or any of her kin. And none of them had tails, though some had lost their boots, and Jason could see the wicked sickle claw, like Ashnareth’s. She hissed what sounded like orders to those who could move. She hauled the bent bike off Jason’s ORC, and shoved him, limping, toward the others.
Not far away lay a pile of leather and bike that hadn’t joined the growing knot of prisoners. It looked oddly flat, as if its owner had escaped. “Hey, there’s nobody home.” Jason said, pointing his shattered bo at it, but not quite touching. The gear was tattered and partly burned, but he could see no body.
“One down.” Zan said behind him.
“What?”
“If you kill them, they...” Zan frowned, spread his hands and a small ball of flame appeared between them, blossoming and fading like a fireflower.
“Whoa. Spontaneous orcish combustion?” Jason’s face twitched between humor and horror.
“Yeah.” Zan said, “That’s why there’s no evidence of their existence, in fossils, in science, in your newspapers, even in your gossip rags. They don’t leave any.”




“What is this?” Bran swept his hand, still holding Skyfire, in a circle, indicating the bikes, the orcs, and the small circles of blackened grass where some had met their end. He directed that at Ashnareth. It sounded nearly like an order. 
Ashnareth made a noise that might have been a warning, or a Dragonkin oath. “I will call my sisters. We will deal with them. It is not your concern.”
“Who are they. Your kin, no doubt. But on these...” he stared at the strange futuristic technology, glanced at Cait, Zan and Jason. “Perhaps you are right. Not something we should know about. Call your clan.”
Ashnareth raised her head, howled something into the night. A low moaning call full of deep rumblings such as elephants use to communicate over long distances.
“Why were they after us?” Cait signed.
“You sure they were? Not just treasure or something?” Jason said. He frowned, “Wait, Bran said they don’t go after stuff, like treasure or wealth. But these guys have bikes. They could buy a lot of cool gear with this treasure. And how’d they get here? Through the lighthouse?”
“They didn’t need it. These guys travel through space-time as easily as their sisters.” Zan signed it, for Cait.
“Guys. These are the guys?” Jason frowned at the shapes huddled in the dark by Ashnareth. Even in their leathers and helmets, they were distinctly smaller than her.
“Not all of them. Just the rebels. The outsiders. Mostly young guys, fascinated by the technology their own folk never use. We call them Docktails, because they dock their tails to look more like men.” Zan peered over his shoulder, noting Bran was yards away, unable to hear his whisper.
“You two were on the Niamh,” Cait said, “I was in Holly’s yard, listening to the sailor from the Roane talk about their mission. Or what he knew of it which wasn’t much. He said, Crates came on board. We never saw their faces. The faces of the ones who brought the gear, but there was something...something odd about them. Bran and Tas wanted to know what. Carlos said, They moved different. And Tas asked if they had tails. Carlos said, Tails? Tails! No, no. Men in black leather. Their faces masked, hooded, helmeted. Men I would not want to tangle with.” Cait pointed to the orcs on the ground, some huddled in a group with Ashnareth towering over them. “Sounds like them.”
“And the Roane has all kinds of futuristic tech, and magic stuff” Jason said. “The ORC Delivery Service makes sense.” He glanced at Ashnareth, hovering over the prisoners. "Wonder what she knows..."
Cait strode over to Ashnareth, guarding the orcs. Zan trailed after, with the idea of translating. Cait circled around a bike lying next to an empty set of leathers, slightly burned. Cait turned a questioning face to Ashnareth. 
“They chose their death,” she signed.
“You know my language?”
“I know many. You fought a formidable foe well, for one so young.”
Cait shrugged, “my father taught me well. So did Bran.” 
“You know Bran in another place.”
“Yes.” Cait studied Ashnareth, something about her seemed different from the others she’d come with. “You’re young too.”
Ashnareth’s jaws opened slightly in what might have been a grin, “You see clearly.” She studied Cait with golden eyes, “You are not afraid.”
“Of you? Why?”
“Your people are always afraid. Kill what they do not understand.”
“That’s true, but only sometimes.”
“Too often.”
“Why are the Docktails here? Do you know?” 
“Do you?”
By now Zan and Jason were hovering behind her. Morgan frowned at them and began hitching himself over to them.
Ashnareth glanced at Bran. “There are things he cannot know.”
“He doesn’t know this Sign yet, it hasn’t been invented.”
“Yes, I sometimes forget the where and the when of things.” Ashnareth signed.
“I think I know what the Docktails are doing. They’re pirating technology from different times and places and selling it to Margo Pyle on the schooner Roane.” She paused, trying to read Ashnareth’s expression.
Ashnareth glanced at Morgan.
“Your people know about her. Something about her anyway.”
“You see far more clearly than most of your kind.”
“I heard one of the Roane’s sailors say they were getting stuff from men who looked like those.” She pointed to the orcs in their black leathers. “And Bran and Tas were on the Roane, and saw some pretty weird stuff.” 
Now Ashnareth’s eyes widened, as if this was news.“You know this.”
“Yes.” Cait said.
Ashnareth glanced at Bran.
“He won’t know any of this for two hundred more years.”
“Why are you here?” Ashnareth said. “I know how, the Gate. But why?”
“The Gate sent us. I don’t know why.”
“Ah.”
“You think the Docktails came looking for us,” Cait said, ”or for whoever opened the Gate? Or maybe Margo sent them after us? Why did you come?” 
“Because the Gate opened. We wish to avert any damage caused by misuse of our Gates. Even forgotten ones.” She glanced at her prisoners. “It is an extra gift that we stopped these.”
“They’re a problem.” Cait didn’t make it a question, but left the door open for Ashnareth to explain more.
“They have always been a problem. We move through space-time, taking nothing with us. They make a great mess wherever they go, tangling things that should remain separate.”
“You’re like, the Time Police?”
Ashnareth cocked her head as if she didn’t quite get it.
“Does the Roane go through gates, or time travel?”
“The Lady Niamh, and certain of the Elders, and the horses of Manannan are the only ones who travel in time besides us. And the Dragons. There are other Gates, and other Gatesingers.” She eyed Bran. “We have not seen this Roane in any other world but yours. Why are you so concerned with Margo Pyle?”
Cait said, “She messed with a lot of us; kidnapped Morgan, then Bran, then my sister. She nearly killed Bran, and Ian. I don’t know what she would have done to my sister, or Morgan. I don’t know why she wanted Morgan to begin with. Why are you so concerned with her?” Especially since you didn’t seem to know that the Docktails were bringing stuff to her from different worlds. Before Cait could ask more Ashnareth turned northward. Cait followed her gaze, saw the air shimmer, twist in on itself. A hole appeared in the air, a hole full of sunlight and shade-dappled woods. The scent of crisp fall air flowed out, was shut off as the hole shuttered closed. 
Twenty Dragonkin stood in the marsh, eyes glowing in the faint light of early dawn. In that light Cait could see the colors of their plumage, dappled and striped, colorful as parrots and leopards. The leader stepped up to Ashnareth, exchanged information in low twitterings and chirpings. With barely a nod to Bran and the others, they scooped up the fallen orcs, the bikes, the gear shredded and burned, and herded the ambulatory orcs into a huddle. The hole in the air opened, spread, engulfed the lot of them and closed again.
Only Ashnareth remained. She eyed the black mare of Manannan, signed to Cait, “I did not know you had the favor of Manannan’s horses. I did not know what your purpose was. I do not need to see you home. You will find your own path.” She eyed Chasseur again, “With her.” She turned as if to go, to follow her kin through the Gate.
“Wait.” Cait said. She glanced at Zan, Jason, Morgan.
Morgan seemed to pick up on her unspoken thought. “We might have need of a Dragonkin.”
“Even,” Zan said, “if we are traveling by water.”
“Even more,” Jason said, “you might have need of what we find out.”



Rebel Blockade Runner



Once more day and night seemed to reverse themselves, as Cait and the boys crawled into hammocks at dawn. Even Morgan, not wishing to miss the boat should it decide to leave, had hauled up on deck, slung a hammock and fallen asleep. Chasseur grazed in the marsh a furlong away. The kayaks had been stowed, the treasure secured. The Dragonkin and orcs and their anachronisms had vanished like a dream, except for Ashnareth, lurking in the precise geographic center of the deck, trying very hard not to look out at the expanse of water, not yet as vast as she knew it would become. Zan had done an illusion on her, turning her into a fairly ordinary, if rather tall, sailor. Which left her tail, now invisible, an obstacle to any who ventured too near.
From aloft, a sailor with a good spyglass, or Elvish eyes, could see that the islanders had formed a small army, and descended on Nightwind. Or at least, what remains of the ship that had washed ashore, or were caught on the sandbars not far from the beach. Her own crew seemed not to be putting up much resistance; they seemed more interested in fresh water, food and a way off this mosquito infested sandbar.
Bran watched the black mare graze in the warming light, wondering if she would stay. He could not fly ahead as he was used to, spotting the blockading warships, dodging, outmaneuvering, outrunning. Raven was flying blind this trip, because her raven couldn’t fly. Well, they had two illusionists. And a Dragonkin. And maybe, if Chasseur decided to come with them, a scout on a fast horse.
Beyond the small scattering of two-leggeds and their problems, the two islands shifted from night to day. Creeks and shallows filled with a white storm of egrets, herons and gulls hunting the abundant small fish. Blue herons stood like trees, watching the water, then struck like lightning. Snowy egrets danced, wings outspread, yellow slippers enticing fish to come near. Gulls and terns swooped over the middle of the narrow creeks and guts, while the herons and egrets hunted the edges. Out on the bay skimmers unzipped the water with their long lower bills, nabbing any fish they touched. Osprey and eagle soared. Along the coast, the dolphins started their morning commute. A fishing boat from Chincoteague spread its sails on the wind and slid out of the channel into the sea. Ashore, there was discussion about when Pony Penning would begin this year. And Sheep Penning as well.
In a week, Nightwind would be picked clean by the scavengers; human, crab, shark and others. The shifting sands of Assateague would take care of the rest. In another time, a pinto pony with one blue eye would gallop along the same beach, and find no evidence the ship had ever existed.



Light bloomed in the dim belowdecks of Silver Raven, feet thudded down a gangway, someone shook Jason’s hammock. He peeled an eye open. Diana raised her lantern, making him blink. “Up, up, you’re on watch with the rest of your scurvy crew.” She was grinning, as if she’d just got the latest, greatest video game.
“Wha?” Jason managed to mumble. He wasn’t very good at mornings, especially if they came in the middle of the night. He blundered above with Cait and Zan, saw that it wasn’t quite night; a warm glow still lit the western sky. Morgan was already on deck, perched on the gunnels by the fore shrouds, leaning against a belayed line like he was in a big vertical hammock. Here he was close to the sea leaping up against the sides of the ship. Here he was eye level with the rest of the crew.
Jason stared out at water, lots of it. Almost lost in the sunglow was a low dark line that might have been a distant shore. “Gee Toto, I don’t think we’re in Chincoteague anymore.”
“Indeed.” Ashnareth rumbled from her position, hunched by the mainmast. Her face suggested she might rather be by the rail, barfing over it, except that she preferred being farther from the sea roaring by the hull.
“We’re headed for the Virginia Capes.” Diana said. Even here, where there was little chance of being accosted by orcs or warship crew, she had an inordinate amount of ordinance slung about her; pistols, knives, a good cutlass, and...
“Are those grenades?” Jason said, squinting at two small round objects slung from her belt.
“Yes.” Her grin got a bit wider. “We outrun what we can’t outgun. But we’ll outgun what we can’t outrun.”
Jason turned to Zan, “I didn’t even know they had grenades.”
Zan shrugged, “ask me about moon jellies, or the sixty-eight kinds of bloodsucking insects I now have an intimate acquaintance with.” He turned to the sound of orders called from abaft. “Come on.” He dragged Jason and Cait along with him, and in a moment they were hauling on lines as Raven tacked. Her bowsprit, still the color of unpainted new wood, swung across the horizon like a unicorn’s horn.
A big butt-kicking fighting unicorn.
“The Virginia Capes?” Jason said.
“Mouth of the Bay.” Diana said, “Cape Henry’s to the south. The end of the peninsula that holds Delaware and Maryland and part of Virginia to the north, that’s Cape Charles. We’ll round it in the dark.”
“Where’s the blockade?” Jason said.
“We never know.” Diana’s eyes went to Bran, perched on the bowprit. “He can still sing us up a fair wind, but he can’t scout ahead for the warships.” She turned to Zan, “So, he says you can help us.” She looked less than certain. 
Turning a motel room into a pirate ship was one thing, but turning a privateer into a warship was something entirely different. For a warship was what the Captain wanted. Something the British blockade would take for one of their own. Problem was, Zan had a very vague, pirate movie influenced idea of what a British warship of 1814 looked like, and Morgan had no idea at all.
It wasn’t as if one could look it up online. And the illusion could only be seen from the outside; to have the Raven’s crew see it, to turn the deck of the Raven into the deck of a warship would make it impossible to sail her. 
“I guess we’ll have to wait until we see one.” Zan suggested. 
Captain Claiborne eyed him, “I trust you have the keen eyes of your kindred?” She glanced at Bran. “And that you can see one before we are under their cannons.”
Zan nodded, glancing at Morgan. Morgan could back him up, as always, but it was up to Zan to know what a proper warship looked like, and spin the magic. Zan held up a finger, testing the wind. It seemed to have failed. “I thought you were singing up a fair wind?”
“I have, and the wind has complied.”
“There’s like, no wind.” Jason said.
“Light airs are an advantage for us.” Bran said. “The massive square-rigged warships are becalmed, while we fly past them.” He gave them a grin, a wicked pirate grin like they hadn’t seen since the twenty-first century. “And do you think the Silver Raven would have sails of ordinary canvas?”
Zan’s eyes widened.
“What?” Cait punched him. “What?”
“Ravenkin.” Ashnareth signed. “Ravenskin.”
Of course, that’s why they weren’t the pale sand color of canvas, that’s why they had that faint silvery sheen. “Your family wove them.” Zan said. “Using their own feathers.”
Bran’s grin widened. Then he headed aft to the helm.
Zan glanced up, saw crew aloft impossibly adding more canvas to the vast cloud already catching the airs. Topgallants bloomed above the tops’ls, stuns’ls spread the wings of canvas...of woven Ravenkin magic... wider, a ringtail grew the mainsail into one vast wing.
Raven heeled on the faint breath coming from the northeast, the sea surged past her bow, the channels slid along the swells like surfboards. In the last of the light, they could see the dark edge of Cape Charles to the north as they rounded the cape into the great Bay’s mouth.



“Where is Chasseur?” Cait wondered. She was working on one of the many small mending jobs sailors, or cowboys, do when they are done with their ropes and are only riding the wind. For the moment, Raven was riding the wind without any help except from the helm. 
That was Jason and Diana. Zan was still aloft, staring into the night sea, looking for warships. The sea swells still echoed Morgan’s storm, they plunged against the rudder, and that flung the nine foot tiller back and forth like a gate in a gale. It was crosstied, like a horse awaiting tacking up, lines running from its end through pulleys and back through the hands of the helmsmen. Diana certainly knew the ropes on Raven, but Jason’s extra muscle was welcome. He watched her, hauling on the line when she did, trying not to do it in the opposite direction. Raven’s bowsprit, a hundred feet away, had the disconcerting tendency to migrate in the wrong direction no matter what Jason did, like a cowpony ignoring the reins. 
“There,” Diana said, “did you feel that?”
Feel what? Blisters, sore muscles, and sunburn. Somehow, all the stuff stuffed in the kayaks had not included sunscreen. Jason frowned at the wayward nose of the ship, drifting leftish when it should be pointed toward the small blit of cloud on the horizon. “What?”
Diana gave him a witheringly patient look, “The wind.”
What wind? There’s still hardly any to notice.
“When it picks up, she turns her nose into it. When it dies back, she falls away.”
“Oh.” Sure, I noticed that. Jason knotted his eyebrows in concentration.
“Don’t try so hard. Just feel it.” Diana said.
Weird, sounds like something Bran would say.
Diana laughed, “Bran told me that all the time when I started.” 
“Yeah, sounds like him.”
Diana gave him a sharp look, if she thought it was strange that Jason seemed to know so much about Bran, she didn’t say. 
“It’s kind of like riding a big horse.” Jason said. “These are the reins.”
Diana smiled, nodded.
“You can feel a good horse through the reins, feel just what he’s doing, with his feet, his body, everything. I can feel the water going past the rudder. Feel the waves roll under the hull.”
“Good, good! Now you’re getting it!” Diana made a small adjustment and Jason followed her lead. 
He could feel the shift of the wind now. He began to see when the ship swung her head into it. “Yeah...yeah!” A big swell rolled by, Raven charged up and over it, spray exploding around her sharp bow. She knifed the water as if it wasn’t there, as if she didn’t need it, only the air to spread her wings upon.  “Woooo-OO!” Jason whooped. This was way cooler than anything he would have been doing back at the ranch. Ranch...home, wonder what they’re up to?
Wonder if I’ll ever get back? At the moment, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Bran appeared with a course correction. 
They swung west, and Jason could see a faint line of darker against the dark sky; Cape Charles. He glanced up at the speck that was Zan, near the top of the mainmast, wondered if he’d have to stay up there for days, or however long it would take them to sail up the Chesapeake. Wondered if they’d find a warship for Zan to copy. Wondered if Zan had missed, or forgotten that movie about the Napoleonic Wars, that had a perfectly good 1812 era British warship in it.
Maybe they wouldn’t have to worry about it. Maybe...
“Ship ahoy!” Zan shouted from the top.
“What?” Jason looked up, then out where Zan was pointing, “do they even say stuff like that?”
Whether it was proper nautical terminology or not, it got a reaction, every head on deck turned, others appeared from below, crew scurried into positions ready for action.
Jason squinted, he could see nothing. Dark sky, water gleaming like pewter under the stars, thin dark line of Cape Charles to the north.
Minutes slid by with the bow wave and the wake and the channels surfing the swells. The shape of the sea changed as they entered the Bay’s mouth, the speed and direction of the swells changed, like a horse going from a gallop to a trot. At last Jason could see the speck on the horizon. “How can you tell whether it’s one of ours or one of theirs?”
Bran was on the bow with a crew woman with a spyglass. In a moment the rest of the crew knew: one of theirs. “Twenty-two guns at least.” Jason heard. He mentally counted the cannons on Raven’s deck, certainly not twenty-two. “I guess we’re gonna outrun ‘em.” He said to Diana.
She nodded, her eyes glinting with... 
...glee? Fear? Jason couldn’t tell. 
“Start spinning your illusion.” Bran called up to Zan. On deck, Morgan still leaned on a line by the gunnels, he heard Bran’s command and began drawing on the vast energy of the sea below him.



