Along the Saltwise Sea

by A. Deborah Baker

  A long catwalk led from the cabin the children had been assigned to a line of doors that looked like something from a hotel. Delicious smells wafted from behind the door in the center. “The mess,” said Jibson, somewhat needlessly, as he approached it and pulled it open, revealing a room that looked too large to have fit inside the ship. At least a dozen sailors were already there, seated at long wood tables. They ignored the open door, attention fixed on the plates and bowls in front of them.

  “This way,” said Jibson, and led the children further on, to a wooden table where an older woman was stirring a trough of eggs with a large spoon. A platter of bacon sat nearby, next to a tureen of oatmeal. “Maddy, I’ve brought you our new crew members. Can you see that they’re all fed properly? The captain wants them strong enough to work off their debts to her.”

  “Hungry children?” asked Maddy. “You bring me hungry children, and you question whether I can feed them?”

  “Yes, because I’ve never brought you hungry children before,” said Jibson. “Can you?”

  Maddy rolled her eyes, and shook her spoon at him, splattering bits of egg on the table. “Away with you now, before I give you such a walloping that you don’t remember up from down. Go, go. Yes, I can feed hungry children, and you’re a fool for asking me in the first place. Go.”

  “Thank you, Maddy,” said Jibson, already moving back toward the door. Avery shot him an almost-panicked look, and Jibson smiled, flapping his hands at the group in a gesture that indicated they should move closer to the food. “Maddy will get you sorted. Come up to the deck when you’re done. I have work to do. Goodbye!” And he was out the door, leaving them alone in a room full of strangers.

  Not that Jibson wasn’t effectively a stranger, but this seemed somehow like a betrayal, as if the person responsible for them being here no longer cared about their welfare. Maddy knocked her spoon against the tureen of eggs. All four children turned, wide-eyed and solemn, to stare at her.

  “You look like hungry ones, and that’s a truth I’ll give you for free,” she said. “Smooth those faces and find your smiles, I’m not going to do you any harm. This is my mess, and you’re welcome in it as long as you don’t pour rosemary in my eggs or set fire to the ship. We serve twice a day, morning and evening, and there’s usually bread or cheese or the like if you need something in the middle—growing children always eat more than anyone expects them to.”

  Her hands were busy as she spoke, dishing up scrambled egg, bacon, and oatmeal onto four separate plates. To the first she added a sprinkle of salt; to the last she added a spoonful of what looked like brown sugar mixed with raisins. She picked up the first two plates, offering them to Avery and Zib.

  “Eat, eat,” she urged, voice going surprisingly gentle. “All four of you, eat. The captain will have you hard at work soon enough, and you’ll regret it if you don’t. Work goes more slowly when your stomach’s empty.”

  However long they had been in the Up-and-Under, they hadn’t had a hot meal in the entire time, only fish and bread and flavor fruit and bonberries. Zib’s stomach gave a mighty growl, and almost before she could realize she was doing it, she had reached out and grabbed the plate that was intended for her. Avery did the same. Maddy passed the remaining two plates to Niamh and the Crow Girl.

  “There’s no milk, and I’m sorry for that,” said Maddy, expression softening into something welcoming and kind. “But there’s orange juice, in the pitchers on the tables. Be sure to drink up. Scurvy is the true scourge of the sea, and that’s no lie.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Avery. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Aren’t you the polite one!” Maddy beamed, leaning forward to chuck his chin with one leathery finger. “Go eat, all of you.”

  The children moved to the nearest table and sat, well away from the chatting, feasting pirates. Niamh promptly picked up her bacon and moved it to the Crow Girl’s plate, while the Crow Girl scraped her eggs onto Niamh’s plate. Avery and Zib blinked at them.

  “Eggs come from birds, and I’m not a cannibal,” said the Crow Girl.

  “There’s too much salt in bacon for my stomach,” said Niamh. “Too much of me is water, and not an inch of me is ocean.”

