Along the Saltwise Sea

by A. Deborah Baker

  Niamh and Avery exchanged a glance, shrugged, and went off to begin working on their perfectly suitable, perfectly acceptable tasks. Zib and the Crow Girl’s shared look lasted longer, and when they turned to walk away from each other, it was with slumped shoulders and dragging feet. Captain Άlas couldn’t have chosen jobs they would like less if she’d been trying, because even if she’d been trying, she didn’t know them well enough to understand just how upsetting the jobs she’d assigned them would be.

  For the Crow Girl, the fear of falling without wings to catch herself was all-consuming and inescapable. It would make her fingers clumsy and slow her completion of a task she had never asked for in the first place. Being so close to the sky and unallowed to fly away would be torture for her, every moment, and entirely unfair.

  For Zib, being on something as exciting as a pirate ship, chasing the horizon and racing the waves, but forced into a windowless room to wash dishes with a woman who already reminded her of her grandmother, was the next thing to torture. “Torture” is a big word to involve in a conversation about doing dishes; most people, when they hear it, will think of knives and needles and fiery brands pressed against unprotected skin. But the truth is, torture will take different forms for different people. Sometimes it can be hunger, or thirst, or cruel words. In Zib’s case, it was the denial of adventure and the forced adherence to a part she had been refusing to play since the first time someone had spoken the word “girl” in her hearing.

  It seemed ridiculous to her that anyone could look at her and think she was the sort of child who was suited to laundry and sweeping and eventual motherhood, and all because of a name she had never chosen for herself. “Girl” was a name for another kind of creature, something she was not and would have no idea how to go about becoming, even if she wanted to. If they needed a child to cook and clean and organize, they should speak to Avery, who seemed to find comfort in such actions, and was still lamenting the lost shine in his shoes.

  When Zib arrived in the mess hall, she found it empty of sailors; only Maddy was there, up to her elbows in a trough of soapy water. “It’s a long time before dinner, missy,” she said, and laughed to herself, as if she had said something genuinely hilarious. “What can I do for you?”

  “The captain told me to come down here and help you clean up,” said Zib. Whether she was making no effort to hide her misery, or simply had so much misery that it was overflowing her fragile barriers and cascading absolutely everywhere, was impossible to say.

  Maddy looked at her gravely. “Ah,” she said finally. “I see. There’s always one, whenever we get new recruits.”

  “One what?” asked Zib.

  “One who wants the sea so badly that the captain feels the need to remind them it doesn’t belong to them—not yet. Maybe it could, if they work hard and stay on past their initial term, but it doesn’t just because they stepped onto the deck. So you want the sea, eh, little girl? Does the sea want you?”

  “I don’t know.” Zib clomped across the room to where Maddy was working, rolling up her sleeves before plunging her hands into the hot, soapy water. Hating the chore had never been enough to keep her away from it, and she knew what to do. “I don’t know if anywhere wants me.”

  “The Up-and-Under clearly wants you, even if America doesn’t,” said Maddy, in a sage tone. Zib whipped around to stare at her, and Maddy smiled. “What, you think you’re the only American child to find their way to the Forest of Borders? I thought I knew your accent. We don’t only get American children, of course. I know America likes to believe itself to be the best at everything, but we have no monopoly on unexpected borders. I know a very nice fisherman who came originally from Canada. He’ll trade you a nursery rhyme for a cod if you can think of one that he’s forgotten, or never knew in the first place. And there’s a woman who was born in Mexico City who makes and sells lace in the Impossible City. Oh, don’t stare so! Time is happening here, the same way it’s happening everywhere else, and while you can hide from a great many things, you can’t hide from growing up just by going to another country. That would be patently ridiculous, and wouldn’t make any sense at all. How are the crops to ripen and the fields to be brought in if nothing’s getting any older? Everyone would starve to death waiting for the wheat.”

  “But what about your parents?” croaked Zib. “What about going home where you belong?”

