Saturdays at Sea

by Jessica Day George

  “Grathian wood is being of fine,” Lilah interrupted, folding her arms. “But the point of ship of mine is to use the woods and . . . and things not of wood . . . from all the place. Sleyne. Grath. Hatheland. Glorious Arkower, who is are our enemies.”

  “I know your vision for the ship was very fine,” Cathan said with a simper. “But I must say, as a shipbuilder, well, I know you want your ship to be . . . the best.”

  “Why is not an Arkish doors make not the best?” Lilah demanded. “The wood is finest quality, and thus finely carved!”

  “It’s not something you can understand, Your Highness,” Cathan began.

  “You have lies,” Queen Celina said. Then she switched to Sleynth, so that she would sound more regal, Celie guessed. “My oldest daughter is correct: there is no reason these doors cannot be used. Why don’t you want to honor our wishes?”

  Master Cathan looked at all of them and swallowed visibly. “Well, because—” he began in Sleynth. “I am not knowing of what importance? I am thinking that the small princess is of frugal mind being?” He nodded at Celie.

  “Well, I wasn’t,” Celie said, feeling her cheeks burn.

  “We have plenty of money,” Lilah said at the same time, blushing in anger rather than embarrassment. “However, we are trying to unify several countries with the ship, something we thought you understood.”

  Master Cathan frowned. He looked into the distance, trying to look noble and thoughtful, but Celie could tell it was an act. He’d stayed in Castle Glower for several months, getting the ship ready for the journey to Grath. He had agreed with their plans then, even if he was—

  “You’re afraid?” Celie blurted out. “What are you afraid of?”

  “I am not having fear,” Cathan said weakly. “I am having . . . easier to make doors to the ship, not making ship to the doors.”

  Rolf shook his head and tutted, and Lilah rolled her eyes. Pogue frowned, and Celie felt rather bad for him. He’d enjoyed learning from Master Cathan, she knew, and now he was probably wondering if the man had lied about other things.

  “I might be able to help with that,” Queen Celina said, thoughtful. Her fingers danced in the air, almost as if she were knitting. “Stretching or shrinking the doors a bit wouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “No!” Master Cathan shouted, his face shiny with sweat. “No magic!”

  “Oh,” Celie said. “That’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Chapter

  3

  Celie perched on a stack of Grathian lumber beside the figurehead. Rufus lounged beside her, looking casual, but Celie knew he was watching, too. And what they were watching was not unlike an elaborate play. Queen Celina and Master Cathan were facing each other across a stack of wooden doors, while Rolf and Pogue stood to one side in silence, and Lilah stood on the other side and translated.

  Fortunately, Celie’s Grathian was very good, and the pile of lumber and the figurehead were close enough that she could listen in. She draped an arm around the figurehead’s neck, which wasn’t very comfortable, but one of the workmen saw her and gave her an admiring look, so she kept her arm there and tried to look comfortable and royal at the same time, which was no mean feat.

  What she heard soon distracted her from the growing numbness in her arm and made both her and Rufus more and more angry. Celie was angry because of the words coming out of Master Cathan’s mouth, but Rufus was just angry because Celie was. Either way, they both finally sat bolt upright on the edge of the stack of lumber, Rufus hissing and Celie glaring.

  It seemed that although Master Cathan had treated Pogue with great respect in Sleyne, once he returned to his own land he had demanded to be put in charge of the ship. This seemed to have come after the realization, during the journey, that while Pogue was a knight, he had been born the son of a blacksmith. Master Cathan was of noble family, and was not going to take orders from a commoner.

  “Oh, yes, you will,” Queen Celina said through Lilah. She repeated herself in accented Grathian.

  Celie was shocked that someone could be so awful, just because they were taking orders from a commoner. And what orders? Master Cathan was the shipbuilder. Pogue was just there to make sure the proper materials were used. And the orders to use the doors and other parts from the Castle had come from King Glower, Celie’s father. Just because Pogue was the one carrying out the orders didn’t make them any less important!

