Lani frowned. “There are only six places to go back to. How does anyone forget that?”

“He seemed rather elusive,” Ms. Octavia agreed.

“Mewmewmew,” said Kitten.

Fox nodded at her. “True,” he said. “Ninety-six big ones. That’s old enough to forget things.”

“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the girl made it out of here. Just like we’re going to do.”

He wanted to believe it. But the girl was a single person in a sailboat. He had a whole zoo full of people and creatures and statues, plus a giant ship to move. The task seemed insurmountable, yet he continued to mask his worry in front of the others. “Simber will be here any time now. And then we’re out of this wretched place.”

Sky shot him a look, and Alex hurriedly turned away, knowing she didn’t believe a word of it.

A Second Chance

Progress outside on the ship was slow and purposeful. Inside, things were moving along at a quicker pace. Soon there was a backlog of material assembled and ready to repair the ship, and every day fewer scavengers were needed and more hands were on deck to patch things.

But still there was no Simber.

Alex buried himself in tasks to keep his mind occupied. Finally finished rolling preserve spell components, Alex set them aside. He would instill them with magic when his mind was fresh and he could concentrate. Instead he turned to his next indoor task. The moss.

He stared at the huge fluffy pile that had been faithfully added to daily by the Artiméans, waiting for when Alex was ready to make the flying carpet components. Little did the castaways know the mage was losing sleep at night, silently begging Simber to hurry so he didn’t have to figure out how to accomplish this impossible task. Going back to try to fix the tube again seemed like a less bleak option at this point.

He began to pull the moss apart and twist it into strands—perhaps braiding them would work, he thought. But try as he might, he couldn’t get the fragile material to braid tightly enough, and inevitably he ended up with a carpet that wasn’t strong enough to carry Fox, much less a human.

Still, he kept up the farce, declaring he was nearly there with the design. “Just a few tiny kinks to work out,” he said whenever anyone asked about the progress. He even enlisted help from Ms. Octavia, but to no avail. Without a loom, she had nothing to offer.

After a few days with no progress, Alex knew he’d have to confess the truth. He decided to go back to the drawing board one last time before breaking the news. But when he entered the nook where the moss awaited him, he saw something else sitting next to it.

A tiny, makeshift loom.

Alex looked all around, wondering who had created it, but everyone was busy with her own tasks. He wasted no time searching for the responsible party, and instead grabbed a handful of moss threads and got to work, fumbling as he tried to get used to the small size. Besides, he had an idea of who was responsible. And it wasn’t Ms. Octavia.

» » « «

Late into the evening he stayed bent over the machine, amazed at the careful, beautiful construction made mostly from pieces of absolute junk. Only a true visionary could have imagined the final project with the variety of items contained in it: two auger shells left over from making the captain’s wheel, an old carpenter’s ruler broken into pieces, gears that looked like they came from a clock, a few pieces of metal, some driftwood, a number of thin sticks that were carefully whittled and completely smooth, and a length of gold chain cut into sections.

After a dozen attempts and countless tiny adjustments to the loom and to the thickness of the moss threads, and a hundred restarts due to Alex’s own clumsy hands, Alex finally had a component prototype that he thought would work. Excited, he quickly instilled magic into it, and with fingers crossed, he cast it upon the ground. The tiny woven bit of moss expanded into a thick carpet. Alex sat upon it and commanded, “To the greenhouse!”

The carpet lifted him off the ground and moved him out of the nook, flew a short distance, and then disappeared into thin air. Alex fell to the floor with a thud. “Oof,” he said.

He heard a soft laugh from the nearby sleeping room, but he didn’t care—the carpet had carried him! The prototype was a success. The magic needed a little tweaking to make the carpet fly longer, and Alex had to figure out how to weave faster so it didn’t take him a million years to make enough for everyone, but those were easy tasks compared to creating the prototype. What a relief!

He got to his feet and went back to the room with the moss—there was no time to sleep when things were going well.

It was only a few minutes later when a shadow fell over the loom. Alex looked up. It was Sky, her hair tousled, sleep in her eyes.

“You did it,” she said.

“Thanks to you,” Alex said. “I don’t know how you did this, but it works.”

“I’m sorry it’s so small.”

“No—really. It’s perfect. It’s my fingers that are too big.” He pointed to the gold chain links. “Sky . . . please tell me this isn’t the bracelet from your mother.”

Sky smiled, ignoring the question, and sat down next to him. “Here,” she said, reaching for the loom. “Let me show you a few tricks that can help you go faster.”

The nearness of her after so long was almost overwhelming. Alex didn’t dare react for fear of Sky coming to her senses and leaving. Maybe she was sleepwalking. Or maybe she was just ready to forgive him. Alex tried to focus on what she was saying, but he could barely hear her over the pounding of his pulse.