The Seventh Hour

by Tracey Ward

  “They better hurry. The frost is coming.”

  I nod my head, my eyes fixed on the ships. “Everyone is running late this year.”

  My older brother left for the city with a group of twenty men and women two weeks ago. They go twice a year to join in a souk that lines the streets of Porton with booths and shops selling goods that the surrounding villages have harvested or made during the six months of sunlight. We go to sell but we also go to stock up on what we don’t have here in the mountains. There are medicines that need to be bought, both for the animals and for us. Fertilizers and seeds. Cloth, machine parts, oil, tools. Most of the medicine we rely on the Eventide to bring in from other ports around the world. They ride into town before the start of the festival, charge merchants in the city sky high prices, the merchants then shoot the prices even higher for us, and the Poshers disappear before having to look us in the eyes.

  We hold festivals in our villages as well. Parties that run for weeks to celebrate being out of the caves. Outside in the fresh air, under the sky. We have to keep our homes completely blocked off from the elements when the sun sets or while it sits high and constant in the sky, but we have electricity. We have lights that simulate daylight to keep us and the animals from going insane. Nothing can compete with the real thing, though. With clouds and a breeze and the smell of the ocean.

  The parties ended two days ago. It felt weird. Normally the souk crew is back from the city in time for the last days but they never showed. We all assumed they were waiting for the Eventide to show up and sell their overpriced goods but if they’re just sailing by now it’s going to be cutting it close. Easton and the others might be trekking home in the dark. They’ll either have to take the tunnels or face the animals gathering food for hibernation. The bears will be prowling the wild in droves in the next few days. The wolves too. All of them eager to get what they need and go to ground before the vishers wake up.

  No one wants to be on land when that happens.

  Lightning strikes in the west behind the ships. The storms are closing in on each other, moving inland and carving a path right over the top of the Eventide. From our vantage point on the ridge I spot other Gaian’s lighting torches, signaling to the fishing crews to get inside. They’re abandoning the beach, running inland. Thunder rumbles, distant and angry, and I absently take Karina’s hand in mine.

  “We better get inside,” I tell her, watching the clouds. “The storm is about to start.”

  She nods in silent understanding as she follows me down the hill. We hurry together, our hands loosely clasped, and it’s not until we’re halfway down the mountain that I’m aware of it. My stomach clenches for a third time, painfully bloated with joy and a weird sense of hope.

  It doesn’t last.

  Chapter Three

  Liv

  A strong hand grabs onto me, the grip like an iron shackle around my wrist. I instinctively wrap my hand around the arm attached to it to sturdy our connection. My body stops falling and begins swinging instead, my face heading straight for the hull at the bow of the ship. I don’t fight it.

  I curl into a ball as much as I can, taking the brunt of the hit with my shoulder. My body makes a hard thunk! as it connects with the wood. I shriek in pain, closing my eyes so hard it hurts.

  Gav holds onto me as I swing slowly, waiting for my sideways momentum to die out. I feel cold, salty wisps of sea spray peppering my bare skin, reminding me of how close I came to falling into its deadly grasp. Even if I could swim I’d be dead. They wouldn’t come back for me. We never go back for anyone. And no one can swim forever.

  When I’ve stilled Gav starts to pull me up. He grunts and grumbles above me with each hard, decisive yank. My hair flies around my eyes, giving me shattered glimpses of his strained face and the corded muscles under his brown skin. The dark lines of the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. Mine stands out even darker, fresher. Smaller but no less important.

  I use my other arm to grab onto whatever I can to help him hoist me up until finally I’m flopping over the railing, gasping like a fish out of water. Gav stands hunched over me, his hands on his knees as he breathes harshly through his nose, but I barely see him. Instead I stare up at the sky, my sight going fuzzy around the edges as adrenaline spikes my heart rate far too high. My shoulder aches, my pride is destroyed, and my gut is clenched by the darkness of the sky. I know it’s not possible at this hour but I swear I can see stars poking out through the perfect dusky blue.

