Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(76)

I believe Tress might have been more pleased if the view hadn’t been so stunning. She’d have had a better chance of keeping my attention.

“Would you please focus, Hoid?” the girl asked.

I pointed at the distant red moon, the spores streaming down to fill the sea. “It looks like the moon is throwing up.”

Tress sighed.

“Imagine that the sea is the toilet,” I said, “and the moon is the face of a god, heaving onto us after a long night of getting spun around and around on a bar stool.”

I actually composed a poem about a vomiting god. I’ll spare you, though it’s the only time I’ve had an excuse to make a really good rhyme for “scarf.”

Finally, after some prodding, I turned from my newfound muse and settled down on the deck near Tress. She would have preferred to work with me belowdecks, out of sight, but I had been stubborn. I’d wanted to watch the moon barf. As one does.

“We need to break the curse,” she said.

“Ah yes,” I said. Then I leaned in close, speaking conspiratorially. “You know, I have one of those.”

“A curse?”

“Indeed.”

“I know, Hoid.”

“You do?”

“Yes. It’s why we can talk about it. If I didn’t know, you couldn’t tell me.”

“I can’t tell you something you don’t know, but only things you already know?”

“Yes, because of the curse.”

“Oh! A curse! I—”

“—have one of those. I know. I need to break yours so you can lead me to the Sorceress. Nobody knows where in the Midnight Sea she can be found.”

I fell silent.

“Hoid?” she asked. “Do you understand?”

“I think I understand. But, see, it’s hard.” I leaned in closer. “I can tell you…”

“Yes?”

“Something important…”

“Yes?”

“Socks with sandals,” I whispered. “The new fashion movement. Trust me. It will be all the rage.”

She sighed with increasing exasperation.

I’m accustomed to that reaction from people, but I prefer to be intentionally irritating. It’s against my professional ethics to frustrate people by accident. It’s like…a construction worker making a new road while sleepwalking. The foreman would have a fit. How in the world does one make a sleepwalker take a union-mandated break? Do you wake them up?

“Look,” Tress said, “I have this paper here, see? And I’ve written down a lot of words that I think would have to do with curses. Are there any you can’t talk to me about? If so, that will give me a clue.”

It was a workable idea. I would have been impressed, if I hadn’t been distracted by wondering whether anyone had made clothing out of napkins yet.

Tress handed me the list of words. I studied them, cocked my head to the side, then nodded.

“Anything?” she asked.

“I,” I declared, “have apparently forgotten how to read.”

Showing legendary patience, Tress took the list back and read the words to me. I repeated them.

“Well?” she asked.

“I definitely have heard some of those words before,” I said. “Now, I forgot the rules. Is this the game where I draw a picture of the word, or is it the game where I act them out?”

She groaned and lay back on the deck, her head thumping the wood. “Could you maybe lead me to the Sorceress without getting your curse broken?”

I fell silent.

“Hoid?”

I smiled at her. I’d blacked out one of my teeth to make it seem like it was missing, as I figured that must be quite fashionable. A number of the Dougs were sporting the look, after all.

“Maybe I could say letters to you,” she said, “and you could think of the way to break your curse. I could ask you, ‘Is this letter in the word?’ Theoretically, you won’t be able to say yes if it were.”

This one wouldn’t have worked. It was an easy enough workaround that the Sorceress had thought of it, and had basically “programmed” the curse to forbid the person from confirming words this way.

In addition, in this specific instance…well…

“Letters,” I said. “Spelling words. Reading…”

“Right,” Tress said. “Right. You never answered my question, though. Could you lead me to the Sorceress? Even without being uncursed?”

I fell silent.

A part of me was hoping she’d notice how loud that silence was.

“Wait,” she said, sitting up. “Every time I talk about sailing to see the Sorceress, you get quiet.”

“Do I?” I asked.

“Those are the only times when I’ve been around you that you haven’t had anything to say…” Her eyes widened. “Hoid, you can’t talk about the Sorceress or her island, right?”

I, notably, was unable to answer.

“Hoid,” she said, “can you talk about the king’s island?”

“I’ve been there once!” I said. “Have you heard the story about the king’s tosher? I don’t really remember it, but it has poop in it, so it must be funny!”