  “Oh,” said Zib, and picked up her spoon, filling her mouth with oatmeal.

  Oatmeal is a difficult thing. Done right, it can be delicious, filled with interesting textures while remaining unchallenging enough to be easy on the mouth. Done poorly, it becomes a viscous mass with no discernable qualities of its own. Suspicion in the face of a stranger’s oatmeal is understandable.

  Zib’s eyes brightened as she swallowed, and she set herself to wolfing down her oatmeal as quickly as she could, giving every indication of pleasure and satisfaction. The Crow Girl reached cautiously for a piece of Zib’s bacon. Zib whacked her hand with the spoon and kept eating, almost too fast to taste what she was gulping down.

  Avery, in contrast, began with his eggs, but was soon eating as quickly and determinedly as Zib. The Crow Girl ate everything on her plate mixed together, which wasn’t much, since she had only bacon and oatmeal, and Niamh ate in small, civilized bites, stretching her meal out well past the others.

  When Zib ran out of oatmeal, she started on her eggs, and when she ran out of eggs, she reached for the nearest pitcher, which was heavy and cold and sloshed as she moved it, sending the sharp, sweet smell of oranges into the air. Oranges were expensive, and orange juice a rare treat at home. She didn’t understand how a pirate ship could have pitchers of the stuff on every table, and as she filled the waiting cups, she didn’t care to understand.

  It tasted as good as it smelled, tart and sweet at the same time, delicious enough that she gulped it down greedily and filled her cup a second time. Then the second cup was gone as well, and while she would have enjoyed a third, her stomach felt as tight and distended as a drum, so full of breakfast that she could practically burst. Zib slid off the bench, her iron shoes hitting the floor with a clatter, and said, “Well? Are you ready?”

  “I’m still eating,” said Avery.

  “Me, too,” said Niamh.

  “I’m ready!” The Crow Girl stood, picking up her empty plate, and asked, “Where do we go?”

  “Up, Jibson said,” said Zib. To Avery, she said, “I’ll see you on deck.” It wasn’t that she was in a particular hurry to get to work; it was that to children like Zib and the Crow Girl, idleness is poison. There is always the need to be moving, to be searching, to be doing, whatever form that doing happens to take.

  It can be frustrating, both to adults and to other children who lack that essential need for motion, to spend time with one of the doing children. Perhaps that was why Niamh and Avery merely waved, not taking their attention away from their breakfasts. Zib and the Crow Girl carried their empty plates back to Maddy, placing them in the basin that she waved them toward, and then they were off, taking all that restless energy out the door and into the hold of the ship.

  Zib dashed along the catwalk to a narrow stairway that wound its way upward into the dimness of the hold. The Crow Girl followed close on her heels, nearly stumbling in her fine iron shoes, which were, after all, unfamiliar on her feet. If she had ever worn shoes, it had been before she traded her name for a hundred beating wings, and she had no memory of it.

  At the top of the stairs was a narrow wooden door with a small hatch set in the top. The door refused to open when Zib tugged on it. She scowled and whacked the heel of her hand against the wood. “Stupid door,” she complained. “Stupid pirates. How are we supposed to go up on deck and work if we can’t get out?”

  She didn’t sound concerned. Why should she have? If she was locked in, it was with her traveling companions, and with fine new iron shoes on her feet, and with a whole mess hall full of food served by a woman who reminded her of her grandmother. Not exactly, but enough so that she couldn’t imagine being afraid of her. No, there was nothing to be concerned about here. This was just another part of the adventure.

/>   Something behind the door made a sound. It was small and weak and pleading, like it didn’t expect to be heard. Zib’s eyes widened. She tried to open the door again. It refused to budge.

  “Try the hatch,” said the Crow Girl, both wary and excited. New things were always her favorite things, for they were the things that provided the most opportunity to do. Crows are curious creatures, and whoever the Crow Girl had once been must have been curious, too, or she would not have been able to so easily take the murder into her heart.

