Granny promised lots of things. Sometimes, her promises were clear. Lulu soup for dinner, I love you, take care of those trees or you ain’t gonna like what happens—Drake understood those promises. He never bothered to test them, but the other kinds of promises, the ones hidden in Granny’s words like treasure chests in dirt, those called to him. They dared him to measure their truth.
Eurybia grieved. She grieved so hard, she made the currents go round and round the world, made them strong enough to pick things up, carry them back.
The ending to Granny’s story rang in ten-year old Drake’s head as he watched a leaf rise and fall with the sea. A current caught the leaf. It shined in the light, blinded Drake like a tourist’s jewels, then slipped down, over the wave’s backside, and past the cove’s opening. The leaf floated away from Junk Palace’s land, away from layers of rusted gears, sheets of metal, nests of crumpled plastic, trashed tech-addies, old cybersthetics, rotted ships, cracked planes, stacked houses, and bones. Dailas held everything together. The currents carried the world’s leftovers, but the dailas, with their ocean deep roots and cloud-kissing canopies, kept everything in place.
“Drake! You best get them lulus to town!” Granny’s voice drifted from the cliff top where their shack leaned against a lulu fruit tree. It was another promise, one Drake knew the ending of.
“Going!” He turned just enough to be heard. He stared at the narrow cove opening, where crystal sky and hazy clouds cut through the cliffside like lighthouse beams. The beam was warm, and Drake swore it sung.
“I’m going,” he said again. The wind stole his voice, bounced it between cliff walls, and out towards the open sea where it raced alongside the disappearing leaf. If Granny’s story was true, it would return. Drake turned away, grabbed the basket of lulus, then trudged up the path towards town. The scavengers would haggle prices today, prices that hadn’t changed since Granny was a kid. They’d keep Drake away from home. He’d walk back with an empty basket, the money split between his shoes and pockets. His hand would rest on the zap knife he’d made from scraps. Night would turn the daila shadows into hands, the leaf tips into knives, guns, fists. He’d walk faster. Still, he’d miss it.
In the cove, tucked between sand and pop cans, a leaf sat where it had entered the water from between cusped hands.
#
When Drake was twelve, Granny didn’t tell him to go to town anymore. He just did. He woke up, watered and picked the lulus, checked the fences, and was on the path towards Stacked City before Granny ached her way out of bed. He was on the downhill slope, right on the edges of town, and already standing tall. Shoulders straight. Head tilted back. Ring of scars on arm out.
Granny had three things she liked to say.
“You turn into a soldier,” she’d pause, spit over her shoulder, “I’ll skin you.”
“You turn into a scavenger,” she’d pause, spit over her other shoulder, “I’ll skin you twice.”
And what Drake understood the most, what every Junk Rat knew from their first cries; “Ain’t nobody care about you, not until you force them to.”
Those words beat in Drake’s head like a heartbeat every time he was in Stacked City. They got louder each time he stared at scavengers, tourists, and soldiers, said I dare you with his face.
He’d meet That Manat night, deep inside Stacked City’s labyrinth alleys. There were no streetlamps to light the slithers of space. The only source of light came from inside the cramped buildings. Drake drifted between the glowing patches with an empty lulu basket on his back. That’s when he heard it. A clatter. A thump.
“Give it back!” The light from a nearby cybersthetic shop outlined a metal pole on the ground and a man’s broad back. Drake’s first glimpse of That Man.
“I don’t think so, Cash. Think of it as your first payment.” He laughed, deep, bubbly like hot oil. He cocked an arm back. It caught the light—it was metal, a cybersthetic or tech-addie. “This too.”
It was the cry that did it. The sucking in, the I-can’t-breathe-ow, the shock in the sound, that had the zap knife in Drake’s hand, his finger on the red button, his arm pulled back, lined up, then whoosh, tossed. It clattered to the ground a couple hands away from the man’s foot.
For a breath, nothing happened. Then the alleyway flashed and buzzed with electrical light. Tiny darts flew from the zap knife into the man’s backside. He fell away from Cash, who scrambled into the crook of a crumpled airplane wing. The light died, and the man stilled.
Drake walked past Cash, past the man, and picked up his knife. While the darts crawled back into the hilt, Drake’s eye drifted towards a chunk of bone white in the man’s fist. It stood out, brighter than any of the dingy pieces around them, even those caught in the buildings’ light. Drake tugged it free. It was a diamond-shaped pendant looped through a cord.