Margo wasn’t sure when she’d discovered it, but if she wished, she could go unnoticed by her father, by the entire crew. It had allowed her to remain hidden when she didn’t wish to do some menial task, some boring mending of sails or splicing of line. When she didn’t wish to be dragged out of her quiet space in the cargo hold, or from the windy tops where she could see the whole world spread out at her feet. Now, now would be a good time to use this odd talent again. She had awakened, ravenous, from a sleep she knew had been magicked by the Second Mate. Her father and the crew were right; there was sorcery aboard this ship. Well, that’s what they called it, her mother had called it something else, but Margo couldn’t remember the word. Or was it a word? More like a sound. A song.
Didn’t matter, she wasn’t staying aboard this ship any longer than she must. She would find her way back to Father, then to what they’d been searching for between battles fought and prizes taken. Their ship was gone, but there would be another.
Maybe this one. There was a warship on the horizon, call them in, take this ship, let them know who had made it possible for them to take their prize. Father gets a new ship.
Simple, at least in the mind of an eight year old.
Easy to slip past the off-watch crew asleep in their hammocks. Easy to slip past the few stirring below. Easy to make it up the gangway on silent unnoticed feet, shrouded in one of the ship’s blankets. To grab an oil lantern. To slide past the crew watching the sails on the horizon grow ever larger. To slip into the space behind the fiferail, lantern covered.
To wait.
Wait as the distant sails grew larger.
Larger.
Then Silver Raven was gliding by, parting the water like a cutlass blade. The big warship lurking, motionless, in the dark, her sails loose in the light airs.
It was easy to smash the lantern against the boom and light the main on fire.



Diana stared in disbelief for about one millisecond, “Hold this!” she shouted at Jason, let go the tiller line and ran forward, calling out to the rest of the crew. “Fire, fire! Fire on the mains’l.” She began frantically loosing a line. Within seconds three more women were at her side, hands on the line. Above them, the gaff holding the mainsail up like a vast wing came down with a crash on top of the boom. The fire flickered, sputtered and was dowsed by several buckets.
Jason found himself alone on the tiller, hands gripping heavy rope, leaning hard against the yank of the waves on the rudder and thence on the big wooden steering stick. He hadn’t even had time to think about Zan, aloft on the main, directly in the route of the fire. He glanced at the compass in its binnacle, at the dark sea road ahead. Raven was yawing like a badly behaved horse. “What the... ?” He grimaced and leaned harder into the steering lines. “Come on girl. Nice Raven. Behave now.” He glanced up, maybe with the main gone, it did something weird to the way the ship moved. Well, he’d just have to hang on, so far nobody else was paying any attention to the helm.
Cait appeared, holding a thrashing wool lump, her face had the concentrated expression of a steer wrestler. A tall crew woman caught up the bundle and exclaimed, “Would this be your culprit?” Part of the blanket was pulled back to reveal Margo. Someone else held up the ruined lantern.
Bran and the Captain appeared. Diana stepped back beside Jason on the tiller, which definitely eased Jason’s aching arms. The main gaff was raised again, the sail slowly unfolding to reveal scorched, blackened canvas. And lack of canvas; most of the lower part looked like the wings of a moth who’d flown through a hurricane. 
“Not the least of our problems.” With a worried glance at the closing warship.
“No time to bend another.”
“The spare’s but ordinary canvas.”
“They’re on the windward beam.” They have the advantage.
Jason could see the dark bulk of the warship looming to starboard. Lights had sprung up on it. “Are those signals?” He asked Diana.
“Yes.” She glanced up at Zan, above their heads. “I hope he hasn’t lost the illusion.”



The thing about illusionists is; if they’re distracted by sleep, death, or imminent death, they tend to lose the illusion. Having a fire lit under one’s butt, tends to be a distraction. Zan had, for several panicked moments, been considering the options of leaping into the sea (an experienced cliff diver might have survived, if the ship was standing still), trying to climb down one of the other standing rigging lines, assuming they wouldn’t catch fire while he was doing it, and wondering if an illusion of a hang glider would actually work.
Now the warship saw the amazing sight of one of their own transforming into one of their enemy with a flash of flame and smoke. Then the flame died with a faintly audible crash (of the boom descending, though they could not know), then the ship seemed to melt, shift as if seen through fog, and it was a warship again, though of a decidedly different construction than the first one. They could not fathom what Yankee trickery had been concocted since they last sailed this bay. They didn’t spend much time considering it, something was afoot, something best stopped by their mighty array of cannon.



“That’s not it!” Morgan shouted up at Zan.” He couldn’t see the illusion any more than Zan or the rest of the crew, but he could feel it, feel the different shapes and currents of the energies making Raven look larger, with more masts, guns and decks. More than before, different than before. “It’s not the same!” He called to Bran.
“Leave it!” Bran said. “Hold it as it is.” There was no time to fiddle with it. 
From aloft, Zan could see the crew flashing back and forth across the deck like a school of small fast fish. It was a highly coordinated dance, swift, sure, no one expending useless energy, no one getting in anyone’s way.
Bran shouted up at him, “What can you do about the hole in the main? Without it, we’re as slow as they are. And we cannot balance the helm.”
What could he do indeed? Zan’s illusions had energy, and a certain amount of substance. Usually they were a sort of layer over something else; like the magic turning Raven into a warship. Or they were a puff of energy, like a blast of wind, taking a brief form, like the shark (blurry though it was) that had leaped out of a foot of water in Chincoteague Bay a month ago. Mend a hole in a vast sail, luffing in the wind? It would help if it was still. If it didn’t have such a huge hole. 
Zan hitched down the shrouds, to where he could reach out and touch the top of the sail, just under the gaff. It was Ravenkin skin, like the wetsuit he was still wearing under his ninteenth century shirt. It had been damaged by fire, his element. Maybe he could work with that.
“Hurry up!” someone shouted from below, not Bran, one of the crew.
To starboard the dark shape of the warship loomed larger. Then it spoke with a flash and boom. Zan heard the whistle-whoosh of the warning cannonball.
Close, entirely too close.
Think think think! Don’t think. Do. “Morgan!” Zan shouted down, but Morgan was already with him. Morgan drawing the energy up from the sea, Zan drawing it down from the moon and the stars. It swirled, coalesced, flickered across the torn main.
Fllickered. Faded.
Again. Focus. Zan pictured the sail, like Bran’s raven wings, catching the wind. He saw the same sail on Niamh, the shape, like a big bird wing, narrower at the top, broad at the bottom.
Flicker, fade, form again. Then there it was, the sail, broad and silver in the night, catching the faint wind from the northeast. Raven straightened. The bow wave swelled again. She heeled, flew under the guns of the warship.
They answered her audacity with their cannons, more of them this time.
No time to throw up a shield, as they had on the Lady Niamh. No energy to spare on anything other than holding the mainsail in one piece.
And on one good gust of wind. One raven-sung blast, roaring from a new direction, a brief howl throwing Raven beyond the reach of the cannons. They fired once more, and all could hear and see the splash of fire that fell too short.
Before the big ship could take advantage of the freak wind, before she could arranger her sails to catch it, it had died.
Raven sailed on, the light wind from the northeast all she needed now.



There was no brig for Margo, Raven’s lean, spare hull had no room for such amenities. There were no reprimands either, she was eight, she was distraught, she had been taught the wrong things. 
No one had the heart to tell her that her father was dead.
Bran sent her below again in a slumber that would last much longer.
“Maybe you should stick her in a tower like Sleeping Beauty.” Jason observed.
“You failed to notice that the magic user who put Beauty in the tower was done in because she put Beauty in the tower.” Bran told him. He went forward, taking up a position on the bow again with his spyglass.
Jason’s eyes traveled up the height of the mainsail. Half to Morgan, still perched nearby, and half to himself, he said, “That’s the second time she’s burned his feathers.”
“Or the first.” Morgan said, “Depending whether you think time is a line or not.”
“Feathers. Wait.” Jason said, “He’s got to have more of them, somewhere on this ship.”
“What?”
“You were sleeping it off somewhere out there.” Jason waved vaguely at the eastern horizon. “We were talking to Bran about the treasure. There’s not a lot of furniture in his cabin, but there was a big quill on his writing desk.”
Morgan’s eyes widened, “was it...”
“No, that was a goose quill. I think. It wasn’t quite the right color. But he’s got to have some of his own there somewhere.”
Morgan said, “are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Come on, you can read mind as well as Zan.”
“That’s like kissing my sister.”
“You have a sister?” 
Jason’s expression was a bit too eager for Morgan, he scowled back.
“Uh, I mean. Cool.” Jason said lamely, “She’s probably...” cute, hot, awesome. He closed his mouth before he stuck his entire leg in it.
“Feathers.” Morgan said, glowering, “We were talking about feathers.”
“Yeah. As in we get a couple of them, and take them back to Bran in the twenty-first century, leaving enough for him here.”
Silence. Contemplation. Both boys stared at the dark water as if Manannan himself might rise up out of it and give them an easy way to do that.
At last Jason said, “You’re the guy who can look like anything he wants.” 
“You’re the guy with legs.” Morgan countered.
Jason looked aloft, where Zan was still perched on lookout.
“He’s busy. And likely will be until we are off this boat. And then it will be too late.”
“Ship. It’s only a boat if you can put it on a ship. Bran said so.”
“Whatever.”
“You can’t do invisibility either, I guess.”
“No.”
“Ok, soooo.” Jason frowned. Surf ambled by the port rail, nosing the air, someone reached down and patted his furry head. “Turn me into a dog.” Jason said suddenly.
“What?” Morgan’s expression shifted gears, from stunned to panicked. “I can only do illusions on myself!”
“You helped Zan do stuff!”
“I can support his illusions.”
“Well, what about the stuff you do on yourself, just pretend, uh...” Sharkman thought furiously, “uh, pretend I’m yourself!”
Morgan stared at him. It was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.
It was the most brilliant thing he’d ever heard. His face shifted from panic to amazement. “Maybe. Maybe it might work.” He frowned, “But what do I turn you into, not me.”
“Erf.”
They both turned to see Surf grinning at them, drooling on the Raven’s deck.
They turned to each other and broke into Surf-sized grins.
In a minute, Surf and Jason still stood by the rail, only in different places.
“Cool,”  the one who looked like Surf said, “Just don’t let him steer.”



Morgan watched Surf/Jason’s blurry shape vanish below. Morgan turned to find Jason/Surf kneeling on deck. He frowned at the dog, reached and placed his front paws on the gunnels. There, now he looked like Jason leaning on the rail, staring out at the dark water. A crew woman strode by, bent on a mission. She glanced at Jason/Surf, her stride hesitated, as if she meant to say something.
Like maybe, come haul on a line, come help fix something, come man the helm.
Or dog the helm. Surf was talented at boat stuff, but not that talented.
“We’re keeping a sharp eye out.” Morgan said, quickly adding an illusory spyglass to Jason/Surf’s gear.
“Ah.” the crew woman went on down deck.
“Hurry up.” Morgan muttered under his breath. “Next somebody will ask him to start singing sea shanties.”



Except for the watch on deck, the crew had gone to their hammocks to rest and be ready for sudden action. No one noticed Surf/Jason lumping down the gangway, or wandering aft to the officers’ quarters. 
Easy. Except for having to wander through the ship on hands and knees. Except for not bumping into occupied hammocks or other gear. Except for blundering into things in the dark, since Newfoundlands didn’t generally carry lanterns.
Piece of cake. Or steak, as Morgan preferred.
There it was: Bran’s small cabin, the bunk with its multitude of drawers below the mattress, the writing desk, the pegs on the wall, a sea chest. All of it was just visible in the faint light from the deck prism above. If any had been awake to see, they would have had the amazing view of Surf pawing through the stuff in the drawers, the sea chest, and finally, standing on his hind legs, opening the drawer to Bran’s writing desk with his furry white forepaws. Jason slid the drawer open carefully as he could, but the illusion made him feel like he was wearing the kind of mittens his Grandma always gave him for Christmas; big, fluffy things in tacky colors. He bumbled, fumbled, wobbled the drawer open. The desk weebled back.
Sharkman would never have this problem. 
The desk teetered to a halt, it appeared to be tethered to the wall somehow. But some of the objects on it weren’t tethered; something on the top of the desk tottered, fell with a thud. Surf/Jason froze, ducked his head around the corner.
He heard the scrabble of tiny claws on wood. Two small shadows erupted into the cabin, “Yark! yarkyarkyarkyarkyarkyarkyarkyarkyark!”
Sharkman would never have had this problem either. He probably would just have eaten them.
“Shhhhhh!” Jason knelt and grabbed first one energetic Schipperke, then the other. They shut up, sat back cocking their heads at the odd sight of Jason (who they could smell) disguised as Surf (who they knew by sight and smell). “Yark?”
“Shhhht. Sorry, didn’t bring any doggie treats.” Why didn’t I think to stop in the galley and get something? Oh yeah, that would have looked great, Surf raiding the fridge. Wait, there is no fridge. Surf raiding the cupboard. Whatever. “Shh shhh shhhhhhh.” He searched the room frantically for something Schipperkes would be interested in. His eye fell on a wool hat slung on a peg, a watch cap, like Morgan’s, only of plain blue wool. Jason pulled it down and handed it to one of the dogs, “Here, play with this for awhile.” Chaser, or Hunter, Jason could never tell which was which, grabbed it and ran off under the crew’s hammocks. Jason rummaged in the drawer, found paper, sealing wax, string, a book.
And a long narrow wooden box.
He poked at it with mitten hands, the top lifted off easily. Inside were half a dozen long flight feathers, their color hard to tell in the faint light. Jason stood on the bunk, holding the box up to the deck prism in the ceiling. Light glittered through it, falling on the feathers, turning them to dark silver dancing with iridescence.
“Score!” Jason whispered. 
One Schipperke had stayed, a pool of black by the door, watching Jason with bright, curious eyes. Suddenly he turned his head toward the bow, ears pricked, mouth open in a grin.
“Crappola!” Jason stuffed the box in his shirt and knelt, Newflike, on the floor.
The bosun poked her head in the doorway, “What are you doing in there?” She stepped forward, picked up the ink bottle which Jason had knocked down, “Now look what you’ve done!” She held it up, dripping, glowering at the tiny pawprints all over the deck. “Out, the lot of you!”
Jason fled, all of Bran’s feathers, except the one Bran was wearing, stuffed in his shirt.



Zan gave another shout from the top. This ship was farther away, and downwind. It seemed to be on a course to meet the other. 
“They heard her cannonfire,” Bran said, “they’ll be joining her. Like bear jaws at the mouth of the Bay.”
“Well behind us,” someone else observed. 
“Can’t catch us now. the wind’s in our favor, not theirs.”
Jason was back at his position on deck, Surf was a Newfoundland again. 
Morgan signed, got it?
“Oh yeah.” Jason said, his expression more like someone who’s just stepped out of a shark cage.
“Problem?”
“Oh no.” Jason signed, “Just that now I have all of them.”
“All of what?” Cait signed.
Morgan’s reply was lost in Zan’s call from the top. “There’s another one.”
The crew strained eyes into the distant dark, saw nothing, not even with the spyglass.
“What does it look like?” Bran called. “I can’t see it, it’s too hull down.”
Minutes passed.
At last Zan called out, “Smaller. Not a big three masted warship. Is it one of ours?”
“It may be. Or one of ours taken earlier as a prize, now under their command.”
More minutes passed, minutes filled with the splash of the bow wave, the glitter of stars on water, the sliding by of the distant shoreline.
“Looks like us.” Zan called down, “A Baltimore Clipper type.”
“A what?” Bran said, “We were built in Baltimore yes, but...”
Morgan frowned up at Zan, glanced at Cait, signing what he’d said.
“That’s later!” Cait shouted up at him.
“Anachronism alert.” Jason yelled to Zan.
Cait signed to Morgan, “they’re called sharp-built schooners now.”
“Maybe this is another blockade runner?” Morgan said hopefully.
“If she is, she’s headed straight for two warships.”
“Unless she’s one of theirs.”
“If she’s one of ours...” Cait’s face said we should help her. It’s the cowboy way.
“I don’t think we’ll turn around,” Jason said, “not with a big hole in the main. And Zan’s gotta sleep sometime, after we get to Baltimore. So we better get there as quick as we can.”
Zan was finding it more and more difficult to stay awake. Perching like a bird was not a problem, for awhile. It had been a long long while. His arms were starting to ache. His feet, his legs. Every part of him longed for a bed, or at least a hammock. He blinked at the distant shape, growing larger every minute. One of ours? Or one of theirs?
Bran trotted to the bow again, pulled out a spyglass. The waves and the stars rolled by. The masts of the distant ship had been rolling up over the horizon, now too, he could see the whole hull. The cut of her jib, the sharp shape of her bow, the immense bowsprit, the schooner-brig rig she flew. He squinted into the glass; with his bare eyes he could see farther than any other of the crew, with this glass, ground by Dwarvish skill, he could see farther and clearer than even a Ravenkin, except where the curve of the earth or the haze of distance interfered. Nice ship. Good lines. Who was she? She shifted a little on the wind, and he could see her bow plate, where her name was carved in clear, strong letters. He stared, then set down the spyglass, a look of bewilderment on his face.
Bran went aft on swift, silent feet. He got Cait’s attention, and Morgan’s, “Morgan, ask her why there’s a ship with the same name as her horse.”
“A ship? The same name?” Morgan said.
“Chasseur.” Bran said.
“Chass...” Morgan began. Cait had told him, and the rest of them. He couldn’t quite remember... where she’d seen the name. On a ship’s boat. In the twenty-first century. No that wasn’t it. Yes it was, but there was more.
“Morgan.” Bran said. “Ask her.”
Morgan turned to Cait, her eyes full of questions, “The ship heading this way has the same name as your horse.”
“No way!” She said. She turned to Bran, “You saw it?”
“On her bowplate.”
Morgan signed the translation.
“You have a good spyglass.” Cait could just see the shape of masts against the sky. “Spell it.”
Bran traced it on the gunnels with a finger. C-h-a-s-s-e-u-r.
Cait’s mouth fell open. “She’s ours! She’s...” what could she tell him? What wouldn’t change history? Well she was part of history now, and the Chasseur was heading straight for two mighty big warships. If she met them, she would never sail out of the Bay and into history. And Cait would never see her name on the transom of a little ship’s boat in Norfolk.
Maybe she’d seen that name, in a place with so many names to remember, for a reason.
“She’s got to get out of the Bay. She has an important mission.” Cait didn’t remember quite what that was, just that it had been remembered for two hundred years. Remembered enough to build two replicas of her. One with a ship’s boat on it with her name.
Bran thought about it for five heartbeats. Ten. “On your feet!” He told them, “We have a raven-trick to pull.”
“Are we turning around?” Jason said, as Cait pulled him down the deck in Bran’s wake.
“Apparently.” Morgan said, and slithered after them.
They were. They did. Straight down the Bay, into the bear jaws waiting for them. But Raven often teased Bear, lured him away from a fine dinner, hopped and danced right in front of him, so close that Bear was sure he could add Raven to that dinner. Then another Raven would swoop in, grab some of the booty, and fly off with it.
Raven swooped in, danced, feigned a broken wing. Then, when the warships were sure they could trap her between them, she laughed in their faces and flew back up the Bay.
Not too fast. Just fast enough to stay out of the range of their guns, just barely out of range. When they had chased her far enough, the wind shifted, and Raven vanished into the dark.
Somewhere south, Chasseur passed out of the Bay, pointed her nose east and sailed into history.



