Impossible Creatures

Christopher helps Mal repair the tear in her coat. As they work, she tells Christopher about how she got her name. As was customary, her great-aunt took the baby Mal to a namer. Theirs was a poor seer—a real one, not a fake like so many—who named her “Malum,” which means “mischief” in Latin (according to Mal). Christopher knows a little Latin and thinks that Mal’s translation may be inaccurate. When the coat is repaired, Mal decides to fly out over the ocean. She looks at home in the sky with her bird-like features and light bones. It is the happiest that Christopher has seen her since they met.

A kraken—an enormous, octopus-like creature—suddenly attacks the Neverfear, tossing everyone into the sea. However, it makes the effort to carefully place Mal on a piece of driftwood before crushing the ship to bits. Christopher nearly drowns but makes his way to the surface. He panics when he can’t find Mal. A nereid (a mermaid-like creature with legs instead of a tail) suddenly appears. She is called Galatia and rules over the sea in this area. She rescues Christopher and Mal and explains that something is wrong with the water. The glimourie is receding, and its absence is killing marine life and driving hungry predators like krakens into places they don’t belong. Galatia also cryptically claims that the creatures are looking for Mal because they know what she is. Soon everyone but Warren, the first mate, is located. They all ride large, seahorse-like creatures called hippocamps and head to safety.

The nereids drop the crew off at the City of Scholars, believing that Mal and the others need to do research to prepare for the journey ahead. They call out to Irian in their language before they leave, but Irian blatantly ignores them. When Mal wakes, Nighthand tells them that Warren is likely dead. He claims that “Berserkers do not weep […]. And they do not love. How could they, when they mustn’t fear? Love has fear baked into it” (138). Despite his words, everyone can see that his eyes are red from crying over Warren’s likely death. Christopher tells Irian about Galatia’s explanation that the creatures seeking Mal. He also asks her what Galatia said to her, but Irian avoids answering this question.

In the City of Scholars, a rich and powerful woman named Anja Trevasse finds them and takes them in. She has her own network of spies and controls people through the many favors that they owe her. Both Nighthand and Irian warn the children to be careful of what they say around Anja and state that her spy network of ratatoskas might overhear them anywhere in the city. Nighthand talks with Anja in private. Anja agrees to loan them a swift ship called Shadow Dancer in exchange for some time alone with Mal. Mal later tells them that Anja simply wanted to know about her coat, the seer that named her, and her early life. Christopher tells Mal to be careful because he sees a ratatoska carefully listening to them. Anja sends seamstresses to make them all new clothes, but Mal refuses to give up the smelly, tattered sweater that was a gift from Leonor.

As they make their way to the ship, a palm reader and her two teenage sons accost them and demand coins in exchange for telling their fortunes. The palm reader gives a usual vague palm-reading to Christopher about riches and adventures, but she gives Mal what sounds like a true fortune, saying that there are odd days coming and that the “most dangerous human talent is forgetting” (148). When she sees Mal’s lifeline (an indicator of a person’s well-being and outlook on life), she drops Mal’s hand and runs away. She seems fearful but also hungry for Mal. The look on her face reminds Christopher of the look on the murderer’s face.

They arrive at the small ship, which has wings made of pegasus-tail hair. Christopher looks on as children ride boar-like creatures. He feels “a kind of wonder” (152), feeling as if he is taller and tougher. He reflects that his family’s role is to safeguard this magical realm. Christopher soon learns more about the geography of the Archipelago. The temperature grows colder the farther north one goes, but at the pole (Arkhe), it is hot because of the Somnulum, a sun-like object that exudes the purest form of heat and burns pure glimourie. It sits above the first tree, the Glimourie Tree, which is in the middle of a maze. The Somnulum was placed there by the Immortal when she built the ring of protection around the Archipelago. Irian tells him that the historical figure named Icarus once flew too close to the Somnulum; this tale shocks Christopher since he only knows Icarus as a Greek legend in his own world.

They reach the island of the sphinxes. They must approach in a rowboat because no ship can land there. The shore is a tall, sheer rockface with some handholds in it, so they must climb to reach the sphinxes. As they climb, Christopher falls.

A shrub on a narrow ledge breaks Christopher’s fall, saving his life. Mal sends down her coat, and Christopher manages to grab onto it. When a wind comes, he flies up. He cannot resist flying higher and higher despite the danger. He lands safely, exhilarated by his flight.

