The Voyage to Magical North

by Claire Fayers

  A pair of strong hands caught her. “Steady,” said Cassie in her ear.

  A light flared. Tom held a lantern up. Brine pushed Cassie aside. “We’ve got to go. Marfak West’s got Peter, and the Onion is sinking. Now,” she added, afraid they were going to get into another pointless discussion.

  Cassie’s expression set hard. “Did you see a way out of here?”

  Brine gulped and nodded.

  Cassie swung away from her. “Then what are you all waiting for, you scurvy knaves? All hands on deck!”

  * * *

  The setting of the sun was worse than the never-ending daylight. Ewan Hughes had become used to the unnatural green sky. Night somehow felt wrong. He lit another lantern and watched the crew work. To his left, six pirates were lashing planks together to make rafts while, on the right, two human chains were jeering each other on as they raced to pass bundles of goods from belowdecks. Trudi, not one to let a little thing like the sinking of her galley stop her from cooking, had lit a barbecue mid-deck and was roasting skewers of meat.

  “Fish-bird on a stick?” she offered Ewan. He took one. It tasted every bit as bad as he’d expected. Holding it, he surveyed the wreck of the Onion. Another section of wood broke away and splashed into the sea. Fish-birds darted after it and tugged it underwater.

  “Cassie will come back,” said Trudi. “There’s plenty of time yet.” She pushed her frizz of hair back off her face and smiled nervously. Tim Burre limped past backward, dragging a plank. Stepping out of his way, Ewan felt a frown forming. Everyone was staying far too busy, trying to fill up every second with activity so they didn’t have to think about what was going to happen next. He walked to the side of the deck and stared out.

  If Cassie wasn’t back by sunset, she’d said, Ewan should leave without her. He shook the thought away angrily. Cassie was coming back. Cassie came back from everything. She was the greatest sea captain in the world, ever, and she wouldn’t abandon her ship.

  Ewan stood and watched—he wasn’t sure how long—until faint fingers of light crawled back across the sky. The sun was coming up again. The sun that set only on the evening of Orion’s day, he remembered. They’d missed seeing Magical North. He guessed it didn’t really matter.

  He glanced down at the half-eaten fish-bird kebab in his hand, shrugged, and tossed it overboard.

  “I don’t think you should have done that,” said Trudi.

  A faint rattle of sound swirled around them: the clattering of angry beaks. Fish-birds popped their heads out of the sea and more of them leaned forward from the ice floes, shuffling their feet and jigging their wings up and down in a vengeful dance. Ewan’s legs trembled and he felt himself take a step forward. Too late, he remembered he was no longer tied to anything, and he didn’t care. He wanted to give up and fall into the sea because there really wasn’t any point carrying on.

  But even as fish-birds closed in around what was left of the ship and Ewan’s legs took him another step closer to the edge, he drew his sword. If there was such a thing as an afterlife, he promised himself, they’d all go into it fighting.

  The fish-birds snapped their beaks: It sounded like applause.

  And then, before another word could be thought or spoken, there came a rush of wind and a flapping of sails and the rising sun was momentarily blotted out as something dark and shaped like a ship shot around the side of the ice floes and headed straight for them. Suddenly released, Ewan collapsed to the deck. Hammers and swords and the untied ends of rope fell as every crewman, woman, and cat forgot everything else and stopped to stare in an utter eye-bogglement of disbelief.

  The ship wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be. It was a figment of a desperate imagination, no more. Any moment now, it would vanish, and they’d be back with the icy sea and fish-birds trying to drown them. Yet, in the moment while he waited for reality to set in, Ewan saw a long hull of auburn wood that glowed as if a thousand lanterns were burning inside it. Above the white sails fluttered a flag marked with a gold ring, and on the prow, written in letters as tall as a man and edged in gold, one word: ORION. And, standing on the deck, waving frantically, was Cassie O’Pia.

  “Ahoy, my hearties!” she shouted.

  “Pieces of eight!” yelled Brine enthusiastically.