  Zib nodded, eyes wide, and reached up to gingerly slide the hatch aside. It revealed a small, dark room, with patches of straw on the floor and a high window on one wall, open to let the morning sun stream in.

  And there, in the middle of the straw and squalor, was a woman.

  She was not young, being clearly adult. She was not old, being clearly younger than Zib’s mother. She was underfed, thin enough that the sharp angles of her collarbones showed obviously through her skin. She sat at the center of what Zib was already thinking of as her cell, arms wrapped around herself and head bowed, so that her snowy hair fell to cover her face. She was wrapped in rags, tattered brown canvas rags that looked as if they might have been salvaged from a damaged sail. Zib gasped. The woman raised her head.

  Zib struggled not to gasp again. The woman’s eyes were huge, seeming to take up the entirety of her thin, pale face. They were the color of water in the shallows, almost clear, but with hints of blue buried in what little depth they had, as if they confused the light into refracting off them incorrectly. She looked at Zib. Zib looked at her. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before standing, slowly, on shaking legs, and taking a step toward the door.

  “Please,” she said, in a voice as low and sweet as the tide rolling in across the marshes. “Please, have you come to let me out? Please.”

  “I can’t,” said Zib. “The door won’t open, and I don’t have the key.”

  “Άlas wears it at her belt, always,” said the woman. “She locked me here when she decided she had no further use for me, but I haven’t hurt her, you have to believe me. I haven’t hurt anyone. All I wanted to do was see the world.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Zib. “I can’t steal from the captain. This is her ship, and I’m promised to serve her for the next week.” It felt profoundly wrong, telling a prisoner that she couldn’t help them; it felt like being the sort of person who stood by and watched while bullies picked on smaller children, and who was in many ways no better than a bully themselves, because if they’d been better than a bully, they would have helped. But she had been told, over and over again, to respect her elders, and to obey the rules when she went to someone else’s home, and this was Άlas’s home, wasn’t it? If she let this woman out, she would be both disrespecting her elders and violating the rules of someone else’s home. And that would be very bad, bad and disobedient and wrong. She would be in ever so much trouble if she did something like that.

  But trouble aside, it wasn’t right to leave someone locked up cold and alone and scared, with nothing proper to eat or drink, in a tiny little room. Locking someone in had always seemed to Zib to be the very worst of punishments, the sort of thing that should absolutely be reserved for the very worst of crimes, like killing, since someone who’d been killed would be locked in a little pine box forever. That was why she didn’t move away from the hatch.

  “I’m Lýpi,” said the woman, moving closer to the door. She moved slowly, not seeming to have the strength for anything else, and her eyes as she watched Zib were the eyes of someone watching a wild animal, hoping that it wouldn’t run away before it could be reached. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m—” Zib began, and stopped as the Crow Girl grabbed her arm and yanked, pulling her away from the hatch, breaking her connection to the stranger. She turned on her friend, relieved at the familiarity of her irritation. “What?” she demanded, when what she meant was “thank you” and “let’s run away, I’m afraid.”

  “You can’t give her your name,” said the Crow Girl, as if it were the most reasonable statement in the world. “When you give your name away, sometimes you lose it, and if you lose your name, who are you going to be?”

  Zib frowned. “I told the captain and Jibson my name and you didn’t object then,” she said. “Why now?”

  “Because then was in the daylight and the open, and then was in the dischargement of a debt, and then we weren’t standing in front of a locked door in the belly of a pirate ship talking to a stranger,” said the Crow Girl. “Some people are never strangers, even if you haven’t met them before. Some people are always strangers, even if you live with them for a hundred years. This woman feels like the second sort of person, and if you give her your name, maybe she’ll gulp it down and keep it for her own. You can’t give her your name.”

  “All right,” said Zib, shaking off the Crow Girl’s grasp. “All right. I won’t give her my name, all right?”

  “All right,” said the Crow Girl, and stepped back.

