by Alex Aster
Less than a day away from Perla. From the compass.
And, possibly, with the statue shavings’ help, just hours away from the pearl.
For a moment, Tor allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to return home to his mother in one piece. To sleep for a week straight, to possibly pretend like he was normal.
Then, Melda snapped her fingers beneath his nose. He blinked and she rolled her eyes at him. “Daydreaming, at a time like this?”
“Sorry—that’s it. That’s all I heard.”
She shook her head and turned on her heel, making small circles on the upper deck. She turned suddenly. “I knew, I just knew, something was off about her.” She threw her hands in the air. “And we can’t just send her packing. We need someone from Swordscale.”
“Maybe we don’t.” He turned to make sure the rest of the deck was clear, then unearthed the tiny sack from his pocket. The shaved rock sat inside.
Engle peered at it. “Is that…”
“Shavings from the statue at Siren’s Wharf. The owner of the bookshop said it used to have a comb and that it was stolen.”
Melda straightened. “All we need is the compass then. We can use the siren’s shavings to find her lost comb. And if we find the comb, we get a wish. And if we get a wish—”
“We get the pearl.” Engle finished.
They all grinned at each other like thieves.
“Good,” Melda said. “I didn’t like relying on Vesper to find the pearl. We can’t trust her. Or Captain Forecastle, for that matter.”
Heads lowered, they huddled together. “When we find the compass, we can say goodbye to them both,” Tor said. “Until then, it’s best if we act as if we know nothing.”
Engle shrugged. “I can do that.”
Melda smiled sweetly at him. “Without much effort at all.”
Tor rolled his eyes. “We already have enough enemies on this ship,” he said quietly. “Let’s not fight among friends.”
* * *
Before dinner, Tor found Engle at the back of the ship, squinting down into the water.
“See anything good?” he said.
Engle kept staring. “I think something is…” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What is it?”
Engle turned away from the water and blinked long and hard. “Nothing. Just those stupid nightmares. I think they’re seeping into true life and making me paranoid. Making me see things…”
Melda took a break from reading her new mermaid book and made her way over to them.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Tor asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”
Engle shook his head again, then waved away Tor’s concern with a lazy hand. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just need to sleep better at night.” Melda neared and he said loudly, “Melda’s snoring certainly hasn’t helped.”
She gave him a look. “If anyone snores, it’s you, and you also talk in your sleep,” she said.
Engle paled. “I do?”
She smiled deviously. “Yes, and I can hear it all right through the walls.” Melda regarded her nails. “What interesting things I hear…”
Engle stormed off, and Melda laughed. She turned to Tor. “He doesn’t talk in his sleep,” she said.
“I know. I’m in the cabin next to his, remember?”
She sighed, grin disappearing. “I’ve tried to talk to him about it, you know. He refuses. He doesn’t think the nightmares are a big deal.”
Tor watched his friend walk to the opposite side of the ship and peer into the water again. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.
She nodded. Then, she motioned toward her new mermaid book. “Apparently, there are several species of mermaid.”
“Captain Forecastle said so, too.”
“Each is as deadly as the next. Only very few are the friendly, helpful type. Some are green with nails as long as spikes, some are half human, half octopus, some are such beautiful singers they make sailors jump off their own ships—the Melodines we’ve already encountered, in the middle of a desert of all places.”
Tor laughed without humor. He remembered their purple gem eyes and voices like maple honey. They would have drowned him in the oasis if it hadn’t been for Melda and Engle.
Melda continued. “Some, like the story in your mother’s book, sing nightmares to life.”
Tor stilled. Was that what was tormenting Engle? Was a siren whispering nightmares into his ear from the sea, making him see terrible things in the daylight?
“It says that they can affect one during sleep, too,” Melda said, nodding like she was thinking the same thing. “Maybe that’s why his dreams have been so bad on the ship.”
“Okay—how do we stop them?”
She opened the book to a dog-eared page. “An elixir for bad dreams. It’s in this book and works to banish them, no matter the cause.”
They spent the next hour putting together the mixture. It required a handful of sea foam, a silver hair (which Vesper begrudgingly provided), a slice of moraberry, wood from a ship, and spit from a pirate, all mixed in an oyster shell.
Though elixirs could typically only be made by those with elixir emblems, the sea seemed to have its own rules. Tor stirred the mixture once, and it bubbled blue, then green. Then boiled away, leaving only a thin, transparent paste.
“We rub it on his pillow…and no more nightmares,” she said. “From a mermaid or otherwise.”
They decided not to tell him. Engle had been rather defensive about his nightmares recently, no need to embarrass him further, Tor reasoned. During dinner, when Engle was ravenously finishing off an ear of charred, buttered, and nut-crusted corn on the cob, Melda excused herself. She returned without the elixir and nodded silently at Tor.
And that night, for the first time, Engle slept in silence.
Maladies at Sea
Sicknesses at sea can be far crueler than those on land. Disease spreads with ease in close quarters, and soon the entire crew is covered in scales. Stormscale is known to kill in less than a day. Grimgrey takes its time, crumbling bone until the skin just sags. Palestye starts with a pain in the side, then ends in coughing blood.
