Saturdays at Sea

by Jessica Day George

  “I. Don’t. Like. It. Here,” Celie repeated.

  “Celie, why do you have to be this way?” Lilah closed her eyes and groaned. “You’re going to be awful the entire time, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Celie, what is wrong?” Queen Celina said, looking up from her knitting.

  Far from her usual unruffled self, the queen looked peevish, and Celie could tell from her mother’s voice that if she didn’t choose her next words carefully, she would be in trouble.

  “The Sanctuary is beautiful,” Celie said honestly. “And the king and queen are the nicest people I have ever met.”

  “Then why don’t you like it?” Lilah said impatiently.

  “It’s . . . there’s just . . .”

  “If your bed isn’t comfortable, tell a servant. If your new gowns are uncomfortable, tell the seamstress,” Queen Celina said. Then she swore.

  Her daughters looked at her in shock.

  “Sorry,” she said, her smooth cheeks turning red. “I dropped a stitch. I know that’s no excuse, but . . .”

  “I’m not the only one who doesn’t like it here,” Celie said, pointing an accusing finger at her mother.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Queen Celina said, giving up on picking up the stitch and tossing her knitting aside.

  The ball of yarn unspooled and rolled across the lawn until it ran up against Lady Griffin’s hip. The queen of the griffins looked up at the queen of Sleyne, then down at the ball of yarn, and made a noise of disgust. She scooted a few inches to the side so that the yarn wasn’t touching her anymore, and then went back to sleep.

  “You don’t like it here?” Lilah sat up slowly, her fists clenching in the trailing sleeves of her gown. She opened and closed her mouth twice. “But Mother, why?” she asked, her voice plaintive.

  “I don’t know, dear, it’s just . . . well, it’s always hard to be away from home.”

  “The Sanctuary isn’t alive,” Rolf said, coming across the garden to them.

  He had been down at the docks with Pogue and Master Cathan, the shipwright, all morning. He was wearing a lightweight sailor’s tunic and loose trousers, and was brown from the sun, after having worked on the ship back in Sleyne throughout the spring as well. He looked almost grown up, and very strange for a moment. Celie didn’t like that, either.

  “This is the longest any of us has gone sleeping outside the Castle,” Rolf said, kicking at the base of a birdbath.

  The bowl of the bath was made of a giant clamshell, and Celie had already asked twice if it was a fake. It wasn’t, apparently, and she hoped to never see a live clam that big. It could probably bite off her entire arm.

  “It’s the longest we’ve eaten outside the Castle, slept, spoke, worked,” Rolf continued. “Even when we went to Hatheland, we were there only a few days.”

  “Your father and Bran and I were living outside the Castle for months last year,” the queen pointed out. “And that was dreadful; but we were also injured.”

  Rolf nodded, looking grim.

  Last year all of Sleyne had thought that the king and queen and Bran, Celie’s oldest brother, were dead, after an evil foreign prince had paid bandits to kill them. They had gone into hiding in the forest until they were well enough to travel home to the Castle.

  “But as you say,” Rolf went on, “you were hurt. You already didn’t feel well, and you had bigger problems to worry you.” He hunched his shoulders, settling the loose linen tunic. “This is the longest any of us have been outside the Castle by choice.”

  “Except for Bran, again, when he went to the College of Wizardry,” Lilah pointed out.

  “But Bran isn’t here,” Rolf said in exasperation. “I’m not talking about Bran! I’m talking about us! Why we feel out of sorts!”

  “What are we supposed to do?” Lilah wailed. “We’re supposed to be here for months! And I feel all . . . floppy!”

  Rolf turned his head. “So, I was right,” he called out.

  “Are they coming?” Pogue called back.

  He was in the gateway of the garden. He, too, wore a loose tunic, and high boots with his linen trousers. There was a red cloth tying his shoulder-length hair back, and he was even more tanned than Rolf. Celie felt even stranger, and not just because of the Sanctuary. Pogue Parry was widely considered to be the most handsome young man in Castle Glower or the village, but it appeared that he was even considered handsome in the sophisticated Grathian court.