A scuffle made Drake look up. Before he could track the sound, a pole was pointed at his head.
“Give it back.” Any threat was shattered by Cash’s pants, the blood dripping from his nose, the way he stood on his toes, hunched over, like everything in the middle hurt. The pole shook in the air between them. The shadows under Cash’s cheeks were deeper than Drake’s, his wrists knobbier, legs scrawnier.
“Give it back. Now.”
The lulu basket felt heavy, but there were only a dozen coins and squashed bills inside. It’d be heavier tomorrow, after it was filled with the fragrant fruits again. Drake wondered if the other boy had any money, any food. He wondered what the pendant was worth, and why Cash hadn’t sold it.
With a squeeze, Drake held the pendant out between them.
Cash’s face went slack, then steeled. The pendant disappeared in his pocket.
“I can get you money,” Cash said. His backward steps crunched against the plastic bunches beneath them.
Drake shook his head.
“No.”
“What you want then?”
Drake looked to the sky. It hummed a siren’s lullaby— sweet, sashaying, just loud enough to hear.
“Nothing you got.”
Cash huffed.
“People don’t do things for nothing.”
Drake shrugged. He hadn’t planned on doing anything. It’d just happened. Now though, he was hungry, and if he didn’t get home soon, Granny would worry. Drake turned away with a wave. Between his footsteps, he heard the other boy sputter, take a step forward, then stop. That was alright. Drake didn’t understand it either. He just knew that his Granny-mantra had changed when he’d heard the other boy’s cry. It’d switched from nobody cares, to your mama never let a bad thing stand.
#
Three years later, a trio of boys sat among charred lulu trunks. To their left, a black square marked where the shack once stood. Drake didn’t look. His eyes stayed on a pile of stacked stones, originally one, then two, and later, three. Daila roots wrapped around them like cusped hands, guarded them from wind and tide.
“We’re getting Him. Today,” Drake said. “Me, Cash, and Leo.”
Leo whooped from his root perch. Cash tugged the younger boy back onto solid ground. Drake smiled, small and quick. He didn’t think Granny was surprised. Ever since that night, with That Man, when Cash knocked on the shack’s door with a warning on his lips, he hadn’t left. Drake had asked about it only once.
“Why’re you here?”
Ash was everywhere. On Drake’s hands, in his hair, his throat. His leg ached like a tank had ran it over. It was broken— a lone Junk Rat’s death sentence.
“Debt ain’t paid.”
They never talked about it. Just like they never talked about Leo’s first rotation, when he didn’t speak, didn’t gesture, just followed them like a ghost caught in their tailwind.
“—so Eurybia got upset, and made the currents go round and round the world,” Drake said with a twirl of his finger. Leo’s leafy eyes followed the gesture a beat too slow. Cash watched the exchange from across the fire. He rolled his eyes— too dumb to take care of himself, burden, can’t do anything— then tore a rib from the smoked opal jag spitted over the fire. Drake ignored him.
“So that maybe, someday, Crius could find his way back.”
Story done, Drake leaned back and chewed his own piece of meat. Loud chews, fire pops, and trash rustles filled the silence.
Then, Leo cleared his throat.
“Did he?” His voice was warbled like a dying bird’s cry or a chick’s first cheep.
Cash choked. Drake fumbled his jag leg. They stared, open-mouthed, at the boy they’d thought mute.
“What?” Drake asked.
“Come back?” Leo said.
Did he come back?
Drake still didn’t know the answer, and Granny wasn’t there to ask.
The sun peaked over the cliff and hit the stones’ edges. They turned sunset, danced between pink and orange like the blood in Granny’s hai—Drake frowned.
“I know you said revenge just goes round and round, but we got to. It can’t stand.”
The boys nodded, but the rocks were still.
“They kill an old lady for some trees—because a kid pissed them off, what else they gonna do?”
Leo chorused agreement. Cash traced his pendant but nodded when Drake glanced his way. As they turned away and disappeared down familiar paths, Granny’s voice grumbled in his head. Your mama never let a bad thing stand. The words were normally a punch, an awakening. Lately, they were a bone popped out and twisted in wrong.
