Chapter 1

  “Sometimes,” said the horse.

  “Sometimes what?” asked the boy.

  “Sometimes just getting up and carrying on is brave and magnificent.”

  - Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

  Once upon a time, there was a young waitress named Ada. She was tall and fierce, and her skin was the color of cinnamon, her eyes walnut, her hair tomato-red streaked with blue. She took lessons in cookery because she dreamed of opening her own restaurant. She smoked west-Iffish tobacco from a plain pipe of polished oak, and she often curled up in a nook by a high window to read novels of romance and adventure, and she spent long hours caring for her unusually abundant and autonomous hair. She had few friends, and when the evening cloudlight yellowed over the pale skies, she became homesick for windswept amber fields of wheat and barley, the sweet musk of horse sweat and sage, herds of cattle grazing on dry hills, meadowlarks on ice-crusted fenceposts in the cold of dawn.

  She became homeless when the Dark World fleet laid waste to Skywater City. A single stray blast from some villainous warship incinerated both her workplace and her adjacent apartment.

  Ada was in the market purchasing flour and rice, along with blue eggs and Abrathian spices, when the fleet arrived. She and so many others had heard the warning sirens, but there had been no time to act, to escape. What could be done but hope for deliverance?

  Ada survived the chaos and devastation of the attack by virtue of her remarkable hair. It shielded her from the falling rubble of collapsing towers. By its strength she leapt canals and chasms, and though she was not by nature compassionate, she stopped on her way to catch a cluster of scaly Thrids falling from somewhere in the exploding skies. She wrapped the lanky turquoise creatures in coils of her flame-red locks, lowered them to the trembling stones, and did not wait to hear their thanks.

  The tumult in the heavens was great, and the plummet of broken warships worked as much destruction that day as did the stray weapons-fire. At the end of it, Skywater Citadel lay smashed, billowing pale sparkling smoke. The city burned, but the Dark World fleet dispersed. Some said Lord Fierce had saved what remained of the city. Some said the Lords were all fallen, and so were the heroes. But most said, and it was soon agreed to be so, that the heroes had vanished away before the attack, abandoning Skywater City to its fate.

  In the smoke and starlight, her body and hair and blue tunic besmirched with dust and blood and grime, Ada stood where the Silver Green had once risen proudly from the cobbled streets. Beside it lay the wreckage of her home. She walked among the rubble, lifted stones and shifted smoldering beams with hair that did not singe or burn. She found that all her few belongings and all her few friends had perished together in the attack.

  The morning cloudlight discovered Ada cocooned in her sooty hair, huddled among the still-glimmering ash for warmth. When she woke, she turned her tear-stained face to the morning clouds, and she smelled on the cool breeze not only smoke and death but also the salt tang of the sea; she heard not only cries of despair but also the wheeling call of seabirds who cared not for the calamity beneath them.

  Ada said to herself, “I will go home.”

  So she set out, bleary and hungry. She trudged through the blackened streets out beyond the city to the north and east.

  On her way, she passed near to the incandescent ruin of Skywater Citadel. There, in a pitted alleyway, in a grimy puddle, flopped a seafish no larger than her hand. It glittered in gold and pearl beneath the mud. It was a type of fish Ada did not know, and she wondered at how it had come to be there in the puddle until she saw the broken fishbowl nearby. It clearly would not survive much longer, and Ada perceived that it might make a meager meal for her in the evening, so she reached out for it with her hair.

  Lord Fish gasps for breath, for he is unskilled at breathing air, being only a fish.

  Ada paused. Then she said, “Lord Fish? Is that…you?”

  Lord Fish would answer that query in the affirmative, could he speak, but alas, he cannot, for he is a fish.

  Ada cast about for a container and fresh water, all thoughts of dinner and her hunger forgotten. She found a small empty barrel in a nearby pile of debris, and she dipped it in the nearest canal, murky grey though the water was, and she returned to Lord Fish and rescued him from the puddle. She murmured something about it being ‘an honor,’ though in truth she was more baffled than honored. Ada had never met Lord Fish, or any of the Lords, in person, and this first encounter was not as she would have expected.