  It seemed that it did. Because of the magic. Master Cathan had not liked being in the Castle. It had made him nervous, but Celie hadn’t known he truly feared and despised magic. Now that King Glower wasn’t there to give him orders directly, he had decided that Pogue was too foolishly common to know that magic was dangerous, and any parts that had touched magic should not be included on a ship.

  Now Celie and Rufus were both hissing.

  “I want you gone,” Lilah said.

  “Lilah,” Queen Celina said, turning to Lilah in surprise.

  “If you work not with and beside magic, then you work not on this my ship,” Lilah said in Grathian, and then she repeated herself to their mother in Sleynth.

  Celie expected their mother to scold Lilah, to tell her to stop being so spoiled. But instead Queen Celina frowned at Master Cathan for a long time. Now he was sweating again, but this time not from the threat of magic.

  In a very careful voice, translated as precisely as possible by Lilah, Queen Celina informed Master Cathan that Sir Pogue was a most trusted friend of the royal family of Sleyne, and that his word was to be considered the word of the Glower family. She explained that the ship was a part of Castle Glower, and as such needed to have the magic of the Castle in it. It also, she said with great disdain, needed to have every piece of it treated with respect.

  At this she turned and looked directly at one of the men who had been walking over the discarded doors. He turned red and began to stack them more neatly.

  “Are you willing to do as we ask?” Queen Celina finished.

  Master Cathan looked caught. He glanced around and saw Celie sitting with her arm around the figurehead, her angry griffin by her side. He threw his hands in the air.

  “No,” he said in Sleynth. “I am not being this man of which you seek. I am not being a man who greets the griffins and the magic.”

  And then he marched off.

  Most of the men had stopped working, listening to their master and the queen. About a dozen of them also left, following at Master Cathan’s heels. Rolf gave them a disgusted look, and so did Celie, but Pogue just looked stoic.

  Celie wondered, for the first time, if it was hard for him to be a knight. She’d thought he would love it, since he hadn’t wanted to be a blacksmith but had dreamed of living and working in the Castle with the Glower family. But outside the Castle, was it difficult for him? Away from friends and family who were proud of him, did people think he didn’t deserve to be a knight?

  He caught her eye and gave her a grim little smile.

  “Who’s going to build the ship now?” Rolf demanded. “What do we do?”

  “Pogue?” Celie called from her perch. “Do you know how to finish the ship?”

  Pogue shook his head. A few more of the men put down their tools, made guilty little bows to the royal family, and then slunk away.

  “It seems I am be coming just at the right!” called a merry voice.

  A bowlegged, barrel-chested man was striding along the docks, dressed so marvelously that at first Celie didn’t notice what was on his shoulder. He was wearing elaborate layers of tucked and frilled clothing, like any noble Grathian, but his were made entirely of brown leather. Celie had never seen a ruffled collar made of leather before, but when she took her eyes off it to look at the man’s face, she screamed.

  On his shoulder there was a strange creature that resembled a person! It was completely covered in gray hair, with a wizened, elderly face, although it was as small as a baby. Celie stared in horror.

  The leather-clad man saw her looking, and la
ughed.

  “Having never seen such a monk as this, I am thinking of you,” he said to Celie. He stretched out his arm, and the little creature ran down it, displaying a long tail.

  “What is that?” Lilah shrieked.

  The man laughed. “It is being only a monk! Of the greenest vining jungles!”

  “What does it do?” Celie asked, intrigued. Rufus looked like he was ready to fly or bite, so she stayed where she was with a firm hand on his harness.

  “It is being a precious awful pet,” the man said with a shrug. “An only way to say to my family that they are having many of the dogs, and many of the goats, and many of the birds, and many of the ponies, but I am he who is having the only monk!”

  “Wait,” Lilah said. “Are you—”

  “That is right, my our Delilah,” he said with a laugh that boomed out across the shipyard. “I am being your very new soon brother, Orlath! Prince Orlath! Explorer of jungles! Captain of ships! And builder of many the fine!” Orlath tossed the monk toward his shoulder, where it grabbed hold, and then he put his fists on his hips. “I am the one coming here and the now to make this ship be built!”

