Along the Saltwise Sea

by A. Deborah Baker

  Carefully, he raised his hand and knocked on the cabin door. The sound of heavy footsteps answered almost immediately, and then, before his nerves could falter, the captain was opening the door, looking down at him with narrowed, disapproving eyes. Avery coughed, feeling his cheeks flush red and his chest get tight.

  “You said to clean things up,” he said, forcing the words up a suddenly dry throat and past his unbending lips. “I’m not good with a mop and I can’t string a sail, but I can clean up the books that fell during the storm, if you’ll let me come in.”

  “You were respectful enough of them before,” she said, somewhat grudgingly, and stepped aside, letting him in.

  As he had feared, the bookshelves were all but empty, their contents spread across the floor. The rugs were thick and soft enough to have blunted their fall, and it didn’t look as if any of them had been damaged, but he still wanted to sweep them into his arms and reassure them that the worst was past and they would be all right now, no one was going to hurt them again. The captain watched him for a moment before retreating to her drafting table, picking up a compass, and returning to the work she had been doing before he interrupted her.

  With all the books scattered across the floor, Avery was free to begin organizing them as he liked. He kept to the alphabet, naturally, but began “A” at floor-level, which had always seemed to him to be the most sensible way to approach a filing system. “B” was put next, the alphabet winding up the bookshelf like a large and literate snake that added its joints one letter at a time.

  He worked in efficient silence until he had reached the letter “L,” and his hand fell upon a book titled Lore and Legends of the Saltwise Sea. It was bound in blue silk, as rich and textured as the waves outside, and the weight of it was both more and less than it should have been possible for a single book to be. He hugged it to his chest, suddenly overcome with longing, and climbed to his feet in order to approach the captain. The rug muffled his footsteps, and so she didn’t look up until he was almost beside her.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “May I … may I borrow this? Please?” He turned the book shyly toward her, not quite willing to let it out of his hands. “Our cabin is nice, but it’s very small, and very empty, and I’m used to a story before bed.”

  If it had been Zib asking, the captain’s answer might well have been different, and she would have felt no shame over that. But this was Avery, sweet and shy and always very popular with adults. She tilted her head, and smiled a little, and said, “Certainly you may. But be very careful with it, for all my books are rare and precious to me, and I would not be pleased if any damage were to come to one of them.”

  Avery nodded and stepped back, still clutching the book to his chest. He knew a warning when he heard one: if he allowed this book to be harmed, he wouldn’t be allowed to borrow any others. As he had yet to see any others he wished to borrow, this was perhaps less of a threat than it might have been, but she could also forbid him to play librarian for her, and lacking any other jobs on the ship that suited him, it was very important that he be allowed to do this one. He returned to the piles of books yet to be put away, keeping his precious book of legends close to hand, and went back to work.

  There was too much mess to be unmade in a single session, but little enough that he was up to the letter R when the captain said, “The light is going. You should stop for now, or you’ll begin making mistakes, and I’d prefer you only need to do the work once.”

  Avery looked up, startled. The cabin had no windows, but the light slipping through around the edges of the door was considerably dimmer than it had been, and the shadows forming around the oil lamps were considerably deeper. “Oh,” he said, climbing to his feet again, snatching up the book as he did, so that he could clutch it hard against his chest. “All right. Are you coming to dinner?”

  “I’ll be there shortly,” said the captain, and opened the door for him, so that he could step out onto the twilit deck.

  Zib was still dangling from the rigging by one foot, laughing to herself like she was somehow doing the cleverest thing anyone had ever done. Niamh and the Crow Girl were standing by the rail with Jibson, chatting quietly. Avery walked over to them as the captain closed the door behind him, looking around.

  The deck of the ship was sparkling clean, as if it had never been disheveled in the first place. The sails and riggings were tight and properly arrayed; the metal fixings had been returned to the bits of rail and structural flashing that had lost them; everything that had been tipped over or toppled had been tidily restored. Jibson smiled at Avery’s approach.

