She was hard on him, much harder than the other minoros in Trueblood’s opinion, though he could understand why. She was training him for command as well as service, which meant every move he made in Merevhal’s presence made its way back to the kepten. Her demand had all the exacting and relentless scrutiny of his father, but with none of the biased, indulgent love. She let him get away with nothing.
“Your boatswain must be the person you trust most in the world,” True often said to his son. “Your future crew is in his or her hands.”
Trueblood understood his father’s implicit confidence in Merevhal, but the understanding didn’t sustain him in the long, arduous hours of the day when it seemed he could do nothing right. Or when he perched on a tight-throated, frustrated edge of rebellious anger, hating Merevhal with every ounce of his being.
One day he’d have a son of his own, and he’d have to put him in the charge of a boatswain and stand back, keeping his indulgent emotions out of the way.
He sighed hard, trying to break up the knot in his chest. The future leaned heavy on Pelippé Trueblood tonight. Breathing open-mouthed down his neck and making him feel he was behind, unprepared, and he should be making decisions about his command now.
He turned to a new page. His especial penmanship wobbled as he wrote, When I’m Kepten, I would like Lejo to be my boatswain. Da says your second-in-command must be the person you trust most.
He glanced at Raj with a twinge of disloyalty. He trusted Raj, but in a different way.
I want Raj to be my pilot, he wrote. He always knows what direction to take, while Lejo always knows the right thing to do.
Raj switched the cross of his ankles in Trueblood’s lap. His expression was intent over an atlas. Raj lived for maps. Occasionally he jotted on a scrap of paper with the two pencils he held in his six-fingered hand.
Raj can write two different things with his sixhand, Trueblood wrote. It’s very wonderful to watch.
On the floor by the hearth, Lejo sat center of a group of minoros, because he lived for company. One lad held Lejo’s sixhand, eyebrows furrowed as he examined its extra finger.
Lejo’s sixhand is his non-dominant one, Trueblood wrote. He can’t do anything useful with it, but when people hold hands with him, which is often, it’s always his sixhand they take.
He stared at the lines he penned and felt better. As Merevhal started to read, he sketched a goldfinch in the margin.
“This is the Truviad,” the boatswain said. “The epic of Truvos, god of the sea.”
She held open the book to show a two-page illustration of the ocean. The foaming crest of every wave was the head of a white stallion, with the black-skinned Truvos riding the highest wave. Bands of gold scales clasped each ankle and wrist. His triple-spear pointed ahead. Fish and shells tumbled from his long hair, braided in hundreds of thin plaits.
“He looks like the kepten,” little Sixten said.
All eyes swiveled to Ikharus-Lippé True, asleep in the other big chair, one side of his dark face melted into a palm. His big feet rested on a hassock and three minoros perched on the bench made of his long legs. A thick gold bracelet clasped each wrist. Around his shoulders spilled his braids, each plait tied with a bit of blue thread.
He was so magnificent, so immutable with power and so soft with fatigue, it made Trueblood’s gaze blur around the edges.
“Truvos created the kepten’s people,” Merevhal said, turning the book back around to read. “The sea god heaved mighty stones from the ocean floor and set these monoliths into the earth. They drew off essence from the great Tree of Life and became the giants.
“As Nydirsil dropped her seeds and forests of Nye covered the land, the giants took the tallest and strongest to make ships. House Tru became a great mariner dynasty, the only ones permitted to transport Nye around the world.”
Merevhal’s voice, so strident and overbearing across the decks of the Cay, softened around the story. The lamp glinted along the strong cross of her nose and eyebrows and blurred her face into something almost beautiful.
“Now, lads,” she said. “Once a man called Khe was the devoted servant of Truvos. The sea god loved Khe best, often doing foolish things for his attention. Khe became fascinated with the pegaso that nested in the highest branch of Nydirsil. He called to the winged mare to fly down to him so he might adore her.
“‘I fly for no man,’ the pegaso replied.