  Lord Fish swims about in the barrel, for as the girl with the hair must surely have realized, he is a fish.

  “Oh! My apologies.” Ada bent in a small bow over the squat blackened barrel, and it occurred to her that she must look ridiculous. “My name is Ada Brickley. Where should I take you?”

  Lord Fish would go with Ada wherever she goes. After all, he can scarce do otherwise. For as she might recall, he—

  “Yes, yes, I know. A fish. But, not to the Citadel?”

  That Citadel is no place for Lord nor Fish anymore. That which it guards can never be opened. All is at an end, the heroes departed, all save one. Naught lies ahead but a gradual demise, and a spreading gloom, as all the world sinks into a final darkening night on which no cloud nor moon shall rise, nor star shine any longer.

  Thus might speak Lord Fish, were he otherwise than a fish.

  Ada stood for a while in the empty street beside the barrel and tried to understand whether the fish had actually said something, and if it had, what the words had meant. At length she picked up the barrel with her hair and continued on her path, for she was one whom neither confusion nor uncertainty could long detain.

  She walked barefoot upon sandals made of her own coppery hair, which twined like living wire up her legs and about her body. The hair supported the barrel beside her as she walked, and braids of it reached ahead from time to time to clear a path through the rubble.

  Lord Fish would perhaps observe, could he see through the charred wood of the barrel, that Ada Brickley’s hair is remarkable, in utility far surpassing most hair he has encountered. Lord Fish has no hair himself, being, of course, a fish.

  “Just ‘Ada’ will do,” she replied, already second-guessing her snap decision to bring the fish along. She knew many ways to cook a fish, but very little about what to do with this one, who happened to be one of the nine Lords of Skywater.

  “Alchemy accident,” she added. She had been fired for spilling a shelf of potions all over herself, which had been getting off easy considering all the horrible things that might have happened to her had it been a shelf other than ‘Alchemical Hair Products.’ Her hair was invincible now. It grew and it grew, and she couldn’t stop it. But at least it had become, as Lord Fish said, useful.

  They proceeded in silence for a time, and they met with less ruination as suburban sprawl replaced the central city districts and the cloudlight solidified overhead into a harsh daytime glare. Ada stopped to drink from a well and to replace the barrel’s unclean water, for which Lord Fish thanked her without speaking. He couldn’t speak, of course; he was only a fish. But she asked him there, “You said that all the heroes are gone but one?”

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  And the Fish longs to inform the kindly Ada that it is so, that the first of the heroes, she of wind and sky, the winged one, remains. Yet he cannot, for fish cannot speak. Alas. Glub glub.

  “Did you just say ‘glub glub?’”

  Of course he did not, silly girl. Fish cannot say anything. They can only make fish noises. Such as: glub glub.

  “Silly…! Listen, Fish, I may not know what kind of fish you are, but I’m a chef-in-training and I’m sure I could make a fine stew out of you!”

  Ada became aware that others at the well nearby were staring at her. She waved her hair expressively at them. Go back to what you were doing, the gesture said.

  “She’s scary, brother!” a small piping voice exclaimed from nearby.

  “Outrageous, that is!” a similar voice replied.

  Ada glanced in the direction of the voices but saw only a splintered crate and some fruit against a cracked plaster wall shaded by a tattered awning. One of the fruits, like a reddish coconut with a leafy maroon stem, began hopping up and down. “Monster!” It squeaked at her. “Villain! Chef-in-training! Abusing innocent barrels! Ooooh!” It bounced back and forth on the paving stones with a light percussive clacking as though it could scarcely contain its rage.

  “Don’t, brother Furor!” cried the other identical fruit, which seemed to lean away in fright. “She cook us too! She put us in barrel!”

  If Lord Fish were not a fish, he might wonder whether he heard the voices of two Admirals Emberstar?