  “Been working for the captain, eh, lad? What have you got there?”

  “A book,” said Avery, who had never cared for being talked to like he was a child, even though he had been a child every day of his life so far, save for the ones where he had been a baby. “I borrowed it from the captain, with her permission.”

  There was a clatter of metal on wood as Zib dropped down from the rigging and landed on her iron-shod feet. She came trotting over to the group. “Are you going to read us a story tonight, Avery?” she asked, without any of the teasing he would have expected from one of the girls at school asking the same question.

  Avery nodded, tilting the book so Zib could see the title. “It’s about stories of the sea.”

  “Oh!” said Zib, eyes going wide and round. Then she nodded, vigorously. “That sounds like a good story. It’s almost time for dinner, although I don’t really understand how it can be when Maddy said she serves twice a day, and we already had eggs and sandwiches.”

  “She also said there would be bread and cheese in the middle of the day, and lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches,” said Niamh. “Maybe she meant it when she said she could always feed hungry children.”

  Jibson laughed. “You’ve already figured Maddy out, missy. She doesn’t do anything proper complicated for lunch, but with your friend with the hungry hair helping her with the morning dishes, and the four of you being so young, she made an extra effort today. I’m sure she’ll do that a time or two more, as long as she keeps getting help.”

  Zib, who could see the future stretching out in front of her in a line of dishwater basins, swallowed a groan and turned toward the door. If there was dinner in the offing, she wanted to be there before the best bits of whatever it was had been taken by the rest of the crew.

  She was far enough ahead that she was the first of their group to reach the mess, which was fuller than she had ever seen it, packed from wall to wall with pirates, all of them carousing, hefting mugs that didn’t look like they contained orange juice this time, and eating noisily from large bowls filled with what appeared to be some sort of meaty stew. Maddy was in her customary place, dishing up bowls and hunks of rough bread to the sailors who approached her. She smiled at the sight of the children, waving for them to approach.

  Again, Zib was the first there, beaming as Maddy pushed a bowl of stew and a heel of bread into her hands. “Are you coming to help with the breakfast dishes again tomorrow?” she asked hopefully. “That was more of a help than you could possibly have known it would be, and I promise not to keep you forever, I know young things need to be moving around whenever they can be.”

  “I will,” said Zib, almost before she had realized she was going to speak. She smiled and grimaced at the same time, creating an entirely new expression that was not, it must be said, a wholly pleasant one. “It’s only a few hours, and if you have help, we get lunch, right? I don’t mind.”

  “But you do mind, and that makes it all the kinder,” said Maddy. “It’s an easy thing to do a job you fancy. To do a job that tasks you so is a great gift to the person you work with, and I’ll do my best to be worthy of it. Now all of you, off to eat. Grab a pitcher of bonberry juice as you go. You won’t like what the sailors are drinking.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Zib, and picked up a pitcher before heading for the nearest open table. The others were close behind her. Niamh
sniffed her stew as she sat.

  “Chicken and root vegetables,” she said. “No fish. Again. I don’t think I’ve seen a single scale since we came onboard.”

  “The captain said their nets keep coming back empty,” said the Crow Girl. “They can’t catch anything, so they can’t serve anything. That only makes sense.”

  “But why can’t they catch anything?” asked Zib. “It’s a big ocean, and they have big, big nets. I patched holes in a couple of them today. There’s no reason for them not to be able to catch more fish than they can eat, unless the Saltwise Sea doesn’t have any fish in it?”

  Niamh shook her head. “No, the Saltwise Sea is full of fish. Funny-looking ones, all different colors, with fins like veils, or with so many teeth that they could eat you up in just two bites. Sometimes they would get swept into the frozen city by the currents, coming up under the ice and looking for a way home again. We made one of them our mayor for a whole season, until the ice broke enough that he could find his way back to the ocean. He was an excellent mayor. He only ate two councilors, and most people agreed that both of them very much deserved it.”