Many a pirate have gone to distant lands in search for cures—and some have found them. But many more have succumbed to their malady, and now rest in their watery graves beneath the sea.
9
Bluebraid
The next morning, Engle was grinning. He stretched his arms high above his head as he strode across the deck, then came to a jumping stop in front of them. He disheveled Tor’s hair with one hand and pulled Melda’s new braid with the other.
She looked like she was trying very hard not to smile. “You look well.”
Engle bounced around on his toes like someone about to go into a battling ring, full to the brim with energy. “I feel amazing. Refreshed. Had my first good sleep in a while.”
Tor and Melda shared a quick look. “Good,” Tor said. “Today’s important.”
Perla was just a few miles away. While Engle had snored loudly next door, Tor hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. His insides had been twisted up—hope, fear, and worry all intertwined.
Today, they could have the pearl. If everything went right.
Tor swallowed. By now, he knew things rarely went as planned.
“So, sightseer, anything on the horizon?” Melda asked. She was fully smiling now, watching Engle run across the ship, staring out at every direction.
Tor was smiling, too, watching Engle trip on an uneven board, then burst into laughter. He hadn’t seen his friend look so high-spirited in a while. Maybe he was okay now. Maybe, just maybe, they could put the past behind them.
Captain Forecastle surfaced from below, a finger in his ear. “What’s all the commotion?” he said. He opened his mouth to say something else, then ga
sped. His head twisted unnaturally upward, chin to the sky, as if his hair had been pulled back. Melda screamed, her head whipping back the same way.
And Tor felt the unmistakable smoothness of a blade across his throat.
* * *
Captain Forecastle grinned. “Hello, Bluebraid,” he said. And like a curtain falling, a dozen pirates suddenly appeared beside them, swords drawn. A vessel was anchored nearby, with thick ropes strung between it and Cloudcaster.
The pirates had swung aboard without a sound—even Engle hadn’t spotted them.
Somehow, they had been invisible.
“That emblem never gets old,” Forecastle said. The woman holding a blade to his neck spit at his boots. She had a captain’s hat just like Forecastle’s, and skin as tanned as Tor’s, covered in various tattoos that looked faded and colorless next to her gleaming silver invisibility emblem. It would have taken an extraordinary amount of power to also make her crew and ship invisible. Tor wondered where she had learned to wield her ability so expertly.
Her voice was raspy when she spoke. “You have the gall to speak to me so casually, after what you did? I should take your tongue, fool.” She drove the blade even closer to his neck, and Captain Forecastle’s throat bobbed nervously.
“No need, no need. The watery hole gave us time to think…to…repent.”
Bluebraid laughed thunderously, without humor. “Save those lies for the fish.” She nodded roughly toward one of her crew—a boy who looked not much older than them. He wore a ragged leather vest, shorts, and worn brown boots; his hair was so long it reached past his shoulders. “Search them.”
The boy went to Tor first, and he tensed, waiting for him to draw a weapon—but the young pirate made no move to put a finger on him. Instead, he put his hand out, then dropped it. “Nothing of value,” he said in a voice far too deep to belong to a child.
There was still a blade to Tor’s throat, so close he didn’t dare breathe deeper than necessary. The arm that held the sword was crusted over and scaled like a fish. Tiny shells dotted the pirate’s knuckles.
Tor swallowed and felt the cool metal against his larynx.
The boy moved onto Melda.
“Just a few dobbles,” he sneered.
When the boy approached Engle, he twisted his face in disgust. “Just crumbled, stale pastries.”
Vesper was still in her room below. It seemed like they hadn’t discovered her yet. Maybe she had made herself incredibly tiny. Or maybe she had escaped, somehow, deep below the sea when she’d heard the commotion. Either way, Tor wasn’t surprised.
At last, the boy reached Captain Forecastle, who laughed nervously. “He’s gotten very good…”
The boy glared at him. “Yes,” he said, voice full of poison. “I’ve had twenty years of practice.”
“Twenty?” Engle seemed to not have been able to help himself.
Bluebraid turned her sharp gaze to him. “Twenty years, our lifelines have been frozen.” She dug her blade hard enough against Captain Forecastle’s throat that it produced a tumbling droplet of blood. “Twenty years of agony. Not being able to sleep or leave the sea.” Her nostrils flared. “Usually, lifelines mean nothing out here. But the curse that binds us is relentless.”
“But shouldn’t your curse have ended, like the others?” Engle wondered. Tor wished he would stop talking.
“The Night Witch didn’t do this to us… No, we had to make a deal with a deeper darkness for a chance to set us free.” She grinned down at Forecastle. “And that’s where you four come in.” She nodded at the young pirate boy, and he lifted his hand.
And smiled.
“You’ve got something quite valuable, don’t you, Forecastle?”
“Captain—” he began to correct.
But before he could finish his sentence, the boy stuck a hand into the inside of Captain Forecastle’s jacket and pulled something from one of its hidden pockets.
A compass.
The compass.