  “They’re coming,” Rolf said.

  “Where?” Celie demanded, trying to cover up her fluster of feelings.

  “To see the ship, and touch it,” Rolf said. “It’s part of the Castle; it will do you good!”

  So they made their way down to the private docks that belonged to the royal family. In Sleyne, they simply would have walked out through the Castle gates and down the road, but in Grath things were always more complicated. First they had to find their hosts and tell them where they wanted to go, and the king and queen had to finish feeding their exotic birds, which lived in a glass-roofed room filled with tropical plants. Then they had to order a parade of coaches to take the Glower family to the docks, and while the coaches were being made ready, they had to change into suitable ship-viewing clothes.

  This last was at Lilah’s insistence, not so much a rule of the Grathian court. But Celie wasn’t imagining the approval on Queen Amatopeia’s face when they told her good-bye in the courtyard. She was a deeply kind woman, but she also changed her clothes at least four times a day, and Celie knew that the queen found Celie’s habit of wearing the same gown all day distressing.

  Celie wanted Queen Amatopeia to like her, because she loved Lulath like a brother and she knew it was important to Lilah that they impress her future mother-in-law. But when you spent at least part of your day rolling around in the grass with a griffin, it was hard to see the point in changing one mostly clean gown for another, just because the clock struck a certain hour.

  It was hard to remember, too, that even the dinners with just Lulath’s parents and one or two of his siblings counted as official state dinners, and not family dinners. In the Castle, state dinners were rare, and though Glower family dinners included Lulath, Pogue, and often several members of the Royal Council, King Glower himself often sat down with his collar askew and ink splotches on his sleeves.

  It was nearly an hour before they were rolling down the smooth-paved roads of Taran, the seaside capital of Grath. The Sanctuary sat on the southern cliff that overlooked the sea, and Taran was laid out on the sloping hill to the north and west, extending to the grasslands north of the ocean and the low docks on the west.

  The buildings were higher and the streets wider than in Sleyne City, but the people seemed no less friendly. They stopped and waved to the royal coaches as Celie and her family passed through the streets. Children shouted out, asking where the griffins were, and Celie waved and pointed upward. Far above them the griffins circled, and the children screamed in delight when they spotted them.

  The road along the docks curled to follow the line of the shore, with the city on the right side of the coaches and the long wooden docks full of ships on their left. Celie climbed over Lilah and stuck her head out the window to look at all the ships. Some were narrow and sleek with blue sails, while others had yellow sails and little hatches close to the waterline, where oars would be put out and the ship could be rowed in calm winds.

  They passed ships from every country, except for landlocked Sleyne, and then they came to a long beach, where no docks were built but a rocky construct jutted out into the water. Rolf called something back from the coach in front of them, but Celie couldn’t understand.

  “Those are the ruins of the old palace,” Lilah said. “Apparently the first palace of Grath was built right on the water, but a huge storm destroyed most of it.”

  “Oh,” Celie said.

  She couldn’t blame them for wanting to build the new palace so high on the cliff, then, if all that was left of the previous pa
lace was part of a wall. If Lilah hadn’t said something, she would have just assumed it was a pile of rocks that happened to be there, not the ruins of an entire palace.

  Then they were passing docks again, but these were patrolled by soldiers in the blue uniforms of the Grathian Guard. The buildings on the right side of the coaches were all official looking, and the ships on the left were all of the same design: sleek and tall, with blue sails and the names of Grathian kings painted in gold on the bows.

  At the end of the row of Grathian ships was a great deal of lumber and a great many men shouting and swearing and swinging things around with ropes and pulleys. Off to one side were the huge carts that had been used to haul the parts of the ship from Sleyne.

  Perched atop the nearest cart was Bright Arrow, Pogue’s griffin. When he had realized that they were going to change their clothes and ride in carriages, Pogue had left for the docks on his own. Now he climbed down from a wooden support frame and bowed to Queen Celina.

  She smiled fondly back. “How is the building going, Sir Pogue?” she asked.