  “Lord Fish!” The frightened fruit bounced a little. “Help! Help!”

  “Get her!” The angry fruit continued to dodge back and forth in little hops. “Get her, Lord Fish!”

  Naturally, Lord Fish is aware that his kind do not generally ‘get’ very much apart from insects, fruit, and other morsels of food. Certainly nothing the size of Ada Brickley and her hair, excepting the larger fishes. Such as perhaps sharks.

  “We’re leaving, Lord Fish,” said Ada. She picked up his barrel of freshened water and continued down the broken road. The soft clacking of hard shells on stone alerted her that the fruits were following.

  “Don’t, Furor!” whispered one, clearly audible.

  “Come, Trep! can’t let her get away!”

  Ada stopped, clicked her tongue in vexation, turned on her heel. The foremost fruit hopped up to her and threw itself against her shin. She flicked it away with a twist of blue-streaked hair. Undeterred, it rolled upright, returned, and attempted to stomp on her exposed toes. It was almost heavy enough to hurt. Its brother, meanwhile, cowered behind a nearby block of rubble, unaware that Ada, with her height advantage, could still see it.

  The attacking fruit squeaked insults at her, which was amusing until it began bringing her hair into it.

  “That’s enough,” she said, calculating that these fruits could probably survive a long toss into the canal down the street.

  Lord Fish wonders whether the brothers Emberstar would be interested in accompanying a fish and a young maiden on a quest.

  “Quest?” said Ada.

  “Quest!” declared the angry fruit.

  “Q-q-quest?” said the timid fruit.

  “I’m just going home! And I don’t need any...admirals...” Her protestation dwindled as her tired brain made a belated connection. Oh, that Emberstar. That Admiral. The one who was supposedly some kind of plant.

  “A quest...for what?” asked the timid fruit.

  “For vengeance!” the angry one suggested.

  “I’m not on a quest! Leave me alone!” She turned and strode down the burned street.

  Lord Fish wonders whether one’s being on a quest, or not, is indeed a matter of perspective.

  “I’m told my sushi is delicious, Fish.”

  The fruits clacked on the stones as they followed behind. “Who’s Sushi?” the angry one demanded.

  “She sounds scary!” the other whispered.

  Lord Fish might reminisce, if only fish were apt to do so, that several of the heroes also were blind to their heroic quests.

  “Heroes!” snarled the angry fruit. “Left us! All gone!”

  “We’re doomed!” wailed the other. “It’s all over...”

  Lord Fish knows that one hero remains. If only he could speak, and so inform his botanical companions of this significant fact. Glub glub.

  “Who?” demanded the angry fruit. “Who stayed?”

  “The hero of wind,” said Ada, “the one with wings. Why don’t you go bother her?”

  “Oh!” said the timid fruit. “She’s so scary!”

  “Aha!” cried the angry fruit. “So that’s your quest!”

  “No!”

  “Oooh!” said the timid fruit. “So brave!”

  “We find her!” the angry fruit announced. “She fix this.”

  Ada, on the verge of seizing these annoying fruits and hurling them down the street, paused. She looked around at wreckage and ruin, the smoky skies and the dirty, defeated faces. Too late, she thought. Much too late for any hero to fix this.

  It will only worsen, Lord Fish supposes. The world will blacken. The stars will fall, and only a hero has the power to fix that. Yet, he supposes, she does not wish to be found. A quest there lies for the taking, should any choose to take it. But what does he know? He is only a fish.

  “A quest! A quest!” The two fruits hopped in a circle, chanting the phrase in excitement.

  “No!”

  Ada kept walking. She never did hurl the Emberstar brothers down the street. In the evening, she used the strength of her hair to clear rubble off of trapped survivors in exchange for food and a wheelbarrow. And when Furor and Trepidation Emberstar jumped up into the wheelbarrow alongside Lord Fish’s barrel, she did not remove them.

  But she had no intention of embarking upon a wild turkey hunt after the last hero.