After a moment of long, thoughtful silence, captains Rayan and Leith guided us down into the depths of the ship. Rayan brought Lark and me to where we would be sleeping for the night. She hugged us tightly before leaving.

As soon as I could, I curled up under the covers of my unfamiliar bed. It was stranger than it had been last time—softer than it should be, than I was used to. I considered going down to the floor, but I didn't have the willpower to get up.

The room was purely dark. There were no windows in the walls—no torches to illuminate the small area. It was nice. I wasn't happy, of course, but without anything to remind me how the curse was affecting me, I felt... empty. In a pleasant way. As though this darkness was really the void of nothingness, gently cradling me in its soft arms. As though I had nothing to worry about.

I slowly slipped into the depths of sleep.

I woke, rolled over and closed my eyes, fell asleep, woke again. It was lighter in the room now, though I knew nothing had changed. It was as though the walls had become more transparent.

I pulled the blanket over my head. I refused to get up—to face the horrible, complicated, overwhelming day ahead of me. I wasn't ready. Maybe I'd never be ready, and that was okay, wasn't it? I could stay here forever. I could sink into the softness of my mattress and disappear. Everyone else would forget about me. Life would go on without me.

Soft footsteps cut into the silence. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, trying to ignore the way the noise came closer and closer.

Something came to rest, gently, on my back. A hand, maybe. It applied a light pressure and pulled back. When I didn't react, it did it again.

"Fyra."

Not Lark's voice. Obviously. For a moment, I'd hoped it was her, forgetting that her voice had been torn from her by the Magician's curse.

"Fyra," it came again. "It's nearly afternoon. Aren't you hungry?"

I ignored it. If I stayed still long enough, perhaps whoever it belonged to would go away and leave me to my peaceful, empty oblivion.

But it was not to be. The hand patted my back one last time, then grasped the blanket and pulled it off me. I gave a startled squeak. Reluctantly, I rolled over to see who was here.

Sharla smiled at me sympathetically. "You've been through a lot already, Fyra. I don't think starving will make anything better."

I sat up. My back ached where the Magician's spell had hit me.

"Well?" Sharla asked.

"I'm not hungry."

My stomach growled in argument.

Sharla made a valiant effort to resist the smile that curled the corners of her lips upward, but eventually she caved. "Your belly says otherwise."

"Maybe my belly is wrong."

"Maybe you're wrong." Her eyes softened, and her smile faded. She offered me a hand. "Come on, Fyra. You can't stay in bed all day. I mean, you could, but it wouldn't be particularly interesting. And your friends are worried about you. Lark would have come, but since she can't talk... It would have been complicated. We're working on fixing that, though. Or at least making it better."

I frowned. "Fixing it? You think you can make it so she'll be able to talk again?"

"Sort of."

"Can you undo my curse, too?"

Sharla shook her head. "We aren't undoing Lark's curse. No one here is powerful enough for that, and more importantly, no one has the right kind of Blessing. We're trying to find a way for her to still communicate."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry."

A shard of regret sliced into my belly. Coming to a decision, I took Sharla's hand and pulled myself to my feet.

"I'll come with you and eat."

"Really?" Sharla asked.

"Really," I said.

Her eyes sparked with joy, and she turned to the door, leading me out of the gloominess of my bedroom.

Outside, torches lined the walls, and warm orange light flickered over dark grey. We moved quickly through the tunnels. Sharla seemed much more sure of her way than I had ever been. Her turns felt slightly mechanical, as though she'd done them a thousand times before and knew exactly where each one happened—exactly when she needed to begin veering right if she wanted to be around a corner as quickly and efficiently as possible. Her pace was quick, and though there was a somber expression on her face, her step had a subtle spring in it. Maybe she hadn't expected me to come with her at all.

When we finally arrived at the dining hall, maybe five or ten minutes later, Lark and Bran were waiting for us, along with an elderly woman who I had not seen before. Lark immediately stood when she saw me. She rushed to give me a hug. I hugged her back for a moment, but pushed her gently away when I began to feel claustrophobic. She smiled.

"How's it going?" Sharla asked the elderly woman.

"All right. We haven't figured anything out yet, but I think we're making progress." She turned to me, sticking out a thin-but-strong hand for me to shake. "I'm Nevaeh. Lark and I have been trying to figure out a solution for her voice."

"Oh," I said. I couldn't help but feel a slight jealousy that Lark would be able to regain what she'd lost, while I was left in the lurch. "Um... You're Blessed?"

Nevaeh nodded.

"What's your Blessing?"

"It's tricky to describe. A simple way to put it would be that I make things that are... invisible, visible."

"Oh," I said. "Interesting."