#
Their rickety ship was hidden in an oceanside cave about a trek away from the shack. Cash called it their “escape.” Leo their “pirate ship.” To Drake, it was something to work on when he wasn’t upgrading the treehouse.
The boys created a line from the Spiked Lulu’s nest to a dinghy at the cave’s opening. Leo lifted a crate of explosive algae, his nose wrinkling at the rotted mint smell. He stepped too close to the nest’s edge, got yelled at, then tied the crate to a pulley. Drake tugged the pulley’s rope until the crate thumped onto the Lulu’s deck. Cash stopped glaring at Leo long enough to take the crate from Drake and carry it to the dinghy.
“Hi boys.” A chipper voice sounded from the cave’s opening.
“Food?” Leo yelled and waved his arms from the nest. The young mermaid laughed and pulled herself onto a tattered beach chair. Molphe looked around with big, peach colored eyes. She’d given them the algae. She knew what it was for, but the memory of two boys drifting farther into the black sea, closer and closer to her city, attracting predators with their blood spill—it’d been that night, when Drake and Cash had lost and the lulus burned— made her ask anyway.
“Do you have to?”
“Yeah,” Leo yelled. He snapped both thumbs up. “Don’t worry though. Soon as it’s done, we’re outta here.”
The sky called to him, to Cash. They watched the horizon.
The sky called, but Drake looked at the other two first, saw the flash of teeth in Leo’s smile, the smoothness around Cash’s eyes.
For a while now, the sky’s song had played for Drake, but quietly, like it was meant for someone else.
#
Much later, Drake would pin-point three moments as Those Moments— as thoughts, breaths, heartbeats—where everything went wrong.
The first was a thought. Cash can lay the bombs. That was fine. Cash started thieving when he was six. Sneaking into That Man’s den to plant algae bombs was child’s play. Leo was the problem. If Cash laid the bombs and Drake was the bait, the reason they’d know, without a doubt, that he’d be there, then Leo was the escape. He’d be in the thick of it, in the middle of knives, guns, fists.
Leo wasn’t like the older boys—wisdom added yearly, closer to the size of men.
The second was a breath, the one Drake lost when his head turned, and a pistol was hands away from Leo’s gold curls. The ends were almost as white as Granny’s. They’d bleed sunset too.
The last was a heartbeat. Drake’s sped up the moment the building shook with the first bomb’s boom, raced when That Man’scybersthetic arm popped and whizzed into a saw blade. His heartbeat throbbed along his neck as he turned towards Leo, the man with the pistol, away from That Man.He grabbed the pistol. Pushed. There was a gun pop, but the saw’s roar was louder.
Drake didn’t see The Man or the saw strike his back, only Leo’s face stretching like soiled paper. Sparks flew. His knees wobbled under the impact. He didn’t know who gasped, only that That Man lifted the blade away, put it back, and it still didn’t hurt.
The glance wasn’t a Moment— it hadn’t ruined anything. Shattered and ruined were two different things. Drake glanced over his shoulder, saw a blade taller than Leo bouncing off his flesh like it was made of stone. He blinked, narrowed his eyes. His skin wasn’t the right color. There were bumps on it, like scars or elongated pimples. The green tint didn’t go away, not even when he shook his head. The saw disappeared. Without the sparks, Drake could see the scales draped over his back.
The scar on his arm ached.
In a blink, the scales were gone. The saw came back. After many blinks, his arm was gone too.
#
The treehouse creaked beneath the movement of two boys. They rummaged around the third who slept on the treehouse’s deck. Sunlight filtered through the daila leaves and branches, hit the worn wood and the third’s slack face. Cash and Leo pulled branches out of the way and tugged blankets down so more light touched Drake’s skin.
Or they did. When they weren’t fighting.
“We’re not going, Leo.”
“REGROWTH destroyed the ship. We did nothing but piss That Man off. We gotta go.”
Drake was too tired to open his eyes, but the word REGROWTH turned his dreams into memory.
Granny held Drake close. She always did on recruitment days, like she was scared President Dante’s army would snatch him.
“REGROWTH pigs,” she’d spit at the big soldiers with metal bands embedded in their arms, the ones who dared at everyone who passed.
Something growled in Drake’s tummy. He pushed away from Granny, stuck his nose in the air, and dared too. He never could tear his arm free from Granny, never could unveil the ring of scars she hid beneath a curled hand.
