I know from Renna’s anger and Noam’s surprise that the disease is unpredictable. If I shave off even an hour’s time from my journey, that will be worth it.

“But what about my eyes?” I ask. “One good look at my face would give me away.”

She thinks. “I have a wide hat you can borrow, and I’ll give you a dress to hide your uniform. So long as you act shy, no one will think twice. If you’re willing to part with those earrings, I’m sure we could fetch enough that a river trader won’t ask questions.”

I touch the pearl first, as if the blue stone in my other ear wasn’t there at all. The pearl I could part with. I don’t know about the other one. This is not about you, I remind myself. Tabrol needs to live. The sentimental value of one earring couldn’t outweigh the future of our people.

“Okay,” I reply. “Let’s go to Ramsgate.”

Ellian insists on getting some food in my stomach for the journey. “I’ll hurry,” she says, seeing my look. We’d just agreed how urgent my mission was. My stomach, however, agreed with Ellian.

Minutes later, she and Isla have finished prepping a small plate of vegetables and eggs mixed together. The flavors are strange but wonderful, and though my mother would wish me to be more polite in a moment like this, I eat more than my fair share of the bread. I’ll need every ounce of energy to get back to the Heliana.

“Do you like it?” Isla asks.

The steady, deliberate cadence of her words makes me smile. “Yes, thank you.”

Isla giggles and wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her dress. “Do you live on a floating island?”

“Yes,” I reply, matching her words so she’ll understand. “I do live on a floating island.”

“She’s been waiting for someone new to practice on,” Ellian cuts in. There’s a look in her eye I don’t quite understand. Pride? Regret? “Evidently, I’m a boring practice partner.”

“My name is Isla,” Isla says. She says each word with the solemnity of a scholar. “I am Leonodai.”

Yes you are, I think. Whatever the human who Ellian loved was to Isla, for the short time they shared, I can see her mother’s influence more clearly. Dress her in human clothes and teach her the human words, but Isla has magic.

When we’re done eating, Ellian hurries to ready my disguise. Isla watches from the doorway of her mother’s room. She says something in the humans’ tongue—a question, by her tone.

Turns out no sounds the same in the human tongue as it does in Leonodai. The girl stomps her foot and disappears into her own room.