by Shae Ford
He quickly took his hand away, and it left a char mark in the shape of his palm on the rails. As he dragged himself back to reality, the fire in his hands went out completely — returning to their normal shade of pale.
“What else can I bend?”
Morris must have seen the excitement on his face, because he wasted no time quashing it. “I think just the sword for today. You don’t want to push yourself too hard early on, or you might get a headache.”
He was confused. “But I thought you said headaches were a good thing.”
“They are,” Morris allowed, “but only when they’re used proper. The mind is tricky — you’ve got to start out small and then build up to the big things. But when you’re lost in imagination, it’s easy to get carried away. There’s been many a young whisperer who tried something that was too big for him, and he didn’t live to tell about it. So we’ll stick to reading, for now. And don’t you try anything without asking me first, all right?”
He reluctantly agreed.
*******
Shortly after their gauntlet battle, Aerilyn asked him for a favor. “I know I’m not very strong,” she admitted one afternoon over a lunch of slimy, colorless fish. “But I think I’m beginning to agree with Kyleigh — a woman ought to be deadly with something. And I thought, since our arms are about the same size, that I might make a decent archer. So if I were to try archery, would you be willing to … teach me?”
Though she’d made a pretty painful comment about his arms, Kael found he couldn’t douse the hope in her eyes. “All right,” he said, and plugged his ears against her delighted squeal.
Morris didn’t seem to mind that he’d added Aerilyn to his list of chores. “You can do as you please, lad. Just so long as you get your reading done,” he said.
That was fine with Kael: he rather enjoyed his reading assignments. In Tinnark, he’d only had the same four or five dusty tomes to read. But the library aboard Anchorgloam had hundreds. The only bad thing about it was that getting the books required a trip to Lysander’s cabin — which usually involved a lengthy conversation with Lysander.
He was beginning to wonder if it was worth the trade.
“And so I’ve been pouring over it day and night, and I just don’t see what I’ve managed to do wrong,” Lysander finished. His shoulders were sloped down and his head hung pathetically close to his chest. “What do you think I should do? How do I change, how do I prove to her that I’m not a horrible, drunken leech with all the depth of an inkwell?”
Apparently, when Lysander asked Aerilyn to dance, he hadn’t got the answer he’d been expecting. Instead, he got a rather cold refusal that included several creative reasons as to why she wasn’t interested in him. That was the gist of it. There were loads of other, more sentimental things in between, but Kael mostly ignored them.
“I don’t know. Why are you asking me?” he said distractedly. He was looking for a tome on dragons, something fun that he could read in his very little spare time, and wasn’t at all interested in whatever nonsense Lysander whined about.
“Because you’re her friend.”
“Well, then why don’t you ask Kyleigh?”
It seemed like a reasonable enough solution, but Lysander just snorted. “Kyleigh is a woman. And ladies tend to give very flowery advice that makes a man feel good about himself, but doesn’t actually solve the problem.” He leaned back, propping both his hands on the desk behind him. “No, what I need is advice from a man — a fellow close to Aerilyn who can give me the honest truth.”
Kael glanced up, and knew from the tilt in his chin that Lysander meant to get advice from him. “Uh —”
“No, don’t think about it,” he interrupted. “Lies need time to grow, and all I want is the truth. So out with it — what do I need to do to make Aerilyn think better of me?”
“Well, you could behave better,” Kael said without thinking.
But Lysander wasn’t at all offended. He leaned forward. “I see … and how do I do that?”
The fact that he didn’t know anything was wrong was a large part of the problem, in Kael’s opinion. But if he explained it, Lysander might give him a moment’s peace. So he reined himself in and tried to put it in words he thought the captain could understand. “Aerilyn is a lady.”
“Yes, undeniably.”
“No, she’s a real lady. A gentle lady who likes to wear pretty things and doesn’t enjoy having dirt under her fingernails.”
“So?”
“So she isn’t like Kyleigh — you can’t scoop her up and spin her around in a circle, because it offends her.”
“Ah … I’m not sure I understand.”
Kael wasn’t surprised. He thought about it for a moment, tried to think of a way he could dumb it down even further. “She’s like the treasures in your hallway: you can look at her, but you aren’t allowed to touch her.”
His handsome face became considerably befuddled. “But I can touch the treasures in my hallway.”
“Because they’re yours. Aerilyn isn’t yours, she isn’t anybody’s. She’s like … a deer. She’s wild and untamed and she won’t go anywhere near you unless she trusts you.”
“So I’m supposed to … feed her?”
Kael wondered, briefly, if he might be able to kill himself with the corner of a book. “No, you’re supposed to respect her, respect her territory —”
“And then lure her in and bring her down!”
“No!” Kael had reached the end of his very short rope, and could do nothing to keep the words from bursting out. “She’s a lady, not a meal. And you aren’t going to get anywhere near her if you think of her like that. You want to know how to get Aerilyn to like you? Stop behaving like a complete and total idiot. Stop swearing, stop calling her names, stop drinking, stop flirting with Kyleigh and — for mercy’s sake — keep your shirt on!”