  “That’s a loaded question, isn’t it?” asked Maddy. “If I belonged where I’d begun, why would the wall have come for me to climb? I don’t think it goes looking for children who belong where they are. I think it goes looking for children who have something to learn about the way the world works, and who can find that lesson in the Up-and-Under.”

  “How can a wall go looking for anything?”

  “Spoken as if you haven’t been chasing the improbable road! Don’t try to deny it, even if you would; there’s a look to road-walkers, and you have it, all four of you, although there’s less in your crow. She doesn’t know quite who she is or wants to be any longer, and it’s going to take some great trial for her to remember, make no mistake. Walls can do as walls can do, and you can do these dishes until the captain sees fit to let you free, and I can dry my hands for a moment, since I have a helper.” Maddy’s smile was sympathetic. “I know you hate it, poppet, but it won’t be forever, and the sea will be there when you’re done. The sea is always there. She changes her face, she’s not always kind, but she’s always there.”

  “I saw a woman,” Zib began, hesitantly.

  Maddy’s face hardened. “That stairway isn’t always there, and if you see it again, you steer clear. Do you understand me? There’s nothing good to be accomplished by climbing where you’re not welcome. Listen, and mind me well.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Zib, and kept washing dishes, while through the wall of the pirate ship came the softly whispered singing of the sea.

  SEVEN

  ON STORMY SEAS

  There were as many dishes to be washed as there were sailors on the ship, which is to say, more dishes than Zib had ever seen outside of the holidays, when it seemed as if every distant cousin she could name had made it their personal goal in life to drown her in chipped plates and bowls with smears of gravy still clinging to the rim. The washing of one dish is much like the washing of another, and so we leave Zib to her unwanted, unenvied task, washrag in one hand and flatware in the other. She’ll be fine.

  Instead, we rise up through the body of the ship to the deck, where Niamh patiently swabs, the mop in her hand well taller than she is, saying nothing to the pirates who tromp by, their bootsoles staining the freshly swabbed wood, forcing her to do it over and over and over again. If this frustrates her, she gives no sign. She only continues in her work. There is a smile on her face, and she has the sea air combing through her hair like the patient fingers of a loving mother; like Zib, she’ll be fine.

  Higher still, the rigging, and we find the Crow Girl, still in her borrowed iron shoes, clinging to the rope in terrified determination. She has only checked three of the knots she was sent to the heights to check. Every time she reaches for the fourth, the same wind that strokes Niamh’s hair blows through the rigging and sets it to shaking, and she cries out and clings harder, clearly terrified of falling. Jibson is there with her, trying to coax her into working faster, growing increasingly frustrated with his inability to get through her fear. She’ll be up there for hours if the captain insists the job be finished before her descent.

  In the small building behind the wheel, however, there is a room we have not yet seen: the captain’s quarters, which are easily three times the size of the room our four children have been assigned to share, and opulent in a way that even a rich man’s room on land might envy, with walls papered in rich brocade and the floor softened by piles upon piles of rugs. The bed is draped in heavy velvet curtains, and as Avery stepped into the room, he resolutely does not look at it. If he looked at the bed, he might remember his exhaustion, and if he re
membered his exhaustion, he wouldn’t finish the work he’d been assigned to do.

  One entire wall of the cabin was dedicated to tall oak bookshelves, crammed with more books than he had ever seen outside of a library. True to the captain’s word, more than half of them were out of order, and it seemed like every time he put a book back where it belonged, he found two more that needed to be moved. There was a clever ladder attached to the book wall, with wheels that moved soundlessly when he pushed against it, and he didn’t have to worry about anything being out of reach.

  He was less sure why a pirate ship needed to have so many books, but they were here, and that meant they needed to be treated with respect. Treating books with respect was something that came easy to him, having been drilled into him by every adult he’d ever known. One by one, he stroked the covers, straightened the spines, and moved the books into their places, making order out of chaos, and found that the world was a better place for being so corrected.