  It’s a terrifying thought.

  My mother’s face appears over mine, blocking out the sky with her blond curls and tense gray eyes.

  “What were you thinking?!” she hisses loudly.

  I close my eyes. “I wasn’t.”

  “Is this a cry for attention? Because I promise you, you’ll get it, but it won’t be the kind you’re hoping for.”

  “I wasn’t hoping for anything. I just…”

  “You just what, Livandra?”

  I flinch at the use of my full name. At the weight of it and everything it carries.

  “I just wanted to be alone,” I admit, opening my eyes reluctantly.

  Mother stands up straight, looking down her nose at me. “Your father won’t be happy about you making a scene like this. People are always watching.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  Me too.

  “He’s on the third Dasher,” Gav reminds her, offering me his hand to help me up. His voice has taken on that charming cadence he has that’s like a balm to our mother’s overactive nerves. “He didn’t see her. More than likely only one or two of the crew did. We can contain this.”

  “I won’t lie to him,” she replies stiffly.

  “No one asked you to. If he never asks about it you never have to lie about it.”

  She glances at me, looking me up and down from my bare feet to my loose, disheveled hair. I expect her to snap at me again. To tell me for the millionth time to act like a lady or remind me how important our family’s image is, who my father is, but she doesn’t do any of that. Instead she stares me straight in the eyes and her face softens, turning almost sad.

  “I can’t protect you like I did when you were a girl,” she tells me tenderly. She touches my arm lightly, her fingers covering the ink on my skin. “You’re a woman now. You’ll have to fight your own battles.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I promise.

  Her lips purse tightly. “I hope to God that’s true.”

  Gav takes her hand in his and squeezes it warmly. “Everything will be alright. Don’t worry.”

  She smiles up at him gratefully. Her face glows golden as the east horizon when she looks at Gav. He’s her pride, her joy, her success. A bright boy bursting with manners and kindness and the unmistakable, unfakable ‘it’ that belongs to all great leaders. He’s destined for everything, for the head of every table of every house in our tribe, and she couldn’t be prouder.

  She couldn’t wonder more where she went wrong with me.

  “We’ll keep it quiet,” my mother agrees, deftly plucking the ornate necklace from Gav’s hand. She brings it to me, holding it out to wrap around my throat. “Your father doesn’t have to know. Not if you promise me it’s the last time.”

  “I promise,” I vow stiffly.

  “Good.” She clasps the jewels around my neck where they sit heavy like a yoke against my collar. She takes my shoulders in her hands to hold me steady. “You’ve been out of sorts lately, Livandra. Missing meals, avoiding your studies. I really hope this isn’t about that boy.”

  I hold statue still, willing myself not to cringe. To shudder.

  ‘That boy’ was a beautiful sixteen year old carpenter with elegant hands and an ear for the piano. I caught him playing it one day on our Dasher when he was supposed to be fixing a broken chair in the dining room. He was embarrassed to be caught but when I sat down next to him and begged him to keep playing he smiled and humored me. He was wi
ld and unpracticed. A natural with so much talent it burst from his fingers in angry low notes and delicate, fluttering high notes, running then slowing in a frolicking refrain that left me breathless. I sat with him for only ten minutes listening to his song and in that time I felt something so vivid and real, untamed and unstructured, I could barely speak. I had never known chaos could be so breathtaking. Even as he stopped, as he leaned toward me and pressed his lips to mine, I couldn’t find words to describe the connection I felt to him in that moment. To his music and his emotion. Even now I can’t say what it meant to me.

  My father caught us. He pulled me from the piano bench, cornered the boy, and beat him with a leg from the broken chair. I cried and screamed for him to stop, but he never hesitated. He didn’t slow, not until the boy collapsed on the ground at his feet. He was in the hospital in the city for months recovering, and even though I never saw him again I heard he would never look the same. He’d probably never play the same either. He’d gone all but deaf in his left ear.

