On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer

slowly and found himself on his back staring up at what appeared to be a rocky ceiling of sorts. He felt dry and worn out. He remembered waking on the beach alone, crying to himself about his cowardly fate. No doubt he was now brought fully into his own hell, or at least a deeper level of the afterlife, this time made of stone and lichen, and the soft, uneasy crying of a man. The echoes of his own tears, perhaps.
    “Stephen?” whispered the crying voice, faltering in its sorrow for a moment. There was sniffling, and the shifting sound of fabric against stone. “Stephen, are you awake?”
    Stephen Montanto shut his eyes again and stayed very still. Demons would be tricky. No doubt they would try to appear to him in his hell as faces he had known in life, faces he had no doubt betrayed. After a moment of uncertain silence, he ventured to peep one eye open again.
    The woeful countenance of Truffo Arlecin had appeared over his head, and the warm salty tears of the young man fell like startled raindrops onto Stephen’s own cheek and chin. He winced in spite of himself.
    “Stephen! You’re awake!” Truffo seemed hopeful, giving the older man an encouraging sort of jostle at the arm.
    The valet grunted, his head pounding, and he batted at the younger man’s hands with his own. “Don’t touch me, demon,” Stephen rasped, his throat dry. “Sent to torment me, are you, devil?”
    “Devil? It’s me, Truffo,” the young man whined, recoiling from him and sniffling aloud. “You’re not dead, you old fraud, you’re alive! This isn’t Hell—or at least, it isn’t, yet.” The fool gave a small choked sob and swallowed back whatever else he was going to say.
    Stephen sat up slowly, using the wall of the rocky alcove for a brace. He was very sore indeed, and even as his mind caught up to his eyes in seeing his surroundings, he felt as weak as a baby bird fallen from the nest. By the saints, he was thirsty.
    “What do you mean, ‘yet’?” he demanded, his voice thin and rough as straws. Truffo looked toward the mouth of the little cave, where the shore and sea lay several dozen yards off.
    “It’ll be back soon,” the fool whispered, his hands shaking. “It’s hideous, Stephen—it ate a bird right in front of my very eyes! Raw! Blood and feathers everywhere!”
    Stephen frowned but saw no sign of this massacre when he glanced about the sandy floor of the narrow cave. “Indeed,” he grunted. “What is it?”
    “Not a man nor a fish, some sea-skinned devil I’ve never heard the likes of before in all my life,” breathed the fool. “It dragged me in and knocked me out, and when I came to, you were here, and I thought for sure you were dead!” Truffo’s dark eyes brimmed over heavily with tears.
    “Shush, shush now, stop that sobbing,” growled Stephen, feeling an ache growing both in his stomach and the back of his skull. “We survived a shipwreck, didn’t we? We’ll survive this, somehow. Some luck will find us yet, you’ll see, boy.”
    “I never thought I’d die on an island in the middle of nowhere,” wailed the fool piteously. “I’m too young—too posh—too poetic for this fate!” Stephen frowned at the whining. Truffo was not very old after all; his melancholic humor and his usually lofty wit made him seem far older, but in truth the boy was not much more in age than Prince Ferran himself. Stephen’s heart tugged at the thought.
    Prince Ferran! he thought. How young to be swallowed by the sea, and we poor servants left to carry on without the masters.
    “Come, come boy,” he urged, beckoning Truffo to sit beside him against the wall. “We’ll muddle through together, monster or no. But we won’t get far without food or water, so we’ll have to think of something. And stop crying, you’ll dehydrate yourself even more.”
    Truffo scrambled over beside him and sat hugging his knees and sniffling quietly. Stephen sighed. We ’ ll have to think of something, the valet thought, and