Tor forgot all about the sword then. He thrashed against the man’s grip, catching him by surprise. For a moment, he wriggled free. Then, the pirate’s scaled arm sliced against Tor’s as he fought to get ahold of him. “You lied to us!” he screamed out, as the blade found his neck once more. “You were using us to gain passage to Perla, then you were going to lose us and find the pearl yourself!”
Captain Forecastle shrugged. “Never make a bargain with a pirate that isn’t inked in blood.”
Bluebraid grinned. She released Forecastle, pushing him to the floor, then stepped over him. She walked slowly to Tor, her boots echoing loudly against the deck. Closer, Tor could see that her thick, blue braid was dotted with a dozen diamonds. She smiled. “What do you know of the Pirate’s Pearl?”
Tor stiffened. He said nothing.
She kept smiling as she snapped her fingers, and the young pirate boy took Engle by the front of his shirt. He hauled him to the edge of the ship. “We’ll throw him overboard. And I’ll make him more than just invisible. He’ll cry for help, but you won’t hear him. You’ll search for hours, but you won’t see him. Not until it’s too late…”
Engle’s eyes widened. Tor had never seen him look so afraid. He imagined his friend was replaying that day in the Lake of the Lost—when he had almost been lost forever. When he had been dragged deep beneath the gray water, with no hope of ever surfacing.
No.
Never again.
They needed to get away, but Tor’s plan would mean losing the compass. He looked at his friend—
And made a decision.
Tor met Bluebraid’s gaze. He lifted his arms, and the ropes flew to him, startling the pirate holding the sword to his neck so badly that Tor was able to step away. Even Bluebraid seemed shocked, her eyes wide as he pushed his hands down as hard as he could, like he was trying to break through concrete with just his fingers, groaning at the effort. And the ship followed.
“Hold your breath!” he screamed.
The mermaid at the bow plunged headfirst underneath the water.
There was a roar as the ship dove deep through the sea, fast as lightning. Tor closed his fists, and the other ropes found Melda, Engle, and, begrudgingly, Captain Forecastle, holding them secure. Connected to the ship, he could sense Vesper below in her room. The force of the ocean swept Bluebraid and her crew away, left in Cloudcaster’s wake. The ship continued to sail down through the deep seas, bubbles erupting in streams behind them.
Then, seconds later, Tor pulled on the ropes, and they rushed toward the surface.
Sunlight neared, then exploded in his vision, and Tor collapsed onto the planks, fully drained. The ship groaned beneath him as it righted itself. The ropes dropped Melda, then Engle, to the deck, and they coughed and coughed, only stopping to take deep breaths in between.
Melda slumped against one of the masts and lifted a weak finger at Tor. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said.
Engle scoffed. “Why’d you save him?” He motioned to Captain Forecastle, who was looking around desperately for his hat. He found it, dripping and mangled between some of the lines.
“I don’t know.”
The latch to the bottom level opened, and water spilled out, followed by Vesper, who simply wrung her hair dry.
“Thanks for the help,” Melda said sarcastically, hands in fists, voice still hoarse. “Were you just going to wait until they killed us all? Escape back to your watery world?”
“I—”
Melda cut her off with a glare that could pierce a diamond, and Vesper retreated below once more. Melda turned her wrath to Captain Forecastle. “And you—you lying, filthy, unforgivable pirate.”
Engle was by her side; he placed a gentle hand on her arm. “Land ahead,” he said softly.
They stopped in the first port they encountered, a good-sized one with a sign that
welcomed them to Tortuga Bay. The name was familiar—Tor thought Melda might have mentioned it a while ago.
Captain Forecastle began to spin lies and make excuses, but when his words were met only with glares, he climbed down the side of the ship, and they left him on the dock.
Tor watched the pirate until he was just a dot, then turned to his friends. “What now?” he said. Every step they’d made had been wrong. Every person they’d trusted had been wrong.
But Tor did not regret his decision to choose saving Engle over the compass.
Melda look at her tiny hourglass, which now held much less purple sand than before. “It’s over, isn’t it?” They had gone to great lengths to find the enchanted device, it was the key to finding the pearl. Without it, they had nothing.
And it had been lost to Bluebraid and her crew.
Engle grinned. “Who’s giving up now?” he said. Then, he pulled something from his pocket.
The compass.
Man without a Mouth
The sea is an endless soup, though the cauldron it sits in is a mystery. Many a pirate and sailor have attempted to chart every mile of bright blue water, every island, every faraway land. But some seas are deadlier than others—and some lands, too. It is said that far across the ocean, there is a place completely devoid of color. A pirate made the mistake of piercing the wall that had kept that land separate from the rest—and it shattered his ship to pieces. A single sailor survived on driftwood to tell the tale.
And it is a tale many have chosen not to believe.
The man claims to have seen a land of fire and smoke, of nightmares and dreams. He says the hole the ship made in the wall allowed many things to escape. Including a man without a mouth. A spectral. He burned a path through the sea, water turning to steam, and walked across its bottom easily.
Many dark creatures from that land have been spotted throughout the sea in recent years. And it is said that Emblem Island is shielded by another wall.
Though many wonder what it would take for it to also fall.
