by David Estes
“No,” I say again, thinking of how to get this conversation back on track, if it ever was at all, but finding myself utterly at a loss for words.
“No what?” she says, glaring, her hands on her hips. “You have two big men drag me down here and you’re surprised I’m jumping to conclusions?”
“I only wanted to talk to you. Like when you climbed the quarterdeck stairs.”
“And you slapped me and threw me in the brig.”
“You left me no choice,” I say, annoyed at the pleading tone in my voice.
“You’re just like the others,” she says. Like who? Like my father? Like Hobbs? Am I? Should I be?
“Then why did you tell me your name?”
The question closes her lips, stops whatever retort or accusation that was flying up from her throat. She takes a deep breath, swallowing it like a bite of gruel, closes her eyes as if remembering something.
Eyes still closed, she says, “Why did you save my life?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
Her eyes flash open. “You should’ve let me die. There’s no life for me here.”
The despair in her voice surprises me. A girl so young, so seemingly full of life, shouldn’t sound like that. It reminds me of someone. My mother, I realize with a jerk. Before the accident she had started sounding like that, more and more with each passing day.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” I manage to get out.
She sucks in another deep breath. “Why am I here?” she asks, but this time there’s no accusation in her voice and she sounds almost defeated.
“I wanted to—”
“I know, I know, you wanted to burnin’ talk to me, but why else? What’s the cover story?”
“I’m going to teach you to repair sails,” I say.
She raises an eyebrow, as if surprised. “And what if I refuse?”
“Then I’ll leave you alone forever,” I say.
She lifts a hand to her brown forehead, massages her skin. Seconds tick by. “When do we start?” she asks.
I can’t hide my smile this time. “Immediately,” I say.
Chapter Twenty
Sadie
Nothing my mother put me through in training is as hard as taming a horse.
Especially when the horse is Passion, living up to her namesake with every stomp, every gallop, every barely thwarted effort to escape. The stables are nothing more than a challenge to her. Thrice now she’s smashed through her gate, come charging out of the stables, knocking stable boys and Riders out of her way, snorting and whinnying when she felt the light breeze on her nose.
And thrice we’ve brought her back.
Growing up training with my mother, I dreamed many times of the day I’d receive my horse, how I’d jump upon her and gallop off across the plains, wind streaming through my hair and her mane, connected by a bond as thick and strong as bone.
I haven’t even thought about riding Passion yet, and it’s been several weeks.
Sometimes she seems calm, almost tame, like when she drinks from the water trough, but then I blink and she’s kicking the trough over, spilling a lake of water through her stall, smashing into the wooden sides as if her freedom takes precedence over the wholeness of her body.
Freedom is an illusion.
Despite the silence that’s grown like a pregnant raincloud between my father and me, his words fill my mind more and more.
Listen to your father, for he is wise.
Is my mother right? Were her last words of advice more than just words?
To make matters worse, Remy is already riding his horse—a fully black stallion he’s named Bolt—the first of the new Riders to do so. Around and around they run, Remy whooping and hollering like they’ve been riding together their whole lives.
I look away from him and focus on Passion, who’s straining against the six ropes anchored deep in the ground that I’m using to keep control of her. If I had some help, I know I could tame her, but unfortunately, a Rider taming their horse is a solitary endeavor, part of the bonding process.
I approach her, hand extended in peace. “Shhh,” I say when she snorts, a sound full of heavy air and a warning. “I only want to talk to you.”
A change to my method is needed. I’ve tried brawn, pulling her with the ropes, futilely fighting her weight and strength. I’ve tried coercion, offering small morsels like apples and carrots to convince her to perform small tasks, like walking a short distance, or bowing her head, or strutting in a circle, but she seems immune to bribery. Most of the time she ends up knocking me over and taking the treats anyway.
I stop a few feet from her, speak to her. Not a command, sharp and demanding obedience, but soft and with meaning.
“You are perfection,” I say, receiving a low grumble that vibrates her lips in response.
Obviously, she seems to say.
“I am not.”
Again, her reply sounds like one of complete agreement.
“I need you.”
A soft whinny, her eyes blazing. I only need myself, is what I interpret.
“What if we were meant to be together?”
No response. Does she understand me? Has she really understood anything I’ve just said, or are the responses I’ve inferred just a child’s imagination?
Unfazed, I say, “What if our strength lies in our bond?” No response. “What if apart neither of us are really free, but slaves to not knowing what could have been?”
Her eyes, although as wild as ever, are fully focused on me. She has stopped straining against the ropes.
The wind, which was so strong a moment ago, has fallen silent, leaving us in a void of silence. Rider and steed. Sadie and Passion. In my mind, our names melt together until they are not worthy of the combined being we have become. No name is worthy.
“We can be invincible,” I say.
And I see it in her eyes: a change, an understanding, an agreement.
And she explodes forward, forcing me to jump out of her path as she pulls up each and every stake, shooting them into the air, galloping forward in a jumble of power and ropes and pride.