  He was reaching for a weighty tome bound in purple damask when the ship gave a mighty lurch and he was nearly knocked from his ladder. Confused, Avery climbed down to the floor and moved toward the cabin door, intending to find out what was going on. The ship lurched again, this time knocking him to the floor, where the rugs padded his fall.

  On the rigging outside, the Crow Girl’s greatest fear was finally realized, as the second lurch knocked her out of the rigging and she plummeted toward the deck below. She clawed frantically at the air as she fell, and Avery or Zib would have recognized the position of her arms as the one she regularly assumed right before bursting into birds. But her body remained a single contiguous piece, and before she was halfway down, she had stopped flailing and allowed herself to simply fall, plummeting peacefully toward the deck below.

  Niamh dropped her mop and grabbed her bucket, dashing its contents into the air below the Crow Girl. The water froze there, still liquid, but somehow floating, and came together into a vast bubble that seemed far too large to have been contained in Niamh’s bucket. The Crow Girl struck the surface with a splash, and was pulled inside, her eyes snapping open as she realized that she had hit water and not unforgiving wood. She sat upright with a gasp, her head breaking the surface of the water. Niamh snapped her fingers. The bubble gently set the Crow Girl down on the deck before retreating back into the bucket, where it curled, unmoving.

  Once again perfectly dry, the Crow Girl stared at Niamh, eyes very wide indeed. “I didn’t know you could do that!” she squawked.

  “I didn’t need to before,” said Niamh, with a shrug. “And I can’t, always. The water has to know me before it will listen to me. I’ve been working with this water for hours now.” The water in the bucket gave a little glorping bubble, as if to agree with her.

  “All hands to stations,” barked the captain, striding by. “We have a devil of a storm rolling in, and there’s no room for idleness in a squall!”

  “We don’t have stations,” said Niamh. The sky had started to darken as the captain spoke, and was already the color of a deep blue-black bruise, the kind that stretched all the way down to the bone. The clouds hung heavy and low against the horizon, closing in with impossible quickness.

  Captain Άlas looked at the children as if she had never seen them before, a confusion that failed to lift when her cabin door banged open and Avery came running out. He looked up at the sky with wide eyes, and asked, “Is there a storm coming?”

  The captain nodded, seeming to snap partially out of her fugue, and said, “Aye, a bad one. As you children have no stations yet, get below. When the wind blows, it’ll take anything that’s not nailed down, and you’re all small enough to serve as souvenirs.” She strode away, already shouting again, ordering sailors hither and yon.

  The Crow Girl grabbed Avery and Niamh by the hands, pulling them toward the door that would take them into the belly of the ship. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she chattered. “I don’t want to be blown away, not when I can’t…” She stopped, a brief look of horror flickering across her face, and bit her lip.

  Avery, who hadn’t seen her fall, asked, “Can’t what?”

  Niamh simply nodded, and said, “She can’t be birds right now.”

  “How is that possible? She is birds.”

  “Surely the captain would understand if she was birds to save herself.”

  “I don’t mean she doesn’t want to disobey. She can’t,” said Niamh.

  “Άlas said her magic would keep the Crow Girl in one piece, but not that it would hurt her. Surely she can be crows if not being crows would hurt her.”

  Niamh grabbed Avery’s hand and pulled him along with her as she ran for the door. The Crow Girl followed, moving just as quickly as she could in her tight-fitting iron shoes. Niamh flung the door open to find Zib standing on the other side, still holding a ladle dripping with soapy water. Zib’s eyes widened at the sight of her friends. Niamh shoved past her, letting go of Avery’s hand once they were safely below. The Crow Girl slammed the door.

  “Storm coming in,” explained Niamh. “Pretty bad. The captain wanted us all to get to safety before it hit.”

  Zib squealed excitement and dove for the door. The Crow Girl stopped her with an arm like an iron bar, knocking her back a foot. Zib pouted at her, denied the excitement she so craved.

  “I’ve been outside in storms before,” she wheedled.

  “But not on a pirate ship in the middle of the Saltwise Sea,” said Niamh.