  The children were silent for a moment, considering the idea of a world where a fish could serve as mayor and devour anyone who frustrated them. Zib poured out cups of bonberry juice, which was sweet and sour at the same time, and kept eating her stew. She had long since learned the value of eating when there was food in front of you, and didn’t consider any question or mystery to be worth the possibility of missing a meal.

  Avery held up the book he’d borrowed from the captain. “Maybe this can tell us more about the woman at the top of the stairs,” he said. “It can’t hurt to look.”

  “Why do people always say that?” asked the Crow Girl. “I looked at the Page of Frozen Waters while she was sorting her weapons, once, and when she spotted me, it hurt plenty. She said I was spying, but I wasn’t spying, I was looking, and they’re not the same thing, or they’d have the same name. She didn’t have to hurt me.”

  Jibson plunked down onto the bench next to her, causing her to squawk in brief surprise. His bowl was only half-full, and the pitcher in his hand was distinctly not bonberry juice. “Looking and spying feel the same to the person doing them. It’s the person they’re being done to who gets to decide which is which. You’ve met the Page of Frozen Waters, then?”

  “We all have,” said Niamh. “We’d prefer not to do it again.”

  “But we will,” said the Crow Girl. “She’s never going to forgive us for getting away from her.”

  Jibson nodded slowly. “Some people are like that,” he said.

  “I don’t think she’s people,” said Avery. “A blizzard isn’t people. A bad storm isn’t people. The Page of Frozen Waters is more like those things than she is like a people.”

  “We can’t decide who is and isn’t people, even when we think we should be able to,” said Jibson. “I’ve met a lot of people where it would have been easier to pretend that they weren’t, but all the pretending there is wouldn’t have changed what they were. As long as someone’s still people, you have to treat them with kindness.”

  “You’re a pirate,” said the Crow Girl. “What do you know about treating people with kindness?”

  Jibson looked at her sadly. “I know that most of us would rather still be sailing with the navy, like we were before the King destroyed the Lady and took up with that Page. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We steal because starving for your principles is still starving, and none of us are so loyal that we want to die for loyalty, but we’ve never hurt anyone on purpose. Being pirates didn’t turn us cruel. If it had, I think this ship would have far fewer sailors by now, as we’d have been deserting since the day we understood what we’d done to ourselves.”

  “But you don’t desert,” blurted Avery.

  “No, we don’t,” said Jibson. “We love our captain, for all that she can’t love us, and we stay in the hopes that one day she’ll remember how to let her heart come home.” He took the last bite of his stew and stood. “Goodnight, children. Sleep well when it comes to that.”

  “We will,” said Zib. She resumed shoveling stew into her mouth. She hadn’t thought she would be hungry, not after the size of lunch, but climbing took energy, and tying seemingly endless knots had been more difficult than she’d expected. She ate every bite of her stew and every crumb of her bread, which was brown and heavy and surprisingly soft, like the bread her grandmother baked. She wished she had a pat of butter to melt into it, all golden sweetness dripping on her fingers, but even unbuttered, it was delicious.

  Niamh finished about the same time Zib did. Zib bounced to her feet, grabbing the other girl’s bowl, and carried both over to the waiting basin, where she shared a quick smile with Maddy before returning to the table. The Crow Girl was just finishing her own meal, and Zib took her bowl as well, dropping it in the basin before looking meaningfully at Avery. He wasn’t dawdling, precisely, but was eating with slow, thoughtful bites, taking his time and savoring the meal. He glanced up, meeting Zib’s eyes, and swallowed hard before he started eating faster, not quite gulping his food.

  “Bowl,” said Zib, holding out her hand imperiously. Avery sighed and plopped it into her palm, a few bites of stew still sitting lonely at the bottom. Zib whisked it away as he stood, gathering the book once more against his chest.

  “I guess it’s time for bed and stories,” he said. “Come on.”