“They tracked the algae to the ship with their freaky lizard powers. We never brought the algae here. We’re fine.”
A laugh— jittery, mean, un-Leo like.
“You think they’re gonna stop at the ship? They want him!”
“We ain’t leaving.”
“Cash, if they catch us, there’ll be nothing left. Not me, not you, and definitely not him.”
Drake drifted away, into another night filled with leaves and lefts, gones and takens.
“Cash. Cash. What’s your name?”
It was Molphe’s fault. All it took was one exchange— one Leo hadn’t even been a part of— to send Leo into an avalanche of questions that hadn’t stopped since their breakfast of seaweed cakes.
“Cash. You can’t keep lying to me, bro.”
The boys walked one-after-the-other through tangled daila roots and scum-covered pipes. Even though Drake was at the back of their line, he could see that Cash’s back was straighter than the metal pole looped over his shoulders. He held the pole with one hand. With the other, he clutched the pendant so tightly his elbow shook.
Drake whapped Leo on the head with the butt of his spear. The younger boy squealed and clutched at the growing bump.
“Drop it.”
“But—”
“He don’t want to tell you, he don’t got to.”
“But—”
Drake lifted the spear again. Leo scampered far ahead of the older boys. It wasn’t until that night, when they were nestled inside the treehouse sipping frog soup, that Cash’s name was mentioned again.
“So,” Leo said with a slurp, “should I call you Cash or—ow!”
Drake tucked his foot back underneath him and refused to look at Leo’s puckered lip. The resulting silence was punctuated by sniffles.
“It’s Zephryn. For my ma. Zephra.” Cash’s voice was quiet. The pendant hung free on his chest, uncaged by hands.
“You have a mom?” Leo asked, eyes bigger and brighter than daila fronds. Cash shrugged, glanced at the night sky. Chips of dark sea peaked through the treehouse’s mish-mashed borders, daila trunks, and the shifting junk that filled the gaps.
“She left. Her and Pa.”
Left. Drake rolled the word around his mouth. Left, taken— like Granny— but gone all the same.
#
Drake woke up to light rays and an ache in his shoulder. He blinked, shifted, and yawned before a voice spoke.
“Ship’s gone. Molphe’s trying to salvage some, but there ain’t much.”
In the years it’d taken to build the Lulu, Drake had learned a lot. Building a second one would be quicker, easier.
“REGROWTH found it. They’re still here.”
Cash’s voice was soft but solid, with none of Leo’s chirps and giggles.
“I burned our clothes. From that day, and any others that might’ve had algae on it. Molphe’s leaving seaweed and tonics for your arm. I don’t know what’s in them, but you’re awake, so guess they’re working.”
Drake’s hand shot to his arm, fumbled around seaweed bandages, and realized oh, there was no arm, only a shoulder that ended in raw stump.
“I’ve been trying to stay in the treehouse, so our scent isn’t everywhere, but our food stores are almost out. I’m gonna have to start hunting soon. Not sure if I can get a jag on my own.”
Drake dragged his eyes away from the stump towards the boy sitting on the deck’s edge. Cash’s feet hung in open air, floated above Junk Palace, and mingled with the sky. He didn’t face Drake.
“Maybe some fis—”
“Where’s Leo?”
Cash’s jaw tightened. His hand was a fist around the pendant.
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
“Left.”
Drake pushed himself up, groaning as muscles ached to life.
“Left where?”
Cash scowled.
“There was a recruitment day.”
You turn into a soldier, I’ll skin you.
Granny’s voice was gritty and graveled. It wasn’t so different from Leo’s own first words. It was the words that came after that became Leo’s own. Drake could still hear it, the way they’d flashed, popped, and spread like fire sparks. But he was gone—left, Drake reminded himself, left—and memories carried little warmth. They carried less than the sun, less than the jag pelt wrapped around his waist. They carried so little, Drake felt himself shiver.
#
While Drake got better and better, could stand for longer, figured out how to dress, eat, cook, and bathe one-handed, Cash got worse and worse.
“Why are you even touching the zap knife? You can barely hold it!” Cash said as he knelt beside Drake and patted him down, checking for broken bones, fevers, scrapes, and cuts. Drake sat on the floor, legs splayed, limbs numb from the shock he’d just received.