The Isles of Limbo



“What will we do with Margo?” Cait asked. The eastern sky was growing pale. Zan still swayed in the top, lashed in with line so he didn’t fall off if he fell asleep. Jason leaned against the rail, half asleep, Surf was a pile of orca colored furriness nearby, and Morgan coiled on the other side, half awake, watching. 
Bran looked like he might need some sleep too. Their diversion of two warships had cost them time, they could not run all the way to Baltimore in the dark now, and they would be easier to spot when the sun came up, illusions or no.
And the illusions were slipping, as the workers of that magic grew exhausted.
“The Captain will not have her aboard any longer than necessary.” Bran said. He toed Morgan gently, made the one sign he knew, the one for “sign”. Translate for me.
“You made her sleep.” Cait said to Bran.
“Not for long, I think. Some of your folk resist magic, she’s one. And I cannot tie an eight year old girl to the mast.”
“Even if she tried to burn down your ship?”
“Even if.”
“What then?”
“I have been thinking about that. We need to have a mainsail without holes in it, when Morgan and Zan sleep, or leave the ship. We need to leave Margo in safekeeping. We’ll stop at Tangier. We can bend on the spare main, and...” He said no more about Margo.
“Tangier. Sounds like a long way away.” Cait said. The word Morgan fingerspelled was like something on the other side of the world.
“Isn’t that like, in Africa or something?” Jason said. It sounded like Madagascar or Figi, one of those places you’d see on National Geographic specials.
“Right there.” Bran pointed east. His voice lapsed almost into the rhythms of poetry, “Waterfowl come for the wild celery and widgeongrass. It is rich with eelgrass beds and sea lettuce loved by small fish, crabs and seed oysters. The marshes themselves, of spartina patens and spartina alterniflora, are richer than any farm field. Tangier has other names, John Smith called it and its kin ‘The Isles of Limbo’.”
“John...that John Smith? The Pocahontas guy?” Jason said.
“He knew her, yes. And he knew of these islands, though his exploratory vessel was much smaller than ours, and of much shallower draft. In these waters, vigorous soundings will fail to reveal anything more than five feet deep, Raven needs a bit more than that.”
“So,” Jason said, “since we sank most of your ship’s boats, I guess you’ll need ours?”
Bran smiled, “Indeed. And I’ll need you. I have no wish to land on Tangier.”
“Why?” Cait said. “It sounds like you love it.”
He looked almost embarrassed. “I incurred the wrath of several lovely young women there. Oh, it was a long time ago, when I was much younger. And not nearly so wise.” He gave them a self-deprecating smile. “Take Margo. Find Grandmother Brown, tell her Margo’s tale.”
“Ok.” Sounds easy enough.” Jason said.
“And tell her yours.”
“Ok. Like all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, sure.”
“One more thing. Don’t tell her I sent you.”
“Sure.” Then Jason thought about what Bran had said; a long time ago, when I was much younger. How long ago was Bran young? How could any of the young women he’d offended still be on Tangier?



In another part of the space-time conundrum, Tangier would have a dock, a deep dredged channel leading to it, and a fishing fleet. And a high school, a road, a nurse, souvenir shops, and one bright yellow Volkswagon. 
This Tangier appeared out of the midday haze as a wobbly dark line floating above the horizon. Raven drifted nearer, and the wobbly line resolved into marsh grass emerging from the bay, with a few islands of trees in its midst, not unlike Assateague. But much smaller, and with nothing else at all visible on the horizon, unless one counted tiny Watts Island to the southeast. Tangier herself was only three and a half miles one way, and one and a half the other. At least that's how big it was in the 21st century. 
Raven stopped well away before she would run aground, let down her anchor. 
From nowhere Chasseur appeared, trotting across the water as if she’d been following Raven all along.
“Now what?” Cait wondered, yawning after a few hours of sleep. The mare stood off the starboard beam, staring in at them as if waiting for something. Cait leaned over the rail and offered some hard tack, but either the mare had better taste than that, or she really didn’t like the idea of encountering weevils.
Behind Cait, crew slung the kayaks from lines aloft, and lowered them over the side. The dogs pattered around the deck, watching, getting underfoot, and wondering what was up. The ship’s boat went overboard, along with Diana, and Ashnareth, huddled in its exact center, looking miserable. Zan yawned his way to the rail and helped direct Finrod into the sea. He started over the rail after the boat. Bran placed a hand square in the middle of the redhead’s chest. “The weather is warm. You should stow that...” he frowned, as if he’d forgotten the word.
“Wetsuit?” Zan prompted.
“Yes, stow it in your boat.”
“Because?”
“I said so.” Jason finished with Parental Mandate #1.
Bran gave him a sharp look, turned back to Zan, “For the same reason they don’t know the Raven is here.”
“Man, how many women did you incur the wrath of?” Jason said.
“We’ll ask him when we get back.” Zan signed.
“And don’t they have, like spyglasses or something on that island?”
Zan tugged Jason along in the general direction of his boat. “Apparently not.”
“Maybe they’re all nearsighted like Morgan.” Jason said, “Maybe it’s like, a Merrow Island, or Island of the Myopic Society of Pocket Protector Wearers, or The Clan of the Astigmatic Jackass Penguins, or...”
Cait was already over the side, slipping into Sky, pulling the sprayskirt over the coaming against the waves and the long paddle to the island. The black mare stood, standing in the two foot chop as if it were only grass waving in the wind. Her head was up, her ears radared in on something on Tangier or beyond. The end of a line brushed Cait’s face, she looked up, Bran leaned over the rail, he pointed at the mare, then at her. Follow her, his lips said, trust her.
Then Zan and Jason were in their boats, and Bran was lowering the dogs over the side too, and last, Margo, still curled in sleep.
“The dogs?” Cait signed. She eyed Bran, the western sky of the Bay behind him, and the mare, silhouetted against the eastern sky. “Does he know something we don’t?”
“A lot,” said Zan.
They pulled away toward Tangier, Jason held his paddle across his knees for a moment, signed, “There’s something he doesn’t know.”
“What?”
“I still have all his feathers.”



The conversation flew, signed so Diana couldn’t overhear.
“If we take them back now, we’ll be in deep...”
“And so will twenty-first century Bran.”
“If we give some of them back, he’ll want to know where the rest are.”
“Then we’ll have to explain the whole space-time conundrum.”
“We really ought to...”
“But...”
“He’s got one...”
“What if it isn’t enough?”
The signs rolled back and forth like waves ricocheting off a steep mudwall into incoming tide. Cait thought they should make sure Bran got at least a few back, saving the rest for him in their time, if they got back there at all. Jason figured that was about as bright as telling his dad he’d left a gate open. Morgan thought they should lay a temporary illusion over them, hand them over as something else, let Bran find out the truth when they’d gone home.
Finally Ashnareth smacked the water with one of the oars she had been wielding with some success, sending a fine burst of spray at them. She pointed at the sleeping lump in Finrod’s bow. “I think we must worry about that first.”
  Cait looked back once at Silver Raven, dwindling behind them. She laid her paddle across her knees, rummaged in a drybag in her cockpit. She produced a camera, held it up, snapped away. She drifted with the wind to starboard, took a few shots from that side, on the zoom setting. Trained her camera up at the rigging, all straight-arrow lines and sweeping mooncurves, silhouetted against a warm July sky. Behind her the others stopped, waited for her to catch up.
“Rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air,” she said out loud.
“What?” Zan signed.
“It’s July, in September the British will besiege Baltimore.”
“Oh yeah,” Jason said, “and that Key guy will write some poem about it, remember?” He eyed Zan.
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. Ask me about moon jellies.”
Cait picked up her paddle, “Maybe we should have told him to get out of Baltimore before then.”
“Why?” Jason said, “we won, didn’t we?”
“It was a draw. The British left. We both signed a treaty. We’ve been friends ever since.” She was quiet for several strokes of her paddle. “They kept the British out of the harbor by sinking about twenty ships in the entrance.”
No one said anything to that. Zan and Jason glanced back at the Raven, hoping she hadn’t been...wouldn’t be, one of them.



“Hey!” Morgan threw himself above water, gasped a breath, and splashed down in a most ungraceful, unMerrowlike manner. The others turned, slowed their strokes. 
“What?” Zan said.
For Morgan, the shallow water was hard to swim in, and worse; harder to breathe. Something was wrong with the taste of it; not just the silt he stirred up with every finstroke in these shallows, but the smell, the feel of it when he tried to breathe it nearly made him choke. The water was still free of the sound of engines, and the taste of the pollutants he knew from his own century, but something was wrong. It was like trying to swim up a river. “It tastes wrong.” Morgan said.
“You’re halfway up the Bay,” Zan said, “of course it tastes wrong. It’s halfway to fresh water.”
“Great.”
“What?” Cait said.
“He’s not an anadromous Merrow. Catadromous either.” Zan said.
“Cat, what?” Cait said.
“Like salmon. Or eels,” Jason said, “They live half their lives in fresh water, and half in salt. They can breathe either at different times. Morgan apparently can’t, because swordfish are sea fish.”
“Yeah.” Zan said.
Morgan coughed, “Anybody got an extra PFD?” 
Zan shook his head. The boats were loaded, overloaded really, with the addition of Margo, small as she was. “Hang on to the stern, use your tail.”
Morgan swam up, caught hold of the stern carrying toggle. “Like when you rescued me on the surfboard.”
“Vrrrrrrrmmmmmmm!” Jason grinned, “The mighty Finrod kicks in her retrothrusters, the Sharkteam makes landfall in record time.”
“Probably way less than twelve parsecs.” Zan said.
Cait shook her head, you two are so weird. The next moment she found she had to dig in and paddle hard as Morgan’s tail shoved the mighty Finrod into hyperdrive.
The marshy shoreline drifted nearer. Clumps of loblolly and hardwoods appeared. And something else.
“What is that?” Cait shouted up to Zan.
He stood up on Finrod, staring at the shore. “Looks like Bran took a wrong turn and landed us in Polynesia, or Figi, or something.”
“What are they?”
“Grass huts.”
“Dad never said anything about any settlers living in grass huts.” Cait said.
“Were there any settlers here?” Jason said.
“Yeah. But not in grass huts.”
And none, Jason thought, who would still remember Bran in his wayward youth. “Hey Toto, don’t think we’re in the same space-time conundrum anymore.”
Zan shot him a swift glance, then one at Diana in the ship’s boat, and Ashnareth. Sign, he told them. 
“We’re not, are we?”
“We went through a Gate.” Morgan said, “Yes.”
“You didn’t tell us.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I think Bran didn’t want the crew to know. Too much to explain.” Zan signed.
“Well, where are we?”
“It’s still Tangier.” Zan signed, “Just not the one you’re all familiar with on The Recreational Map of the Chesapeake Bay.”
“I’m not familiar with any of them.” Jason said. “But maybe you should warn us if there’s gonna be dinosaurs or something.”
“They’re extinct.”
“In what space-time continuum?”
"Not any time there was a Chesapeake Bay. It's 35.5 million years old, formed by a bolide impact event at the end of the Eocene." Zan began.
"Were you, like there or something?" Jason said.
"No, but Shaughnessy was..."  
They picked up paddles and drifted closer. Grass huts, definitely grass huts, tucked in among the trees on the ‘fast land’, the high ground that wasn’t tidal marsh. They ran aground on the heels of Chasseur, and anchored the boats. Ashnareth leaped out of the ship’s boat, nose wrinkling at the sand and saltwater under her feet. Diana hauled on the oars, and pointed the boat’s bow back toward Raven. Morgan backed off, keeping to the water he could still float in, and staying as Guardian of Boats and Finrod’s lone, sleeping occupant. The dogs piled out in furry confusion, sniffing the ground, trotting off on scent trails.
Zan whistled them back. Signed for them to stay near. Bran hadn’t said anything about danger, but he rummaged in his boat for his bow anyway. Jason kept his paddle in his hand, Cait picked up her rope, slung it over one shoulder and gripped the paddle with the other hand. They stalked forward, spikey low marsh grass crunching underfoot, mud squelching beneath. There was no one in sight, no one who could have built the strange round grass lodges.
“Indians?” Jason suggested. Maybe there was a space-time warp where they still lived on in grass huts.
Cait shook her head. Definitely not, some Native tribes built round lodges, with a sapling frame and bark coverings. This looked familiar, not tropical island familiar, but like something else she’d seen.
Chasseur stopped, head and ears at alert.
Something rustled in the grass. Zan spun toward the soft whisper of sound. The dogs stood up on their toes, staring, then cocking their heads with interest. The kind of expressions they had when they sighted a squirrel on the trail.
No squirrels here, fourteen nautical miles from the nearest real land. Ashnareth was scanning the horizon, looking very much like she wished she could see something besides water.
Rustle rustle rustle. Jason heard it too. They all could see the finer spartina alterniflora, in the high marsh, bending as if something unseen was walking through it. He inched closer to Ashnareth. Anybody who could take out biker orcs the way she had, well, it’d be a piece of steak, or whatever, if there were dinosaurs.
“Cait, get the sword.” Zan signed, raising his bow. The grass was bending on every compass point, whatever it was, it was coming at them from all sides.
Cait ran to Sky, pulled the hatch cover off, wishing she’d thought of this before, put the sword on deck, under the bungees. She threw the hard plastic hatch cover and its neoprene undercover in the cockpit, swept out the sword, realizing that now, with the hatch open, she couldn’t put to sea if they had to flee. She frantically tried to replace the neoprene. Behind her Morgan splashed up into the silty shoreline, “Go!” I’ll fix it!”
Cait ran, came up hard beside the boys, the dogs and Chasseur. The mare stood with her ears hard forward, the sort of look a horse might have right before she bolted and fled. Or the sort of look she might have if someone was coming bearing oats. “What is it? Zan, can you tell?”
He raised his bow. Jason gripped the kayak paddle, wishing he’d thought to ask Bran if he had a spare cutlass or something, or Diana if she had a few extra grenades.
The grass rippled, rustled.
Now they could see small brown shapes, round, furry, trailing long smooth tails.
“Rats?” Jason said, incredulously, “We’re surrounded by rats! Big freaking swamp rats!”
"Rodents of Unusual Size." Zan muttered.
They were nearly as large as the sled dogs, scuttling through the grass, closing the circle tighter. “Yes!.” Cait said suddenly, she knew now why the distant lodges looked familiar. “Swamp rats. Muskrats!” 
“Ok,” Jason said, raising the paddle higher. “Big-gynormous huge freaking muskrats!” He glanced at Ashnareth, still disguised by Zan’s illusion. Even with a human face, her expression was less readable than Chasseur’s.
They stopped, bright dark eyes studying the tense clot of explorers. The nearest one rustled forward a step, another. Stood on its hind feet; big, spready-toed feet, like the roots of an ancient tree, with only a little webbing between the toes. It stood and its tiny forepaws pulled at its whiskers.
Its face split, straight down the middle. Peeled back like someone unzipping a jacket. the soft brown fur fell in a pile at the feet of a round little woman, half as tall as Jason. She was clad in rough woven clothes the colors of the marsh, her eyes dark and bright as a muskrat’s. Her quick little hands fiddled with a pouch at her belt.
“Whoa,” Jason whispered.
The dogs stared in disbelief, then disappointment. Their dinner had turned into somebody’s grandmother. 
The little woman reached into her pouch, withdrew a round stone. She held it up, looking at them over it. She hummed something to herself.
Jason gave Zan a panicked look, biginorous huge freaking muskrats with magic. Hope you have a counterspell! Please tell me you have a counterspell! He held the paddle like a sword between himself and the Muskrat People. Then he thought that it might be better if he looked more diplomatic, he lowered the paddle to halfmast, one eye on Zan, one on the strange little woman.
She continued to stare at them over the stone and hum her little tune.
“Um,” Zan fumbled, “We’re looking for Grandmother Brown.” Then he tried the same greeting in three other languages.
Beside him, Ashnareth rumbled something that might have been a diplomatic greeting, or a challenge to battle.
Around them, other muskrat folk stood and peeled off their animal skins. All were short, round and solidly built. Their hair and skin varied from dark browns to the pale colors of dried marsh grass. They were all clad in woven things the colors of the marsh. Despite their round builds and pleasant faces, there was something about them that made one think they were far from defenseless.
“I am she.” Muskrat Woman said, in plain English. “Who are you?” Her bright eyes went from the Elf boy to the two human children, to the black mare of Manannan, to the wolflike dogs to the great hairy Newfoundland to Ashnareth, to Morgan, still with the boats a dozen strides away. She squinted as if she couldn’t quite see him. Her nose twitched, she sniffed, gave a small smile. “One of the seafolk, so far from home. And another.” Another what, she didn’t say. She eyed Ashnareth, still disguised, “And Dragonkin. Seldom do we see your folk here on our little dot of land.”
One by one they introduced themselves. 
“No one comes here.” Grandmother said. “And you did not open this gate yourselves.” She eyed Ashnareth, “Not even the ones who can.” She gestured, and Ahnareth’s disguise fell away, revealing her feathered hide, splashed with tropical color, and her head feathers, lowered at half mast, much the way the dogs would lower their ears as a sign of respect to the pack leader.
Zan looked at the mushy ground, it seemed like saying anything but the truth would be a bad idea. But maybe he didn’t have to tell all of it. Especially the Ravenkin part. “Um, no. We have...” a problem named Margo, in several centuries. “Someone who needs safekeeping. Her family is gone. We were told to look for you.”
Grandmother waved one small fine-fingered hand at him, “Show me.”
They turned and walked back to the boats. Zan pointed to Margo, still curled in Finrod’s bow. 
Grandmother waved her hand, the one with the stone still in it, and the illusion of skin and wood boats fell away. “Hmmph. You have been traveling dangerous waters.” She studied Morgan a long time, “Very dangerous waters.” She ambled up to Jason, her gait reminded him of a hamster. He smiled, then coughed, trying desperately to cover the snicker that threatened to escape. She patted him on the chest, it was almost like being patted by Earla. Jason wobbled back a step. “Gifts from the orcafolk.” She eyed Cait, sniffing, “And a pooka.” She sniffed at Zan, and Morgan. “Hmmmph.” Back to Zan. Sniff sniff. “You came with that bloody Ravenkin.”
“Uh, uh....”
“I can smell it.”
“Uh.” Zan stepped back a pace, shot a desperate glance at Jason and Cait. Run now? Flee in panic before they decide to have us for dinner? Wait, they’re muskrats, vegetarians. Maybe they have pet dinosaurs, sabertoothed tigers, thylacoleos. Maybe they sacrifice unwary travelers to the Swamp Gods. He had experience with the Elders. With three of the Grandmothers. He knew that even the most ridiculously cute and furry of them were forces one did not incur the ire of. These, apparently, had been isolated a bit further and longer than most, which usually meant they were easier to annoy. 
“We came through a Dragon Gate.” Zan and the others turned, it was Morgan speaking, hauling himself up into the marsh grass, where he couldn’t flee, where he was considerably shorter than the Muskrat Folk. “We didn’t choose where we went, it sent us. Yes, we sailed with your bloody Ravenkin, if you have some argument with him, we are sorry, but we are not part of that argument. We have a story, and this,” he pointed to Margo in the boat, “is part of it. We cannot take her with us. We cannot return her to her family because apparently there are none left. At least, none as will take her. We are not sure where we are going next.”
Grandmother stared at him for a long time, finally she said, “Dragon Gate. Hmmm. Come then, you must be hungry after your long voyage.”