His voice seemed to ring off the walls for a good half-minute. He’d have been embarrassed about the way he acted if the good captain didn’t so thoroughly need to be shouted at.
Lysander sat very rigidly in the aftermath, his mouth parted in a surprised O. “I see,” he finally said. “If I want a lady to like me, then I’ve got to be a gentleman.”
“Yes.”
Lysander scratched his chin thoughtfully. “So I’m not allowed to flirt with Kyleigh anymore, eh?”
“No.” The word came out a little sharper than he meant to.
Lysander smiled. “You were looking for a book on dragons, no? Well let me suggest this one.” He crossed the room in three steps and pulled a bright red book off the middle shelf. “Tales of Scales: The Complete Catalogue of Dragons, there’s not a more detailed book in all the realm. I should know — I nicked it from the fellow who wrote it, right out from under his quill.”
Kael snatched it, muttered his thanks, and left before Lysander could trap him with another story. He was suddenly in a very bad mood.
*******
Much to his surprise, Aerilyn turned out to be a pretty decent archer. More than decent, actually. She picked up on the form quickly and it wasn’t long before she could hit the target nearly every time. They started out with Kael’s bow, but it wound up being too much for her strength. That’s when Morris suggested they try one of the longbows.
“But those are bigger,” Kael said.
“Aye, but they’re not as tough to pull back,” Morris explained. “She’ll get a stronger shot with little effort. You ought to consider giving them a try.”
Kael wasn’t about to give up his bow, even if it was more difficult to shoot. It was Roland’s … and the only thing he had left of Tinnark.
Aerilyn was a little intimidated by the larger bow at first, but it wasn’t long before she figured it out. “This is much better,” she said, as her arrow struck the center of the barrel lid they used for a target. “There’s no grunting or swinging clubs about — just careful aim and skill.” Another of her arrows found its mark. “How’s that?”
“G
ood,” Kael said. “Just make sure you don’t overshoot. I don’t want to have to pull an arrow out of anyone’s rump.”
They’d weighed anchor next to a string of leafy green islands, and most of the pirates were out foraging. They swam in the crystal blue water beneath them, scouring the reefs for any unfortunate creature the cook might salt and turn into a deadly stew. Occasionally, a pirate would dive down and after a moment, bob back to the surface with a fish wriggling on the end of his harpoon.
As much as Kael wanted off the ship, he couldn’t make himself put one leg in the ocean. He watched as Kyleigh climbed to the top of the rails and stood, harpoon in hand. She was wearing a shirt cut to the elbow and pants cut to the knee. Her feet were bare. At the goads from the pirates below her, she spread her arms wide and fell, headfirst, in a graceful arc.
He leaned forward and his toes curled when she struck the water. It was only after she came back up that he was able to breathe again.
“Yes, and speaking of rumps,” Aerilyn said as she retrieved her arrows, “what’s gotten into Captain Lysander? He seems … well, he’s been acting rather nice lately.”
He pretended to watch Noah and Jonathan as they grappled on top of a reef, trying to fling the other into the water. He thought if he wasn’t looking at her, he might be able to hide the guilt on his face. “I hadn’t noticed him acting any differently.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really? You didn’t notice that he hasn’t taken a drink in nearly a week? Or that he managed to keep his shirt on all day yesterday? And he,” she fidgeted with the hem of her shirt, “he’s been sitting with me at every meal. It’s almost as if …”
“As if what?”
She shook her head. “Oh, never mind. I’m probably just being silly.”
They shot for a few minutes in silence, and he hoped that was the end of it. But then she turned and said quite suddenly: “He hasn’t mentioned anything about me, has he?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. How should I know?”
She made a frustrated sound. “Well don’t boys talk about girls? Kyleigh and I talk about boys.”
“Really? What boy does Kyleigh like?”
Red sprung to her cheeks. “It doesn’t matter,” she said quickly.
“But she does like someone?”
“No — which is why it doesn’t matter.”
Aerilyn’s momentary weakness was over. Now she had her arms crossed and her chin set. He knew that even if he pried her mouth open with his bare hands, he wouldn’t get another word out of her. Which was a shame, really, because he wondered what sort of boy Kyleigh might be interested in. He was probably some handsome, stone-fisted knight she met while in the King’s army: a man who was just as deadly with a blade as she.
For some reason, that thought made his stomach hurt. “Lysander asked what your favorite color was yesterday,” he admitted.
Aerilyn leaned forward, hands clasped in front of her. “And?”
“And what?”
She slapped him playfully on the arm. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I wasn’t certain, but I thought it was blue.”
She flung her arms about his neck with such surprising force that he nearly tumbled backwards. “Oh, you know me so well! But I wonder why … do you think he might …?”
Kael wondered if she actually expected him to be able to guess the ends of her sentences. “He might what?”