  “I was not expecting that,” Rolf said faintly.

  “None of us were,” Queen Celina said, but then she smiled.

  Chapter

  4

  Master Cathan had been right: the ship was magic. But it was the kind of magic that Celie and her family were familiar with, the magic of Castle Glower. The ship truly was a part of the Castle, as they had hoped, and it had let them know that it wasn’t happy. Unlike the Castle, it didn’t seem to be able to grow a new room or make itself bigger or smaller, but apparently what it could do was make the entire Glower family testy and prone to fighting.

  “But now I feel like a new man,” Rolf marveled again, nearly a week later, picking up a basket of nails and staggering toward the ship.

  “One day you will be the new man,” Orlath said. “But today you are still I think the old boy.” He laughed and took the heavy basket from Rolf and hooked it to a rope for one of the men to haul up the side of the half-built ship.

  Rolf blushed and muttered something, and Celie and Pogue exchanged grins when he wasn’t looking. But Orlath just clapped him on the shoulder and laughed again.

  “It is good, to be being feeling so better,” he said. “It is good to be doing of a thing that someone is having in love.”

  “What?”

  “It’s good to have a passion in life,” Orlath said in Grathian. “Like myself and ships, or Lulath with his wars.”

  “That’s still being much weird me,” Rolf said in Grathian. “Lulath being this battle expert.” He shook his head in bemusement.

  “Why else would he name his griffin Lorcan the Destroyer?” Orlath said, shaking his own head.

  “Who was Lorcan the Destroyer?” Celie asked with a grunt. She was sitting in her usual spot atop a pile of lumber under the watchful eye of the figurehead and trying to master a series of knots that Orlath had showed her with a piece of rope.

  “My brother will having the telling to you,” Orlath said. “I would rather be talking of the ship and the sea!” He made a sweeping gesture, a smile splitting his face from ear to ear.

  “I don’t know that I have a passion for all ships,” Rolf said, getting back to their earlier conversation. “I’m mainly interested in this one.”

  “Ah, but that is what I meant,” Orlath explained, switching to Grathian. “Your passion, your life, it revolves around your beloved Castle Glower. You are the keepers of the Castle, the scholars of its history, and when you are far from it, you are unhappy. And when the ship, made from its very bones, is displeased, then you are the only ones who can guess this!”

  “I am supposing this we are,” Rolf said, looking pleased. “Aren’t we so, Cel?”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said, still trying to get the knot right. She pulled one of the ends, and the whole thing fell apart. “Drat!”

  “Like this,” Pogue said, setting down the long curved piece of wood he had braced on his shoulder. He took the rope from her and held it up. “Over, under, around, and through, that’s the way we like to do,” he chanted, and then showed her the finished knot.

  “Did you really just say that?” Rolf said, and burst out laughing.

  Pogue turned red under his tan. But Celie took the rope, studied the knot, and then managed to do it herself, saying the rhyme under her breath. She mutely held it up to show Rolf, and to make him stop laughing. He clapped when he saw, but he was still laughing.

  “Of a sureness I should be knowing that Sir Pogue would have the gift of it,” Orlath said with enthusiasm.

  Yet another nice change was that Prince Orlath thought Pogue was astonishing. He had sung his praises to the skies upon hearing that this noble knight, trainer of griffins, builder of ships, had been born in a blacksmith’s cottage. He had been quick to share stories of sea captains he had known, and heroes of Grathian legend, who had risen from humble beginnings to greatness.

  Orlath listened to everything Pogue said, and carefully considered each piece of the ship they had brought from Sleyne, making it clear that he wanted to use everything they had. He wanted to know the history of the Castle, of Hatheland and the Glorious Arkower, and it was Pogue he wanted to hear it from. Celie and Rolf translated, but Pogue was picking up Grathian very quickly. He had already begun learning the important ship-related words from the Grathian workmen, and Orlath wasn’t the only one impressed by how quickly Pogue was soaking up words and whole phrases.