The lodge was airy, shady in the summer heat, the sides open to the prevailing westerlies, the rest shaded by screens of woven marsh grass. Of the multitude of bloodsucking flying insects common to salt marshes, none had found their way into the lodge. The frame was wood, carved and woven into intricate twining vine shapes. Everything in the lodge seemed to be made of wood, carved, or grass, woven. The food was plentiful; vegetables and fruits (From what fruit trees? Cait wondered. Did ships come here with trade items?), and gifts from the sea; mussel and crab and clam and one huge (slightly disgusting) whelk, its occupant steaming like an oversized escargot. Ashnaeth reached for that, and slurped it out of its shell. Zan yet had one of the Raven’s hammocks (he’d forgotten to return it from Finrod’s hold), and Morgan had ridden it to the Muskrat Lodge, pulled by the three dogs, now enjoying the finest of Muskrat seafood. Margo had roused from her sleep, perhaps Grandmother Brown had done it, or perhaps Margo had simply thrown off the sleep spell. She sat, glowering at everybody, at the end of the low wooden table. She had stared at Ashnareth, but didn’t seem to find her any weirder than a boy with a fish’s tail at the same table, or having been rescued by a horse who could run on top of the sea. Grandmother Brown and the others seemed to be paying the kind of attention to her that Grandparents pay to children who have had a hard day. 
“Let’s hear your tale first, dear.” Grandmother Brown asked her.
Margo scowled at Morgan, Zan and Jason. Cait she glanced at, but glanced away as quickly. She stared at her plate, pushed the food on it around like an armada at war. At last she spoke; exploded in anger, “Those bloody heathen sons of...” the rest left no doubt that she could converse like a mariner.
Grandmother raised her hand, the child fell silent, eyes wide. “Here, you will speak in a clear and intelligent fashion, using all the parts of speech in their correct order. You will avoid such base and unenlightened verbiage.”
Margo’s open mouth closed. Her anger seemed to evaporate, or at least, sink back down to a simmer. She finally told her tale.

Nightwind was my home, for all my life. Or at least the parts that mattered. The parts I remembered. I don’t remember a land home. I remember trees, horses pulling a carriage, once, long ago. But we didn’t stay. Mother wouldn’t stay. She had to go back to sea. Father preferred the sea too. I asked him once about his mother, his father. They were far away, surrounded by green hills and horses and cows. I saw cows once. Funny things, pulling a cart at a dock. Milk comes from them, Father said, and cheese. We always had cheese on Nightwind. Strange stuff, smelling of land, Mother said. Milk I had once or twice, when we made landfall. I liked it, but it didn’t like the sea, if we took it on the ship, it soured right away.
We went everywhere the water would take us, which was everywhere in the whole round world. My mother told me about the sea, the things on it and in it and under it. She sang stories all the time. Sometimes we’d see the things from her tales; Merrows and sea cows and great whales and sea dragons and penguins and albatross. Once we even saw the Great Serpent himself. The sun was going down and he arced across the horizon like a rainbow. She would stand on the rail and stare out to sea sometimes. “What are you looking for?” I asked her.
And she would say “Oh nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
One day when I asked, she held me close and whispered in my ear, soft enough so no one else could hear, “My island. My family.”
“What island?”
She opened the pouch she wore at her belt, and showed me a crystal, like the prisms in the deck, like the light catchers hung from chandeliers, only not made of glass by men, but grown in the very earth herself. In the Cave of Swords. 
“Can you find it?”
“Yes.”
“Can I?”
“With this, yes.”
“Then let’s go there.”
“Your father will not take me.’
“Why?”
“He is afraid I will stay.”
“But you wouldn’t.”
She said nothing, but continued staring out to sea.
She seemed sad so much of the time. My father brought her anything she wanted from the places we visited. He gave her the pick of the prizes he caught. Named one of the ships he commandeered after her. She still stared out to sea, even though she was riding upon it.
“I want to be in it.” She whispered that to me one day. “Back in the deeps, with the light glinting down from above, chasing the small swift fish, dancing in the moonbeams, in the magic green flashes of the small things that light up the dark sea.”
“How can you do that?” The sea was deep and cold, and Father had never let me swim in it, despite all I knew about sails and sewing and making and mending, of navigation and swordplay and climbing aloft.
“My soulskin.” She whispered. “Find it.”
I did. I searched the ship, all the dark secret places I knew. All the places I could go to when I wished not to be found. There were places even the sailors didn’t know. There I found what I first thought was an old coat. Soft and sleek, a sealskin. A handsome one, perfect, not ever used, it seemed. No harpoon holes in it.
It was the color of my mother’s hair.
It smelled like her. Like the sea. Like faraway places we couldn’t ever reach.
I took it to her. Her dark eyes grew wide with astonishment. She smiled. She slipped it on and pulled it close about her. She knelt and gave me one long last embrace. She gave me her pouch with the strange crystal in it. “Some day you will find me again.”
Then she was gone over the side in the night.
The last I saw was a sleek dark head, popping up on a wave, looking back at me with sad eyes.
She was gone.



She coiled into a small bundle of grief and cried. One of the Muskrat Folk picked her up and vanished into the dark with her.
Zan and the others sat, silent, stunned.
“But Tas said, ‘She’s human.’ “ Cait broke the silence, speaking out loud, the sound of the words a memory on her tongue. “But her mother is a selkie.”
“The Seal Folk.” Morgan signed.
“She’s one of you?” Jason signed.
Zan signed, “Having a parent who is Elven or Elder or Selkie or something gives you some random talents, but you’re still human.”
“She’s still alive. In the twenty-first century.” Cait signed.
“Gates.” Jason signed, “she stays somewhere,” he glanced around the Muskrat lodge, “like one of your Gateworlds, “comes back in two hundred years, gets a boat, and goes looking for her mom.”
“Where’s she get the boat?”
“Why does she kidnap a Merrow, when her mom gave her the crystal? And why does she need stuff from ORCs R Us?”
Ashnareth grumbled something that may have been a warning, or a comment on her own species’ reprobates.
Jason frowned into silence.
Grandmother Brown was studying all of them. “Perhaps you should tell your story now.”



They did. From Morgan being captured by Margo’s crew, to his escape, the return of his cap, the finding of the Gate in the lighthouse, the journey on the Silver Raven, the sinking of the Nightwind, even the ORCs and the finding of pirate gold. Their words leaped over each other like waves running up a beach. At last it was told and they fell into silence.
“How does she get from here to there?” Morgan said. 
“And what are the ORCs doing in the middle of it, besides getting stuff for her in half a dozen space-time continuums?” Jason said.
“We do not become involved with others’ politics, maneuverings and wars.” Ashnareth rumbled. “Except for those of ours who have left the Path.”
Grandmother Brown said. “We do not travel beyond our island, and we seldom hear word of the outside world. We brought up the land, long ago, from the deeps, to make Great Turtle Island. We placed the handful of soil on Turtle’s back, you can still see our pawprint there, if you look. We sing the songs for that land. But we do not venture out into it. It is your world now. You must find your own way.”
“What about Margo?”
“We will keep her in safekeeping. As long as she wishes.”
Could you just keep her forever? Keep her from coming back and harming Morgan, and Bran and Bri and the rest? Cait looked at Zan, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
He nodded.
“We do not interfere with your journey.” Grandmother Brown said. “Though we may help you on your way.”
“Great!” Jason said, he looked at the others, “Well, alrighty then! Margo’s safe. I guess we’ll be getting back to our ship now.”
Grandmother Brown smiled, “Oh, Raven’s long gone.”
“What?”
Ashnareth sat up, her feathered crest shot straight up in alarm.
“She has her own journey to make.”
“Great. So, how do we get home?”
“Or wherever.” Zan added.
“Not to mention, how do we get these back to him now?” Jason clutched his chest, where the feather box still lay, tucked into the wetsuit Shaughnessy had shapeshifted for him. 
Morgan laughed, “You’re even. He has all the treasure.”
Jason and Zan groaned. 
“At least I’m gonna give back the feathers when I see him again.” Jason said.
Grandmother Brown studied them all, her face quiet as a marsh at sunrise. “First, rest awhile. We will learn the rest in the morning.”



The grey horizon paled and glowed golden. Tangier, or the Tangier of the Muskrat Folk, at least, came alive with the white flash of feeding gulls, terns and egrets. The grey grass turned orange, then ochre, then green in the sun. There was nothing else in the whole wide world but this marsh, built on a pile of sand barely poking its head out of the Great Bay. 
They came to the water’s edge, higher now, in the rising tide. The green grass undulated in the wave ripples. A band of Muskrat Folk padded through the marsh, carrying bags and baskets of provisions; enough, Jason thought, for five or six epic movies’ worth of adventures. At the water’s edge were several small round boats, like the coracles of the British Isles. The Muskrat Folk loaded their provisions into them.
Ashnareth looked positively queasy.
“Gonna be a long paddle back to Chincoteague.” Cait said.
Zan was silent, watching the marsh as if looking for answers.
And they came; the black mare, trotting through the grass, splashing up little fountains as she came.
Beside her was another horse, smaller, the size of the Chincoteague ponies.
“Heeeey.” Jason said, “That’s my horse!” Not his, technically, but the one who had come to his aid when they raised the Niamh.
The golden pony lifted her head, nickered a greeting. Or maybe it was a snicker, Jason thought. She had the kind of mischievous look that some of the cowponies back home got when they thought they should be vacationing in the grass, not working.
“What are we going to do?” Cait said, “Hook them both up to the kayaks? Not enough for us all to ride, that’s for sure.” She eyed Ashnareth, “And some of us don’t fit well in such small boats.”
“You can hardly paddle where you are going.” Grandmother Brown observed. “And the Black Mare cannot carry you all. She can, in another form, but you cannot sail her.”
“Sail...what?” Zan said, confused.
"Longstorysomeothertime." Grandmother Brown smiled.
The golden pony trotted up to within ten feet of Jason, stopped, rumbled something through her nose.
“I really really wish I spoke horse.” Jason said.
“Try a granola bar.” Cait suggested.
Jason rummaged in his boat. Except for what the Muskrat Folk were packing, expedition food seemed to be kind of low; mostly it consisted of empty wrappers and ziplock bags. Then his hand fell on something he’d nearly forgotten; a package of Earla’s oatmeal brownies. He pulled one out, eyed the pony, pulled out the rest. 
Manannan’s pony trotted up and devoured all of them in ten seconds.
“Now what?” Cait said.
Her mare trotted off into the Bay, dwindled to a black spot, and halted.
“Prepare your boats.” Grandmother Brown said. Two of her kin stepped forward; a stout young man, introducing himself as “Innis.” and a young woman, very short, but strong looking, “Nerine.”
“Go.” Grandmother Brown said. Her kin stepped into the round coracles, paddled out, one of them containing a huddled and worried looking Dragonkin. Jason, Zan and Cait readied their boats, stowed dogs, snapped on sprayskirts and shoved off.
To where? None of the Muskrat Folk had said.
Follow the black mare. Bran had told Cait. Chasseur stood offshore, well off, in the deeps where a ship could lie. The golden pony trotted out beside her.
“Go on then.” Grandmother said. “Perhaps we will see you again.”
Zan turned, said something to her in another language, one full of the sounds of air and fire and growing things. He stood on Finrod and bowed. Grandmother nodded in return.
Jason bowed, as best he could from his cockpit. “Hey.” He couldn’t think of what you’d say to an ancient Muskrat Woman. And what was all that about bringing up the land, and turtle’s back? Maybe Zan would know. “It’s been awesome.” He said. “I’m honored to have met you.”
Grandmother Brown smiled, showing two big orange teeth. It no longer looked funny, Jason thought. Kind of beautiful, really. “Hey.” He rummaged in his cockpit, found his camera. “Do you mind?”
She continued to smile, so he took a shot or two, wondering if pictures in an alternate universe would actually come out.



They paddled out, following the coracles. The horses of Manannan stood on the waves, waiting. For what?
The lead coracle stopped, Innis held up a hand, sun glinting off his pale sand hair. Morgan slowed Finrod, hanging onto the stern, maneuvering the boat around so he could see.
The golden pony was melting. Fading, blowing away in the west wind off the Bay. Melting and misting and shapeshifting like the sandy islands of the Bay and the east coast. Like Assateague and Chincoteague and Tangier. The wind and mist swirled, grew, towered up fifty, sixty feet into the bright summer air. Something formed in the fog, faded, formed, grew more solid. 
It made Jason think of how he and Zan had first seen Niamh, as they dropped down through the green water to raise her. A ghost, gradually becoming more solid, more real.
It was Niamh.
Masts and spars and bright white sails were forming in the air, a hull swept out and bobbed on the sea.
No...not quite Niamh. Half as big, and higher of side and rounder of belly, bluffer of bow. A bow with a leaping white seahorse carved on it. A golden palomino hull, with a white belly, slightly raked masts the dark shades of the pony’s mane, a mass of white sail; a tops’l schooner, pony sized.
Cait stared, mouth ajar.
“Cool.” Jason said, “I hope it comes with a crew.”
“That is you.” Nerine told Jason.
“Us?”
“Aaiii!” said Ashnareth.
“You know enough. We two will go with you as far as we can. She is small, and needs only five or six to sail her.” With that, Nerine and Innis paddled toward the ship, and in a moment were clambering over the side, lifting up goods from their boats.



Backward Into the Future



“What are we going to name her?” Cait signed.
Jason squinted up at the topsail yards, considerably closer than the same yards on the Silver Raven. The whole ship seemed closer, cozier, less like Raven’s warship swordshapes and more like a snug cabin in the woods, or a cushy recliner in front of his favorite movie with a few bowls of snacks handy.
In a minute he realized the recliner image wasn’t anywhere near the truth. The two Muskrat folk began calling out stuff like “Haul on the main tops’l braces!” or maybe it was “Brace the main tops’l halyards!”. Jason found himself scrambling to heave and haul and set sails and set things in motion. “She’s one of Manannan’s horses, can’t she just sail herself?”
“Not in this form.” Nerine told him, “She has bound herself to the laws of wind and wood and line.” She looked out at the horizon where the black mare waited, “Mostly.”
“So there are things she can do that ordinary ships can’t?” Jason said.
“She can sail anywhere the water goes.” Nerine said.
Zan stopped signing, glanced at Cait.
“Shaughnessy said water flows between the worlds.”
Nerine just smiled.
“So,” Cait put the last turn on a length of line, “what are we going to call her?”
“Misty.” Jason said.
“Been overused.” Zan said. “There’s like, Misty II, III, IV, IIVVVWXXXCCVII, etc.etc.ad nauseum.”
“How about...” Cait began.
“Stormy and Cloudy and Cyclone and Twister and Lightning and Cumulonimbus, all been used.” Zan said with certainty. “And Tornado. That was...”
“...Zorro’s horse.” Cait said. “I know.” She made the ‘Z’ in the air, schzzt, schzzt, schzzt.
Jason thought about the rest of the weather channel. “Don’t think you’d want to name a boat Tornado. Or White Squall,” he said.
Morgan flinched.
“Yeah.” Zan said. “Let’s lose the weather channel.”
“Chessie.” Cait said.
“What?” 
“As in Chesapeake. And it’s a ‘ch’, goes with Chasseur.”
“Y, ok.” Zan said. One eyebrow twitched as if he thought the ship should have a longer, less pronounceable name.
“Yeah, that works.” Jason said. Kind of like the down home names the cowponies all had, back on the ranch.
“At least it’s not Stormy.” Morgan said through his teeth.



Chasseur jogged north, the cheerfully upturned bowsprit of Chessie pointed at her tail.
“North?” Jason leaned over the side, trying to see anything beyond a hazy horizon, “Chincoteague’s like, thataway.” He pointed in the opposite direction.
“Follow the mare.” Morgan said, “That’s what Bran told her. In two centuries.”
All day the black mare ran north, often she slowed, trotting easily ahead while Chessie bobbed and rolled over the waves like a big rubber duck. Jason stood on the bow, watching Zan on the bowsprit as it leapt up and down like a giant seasaw. That was another way Chessie was differed from Raven; Raven sliced through the waves as if they weren’t there, as if she didn’t need the water, only her vast wings. Chessie rolled and rocked and bobbed like a floating gull, her broad-chested bow splashing against the waves like a solid pony swashing through tall grass.  
Cait was astern, on the tiller, her cowpony short hair had begun to turn into a wild horse’s mane, blowing in the wind off the sea. Raven would have needed more than just Cait on the tiller in seas like these, but Chessie needed only Cait. Her hands held the lines, like big reins, running from tiller through pulleys at either side. She could feel the water slide past the rudder, feel the waves as they rolled under Chessie. It was like riding a very big cowpony. 
The Muskrat Folk, for the moment, were still, watching the horizon rolling toward them. And rolling, and rolling, and rolling.
Only Ashnareth looked a bit green around the gills.
And Morgan. He was huddled by the foremast looking like he might need to have a conversation with Ralph, somewhere over the side. 
“You’re a Merrow, how can you be seasick?” Jason said.
“I’m...” his eyes bulged slightly, “used to being...” erp...”IN the...” he didn’t finish, just hauled himself to the rail as fast as he could.
Jason turned to Zan, both their faces vying for Best Reaction to Most Grossawfully Vulgar Barf of All Time. 
“Cool,” Zan said, “How’s Ashnareth?”
“Can Dragonkin even barf?”
The answer came in an unbelievably awful smell, wafting from abaft.



The two sea-impaired were ultimately placed in the exact geographic center of the ship (where it moved the least) and told to stare at the far, and relatively immobile horizon. A horizon yet devoid of any signs of civilization, in any century. Nerine produced some sugared ginger root and Morgan found that intriguing and useful. Ashnareth wrinkled her nose at something not of carnivorous origin, but finally tried it anyway.
It didn’t help.
“Maybe she needs, like, squashed squid or something.” Jason observed.
“Pureed pufferfish.” Zan said.
She lifted a lip, revealing far too many teeth to argue with. The boys fled forward.
They scrambled to move lines, belay them in new positions as they tacked on a new course. The afternoon wore on in a yellow haze. The heat rose, even for July, it seemed hot. The spray splashing over the side was welcome. The Muskrat folk produced, from their gear bags, wide hats woven of straw, or marsh grass maybe; highly unattractive hats, but effective against the sun. Jason found a hat in his paddling gear, found Cait’s too, and took it to her, soaked with spray to make it cooler. Zan pulled one from his gear; a particularly ridiculous shade of green that resonated horribly with his red hair.
“Where are we?” Jason asked, at last. “Or maybe I should say when are we?”
Zan frowned at the horizon. Even to his Elven eyes it wasn’t showing any signs of shore or ship or sail or city.
“The water feels different.” Jason said.
“What do you mean?”
He thought about how to explain it. He wasn’t sure he could; it was a feeling, like the feeling you got when your horse shifted from a trot to a canter. Or when he switched leads, or when he rounded a corner on the wrong lead. 
“It feels different, how?” Zan insisted. “You’re the water elemental. You’re the sharkman.”
“Like when we were on Niamh, at sea. The water felt different than when we were on Raven, in the Bay. It’s like when the bottom comes up under you in the kayaks, when you go from deep water to shallow.”
“Deep water...” Zan spun, ran to where Morgan still huddled amidships. “Morgan, Morgan, what can you tell about where we are?”
He kept his gaze on the far horizon, “That it isn’t close enough to where we get off this boat.”
“Ship, it’s only a boat if...”
“Yeah yeah yeah. If you can put it on a ship.” He glared out into the sun.
“You could swim. I think we’re going slow enough. It’s not like the Raven.”
“No, the spray coming over the side isn’t salty enough. It’s still the Bay. I can’t breathe it.”
“What else? Something’s weird here.”
“I’ve never been up the Bay before.”
“If you were to guess how deep this is, what would you say?”
“Aren’t they, like, taking soundings or something?”
“Not here. Only when they think it’s too shallow and they might run aground. And that’d be really shallow, like nine feet.”
Morgan closed his eyes. Minutes later he opened them. “Deep water. Even on Raven I could feel how shallow the Bay is.” His hands made motions, short steep waves in the Bay, and the long, rolling waves they were feeling now. Long rolling waves over deep water.
“Yeah, that’s what Jason said. Did we go through a Gate?”
“You would know too.”
“I didn’t notice. But then, maybe the horses of Manannan work differently.”
Morgan nodded, “They need no Gates.”
Zan found Nerine, “Where are we?”
“North of Tangier.”
“When?”
“Your version of time means little to us.”
Never ask an Elder a simple question; they’ll turn it into Advanced Space-Time Zen 101. It probably meant they’d have to wait and see. That was the eternal grownup answer to anything, Wait and See. He trotted back to Cait, told her what Morgan and Jason thought.
“Yeah, it seems funny. Not like on Raven. And not just because the boats are different. And we haven’t seen anything; no boats, no shore, no buildings or channel markers or anything.”
“Now what?” Zan said, but the hazy yellow horizon gave no clue.



