Free On the Isle of Sound and Wonder by Alyson Grauer

full-on alarm of distress in the middle of the night. The ship’s power was failing, and they were falling out of the sky, into the deep.
    Truffo cried into his hands, hugging a bottle of his own as he sat on the ground with his knees pulled up against his chest.
    “We’ll die, we’ll die, we’ll surely die,” sobbed the sad fool. “Never more to touch the sky or ask a balding eagle why, or eat my mother’s homemade pie, or never fall before we fly, we’ll die, we’ll die, we’ll die . . .”
    “Hush lad,” slurred Stephen, already feeling blackness at the edges of his senses. “Keep drinking. We’ll go out on the wings of Dionysus together. Be brave, now.” He drank from the bottle again, as though summoning the last of his own courage there.
    Truffo, his boyish face tear-streaked and ruddy, looked up bleakly, mid-sob. “Dionysus hasn’t got wings,” he moaned. “We’re going to die!”
    The Brilliant Albatross jolted sideways, throwing both men to the floor, wine bottles clattering and rolling and breaking all around them. The lights in the wine closet stammered and went dark, and there was a scream from somewhere else on the ship as the Albatross plummeted toward the sea. Stephen had slipped into unconsciousness before they hit the water.
    Now, on an unknown beach, Stephen Montanto opened his eyes, though the light of day was painfully bright, causing tears to slide down his sand-scratched cheeks. He tried to roll over onto his back, but an exquisite, lightning-sharp pain lanced through every single nerve in his body.
    Dead people can’t be in this much pain , he posited to himself, and breathed heavily in order to try the roll over once more. He was successful this time, but the movement made him cry out in a ragged, hoarse voice, and more tears sprang forth from his eyes.
    Stephen lay on his back, panting for air, and choked with pain and sorrow as the sun beat down on him. Then he slowly started to realize that he could hear the waves and the birds and the gentle wind through the trees and grasses. An island , he realized, and tried to look around, shielding his raw eyes from the sun with a heavy, sunburnt hand. I’ve been washed to some desert island. Perhaps I am not dead after all.
    He reflected that he had been considerably intoxicated when the ship went down, and added in the fact that, even when sober, he was not much more than a barely-competent swimmer. He let these thoughts marinate for several minutes and concluded that if he was not dead, it was by a miracle alone that he found himself on this beach. As there was no sign of anyone else nearby, he further concluded that he must be the sole survivor, and all the others had surely drowned.
    Stephen gave a wordless sob. He had failed his king in the hour of true need. It was not right that he should survive—even by accident—only to know that his king was dead, and all the others aboard the Albatross, too. And Truffo, the poor lad. And Prince Ferran! Stephen’s heart ached nearly as much as his body did.
    It was too late for such thoughts. He drifted back into a kind of sleep, too pained to get up and seek out shade, and aimed to let himself be burned to a crisp by the boiling sun above.
    * * *
    Truffo Arlecin woke to a strangely colored bird walking on his leg. It chirruped and cawed to itself, muttering like a nosy housewife investigating a new neighbor, and taking no notice of him whatsoever as his eyes opened bleakly and his brow furrowed in concern and pain. His body throbbed dully with the soreness of one who has fallen from a great height and lived to tell the tale, and his clothing was ragged and damp.
    The bird, which was yellow on top, blue on its bottom, and orange in the middle, with a sharp black marking like a mask over its face, stood about the size of a house cat. It ruffled its tail feathers as it stalked up and down Truffo’s legs, poking at his clothing and cocking its head this way and that as it muttered. It did