“Khe asked Truvos to turn him into a horse. Truvos hesitated. All living creatures on the earth, including men and horses, belonged to his twin sister, Nyos, who did not like her creations changed or altered. But after Khe pleaded for nine days, Truvos relented.
“The sea god knew Nyos had made horses from a rock taken from the moon. He climbed to the top of the Tree of Life, chipped away a small bit of the moon and gave it to Khe. Whenever Khe held the stone, he could shift from man to horse and back again.
“Delighted, Khe showed himself in his horse form to the pegaso. He begged her to fly down to him so he might adore her.
“‘I fly for no steed who is bound to the earth,’ she said.
“Khe now asked Truvos for wings. Truvos again climbed the Tree of Life and stole the nine stars holding her branches to the sky. These he made into rings which he placed on Khe’s human fingers. The starsilver made great wings open up from his back, allowing him to fly.
“‘Come to me now,’ Khe said to the pegaso. ‘I who am no mere man, nor a steed bound to the earth.’
“But Nydirsil, not anchored to the sky anymore, was toppling and swaying and the pegaso was frightened from her perch. She flew away and Khe gave chase, forced himself upon the winged mare and sired the first kheirons, twins female and male. Each born with a moonstone that allowed them to shift between horse and man. Each born with the power of flight bound either to silver hooves or nine silver rings.”
Merevhal turned the book to show the illustrations of the first kheirons. “Here is ele-Kheir, the Horsedam. The immortal female kheirone. She stayed with her mother, with a secret purpose kept safe on the side of the moon never shown to man.”
A page turned. “And this is il-Kheir, the Horselord. He lived on earth as king of all the steed races. His mortal descendants threaded through time and his reign passed in an unbroken father-to-son line, looped like a string of beads around the centuries.”
“Who is the Horselord now?” Sixten asked.
“Sevri il-Kheir,” Abrakam said. “And Tehvan is his heir.”
“Fen,” Kepten True said behind his closed eyes. “He likes to be called Fen il-Kheir now.”
“Why?”
True’s chest swelled wide as he yawned and stretched. The boys perched on his legs rose up and down. “Fen is the giantword for finch. The Horselord’s son defied death so many times, maybe he felt like he delivered his own soul.”
“You delivered him,” Trueblood said. “You rescued him from the top of a Nye tree and brought him home.”
And il-Kheir promised to bring you home when it was time.
The kepten opened his eyes and looked at his son. Trueblood’s heart pulled in two and twisted around itself. Love and pride tangling with the fear of growing up and watching his father grow older until the inevitable day when…
“Aye,” True said. “But I’m not a finch, Pé. I’m just a single flower on a tree.”
Trueblood wanted to run to him. Knock aside the lap usurpers and fling himself against his father’s strong chest. But now the kepten was getting up, spilling boys onto the floor and bidding everyone goodnight through enormous yawns. Merevhal closed the book and smoothed it with a palm before handing it back to Abrakam. “To your bunks, twerps,” she said.
From the Most Private Journal of Pelippé Trueblood
Osla, Sayenne and Rona are three other women on our ship. They are not related, but everyone calls them “the Sisters.” Even R
ona, who was born a man, but lives as a woman.
Once, a lot more females used to sail on the Cay. But in the four years I’ve been at sea, no girls have come to climb the main mast and join the crew. Da told me that given a choice between sailor or soldier, girls typically choose the military. “Nyland’s endured this long because of the women who protect her,” he says.
The Sisters are the Cay’s sail makers. This is an important job because without sails, the ship can’t go anywhere. Osla weaves the sail cloth. Sayenne measures it and Rona cuts it. Then they sew the sails together. Most ships have plain white sails but ours are different colors. This shows my father is an important man.