The sun rode the clouds down into the west, sank in a sizzle of hot orange and magenta and a purple that made Morgan want to revisit Ralph. He leapt over the side, thinking a swim might help; instead of being tossed about on a weird wooden cork, he would be part of the sea again.
This sea was nothing he’d ever been part of.
It tasted wrong, not just like the Working-Its-Way-Toward-Fresh-Water weird of the Bay, but deeply, deathly, malignantly wrong. There were no sounds of engines chewing it up, but there were no sounds of fish either. None of the small quiet scuttlings, creakings, groanings, chirpings, drummings, croakings Morgan was used to. He took a cautious breath and came up choking. Sputtering he thrashed toward the ship, reached up for the channels and missed. He sank, and it was as if something was pulling him down, it was like the time when he had no cap, when the sea had become an alien place.
A dead place.
Something grabbed at him, caught a handful of hair and hauled him back to the light. He clapped a hand on his head, shielding his hat, caught the wrist holding him. Fine feathered, like a bird of the far south pole. Morgan sputtered and stared up into the clear golden eyes of the Dragonkin. She hauled him up, over the rail, one-handed. Her eyes looked almost sympathetic. When he had stopped coughing, she asked, “What did you find?”
“Death,” he said hoarsely.
“I smell it from here. I do not know these waters, but I know the smell of death.”
The others had gathered around, eyes wide with questions. Everyone turned to the two Muskrat Folk first. They said, “This is your quest. We are only here to help care for Manannan’s horses.” Their small bright eyes went to the steamy horizon, now a smear of iron blues and bruised purples. If they were worried, they didn’t show it, but their round faces looked far less cheerful than they had in the morning.
Chessie rocked and something thudded on the wooden deck, hoofbeats. Chasseur stood there, shaking off the sea, ears at half mast. Cait went to her, something was wrong, she could see in in her stance, in her ears, in the position of her head. “What? What is it?”
The mare shook and the last of the weird water sprayed off her. It smelled wrong, the whole sea smelled wrong, not the strong swamp-stink of a healthy salt marsh, not the diesel fuel laced water of a marina, this was something else. “It smells like the end of the world.” Cait said out loud.
“Where are we?” Jason asked again.
“North of Tangier,” Innis said. The sun’s glow was gone now, and stars were beginning to light, one by one.
“At least there’s stars.” Zan said.
Ashnareth studied the stars; her expression was unreadable to Human or Elf. Nerine took out a navigational instrument not even Cait had seen before and studied the stars too. What she learned, she didn’t say. Ashnareth only confirmed they were indeed, north of Tangier.
They slept, uneasily, on the gently rolling deck, in the heat under strange, hard stars.



The sun came up with a vengeance, hot and furnace red. No one felt much like eating, but Nerine insisted that sailors had to have some kind of fuel, the ship wouldn’t sail itself. Ashnareth seemed to be less queasy, if not exactly at home on the sea. She fell in with the others, heaving and hauling, bracing yards and setting sails. For most of these, she and Jason were all the muscle they needed, while Zan and Cait and the Muskrat Folk took care of things aloft. 
Morgan sagged against the mainmast, looking pale and almost greenish. His sand-colored hair hung limp from under his cap. The cap itself had gone an odd, dark red, the color of dried blood. A faint glitter of silvery scales surrounded him on deck.
Forward, Chasseur still stood, drinking a bucket of ship’s water. She hadn’t gone back into the sea all night. Cait stood by her, feeding her some of the things the Muskrat Folk had packed. She looked smaller, as if she had melted, or shrunken a bit under the sun. Her coat was black bleached; the color of burnt toast. 
“We should turn around.” Cait said. But the mare’s nose yet pointed north. North, to where? Cait frowned at Morgan, at the mare’s sunburnt coat, how long? 
Jason pulled the box of feathers from under his shirt, where he had kept them safe, he hoped, all this time. He hunched, back to the wind and pried the box open carefully, holding a hand so none would be caught by the wind. He touched one, ran a finger down its silvery irridescent length. “Wish you were here. Wish we knew what we were doing.” Bran wasn’t there, only Jason and Zan and Cait and Morgan. And one Dragonkin and some Muskrat Folk who only seemed to know about cooking and flying a ship. “Why are we here? What are we looking for now?” And, are we gonna survive it? It no longer felt like a Sharkman adventure. No battles, no supersecret superweapons, no special effects. Only the long hot day and the longer hotter horizon the black mare kept pointing her nose toward.
Follow her. Follow her. It was as if Jason could hear Bran saying it again. The feathers lifted, fluttering a little in the hot wind from the south. They flashed with light, like Margo’s magic crystal. The crystal from the Cave of Swords. Jason straightened, the Cave of Swords. The Cave of Swords? He looked up, over the fiferail and met Chasseur’s eyes. They glowed with a deep sea gleam, even though she certainly was shorter than yesterday, and her coat was burnt by the strange sea and sun. Jason’s eyes went to Cait, her eyes the greens and browns and greys of solid earth, her face showing uncertainty. He held up one glittering raven feather, the color of the sea. Her eyes went from the feather to Chasseur’s nose, pointing north. She turned to Jason and nodded. Jason clapped the box shut. Stood. “Ok, then. We’ll keep following your nose.”
Chasseur stood in the bow, her nose echoing the upthrust shape of Chessie’s bowsprit, in reverse. When they tacked to catch the wind again, her nose swung like a compass needle, pointing ever north. The real compass was forgotten. Chessie sailed on, less like a cheerful rubber duck now, and more like a stolid pony, mashing her way through heavy brush, up hard hills, over steep rocky terrain. 
At noon the far horizon to the west shifted shape, changed its color. The hot wind eddied and died The Muskrat Folk scurried about, calling orders. The topsails came down, along with their yards. And the top masts, Ashnareth and Jason hauling them down by line and pulley. Everything heavy was stowed below (even the eight swivel guns on deck). 
Nerine took one look at Morgan and sent him below. She scanned the others, her eye fell on Jason. “We’ll need strength on the tiller. And your Guide is a creature of the sea.” 
“Uh, sure.” Jason said, not feeling sure at all. Strength? What’s up with that? What’s happening?
He found out. In an hour the squall line had swept upon them, a screaming white haze of wind and rain. Chessie turned her broad tail to it and ran, the seas mashing over her decks till only masts, rails, hatch coamings and deck gear were visible through the waves pouring over the deck. Not even Morgan could sing this one down.
Jason balanced on the quarterdeck; it was like riding a sixty foot surfboard. His hands gripped the steering tackle, Nerine peered ahead through the squall. Ashnareth stayed with them, helping to control the thrashing tiller. She preferred the nightmare of crashing waves and howling gale to the dark hole belowdecks. The black mare stayed at the bow, waves breaking over her, pouring past her, back into the alien sea. The others huddled below, hatches battened, spray leaking down from above, and from the bilges splashing up the bulkheads, as if a sprinkler system had been installed below. Half a dozen times, Chessie heeled hard over on her beam ends, turning walls into floors, ceiling into wall. She hung there while the waves pounded her and she fought the weight of her own rig and the water she was swallowing with every breaking storm swell.
Then she would right herself and plunge on.



Hours passed, then the squall line swept on, as it had for millennia in the Great Bay; it came, sudden and swift, terrorizing mariners of any experience, and left, as swiftly, often with wreckage in its path. Today, the only thing afloat in the whole Great Bay was still afloat, plunging ahead stubbornly. Chessie’s crew emerged, manned the bilge pumps, looped lines back into their positions, where they could be found in a gale or in the dark. They reset the topmasts, the topsails. A fair wind blew up behind the gale, and Chessie charged on. All day she ran north, following the black mare’s nose. Nothing appeared on the horizon. Not Annapolis. Not the Bay Bridge. No towers of cell or radio, no barges or freighters or pleasure boats. Not even the remains of a skyscraper sticking out of the rolling greasy green sea.
Then the sea shapeshifted. The waves shortened, steepened, as if Chessie had come to shallow waters. Land appeared, a smudge on the horizon, almost as if it was afraid to make an appearance. 
Not green land, Zan could see, brown, wasted land. “What happened here?” 
The water narrowed, but not by much. They could see land to either side, far away, the way it appeared on the vast reaches of the Bay in their own time.
“What time is this?” someone said.
The air itself seemed heavy, hard to breathe.
The black mare snorted, her cannon warning sound. She spun, nose pointing down.
Nerine called orders, sails lowered, soundings were taken, anchors dropped, found bottom. Chessie bobbed in an uncertain grey-green world. The mare stomped on the deck, sounding it like a drum. She stared down into the green murk.
Jason and Zan looked at each other, then at Morgan. “Whatever it is,” Jason said, “It’s down there.”
Zan nodded. Neither wanted to be the first to mention the fact that, even if Morgan couldn’t dive, the kayaks contained some perfectly good dive gear.
“You brought dive gear.” Morgan stated. “I need it.”
“Ok, then,” Jason said it without thinking. “You’ll need a buddy.” Like a Merrow needed somebody to dive with. Yeah, here he did. Jason didn’t think too hard about what they were diving into, or where the black mare would lead. It was a dive. He ran through the gear check, made sure his air was on, his computer. How much air? Full tank; a steel 120, one hundred and twenty cubic feet of air, compressed into a compact, somewhat heavy tank. He’d need less weight on his weight belt. The water was warm, warmer than it was even in Chincoteague’s shallow bay in July, so the light wetsuit Shaughnessy had given him would work fine. He’d leave Bran’s feathers on board Chessie, where the others could get them to Bran, just in case. Just in case there was a giant moonjelly or something down there.
He turned to see Ashnareth bringing up two of the swivel guns, one on each shoulder. With help from Cait and Nerine, she fiddled them into place on Chessie’s gunnels. “You think we’re going to see more of your relatives?”
She curled a lip, revealing way too many teeth. “They are not my relatives.” She yanked on a stubborn bit of technology, the cannon clanked into place.
“You know how to fire those things?”
“Of course not. We do not use your technology.” She glanced at Cait, “But she told me how they work.”
“Cait?”
“Her family, unlike most humans, knows much about things beyond their own small place in time.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Of course. They knew all kinds of historical stuff. Jason heaved his last bit of gear into place, wishing he had a history book about wherever or whenever they were now. He’d get an A on that test, for sure. He lumped to the place amidships where Chasseur was waiting. He stared at her, wishing he could speak horse. She snorted, looked down into the water again, then she leapt overboard, and vanished below.
Morgan hauled himself over the side, took one honking-goose breath on his regulator, gave Jason the “ok” sign, and followed the mare, leaving a faint glitter of loose scales behind. The mare was smaller. Morgan looked weird, like he wasn’t all there. Even Jason couldn’t squelch the morass of morays in his gut. They were all part of the sea; Manannan’s Mare, Morgan, Sharkman. They were all feeling the effects of whatever had happened here.
He stuck a leg over Chessie’s side, then the other, and took a giant step into the unknown.



Green gloom. the faint line of Chessie’s anchor cable vanishing below, the dark, incongruous shape of a horse, floating below him as if she was standing in a pasture. The bright flash of Morgan’s blond hair, the “ok?” sign flashed at Jason.
“Ok.” He signaled back, turned his fins and flipped them, mirroring Morgan’s own fin. The mare sank below them, a dark shadow, not at all fishlike. Down, down, the only sound that of their bubbles. Above them, the bright, rippling ceiling of their world; light, air, safety. Below; alien darkness and a sea reeking of death. Jason could taste it, leaking in around his regulator, something odd, off, sulphurous. Yet the sea was clear, he could see for sixty, seventy feet, that’s how far away the mare was now. He looked at his depth gauge; sixty feet. Looked up; Chessie’s hull stood out, clear and dark against the bright sea sky. Ten feet more. And another ten. The deepest he’d ever been. How deep is she going? does she know humans can only go to 130 feet in scuba gear? Unless you do decompression diving, and I don’t know anything about that! Morgan drifted beside him, leaving a faint glitter of scales in his wake.”Ok?” Jason asked him.
He nodded, flashed back the ‘ok’ sign, maybe a little too vehemently. Yeah! I’m fine! Let’s just do it!
Below them a faint grey shape appeared, the mare a dark silhouette against it. A whale? No wait... “Is that a rock?” Jason signed to Morgan.
“Yes.” 
They drifted down, touched down on its ancient scarred surface. Jason’s fins wafted silt off it and he saw something; remains of old sea life maybe. No. He knelt, waved his hand over it, like a magic spell. Crud of ages drifted off. A wolf stared back at him. A few feet from that, a thunderbird. A strange dancing goddess. A man with bunny ears, or horns. “Whoa!” Jason said thorough his regulator. He pointed, but Morgan was already looking. 
The mare was standing on the end of the rock, watching them.
“Your folk made these?” Morgan signed.
“Yeah.” If he meant humans. Humans, long ago. Not his own tribe, another. Jason squinted, trying to remember where he’d heard of something like this. His dive slate dangled from his BC, where it always was. He pulled it up toward his face, glanced at the petroglyphs, then unhooked the slate’s pencil and scribbled a copy of the first petroglyph. Then the next. Morgan floated beside him, his eyes question marks. Jason didn’t stop to answer those questions. Somehow, he thought, this might be important. He doodled the wolf (well, it mostly looked like one, he thought), the goddesses, the strange man with bunny ears, the one with horns and a tail, the thunderbirds.
Then the rock melted, faded, wafted away on the currents and he was staring into a hole in the sea, the black mare vanishing into it.



The empty horizon had finally produced something. A faint buzz, like angry hornets, and distant blits on the surface of the sea. Zan climbed aloft, as far as he could, not half the height he could climb on Niamh, or Raven. From Chessie’s short masts he saw an amazing sight.
“What!” Cait demanded.
Ashnareth stood, eyes trying in vain to see as far as an Elf’s, ears picking up only the faint buzz the humans could already hear.
“Arm the photon torpedoes!” Zan shouted, “We got company!”
“Pho-what?” Ashnareth said.
Cait was already running to the cannon supplies; swabs, powder, wads, balls. Just like firing a big black powder rifle, like they’d done at the Rendevous. Like they’d done on the Constellation on a tour last summer. Only that had been with fiberglass cannons, and no real powder.
“Cool.” Zan shouted down to them, signing with one hand for Cait, “Now they got Jet-skis.”
“Orcs?” Cait said.
“ORCs.” He signed back, raising fingers as he counted them; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight...
“I thought we took care of them.” Cait muttered.
“There are more than just the few we took from your marsh.” Ashnareth signed. “Too many.”
“...nine... ten... eleven. Wait, no...make that. Aaagh! they’re running in circles, I can’t tell!”
“Down here, we need you down here.” Nerine called to Zan. 
He slid down the shrouds, lightning fast, ran to one of the guns.
Cait gave him an uncertain look.
“I actually know how these things work.”
“You do?”
“I grew up with a privateer, remember? I never learned much about sailing, but I learned about cannons. Fire element, remember?”
“What are they doing here, anyway?” Cait said. Her gun was primed, ready, she handed it over to Nerine and hurried to the next one. She glanced back at Nerine, but if she knew anything about ORCs, she didn’t say. 
“Perhaps following you.” Ashnareth stated. “Perhaps not.”
“Oh that helps,” Zan said, “thanks.” He finished with his cannon and handed it over to Innis. Then he ran for Sky; lashed to the deck bungees was his bow. He yanked it out and ran to the gunnels. He could fire this many times while the cannons rang out once. He could fire it between helping the others with the cannons.
He lifted the bow to fire in a long, high arc; he might just reach that first one, or warn him off. He let loose the bowstring.
There was a snap and fizzle, and something as bright as a half dead firefly escaped from the string.
Zan stared at it, openmouthed, tried again. This time all he got was faint suggestion of heat lightning dancing along the string.
“Your magic is fire based.” Nerine observed, “and land based. You may have noticed we are surrounded by water. Dead water.”
Dead water in a dead world. The bow was useless. Zan crammed it back under the deck bungees, withdrew his sword. They would have to depend on that, and the spare one for Cait, and the cannons, and Ashnareth’s lightning fast claws.
 
The only thing scarier than dropping down into a mystery sea teeming with death, was following a vanishing black mare into a dark hole in the bottom of that sea. Trust her. Bran had said. Yeah, but wasn’t it Cait who was supposed to be following her?
Jason followed her anyway, Morgan pasted to his starboard side. Jason glanced at him, wondering whether Morgan was trying to keep Jason from being scared, or sticking to Jason to keep Morgan from panicking and doing the Emergency Death Blow to the surface.
There was no surface here. No dance of light above them. No comforting shadow of Chessie, silhouetted against the sea sky. Only black dark, and a faint phosphorescence that the mare had somehow produced. It made her look like a weird angel, floating above them. Jason poked at his ears, they told him he was actually going deeper. Ok, a weird angel floating below them. Maybe a ghost horse. He flicked on his flashlight, it only illuminated his gauges, and Morgan swimming hard by, and the wispy tail of the mare, just ahead. Plenty of air, he hadn’t sucked it all down in a panic yet. He hoped Chasseur knew what she was doing, but how could she know anything about the limits of human technology?
The pressure in his ears changed, shapeshifted. They were going up. Up up up. Then light, a faint glimmer, the mare a black shape against it. 



They came screaming in, roaring up spray, jets spouting great rooster tails into the hot blazing sky. There was no indication that they wanted a parley. No indication of what exactly they wanted. 
Cait looked at Ashnareth, “You know them, what do we do?”
For an answer she snarled something that made Cait’s skin crawl. 
Then she glared out at them, silent, feeling useless. They were using human tech, as they always did, and they were out of reach of her sickle claws. She could wait for them to close, to board, take them out then.
Putting her companions in dire danger.
Or she could use the technology of her companions. Human tech. The frivolous toys her kind shunned.
That would make her just like them.
She glared out at them, rumbling under her breath. There was no time to think, these buzzing annoyances spraying gouts of dead water were wickedly fast.
She grabbed what she hoped was the handle of one of the swivel guns, “Show me how to use this.”
Zan ran through the drill, “The swab part’s really really important. If there’s an ember in there when you pour powder in, you’ll blow us all up!” She nodded, paying close attention to what he did.
Then Chessie’s little swivel guns boomed out across the seething sea and ORCs blew off their water-born “bikes”. There was a paff of fire and smoke, and another. Cait wasn’t sure whether it was the jet-ski or the ORC or both. She flinched. It was one thing to fire a muzzle-loader at a target. Or to do a cannon drill with fake cannons, or black powder alone, another thing to blow something live, even an ORC, out of the water.
“You do not want to find out what they want.” Ashnareth said. And aimed another round.



