1

P R OPPED ON a bench between two silent rowers, en route to Raftworld, Pip woke to moonlit darkness. He could see the Raft King sitting ahead of him, along with more rowers. Groggy but not terrified, he felt as if he should be scared— coming to consciousness on a rowboat, kidnapped and far from his sister and her protection. And on the surface of his person, in his skin and even deeper, in the layers under his skin, he was scared. Very. But deep under those strata of fear a little nerve of excitement sparked in his spine and heart and lungs. Here he was on an adventure, a trip to see the world, exactly what every Islander who joined Raftworld wanted. And—a still deeper, quieter voice inside him said—the fact that Pip was adventuring alone, without his sister, would make the trip even more exciting. No one to watch out for him, yes, but no one to remind him of his shortcomings and his oddness, either.

He felt immediately guilty for that thought. Of course Kinchen should remind him of the things he couldn’t do: recognize people, keep track of them in groups, remember who they were; and the things he shouldn’t do as a result: go to town, go to school. He felt himself rise back to the top layer of his being, the fearful layer.

Even so, he found it hard to be completely scared on the water. The ocean comforted him, and now was no exception. He could hear it murmuring, not in words but in feelings, right in his heart: Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of you. Once when he was little, he had tried to explain ocean talk to Kinchen—how it didn’t travel through ears or mouth, but rather, it felt as if the water in your own body was talking to the water in the sea—but he could tell his explanation didn’t make sense to Kinchen and even troubled her, so he hadn’t mentioned ocean talk since then.

That was one of the things that made him weird, he knew: that he could understand water and the things in it. He couldn’t eat fish, even though it was one of the main dishes in the Islands. (How can you eat a creature you can have a conversation with?) And he could feel the water’s moods—which Kinchen assured him was not normal. But people didn’t even need to know this water-gifted part of him to know he was odd. They knew it the moment they saw him standing in a crowd, confused, the moment he looked at everyone—even his own sister, before she’d bleached her stripe of hair for him—as if he had no idea who they were.

Pip took a deep breath. He could do this. No vacant looks. Memorize every detail possible for each person he met. Try harder to navigate in a world crowded with people who all looked the same. He could do this, just like anyone else.

No, he couldn’t.

But he would try.

Though the rowers he was seated between surely knew he was awake, neither they nor the Raft King spoke to him on the boat, which meant he was able to listen uninterrupted to the ocean and to his thoughts. The moon glowed in the sky, the vessel sliced through the water, the rowers paddled swiftly, the spray leapt in arcs; and occasionally the caped Raft King, seated at the prow, grunted something to one of the lead rowers. Purple cape, thought Pip, squinting through the moonlight and remembering the color. Easy. I can do this. But then he studied the rowers seated next to and in front of him, and each of them looked to him like a clone of the next: male, dark-skinned, muscular, with short curly hair. And if he put a cape on any of them, they’d all look like the Raft King. He sighed. This would be impossible.

They neared Raftworld as a glimmer of dawn began to glow at the horizon. The boat glided to a stop near what looked—in the half-light—like a small marina at the edge of the rafts, at which a rower leapt out and tied the boat to a post between two smaller vessels. The rowers stowed their oars, and one of them took Pip’s arm—gently, firmly—and guided him off the boat.

Stepping onto the wooden dock, Pip saw immediately that Raftworld was the wrong name; it would be more accurate to say Rafts-world . The nation was composed of raft after raft—each one, including this square of dock, the right size to hold a small house and garden—stitched together with flexible cords, so well knit that he could not see the water through the seams, though he could see the way the rafts bent gently at their hinges to allow for the water’s swells and waves. From where they stood in the dock area (several rafts long), a path led away through houses and other small buildings, and everywhere Pip could see—and smell—thick gardens reaching for the sky. The air was rich with mint and lavender overlaid with something sharp and tangy he couldn’t identify. Birds trilled.

On either side of them but far in the distance, engines started chugging.

The Raft King spoke to Pip for the first time since he had woken on the boat. “Tonight we’ll have a party, welcome you in style. I can tell that you’ll be an enormous boon to our great campaign.” He turned to two of the rowers standing nearby. “This is Pippin.”

“Pip.” He looked up into the rowers’ faces. They were both tall with strong shoulders for rowing. Their pleasant faces both exactly the same, though Pip imagined that Kinchen wouldn’t think so.

The Raft King spoke to the two rowers. “Fancy dress tonight. Make sure he’s presentable.” Then he strode away, purple cape flapping in the breeze. The other rowers left, too, except the ones on Pip’s right and left who said they’d escort him to a house where he could wash and change.