And I’m laughing and shouting and panting, watching her go. Watching her run across the plains away from me. Because I know.
She’ll turn around this time.
And she does.
She stops and turns, looking back at me with frustration. Although she thinks she wants to, she can’t go. Because now she needs me too.
~~~
Coming to a tenuous partnership with Passion doesn’t help things at home. Father is still Father, full of unwanted advice and long periods of silence while he meditates, seeing visions that will cost other sons and daughters their mothers and fathers. Calamity and fire and death and pain and fear and madness.
I’m becoming more cynical of the function of the Men of Wisdom with each passing day. Of what use are predictions of the future if you can’t change them?
Sometimes just looking at him makes my chest burn with anger at the dual losses I’ve suffered. My brother and mother. My playmate and master.
But we suffer each other out of necessity.
When I see love and caring for me in his eyes, I return it with a glare, not feeling bad about it until later, when Passion chastises me by throwing me from her back. She only seems to do that when I’ve been cruel to my father, as if she can sense the anger inside me.
“I’m sorry, Pash, but you don’t know the history,” I say, brushing grass and dirt off my black riding robe. I crack my jaw a few times, feeling it click back into place. Passion allows me to ride her now, but only on her terms, and if she wants to discard me she does so with vigor and without regret.
He’s your father, her snort seems to say.
“And he’s a coward.”
After that comment she won’t let me ride her for the rest of the afternoon.
~~~
That night our tent feels more like a prison, such is the tension between us, thick and ba
rred, twisted with barbs and spikes.
When I make a move to leave, to go for a walk, my father stops me. “Sadie,” he says, his voice cracking.
I whirl on him, unable to hold back the clench I feel between my ribs. “Unless you’re going to admit your faults, the hand you played in Paw’s and mother’s deaths, I suggest you let me go.”
His eyes are instantly clouded with tears, full of shame and self-loathing. The truth is in the heavy mist, raining from his eyelids and quickly forming into filthy puddles made dark by his deep brown eyes.
The light flickers like an omen.
I turn and he says, “Wait.”
“Admit the truth,” I say, not looking back.
“Sadie, I can’t,” he says and I know the tears are falling, dripping from his chin, splashing his weakness in his lap.
“You can’t or you won’t?” I say to the tent opening.
“Both.”
He can’t because he’s pathetically weak. And he won’t because he’s ashamed of himself.
“Right,” I say. “Of course.” My sarcasm only adds to the tension.
“I have something I have to tell you,” he says, and a sharp breath whistles between my teeth. Is this it? Will he finally admit his wrongdoing, be a man?
“Does it have to do with Paw or Mother?” I ask.
Yes.
“No,” he says.
“Save it for someone who cares,” I say, pushing into the night.
“Wait,” he says again, but I don’t.
I’ve got no one to talk to. Remy’s tried to speak to me a few times, but I’ve ignored him, and finally he stopped trying. Passion will only give me a hard time about the way I’m treating my father and I’m really not in the mood for a lecture.
With nowhere else to go, I run for the beach, nodding to the watchmen on duty as I pass the last few tents in the camp circle. Although the air is dry, lightning crackles in the distance, warning of an impending storm. Bumps rise up on my arms and I hug myself, rubbing them away.
The ocean is surprisingly calm, and I sit for a while, watching it breathe. They say Mother Earth’s hand extends to the very edges of the sea, at which point the Deep Blue governs itself, but I don’t know if I believe that. There are too many signs of the good Mother’s hand in everything. She paints the clouds overhead, lifts the seabirds on gusts and bursts of wind, heats the ocean with her fiery sun.
If anything, the Deep Blue is a footman to Mother Earth.
The moon is bright tonight, rolling out a carpet of light across the ocean, shimmering anywhere the water pops up. A small wave rolls onto the sand, reaching toward me, sending crabs scurrying out of the way.
The hairs rise on the back of my neck and I leap to my feet, spinning around, ready to defend myself against the attack I feel coming.
Remy stands statue-still, eyes as wide as a full moon. “You’re not going to hit me, are you?” he says.
I’m surprised to feel contradicting desires in my heart. On one hand hitting him sounds like a pretty decent idea, but a more mysterious, less-controllable part of me wants to be close to him again, to have things be like they were before, when we were growing closer, back when my world wasn’t dead and burned, back before we were Riders. When we could swim naked in the ocean.
Has he come to make peace?
I shrug. “I’ll hit you if you want me to,” I say.
He laughs, and I realize how much I’ve missed it. My nerves, which have been so frayed and torn lately, seem to twist themselves back together.
Pain wells inside of me, gathering itself in bunches, aching like deep bruises.
“Would hitting me make you feel any better?” Remy asks.
Probably. “There’s a good chance,” I say.
“Then do it,” he says.
But I can’t, not when I haven’t even told him why I’m so angry with him.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
“My father sent me.”
What? “Why?”