Light, light broken into a million glittering fragments, dancing off the water’s surface, glinting below, dancing off the bubbles of the two divers. Jason and Morgan surfaced together, stared around them, then spat out their regulators.
Chasseur stood in the middle of a cave, the roof broken through, the light coming from there. Light glinting and dancing off a thousand shattered shards of...
“Whoaaaaa!” Jason stood up, fins balanced on rock. “It’s like that cave in, what was it?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know your tales.” Morgan said.
“It was King Arthur. No. It was Merlin. Some chick got mad at him and stuck him in a crystal cave. I don’t know if it was made out of crystal, or had a bunch of... Hey, wait.”
Morgan was hauling himself up on the rocks, worn smooth by water. Or something else. The mare stood off, scenting the air from beyond.
Jason scrambled up behind Morgan, pulled off his fins, wondered if it was safe to leave them here, or if he should carry them along. It was the Unknown. He hooked them over his arm and stared. It was a big cave; you could have parked the Silver Raven in it, and that was just the water part, the edges were shelved in rock, the ceiling curved up high enough to accommodate the Raven’s masts. 
Broken ceiling, or was it supposed to be like that? No, there was another entrance, a tunnel, short enough to be filled with light too. Vines and twisted trees hung down over the edge of the ceiling hole. The light coming in from above danced off the crystal shards lying everywhere, poking out of the walls, lying scattered on the floor. 
“Wow!” Jason breathed. he glanced at Morgan, his face looked not at all like a face full of wonder. It looked stricken. “Wait.” Jason said, “It’s not supposed to look like this?”
Morgan nodded. “I have never seen it. Only heard of it.”
“This is Margo’s cave, isn’t it?”
Morgan nodded, unable to say more.
There were no swords in the Cave of Swords, swords of crystal, they would have been, Jason guessed. As he poked along the edges he could see the shadows of where they had been. Where they had grown in the ages old rock. See that they had been immense, some as big as swords, some as tall as masts. they were gone, and only the shards remained. “Who did this?” Jason’s voice echoed hollowly, no answer, not even an echo came back.



Boom! Boom! Boom! 
Chessie’s cannons spoke. But there were more ORCs than cannon, and it took time to swab the barrel, load the powder and ball and prime and shoot, then use the worm to clean it out and start all over again. The swivel guns, mounted on the gunnels, could be swung and aimed faster than regular cannon on carriages, but the ORCs were faster still. They screamed by, sending great waves of foul water on deck, they leaped aboard, sending their own craft spiraling out of control.
Ashnareth met them with the kind of fury only a betrayed countryman could feel. Her sickle claws slashed and she sent them back into the sea in puffs of flame and smoke. Cait and Zan and the Muskrat Folk could only stay at the guns and try to keep the others at bay.
At bay. Funny word. that’s where they were, somewhere in the Great Bay. Somewhen. Where? Why? What had happened to it?
What else were they trying to keep at bay?



“This can’t be the past.” Jason said. “The Chesapeake was formed, like, at the end of the last ice age. Before that, it was a river. The Susquehanna River. Then it flooded, from the glaciers melting. But not this much. So this has to be the future.” He looked at Morgan, “but you can’t time travel in your own lifetime. So it’s gotta be pretty far ahead...” He stopped at the next thought. Unless you’re dead.
Morgan hauled himself up farther, wishing the dogs knew how to dive. He grimaced as a shard sliced into his tail. Chasseur was ambling toward the tunnel leading out. “I can’t follow you. Someone needs to follow her.”
Jason looked at the mare, at Morgan. “Well, guess I don’t need a weight belt, right now. Or fins. Or this tank.” He unloaded his gear. set it down by Morgan. “You sure you’ll be ok here?”
“I have to be. Sure you’ll be ok?”
“I gotta be.”
Morgan cracked a smile, the first Jason had seen for days, “Anyhow, you’re Sharkman.”



Sharkman and the Island of Doom 
Sharkman stole forward, through the tunnel, following the light hoofbeats of the black mare. She looked like Morgan, tattered around the edges, her coat sun and salt burned, her mane and tail thin and bedraggled. Like this place, rocks tumbled out of the walls, floor of the tunnel littered with debris, as if no one had passed here for ages. Around a bend, the light growing brighter.
Jason stepped out into silver sunlight, a rocky coastline fell away to his left, the sea still roared against it, but it too, smelled odd. Something plantlike clung to the rocks he could see along the shore, but whatever it was looked matted and grey. Above him rocks rose into hills that might have once been green, now they were brown with dry shrubby stuff, gnarled trees that looked half dead.
And it was, except for the sea smashing against the shore, silent. No gull called, no bird sang. No buzz of bloodsucking fly or mosquito, those creatures who were, in a healthy ecosystem, the basis of all other life. 
The black mare plodded on up the hill, tail swishing gently like the memory of a wave. Jason trudged after her, his wetsuit-booted feet flinching on the sharp rocks. Past the twisted trees, not the kind of twisted-by-the-wind look he’d seen in pictures of stuff on sea cliffs, a different kind of twisted. Contorted, wrenched, perverted, distorted. He ducked under a branch and it caught, impossibly, on his smooth wetsuit.
It moved, I swear that tree moved.
He thrashed, and it let loose, whether by Sharkman’s strength alone, or because enchanted trees didn’t like wetsuits made by Orcafolk. The mare’s hoofbeats came from around a bend now, above. The trail narrowed, stones skipping down the cliff to rocks below, jagged teeth in a white sea. 
Yeah, sure, a horse made it up here, so can I. Right? Sure, but it hadn’t been a very big horse last time he’d looked. He stumbled, caught himself. Made the mistake of looking down.
He pressed up against the crumbly cliff wall on his left, eyes wide in terror, then squinched shut.
As if that would help.
There has to be an easier way up here. If there was, he wasn’t going to find it without the mare, and he could hear her hoofbeats growing fainter. Ok. Yeah, sure, I can do this. He pried one eye open, saw silver sky above, hazy with some kind of mushy, unidentifiable cloud cover. It made him think of how the surface of water looked as you rose toward it from the depths. He breathed, the way he’d learned in the martial arts routines Bran and Shaughnessy had shown him. The way he’d learned in diving. Breathe. In slow, out slower. Grow roots into the earth. He took a step up the trail, then another.
A minute later he came out on top of the world. He could see the whole island, spread out like a splayed hand, one side smooth as if the sea had sanded it into a long half moon, the other side full of small coves with white sand beaches. It looked like the kinds of beaches you saw in nature specials, beaches full of walruses, or seals.
Seals. Margo’s mother was a Selkie. This was Seal Island. Then where were they?
Gone, like the swords in the cave. The whole island rang with the silence.
Chasseur stood a few dozen yards away, head raised, drinking the wind. She let out one ringing neigh. 
Nothing answered.
Ahead, half hidden in the folds of the brown hills, was a house. A long low cottage made of stone and wood, its thatched roof long gone. The doorframes were carved with marvelous shapes, sea shapes, tree shapes, shapes of land animals and birds and creatures of the deep all faded by wind and weather. Jason hesitated by the door, imagining ghosts. Zombies. Cursed treasures.
What he found was dust. Leaf, twig, bits of grass carried in by some small island creature long ago. The fireplace was cold. Even the smoke stains were faded.



Morgan studied the air gauges on his and Jason’s gear. They’d used half getting here. Too much; the rule was one third in, one third out, and one third for The Attack of the Giant Moonjelly and other disasters. He had thought to explore the cave, but he needed to save the air. 
What he really wanted to do was lie here and sleep. He was tired, fatigued beyond anything he’d felt pulling sailors out of his own storm. Beyond even the fatigue of a small Merrow child in a long ago war zone. Something was terribly wrong with him, and with this place, and the sea they’d come through to get to it. They were connected, of course, by the water itself. What had happened here had happened there.
What? Was Margo responsible for all this? An old anger boiled up inside him; the anger of having his cap, his connection to the sea stolen. Of Bri, small and innocent put in dire danger. Of Bran, and Ian, nearly destroyed.
Then he thought of the small child Cait had pulled out of the wreck of the Nightwind.
Wrecked by his own storm of anger.
He heaved off his tank and BC and laid it on the rock, well above water line, BC inflated, in case it somehow rolled into the water anyway. He didn’t need a flashlight, as Jason had, to see the blurry glitter of the stumps of the crystal swords, the hole in the caved-in roof, the faint light from the tunnel. He hitched himself over the floor, picking up fragments and dropping them, wondering what he was looking for.
Evidence, like in those detective movies Earla was so fond of. Something to tell them who’d been here. Why?
So far all he was finding was the small pieces of crystal, the ones too insignificant for the thieves to remove.



The long cottage was divided into rooms, each with its own fireplace and doors to the outside. There were windows, some with carved wooden shutters fallen below them, some with the shutters still closed against whatever had invaded the island.
Invaded? That’s what came to Jason’s mind. They stormed in on their mighty battleships and trashed the cave and stole the crystals and left the place for dead. He kicked absently through some leaf litter. Something small scuttled out and vanished in a crack.
Sharkman squeaked and flattened himself against the opposite wall, breathing hard.
“Yeah, ok. It’s just a mouse. A freaking mouse. Or a really really big cockroach. They’d survive anything, right? Yeah. No problem. Sharkman versus Giant Killer Cockroaches, News at Eleven.” Sharkman went looking for a stick, a really big one.
Thus armed he went from room to room, finding little more than dust, leaf litter, and more small unseen things scuttling through it. “Well, at least something’s still alive here.” He was beginning to think he should have brought a water bottle from the ship, slung it on his BC. Sharkman was definitely getting thirsty and he wasn’t going to trust anything he found here.



There was nothing along the shelves of rock except fragments of the crystals that had grown out of the earth herself. Morgan stuck his face in the water, holding his breath. He could see, in the dim light, a vast bowl, the floor of the cave, flooded as it had always been. The Gate they had come through, following Chasseur, was closed, it would take her to open it again. He stuck out his tongue, tasted the water. Not quite right, but it was seawater. He could breathe it.
He hoped.
He took a shallow, experimental breath. It was like breathing air downwind of a burning ship, but far enough downwind so he wouldn’t choke, at least not in the few minutes it would take him to explore the cave. He turned his fin to the fragment of sky shining through the broken roof and dove.



Jason poked the stick at the leaf litter in room, what was it? (the house seemed to stretch on forever, somehow bigger inside than it was on the outside), must be about Room Six Zillion and Eleventy-Two. Poke poke stab stab. He wielded his staff like a weapon against the Unseen, the Unknown. Some rooms yet had furnishings, crumbling with dry rot. There were chests and cupboards, and something that looked like an old fashioned wardrobe. Jason pried it open, wondering if it led anywhere. It creaked, groaned, the door fell off with a cloud of dust.
Sharkman leaped back, swordstick raised. Nothing emerged.
He poked his stick into the wardrobe, poked at the back wall. Nothing, just crumbling wood, and beyond that, stone.
“Wish Zan would have packed another tank. We could use somebody with an Erase Monster Spell.” 
Zan was having his own difficulties right about then. The ORCs seemed, impossibly, to be multiplying. The water was littered with dead jet-skis, sinking jet-skis, and jet-skis still under the power of ORCs who made movie stunt guys look like wimps. Chessie’s cannons filled the hot air with blue smoke. ORCs leaped from screaming ‘skis, grabbed the gunnels and tried to board.
Each one was met with Ashnareth’s slashing claw, or with well-placed sword strokes from Zan and Cait. The Muskrat Folk were half as tall as the ORCs, but their stout staffs spun and thrust and never seemed to miss.
Still, Chessie’s supplies of powder and cannonballs were limited, Zan guessed. He only hoped the ORCs supply of marine fuel was more limited.



Room Six Zillion and Eleventy-Three. Dark, crawling vines and shrubbery had grown over the windows, shuttering them with creeping woody tentacles. The doors were closed. A fireplace stood at one end of the room, a pile of debris that might have been bunks filled a corner. Faint carvings could still be seen on the doorframes, and window lintels. A cauldron and some pots lay scattered near the fire. Jason poked aside a drift of plant debris, evicting a family of what looked like land crabs, their colors faded like old photos. It was a big drift, and under it was a chest. Jason swooshed the litter off the top. Carvings of seals and undersea kelp forests danced across the lid. There was a lock on it, but the hardware that held the lock was set in crumbling wood. One strike of the stick and the lid shattered. Jason pried it up.
Inside was an old coat. A leather one. He ran a hand over it. No, sealskin. A shiver ran through him, it felt the way bioluminescence looked, green and sparkly, and utterly eerie. He pulled it out; a sealskin, worn and tattered, but still recognizable.
Behind him came the whoosh and crackle of flame, the swift smell of smoke.



Morgan drifted over the bottom of the cave in a search pattern, back and forth, back and forth, the way Shaughnessy had shown him. An anachronistic gleam shown out among the shards of crystal. The dull gleam of lead. He dropped down, lifted a weight belt. With difficulty he heaved it to shallower water near shore, studied it. Turned it over. There were markings on the weights, letters, and on the belt itself. Good. Maybe they didn’t need to take the whole thing back, just one weight, or Jason could substitute these weights for his own.
One down. Morgan dove back in. Whoever they were, they had been hasty. Messy. He found a knife. A piece of machinery he couldn’t identify, and much too large to remove. Jason could draw it, perhaps. He frowned at it, trying to memorize its shape, so he could do an illusion of it later. Its shape and color seemed to slide out of his mind's grasp. There were other things, some he recognized as dive gear, left in haste. Others he had no idea of what they were. He picked up the small items he could carry, left them with the pile of Jason’s gear on shore.
Back and forth, back and forth across the bottom of the cave, the light glittering, dazzling, up from the bottom, down from the hole in the roof. 
He caught himself drifting aimlessly. Where had he been? What part of the cave hadn’t he seen yet? He drifted up toward the light and bonked his head on the bottom, the crystal shards glinting madly at him. No, no, must be the other way.



Jason turned, a familiar campfire smell in his nostrils. A smell horribly out of place in this forsaken island. 
The fireplace was crackling with flame, almost cheerily.
“Ok, ok, whoever you are, you can come out now. I won’t hurt you.” He stood, stick raised like a sword in one hand, sealskin draped over the other arm. 
From behind, someone came, brushing a hand along the sealskin.
“WAAAAUUUGGGHH!” Jason leapt aside, clutching skin and flailing with the stick.
At nothing.
“OKokOKok. It’s cool. Nobody there.” He turned in a circle. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Bare walls, dark room, old chest.
Fireplace with a see-through chick in a gown standing by it.
The sealskin tumbled to the floor. Sharkman stood, jaws agape.
In a voice that sounded like it was coming from another dimension, the woman said, “Stop them.”
It took a minute for Jason to make his mouth work. Shapeshifting pookas and Ravenkin and marine biologists who were really whales, alternate universes, Off Road ORCs, random gales, all in a day’s work for Sharkman.
Ghosts were something else. He was the kid who watched horror movies from between his fingers. Who refused to go into the Halloween House of Horror, or on Jason’s (why was it always ‘Jason’?) Haunted Hayride. 
Then again, maybe he’d just hit the Selkie Voice Mail. Beep, at the sound of the roaring fireplace, please leave a message with the seethrough lady in the white dress beeeep.
“Ssstaaaahhp themmmm.” The voice crackled, mixing with the fire, sounding like faraway wind.
“Sssstop who?” Jason finally managed to say. 
She stayed, there by the fire, he could see it flickering through her. His eyes went to her face, not an unkind face. A face like somebody’s mom, a beautiful mom, like the kind you only saw in movies. There was something strong and sad in her face. 
He bent, picked up the sealskin, dusted it off. “Is this yours?”
“They have destroyed the cave...”
“I know, I saw it...”
“...destroyed the island. Taken the swords. Water flows between the worlds. This affects many more than the Seal Folk.”
“Who? Who did this?”
“Margo...”
“Margo?” Of course, of course it was her. Who else had been a pain in everybody’s...”
“Margo, you must stop them.” The woman was saying. “Only you can save all our worlds.”
“Margo???” Jason stood, his face squinched in disbelief. “But...” Can’t you tell I’m not her? Who the heck are you? He opened his mouth to ask, but the gossamer woman fratzed, jittered and faded. The fire crackled on merrily.
Jason took a step forward, then another. Waved his hand through the space where she’d been. Nothing, of course nothing. His wetsuited foot encoutered something sharp and hard and nothing like the rest of the floor. “Ow!” He pulled his foot back and under it was a crystal shard. He bent, stared at it. Picked it up. Clear as glass, seven-sided. He frowned, trying to remember how many sides quartz crystals had. “I wonder if I should take this along?” He said to an empty room. There was no answer. He closed his hand around it, stepped backwards to the chest, staring down into its dusty emptiness.
Put the sealskin back? Take it with me? Whose is it? Seethrough Lady’s? Where were the Seal Folk? He’d seen no traces, no bodies, no bones. Or maybe it had all happened so long ago, there weren’t any, like when they found the wreck of the Titanic; just a teacup perched on a massive boiler and scattered shoes and a suit of empty clothes.
He gently laid the sealskin back in the chest. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, its owner would come back for it..
Something rattled the door, thumped against it hard. Sharkman jumped, raised the swordstick again, this time with less panic and more purpose. Another thump, followed by a snort. A familiar snort. Jason went to the door and thrust it open, Chasseur stood there, silhouetted against a darkening sky. She turned and headed back toward the cave, Jason striding after.
Down the long winding trail, this time he didn’t look down at the crashing ruined sea. The tree limbs and tangling roots seemed to creep away from him, the path stayed clear. He almost ran through the tunnel, came up short where the pile of dive gear lay.
Where was Morgan? His gear lay there too, along with a scattering of stuff that looked like it came from the twenty-first century.
“Morgan!” No answer. Jason turned to the black mare, she stood, head low, as of she was conserving her last bit of energy for the plunge home. She stared toward the water. “Well, where else would he be?” Jason splashed to the edge, shone his light down in the water. Waved it back and forth to signal Morgan. What was he doing? Taking a nap? Selkie cave, sea outside, this would be sea water. Morgan could probably breathe it. Just wait, he’d appear any minute. Jason glanced at the mare, with her lowered head and tangled wispy mane. Yeah, he could breathe this about as well as Jason could breathe the air in a burning building.
Sharkman set his jaw and hauled his BC over his shoulders, he spat in his mask, rinsed it, slapped it on his face. Double checked his air, computer, weights still in the BC pockets. Fins. He stepped off the rock shelf and splashed into the dark.
His flashlight wobbled across the bottom. Bottom, the cave had a bottom now. Great, I hope there’s enough of Chasseur left to get us home. Dark rock, scattered with glints of broken crystal. And other stuff. Dive gear, random machinery. 
But where was Morgan?
He swam out in an ever broadening circle. Debris, debris, crystal shards, fallen rock, debris. Then his light swept over an inert form. He flashed back to the moment he’d first met Shaughnessy, Bran, Ian and Morgan. He’d dived down on their bubbles and seen an immense tail. He’d freaked and done an emergency blow to the surface, thinking he’d seen a big shark.
He dived, grabbed the fin, shook it. No response. He swam to Morgan’s head, lifted it. His eyes were closed, his cap still in place. Jason hooked an arm around Morgan’s chest and hit the inflator button with his other hand. They rose toward the faint light coming through the ruined roof.
Jason surfaced, spat out his regulator, gasping, he hauled Morgan to the rock shelf. It was harder to haul him out. Breathing, breathing, please be breathing. How was he gonna do CPR on a Merrow? Should he be trying to get air or water into his lungs? Jason rolled him over on his side, water flowed out of his mouth. His chest rose again, half heartedly. Jason crouched, waiting for another breath, trying to remember how you were supposed to do mouth to mouth.
Morgan sputtered, sat up, clinging to Jason. 
“What were you doing?” Jason said.
“Edifice...effervesce...” One clenched hand opened, in it was a plastic clip from a diver’s gear.
“Evidence?”
“Uhhhh.” He sat up, curled over his tail and hacked up the rest of the vile water. 
“Maybe you should stick to air for now.”
“What...what did you find?”
Jason scrambled up to where the rest of the gear lay, he’d dropped it here, yes, there it was. He held up the shard.
“Looks like the rest.”
“This one was in the cottage.”
“Cottage?”
“On shore, in room eight hundred and eleventy-five, under the feet of a see-through lady who told Margo she has to save the world.” Jason paused, “Maybe all of them. Whatever happened here affected a lot of other places too. A lot of others besides the Seal Folk. That’s what she said.”
Morgan straightened, “What?”
“I either got the Selkie Voice Mail, or we gotta call Ghostbusters. She didn’t seem to know who she was talking to though, so...” He turned the crystal over in his hand, “... so maybe this was some kind of message, apparently meant for Margo.”
“Show it to the others, when we return.” Morgan’s voice sounded hoarse, as if he’d been breathing fire.
Behind them, Chasseur waded into the water.
“I think it’s time to go.” Jason studied Morgan’s drained face, the way he slumped on the rocky shore, “You think you can manage your dive gear?”
Morgan looked away, staring at the dark water, giving no answer.
He’d have to manage it. They couldn’t stay here. “I’ll get it.” Jason said. I’ll get you home, if I have to drag you there myself. No Sharkteam member gets left behind.
Jason heaved up Morgan’s tank and BC.
“Go.” Morgan told him.
“Yeah,” Jason held out the BC, “as soon as you get in this.”
Morgan found the last shreds of his voice.“GO!” 
Jason was taken aback, for about five seconds. “Ok, I can drag you back without this. See how long you can breathe the water. But I will drag you back!”
Morgan glared at him. Go! Save yourself. Save the world. All of them. I'm done. I will only hold you back. He stared hard into Jason’s eyes with eyes the color of night sea.
This time, Jason didn’t look away.
Morgan did.
Jason held out the BC and tank, helped wrestle him into it.
“Wait.” Morgan said, “We have to take some of the evi...stuff.” 
“Yeah, you’re right.” Jason’s light squiggled across the cave floor, and the shallows of the rock shelf. He saw the weight belt Morgan had dropped there, ditched his own weights and wrangled the new one over his hips. He found a place on his leg for one of the knives, places in the BC pockets for some of the other stuff. He helped Morgan slide into the water, then took one last look at the larger debris he couldn’t carry. He pulled his dive slate up on its bungee and recorded the discarded machinery, like battle wreckage, on the part of the slate that didn’t contain the petroglyphs. 
Morgan floated there for a moment breathing the clean, dry air from the tank, from another world. One that hadn’t had the drain plug pulled out of it, yet.