I like climbing the masts and rigging the sails, and I like learning how to tack and beat and get the sails to obey the wind. Once, I thought making sails would be easy work but it isn’t. Canvas weighs a ton. The Sisters’ workroom is a smelly, noisy place. The stench of the dyes can make you barf and the racket of the looms wears on your nerves. Sewing can be done on deck, thank Gods, but a sail has to be double-hemmed on all sides and you can spend a week on just one edge.
Lejo likes the work, but I and Raj are probably the worst sewers in the history of the world, anywhere, ever.
The Sisters also sew clothes for the crew. We all wear white clothes and black boots. Everyone’s breeches and shirt are a little different, but they are all white. I don’t know why. Sometimes things are done on the ship and Da says, “Because that’s the True Way.”
Da has an especial blue coat he wears when he goes ashore because he is the kepten. One day it will be my coat, but I’m not sure I will fit into it.
Every year, the Sisters took Kepten True’s blue coat apart. Removed every button, ripped every seam, washed and dried every piece and then sewed it all back together again.
“Why?” Trueblood asked. It was his job to clean and polish the buttons.
“The salt spray is bad for the dye,” Osla said.
“Too much exposure and it can fade,” Rona said.
Sayenne bit off a thread with her teeth. “It’s the only coat of its kind.”
“This shade of blue, Pé? It’s from ukhor stones.”
“Ukhor was only found in the ground at the roots of Nydirsil.”
“It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Nowhere else on earth will you see this color blue, Pé.”
Trueblood followed the conversation around the circle. “Not unless someone finds Nydirsil.”
The Sisters exchanged a glance, nodded as one and then bent over their work again.
“Maybe Da will find it,” the kepten’s son said.
“If anyone can find it, he can,” Osla said.
“Have you heard the Truviad?” Rona asked.
“No,” Trueblood said, because it was polite to the rakontistos to pretend you hadn’t heard a story before. And he liked this one.
“Truvos stole the stars that held Nydirsil’s branches to the sky,” Sayenne said. “He made them into rings for his lover, Khe. The tree became unmoored, the weight of her branches making her trunk sway dangerously this way and that. Until her roots began to pull free from the center of the earth.”
Around the circle the story grew, each sister sewing her part to the whole.
“The ocean floor cracked open, releasing a horde of demons and monsters into the sea. Leviathans. Sea serpents. Kharbidis, who sucked ships into her whirlpool mouth. Aspida, the giant turtle who disguised himself as an island and lured sailors to their doom.”
“Worst were the twin kraken, Murder and Misery, who roam the waters to this day.”
“Her foundation broken, the earth divided. Quakes and volcanoes rearranged the terrain. Old mountain chains crumbled into sand while new mountains punched to the skies like the fists of giants. Tidal waves flooded the land, wiping out much of the Nye forests and reducing farmland to salt flats. People began to starve. Famine brought war and disease.”
“Nyos begged her brother Truvos to return the nine rings to Nydirsil before all was irrevocably lost. But Truvos would not relent. Nyos strung her mighty bow with an arrow fletched with peacock feathers, which contain the eyes of the stars.”
“The feathers made her aim impeccable and true. Nyos never missed a shot. The arrow impaled Khe upon Nydirsil’s trunk. He hung there nine days while the tree continued to pull free from the earth.”
“In a rage over his slain lover, Truvos slew his sister. He took Khe’s body down from Nydirsil and put it onto his ship, the Khollima. He chained the tree behind and sailed away forever. But not before leaving the world a message.”
“Upon three monoliths uprooted by Nydirsil’s roots, Truvos chiseled his conditions. He would not return the nine stars…”
“Until a love like he knew with Khe…”
“Came to earth threefold…”
“And hung bound with silver in Nydirsil’s branches for nine days.”
Trueblood had forgotten to breathe at the end. He exhaled beneath a furrowed brow. “That makes no sense.”
His head wrestled with the image of a man and woman caught in a tight embrace, wrapped in silver chains and dangling from a branch like a piece of fruit. Threefold? Did that mean three couples had to hang from the tree?
“The great stones with the original Truviad were moved to the library of Alondra,” Osla said.
