“Mewmewmew!” cried Kitten.
Fox began to interpret, but then glanced at Simber and closed his mouth.
Alex shook his head. “I don’t know how any of us lived through that, whatever it was.” He stepped carefully to the railing and used it to steady himself. The water sparkled with the sun hanging low over it, making a pale yellow path in front of them. “Are you sure you’re okay, Sam?”
Samheed nodded and limped over. “I think so.”
“We’re still heading west,” Alex mused. “Unless it’s morning now.” He narrowed his eyes and wished for a better sense of direction. “Where are we? How do we get home? Do we have to go through that thing again to get back?”
“I doubt we’ll have to go through it again,” Samheed said. “I’m pretty sure that was a scroll feature. We’re on the other end now.” He rubbed the back of his throbbing head. His fingers came away sticky with blood. “Ick.”
Kitten hopped and mewed again.
Alex ignored her, completely puzzled by Samheed’s words. “What do you mean, scroll feature? Other end of what?”
Samheed wiped his fingers on his shirt. “I mean it’s like the scroll feature Mr. Today turned on in Artimé whenever new Unwanteds arrived to keep them from getting lost or eaten in the jungle. I rode on it our first day, remember?”
Alex frowned. He remembered Samheed getting mad and stomping off, away from the group, but he’d never asked what had happened to him. “I didn’t care much for you back then, you know.”
“Likewise,” Samheed said with a smirk. “I don’t think I actually told you guys what happened. But it was sort of like what we just went through, only on a much smaller scale.”
“You mean you scrolled on a waterfall and didn’t tell anybody about it? Are you joking?”
“Not a waterfall—I wasn’t on water in Artimé, I was on land. It was like . . . like I got sucked down a hill that rotated, and my feet were stuck to it, so even when I was upside down, I didn’t fall anywhere.” He pursed his lips. “Picture Kitten with her feet glued to the ship’s wheel. If we turned it, she’d stay stuck to the wheel all the way around. It’s kind of like that—I just went around, and it brought me to the other side of Artimé.”
“So . . . you’re saying that we went around the world? And now we’re . . . where exactly?” Alex looked left and right at the vast, open sea.
Samheed shrugged. “My guess is that since we began scrolling when we were as far west as we could be, beyond the Island of Legends, we’re now as far away from the Island of Legends as we possibly can be. We’re . . . we’re . . . east.”
“MEW. MEW. MEW.”
Everyone turned to look at Kitten, whose tiny face was furious. She pointed with her porcelain toes toward the bow of the ship.
“She says—” Fox said.
“She says,” Simber interrupted, “that Ms. Morning’s seek spell came frrrom the west. Arrrtimé is that way.”
East of the Sun
Alex cringed. The seek spell from Claire Morning—it had come just as the ship plunged over the waterfall. He’d forgotten all about it. It could mean only one thing: Something was wrong in Artimé.
And here they were, in a broken-down ship with a broken-down captain somewhere far from home, in a part of the sea they’d never traversed before. No one knew exactly how far away they were. All they knew was that there were three islands on this side of Quill and Artimé, just like there were three on the other side. If these islands were spaced out similarly to the ones on the west side of Quill, it could take many days for the battered ship to limp home.
As Alex contemplated, Lani’s head appeared in the stairwell. “Alex,” she said, her face full of concern. “Glad you’re finally awake. Got a big problem. There’s a hole in the ship. We’re taking on water fast. Sky suggested we try a glass spell to cover the hole.” She paused for breath. “I think it might work, but I don’t know how to cast that one.”
Alex looked at Sam. “Can you do it?”
Samheed nodded. “I’ll go. You figure out what to do from here.”
A moment later, Carina Holiday approached. “Alex,” she said urgently. Her pixie hair was wild, sticking up in all directions. “Sean’s not doing very well.”
Alex’s face lit up with concern. “Where is he?”
“Still tied to the ropes. Follow me.”
Alex hurried after Carina. When they reached Sean, whose leg had been badly broken by a giant eel on the living-crab island called Karkinos, they knelt at his side. Lani’s younger brother, Henry Haluki, was there already, measuring a small amount of liquid from a vial and pouring it carefully into Sean’s mouth. Sean’s face twisted in pain. Sweat dotted his upper lip and forehead.
“What happened?” Alex said.
“Bumpy ride,” Sean said between short gasps of pain.
Carina reached for Sean’s hand, and he gripped it tightly. “It’s his leg, obviously,” she said. “He’s having almost as much pain now as when he broke it.”
Alex pressed his lips together. “What do we do?” he asked Henry.
Henry held the bottle of medicine to the light, frowned, and put it into his pocket. He moved to examine the makeshift splint the Unwanteds had made for Sean’s leg. “Every move this ship makes,” Henry said with grave authority, “feels like a knife stabbing his leg. We have to set it again.”