She screwed up her nose and tried to look severe, but in the end her smile broke free. “All right, you don’t have to tell me. I know there’s a code you gentlemen have to keep about these things. But I’m going to tell you something, and you can’t tell Lysander I said it. Do you swear?”
“Sure, all the time.”
She slapped him again, grinning at his feeble joke. “That’s not what I meant. Promise you won’t tell Lysander.”
He sighed. “All right, I promise.”
“Good.” She leaned forward, her eyes shining mischievously. “I think, against every reasonable bone in my body, that Lysander is quite … handsome.” She giggled and her face turned pink. “It’s horrible isn’t it, for a merchant to fancy a pirate? Did you ever hear of anything so completely scandalous?”
Kael tried to smile, but he thought there were worse things in the Kingdom than the fancy between a pirate and a merchant.
*******
Every day, their list of backbreaking chores stretched on and into the evening. Only after they managed to choke down their last spoonfuls of a poisonous dinner were the pirates allowed to prop up their boots and relax. This they did on the main deck, out in the cool of the night and under the brilliant cover of the stars.
And because there was literally no end to his mischief, Lysander kept Jonathan’s chores running through the evening. While everyone else talked or played at cards, he’d have to string up his fiddle and entertain them with a song. Lysander ordered that they be strictly historical tunes, and mainly verses chronicling their days aboard Anchorgloam.
But Jonathan managed to weave a good bit of his rudeness into every song. And it was so popular with the men that Lysander pretended not to hear. That particular evening, Jonathan seemed to have been inspired by the contents of the galley:
Ladles of soup with spindly legs
Of crab and gooey starfish eggs.
Barrel of scales and fishy eyes,
You’re not quite like my mum’s mince pies.
Shut my lids and serve a plate
Of heaping, steaming merman bait.
The cook tells me it’s quite the catch,
So tip me spoon and down the hatch!
Oh, alas! My gut repels
The squirming, squiggling seahorse tails.
My stomach heaves, I turn a hue,
And out my mouth comes seafood spew!
The pirates whooped and clanged their tankards together as Jonathan took a deep, over-exaggerated bow. Only one man stomped off in a huff: and that was the cook.
Rumors flared up like bouts of scurvy aboard the ship, and it wasn’t long before everyone knew about Kyleigh’s secret. No sooner did Jonathan finish his song than the pirates were bellowing for her to sing their favorite tune.
“All right, fine!” she said, when it was clear they would never relent. She leapt to her feet and shouted: “Ahoy, rapscallions!”
They roared and raised their grog in greeting.
“Clean the seaweed out of your ears and listen up. I’m about to tell the saddest tale ever told.” A forlorn note came off of Jonathan’s fiddle as he joined her. “It’s a tale about a man. A man named Sam Gravy —”
Cheers rang out.
“— and how he lost his true love to the sea.”
When Jonathan’s notes pepped up into something the pirates could stomp their feet to, she started to sing.
There is a tale of courage and bold,
Of a lad who felled trees and built him a boat.
His name be Sam Gravy and this be his tale,
Of how he found love with a rudder and sails.
Across the High Seas, he sailed with his love,
Through forests of trees with tops high above.
O’er deserts that quelled with burning hot sand,
And never such love for a boat had a man!
Sam Gravy she sped
And he felt not a shred
Of doubt in his soul of her valor.
With him at her helm
They’d conquer the realm
And his heart would rest ever with she.
So it happened one day a serpent arose
Out of the sea and lunged at his boat.
Sam Gravy he turned on the wheel with a tug,
And threw his harpoon at the heart of the thug.
The serpent, he roared and with one final gasp
Drew up his tail and made such a splash,
That Gravy, his boat, his love and his pride
Were swept onto land by the force of the tide.
Sam Gravy she ran
Aground in the sand
Though he swore ‘twould never be broken,
The ship he so loved
She never comes home
And his heart now belongs to the sea.
Yes his heart, it belongs to the sea.
It was a horribly sad tale, but Kael never got tired of listening to Kyleigh sing. She carried the notes so beautifully, so effortlessly, and it made him wish he could do the same. But all he had to do was think of singing and his ears would threaten to leap off his head and fling themselves into the ocean.
He left when the dancing started. There was no point in sitting around and watching everyone else do the jig. Tales of Scales sat under his hammock, still mostly unread. He always had every intention of reading it, but the moment he fell into bed, his eyes got heavy and the sentences drifted further apart:
Long have the race of men warred with the dragon, long have they envied him. Though the King bears his image upon his heart, he knows not the dragon's strength. He is Fate's first child and the most ancient of all beasts. His life stretches into the thousands of years, sword nor arrow can pierce his skin … the fire that boils in his belly is more fearsome than the core of flame ... burns in his heart, sets fire to every drop of blood. The dragon loves most fiercely ... protects ... only once...
*******
He woke with a start.
He dreamed of Amos again — only this time he’d been holding onto his arm, trying desperately to haul him back over the edge of a bottomless pit.
Let me go, Amos had said, his voice unusually resounding and deep. Let me go, child. It’s time to let go.
