“What?”
“You’re very good at your job.”
Skya spurred her charger into a gallop. There was no more talking after that.
They rode for several hours. Even scared and heartbroken, Emilie couldn’t help but marvel at the sight of the Painted Sea as it came into view. She even got Fritz out to show him, though he was less impressed than she was.
The shore of the Painted Sea was swirled with colors like a child had spilled their jar of rainbow sand everywhere. Pinks and blues and greens and purples. The water was so clear she could see through it like a window. Small silver dolphins and lazy rays played in the surf. A line of enormous elephant-gray boulders jutted out in the water, forming a pier. And at the end of the dock waited a ship. A magnificent dragon boat like something from the pages of a child’s book on Vikings.
Emilie spotted a small crew aboard the ship, bustling about, preparing to leave and take her away with them.
Skya brought her horse to a halt at the top of the hill.
“You sure you don’t want to come with me?” Emilie asked. “We can just hang out on the boat instead of you getting yourself killed?”
She was hoping to make Skya laugh, but it didn’t work.
“I love this place,” Skya said. “This world is mine the way my heart is mine. It’s part of me, and I would defend it the way I would guard my own heart. If I don’t come back, I hope you will stay and rule and let this place into your heart.”
“Run a kingdom. I don’t know. With Mom gone, I barely remember to pay the electric bill. I don’t think I can do that. I think I’d fail everyone.”
“I understand,” Skya said.
Emilie instantly regretted what she’d said, but it was too late to take back.
“If you do decide to leave,” her sister went on, “the way back is different than the way you arrived. Tell the captain to take you to the farthest shore. When you step off the ship, you’ll see a cobblestone path in the sand. Follow it until you reach a door in the desert. No wall. Only a door. Go through it, and you’ll be home again.”
“Will I forget this place like Rafe did?”
“No. You’ll never forget it no matter how much you wish you could.”
Morgan, made for steep climbs, carried them easily down the winding path to the beach below. Then Skya dismounted and helped Emilie down.
“Say goodbye to Morgan,” she said. “We’ll meet the ship at the end of the pier.”
Emilie stroked the magnificent horse’s mane, then hugged her long neck. Slowly, she pulled away.
She couldn’t believe she was doing what she was doing. But it had to be done.
When they reached the beach, Skya stopped and reached inside her tunic. She handed Emilie an ancient, barely decipherable Polaroid. Emilie peered at it through the cracks in the photo paper and saw a skinny blond girl holding a doll in her arms. Except it wasn’t a doll but a baby.
“I loved holding you,” Skya said.
Emilie stared at her. “I didn’t know we ever met.”
“No?” Skya smiled. “You lived with us for a month. Mom showed up with you when you were about ten days old. She was wrecked. She tried to pick you up and almost dropped you. And you were so tiny, but you, man…kid, you could scream. I got so tired of hearing you scream that I put on some music, turned it up, and pretended we were rocking out. Like magic, you calmed down. That was my whole life for a month, you and me, singing and dancing. Our favorite song was ‘Landslide.’ You would fall right asleep when I sang it—”
Emilie’s heart leapt like a stag.
“ ‘Landslide’? Stevie Nicks? I love Stevie Nicks. She’s my lady and savior.”
“Oh,” Skya said. “Funny. We didn’t have a lot of music in the house, but I had an old Fleetwood Mac cassette. It was the only music that worked on you.”
“You gave me Stevie.”
Emilie looked at the photograph again, the old, fading Polaroid. Emilie realized that if Skya had it here with her, that meant she’d had it on her when she disappeared. “I thought I might get to keep you if I could get you to stop crying. But Aunt Marie came to me one day and said it was time to tell the baby goodbye. You were going to go to a new home. We took this picture in the lawyer’s office. We couldn’t afford a babysitter, so they took me to watch you while they were doing all the paperwork. I didn’t want to let them take you, so the receptionist lady took the picture to distract me. She was the one who told me that as your big sister, it was my job in the world to keep you safe. And the safest place for you would be where you were going. And I thought about how scared I’d get when Mom would show up out of nowhere, middle of the night, drunk or on something. Bringing creepy guys around…And I knew that lady was right. It was my job to keep you safe, and the safest place for you was far away.”
Emilie wanted to speak, but maybe for the first time in her life, no words came out.
“I’m going into that place without you for one reason,” Skya said. “There are mermaids in the sea and unicorns in the forest and giants in the wild desert reaches…that’s how magical this place is. But as magical as this place is, the Ghost Town is just as dangerous. And if you were to get hurt there or die, the magic would be gone and a thousand mermaids and ten thousand unicorns and a million giants wouldn’t be able to bring it back to me.
“So you’re getting on that ship, right?”
And Emilie said, “Right.”
Skya started forward along the pier, and there was nothing for Emilie to do but follow her. The sea breeze smelled like salt and rain clouds, and the sun was warm but not hot. The enormous powder-white gulls barely had to flap their wings to stay aloft.
As they made the long final walk down the pier, Skya went on.
They were at the dragon ship now. “Please…get on. And I promise you I’ll do everything I can to come back alive. Then we can be sisters, okay?”
“Okay,” Emilie said. Her sister had made up her mind and nothing would change it. Emilie had made up her mind too. “I’ll get on the ship.”
“Good. Thank you.”
Emilie got on the ship.
The captain and her crew of three began to pull ropes, raise sails, and turn wheels. The ship caught a strong breeze, and soon it was moving away from the pier.