  “No, Mother,” I reply coldly, “it’s not about—“

  Lightning crackles across the sky behind us, reflecting across the water like flames on a fractured mirror. A boom of thunder drums inside my ears, rattling my bones until I’m trembling.

  I look to Gav anxiously. His face is on the sky before it lowers to find mine, and in his gaze I find everything I’m feeling. Fear, anxiety. Acceptance. We’ve been running from these storms for weeks, falling farther back into the dark than we’ve ever done in our lifetime, and the fact that they’ve caught up to us is not a surprise. It’s our worst fears come to life, but it’s like we’ve been waiting for it.

  “The Moles are running,” Mother whispers, her hands tightening on my arms.

  She’s looking to the land, the continent that’s always on our starboard. Dark shadows scurry across the landscape with torches in hand. They’re running for their holes in the mountains to hide from the storm like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

  I shake off my mother’s hands and take hold of her arm. “We should get below decks,” I tell her firmly. “We’ll sit in the parlor and play cards. The worst of it will pass soon.”

  She looks to the south where the other ships sail ahead of us. “Your father—“

  “Will be fine,” Gav assures her with a practiced, winning smile. “The other Dashers are farther ahead of it than we are and once we speed up we’ll be clear of it. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Yes, you’re right. Livandra,” Mother says to me as she steps closer to Gav. To his reassuring warmth and strength. “Get your shoes and follow us down.”

  I smile kindly at her, nodding my head, but I don’t speak. I hold my tongue that dies to thrash against the order.

  She frowns at me before she turns.

  That’s the last thing I see; my mother’s frown. It’s fitting in a way. My father’s frown was no doubt the first thing I saw when I was born. Abject disappointment should be the last thing I know before I die.

  The world explodes as lightning strikes the ship. It pierces the deck, digging deep into the hull where lives, breaths, and babies lie. That’s what occurs to me as I’m thrown backward, spiraling toward the water again with no hand to reach for this time. I think of all the lives on the boat that are already lost. Of all of the lives that will be lost in the coming moments.

  I think of Gav; my life, my light, my sun that I’d follow to the ends of the earth.

  As I hit the icy water, the world going black as the night, I’m screaming his name.

  Even in the muffled world under the weight of the sea, I can hear the ship crack and groan. It’s a lost cause, I know it. Dead as its passengers. And it isn’t the first time. Sailing the seas like we do isn’t as easy and blissful as the people living on the land like to think. When a storm hits, and they always do, Moles can escape into the safety of their mountains, digging and burrowing down. Not us. When a storm strikes at sea you have nowhere to hide. We have to ride it out and pray we survive. And we do it alone.

  If a ship is struck as my home has been now, the others don’t come back for survivors. It sounds calloused, and maybe it is, but there’s no other way. The survival of our tribe depends on us making port when planned and remaining in the perfection that is the Seventh hour. For any of us to stray outside of it, ahead or behind, is deadly. We’re not conditioned for the cold or the heat. I can barely see in the dark and when we ride too close to the Sixth hour the glaring light makes my eyes ache in my skull. The heat hurts my skin like a burn from boiling oil.

  So I know when I hit the water that I’m alone, as is every other person living on this ship.

  I kick hard, reaching with my arms as my lungs scream for relief. I fly through the bubbles and currents that swirl around me, try to confuse me, trap me, bury me. My hands strike against something solid that cracks my bones painfully. I take hold of it in blind desperation. My wide open, terrified eyes see the outline of the object through the water – a broken piece of the hull most likely. I don’t care what it is, it’s floating and it can support me so I pull on it until it brings me topside in a flurry of limbs and gasping breaths.

  I break the dark surface just in time to see the ship snap nearly in two. The mast is in flames, the sails being devoured angrily as a violent wind picks up and whips them harshly. There’s screaming coming from every direction, pieces of the ship and the contents of the hull already spilling out into the water.