A Circling of Ravens



The ORC leapt from his jet-ski, grabbed the main shrouds and swung over the gunnels. He met a pointed request to remove himself, as Zan’s cutlass threw him back into the seething water. 
“Nine hundred and sixty-two.” Another was over the side, Zan spun and exchanged quick blows, then sent him after his kin. “Nine hundred and sixty-four.”
“Your count is off.” Ashnareth snarled from a few yards away. “They are not nearly that many.” She slashed out with her clawed foot and a billow of smoke and flame erupted.
Zan hit the deck, rolled, came up on his feet, “Could you warn me when you’re gonna throw ORC fireballs?”
Ashnareth rumbled something and took out another one.
Despite his light words, despite the eerie resemblance to one of his favorite video games, Zan knew it was no game. It was not the first time he’d fought for his life and for the lives of others. It wouldn’t be the last, he hoped. He didn’t have time to think about Jason and Morgan, or what they’d found on the black mare’s trail. 
He barely had time to keep a leaping ORC off Nerine. To deflect one who’d caught the shrouds and was aiming a claw-footed kick at Cait. 
They didn’t look like they were trolling for prisoners this time. Zan leapt, spun, swing through the moves without thinking. Moves he’d practiced a thousand times. More. Moves he’d practiced against an agile Ravenkin. Sure, ORCs were easy after that.
“Ooof, aagh!.” Zan slammed against the foreshrouds, and an ORC twice his size at his throat, swordarm pinned. He coiled, kicked. It was like kicking a rock.
Then the ORCs eyes glazed and he crumpled to the deck revealing a grim faced Cait with her sword in one hand and a cannon worm in the other.
“Cool,” Zan had time to say, then he was swinging up and aiming his feet at another one.
A blur of motion twenty feet aft; Ashnareth had learned to grab the shrouds and lift herself higher to aim kicks at those ORCs yet by the boards. She swung, but the smaller, leather clad ORC caught her foot.
There was a crash and a splash as she went by the boards with him.
“Ashnareth!” Zan leaned over the rail, desperately searching. She floundered up, flailing. 
They swim exactly the way sharks don’t.”  
He grabbed the nearest coiled line and freed it. He swung out, over the gunnels and dropped to the sea, yelling, “Grab hold!”
He didn’t stop to think too hard about what she might grab hold with. Her hands were clawed nearly as massively as her feet.
She flailed, floundered and caught his leg, then, wisely, the end of the line.
“I can’t haul us both up!” Zan shouted at her.
She gasped, sputtered, “I can!” And hauled herself hand over claw up the line, catching him on the way and swinging them both back aboard. She dropped him on deck with a thump, shook herself, aiming a kick at one stray ORC, without even looking.
“Maybe..you...should have stayed...in the middle of the ship!’ Zan gasped. “Like when you were seasick.”
She snorted and galloped down deck, throwing off ORC boarders as she went. 



The black mare waded into the black bowl of the cave, vanished beneath the ring ripples she’d made on the surface. Jason hit his inflator button and dumped air from his BC. Morgan dumped air and sank with him, but Jason kept one hand latched onto Morgan’s BC. They drifted down in the gleam of Jason’s light, following the wisp of the mare’s vanishing tail. The broken glitter of the cave floor faded, vanished like dreamsmoke and the tunnel stretched out toward another place.
Jason breathed slow, listening for Morgan’s breaths in between his own. Watching Chasseur’s tail, listening for Morgan’s bubbles, feeling the faint kick of Morgan’s tail. Faint, weak.
Was the mare going slower? She’s been striding through the water before, like a land horse on a brisk fall morning. Now she looked like an old mare in the heat of summer, barely moving.
Come on girl, you have to get us back. You have to keep going.
Morgan faltered, his fin strokes erratic, the sort of motion, they told you on all the nature specials, that attracted sharks. The motion of an injured or dying creature.
Jason tightened his grip on Morgan, kicked harder with his own fins.
Fins formed by a shapeshifter. Black and white fins, like the world’s biggest dolphin.
Jason slid ahead, hauling Morgan with him. He caught up to Chasseur, drifted just above her back. He reached down, caught a hand in her mane. Not to hitch a ride, to... to what?
He’d never even touched her before. She was Cait’s Guide. He caught her mane and felt a kind of charge, a shiver of energy, flow from his own fins up through his wetsuit clad self to the mare. Her head came up, her ears, at half mast, rose, pricked forward. He felt her surge forward, drawing them all the last few yards into a sunlit sea.



It happened almost without Zan realizing.
Silence.
The bloodsucking buzz of the jet-skis was gone. There was one last startled “graaaack!”, and Zan turned to see Cait standing over a downed ORC on the quarterdeck. Ashnareth leapt toward her.
Cait held up a hand, “Wait!” she shouted at Ashnareth, “we should ask this one some questions.”
“They will not answer.”
“How do you know unless you ask?” She turned to the one beneath her sword, “Who sent you? Why are you here?”
She was met with stony silence.
Ashnareth snorted, “I said they will not talk.”
Cait thought furiously, what would make them talk? Magic? Walking the plank? She saw Ashnareth’s head turn swiftly toward the bow, felt the thud as Chasseur landed amidships. A moment later Jason and Morgan were hauled aboard.
Morgan and Chasseur both looked like they’d been through a hurricane. Jason dumped his gear and knelt to wrestle Morgan’s off of him. He saw the last ORC on the quarterdeck, Ashnareth standing over him, and froze. “What are you doing with him? And what’s with the wrecked jet-ski fleet?”
Cait gave him a look that said the answers should be obvious. 
“Oh, great!” Jason said, “now they got bikes that float.” He studied the wreckage, “We opened another Gate. So they’re following us.”
“What did you find?”
“The reason they’re probably following us.” Jason held out the crystal. “There were more, once. But somebody took them.” He glanced at the ORC, but could read his expression about as well as he could read a dinosaur’s. He pointed at the weight belt he’d dumped on deck, “That’s from them, whoever they are.”
“Our time.” Cait said.
There was a sudden scramble behind her, a scrabbling of clawed feet and the ORC was by the shrouds in a heartbeat. He swung over the gunnels and, impossibly, into the sea; his padded jacket apparently contained as much flotation as a PFD.
Ashnareth picked up a stray cannonball and threw it with the speed and accuracy of a major league player.
The dead sea answered with a faint flash of flame.
“He will not take news of this to anyone.” Ashnareth hissed.
Jason and Cait exchanged horrified glances.
“Really really really glad you’re on our side.” Zan said, flinching.
“We do not take sides.” Ashnareth said. “We follow the Path.”



The path led south, at last. Morgan huddled miserably before the mainmast, wrapped in a blanket dampened with ship’s water and sweet smelling herbs Nerine had produced from her stores. If it helped, Jason couldn’t tell. Morgan was no longer the tanned surfer dude of Chincoteague, he was a pale version of his true blue-grey, almost greenish, his hair darkened like seaweed, matted and shedding, the deck littered with a storm of silver scales. His eyes were closed, but the last time Jason had seen them, they were pale, muddied.
“Is he gonna be ok?” Jason whispered to Nerine.
“This is a deadly place for the seafolk. For you. For all of us.”
True enough, Jason itched, as if he’d swum through a storm of sea nettles, the lacy jellyfish with the long veil of stinging tentacles that graced the Bay, and the coast, each summer. The ones that sent children running from the surf. Only under the wetsuit was the rash merely a faint itch, elsewhere it had erupted into something like poison ivy meets Attack of the Killer Mosquitoes. Nerine gave him some sort of gooey, herbal smelling stuff, and it helped. Some. He looked at Morgan again, wishing he knew what to say. What to do. Say I’m sorry? Crack a joke? Let him alone? He felt beyond helpless. Finally Jason just came and sat by Morgan, silent, staring at the same hot horizon.
The black mare seemed to fare no better. It was as if the heat had shrunk her to pony size, burned her to the color of toast. The heat or the dead starved sea. The sea that was part of her. No, she was the sea; water, wave, storm and current. She stood near the bow, head low, the flat ochre sea stretching out before her and Chessie. Cait and Zan brought her water from the ship’s stores, herbs from Nerine. Nothing seemed to help. She was fading as surely as Morgan.
Dying as surely as this sea. As the Cave of Swords. As the Selkie Island and everything connected to it.
That’s everything. Jason thought. Water flows between the worlds. How do we change this? But first, we gotta get home. “Is Chessie ok?” he asked Innis as he came by, his gait rolling with the rolling deck. After all, Chessie was one of the horses too, like Chasseur.
“She will not sail these waters long either.” He said, “But her form of wood and hemp and canvas protects her for now.”
For now. How long was for now?



Night fell, in a haze of purple. Rain fell, and sizzled on the deck. Innis and Cait drew a spare sail over Chasseur, shielding her from it. The rest went below until the drizzle evaporated, stars stabbing their way through the clouds. Chessie plunged on, her broad chest shoving aside the tainted water, her broad wings of canvas catching the wind, wind that still smelled of death.
The stars faded, Innis and Nerine called for the crew, “On deck, on deck, all hands on deck!” Jason peeled his eyes open, not remembering when he’d fallen asleep. He climbed the ladder through the hatch and onto a deck bright with July sun. It looked different somehow, not the evil sick yellow it had been, more like a postcard you’d send from the beach. “Hey,” he said, a question forming.
Chasseur stood at the bow, not much bigger than a Labrador Retriever now, a small wave, a memory of the horses of the sea. Her coat was faded to the colors of sand and shell and old driftwood. 
But her head was up, her nostrils wide, scenting the wind. On the horizon, a thin dark line wiggled, bobbled, vanished below the waves, then reappeared.
With a line and tackle, they hauled Morgan, curled in a ship’s hammock, through the hatch and onto the deck. He lay against the main, staring blindly out at the dark line, growing solider by the minute.
At last it appeared, the long low line of Tangier, the thatched huts of the Muskrat Folk. Chessie ran aground with a faint lurch. Cait and Nerine and Zan and Jason dropped sails and dropped anchor.
Cait ran to Chasseur, she glanced at Nerine, “What should we do?”
“Nothing. It is time for her to return to her sea.”
Return? Forever? Do the horses of Manannan die?
Nerine said nothing. Maybe even the Muskrat Folk didn’t know everything about Manannan’s horses. Cait stood for a moment, hand on Chasseur’s neck, the mare breathing into her face. She gave her a long hug, then the mare summoned one last burst of strength, strength called from the clean water beneath Chessie’s hull, beneath the once-black mare’s feet. She leapt over the side, swimming like a land horse, with only her face out of the water, her nostrils wide, her ears like tiny radar dishes tuned in on the horizon. The water swept over her, darkening her coat nearly to its old hue. She seemed to grow on the waves, swell with the fresh water of the Bay, back to horse-size. She looked up once, rang out a neigh, then vanished beneath the wave ripple coming from the open Bay, and the sea beyond. 
“Morgan?” Jason said.
“It’s not salt enough here, remember?” Cait said. 
I think he needs to go back to sea now.” Jason said. At least he should bathe in this water. Maybe soaking in it would wash out the poisons from the place they’d been.
Zan nodded.
“I can take one with me.” 
All turned, it was Ashnareth who had spoken. “I cannot go from here. I must go from land. But I can take him to the edge of the sea, on Assateague. I will tell the others you have returned. They will come for you.”
They unloaded the small boats, the dogs, the gear, the Muskrat Folk. 
And Morgan. Tangier lay inland, beyond the great Bay’s mouth, but the water here washed in from the sea, it was close enough for the moment. Close enough to the sea to clear Morgan’s sight, close enough that he uncoiled from his pained pose, close enough to wash the darkness from his hair and from his soul. He caught the stern toggle of Sandtiger, “Just tow me in,” he whispered.
“Hey,” Jason said, “not without a PFD.” And he gave Morgan his own.
Afloat in the shallow sea, they turned to see Chessie vanish, blow away on the wind as if she had never been. The mist swirled, became a pony shape. She let out one cheery neigh then she dived in Chasseur’s wake.
The Bay was empty, except for a small flotilla of crayola colored kayaks, two round woven coracles, and a very nervous Dragonkin huddled in the precise center of one.



Ashnareth left from the edge of the marsh. Took Morgan’s hand (leaving Jason’s PFD) and stepped through a shimmering hole in the air. It shuttered shut and Tangier wavered in the July heat.
“Now what?” Cait wondered aloud.
“Come in,” Nerine said, motioning them ashore, “It’ll be awhile.”
They swam in the clear waters at the edge of the Bay. Jason rinsed his, and Morgan’s dive gear clean of the residue from the Cave of Swords and its dead sea. His own case of creeping crud seemed to fade with each wavelet lapping the sandy shore. At dusk they trooped up to the lodges for a meal that went on, course after course, for (it seemed) hours. They told their tale to Grandmother Brown, and only in the middle of it did Jason remember his dive slate.
“Wish I would have had an underwater camera,” he said apologetically. Maybe Shaughnessy could have loaned him one. But who knew it would be this important?
Grandmother Brown held up the white rectangle of plastic, its stubby pencil dangling from a short bungee. “Interesting,” she said, then she signed it for Cait. 
“What?” Jason said.
She shrugged, “I have no idea what any of this is, it belongs to your world.”
“So we’ll have to find the answers.” Zan said.
Grandmother Brown smiled broadly, showing huge orange teeth.
“Let’s see.” Cait said. Jason passed the slate to her. Most of the stuff looked like refugees from a junkyard, she had no idea what it was. She turned the slate over. 
Her eyes went wide. “Where did you see this?”
“Under Chessie.” Jason said.
“Under Chessie?” Cait said incredulously.
“Where we stopped. Where Chasseur dived. That was the first part of the Gate, the side in...wherever we were.”
“Big Indian Rock.” Cait said.
“Huh?” Jason and Zan said together. Jason’s expression was one of cluelessness.
Zan’s was one of shock. “As in, pictograph island? As in susquehannapetroglyphs dot something or other?”
“Yeah, there’s a website.” Cait said, “My dad took us there last summer. To the Rock, I mean, not the website. It’s right below...”
“The dam. Safe Harbor, I think. Just below where the Conestoga River empties into the Susquehanna.”
“Conestoga? You mean, like the pioneer wagon things?” Jason said. “Prairie schooners?”
“Yeah,” Cait said, “the wagons got their name from the river, and the town on it.”
“Wait wait wait, rock, pictographs, Susquehanna, website...you mean this,” Jason thumped his slate, “is in our backyard, not, like in some alternate universe?”
“Yeah,” Zan said, “normally it’s not underwater. That would be the alternate universe part.”
“Or the future.” Jason said.
They turned to look at Zan, frowning into the fire.
Cait poked him, his body language screamed I Know Something Else. “What?”
“It always was a Gate.” Zan said quietly. “I think the Algonqians, or the Susquehannocks or whoever was there before your people knew it. We knew it. We used it, sometimes. But it never led to a selkie island before.”
“Dragonkin and water go together like peanut butter and jellyfish.” Jason said. “They didn’t make it, so who did? The Selkies?”
Cait said. “They think when the pictographs were carved, maybe thousands of years ago, the rock was close to the river, but not in it. After the European settlers came, we changed things with dams and canals and stuff. Some of the old carvings are underwater. So it was on dry land at the beginning. Dragonkin could have made it.”
“Any Gate can lead different places, right?” Jason said.
“Yeah, if you know the songs, or if you’re a Dragonkin.”
“Or one of the horses of Manannan.”
“Then we know how to find the Cave again. How to get back.” Jason paused, “To a time before all that happened, right?”
Zan nodded. “Somebody must know how to do that.”
“What we don’t know, is who else knows how to find the selkies. And their cave. And how to stop the ones who wrecked it.”



