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Sailors remarked on it now and again as they passed; there was a stretch of beach on one of the old islands where not even the seagulls dared to fly. The skies were empty, the sands and the small forest beyond seemed to be empty of predators, no one would land and go in to look. Every now and again someone did see a large bird wheeling through the sky, but everyone knew no hawk would be caught this far out from its native territory.
And that was fine. Maeve liked it just like that.
She kept behind the treeline, sitting on a stump and playing with the folds of her sleeves as she watched the ship go by. Not his. She didn't even know if she was waiting for him or for the trouble that invariably followed him, and maybe some part of that trouble would lead back to the sorceress and that's where her chain of logic collapsed into a pile of thoughts. She'd been on the island for six months, now, and she still wasn't sure why she hadn't gotten off.
"What?" she snapped at Dermott, who perched on a branch nearby and cocked his head at her as though wondering the same thing. "I know what I'm doing."
No, she didn't. That was the problem. She had no idea what she was doing.
She'd spent a long time recovering from being knocked around in the ocean, cut up on the reefs and against the rocks when she'd finally washed up on shore. Which, she had to admit, was probably better than anything Rumina would have done to her. From ship to shore it had taken less than half a night, and Rumina could make her torture last for days. Maeve knew.
But first she'd gotten cut on the sea life and the rocks, and then the urchin bites had gotten infected from either their toxins or the sand, she didn't know which, and the fever had knocked her out and being alone on the island except for Dermott she hadn't had anyone able to help her, care for her, or shelter her, and a long list of other setbacks. So maybe she was only here because she hadn't been able to leave until recently.
"See?" she muttered to Dermott, busy putting his wings to rights. "It's not my fault. And I do know what I'm doing."
Dermott didn't believe her. Maeve was willing to bet that none of the wildlife or plant life on the island believed her.
"Fine," she stood up, stretched. "Believe what you want. I'm going to go exercise."
Every morning since she'd been able to, she exercised. Stretched, practiced combat, lifted and climbed until she'd worked out a series of movements that made all the muscles ache in all the right ways, instead of the ache of fever or illness. It cleared her mind, and about a finger's breadth of sun later she stood on the beach proper and looked out at the water with satisfaction.
Dermott screeched, shuffled his wings. She looked better, and he liked it like that. A lot better than she had a few months ago.
"I'm pretty pleased about that too," she told him, ruffling his breast with a spare feather.
The harder part was keeping her magic exercised. Maeve could definitely see now why people were supposed to run mad on desert islands, there was both nothing to do and far too much to do. Too much effort to keep herself well fed and healthy and protected from the various animals that wanted to poison her in various ways. Not enough contact with anything that tested her mind. Unless you counted finding food and shelter testing your mind, and she didn't, not anymore.
So she sat down cross-legged back on her stump and practiced her magic. The simplest of exercises first, meditation and breathing. Controlling her body and exploring every inch of her power to make sure nothing was corrupted. It was the first thing you learned, as far as white magic went, and you had to master it before you could touch the full expanse of your power or before any master worth his salt would let you try anything more complicated. It was also where most people either gave up or went over to the black.
Meditation helped. Gave her some kind of serenity. After meditation came a series of small mental exercises, colored balls in separate orbits hovering around her, stacking blocks, rearranging her landscape and making memory pictures in her head until she could repeat everything that was there. Nut, stone, two blades of grass, a loose thread, a stray feather. Healthy body, healthy mind, Dim Dim taught her that. He'd learned it from his teacher before him, and back on down through the chain of initiation.
She missed her old teacher. Achingly so, more than she had when she was on the ship, and she focused on missing him so she didn't notice quite so much how she missed a certain other young upstart with too quick a mouth and a penchant for getting in over his head. Amateur dramatics and playing things up and a handsome smile when he bothered to use it. And warm. And he could be kind.
"Ugh!" Maeve kicked at the sand, irritated with herself. "Dermott! Come on. We're going fishing."
It wasn't that she missed him, she thought. No, it wasn't that she only missed him, she just missed the company. Fighting with someone, talking to anyone but herself or Dermott. All the people she'd known except Dim Dim and the crew were starting to fade in her memory. She needed to get off this damn island before she forgot them, too. Like Dermott, before she forgot what it meant to be human.
