CHAPTER 39: BE GOOD

  The world had gone wrong, and it started with the sugar.

  Ana had let her have an extra spoonful in her morning porridge. A secret smile, a finger to her lips. “An extra sugar,” she’d whispered. “For a special adventure.”

  Then the walk. Not to the park. Not with Benji. A different way, faster, Ana’s hand tight around hers, not holding but holding on. Ana’s eyes, usually so calm, kept looking behind them.

  They arrived at a place that smelled of bitter herbs and clean linen. A tall woman with a kind, worried face and a boy with solemn eyes.

  Then the words came, tumbling out of Ana like the rush of water from an overturned bucket. Kidnap. Serpents. Gang. Kill. Grown-up words that were sharp and cold. Words that meant Ana was leaving.

  No.

  The word was a scream inside Ellie’s chest before it tore out of her mouth. She clutched Ana’s leg, the rough wool of her dress, fingers digging in. “NO! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! Mama left and you can’t leave too!”

  The words hung in the air, the oldest, deepest hurt given fresh sound. She felt Ana’s whole body tense as if struck.

  Then Ana knelt, and the hug was so tight it hurt, but Ellie held on tighter. She breathed in Ana’s smell, soap and ink and the special smell that was just Ana. She memorized the feel of her arms, the way her chin rested on Ellie’s head. If she memorized it hard enough, she could keep it.

  “You be good for your Papa, okay? And remember…”

  Ellie waited for the rest. Remember I’ll come back. Remember I love you. But the words never came. There was just a kiss on her forehead, soft and final.

  Then Ana stood up, her face wet, and looked at the boy, Tam. She didn’t speak, just opened her hand. On her palm lay a plain, grey river stone. Tam nodded. It was a conversation without words, a goodbye Ellie couldn’t understand.

  And then she ran.

  Ellie tried to run after her, but Dr. Maren’s hands were firm on her shoulders. “Ana! ANA!” Her scream ripped her throat raw. She watched the grey dress vanish into the crowded street, swallowed by the city. Just like Mama had been swallowed by a big, quiet carriage going to somewhere else. Gone.

  The world blurred into a tunnel of tears. Dr. Maren bundled her into a hired carriage. Tam climbed in beside them, quiet and watchful. The clinic smells faded, replaced by the smell of leather and horse. The carriage didn’t go home. It went to the big, stone building where Papa worked.

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  Inside, shouting and running. Men in uniforms. Papa’s face, appearing like a storm, pale under his sternness. He scooped her up, his hug crushing, his heart hammering against her ear. “Ellie. Ellie, are you hurt?”

  She shook her head, sobbing into his uniform jacket. “Ana left. She left me.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” His voice was rough. He was talking to other men over her head. “The old fishery on the wharf. Move now. Take a full squad.”

  He carried her to his office, a room of maps and hard chairs. He sat her on his desk, kneeling before her, his big hands holding her small ones. “Ellie, I need you to be my brave girl. Can you tell me everything? Exactly what Ana said?”

  She tried, through the hiccups and tears. The adventure sugar. The fast walk. The scary words. Kidnap. Serpents. Trade. She told him about the stone.

  Papa listened, his face getting harder and harder, but his eyes on her were soft. When she finished, he pulled her close again. “She saved you, Ellie. Do you understand that? However she did it, she brought you to safety. She warned us.”

  “But she left.” That was the only fact that mattered. The blue door of home felt a million miles away, and the person who made it home had run away from it.

  “Sometimes,” Papa said, his voice very low, “the bravest thing you can do is leave.”

  She didn’t understand. Leaving was the opposite of brave. Brave was staying. Brave was facing the monsters. Ana was brave, she’d saved Benji with her glowing ink. Why did she run?

  They went home later, after the sun had started to go down. Papa was quiet, his face solemn. The other soldiers hadn’t found Ana at the fishery, he said. They’d found Serpents, and there had been fighting, but no girl. No Liana.

  The house was too quiet. Benji padded over, whining, pushing his head into her hand. He could smell her sadness. She buried her face in his fur. He still had the faint, beautiful swirls of ink on his belly, the proof of Ana’s magic. The proof she was real.

  Papa made dinner. He burned the potatoes. They ate in silence, the clink of forks too loud.

  At bedtime, the routine was a hollow shell. Papa tried to read a story, but his voice was flat. Ellie stared at the ceiling of her room, at the crack that looked like a sailing ship. Ana had said it was a ship bound for magical islands. Now, all she could see was a crack.

  She climbed out of bed and padded to the small door off the kitchen. It was closed. She turned the handle. Unlocked.

  The room was empty. Not just empty of a person. Empty of Ana. The bed was neatly made. The wardrobe door stood open, empty. A single, stray grey thread sat on the floor by the bed. Ellie picked it up, winding it around her finger until the tip turned purple.

  On the small desk, something gleamed in the moonlight. A vial. Not the one with the dark Church ink, or the one with the strange, shimmering Eastern ink. This was a simple glass vial, empty, with a faint golden residue at the bottom. Honey. For her porridge. Ana must have forgotten it.

  Ellie took it. She clutched it in one hand, the grey thread in the other, and went back to her room. She put the vial and the thread under her pillow.

  She didn’t cry. She felt too empty to cry, the house hollow and cold. The hearth was just bricks and ash. Benji was just a dog. Papa was just a man in a uniform, moving through the rooms with a heavy weight on his back.

  The Ana-shaped space in the world was a new, raw kind of quiet. It wasn’t like Mama’s quiet, which was a sad, sick quiet. This was a loud quiet. A quiet that shouted of last-minute sugar and a final, desperate hug. A quiet that smelled of ink and felt like a river stone held tight in a running hand.

  Ellie closed her eyes. She didn’t wish on stars. Stars were for babies who still believed in fairytales. Instead, she sent a thought into the loud, Ana-shaped quiet, a thought as sharp and pointed as a tattoo needle:

  Wherever you are, be good.

  It was not a wish. It was a command. A spell. The only kind of magic she had left.