A sly grin quirked the corner of Nevaeh's lips upward. "You don't know what I mean."

"No, I don't," I admitted.

For a moment, Nevaeh stared at the table in front of her, thinking.

"If I speak," she said, "you know what I'm saying by the noise I make. But you can't actually see noise, can you?"

I shook my head.

She closed her eyes, flicked her wrist, and said, "I can make the noise visible."

The words she had spoken appeared beside her, written in a neat, loopy handwriting.

"How will that help Lark?" I asked. "She can't speak at all."

"That's where it gets more complicated. We've spent the past hour and a half trying to figure out what works, and what doesn't. Somewhere between her brain and her voicebox, something is intercepting her words, so to speak. If we can find that place and take the words from there..." My stomach growled, and Nevaeh smiled again. "I'm probably boring you with all of this nonsense. I always think it's much more interesting than it truly is. Go. Eat. You've slept in several hours, and Bran said you skipped dinner, so you must be hungry."

Sharla led me away.

The tables were less full this time, and the food on them was more snack-like than entree-like. There were bowls of nuts, and dried fruit, and normal fruit—and the desserts were things like cookies and brownies and large slabs of chocolate rather than the complicated looking confections that had been there before.

Sharla, noticing my slight confusion, said, "When it's not mealtime, the tables are covered in snacks. That way anyone who's hungry is still able to eat without the kitchen Blesseds having to slave constantly over foods."

I nodded in understanding and grabbed a plate.

Sadly, nothing looked particularly interesting or delicious to me. Rather than following the callings of my stomach, I simply grabbed a bit from every other plate. I nearly bypassed the dessert table entirely, but I knew if I did, Sharla would be aghast, so I grabbed a few chocolate chip and toffee chunk cookies.

"That's all you're getting?" Sharla asked when I headed toward the tables.

I looked down at my plate. I didn't think it was that little. There was no space on my main plate, and my dessert plate only had a few empty places at the edges.

I shrugged. "Probably."

"Huh," said Sharla. "I really thought you'd be a lot more hungry."

"Maybe I'll go back for seconds," I said, though I didn't really think I would.

I started by biting into a crisp, sweet apple. The moment I swallowed, a wave of hunger hit me, and my stomach growled as though it was begging for more. I scarfed down all the food on my plate. The dessert cookies were also completely delicious. It seemed that a lack of hope did not mean a lack of hunger, or a lack of ability to taste good food.

I went back for seconds.

Sharla smiled and silently accompanied me, occasionally slipping things onto my plate when she thought I wasn't looking.

When I'd finished eating, I put my plates where Sharla told me to and went to sit next to Bran and Lark.

"How are you doing?" Bran asked. "Are you feeling any better than you were yesterday?"

I shrugged; Bran frowned at me, and I realized he wanted more of an answer than that.

I sighed. "I feel... still cursed, but slightly less despairing. Rather than being in the negative with hope, I'm simply hopeless. At zero. It could be worse."

"Is there anything we can do to make it better?"

"I don't think it can get better," I admitted. "Not without breaking the curse, at least."

Bran frowned, and his hand began unconsciously clenching and unclenching where it lay on the table, beside his elbow. I looked at him. Really looked at him. Deep, dark circles had burrowed into the skin beneath his eyes, and his face seemed pale.

"How are you?" I asked.

He offered me a smile. "I'm as well as I'm going to be."

"Do you feel... strange, without your powers?"

"Yes," he said, voice carefully steady. "I feel like a limb is missing. Last time I was here I could feel everything, even though I didn't know it. I could feel the magic everywhere—in the people, in the ship, in the air. Now there's nothing. It's like the ground beneath my feet has been ripped away."

"Oh," I said.

Bran grimaced. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be such a downer. My curse is a breeze compared to yours. I can't even begin to imagine-"

"It's fine," I interrupted. "I don't want to compare curses with you. I'm sure both of them—all of them—feel equally hard and impossible to the people who have to deal with them. It's not right to compare."

Thankfully, Bran smiled at me.

"So," I said, "what comes next? When do we start planning?"

Bran shook his head. "Not for a while. It wouldn't be fair to Lark. Until she and Nevaeh have figured out a way for her to communicate with us, we'll just hang around. It'll be good for us—time to recover, and maybe shake off whatever mental block we might have amassed in regards to the Magician."

"Okay." I couldn't help a slight grin. "So it's like a vacation."

"Yeah," Bran agreed, "it's sort of like a vacation."

Vacations are absolutely wonderful! Between school and writing and all the other crazy things in my life, I don't get vacations very often. Maybe if I get enough votes, the story gods will reward me with a magical break from school. It could happen. If you don't vote, we may never find out.