“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. I went to your tent first and your father said you’d left. He seemed pretty shattered. Did something happen?”
If only. “Nothing happened,” I say. “Ever since my mother…” Why am I telling him any of this? “Should I go to see your father?”
“Yes,” he says, and there’s a hitch in his voice that tells me he wishes it wasn’t one of his father’s errands that brought us to speak again.
I have to tell him. I have to. Even if it fails to quench the flames of my anger, at least he’ll know why.
But I don’t. I walk away, leaving him standing on the beach staring forlornly at the moonlit ocean.
Chapter Twenty-One
Huck
The men, women, and bilge rats, although pretending to carry out their duties, are watching us. Jade climbs the mast easily, while I am forced to tether myself to the wood and inch my way up, up, up, for fear of falling to my death.
For the first hour we don’t really talk, don’t so much as look at each other, as we construct a series of rope walkways that reach the portions of the largest sail that are most in need of repair.
Eventually, the eyes get bored of watching, and we’re alone again.
Finally, I look at her, tired and hot from climbing and straining against the pull of the ocean. Her brown eyes are bright, her breathing normal. She doesn’t even look winded, and while I can feel the drops of sweat meandering down my cheeks, her face is dry.
Weird how I never noticed how beautiful brown skin could look on a bilge rat. Perhaps it’s because I never really noticed the bilge rats at all, I realize.
And why not?
I want to say it’s because my father told me they were meant to be invisible, working without being seen, but I know in my heart it was simply easier not to see them.
“What next?” she says, and I realize I’ve been staring at her for too long.
I pull away from her with an awkward jerk. “Uh, I guess we start sewing,” I say.
“You look like you need a bloody break,” she says.
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you look searin’ exhausted,” she says.
I laugh at her honesty, but not so loud that we attract attention. This’ll be over in a second if Hobbs—who’s always lurking—thinks there’s something going on. Which there isn’t.
I pretend to lecture her, to instruct her on the finer aspects of sail repair, motioning to a particularly large tear. But really, I say, “What does searin’ mean? I’ve never heard anyone say that word like you just did.”
Now it’s her turn to laugh. “Then you ain’t never talked to any of the bloody bilge rats.” And I haven’t. Of course I haven’t. Well, except for her, of course.
I shake my head, admitting as much.
“It’s a mild curse word, not unlike bloody,” she says. “From my people, from my lands.”
I frown. “What people?” What lands?
While my eyebrows sink further down, hers lift. “Where they take us from,” she says. “Fire country.”
Although the ropes are secure, I grip the mast harder. My fingers start to ache. “Fire country? What’s that?”
Her eyes are giant orbs now, shockingly big, transfixed on me and what apparently is a ridiculous question. “Where do you think we come from?” she asks.
“From nowhere,” I say, parroting my father’s insistent answer, realizing as the words float off my tongue how silly they sound. “Or from the ground or the sky, or something,” I add, my cheeks burning.
“Everyone comes from somewhere,” Jade says. “We’re from a burnt desert called fire country. The Icers take us and sell us to your father.” A skeptical look flashes across her face. “You’re saying you don’t know any of this? That your father brought us here against our will from fire country.”
I feel dumb, but I can’t lie. “I didn’t know,” I say, not admitting I don’t know who “the Icers” are either. “But I don’t think
my father would do that, not without good reason.”
She glares at me and I wish I had somewhere to hide. “I’m here, ain’t I? You saying I’m lying?”
I release the mast, letting myself dangle from the rope harness, hold my hands in front of me, palms forward. “No, no, not at all. I’m just wondering whether there’s more to it. Like did you commit a crime? Were you a prisoner?”
Jade’s glare softens, but remains. “You’re wooloo,” she says, which means as much as gobbledygook to me. “I was a child when my father said I was going on an incredible journey. One that was just for children.”
“Your father?”
She nods.
“Your father sent you here?”
Another nod. She looks at her hands. Is that…embarrassment? Shame? I’ve never seen either emotion on this girl before, and it doesn’t look natural. Why would a father send his daughter into a life of slavery? It’s the question I want to ask, but I won’t, not when Jade’s shoulders are slumped like they are now.
“Let me show you how to fix one of these tears,” I say, and her face brightens, like my change of subject was a gift.
For the next two hours we work, balancing on the rope bridges we constructed, using pre-cut squares of cloth to patch up the raggedy sails. And because we do it while the ship’s in motion, we don’t even lose any time.
When the sun begins to splash into the ocean, finishing its daylong arc across the red sky, we pause.
“There’s a lot more work to be done,” I say. “But it can wait for another day.”
“You know, you’re not much like your father,” Jade says.
A balloon swells in my stomach, pushing on my insides, making me feel slightly sick. “I’m not?” I say, wishing I was. Strong, fearless, a leader.
“Huck, it’s a good thing,” she says, and the balloon pops, though I’m not sure why; perhaps because I like the way she says my name—my real name—not Lieutenant Jones.
