CHAPTER ONE
I ran up the path as dawn broke. I didn’t need the light for my feet to land sure on this trail. Light or dark, I knew every step of this island.
My island.
Their island.
They were all coming home today, all the Prospers. The ones I loved and longed for and the ones I did my best not to. It was First Night. Every last lovely, loathsome one of them would be here soon, sipping whatever they felt like and settling into their beautiful rooms. Breathing in the familiar scents of the island, listening to the gentle music of the spirits above the crashing of the sea, and thinking how good it was to be home.
Home. Even though they were only here a few times a year.
I had never left.
I ran along a cliff face. The path was narrow and cut down sharply into white rocks. Below, waves smashed against them with enough force to send the mist thirty feet up, where it clung to my already damp and salty skin. The rising sun’s lavender light spilled across the water, and the spirits’ morning music swelled at Lord Prosper’s command. The path went upward, steep, but my breath was as steady as my pace. I was good at this, unquestionably. Even if no one cared but Coco, it steadied me to do something I knew I could do well first, before I plunged into a day full of things I wasn’t sure I could.
Like make Miles notice I had grown up and wasn’t just a dirty kid he was nice to in the summer.
Like convince him he wanted me at his side when he asked his grandfather to train him.
Like convince him to ask.
I wasn’t sure I could, but I had to. I had to find a way to make a place for myself here, before it was too late. Before Lord Prosper noticed his promise to my dead father had expired, and they finally sent me away from their island.
From my island.
The thought of it spiked my pulse more than the running could. I turned a corner, and the house came into view below me. My heart clutched at the beauty of it. Familiar as this scene was, I never grew tired of looking at it. The house rose out of the soft green spring grass, tall and white and elegant. From here, the swimming pool shone as blue as the sea, surrounded by pink bougainvillea. I could see Apollonia’s balcony overlooking it, and above that, the fifth floor, topped with its glinting glass dome.
Lord Prosper and Ivo would be under that dome now, working the morning’s magic. If I could be there with them—helping Lord Prosper, as essential as Ivo, or more—I would never have to worry about losing all of this. If I were a magician, I would never have to worry that the rest of me wasn’t impressive or interesting enough. What could be more interesting and impressive than doing magic? I would do anything to be under that dome every morning. Calming the sea and taming the storm that had kept humans away from the island and its secrets for so long.
This patch of ocean had been a dead zone, once. Ships had sailed around for miles to avoid it. Cartographers had marked it with the image of a storm and the word tempest.
Lord Prosper had changed all that. Now, I rarely saw a cloud.
My steps slowed. I tried to imagine tonight, if everything went as I hoped. I’d find Lord Prosper, maybe after the fireworks. Miles, his grandson, at my side. His strong hand in mine.
Unbidden, Ivo’s scowling face rose in my mind. I grimaced and banished the thought. We would just have to find Lord Prosper when he was alone, without his eldest grandson. It shouldn’t be that hard tonight. Ivo always made himself scarce on First Night. He wasn’t one for parties.
I turned from the house, pushing Ivo from my mind, and stared out toward the mainland. There was a black spot on the lightening horizon. A ship, already? It was early for that. The only Prospers who got up early were the ones who lived here year-round: Lord Prosper, Ivo, and Lady Vivian. The rest of them stayed up late and slept later. Even Coco rarely made it up in time to run with me in the summer, despite her promises. What she really wanted to do was lie in bed and eat breakfast off a spirit-borne tray, like the rest of them. I didn’t blame her for it. If I had her room and the spirits served me in it, I would do the same.
The black spot moved quickly, and in a few moments, I was certain it was a Prosper boat. It moved through the waves against the wind without sail, steam, or smoke. Aether-powered. It flew the island’s gold pennant flag, fluttering back toward England.
I picked up my pace again. Then a wind blew against me, pushing me toward the cliff face.
My foot slipped. My feet never slipped.
I wasn’t running anymore, but the ground wasn’t right. Wasn’t there. I rose, pushed up by the wind, limbs kicking and grasping and finding only wind and air. There was a high-pitched giggle in my ear.
Aeris.
His wind hit me, knocking me sideways off the path. I reached for the cliff face, caught nothing.
I couldn’t believe this. My mind was a blank scream of terror and denial.
The pounding waves rushed toward me.
And then they didn’t.
The same wind that had blown me off the trail now blew up from the sea. It caught me just as my feet broke the surface and flung me quickly up and over a towering wave. It pushed me toward the bluff, then dropped me unceremoniously back in the dirt, where I landed in a tangle of long, skinny limbs.
“Aeris!” I screamed, jumping to my feet. I pointed a trembling, furious finger at his nearly human form standing a few feet away. “You aren’t allowed!”
“Not allowed to save a silly girl who falls into the water?” asked the spirit in an innocent tone. “Should watch your feet, Mouse. What would have happened if Aeris had not been near?”
Aeris shuddered, his human form dissolving in a ripple into pure light, then rearranged into false flesh again.
“You nearly killed me, you wretched sprite!”
“Didn’t,” said Aeris.
“I’ll tell Lord Prosper,” I said. My voice shook with powerless rage. Aeris was always an irritation, but he’d never terrified me like this before. His binding shouldn’t have allowed it. I might be the least important human on the island, but I was still a human. I started down the path, toward the big house.