Pip watched the departing king. “Does he always wear that cape?”

The rower on his left answered, his voice flatter and with longer vowels than Pip was used to hearing: “He likes to switch colors.”

Pip groaned inwardly. Nothing easy to identify the king with.

“He’ll probably wear the blue cape tonight,” said the rower on Pip’s right, watching the Raft King’s departing back. This rower spoke in a deep, scratchy voice, like he had a cold. “The sky-blue one. Fancy dress and all.” He looked down at Pip. “I’m sorry we had to take you from your island. But the king will return you when your job is complete . . .” His voice trailed off. “He’s been king for less than a year. He’ll be a good one; he just needs to settle into the job.”

“Hmm,” said the left-hand rower.

“He’s done great work with finding houses for everyone, and helping people expand their dwellings.”

“That he has. But that doesn’t make him a good king. It makes him a good housing advisor.”

The right-hand rower ignored his companion and spoke to Pip. “The king says he needs your help to save Raftworld. I don’t know what he means; we’re doing fine.”

The left-hand rower shook his head. “We’re too crowded. New buildings won’t solve that. And we can’t add more rafts. Raftworld is already as large as it can get,” he explained to Pip in his almost-monotone voice. “The hydraulics can’t handle any more. So we either need to split ourselves into two rafts, or we need to find a place to settle.”

“We’ve got time to decide,” said the right-hand rower.

But the left-hand rower shook his head. “We don’t. And that’s what worries him—the king, I mean. And that’s why he had to get you to come on board to help us.”

“Well,” said Pip, hesitating. This was all new to him, the idea that he would be someone who could help. He was fine at math and reading: but with an overcrowded nation? How could he possibly help? “I wish”—he said, thinking of the governor and especially of Kinchen—“I wish the Raft King would’ve explained the whole problem on Tathenn. The governor could have gotten together some of the really smart grown-ups to help the king figure out a solution. They probably could have fixed it. I don’t know what he thinks I can do. I’m just”—he almost said nobody important , but instead he finished—“a kid.”

The two rowers shrugged. “He says you can help,” said the left-hand rower. His voice flattened even more. “With your magicky stuff.”

Talking to fish? How could that fix an overcrowded world?

“Let’s get you cleaned up for dinner,” said the right-hand one, and they led him off.

As they walked, Pip first paid most attention to his two escorts; Kinchen always told him to try to memorize something unique about people when he first saw them. He glanced sideways at each of these men and mentally groaned again: they were exactly the same. They were dressed just like the other rowers in white shirts, blue pants, and soft rope belts, their dark hair cropped similarly short to their head. No scars, no missing teeth, nothing unusual about either of them as far as he could see. Both of them the same dark, clear skin. There was no way he’d ever know them again. His heart sank. Even the Raft King was a mystery: when he changed his clothes, Pip would lose him. Sky blue tonight, he told himself, and hoped it would be true.

In the growing light of morning, Pip started looking around more, and he realized that his first impression of Raftworld’s dense greenery wasn’t quite accurate. It was a beautiful place, yes; but unmistakably it strained at its seams. As they left the dock and entered the interior of the raft, the path grew narrower and started zigzagging, jogging around homes that looked as if they’d been haphazardly added onto (or simply built from scratch) right into the roadway. While the houses near the dock had been neat cottages centered one per raft and surrounded by lush vegetable and fruit gardens, the houses farther in squished two or three to each square of raft. Some of these homes were pitiably small; others loomed over Pip and the rowers with second or even third stories. Around all these houses, the plants were thin and scraggly, shaded by the taller dwellings and squeezed into the small open spaces left on the rafts.

The left-hand rower seemed to know what Pip was thinking. “A lot of the gardens are on the roofs now.” And sure enough, leaves and vines draped down from the flat-roofed taller homes.

Craning his neck to see, Pip stumbled; the ground had a funny way of moving under his feet. The men took his arms and kept him from falling. “Takes a while to get used to the rocking,” said the left rower. “Watch for the seams.” They stepped from one raft to another.

People were awake now, and a few early risers worked in the gardens and walked the paths, talking to each other in a language Pip didn’t know, carrying baskets or nets or other things that suggested they were starting a busy day. People said hello in English, and most gave him funny looks—not unfriendly, but curious. Pip realized that his lighter coloring and straight hair gave him away immediately as an Islander, and though he saw a few other people who also looked like Islanders (probably, he realized, people who’d volunteered to trade themselves onto Raftworld the last time it came, or the time before that), he surely must stand out as a new person. The new person. The person the Raft King had gone to the Islands to find.