  Fish-birds fled as the incoming ship cut through the ice floes. Ewan Hughes watched them go and wondered if this was part of the dream as well. He let go of his sword. The ship swung in a great arc and came to rest alongside the stricken Onion. A rope hit the deck by Ewan’s feet.

  Ewan shook himself out of his stupor. If he was having a dream, it was a remarkably stubborn one. And, by the look of the crew, they were all having it as well. A slow grin spread across his face. He stood and picked up the rope, leaned back on it to test it, and then—with a cry of “Happy day-after-Orion’s-Day!”—he swung across the gap.

  * * *

  The sight of the Onion had brought tears to Brine’s eyes, but then she’d spotted people on the wreckage, and when Ewan swung across to Boswell’s ship, she didn’t think she’d been so glad to see anyone ever.

  “I see you’ve had a spot of trouble,” said Cassie.

  Ewan Hughes was grinning like a madman. “Nothing we couldn’t handle. Where’s Marfak West?”

  The urge to cheer died in Brine’s throat. “He escaped,” said Cassie, throwing a quick glance at her. “Peter went after him. While we all stood there, he ignored the danger and threw himself after the vilest man in the world. He’s a hero.”

  Brine watched Tom’s lips move silently, and she knew he’d be writing all this down later. Peter would like being the hero of the story—if he ever found out. And of course he would, because they were going to find him.

  She kept that thought in her head while the crew brought across the supplies they’d managed to salvage from the wrecked Onion. The fish-birds watched, but they didn’t seem to like the new ship, and they kept their distance.

  Half an hour later, it was done. Brine looked overboard into the dark water, the last resting place of too many brave people. The Onion didn’t deserve to end up like this, none of them did—and this wasn’t over yet, she reminded herself. They still had to find Marfak West.

  Cassie clapped her hands, calling everyone to attention. “So here we are,” she said. “We’ve lost friends, we’ve lost the Onion, but we’re not defeated. We are going to find Marfak West, and we’re going to send him to the bottom of the ocean where he belongs.” She turned in Brine’s direction. “But first,” she added, “we have an initiation to perform.”

  Without warning, she swung round and seized Brine, lifting her off her feet so fast that they were halfway across the deck before Brine worked out what was happening.

  “What are you doing, you mad pirate?” she shrieked. “Let me go!”

  Ignoring her, Cassie carried her to the side of the ship and held her over the side. Brine immediately stopped yelling “let me go!” and started yelling “don’t drop me!”

  “You see how quickly someone can change her mind about what she wants?” Cassie joked. She adjusted her grip on Brine’s arms and bobbed her up and down.

  “Will you let me go?” shouted Brine.

  “Certainly,” said Cassie and dropped her.

  A heartbeat of screaming, plummeting panic, then a hand caught Brine’s wrist, nearly dislodging her arm from its shoulder as she jerked to a stop. She opened her eyes to see Cassie grinning down at her. Cassie helped her back over the deck rail, and Brine picked herself up, shaking and furious.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Her heart hammered loud enough to deafen her. “Don’t you know how cold that water is? You could have killed me.”

  Cassie stood back, a faint smile on her lips. “Did you really think I was going to drop you?”

  Brine balled her fists. “I think you’re all a pack of idiots, that’s what I think. You don’t know the first thing about pirating. You couldn’t even sell me and Peter on Morning without making a
mess of it. You listened to Marfak West and nearly got us all killed. And now Peter’s been swallowed by a whale, and I bet you’re not going to do anything about that, either.” Her throat burned.

  “But did you think I was going to let you go?” said Cassie.

  Brine wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “No, of course not. But—”

  “Good.” Cassie put a hand on her shoulder. “That means, deep down, you trust me. And that means next time I do something that looks incredibly stupid and dangerous, you’ll back me up.” Her gaze flicked round the rest of the people gathered. “I don’t care if my crew thinks I’m stupid. I don’t care if they make up silly songs behind my back.” She gave Ewan Hughes a quick smile. “All I ask is for them to trust me when it matters. And that’s especially important if you’re going to be my chief planner.”

  Brine’s mouth opened and shut. “I thought you never made plans.”