“Oh, yes, go tell Lord Prosper,” said Aeris. “Go tell the good, wise wizard how wicked Aeris almost hurt the dead steward’s brat. Lord Prosper will care. Lord Prosper won’t be angry that Mousy Mae comes into his magic room to tell tales on his loyal spirit.”
Mousy Mae. I ground my teeth whenever Aeris said it. It was the perfect name for everything I feared I was and wished I wasn’t.
“I told you never to call me that!”
And if I had magic, I could have made him obey.
Instead I stalked toward the house. But it didn’t take long for my footsteps to slow. I had never interrupted Lord Prosper’s magic before, and he did favor Aeris. He was the most humanlike of the spirits, the only one who showed will and intelligence, and despite binding Aeris, Lord Prosper allowed him a great deal of freedom.
But surely he would want to know if the spirit had tried to hurt a human, even if it was only me?
Perhaps he would. I closed my eyes and imagined myself climbing up the spiral stairs to the fifth floor, knocking on the deep-blue door. The perplexed look on Lord Prosper’s face when he opened it. The long moment it would take him even to remember who I was, even though I was one of only five humans who lived on the island all year long. Even though I had lived there all my life. Even though I had never left, not even once.
I stopped walking. No. I was not going to tell Lord Prosper for the same reason I’d never asked him to train me in magic. I couldn’t bear the look of pity he would give me, the kind words that would go along with it when he put me gently back in my place.
A soft breeze blew past me, raising the hairs on my arms. “There, there,” said the spirit. “Aeris wouldn’t have let you fall. Aeris is sorry to have frightened you.”
“Don’t do that again,” I muttered.
“Aeris almost forgot,” said the spirit, suddenly appearing in front of me. “Lady Vivian wishes to speak to Mousy Mae. She is in the house. In Lady Apollonia’s room.”
“What?” I asked. “Why?”
“Don’t know,” said Aeris. He shrugged, and his form blinked light at the motion. “Why would Lady Vivian want to speak to little Mae? Why would anyone? Who knows? Only Lady Vivian.”
Aeris stood in front of me on the footpath. I could have gone around him, through the rock roses. I strode through him instead. Aeris’s yelp of displeasure was worth the skin-crawling tingling that passed over me. The spirit dissolved back into light, then winked high above me.
“Wicked little mouse!” The spirit’s voice was disembodied now. It echoed through the air, then suddenly was small again, whispering in my ear.
“Mae should go around the back. Mae will see what Lady Vivian wants of her if she does.”
I clapped my hands over my ears to push him out, but there was no need. He was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
I followed the dirt footpath that led to my cottage and tried to think of a single reason Lady Vivian would want to talk to me that would bode well. None came to mind. Instead, a host of possibilities that ranged from unpleasant to extremely worrying presented themselves. Lady Vivian might simply have some chore she wanted me to perform, something the spirits couldn’t do. That happened once or twice a year, most recently when Ivo and I were still friendly and Lady Vivian thought I might convince him to write a letter to some archipelago girl she hoped he would marry. I didn’t convince him, and he didn’t marry her.
Or she might have found out about the dress I had nicked from the back of Apollonia’s closet, to wear for First Night. Or worst of all, it was possible Lady Vivian had realized I had recently turned eighteen and the Prosper family’s promise to my dead father that they would care for me until I came of age had expired. My pulse raced again. The thought was almost as terrifying as falling off that cliff.
I opened the door to the cottage and slammed it shut behind me. I needed to change out of the ragged clothes I wore to run in before I could possibly face Lady Vivian and whatever she wanted me for. The cottage was two rooms: a larger living area, complete with a tiny kitchenette; a table and two chairs, only one of which was ever sat in now; several overstuffed bookcases; and the daybed that had been mine before my father died six years ago, and which I still slept on. My father’s room contained a bigger bed, but I didn’t use it. I didn’t use the bedroom at all, except to store clothes in. I stepped in there now, shed my running things, and changed quickly into a pair of camel-colored trousers and a white button-down. Hand-me-downs from Coco, who never wore anything more than a few times. I was grateful for them, though Coco’s style wasn’t the one I would have liked for myself. I would rather have had Apollonia’s cast-offs, but Apollonia wasn’t generous enough to give away even what she no longer wanted.
I toweled off my damp hair and went back into the main room. I kept my training logs tacked to the wood-paneled wall, along with some of my favorite poems—copied out in my best penmanship—and assorted clippings from the Chelton School paper. All the Prospers went to Chelton, the most prestigious boarding school on the mainland, and Coco sent me the school newspaper. Officially, this was so I could compare my running scores to the best of the track team, but unofficially, the newspaper was my most engrossing entertainment when they were all away. I read anything about Miles and Coco, of course, but I also devoured the stories about Alasdair’s polo victories, Apollonia’s fashion glamor shots, the breathless tales of their social lives in the gossip pages. I wouldn’t have admitted it, of course. Sometimes I imagined myself in similar stories. Wild horses couldn’t have dragged that out of me.
I grabbed a stubby pencil from the table and hastily jotted down this morning’s sprint times on the log, which hung beside a clipping of Miles. I lingered on it for a moment. It was an action shot from his last rugby game. He was running, a ball tucked under his arm, and a look of intense concentration on his extraordinarily handsome face. I let out a small sigh. No one had ever taken a picture of me when I was running, but if they did, I was sure I wouldn’t look half so attractive as Miles did. Fortunately, Miles wasn’t going to see me running tonight. He was going to see me cleaned up and glamorous.
Copyright © 2021 by Samantha Cohoe