  “Well enough,” he said. “As far as I can tell.”

  “Is there something wrong?” Lilah asked anxiously. She looked at the ship, and then back at Pogue. “I mean, I know you’re working very hard, but you’ve never built a ship before . . .”

  “Lilah,” their mother said in a warning tone.

  “Is that what this is?” Pogue asked. “You’re checking to make certain I don’t ruin your ship?”

  “Where is Master Cathan?” Lilah demanded. “I thought you were just here to help the shipwright, not actually build the ship.”

  “Is this what happens when we leave the Castle?” Celie asked Rufus, who had landed beside her. “We just bicker and act awful and feel awful?”

  Her own unease—that feeling she had had at the Sanctuary that she didn’t belong and needed to go—was actually worse now. She felt even more strange and feverish, and she could tell by the way Pogue and Lilah were arguing that they felt it, too. Arrow, from his perch on the cart, began to shriek in distress, and Juliet wouldn’t land at all; she just circled above them in agitation.

  “What is that?” Celie said to Rufus. He cocked his head to one side, and she could see that his attention was on it as well.

  There was an enormous wooden frame all around where the ship was being built. Inside the frame, the ship was already a sort of wooden skeleton, much farther along than Celie would have thought it could be in a week. To one side were enormous timbers, smoothed and planed and carefully stacked, ready to make up the sides and decks. One of the carts still held large crates of sails, carefully packed instruments, and the canvas-wrapped figurehead that had started all of this.

  Celie had found the figurehead, a beautifully carved and gilded griffin, in a storage room in the Castle, along with the original sails and many of the parts of the Builder’s Ship. The Builder of the Castle—the ancient king who had ruled a country called Hatheland and fought alongside griffins and created the Castle that Celie loved—had also been known for his ship, which was being re-created now for Lilah and Lulath.

  Sleyne was nowhere near the ocean and didn’t have a lake large enough to sail such a ship on. Celie had to grudgingly admit that it would be better to give the new ship to her sister and Lulath than to keep the figurehead propped up in the corner of the throne room.

  But during the last few months, as Celie and her family had chased an evil wizard through passages inside the very walls of the Castle, Celie had found that parts of the Castle had been created not by the Builder but by his enemies from the Glorious Arkower. Rather than destroying these things, Celie had hit upon the idea of using them—of creating a ship that would have parts from Sleyne, Hatheland, Grath, and the Glorious Arkower.

  Which, Celie saw, was the current problem.

  The figurehead would be the very last thing to be put on the ship, except for the sails. Even Celie, with no experience in building ships, could see that. So she could understand why those things were off to one side. But what she and Rufus had seen was a big pile of doors, doors that had once concealed the secret passages the Arkish had built. They weren’t stacked neatly, the way the other materials were. They were tossed aside, and men were walking over them, looking irritated, as they went about their jobs.

  “Pogue,” Celie said.

  But Pogue and Lilah were now in a heated argument, and Queen Celina was doing nothing to stop them. Arrow had flown up to join Juliet and Lady Griffin, but they weren’t playing, they were circling around and around in agitation, screeching at each other. It was making the workmen nervous, and Celie didn’t blame them. Even if you didn’t know anything about griffins, there was no mistaking the sound of an animal that was growing angry.

  “Pogue!” Celie said again, louder and more insistently.

  “What? What do you want?” he snapped.

  Celie recoiled as though he’d struck her. Pogue had never spoken to her so harshly before. She grabbed Rufus’s harness too tight, and he protested.

  “How dare you use that tone with my sister!” Lilah raged.

  Celie was more hurt than offended, and also more suspicious than ever that something was terribly wrong. Instead of joining in the fight or reprimanding Pogue, she chose to ignore it and just pointed to the haphazard stack of doors.

  “Why aren’t they taking better care of those?” Celie asked, though she already knew the answer.

  “They decided not to use them,” he said curtly, and turned back to Lilah.

  “No, that’s wrong,” Celie said.