“I have to figure out how to build.” He pushed Cash away with a singed hand. “The Lulu II ain’t gonna make itself.”
A breeze whirled. The treehouse creaked a darker note, one the sky had never sung. Leaves fluttered beside the two boys. Cash shifted on his heels and stared at a hole in the floor.
“Maybe we should sign scavenging deals instead.”
You become a scavenger, I’ll skin you twice.
Drake shook his head. “Cash.”
“It’ll take years to make a ship.”
“Cash.”
“It’s what? Two years scavenging then we’re free? Dropped off on some settlement island?”
“No one ever finishes their deal. No one ever gets off Junk Palace. You know that.”
Cash stood. He clutched the pendant so hard his knuckles matched the stone. What Drake said wasn’t completely true. There were people who’d left Junk Palace. Left, and never returned.
“What are we supposed to do? You can’t fight. You can’t build. You can barely get dressed. It’s only a matter of time before—” Cash stopped himself hard, like a wave smacking the shore.
“Before what?”
Before you zap yourself again, fall again, slip down the ladder, find an opal jag, run across That Man or REGROWTH, a mugger, can’t fight back because your arm is gone, taken, and then you’ll leave, but a different kind of leave, a solid, sure-as-stone kind of leave— “Nothing.”
The dailas whispered against each other. Cash stomped onto the deck. He disappeared among the leaves and was captured by the screaming sky. It howled in his ears, danced through his hair, and tugged the pendant’s string away from his chest towards the horizon.
Two days later, Drake was the only one in the treehouse, the only one not captured by the sky’s song.
#
Drake sat in the cave’s opening, listening to the waves echo between the enclosed walls. He shredded a leaf with his fingers. Molphe hovered beside him, half in the water, half out. He stared at the crystal sky. It didn’t speak. Molphe traced his eyeline with her coral orbs, then laid a hand on his leg. Drake jumped at the cold, slimy grip, but didn’t move away.
“When I was little, my mimi told me a story,” Molphe said, “about our first king and queen, Crius and Eurybia. He was a sea dragon, you see. A lacertas. The council hated that he wasn’t one of our kind, so they banished him to the abyss, where the oceans are so deep, not even mermaids can survive. Eurybia was upset and alone, so she used the four conches to create currents that went round and round the world, currents so strong they’d carry Crius back to her.”
“Did he?”
“What?”
“Come back?”
Molphe shook her head. “Eurybia went mad. She created a giant castle with giant towers so Crius could find her, then locked it up tight. No one knows what happened next.”
Drake looked at the leaf in his hand. The organic matter clung together in shattered bundles along the veins, veins he traced with his thumb. Like a blueprint, he could follow their lines and see where the pieces went.
Shattered, but not ruined.
“She could’ve missed him,” he mumbled. Molphe tilted her head.
“I suppose,” she said, “but that’s not the point.”
Drake turned to her with a smile, one that glittered like Cash’s pendant, like Leo’s laughter.
“It’s alright. Granny told me this story too.”
And she had. She’d told him about Eurybia and Crius, about worldwide currents. She’d told him the story and its promises so often, he’d tested the sea’s ability himself. Drake hadn’t seen the leaf’s return all those years ago, didn’t know the leaf was rotted now, just another bone. But he knew the story was true.
Ain’t no one care about you, not until you force them to.
And force they had, but not with dares.
With a knock. A warning. Staying, even though the debt was paid.
With a word. Then more words and laughs than the darkest Junk Palace pit could stand.
Junk Palace didn’t have schools, but Drake built things and learned. If he dropped a cannon ball, it crushed the Lulu’s deck. If a pulley broke, the rope whipped through his hands. If he threw a spear and missed, the target attacked. Action moved with action, force with force, current with current.
The boys were currents. One affected the other, made them swirl deeper, higher, grow hotter, colder, even whirl into storms and waves. And the things they carried— the sand granules, the seaweed, the treasures— they stuck together too.
Did he?
They’d asked the wrong question. The currents hadn’t stopped going round and round, wouldn’t stop going round and round, couldn’t stop going round and round, not while Drake was there. All it took was one current to move another.
Will he?
Will he come back?
Drake looked at the horizon. He met each harmony, each rising crescendo, with a glint of teeth.