It might have been a whole summer. Or a whole day. Or a week. Or a turn of the moon. Jason lost track of the time after the first night. All Zan would say was that most faerie tales mentioned that time moved differently in those other places. Jason thought of faerie tales he’d read, where the hero partied for a night, and woke up a hundred years later. 
“They’re not gonna have, like, warp drive by the time we get back are they?”
Zan just grinned.
Cait studied Jason, “Yeah, but you’re going to have to buy a new wardrobe.” 
It was true; the only thing that fit Jason anymore was the wetsuit Shaughnessy had given him. And the t-shirts, which looked fine in any size. He was looking far less like a land whale and more like, well, Sharkman. He was finding he could keep up with Zan, paddling, and running with the dogs along the beach didn’t leave him gasping like a fish out of water. And he could bench press Zan, or Cait. If they held still long enough.
A day came when a storm of gulls circled far in over the treeline where the lodges were, gulls calling and shrieking, like feathered alarm clocks. 
“Up, up,” called Grandmother Brown, she gathered dogs and thrust breakfast at them and herded them to their boats. She handed them packages, bulging with home cooking, with mysterious other things. When they had reached the marsh, she said, “Paddle west, due west.” Then she waved them off.
The gulls circled out over the Bay, wheeling and screaming, then they vanished in the haze. Cait and Zan and Jason picked up paddles and pointed their bows west. 
“Now what?” Jason wondered. “It really is gonna be a long paddle.” He didn’t mention the fact that nobody on Chincoteague had a boat, to come meet them, except Ian. Maybe Shaughnessy. Little boats, like theirs.
Out into the sun-sparkled water they went, paddles stroking like birds’ wings. The dogs, wet from wading, lounged on Finrod’s deck, tongues hanging, occasionally dipping a foot in the water. Behind them, the low line of Tangier’s marsh wavered and went out. Jason looked back once, and sputtered to a halt. Tangier had sprouted some towers, they danced in the heat haze; cell towers or water towers or radio or futuristic high rises, he wasn’t sure. “Don’t think we’re in Muskrat Land anymore Toto.”
“Cool,” Cait said, “maybe it’s time to send up some flares, or call the Coast Guard.”
“Don’t think we need to.” Zan said, and pointed west. What he could see with his sharper than eagle eyes, the others couldn’t tell. He kicked it into overdrive and they followed, paddles winging through the waves, hulls slicing along like the Raven in a good wind.
Shortly, Cait, and even Jason could see a scratchy line on the otherwise flat horizon. A vertical line.
“Hey,” Jason said, “are those masts?”
“Now what? Or where?” Cait said, “or when?”
Zan flashed a grin back at them, his face saying catch me if you can.



The ship rose out of the blue line where sea and sky met, a faerie tale of masts and rigging and clean pale sails. Not the warm sand color of canvas, silvery, as if they’d been woven of water.
Or Ravenkin feathers.
Cait’s mouth hung ajar, then “It’s the Silver Raven!”
It was, Jason could see. Now he could read her bowplate, her name written across it in flowing, windblown letters. His eyes traveled up her masts to something that looked a lot like modern communications, or navigation, equipment. To the knot of kids hanging over her rail, pointing, as in a man overboard drill.
They drifted up, staring up at the ship they’d left only a little while ago. Same black, sharp privateer hull with its pale silver streak below the cannon doors. Same tops’l schooner rig, the main looking as if nothing had ever happened to it. 
Then Jason noticed the wheel. No tiller, a wheel. His forehead wrinkled in a question mark.
A tall, lean figure, in shorts and a t-shirt (with a raven flying across it) ran forward, hailed them. “You know which way land is?” He saw Cait and signed it too.
Jason’s arm swept in a circle, land lay in every direction but southeast, where the mouth of the Bay spilled into the sea.
“You’re a long way from it!” Bran yelled.
“Yeah, you wanna give us a lift?”
They came alongside, climbing over the channels, pulling themselves up by the shrouds. Bran grabbed the first one over the side (Cait) and gave her a ferocious hug. He ruffled Zan’s hair, then swept him up in the kind of hug that brothers give their younger siblings when they thought they’d skiied off the Death Slope into oblivion. Without missing a beat, he hugged Jason too, (“OoooFF!”) and the dogs (who covered him in gleeful soggy slurps). Behind him, the crew of teens and younger kids was already lifting the kayaks out of the water onto the deck.
“Where’d she come from?” Jason asked, his eyes traveling up the rigging to the fifteen star American flag flying from the stern: the correct period flag for 1812. At the topmast flew a banner with Silver Raven on it, and the ELF logo. “And how come you have a wheel? And...”
“Easier for students to handle.” Bran said. “A ship this size with a tiller...”
“Been there, done that.” Jason said.
Bran grinned, not looking at all surprised. His hair was still dark, like it had been when they left Chincoteague, but his swashbuckler smile was back. 
“Where’d she come from?” Jason said, his gesture encompassing the skateboard ramp smooth sweep of deck, the tall raked rigging, the vast wings folded and furled.
Bran glanced around at the kids on deck, at the twenty-something crew who seemed to be directing their efforts. “She was in the Bay, doing what she does.” Bran said. “We radioed for her when Ashnareth showed up.”
“Sooo, you coulda’ radioed for her when Morgan showed, the first time, without his cap.”
“Ah, time, there’s the issue. She didn’t exist then.”
“She...whaaa?”
“Space-time conundrum. Come below, we have some stories to tell.”



His cabin was much like Jason remembered. So was the rest of the ship. Except for the marine head, which he made use of. It growled like an annoyed Dragonkin for two very loud ten-second intervals. Through the open door abaft of the main salon, he could see two huge yellow engines, one guarded by a raven puppet. 
“Gift from one of the kids.” Bran said. 
They squeezed into the small cabin. Then Jason noticed there was a small hammock for stowing gear, and it contained something in a very girly shade of pink. With lace. Bran saw his expression and laughed. “It’s still the first mate’s cabin. I don’t think she’ll mind if we borrow it.”
“You made a lot of modifications.”
Bran’s privateer grin faded. “Nope. She was built this way.”
They all stared at him, baffled.
“Welcome to the Silver Raven II. Well, we don’t use the ‘two’, but...”
“Two.” Jason and Zan said together.
“What happened to One?” Cait signed, then her hands fell. I think I know.
“Scuttled, along with twenty other ships, to block Inner Harbor when the British fleet tried to take it. In 1814.” Bran’s face went serious, flat and unreadable. "She was pretty busted up in the battle anyway..."
“I’m sorry.” Cait said, “I wish...”
“You had warned me? That was not your place, to tell me. It’s all dust now. Memories, and lessons learned. History changed.”
“How’d you get this?” Jason said, “The ELF’s always strapped for cash.”
Bran’s grin returned, “Pirate gold. It’s amazing how much interest accrues in two hundred years. Niamh’s almost finished. And you two,” He indicated Cait and Jason, “will have some very nice college funds.”
“Whoa, us?” Jason said.
“Yep. You did it. The Sharkteam rocks.”
“Whooo ooo!” Jason whooped. Then, “Wait, there’s one more thing. I almost forgot.” He thundered back up the middle of the main salon, up the gangway, to Sandtiger. There, safe in his brightest dayglow green drybag was a long thin box of feathers. He cradled them as if they were far more valuable than pirate gold. He carried them back, climbing down the gangway one-handed. He galloped to a stop at the cabin door, handed the box to Bran. “Thought you might want these back. After two hundred years.”
It was Bran’s turn to go wide eyed with amazement. To stare in disbelief. He held the box, as if opening it would crush a dream. As if moving would make it vanish into sea mist. 
“Go on!” Jason said. 
He opened it, the silver feathers lay there, dancing with all the colors of sea and sky. He ran a finger down each one, finally choosing one and holding it, carefully, like a fragile frost flower, then more boldly. He fanned it once. Twice. It caught the air, stirred with the memory of flight. His face twitched between fervent joy and tears.
“I didn’t mean to take all of them, I meant to leave you more than the one you were wearing, but...”
Bran caught Jason in a fierce hug, a warrior brother’s hug. “Always thought it was pirates,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess we were.” 
Bran fiddled the feather into his hair. Jason couldn’t see how he braided it in, but he could see the way Bran seemed to straighten, to fill out, unshrink, like the mare when she leapt into the Bay. His hair shimmered, danced with the colors of sea and sky, and was silver grey again.
“Whoa,” Jason said softly, “how’re you gonna explain that one to your crew?”
Bran glanced at Zan. “I’ll need an illusionist. For now.” He headed above, drawing the others with him, “Not my crew. I still work at Hawk Circle. Fly noisy stinky choppers. Sometimes I come out here with the schoolship, show them things our modern captains don’t know. Help pull slimy things out of the bottom of the Bay, help them appreciate something other than charismatic megafauna.”
“Huh?”
“Megafauna; sharks, dolphins, killer whales.” Bran grinned. “Ashnareth brought Morgan, told us where you were. Morgan seems to have learned how to disguise more than himself."
“You knew anyway, where we were, where we were going.” Cait said. “You knew when you told us about the Gate. You had to know. You had to remember us from 1814.”
  “Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“There are so many people I meet.” Bran’s face didn’t tell Cait very much, but there was a glint in his eyes, raven mischief.
“Right.” Cait said. “We followed the black mare.”
“Chasseur.” Bran said.
“Like you said. Like you told me to. In two centuries. See. You remembered her name.”
Bran’s face was all innocence. “Just because you named her after a warship. Which we helped pass safely on her way.”
“See?” Cait said, “You remembered that.”
“I never forget a ship.”
“Whatever happened to Chasseur?” Jason said. “The ship, I mean.”
Bran said, “Thomas Boyle took an inordinate number of prizes, helped prove that the youthful United States was a force to be reckoned with, posted a note on the door of Lloyd’s of London to the effect that the British Isles were under siege... a one-ship siege... and returned after the treaty had been signed. The local paper nicknamed his ship the Pride of Baltimore.”
“Which is where Cait saw the name. On the stern of Pride II’s boat.” Jason said.
Cait nodded. “The ship based on Chasseur.”
“Weird karmic time loops.” Zan said.
“Where is she?” Bran asked Cait, his face grown still. 
He didn’t mean a ship, this time. “Went home.” Cait said.
“Ahh. And where else were you?”
“Longstorysomeothertime.”
"Now's good." Bran prompted.
Zan held out his hands, an illusion forming like mist between them. The dead sea, the pictograph rock, sunken beneath the rising waters. “We got pictures.”
Cait pantomimed a camera; click click click. “I have pictures of the first Raven.”
Bran’s face showed astonishment. “There were some details I couldn’t remember...”
“I drew some stuff on my dive slate,” Jason said, “it might be important. Stuff that was left in the cave.”
“Cave?”
“Cave of Swords.” 
“The Cave of Swords?” Bran said incredulously.
Jason shrugged. “That’s what Morgan called it. And Margo.”
“Margo?”
“You really don’t remember her?”
Bran frowned.
“She wasn’t on the Raven long, though she did try to burn it down.”
“You’d think I’d remember that one.” He shrugged, “All just ripples in the stream of Time. Wait, what about the Cave of Swords, and what were you doing there?”
“That’s where the black mare led us. Me and Morgan. Didn’t he tell you?”
“No. He hasn’t said much. He’s had a hard time of it.”
“Is he...?”
“Shaughnessy’s been working on him. Losing his cap didn’t kill him. A little visit to the end of the world probably won’t either.”
A patter of feet sounded above, then on the gangway behind the cabin, a twelve-year old head poked around the corner, “Captain Brenda wants to ask you something.”
“Ahh.” Bran rose. “We’ll sail around the Cape, and up along the Barriers to Chincoteague.” He looked up at the thunder of feet on the deck above his head. “Not quite the trip these kids signed up for, but, I think, it should be interesting for them. They’ve never been out in the open sea before.”
Jason grinned. It flashed through his head like an epic graphic novel: the Voyages of Sharkman; manning the Raven’s tiller, coming the other way, into the Bay. Outrunning a warship or two. Helping Chasseur sail into history. Helming Chessie through a gale with a seasick Dragonkin at his side.  
“I think they’ll like it just fine.”
Bran nodded, “I suppose we should have a conference when we get to the islands.” He paused, as if waiting for someone to say something else.
“How many of them know Sign?” Cait signed.
“Not many.” Bran thought about it, “None.”
“Good. Then we’ll tell you our story now.”



They did, while the whole crew and the kids joined the tourist invasion of Tangier, poking through souvenir shops, finding homegrown crafts, (or a vintage copy of Something Fishy from Tangier, or fishy souvenirs imported from across the planet,) partaking of local seafood, and listening to the older folk whose four hundred year old Elizabethan dialect hadn’t been affected by TV, radio, cell or DVD. The few who went a little farther, out onto the edges, of town, of the marsh, might see an echo of the traditional watermens’ life, the flight of a Great Egret, or the swift scurry of something small, brown and furry.
Cait, Jason and Zan told their tale, illustrated with Zan’s illusions, Jason’s dive slate, and Cait’s digital camera (there were enough batteries after all). A laptop from the ship provided the rest of the ELF with the tale as well. Only Shaughnessy seemed unsurprised with what they had done and seen. 
At last, Jason unpacked the gear salvaged from the Cave of Swords, and the crystal itself.
Bran held it in his hand as if it might blow away on the wind. He stared at it as if trying to remember something. “I know this. I’ve felt this before.”
Everyone stared at him, nearly breathless.
“Not this one maybe, but one like it. I’ve felt its energies before. On the Roane.”
“Margo’s crystal. The one she got from her mother.” 
“Yes. You have found the beginning of her tale, of which we all were a part. And the end of all our tales. Now, what is the middle part? What lies between the Tangier of the Muskrat Folk, and the Cave of Swords?” He regarded them with a deep blue gaze; blue as the skies over high mountain, or the deeps of the sea. They all felt as if he was seeing again with the far sight of Raven in flight. “You are yet part of that tale. I think it will be you who finds the rest of it.”



The Horses of the Sea



On a twilit evening, near the end of July, with Chincoteague’s motels and bed and breakfasts and campgrounds swelling with tourists primed for Pony Penning, a family in a passing minivan saw a most amazing sight. Three kids, riding horses along a Chincoteague backstreet. That wasn’t the odd part, the odd part was the dogs.
“Are those sled dogs?” A nine year old asked, twisting around to catch sight of them before the van turned the corner.
“Don’t be silly dear. It’s summer, and we’re nowhere near Alaska.”
The four dogs pulling the rig kept trotting on in the wake of the horses. Coiled on the platform was Morgan, Holly balanced precariously around his well-disguised tail. Despite the warm twilight, the dogs were running cool, in ice vests, not the usual ones procured from a pet supply company, but a high tech Dwarf design created by Earla. The rig itself was new...or recycled... with fat tires that would work on street or sand or wooded trail, and a platform comfortable for a merrow. Also, the brakes...the very important brakes, for sled dogs did not often pay attention to the word whoa... were easily reached by Morgan's hands.
They reached the edge of Chincoteague. Morgan handed his land glasses to Holly, hitched his way the last few yards to the water, slid in. He still ached at times, his scaled tail yet had bare spots, and certain land foods made him feel like he was back on Chessie in a gale. But he could swim now. He could probably beat the horses to Tom’s Cove. He heard Holly call to the dogs, “Gee, come!” Heard the rig turn and heard the patter of feet heading back, the harder patter of unshod hooves on the roadway to Assateague. He leapt once, throwing himself back into the clean waters of the channel, then headed toward the sea.
A sea that would rise and swallow this island, and much else, if the middle of Margo’s tale wasn’t found. The Roane was gone, and not even the planet wide web of the ELF could find her. 
Morgan had a feeling, some time, soon, they would. Even now, some were tracking the origins of the stuff found in the Cave of Swords. And a certain Dragonkin was on her own search.
For now, there was a little time. A little time to rest, to heal, to leap on the waves and ride on the wind.
The riders galloped along the thin edge where land and sea meet. The sky over Chincoteague Bay went out in a blaze of color. The stars lit one by one, then in strings, then in masses of sugar sprinkle on velvet. Skimmers unzipped the Bay, gulls wheeled and wailed, a Great Horned Owl hooted from its place in the treeline. Foxes and fox squirrels foraged, the little hognosed snakes went to their night resting places, the Fowler’s Toads who were their prey ate bugs in peace.
Jason had found that Fudge, despite his tall, bulky build, was pretty fast. He’d let him gallop ahead, now he pulled him up. Zan and Cait came up alongside on Dune and Wolf. “Hey, I thought they had all the ponies penned.” Jason pointed down beach at shapes emerging from the surf.
“They do.” Cait said. The swim was tomorrow, at low tide they would herd the ponies into the channel and swim to Chincoteague, as they had for hundreds of years. She shifted her seat, leaned forward, “And the ponies are fenced off from this part of the beach anyway.” Wolf took off, cantering lightly down the beach, splashing up waves like the black mare had done, except that her feet thudded firmly on the wet sand beneath the water.
Nearer she came to the mystery horses. Had they missed a few? Had some gone through the fence? 
They stood at the edge of the sea, a few were farther out, where the last waves broke on the beach, the place kids and body surfers played by day. The place the ponies in the northern herd sometimes stood to escape the bugs. A circle of white horses, manes and tails blowing in the wind from the sea.
The others came up behind Cait, drew their horses to a halt.
“Assateague ponies don’t come in white.” Jason said, “Well, a few do, but not that many. And not really white, but perlino or cremello... and not a whole herd of them."
“They’re not Assateague ponies.” Zan said. Or maybe they were. The original ones, the ones who climbed up the beach long before the European settlers turned their livestock loose to graze here. 
Fudge and Dune lifted their heads, nickered at the strangers. One stepped forward a stride, nickered back, ears focused on the little mare, Dune. Wolf answered with a warning snort and a foreleg strike. The young white stud colt wheeled and trotted back to his herd. Then the white herd turned and plunged into the sea.
"Manannan's horses." Jason said.
“There’s always a white horse or two in the herds.” Cait said.
“Yeah, I've seen 'em on the postcards, the cremellos and perlinos.” Jason agreed.
“Wonder where they’ve been.” Zan said, watching the white manes break farther and farther out.
“You’re the one who speaks horse.” Jason said.
Under Cait, Wolf melted, shifted. Cait thumped to the sand. Tas stared after the vanishing horses of the sea. She snorted, “You haven’t figured it out?”
“Figured what out?”
“That’s a bachelor herd. They were looking for girlfriends, who are all, right at this moment, under the watchful eye of their herd stallions in the corrals.” She smiled, “But they aren’t always. Where do you think the white horses on the island come from? The horses of the sea are all the colors of the sea, but,” she gestured at the white breakers crashing on the long line of sand, “when they come ashore, they are the color of the surf.” 
“Except for one.” Cait said.
Tas nodded, stepped back, sand blew, and Wolf stood there again.
Cait paused, one hand on Wolf’s mane, watching the wave horses plunge through the first waves, over the second, then striding across the wave trough, they vanished in the third wave. For a moment the next line of waves tossed like horses’ manes, but none of them were black.
Cait swung up on Wolf, easily as if she’d been born there, and they galloped home.



The line of boats stretched from the crowd of tourists on one marshy shore, to the empty marsh a quarter mile away across the channel. Boats of all shapes and sizes, a few canoes and kayaks, at least one inflatable raft, and an inner tube made up a fleet, parked on the sparkly water, forming a highway for the ponies to swim. Jason and Zan and Cait floated in their kayaks, Morgan bobbed between them, using misdirection to keep anyone from noticing a stray swimmer, farther out than the tourists wading chest deep along the shore. Those held up cameras and binoculars out of the splashing of small kids waiting for the fabled event. Others had climbed trees for a better vantage point. There was a quiet festive sense of anticipation, and the sound of the odd mosquito meeting its smackerooed doom.
Then a cry went up. A plume of hot pink smoke signaled the arrival of the herd. They came out of the marsh, patches of red and gold and black and white flashing in the sun, the saltwater cowboys whooping behind them, cracking their trademark bullwhips with a sound like a shot. They came to the water’s edge and plunged in. Soon the whole herd was a long wrinkle in the water, a wrinkle of noses and ears, and round brown eyes. Cameras clicked and children wrestled for a better view. At last the lead pony heaved herself up on new land, land she hadn’t touched for a year. Her foal was a step behind, a cheer went up for this was Queen Neptune, a special title afforded the first foal to touch Chincoteague.
Later they would thunder down the streets, maybe cutting through someone’s prize roses, if the cowboys weren’t careful. Among the colorful patches of bay and chestnut, palomino and dun and black and white would be a few surf white horses, sons and daughters of the sea.