Water & Storm Country

by David Estes

  A cheer rises up, but there’s laughing too, and men elbowing each other’s ribs, telling a joke or two about earlier today, reliving my defeat at the hands of a scrawny bilge rat. Hobbs’ jokes are the loudest of all, careening across the ship, bouncing off barrels and railings and masts, swarming around me like relentless flies.

  Cain greets me with a smile and a firm handshake, which I don’t return, because I’m distracted by the hundreds of torches blazing across the ship, illuminating the typically dark and shadowy deck. And I’m trying, desperately trying

  (to find him.)

  But my father is nowhere to be seen. Did he forget? Impossible. And yet he’s not here. He’s finally given up on me, abandoned me.

  I feel a pain in my stomach so sharp it’s like the bilge rat’s kicking me again.

  But no, this pain is worse. Much worse. Because my father’s not here.

  “Cain?” I say.

  “He’ll come,” he says, reading my mind.

  Blood in the water.

  “He won’t,” I say, and Cain doesn’t respond because he knows I could be right.

  As Cain leads me across the quarterdeck to the edge, where it’s elevated above the lower decks, I scan the crowd. Everyone’s here, even the women, having come up from below deck, throwing aside their pots and pans and the clothes they were cleaning. Come to watch me become a man.

  I recognize many men and boys I know and love, like Cain, who have been my friends for as long as I can remember. There’s Grubbs, the ship’s head cook, wearing a splotched and stained apron bulging out with the curve of his well-fed belly; a man who used to let me sit on his table and sneak extra rations of gruel before it was served to the rest of the men and women. Down the row is Croaker, the lookout with a voice like a crow, who first taught me to climb the ladder to the very tops of the tower. I spot a group of boys, jostling and pushing each other for position, trying to get the best view possible. My friends. One of them, Jobe, sees me looking their way and stops punching the kid next to him to wave. I want to wave back, but if I had to guess I’d say men don’t wave. So I just nod in his direction, finally feeling the tug of a smile on my lips.

  Because I’m becoming a man! Whether my father’s here or not, this is one thing he can’t stop.

  Cain clears his throat and a cheer erupts from the men and women and boys and girls, louder than before—and no laughs, no jokes. All for me.

  All for me?

  I feel a shadow from behind.

  My father looms over me, his admiral’s cap like a dark cloud.

  Chapter Four

  Sadie

  “Why didn’t they stop to fight us?” I ask, hours later.

  Clang!

  I catch my mother’s sword on the broadside of my own, spin to get in close to her, but she pushes me away with a strong hand. Although my legs are tiring, I feel reinvigorated when I suck in a deep breath of the cool, salty air.

  Mother dances to the side, onto the hard sand, her feet lithe and graceful like an animal’s. “I don’t know,” she says. “They don’t always fight. Sometimes they move past us, searching for a safe place to land, to refill their freshwater supply.”

  I shove the tip of my sword in the sand and release it, letting it spring back and forth in the wind. Put my hands on my hips. “But why do they get to choose when we fight. Why can’t we attack them for a change?”

  She looks at me with an amused expression, her black ponytail dangling in front, over her shoulder. Her dark brown skin almost seems light brown against the darkening sky, which is one single mass of black clouds with no beginning and no end. Down the shoreline, lightning flashes in the distance. The wind picks up, tossing my untied hair around my face as easily as it picks up a fallen feather from one of the dozens of gulls that swirl overhead, cawing and crying. The waves are dark blue and churning, crashing on the sand with the strength and power of ten horses. The Deep Blue is restless.

  As usual, a storm is coming, and a fierce one at that.

  “Patience,” my mother says, and then leaps forward, the half-smile gone, her face hard with concentration. Her blade cuts toward me.

  Clang!

  I whip my own sword from the sand and narrowly manage to deflect hers away. Not that she would’ve hit me. But she would’ve pressed the point tight against my skin and lectured me on always being prepared, never letting my guard down, or any number of her favorite “Rider Lessons.”