  “Now, Celie, once you figure out the knots, we will teach you the lines and rigging, and what the various sails are for,” Orlath said in Grathian. He had also expressed great delight and admiration for Celie’s mastery of his language, and usually addressed her directly in it. “But that will have to wait until there are sails in place!”

  “Maybe I could learn to use a hammer?” Celie asked eagerly. “I would really like to hammer some of the parts of the ship!”

  “That would to me be the alarming,” Rolf remarked.

  “I am sure nothing would please the ship more than to have all the family help,” Orlath said. “We shall teach them many things about building a fine ship, Sir Pogue!”

  “But not now,” Celie said with a sigh.

  She pointed up the road from the Sanctuary. A royal coach was coming toward them. A footman leaped down from his perch on the back of the coach as soon as it stopped, but the door burst open before he could reach it. Out poured four familiar small dogs—Lulath’s own dogs—followed by their master and Lilah.

  “What joys, friends!” Lulath exclaimed. “What growth of the ship!”

  His mouth was smiling, but Celie could see that there was no smile in his eyes, and Lilah looked like a thundercloud. The dogs milled around, yapping and causing problems, until Rufus led them over to a pile of lumber to play hide-and-go-seek, and then the people were free to talk.

  “Are you being coming to look at this, the growth of your ship?” Orlath said. “Will this my fair sister see her gift?” He held out an arm to lead Lilah toward the ship for a tour, but she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re all working hard, but really we came to—well, I wanted to ask Rolf and Celie to—”

  “To be speaking of the sense into my brain,” Lulath said, cheerfully enough. But Celie still thought his eyes looked shadowed.

  “What is it?” Pogue asked. “What’s happened?”

  “It is being no large thing,” Lulath said.

  “It is!” Lilah protested. “It is being—I mean, it is a very large thing!”

  “Just stop being coy and tell us what it is, then,” Rolf said in frustration.

  The frustration was partly because Dagger had tried to hide with Nisi in the lumber and gotten stuck. Celie helped pull the small griffin out, while Lilah collapsed atop a barrel of nails.

  “Lulath is going to lead an envoy to the village by the sea,” Lilah sai
d, her tone heavy with meaning.

  Celie and Rolf looked at each other, faces blank. They were standing right by the sea themselves. Most villages in Grath were by the sea.

  “The village by the sea,” Lilah said with even greater emphasis.

  Celie was still confused. It didn’t help when Lilah pointed up the shore, to the east. It really didn’t help when Lulath gently took her arm and moved it so that she was pointing more toward the south.

  “What are you talking about?” Rolf asked.

  “The griffin rider village,” Lilah said at last. “You know? Lulath is going there tomorrow. alone.” She gave Lulath a dire look.

  “You’re going to the griffin rider village?” Celie’s voice squeaked on the last word. “Can I come with you?”

  “I want to go,” Rolf declared.

  “So do I!” Pogue added, while Orlath looked on in bemusement.

  “And I want to go as well,” Lilah said with asperity. “I don’t even care about the village itself! I don’t want him to go alone! You have to help me talk sense into him!”

  “I am not being alone,” Lulath said, taking her hand and squeezing it. “I am being with the many guards, and the . . .” He frowned. “The . . . men who are taking the money for my king?”

  “Tax collectors?” Celie supplied.

  “Yes,” Lulath said with a more genuine smile.

  “Why now?” Celie asked curiously.

  “An excellent question,” Lilah agreed.

  For many years there had been a village on the coast of Grath where the people spoke a language no one else could decipher, never allowed strangers within the village walls, and paid no taxes to the king of Grath. Lulath had once attempted to visit them, to try to learn their customs, but they would not allow even the jolly prince to enter.

  Just recently, after returning from Hatheland and hearing the language spoken by Ethan, who had come to Sleyne to help care for the griffins, Lulath had realized where the people of this village were from. They were the last of the griffin riders, those who had followed the unicorns to the sea with the last of their griffins, and then stayed there as their griffins (and many of their own people, probably) had fallen ill from a plague called blackblister that they had brought with them from Hatheland.