“Two of them, anyway,” Sayenne said. “The third was lost.”
“A bit of the second stone is missing, too,” Rona said. “It broke off right in the middle of a sentence.”
“That’s why every copy of the Truviad is printed with its last page torn in half.”
That night, before story hour, Trueblood slid the book off the shelf and turned to the back. Just as the Sisters said, the last page of the Truviad was torn across. Its rough edge had been touched with silver foil, making it a serrated blade that sliced through the last sentence:
He must begin his voyage where…
And then the story stopped.
Trueblood asked his father what he thought the rest of the sentence said.
“I don’t even know who Truvos was talking about,” the kepten said. “He who?”
Trueblood shut the book and slid it back on the shelf. “I don’t like mysteries.”
“Neither do I. But I’ll tell you what my father said about the beginnings of a voyage.”
“Don’t leave port angry.”
“Oh, I’ve told you this one?”
Trueblood leaned a little, letting his shoulder press against Ikharus’s side. “Don’t go to your bed with anger in your heart. And don’t let land out of your sight if anger is filling your sails.”
“Sage advice,” Ikharus said. “When Truvos loaded Khe’s body on his ship, chained the tree behind and set sail, he was pissed. And look what happened.”
From the Most Private Journal of Pelippé Trueblood
Dhar is Osla’s son and one of the sail makers. After my father, Dhar is the biggest person I know. He is both tall and wide. It is funny to watch him sew because his giant hands swallow up the little needles and make especial tiny stitches.
Dhar has a great big voice, too. If he is down in the holds and I am on deck, I can still hear him. Sometimes when I am in my cabin at night, the last thing I hear before I fall asleep is Dhar laughing, somewhere on the ship. This is something I love.
Dhar and Merevhal are gelang. This means they are together and love each other and sleep in the same cabin.
“Did you get it?” Raj said.
Trueblood flipped up his loose shirt to show the book tucked in his breeches. “Come on, let’s go.”
The best way to appear invisible on the Cay was to act like you were working. Trueblood and Raj grabbed buckets and brushes, then clomped down the stairwells of the ship, grumbling loudly about a scrubbing assignment. Lejo followed, a mop over
his shoulder, saying nothing.
Lejo, Trueblood once wrote in his most private journal, is the worst liar in the whole history of the world, anywhere, ever. If you tell a secret to Lejo, he will keep it until he dies. But he won’t be able to keep secret that he has a secret.
The boys closed themselves up in a hold filled with iron ore they were shipping from Hokosia to Nyland. All the rest of his days, the sharp, rusted odor of metal would make Trueblood start to sweat in a nostalgic arousal.
The boys lay on their stomachs, Trueblood in the middle, and opened the tome at random. A bonanza of full-color illustrations lay before them. Couples half-clothed or unclothed. Faces with wide eyes, stiff smiles, strange expressions. An onslaught of bodies and limbs and…parts.
A long, page-turning silence, broken only by dry swallows.
“So that’s what gelang looks like?” Raj finally said.
“I thought it would be…” Trueblood trailed off, not having the first idea what he thought. The wood of the hold pressed all along his thighs and knees and stomach. It was an effort not to squirm. To rub against it. He knew how good that would feel. Lately he was spending a lot of nights discovering how good it could feel.
“This is stupid,” Raj said. “I mean they look ridiculous. They’re just posing. Is that really what Dhar and Merevhal do? Stand around naked in strange positions, looking at each other like fish?”
“You don’t stand still,” Trueblood said. “You’re supposed to move.”
“They’re not moving. He’s just putting it in there and holding still.”
Trueblood jammed his elbow hard against Raj. “They’re not moving because it’s a picture. You don’t put it in and do nothing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s how it feels good, you idiot. What, do you take it out at night and just hold it in your hand and do nothing?”
Please say no, he thought. I can’t be the only one.
“No, but…” Raj’s teeth closed with a click and his face flamed crimson.
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 5