  For a while we forget about the Soaker ships, forget about the cheers erupting from them as they passed, forget about everything but our own bodies, moving, slashing, blocking, fighting, preparing for…for what?

  Finally, my mother puts down her blade.

  “A storm is coming,” she says, but I don’t think she means rain and lightning and thunder.

  Though we both know we should run for shelter, for the camp, we sit on the sand for a while, just watching the gulls play on the gusting wind. Seems the storm isn’t close enough to scare them yet, and the birds are usually right.

  “I hate them,” I say to the ocean.

  “Who? The birds?” my mother says, and I can feel her smile on my face. She can be intense during training, but when she’s just my mother again she’s different.

  “The Soakers,” I say, looking at her quickly, matching her brown stare.

  She knows why, so she doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything, just throws an arm around me and pulls me into her chest. Her heart beats firmly against my face.

  “Don’t be so quick to grow up,” she finally says.

  I pull away, embarrassed that I gave myself the comfort of my mother’s tenderness. I’m not a child anymore. “I’ll be a Rider soon,” I say, frowning. “Is Father trying to delay it?”

  “Your father loves you,” she says, “it would do you well to remember that.”

  “Father’s a coward,” I say before I can stop myself. But why should I stop myself? The words are on my tongue most of the time, why shouldn’t I speak them? They’re the truth, after all.

  “Your father’s a hero,” Mother says.

  Something red and hot and sizzling with energy tears through me, like lightning striking a lonely tree. I shudder, breathing heavy, trying to control my anger like Mother has taught me. I want to swallow the words in my mouth, if only because I love my father, despite his weaknesses, despite all his wise words and no action, despite the coward that he is. But I can’t, because of Sorrow. Because of Sadness. Because of Loss.

  Because of Paw. My brother. My lost brother.

  “He let him die,” I say through tight lips.

  “He tried to save him,” Mother says.

  “He was too weak.” My jaw aches from grinding my teeth.

  “No, you don’t remember. You were too little.”

  I slam my eyes shut, squeeze them so hard, like maybe if I push enough, I can force my head to remember. I want to ask her to tell me, to tell me what happened that day, the cold, hard truth, but I won’t. I can’t. I have to remember it on my own so I know it’s real. Plus, I’ve asked before, and she wouldn’t talk about it. Why won’t she talk about it?

  Faint images flash in the darkness behind my eyelids. A cold, rainy night. From the little my mother has told me, I was three, Paw was four.

  I remember. I remember.

  We are playing together, Paw and me. Some silly game with stones and sticks. He tosses a stone, clapping and laughing when it bounces and rests on the stick. I frown, stamp my little foot. “No fair,” I say, even though I know it was perfectly fair.

  I throw my own stone, but it clatters away from the stick. “I win again!” Paw yells, his arms over his head in victory.

  I cross my arms and refuse to look at him, but then he’s there, with an arm around my shoulders, saying, “You’ll win the next one,” and I can’t stop the smile, because Paw is the best big brother I could ever ask for, and because I love him, and want to be just like him, and because we’re both going to be Riders one day…

&nb
sp; Screams in the distance. Angry screams. Scared screams. Violent screams.

  Torches surround us, flying through the air, carried by dark bodies. Riders, rushing to arms, to get their horses.

  But it’s too late. Too late.

  The Soakers are upon us with swords and knives and clubs, somehow managing to sneak in, already in the camp, slashing, cutting, killing…

  The memory starts to fade, like it always does at this point, but I squeeze my eyes shut tighter still, smack the heel of my hand against my forehead, forcing it to show me—

  —Paw’s death.

  I have to know why I survived and he didn’t.

  Thunder crashes, heavy and loud and close.