This time, when she fished, she wrapped her legs in those tough leaves she'd also used for a canopy, melding them together with magic and making a kind of cloth that protected her against urchin stings. The rest of it was easy, fish-tickling did work, even if it sounded ridiculous. She was knee-deep in the water and bent over with her hair all falling down around her face when Dermott shrieked, almost knocking her backwards again.
"What?" Maeve took a breath, tried not to lose her temper. Then she saw the ship on the horizon. "Damn." Could be pirates. Could be merchants, but merchants had their own reputation and around these parts, or at least where she thought she was, that wasn't the best plan to get off the island. What she really wanted was some idiot noble's pleasure ship, or a diplomatic courier.
Dermott circled around her and refused to move inland, though. Look at that, look at that. Maeve scrubbed a hand over her face and sighed, looking out.
"They probably haven't even seen us..." and Dermott was gone, riding current after currant out towards the ship and Maeve felt him taking her heart with her by means of yanking it up through her throat. "Wait! Dermott...?" No, no no no, not her brother, not her friend, not the last person on this stupid island she could talk to, not him. He couldn't be leaving her now, he couldn't.
And then she was in water too deep to stand and all she could do was paddle while the ship released a longboat. With salt water in her eyes and her hair plastered to her face, she couldn't even see who was in it. Fear, loss, everything clouded her mind and choked her voice. Made it difficult to swim, impossible to use magic.
Strong hands, sailor's hands, grabbed her by the arms and shoulders and a handful of her hair and anything they could reach, dragging her aboard the longboat. She coughed and spat up sea water and seaweed as revenge.
"You look like a drowned rat." A voice told her, then chuckled. "Big rat."
Maeve combed her wet hair out of her face, took one look at him, then launched herself at him and almost toppled them all out of the longboat. In front of her she could hear the people on the ship laughing, and even Dermott let out a screech from the crow's nest of the Nomad, as if to register the opinion to those who didn't know him that she was being absurd.
"I hate you," she informed Sinbad.
He grinned, the way he always did when she told him that. "Enjoying that island, were you?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact, I was." Doubar rolled his eyes at both of them and started rowing, and she squirmed her way over him to sit at the opposite end of the longboat from Sinbad and glare. "Anyway, I had a plan for getting off that island. I was enjoying the rest. And the chance to practice my magic."
"I'm sure you were." That smirk didn't leave his face, and she spent the next several minutes as they rowed back to the ship plotting how to make it go away. "I didn't think I'd see you again," he told her, disrupting her thoughts in mid-plot. He sounded as though he really meant it. And the rest of that she didn't look at too closely, turning her gaze up to the ship.
"Who's that?"
"Who?" he looked over his shoulder.
"That little tart-looking creature with fewer clothes than Dermott."
Sinbad looked around and blinked at her, then started to laugh. And he didn't stop until she ducked him into the water as she climbed over him to get to the deck of his ship. Served him right, anyway, for taking so long to get her back to where she was supposed to be. Back on deck, pulling her hair out of her face again and hugging the rest of the crew hello, wringing out her sopping wet clothes and even grinning fiercely back at Sinbad as he climbed aboard, half glaring, half laughing.
She asked him, later, when everyone had settled down from seeing her again. "Did you find her, yet?" Kept her voice low; the new strumpet and the rest of the crew didn't need to hear this right now.
"Not yet," he shook his head slightly. "There've been some developments. Now that you're back, we can start looking again."
Maeve threw him a quizzical glance. "I've heard some of the talk. Don't you have other things to be looking into?" her eyes dropped down to his arms folded over his chest, specifically the one wrist peeking out. Back up to his face, solemn for once, and he shook his head.
"Not anymore." Firm tone, jaw a little tight. No more on that subject, he wasn't going to talk about it, and she was fine with letting it stand.
Well, almost fine. "Thank you," she told him quietly, one hand on his shoulder as she leaned in to kiss his cheek while she thought no one was looking.
The raucous uproar of laughter told her otherwise. So she slapped him upside the back of the head. Had to keep up appearances, after all. Plus, it made him smile again.