They nodded.

Alex turned back to Sky and Crow. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Both of them looked sure. “Yes,” they said, breathless.

Alex nodded, and then he took out two invisibility paintbrushes from his vest and addressed Crow and Sky. “We’ll leave one of your arms unpainted so that we can see where you are, but this way no one will recognize you. But we need to hurry—it’ll wear off in fifteen or twenty minutes.” They held an arm out and Alex painted the rest of them quickly.

“Why aren’t you painting all of us?” Henry asked. “Because we don’t want to have to call out to find each other—we’d be discovered for sure. And we will lose each other if we’re all invisible. Plus Lani and Sam won’t be able to see us then either, and they won’t understand what’s happening. We can’t risk them not believing we are who we say we are.”

Henry shrugged. “Guess that makes sense.” He wanted Lani to see him, that was for sure.

Everyone but Meghan removed their vests and held them high above their heads with one hand as they climbed down a rope to the water, careful not to get their vests too wet. Then Sean and Alex loaded the nearly invisible Sky and Crow on their shoulders to make sure they didn’t lose sight of them completely in the water.

“Be safe,” Meghan called out as the six made for the shore. She stood by Ms. Octavia and the tiki statue and nibbled on her fingernails, the giant bag of spell components in reach so that she could defend the ship if she needed to.

Alex glanced back. “Don’t worry, Meg. We’ve got this. Sean and Carina will be right here on the beach in sight at all times to fight off attackers and get the team home.”

As they reached shallower water, all six now walking independently toward the beach, a ball of fire came whizzing through the trees and stopped in front of Alex. It exploded, but this time it wasn’t Lani’s face looking back at him.

Alex gasped. It was the fiery outline of a tiny porcelain kitten.

Hope at Last

It was the end of Samheed’s second week of work on Warbler, but there were no days off here. He swung his dulled ax over and over, silently splitting logs for ships. It was crazy how much his muscles ached and burned, and there was no satisfying crash of the ax breaking the wood

to go with it. He didn’t dare slow his pace, though, or attempt to sever the leash—there were at least ten other young men and women out here who would report him in an instant, including the project manager, who’d had his thorns removed recently and liked to remind everyone how hard he worked to get that privilege.

The only thing Samheed could think about to get him through each day was the sign language class with Lani. That was the only time he was certain he’d see her, though they were slowly exchanging information about where they regularly were at certain times of the day, and they tried to catch glimpses of each other in passing.

He’d seen her this morning, just for a second, her long black hair disappearing around a corner. That moment made his throat ache on and off all day, but it kept him going, kept him working hard. The harder he worked and the more obedient he was, the sooner he’d be off this chain, and then he’d be able to move about a bit more freely. He’d even be allowed to eat dinner with Lani. Everything he did was motivated by a chance to see her, and their chance to escape.

And when he thought of escape, his mouth soured, because certainly by now someone from Artimé would have done something to rescue them. Lani’s father, for sure, if no one else cared enough—he was the high priest, after all. He could do anything. That Gunnar hadn’t come was the one thing that still gave Samheed pause—perhaps there was some horrible reason why no one had rescued them even though Lani’s seek spells seemed to be going through and she sent them as often as she could. Maybe the spell couldn’t find Alex, or something had happened to him. Or maybe Artimé was too far away and the spell couldn’t get there. He wanted to believe that his friend Alex would do anything for him. But he was beginning to lose hope.

There was only one good thing that had come out of this, and it was the one thing that kept Samheed from giving up. Lani. He knew she must still be very fond of Alex, though she seemed to enjoy holding Sam’s hand a lot even when she didn’t need to. But if Alex ever showed up to help them, Lani would surely go back to liking him. It hurt Sam’s stomach to think about it.

But Alex wasn’t coming. And Lani was all Samheed had. So he was going to let his heart do whatever it had to do to keep him from losing his mind, stuck here in this horrible place.

The project manager startled him out of his thoughts, calling for a five-minute break. Samheed knew that he could take the break with the others, but if he kept working, the project manager would be impressed. So Samheed waved off the others and doggedly continued as they headed to the water area.

And then the strangest thing happened. Just as Samheed began to swing, a tiny, shiny white thing jumped on the log in front of him. Samheed pulled the swing just in time and wiped the sweat from his eyes, thinking he might be seeing things. He looked closer and saw it was a porcelain kitten.

Where in the world did you come from? he wondered. He looked all around, making sure no one was watching, and then he knelt down next to the log. The kitten moved. And then Samheed heard a sound. “Mewmewmew,” it said in a tiny voice. It hopped up and down on the log, and then it jumped and tumbled down and ran over toward Sam’s giant pile of wood. It looked back at Samheed as if it were waiting.