  “We have to go,” Mother says and my eyes flash open. When I look up, the gulls are gone.

  ~~~

  We’re drenched by the time we reach our tent. I duck inside first, with Mother right behind me. Father looks up from a piece of wood bark, where he’s writing something with a piece of chalkstone. We’ve startled him.

  Thunder booms overhead and his eyes flick upward, as if the tent might cave in on top of us. As if he’s just realized there’s a massive storm.

  I know what that means. He’s been gone. Not physically, like how Mother and I were down at the edge of the ocean, but mentally, spiritually—gone. Off in his own world, doing his Wisdom Man thing, discovering our fates by studying grains of sand in a water skin or herbs in a clay teapot. In other words, doing nothing, wasting time—while we trained for the next battle with the Soakers.

  “A bad one?” Father says when we sit next to each other on a blanket, drying off.

  Mother shrugs. “No worse than the last one.”

  As the name suggests, storm country is a place where nature fights against itself constantly, warring in the skies—not with swords and shields and horses and ships, but with lightning and dark clouds and—

  Boom!

  Another heavy clap of thunder shatters the brief silence, momentarily drowning out the drum of the rainfall on the tent. Father twitches slightly. Mother and I stay as still as stones.

  “What are you doing, Father?” I ask, motioning to the marked tree bark.

  His eyes meet mine and I see the fear in them as they widen. “I had a vision,” he says, and it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud. He’s always having visions, but none of them ever seem to make any sense. Just because one Man of Wisdom said he would become a Man of Wisdom when he was a baby doesn’t mean it’s true.

  “Tell us,” Mother says seriously. I shoot her a frown, which she returns with a clear warning on her parted lips: don’t.

  I turn back to my father, sigh, say, “Yes, tell us, Father.”

  “It involves the Soakers,” he says, which isn’t at all what I expected, and suddenly I find myself inching forward, lifting my head, interested—actually interested—in what my father has to say.

  “Are we going to fight them? Are we going to kill them?” I ask eagerly, forgetting that his visions don’t mean a damn thing.

  Now it’s his turn to frown, turning our happy family gathering into a frown party. “Sadie,” he says, and I can feel the lecture in the way he speaks my name. “Our existence is not all about killing Soakers. Sometimes the more important choice is not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”

  Spare one? Is he talking about the Soakers? Because I refuse to offer any of the wave riders my pity. “Is that the choice they made when they killed Paw?” I say, my voice rising.

  “Sadie, I—”

  “When you let them kill Paw?” I practically shriek. Bright lights flash through our tent as lightning bursts all around us.

  “Sadie!” my mother snaps, but I’m not listening to her, not seeing the lightning, not caring about the way my father’s face has drooped like the wax on a melting candle.

  Wet or not, storm or not, I don’t care. I bash through the tent flaps and out into the thunder and lightning.

  Chapter Five

  Huck

  “My son!” my father bellows, his face beaming with something I’ve never seen before. Excitement? Sort of. Happiness? Definitely. Pride? Aye! There it is. My father’s face is full of pride. And I think it’s for me.

  The crowd cheers, but my father, Admiral Jones, waves his hands to silence them. “Thank you all for coming. This is an important day for me, for my family, for my son.” More cheers. “Today my son, Huck Jones, becomes a man!”

  The roars are deafening but I barely hear them because I’m basking under the glow of my father’s pride. But then I have a thought that makes me go numb:

  Is it real?

  My father once taught me that part of being a leader is being what people expect you to be. “Isn’t that lying?” I had asked, remembering how my mother always told me never to lie, no matter what the circumstances. “No,” Father had said, smiling broadly, “it’s leadership.”

  Is that what he’s doing now? Pretending to be proud of his son because that’s what’s expected of him on my fourteenth birthday?

  But still.

  It’s wonderful seeing him like this—the best feeling in the world. The numbness fades because I don’t care whether he’s lying, or just being a leader, or whatever. For right now, he’s proud of me.

  “May I present to you…my son…Lieutenant Jones!” He pulls his sword out, hilt branded with the mark of The Merman’s Daughter, and I do the same, my sword matching his

  (Except I lost the fight with the bilge rat.)

  (And my father never loses.)

  and we raise our swords above our heads, and I feel full of power and strength, and for the first time in my life I’m fearless, and I can do anything, conquer anything, and I’m ready,

  (I think.)

  ready to become a man.

  No, I am a man. Lieutenant Jones.

  Someone starts singing…

  “Yo, ho, on land or at sea; yo, ho, get down on your knees…”

  …and soon we’re all singing, me and my father included, his proud arm around me—only no…no, it’s just me and Cain.

  “Yo, ho, we’ll fight to the end; yo, ho, we’ll fight cuz we’re men!”

  My father’s gone.

  But I don’t care because he was proud of me tonight and he’s a busy, important man and I can’t expect him to stick around for a silly party that’s all for me. So I keep singing and smiling and my friends come up and shake my hand like I’m something, someone bigger than them, because I am.

  I’m a man.

  And then the grog starts flowing and I’m allowed to have a few burning—and if I’m being honest, quite disgusting—sips this time, because I’m of age and I’m a lieutenant now, so who would stop me anyway?

  But father’s not here.

  But I don’t care because the grog has sent warmth through my belly and the stars are shining even though there’s lightning flashing off yonder in storm country. And the white sails are full and it’s a perfect night for sailing. And—and—

  —father’s not here.

  I take another sip of grog and force it down.

  Someone picks me up, Cain I think, and throws me off onto the lower decks where eager hands await to catch me, to hold me up, to pass me around like a hero’s welcome. And I’m laughing and my friends are fighting through the crowd alongside me, laughing with me. Suddenly I realize: one of the worst days of my life has become one of the best nights of my life. Maybe even the best night.

  A night to remember.