  Zib moved back in front of the hatch. The woman was much closer now, and Zib flinched away when their eyes met. “H-hello,” she said.

  “I could hear you and your friend talking,” said the woman. “You’re not very good at keeping secrets if that was you trying.”

  “Then you know I’m not going to give you my name,” said Zib. She was still more scared and shy than bold, but the nice thing about boldness is that sometimes it can pretend to be bigger than it is. Even make-believe boldness can fill a room when it has to, and Zib was pretending as hard as she could.

  “I suppose that’s so,” said the woman—Lýpi, a name that had a lilt to it that made Zib think of summer winds and sunlight on the sea. “If you won’t tell me your name, will you help me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zib, and her voice rang with simple honesty. She stepped back from the hatch, saying, “I don’t think it’s right to lock people away, but I don’t have the key,” before she closed it.

  A low, despairing wail rose from the other side of the door. Zib shivered and hurried down the stairs, the Crow Girl at her heels. As they reached the bottom, the mess door opened and Avery and Niamh appeared. They blinked at their companions, seeming surprised to still find them belowdecks. “Did you get lost?” asked Avery.

  “No,” said Zib. She turned to gesture at the stairs, and stopped as she realized there were no stairs behind them, only the long sweep of the catwalk extending toward the other side of the ship. “… yes,” she amended. “I suppose we did.”

  “Follow me, then,” said Niamh, and started walking. The other three fell in step behind her, Avery contentedly, Zib and the Crow Girl confused. Both of them stole glances back over their shoulders as they walked, but found no sign of the mysterious stairway with the cell at the top. It was gone, as if it had never been there at all.

  Niamh led them to a narrower, newer stairway, this one with bannisters polished until it seemed impossible that they could ever be the source of a snag or splinter. She started up it, and they followed, up the stairs to a door, which she pushed open to reveal the deck of the ship. Sailors moved back and forth, carrying ropes, nets, and other items from one location to the next. Niamh stepped out into the sunlight. Again, the others followed.

  No sooner were they all outside than a shadow fell across them and Captain Άlas appeared, hands on her hips, feet spread to mirror the width of her shoulders. Zib couldn’t help seeing the bundle of keys at her waist, and looked away, feeling inexplicably unwell.

  “Here you all are, properly fed and properly shod,” bellowed the captain. “Are you ready to get to work?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Avery. The rest nodded.

  “Good,” said the captain. She pointed to Niamh. “You know the way water works. You’ll be swabbing the deck until it sparkles in the sun. I have a bucket and a mop for you.” She pointed to the Crow Girl. “We need to check the knots at the top of the rigging, so you’re going to climb up with
Jibson and make sure everything is properly tied off.” She pointed to Zib. “Maddy needs help down in the mess, getting all the dishes clean before dinner time.” She pointed to Avery. “I want you in my quarters. Sailors are terrible about putting books back where they find them, and you’re going to sort through my library and put it back the way it’s meant to be. Do any of you have any questions?”

  The Crow Girl put up her hand and said, anxiously, “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “But you’re made of birds,” said the captain. “Birds aren’t afraid of heights.”

  “You said I’m not allowed to be birds while I’m on the ship,” said the Crow Girl. “Birds may not be afraid of heights, but girls sure can be, especially when they’re girls who know how easy it is for things to go splash when they fall out of the sky. Sometimes that’s how we open jars and things that we can’t manage with our beaks. We pick them up and carry them as high as we can, and then we just … let go.”

  “You’re not made of glass,” said the captain crossly. “You’ll climb. Does anyone else have any questions?”

  “I like to climb,” said Zib. “It’s easier to get me to climb than it is to keep me from climbing. Could the Crow Girl and I trade jobs, please?”

  “No,” snapped the captain. “She isn’t made of glass, and you aren’t made of sugar. You can wash a few dishes, and she can climb a few ropes. All of you, get to work! This isn’t a pleasure cruise!” She went stomping off down the deck, her own iron shoes clattering against the wood.