  No one was listening to her. Lilah and Pogue were right back into their fight, and Queen Celina was fanning the flames by insisting that they talk to the Grathian shipwright, Master Cathan. Rolf was simply staring into space, muttering something, but Celie decided that he was her best bet anyway, and went over to tug at his sleeve. She had to yank on his arm to get him to look at her.

  “Rolf!”

  “I thought it would make us feel better,” Rolf was muttering. “But it feels worse.”

  “Yes, it feels worse,” she said, shaking his arm again. “Because they’re doing it wrong!”

  “What?” Rolf looked at her, and then back at the ship. “How can you tell? You don’t know how to build a ship. And they do.”

  “The ship doesn’t like it,” Celie insisted. “Can’t you feel it? It’s making us feel wrong because it feels wrong. The Castle wants the ship to be made with parts from all the different lands, and they’re not doing it!”

  She yanked his arm yet again and pointed at the discarded pile of doors with her free hand. Just as she did, one of the men tromped across a door in his heavy work boots, and there was a distinct cracking noise.

  The sound woke Rolf up. He shook himself, dislodging Celie’s hand, and started toward the men, calling out. Celie followed him, pulling on Rufus’s harness to keep her griffin from diving at the workers. If she needed any proof that this was the problem, Rufus’s behavior convinced her. None of the griffins had liked the Arkish tunnels hidden in the Castle, but even Rufus seemed to take the mistreatment of the Arkish doors as a personal insult.

  “Rufus, stop; we’ll fix it,” she said, gritting her teeth and tugging to keep him from snapping his beak at one of the workmen.

  “My only good sir,” Rolf called in Grathian to the man who had just cracked one of the doors. “May I be having a speaking to you if it pleases the queen?”

  Celie winced. Between her tutor, Master Humphries, and Lulath, they had gotten a comprehensive education in the Grathian language and culture, but Rolf had never been a very diligent student. Celie wondered if she should take over, but the man seemed to be able to follow her brother’s convoluted grammar.

  “These are being doors for the untimely use of the ship,” Rolf said heatedly. “And now to have ripped it!”

  The man glanced around, startled. He was holding a keg full of long iron nails, and now he handed them off to another man and came
forward, wiping his hands on the seat of his pants.

  “I’m very sorry, Your Highness,” the man said.

  Celie did her best not to wince at how much more refined this shipyard worker sounded than her brother.

  “But Master Cathan has decided that we aren’t going to use these doors,” the man went on. “If you would like them for another project, we will have them packed up and sent to the Sanctuary.”

  “It is not being the Sanctuary of needing doors!” Rolf insisted.

  “Pardon me, but where is Master Cathan?” Celie asked in her much more polished Grathian. “We should speak to him about this.”

  The man looked only too glad to pass them off to the master shipbuilder. By now they had attracted the attention of many of the workers, as well as Lilah, Pogue, and their mother, who had stopped arguing to come and see what was wrong.

  “It’s the doors,” Celie said to her mother. “The Castle—the ship, I suppose—wants them. That’s why we feel awful.”

  Her mother just looked at her, uncomprehending.

  Rolf squatted down and began to look at the crack in the door. “I think this can be fixed,” he said.

  Celie hummed her approval. She was watching the workman talking to Master Cathan, who had slithered down a rope from higher up in the framing around the ship. She could tell by his expression, even from this distance, that he was not pleased to see them. But when he reached them he bowed and greeted them with his usual courtesy.

  “Master Cathan,” Celie said. “I thought we had agreed these doors would be used on the ship.”

  “Ah, indeed we did, Your Highness,” he said. If he was surprised that she was speaking Grathian, he didn’t show it, but just answered in the same language. “Now that we are here in Grath, with so many fine materials available to us, it seems a shame to use these old, less reliable things.” He scuffed a foot at the doors.

  “Have a stop to that,” Rolf said sharply.

  “That’s why you don’t want to use them?” Pogue said in Sleynth, sounding dazed. “Because they’re old?”

  “And Grathian wood—” the shipbuilder began.