The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (20 page)

"Petra!" James said, shaking her and making her look at him. "We have to get below now! The storm! We can talk about this later, all right? I don't understand what you are saying, but it doesn't matter right now. You have to come down and be with Izzy! She needs you!"

That seemed to get Petra's attention. She blinked at him, as if coming out of a mild trance. She nodded. "You're right, James. Of course. I'm sorry. Let's go."

James nodded with relief. Taking Petra's hand, he turned and began to lead her back toward the mid-ship stairs.

A crack of thunder cleaved the sky overhead and a bolt of blinding lightning struck the aft mast, splitting it in two. Lashing burst loose with a series of high twangs and the mast began to topple, groaning and swinging sideways. James watched with horror, ducking and pulling Petra with him, but there was nothing he could do. The mast spun unpredictably, still trapped in the rigging, and fell to the deck with a shuddering crash. One of the mast's arms swept over James' head, brushing his hair. A split second later, Petra's hand was wrenched from his.

"Petra!" he shouted, scrambling backwards, his eyes wild. The angle of the mast arm had scooped Petra clean off the deck. James' heart leapt into his throat and he threw himself toward the stern railing, his feet slipping on the wet deck. The mast had crushed part of the railing as it fell on it. Now, half of the broken mast jutted out over the waves, caught in a web of torn sail and rigging. Petra clung to the outside of the railing, tangled in the mast's rigging. Slowly, the weight of the mast pulled her away from the railing and she began to lose her grip.

James leapt forward and grabbed Petra's arm just as she slipped loose. She clutched his wrist as she fell away, yanking him forward so that he nearly went over the edge himself. He struggled to hold onto the railing with one hand while Petra dangled from the other.

"Petra!" he cried down to her. "I can't hold on much longer! Climb up!"

"I'm caught!" she called back, and James saw it. The rigging was still tangled around her ankle, binding her to the broken mast. Behind James, horribly, a huge splintering crackle sounded. The mast dipped precipitously as it broke further away from the ship. Ropes twanged as they snapped, and the tip of the mast speared the waves, bowing under their weight.

"Use your wand!" James hollered down, his voice thin in the pounding wind. "Break the ropes with your wand!"

Petra hung from one wet hand, slipping slowly as the mast dragged her toward the mountainous waves. "I don't have a wand," she said, almost to herself. She looked down, examining the stormy ocean below, and then, suddenly, she gasped. "My brooch!" she cried out. She patted at her cape frantically with her free hand, searching. "My father's brooch! Where did it go? Oh no!"

"Petra!" James yelled, raising his voice as loudly as he could. "You have to use your powers! The ones you used in the dream story! Break the ropes with your mind! Do it now! Quickly!"

Petra didn't seem to hear him. The ship rolled horribly as the waves towered over it, crashing now over the decks. The sky loomed and swayed overhead. It had begun to rain.

"Let me go, James," Petra said, raising her eyes to him. They were calm and dark in the stormlight.

"What!?" James called back, redoubling his grip on her wrist. She was slipping away, and James realized that she was loosening her grasp on him.

She shook her head faintly. Her pale face looked earnestly up at him. "Let me go. This is how it is supposed to end. This will fix everything, balance it all back out again. This will send the dreams back into the water, where they belong. Let me go join my father's brooch. It's the only way. Let me go."

"I can't do that!" James cried, struggling desperately to maintain his grip on Petra's wrist. "I have to save you! I can't just let you go! I can't!"

"You can," Petra said. It was a request. "James, if you care about me, you can. You can let go."

"No!" James screamed, but it was going to happen whether he wanted it to or not. The rigging tangled around Petra's ankle was pulling her down, towed by the broken mast as it sank into the waves. An ominous creak sounded behind James as the mast began to tear away, taking part of the deck with it. There was no fighting the force of the storm. It wanted Petra, and it meant to have her.

Petra's fingers began to uncurl from James' wrist.

"NO!" James cried again, leaning forward, fighting to hold her, panic ripping through him. "Petra! No!"

She let go, and his fingers slipped, collapsed onto nothing as she dropped away, still looking up at him, her face calm in the raging darkness.

"UGH!" James cried out involuntarily as something deep inside him tugged, horribly and suddenly, nearly yanking him over the railing once more. His eyes clamped shut at the pain of it, even as he braced himself against the railing. Something was pulling him from the inside, as if a cord ran straight through him and ended in his gut, anchored there by some powerful, unshakable force. It hurt. "Ugh!" he cried out again, and finally opened his eyes.

Petra was still dangling below him, but much further down now, so that waves roared up over her legs and hips. She stared up at him, her face shocked, wide-eyed. Between her hand and his, a glowing silver cord trembled, thin as thread but apparently very strong. So strong, James sensed, that it was very nearly unbreakable. It was magic, but not like any magic James had ever known, or even heard of. It was
Magic,
deep and powerful, coming from outside of him, like a current of electricity so huge and potent that it could kill him if he wasn't careful. The silvery thread came from the center of his palm, trembling and humming. He wrapped his fingers around it tightly.

Petra raised her voice, crying up to him against the noise of the storm. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know!" James hollered back. "But I don't think I can stop it! You have to climb up! I'll pull you!"

"I can't!" Petra answered. "My ankle's still caught! It'll pull us both under!"

As she spoke, the mast crackled and splintered further. With a low creak and groan, it began to pull away from the ship, finally letting loose.

"Use your Magic!" James yelled. "Like you did the other morning! When you fixed the harness chain! I know it was you, just like in the dream story!
Do
it Petra!
Now
!"