  The Crow Girl and Niamh were quick to fall into step behind him. Zib joined the group as they were reaching the door, and together the four of them returned to the cabin they had been assigned. Without a word, they removed their iron shoes and tumbled into their bunks, getting comfortable and settling in for the story ahead.

  Avery propped himself up against his pillow and opened the book to the table of contents. Now, a table of contents is a very important thing. It tells what can be found where in a text, and when that text is unfamiliar, that can be essential. “The Story of the Maiden and the Seven Pearls,” he read. “Jack the Clever Is Beset by Swans. The Fallen Lighthouse. Where the Sea Dragon Keeps His Heart. The Lady of Salt and Sorrow.”

  “Oh, read that one,” cried Niamh, interrupting him. “She’s the patron of my city, and we haven’t seen her in ever so long, not since the King of Cups took up with the Page of Frozen Waters and stripped her of her crown.”

  “You said you couldn’t find her bones,” said Zib, with bloodthirsty curiosity. “Does that mean you think she’s dead?”

  “It means we know she loves us, and would never have stayed away for this long if she had any choice at all,” said Niamh. “She could be dead. I wouldn’t put it past him to have killed her. But if that book has her story in it, I want to hear it.”

  “All right,” said Avery, and flipped ahead in the book to the story she had requested. He took a deep breath, and read, “Long ago and far away, when summer tides were kinder…”

  TEN

  THE LADY OF SALT AND SORROW

  “… there lived a drowned girl from the city of eternal winters. She was very cold, always, for she had drowned when she was but an infant, falling out of her father’s fishing boat and into the water without even the opportunity to scream. Her swaddling clothes had been enough to drag her down to the bottom, and though her family had searched for many days, they had never been able to find her body. Only when their boats were brought back to shore and her weeping mother had been led away had the people of the city beneath the ice come for her, gathering her from the lakebed and carrying her away to their watery streets and the frigid, frozen walls of their palace.

  “There are cities underwater inhabited by nymphs and naiads and merpeople of all kinds, but the cities of the drowned are not like them. Everyone who lives there—and they do live, in their cold, breathless way—is someone who fell from the dry world and drowned, lungs and throat full of choking water, the slowing of their heart the transfer of their citizenship. Because of this, they cannot have children
of their own, for their bodies have forgotten the means of making life out of nothing. When a family in a drowned city desires a child, they must tell the queen, and she will keep watch for drowned children, assigning them as best fits the needs of her people.

  “When this babe drowned, however, the queen herself was ready to expand her family, to take an heir from the dry world to raise as her own. An infant was the best possible choice for her, for although she could see the terrible tragedy of the drowned babe’s existence, her people would most easily accept an heir who had been brought up entirely in their ways, who would never be tempted to leave the water and go looking for the family that had borne her. So when the guards carried the baby into the palace, the queen greeted them with wide-spread arms and a joyous cry of ‘My daughter! My daughter! You found my daughter!’

  “So the guards placed the girl in their queen’s arms, and if a few of them felt some small pangs of regret, that they had not been afforded the opportunity to name the child as their own, they were all clever enough to keep quiet. The queen took the girl to her private chambers, and when she emerged with her a fortnight later, all traces of the dry world had been wiped quite thoroughly away. The girl gurgled and laughed and breathed the water as naturally as any other drowned child, and the people filled the streets in joyous celebration, for they had a princess now, and they had already decided they would love her.”

  “Is that really how babies are made where you come from?” blurted Zib.

  “It is,” said Niamh. “We grow up very slowly, under the ice, and the cold keeps us children for as long as we wish to be. I was born in Crocus, according to the guards who found me, and I drowned when I was too small to swim. Not too small to have wandered into the edge of the lake and been swept away by one of the deep currents, no, but too small to swim all the same. I don’t remember the family I had before I drowned and was reborn. They may have thrown me to the lake on purpose. It happens. When there isn’t enough food and there are too many mouths to feed, some people will give their children to the lake for safekeeping. They know we’ll wake and live again. But I like to believe they mourned me. We always like to believe that, when we can.”