  “That was before we needed them,” said Cassie. “Maybe if we’d planned better, we wouldn’t be here now.” She glanced down. “Anyway, you seem to have a knack for it, and the rest of us haven’t had a lot of practice, and…” She cleared her throat. “And anyway. What do you say?”

  Brine gulped. She couldn’t make plans. Or, rather, she did, and they always went wrong. Like on Minutes, and then Morning, and then when she’d rescued Tom from Barnard’s Reach, which she hadn’t really planned very much in advance … but it had worked. When she thought about it, most of the plans that had gone wrong had worked out all right in the end, because they had brought her here and, even if she didn’t quite know how yet, she knew they were going to find Marfak West and rescue Peter.

  She couldn’t speak, since her throat felt too full of tears, but she nodded.

  “Then you are officially a member of the Onion crew,” said Cassie. “Welcome aboard.”

  The others crowded round. Ewan Hughes shook Brine’s hand solemnly. “Anytime you feel like learning how to kill someone with your bare hands, I’ll be happy to teach you.”

  “How about now?” Brine muttered, shooting a dark glance at Cassie. But she couldn’t keep herself from smiling. She was part of the crew. She belonged.

  Then she saw Tom. He was sitting against the deck rail. The cage with his messenger gull, brought across from the sinking Onion, stood beside him and the lone gull inside was squawking at him, but Tom paid no attention. He was looking down at a little bundle of sailcloth in his hands. Two feathers, one black, one white, were stuck carefully to the front. “My other gull,” he said sadly, holding up the bundle for Brine to see. “She made it back after all. Ewan saved her for me.”

  Brine sat down next to him. “Of course Ewan did. You’re one of the crew, too.”

  He shook his head. “I’m a librarian, not a pirate.”

  “You can be both. Look at Trudi. She’s a cook and a pirate.”

  “Yes, but she’s not a very good cook.”

  The thought made Brine giggle. She couldn’t help herself. Tom looked like he was going to laugh, too, but his eyes filled with tears instead. He bowed his head. “I don’t know why I’m feeling like this. She was only a bird. There are millions just like her. It’s not as if one seagull really matters, not compared with everything else.”

  Brine pulled him to his feet. Holding his hand, she walked with him to the side of the ship. “She was a brave gull,” she said. “She traveled where no gull had ever gone before, and she did her job. She came back, even though she had no message to carry.”

  Tom smiled through his tears. Gravely, he stood and released the gull’s body into the water. They stayed there for a long time, looking down at the sea. It was the first day of Octopus, Brine thought. The first day of winter. She glanced up in time to catch the tail end of a twist of crimson as the Stella Borealis bled and sighed. All the pirates were gathered on the other side of the ship, and, as Brine walked to join them, she saw why: The Onion was sinking.

  Waves washed the length of her deck. Every plank of wood rattled, as if the stricken hull was drawing one last, labored breath. Then she fell apart. The deck planks slid away one by one, the stump of the mainmast bowed to touch the foam-capped waves. A moment later, even the mast had vanished.

  A lone rowing boat bobbed on the settling waves, and the pirates hauled it aboard. “It’s the one we found you and Peter in,” Cassie told Brine. Her eyes were red, her smile far too bright. Brine swallowed the lump in her throat. She nodded her thanks because she couldn’t trust herself to speak. The salvage of one small boat was nothing compared with the loss of the Onion.

  “Where to, Captain?” asked Ewan. His voice was rough and cracked.

  Cassie looked at Brine expectantly. Brine looked down at her feet. She bit her lip. “Marfak West said he was going to undo everything you did. Where would he start?”

  “The Antares, of course,” said Cassie.

  “The Antares, which you sank. Then you know where the wreck is.”

  “Yes … oh.” Cassie brushed a hand across her eyes. “South,” she said. “All hands on deck, and hurry. We have a whale to catch.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Spellshapes are limited only by the magician’s imagination. Most magicians never go beyond what they themselves have been taught, and this is a good thing, for magic is most dangerous when combined with an active imagination.

