Tress of the Emerald Sea

Tress brings her friends to the sprouter’s room to conduct an experiment. She brings midnight essence to life but does not bond with it. When it starts to move toward Fort to bond, she seizes control by offering a bribe of more water. Then, she dismisses it, realizing she has the power to do so because of what she had done to Crow’s midnight essence. She suggests that she might be able to take control of the monsters in the Midnight Sea in the same way.

Laggart appears and demands an audience. Once alone, he says he knows Tress will throw him overboard when he least expects it, thinking she is lying about forgiving him. He demands she shoot him instead. When she offers to throw him in the brig and says she was never planning to kill him, he realizes there are people in the world who are not hypocrites and do not harm others. This is difficult to accept, and he runs away.

Tress feels like celebrating now that she has a possible way to get through all obstacles to the Sorceress. Hoid as narrator says that she feels optimistic until she goes to find him and sees what he has been doing.

Tress expects to find an elated crew to match her own mood, but Salay rushes to her with worry on her face. She takes Tress to the brig, where they are keeping Hoid. Hoid had been found dumping food out into the sea. Ulaam notes that Hoid must have been directed, and they see marks on the containers. Hoid reveals Huck told him to do this.

Tress confronts Huck, who claims he did it for her own good, to keep her safe from the Sorceress. Tress, hurt, puts him in a cage because she feels she can no longer trust him. She believes they will now have to return across the Crimson Sea before coming back, to restock.

The Dougs approach her together. They reveal that one can live off of eating verdant vines for a time, and they want to help her find Charlie. They insist they continue sailing and reveal excitement at being the first pirates to rob the Sorceress.

Even with the support of the crew, Tress is now worried. She can no longer use Huck to get into the tower, and she has no idea how to defeat the Sorceress. She visits Ulaam to see if he can help.

Ulaam’s jokes and comments that the crew expects to die upset Tress. Realizing this, Ulaam becomes serious and tells Tress that although he cannot interfere with the Sorceress, Hoid often breaks rules and could defeat the Sorceress, so Tress must break his curse.

Tress returns to her room to contemplate this. She observes a mug from Charlie, which she had thought showed a butterfly attempting to die by suicide by flying over the spores. Now, she sees it differently—the butterfly is a dreamer who seeks what it wants despite danger. Tress determines that she is both the dreamer/butterfly and the strong pewter mug she uses so often. She rushes on deck and tells everyone that she has decided to go into the Midnight Sea alone.

Salay pleads with Tress to allow them to go with her into the Midnight Sea still, but Tress is determined to go alone. Huck convinces her to take him with her still.

Tress waits for some time in the rowboat on the Midnight Sea. Eventually an eel-like monster appears in the spores, and Tress touches it. She tries offering it water, but she is too inexperienced with sprouting for the technique to work. As the monster is about to attack her, Huck calls for it to stop and to take them to the Sorceress. The monster has been taught to listen to Huck and to take him to the Sorceress when ordered to do so. Huck is finally going to where he was created, as he was told to do by the Sorceress.

The midnight creature wraps itself around Tress to bind her and then drags the boat to the Sorceress’s island, with Huck now free of the cage. He mostly refuses to answer her demands, but he admits that there was never a family and that he is a familiar of the Sorceress. When they make it through a rock barrier that Tress had not known about, Huck seems to make a decision that he does not share with Tress.

Huck opens the door to the tower by saying he has returned and brought a captive. The creature shoves Tress in the door and throws her two cups to her, not knowing their importance. In the darkness, Tress realizes her only option is to ascend the tower.

Huck and Tress ascend the tower, and they are let into a room at the top, where the Sorceress is using her computers (a detail that narrator-Hoid quickly tries to cover up having revealed). Tress tries to claim she purposefully got captured and got past the Sorceress’s trials.

Even though the Sorceress sees through this, she allows Tress to take Charlie away, giving only her cups in exchange. As they walk away, Tress realizes Charlie has not changed at all—but she has. She feels sorrow, and then Charlie smiles brilliantly, like the old Charlie, and Tress realizes that something is wrong. Tress rushes up the stairs and confronts the Sorceress, claiming she turned Charlie into a rat. Huck had been Charlie the entire time.

Tress confronts the Sorceress, who is angry that Tress was able to see through her trick. She explains Charlie’s curse—that he had to bring the one he loves to be cursed in order to lift his own curse. However, Charlie did not bring Tress for that purpose. To get around the Sorceress’s curse, he brought Tress with the intention of having Tress defeat the Sorceress.

As the Sorceress is saying she cannot be defeated by Tress, red lights flash through the room. The alarms have been tripped, and the Sorceress never noticed anything coming. It is the Crow’s Song crashing into the midnight spores.

Hoid backtracks the narrative to describe how the crew had harnessed the crimson monsters by luring them with a lot of water and threatening to give the water to other spores. With these monsters protecting them, they got to the island.

The Sorceress is distracted. Tress knows she must warn the crew of the hidden rocks, so she grabs the tablet that is connected to Fort’s, which the Sorceress has been using to spy. Tress connects with Fort and the others and warns them. Hoid is also on the screen, and Tress realizes that since his curse could be broken by him returning to the Sorceress, he was able to talk about the Sorceress. He was meant to return. Yet Hoid could not talk about the Sorceress. Tress realizes breaking his curse must involve him getting back to the Sorceress’s tower, so she asks the crew to get Hoid into the tower.

The Sorceress finally sees what they are doing and cuts off communication, pinning Tress to the wall with her magic. Tress and Charlie confess their love as the Sorceress turns back to her defenses, and Tress asks Charlie to let the others into the tower. He realizes he can be brave and heads back down the tower.

Charlie is unable to get past the Sorceress’s cat to go down the tower. The Sorceress becomes worried as Salay, dedicated to her mission and to Tress, steers the ship expertly through the rocks. The Sorceress calls up the metal men to combat the crew. Ann begins to fear her own lack of good aim, believing all the things people have said about her over the years.

Then, Laggart appears and helps her, giving her directions for aiming. This helps her gain confidence and momentum, and she catches on quickly. They fire several cannons of Tress’s design and trap the metal men in vines.

Charlie figures out a way past the cat, but he needs Tress to distract the Sorceress. Tress does so, sharing her thoughts about how it is alright to ask for help. The Sorceress becomes more and more irritated by Tress, creating a curse to torture Tress. Before she can activate it, a wall of magic protects Tress. The light fades and Hoid, fully aware again, is standing between them, along with her friends. His curse is broken.

Tress demands the Sorceress end Charlie’s curse, but she cannot unless the terms (Tress being cursed) are met. Tress demands the Sorceress leave since she is a scourge on the planet. At the threatening of Hoid and others, the Sorceress does so.

Tress and Charlie ask Hoid if he can lift the curse. He cannot, but after looking at the runes around Charlie, he realizes he might be able to change the terms of the curse a bit.

The crew returns to the Rock, but in a new ship, chosen as a new beginning. Tress is the captain, and Charlie her valet and ship storyteller. Hoid had changed the terms of lifting his curse from returning to the tower to curse Tress to returning to Tress’s home to verse her.

Charlie transforms as soon as they reach the Rock. Tress’s family runs toward the ship, bags in hand. The king rewarded Tress and the crew handsomely for defeating the Sorceress, both with riches and by finally allowing residents of the Rock to leave it and offering a lot of money for those who choose to work on the Rock for twenty years.

Charlie, Tress, and their loved ones happily leave the Rock to sail the spore seas.