  ~~~

  “Uhhh,” I moan the next morning, blinking in the dark of my cabin.

  Why is someone hammering on my head?

  I reach up, swat at whichever friend is playing the trick on me, waking me up with repeated knocks on my skull. But no one’s there and my hands whoosh through the empty air.

  I feel around for the dark drapes covering my cabin window, pull them aside, squint when the circular beam of light hits me full in the face. The sun is way above the horizon and I’m lat
e. Very late. Not a good start for my first day as a man.

  And my head—oh, my aching head. I drank way too much grog, stayed up way too late. “Just one more song,” the men kept saying and I wasn’t about to deny them. Not on my night. Not when the jokes about me and the bilge rat had ended hours earlier.

  Someone knocks on the door. “Lieutenant Jones?” a voice says.

  They’re looking for my father, but he’s not a lieutenant. “Admiral Jones,” I correct, pulling my pillow over my head to drown out the continued knocking by the confused sailor.

  “That’s your father’s name,” the voice says, and I realize it’s Cain and he’s talking about me, because

  (Aye, I’m a lieutenant now, aren’t I?)

  “Come in,” I say, my voice raspy.

  I hear the cabin door swing open and I peek out from beneath my pillow to see Cain, dressed in his dirty blue uniform, smiling like he’s the one who just became a man. “You alive?” he asks.

  “Barely,” I say. “But I’ve got a headache the size of the ship’s hull.”

  “I bet,” Cain says. “I think you might’ve overdone it a little.” He’s still smiling like my headache is the funniest joke of the yar.

  I groan in response. Then ask, “Why are you here anyway?”

  With those five words, his smile vanishes as if it was never there in the first place. He runs a hand through his long, dark hair. “It’s time,” he says.

  “Time for what?” I mutter.

  “Time to go.”

  A shudder passes through me and I have to clutch my stomach because something’s roiling in there, threatening to come back up. Still wearing my clothes from the night before, I stagger to my feet, stomp past Cain, climb the stairs three at a time, smashing my shoulder into the wooden wall when the ship lurches and my stomach along with it.

  The sun warms my skin when I burst out into the fresh air, but it doesn’t help. I’ve got to get to the side. I rush starboard because the boat’s edge is closer on that side, and because my father is port and stops talking to the rudderman when he sees me, shooting glares in my direction that hold none of the false pride I saw from him last night.