  (From ALDEBRAN BOSWELL’S BIG BOOK OF MAGIC)

  “Shift yourself, crybaby,” Marfak West said. “We’re leaving.”

  Peter glared at him sullenly. His head ached and his eyes were sore, but he didn’t feel like crying anymore. He felt like punching Marfak West in the nose, although that was probably not the best idea. He stood up and almost fell straight back down as the meaty floor quivered.

  Marfak West took hold of his collar. “Stay close.”

  He drew a circle in the air. For a second or two, Peter thought the magician was casting a finding spell, but then magic appeared all around them, enclosing them both in a shining bubble.

  A deep groan ran through the whale’s belly, then a noise like thunder. The whale’s stomach shrank rapidly as a dark wall rushed toward them. By the time Peter realized he was seeing water and opened his mouth to scream, the flood had swallowed him. But instead of drowning him where he stood, it flowed up and over his head, beating at the edges of the magical light but not breaking through.

  Peter drew in a cautious breath and found he was still breathing air.

  “What—” he began.

  Water surged, carrying him with it. His feet broke through the protective magic and plunged into freezing sea. Peter snatched them back. Marfak West laughed, apparently enjoying the whole thing.

  With a final, agonized belch, the whale opened its mouth, and they tumbled out into the huge, black depths of the ocean.

  Silence. Sudden, deep silence. All Peter could hear was his own breathing, slowing as fear gave way to a strange sort of wonder. The whale watched them with mournful eyes that could have been human apart from their size, then it swung slowly around and swam away.

  Marfak West floated gently in the air bubble, smiling broadly.

  “Are you going to turn us into fish now?” asked Peter, half hoping that the answer would be yes.

  “You’re wasting air.” The magician gathered a handful of magic and cast a light down.

  The wreck of the Antares—it had to be the Antares—spread out like a gigantic, half-finished puzzle directly below them. As the light glided over it, Peter saw the crushed timbers, shells, and seaweed heaped over the shattered masts. Remnants of sail tugged and drifted in the water. A fish flitted past Peter’s face and landed inside the air bubble. Marfak West caught it and flicked it back into the sea with surprising gentleness and began drawing spellshapes, too fast for Peter to follow.

  The Antares stirred. Shells flew off in flurries as if the hull were shaking itself awake. Broken pieces of wood crawled together and levered themselves upright to become masts.

  Peter realized, too, a
s his legs suddenly became wet and cold, that the air bubble was shrinking. He was outside it from the knees down. He shot a glance at Marfak West, hoping the magician hadn’t noticed. If he had, he might decide he needed the air more than he needed an unwilling apprentice.

  Marfak West’s head turned, and his eyes narrowed as if he’d guessed exactly what Peter was thinking. Peter gulped in a lungful of air. In the same moment, the air bubble shrank so it barely covered his head and shoulders, and Marfak West gave him a push that sent him spinning out of the bubble altogether and into the sea.

  Oddly, Peter found he didn’t care. He’d almost drowned once already, and it hadn’t been too bad. There were fates worse than death, and at least he hadn’t had to marry Penn Turbill’s bladder-faced daughter. And he’d seen the world—not many people could boast about that. Not that he’d be able to boast about it, either, because you had to be alive to boast and he was just about to be disqualified. He wondered if his body would even float to the surface from this depth. He wondered …

  His last thought faded away.

  * * *

  Brine stood at the prow of the new Onion—Ewan Hughes had repainted her name as they sailed. The ship was still changing, the deck planks shifting from pale ash to a dirty bronze and back, but the changes were happening more gradually now, and the color shifts were less extreme, as if the ship was settling on some halfway stage between legend and reality.

  “Boswell said the universe is indecisive,” said Tom, joining her. “It generally doesn’t make up its mind about what it wants to be until somebody stares at it for a while.”

  At that moment, Brine couldn’t have cared less what Boswell thought of the universe, but at least it stopped her from wondering how long someone could survive inside a giant fish, especially with Marfak West for company.

  Tom frowned at her. “I read a story once about a man who was swallowed alive by a giant squid. He had to eat his way out. It took him a week, and forever after, the smell of fish sent him screaming inland.”