  It’s darker than I’m used to. I can’t tell what’s human and what’s floating garbage. Our lives are scattered across the surface of the water, bobbing like bloated corpses. Despite my blindness, in the distance I spot the receding shape of the other four Dashers. The imposing shape of the massive city slowly moving on. Leaving us alone. Leaving us to die.

  “Gav!” I shout, searching frantically for him in the bedlam. “Gav!”

  “Help,” a weak voice calls.

  I barely hear it over the wind rushing through the flames, fanning them higher and higher.

  “Where are you?” I cry.

  Silence.

  It wasn’t Gav. It was a kid, a little girl I think. I look for her everywhere but all I see are floating barrels. Soaked clothes and cloth. Planks of charred, broken wood.

  “Hello?!”

  “Help.”

  I see her. If it weren’t for her bright blond hair I’d never have found her in the rubble. I surge toward her, using my board to keep me afloat as I kick with all my strength.

  The girl is holding onto a rope hanging off the side of the ship, one that’s disappearing into the water. I take hold of her small hands to help her take hold of the board. Once she’s holding on tight enough I kick to turn us, putting our back to the sinking wreckage. I push us away from the danger.

  Just as I’m beginning to hope we’re clear I hear a sharp snap followed by the rush of flames. I don’t think. I don’t plan or consider the folly of my actions. All I can think of is saving this girl.

  I cry out as I push her and the board forward. I shove with everything I’ve got, my face going underwater with the effort. She surges away across the water. She’s heading toward the building black waves surrounding us as the storm increases with incredible speed. She might not make it. She may capsize out there or be swept off of the safety of the board. Either way, she’s better off than I am.

  I don’t see the flaming section of our ship before it hits me. I barely even feel it before I’m pulled from the world into infinite darkness, but I hear it. I know it’s coming.

  And I have nowhere to go but down.

  Chapter Four

  Gray

  I shake my hand loose from Karina’s to push her toward the mouth of the cave.

  “Get inside!” I shout over the thunder.

  I don’t wait for her to reply before I’m running hard down the last leg of the hill where it spills onto the rocky beach. I hear her feet following fast behind me, though. Still, I don’t look back. I knew she’d f
ollow. She’s stubborn like that. Always has been.

  I skid to a stop on the smooth, wet rocks of the beach. I blink twice against the misting rain, the drizzle playing preamble to the downpour that’s on its way. Out over the ocean I can make out the line of ships heading west. One massive ocean liner like an island in motion, four Dashers with full sails and engines probably working at top speed to power through the storm. It’s the fifth Dasher that’s the problem. It’s broken in half, burning on the water and slowly sinking under the waves that try to put it out.

  It’s a surreal sight. We’ve seen storms hit the ships before but they’ve always made it out. I’ve never seen one burning. It’s eerie and ominous, sending the hair on my arms up on end.

  “Oh my God,” Karina whispers behind me.

  I look over my shoulder to find her standing with her hand over her mouth, her green eyes wide with amazement. The sky snaps behind her, lightning hiccupping inside the clouds.

  “You should get inside,” I tell her again.

  She lowers her hand. “How many?”

  “How many what?”

  “How many people do you think were on that ship?”

  I frown, looking back at the wreckage still burning. “I don’t know. A hundred maybe? Most of the Eventide are on the big ship.”

  “A hundred people dead. Just like that. It doesn’t seem real.”

  “No.”

  “What do we do?”

  “What can we do?”

  Rocks click together as Karina stumbles toward me. “We have to help them, right?”

  I shake my head. “It’s not our business.”

  “Grayson,” she scolds breathlessly. “Of course it is.”

  “No, it’s not. Their people will pick them up. They’ll take care of it.”

  “I don’t think they will. Look.”

  She points to the west where the other ships are pressing on, leaving the wreckage. No boats turn around. None even hesitate. If anything they pick up speed, leaving their dead and dying behind.