Far below, Petra nodded. She closed her eyes as the waves rose and fell around her. Thunder and lightning blasted overhead, but the silver cord held strong, connecting Petra and James, glowing like a filament of starlight. Barely audible beneath the roar of the storm, a twang of breaking rope sounded and Petra grew suddenly lighter, buoying up out of the rolling waves. With a sustained shudder and a monstrous noise, the mast fell away from the ship. It crashed into the waves beneath Petra, sending up a deluge of grey water. Petra swung as she began to climb the glimmering thread, and James pulled her up, surprised at his own strength. It was as if power flowed into his arms from the thread itself, and still it tugged at his center, as if the thread's end wrapped around his very soul. For all he knew, it did.

Moments later, James helped Petra clamber over the broken railing. She collapsed against him, sodden and exhausted, and he stumbled backwards, barely able to hold himself up.

"What in the name of Neptune's ruddy trident is going on back here?" a voice bellowed. Footsteps sounded on the deck and hands grabbed at James and Petra, helping them up. James didn't recognize the sailors, but he recognized the look of annoyed alarm on their faces. The sailors hadn't seen what had happened at the rear of the ship. They only knew that lightning had struck their aft mast, breaking it off into the sea, and now, on top of everything, here were a couple of teenaged passengers mucking about on the deck during an Atlantic storm.

"Get below-decks!" one of the sailors cried out, pointing. "What, are you both totally daft? Go on!"

James nodded, and then turned to look at Petra. He still had her hand, although the strange silver cord seemed to have faded away. Or perhaps it had simply gone invisible. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

She didn't answer. Instead, she turned and looked back, toward the rolling, stormy waves beyond the stern railing.

"Goodbye father," she said in a faint voice. She shuddered and her eyes were wide, wet with exhausted tears. "Goodbye. I'm sorry."

"
S
o what happened out there anyway?" Albus asked quietly.

James lay in his bunk, staring up at the ceiling. The ship still creaked ominously as it rocked, but the brunt of the storm had finally passed. The thump of footsteps could be heard from the decks above as the crew attempted to repair what was left of the stern mast.

"James?" It was Ralph this time, from the bunk across the narrow room. "You asleep over there?"

"No."

"So what gives? What really happened?"

James sighed. "Apparently you lot saw it all from the stern windows in the captain's quarters. You tell me."

"Hah," Albus laughed derisively. "We hardly got to see anything before Merlin got involved. We heard the mast fall over and saw bits of it go over the side, and then we saw Petra's feet hanging down, swinging back and forth with the ropes all tangled up in them. Mum let out a scream, and that's when Merlin came up and put the lights out."

"I don't get it," James said, rolling over and looking at Ralph in the opposite bunk. "Why did he pull the curtains?"

Ralph screwed up his face thoughtfully. "That's not what he did. He came forward and stood in front of the window, spreading out his arms, and he said something in that weird language of his. Old Celtic, I guess. Rose would probably know what it meant. Next thing we know, the windows had all gone completely dark, like they'd been covered in black paint. I guess he didn't want us to see it if Petra was going to fall. I mean, Izzy was there, after all. Petra's her sister."

"Thanks for the explanation," James said, sighing.

"So tell us!" Albus insisted. "What happened?"

James shook his head on his pillow. "She fell. That's all. Lightning struck the mast at the back of the ship, right next to us. It fell over and knocked Petra over the side. She hung onto the railing until I got over there and grabbed her."

Albus shifted on his bunk, squeaking the thin mattress. "What was she doing up on deck in the first place? Didn't she know there was a bloody hurricane going?"

"I don't know," James said. He meant to go on, to try to explain, but the words wouldn't come. Instead, he let the silence spin out, telling its own story.

"I'll tell you one thing," Albus commented, "she's been a little odd ever since she showed up at our place, earlier this summer. Whatever happened back at her grandparents' farm, I think it knocked a few owls loose in her owlery, if you know what I mean."

"Shut up, Al," James said. He felt his face heating, but he tried not to let it show in his voice. "You don't know anything about it. So just shut up."

Ralph rolled over and rested his chin on his forearm, peering across the darkened room. "Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? Hardly anybody knows what happened there. I mean, there's Damien, Sabrina, and Ted, but they sure aren't talking. Merlin's orders. Whatever happened, it had to have been pretty ugly. Both of Petra's grandparents ended up dead."

"Phyllis wasn't Petra's grandmother," James announced darkly. "She was just the woman Petra's grandfather married, and she was perfectly horrid. Whatever happened to her, she got what she deserved."

The bed beneath James squeaked again as Albus moved around on it. A moment later, his head appeared next to James' bunk, peering up at him. "You know something, don't you? Tell!"

"I don't know anything. Shut up and go to sleep, you berk."

Albus stared at him critically.

Across the room, Ralph said, "I don't know what this Phyllis woman was supposed to have done, but she was Izzy's mum, at least. I mean, maybe there was a good reason, maybe there wasn't, but it's a pretty strong thing to say that death was what she deserved."

"Well, Petra isn't in Azkaban, is she?" James replied angrily. "Obviously whatever happened, nobody's blaming her for it."

"Or nobody can prove that she did it," Albus added, still studying James' face.

James threw off the covers and shoved Albus aside. He leapt nimbly to the floor and pulled the door open, letting in the light from the corridor.

"Hey," Ralph called, "where are you going?"

"Out," James replied, not turning back. "That's all. Don't follow me."

He pulled the door closed and stalked along the narrow corridor, fuming and confused. When he reached the stairs to the main deck, he turned toward them and climbed to the door, which was propped open, letting in the night air.

The deck was wet beneath James' bare feet. He peered back toward the stern and saw deckhands moving about by lantern-light, using their wands to repair what remained of the stern mast. Sighing, James turned toward the bow stairs and climbed up, glad that this end of the ship, at least, seemed dark and relatively deserted.