  It was the wrong reply. Zib nodded, enthusiasm clearly growing. “I want to see how it’s different!” she said. “I want to see how tall the waves can get, and whether the lightning will go for the mast! Let me out, let me see!”

  “No,” said Avery, face pale as whey and hands shaking slightly. The things that excited Zib so much terrified him; what if the lightning did strike the mast, what would happen to the sailors who were in the rigging and struggling to control the sail? What if the waves got so tall that they swamped the side of the ship and washed everything away? What if the four of them went back up when the storm was over and they were the only ones left in the whole world? It was all too much and too big to think about, and so he folded it inward on itself, twisting confusion and ignorance into something that felt very much like a knife. “You don’t want to see it. You’re not brave enough. Even the sailors are scared. How could one little girl not be even more afraid? You have to stay down here with us. With the rest of the children.”

  Zib took a step backward, staring at Avery in dismay. She didn’t want him to think of her like that. She didn’t want him to say such things. She wanted him to be her friend, who had saved her from the King of Cups, and to be on her side. Few enough people had ever been on her side. She’d been so sure that Avery was one of them.

  “That’s mean,” she said, in a small voice. “You take that back.”

  “Why?” he asked. “It’s true. The captain sent us all down here to hide with you, because this storm is too big and too scary for little kids like us. That means me and you.”

  “We’re not little kids!” she protested. “We faced down the Bumble Bear and we found the skeleton key and we—”

  “And we paid for those things,” he said. “Nothing’s free on this side of the wall! Maybe nothing was free back home either, but there, we had our parents to stand between us and whatever it all cost. We can’t go out in that storm, Zib! We’ll be blown away, or you’ll be blown away, because I’m not going to risk it, and then I’ll have to walk the improbable road without you!” He didn’t say “alone,” although that was the word he wanted; walking the improbable road with Niamh and the Crow Girl, who belonged to the Up-and-Under and would never wish themselves away to anyplace else, felt like walking it alone. He didn’t want that. He wanted Zib. He just didn’t know how to say that without pushing her further away.

  Zib looked at him, lip quivering and hair seeming to deflate in her sorrow. Avery looked stubbornly back, his body still set between her and the only door. Final
ly, she spun on her heel and ran down the catwalk, vanishing into the dimness in the hold. Avery let out a long breath, seeming to deflate in on himself, as the Crow Girl punched him in the shoulder. He turned to blink at her.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m not very good at being a person,” she said. “I think I lost the knack of it somewhere along the line, if I ever had the knack. But even I know you were just very cruel to her, and you shouldn’t be cruel to your friends when you have any other choice in the world. You need to go and apologize.”

  “What?” asked Avery again, disbelieving this time, like he couldn’t understand what she was talking about. “Why should I apologize for telling her that she can’t go outside in a storm and get herself killed? That’s just common sense! Would you be asking me to apologize if I’d let her go out and be swept away?”

  “No, because we wouldn’t let you do that,” said Niamh. “There’s a difference between speaking truly and being cruel. You were cruel. You chose words you knew would hurt her, and you slung them like stones. Words have power. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t carry them the way we do. Sometimes a word is the only weapon you have. Go apologize.”

  Avery looked at Niamh and the Crow Girl, unified against him, and swallowed the urge to stomp one iron-clad shoe against the catwalk in frustration. Couldn’t they see that he was lost and tired and confused, just like Zib was? He was on a pirate ship in the middle of the ocean, and he’d finally been starting to feel like he might be able to fit in here when the stupid storm had come along and knocked everything off-kilter again. His thoughts were like the books in the captain’s cabin, all out of order and scattered across the floor.

  But Niamh and the Crow Girl were still scowling at him, and so he turned and began to make his grudging way down the walk. His shoes clattered with every step he took, and it was difficult not to resent them as well, for being so loud and awkward that there was no possible way to approach quietly. Zib would have plenty of time to run farther away from him, if she decided that she wanted to. He could be hunting for her forever.