The group comes upon a sphinx who tells them that they must answer riddles to gain access to knowledge. Sphinxes ask riddles to avoid trivial questions and make sure that the recipients of their knowledge are critical thinkers; they also like to attract people whom they can eat. The sphinx takes them up a tall mountain that is covered entirely by the sphinxes’ script. This is how the sphinxes store their knowledge; when they cover one mountain with writing, they move on to another. When the group arrives, they meet the biggest, oldest sphinx of all: Naravirala.

Naravirala asks them four traditional riddles, which they answer correctly. Naravirala confesses that she hates the riddles because the answers lack the subtlety and complexity of answers in real life. They dine on pantherfruit, which Irian claims is named for its similarity to panthers, a real-life creature in the other world (Christopher’s world). Archipelagoans believe panthers to be mythical. Naravirala explains that no one ever believes travelers between the worlds when they talk about the wonders they have seen. She warns Christopher that if humans are not careful, their own native creatures will become nothing more than myths.

They ask Naravirala why the glimourie is disappearing and why the creatures are dying. She tells them a story. Long ago, an Immortal named Helena of Antiok established the circle of protection around the Archipelago to save the land and its creatures from the threats posed by humankind. That magical protection was anchored in the Glimourie Tree, the source of all the magic that feeds the creatures and the land—even in the outside world. Hundreds of years later, the Immortal named Ahmed Telos decided to commission a maze to be built around the tree to protect it from greedy adventurers. He kidnapped two men—Leonardo da Vinci and his brother Enzo—to build an impossible maze that could only be navigated by someone who already knew the way. He had booby traps set up in the maze. To prevent Leonardo and Enzo from knowing the secret way through the intricate maze, he wiped their memories with a potion made by the centaurs.

Hundreds of years later, an Immortal named Marik was born. The life of an Immortal is difficult since they have to remember everything—good and bad—that humanity has ever done. Marik hated that he had to remember even the most terrible of things about humanity. He decided that humanity wasn’t worth the pain of such remembrance. The centaurs make the potion that causes the Immortals to remember who they are, but they also make a potion of forgetting. Marik sailed to the centaur island of Antiok on a boat made of dryad wood. Dryad-wood boats are the only vessels that can reach Antiok because the island shares water with the Island of Murderers, which is enchanted so that boats can dock there but can never leave. Marik closed his palace, leaving his boat of dryad wood on the dining room table; no one would be able to approach the island of centaurs without such a boat. He took the centaur potion of forgetting and became the “Man Who Said No.” He then lived out his life, empty of curiosity about the world. His choice echoed down the generations. From then on, no Immortals were born with the knowledge of who they truly were.

Since Marik, two or maybe three Immortals have lived and died without knowing their true nature. Without an Immortal in the Archipelago, there is no one to tend the Glimourie Tree. Without the Glimourie Tree, the magical protection around the Archipelago is failing. If nothing changes, every living thing, including those in Christopher’s world, will die. Something is now in the heart of the maze, consuming the tree. The tree, the Archipelago, and Christopher’s world can only be saved if someone goes to the centaurs to get an antidote to the potion of forgetting. If this antidote is given to the current Immortal, she will be able to remember the way through the maze and will be able to reach and tend to the tree.

Mal and her group return to the City of Scholars, trying to figure out how to find the current Immortal. Suddenly, the fortune teller and her two sons attack them and attempt to kidnap Mal. The group thwarts the attack and compels the woman to explain her actions. She states that she was acting on behalf of the murderer, Adam Kavil, who told them that Mal is the Immortal and offered them vast amounts of money for her capture. The fortune teller previously read Mal’s true identity in Mal’s palm. The group returns to the Shadow Dancer for the night, and Mal rejects the idea that she is the Immortal. Christopher wakes her later that night to tell her that he remembered that in Latin, the word malum means “apple.” Hearing this, Mal finally has to accept that she is the Immortal. As soon as she does, the casapasaran (the compass-like object that Mal purchased earlier) starts spinning and points in a specific direction. Mal intuits that it is pointing to the Glimourie Tree.

Mal is angered and frightened by Christopher’s claim that she is the Immortal. Christopher feels a little jealous at the thought. When Christopher reminds her that she will be the most powerful, knowledgeable person in the world, she tells him that she is like Marik and doesn’t want to know all the terrible things about humanity. When Irian tries to appeal to Mal’s sense of duty, Mal reminds her that she is still just a child. Even Nighthand tries to convince her to accept the truth. He makes the Berserker’s vow to protect her with his entire life, but she rejects that, too. Irian asks Christopher to think about what it means to Mal to give up her childhood to become unlike everyone else, and he has no answer.