A couple of people said as much. To the rowers, after saying hello to Pip, they said, “This is the envoy?” or “So young?” and the left-hand rower answered, “Yes,” in a way that did not invite further questions.

To Pip this all seemed like a strange way to greet a visitor, especially when your nation received so few. But the rowers didn’t comment. The right rower pointed at the long pipe next to a house, as if he were giving a tour. “Irrigation,” he said in his growly voice. “We grow a wide variety of food—everything we need.”

Pip nodded. Several more Raftworlders passed by, staring.

“The Raft King told the people not to bother you,” said the left. “He told everyone he’d be picking up an esteemed advisor at the Islands who would solve our overcrowding.” His narrow voice sounded doubtful.

“If the Raft King says Pip will fix things, then Pip will fix things,” said the right-hand man. “Not that things need fixing.”

Pip tripped on another seam, this time righting himself before one of the men caught him. The left man made a “huh” sound under his breath. And Pip understood—and agreed. How could he solve any problem so huge? He carefully stepped over the next seam. Everything was foreign here, and suddenly nothing seemed like an adventure anymore. And he missed Kinchen and Old Ren.

•   •   •

A LMOST AS BAD as missing his family: Pip couldn’t see the ocean, not even a glimpse, and this made him jittery. Although he could smell its fishy sharpness, hear occasional slaps against the rafts’ bottoms, and feel the rhythmic rocking of the interconnected rafts, he couldn’t actually see the water. Or touch it. Old Ren had said that Raftworld was huge, but Pip hadn’t realized it was so big it would feel like a lurching island. The ocean was there, under Raftworld’s skin, but he couldn’t reach it and talk to it.

However, there was a lot here to grab his attention, especially now that the sun was fully risen. The gardens, even as crowded as they were, were impressive. Raftworld squeezed more out of each inch of space than the Islanders did, that was for sure. Stunted trees with tight green apples grew in giant pots, next to flats of beans and multicolored peppers, tomatoes of different shapes and sizes, leafy greens and flowering herbs, round melons and gourds. Small land birds hopped; butterflies fluttered; bees buzzed. The brightly painted and heavily carved wood houses—even crowded as they were—nested inside the gardens, their windows peeking out like eyes beneath the arching vegetative brows of their lintels. Small canoes and coiled ropes lined up tightly but neatly outside doorways and under trees.

Every now and then an otherwise empty raft held a red shack, undecorated and gardenless, water barrels and axes at each corner of the building. “What are the red buildings for?” Pip asked.

“Those are the cooking houses,” the left-side rower said. “With ovens.”

“Why all alone on the raft?”

“In case of fire.”

Pip immediately understood. On a wooden world, any uncontrolled fire would be a terrible thing. To cut the risk of accidents, people cooked their food only in these red houses. But that would mean no fireplaces in their homes—and no heat, either. That sounded like a cold way to live.

“But how do you keep warm in winter?”

The rowers looked at each other and smiled at the question. The right-hand man answered. “We head north. We stay in the warm year-round, mate.”

Of course. Raftworld could follow warm weather. Pip felt silly for asking, and he walked in silence for a few minutes. They passed more people who gave them curious looks but did not talk to them.

How large this world was! The air grew more still as they walked farther and farther in, crossing raft seam after raft seam, until he thought they surely must have passed the middle and be headed out the other side. But just when the air was as flat as it could be, and the sun sat high in the sky, and Pip felt he couldn’t possibly walk any farther—not even the length of one more garden plot—they arrived at a red cooking house somewhat larger than the others they’d passed. Up close, Pip could see that its paint was beginning to peel—but the building itself looked sturdy and well built. Its lower windows had been boarded over, and the door had a lock on the outside. The two rowers guided Pip to the house, where the right-hand man pulled out a key and unlocked the door. “Here you are.”

“Um...why is there a lock?” asked Pip.

“Safety,” said the right-hand man. “Don’t worry about it.”

The left-hand man frowned but didn’t say anything.

Before he stepped in, Pip took one last look at Raftworld. The houses blazed with color around him, and the gardens pressed themselves around the buildings, green and buzzing. “Wash and change,” said the right-hand man. “Rest. We’ll be back for you in a few hours.”

Pip went in, and the lock clicked behind him. CPEnaEs3CLviW8Z2wPCKomoTeG6UNPllSW5nDjA0eZu8v2Ga4D8cQcVHtfJpevUm