“You were here?” I asked.
“Yes, with Narina Caravel and a small sailing crew. It was one of the best times I’d had since creating Evoluii. Listening to the beautiful music, as the afterglow faded off into a magical starry night...” He paused. “It was the night I fell in love.”
Fell in love? I looked up at him, and felt my heart sink. Ethal had made no mention of her, and my jealous heart wondered if it was this Narina he wanted me to meet. Did he still love her? And was she anything like me?
“It was a time I will never forget,” he paused. Glancing back down at me, he must have noticed the reservation in my eyes for his smile suddenly slid off his face and the oars slapped against the water’s surface once again.
“Be on your guard against the presence of jealousy,” he warned. “For it was present that night when it seeded itself into a group of guests. Twisting their minds, they allowed it to blind them into a fear that was not justified. Rumours quickly spread against the hosts, saying, ‘The Syreni are braggarts and swindlers. They will destroy us all if we don’t do something first.’ And a curse was forged with the help of an accuser. ‘They shall not be allowed to share this land with us!’ they vowed. And the curse spread over the Syreni like a virus, crippling them to their knees, so they could no longer live like the others.”
“Is that when they were pushed into the water?” I asked.
“Yes, and they nearly drowned,” he said. “But a front of good opposed the curse, and although the Syreni could no longer survive on land, they were given the ability to survive in water.”
“And that’s when they grew fish tails and gills?”
“Yes,” he said. “And the lake became their new home. It is why they no longer work at the temple.”
I thought back to the scene in the temple and it all made sense.
Suddenly the rigging swept into my view as we came up beside the tall ship. A large carved mermaid rose from the water along the curve of the bows keel, where the sunlight bounced off the water and danced along her shimmering tail. But it was the back of the boat he was heading for, and he rowed us in close. Here, thick belts of canvas held by a rope-and-pulley system hung down towards the water’s surface, where Henry stopped the boat.
I watched him stand and grab hold of one of the large belted loops. He wrapped it snuggly around the back of our small vessel. Then maneuvering around me, he tightened another belt at the front, so that the row boat was fixed into a sort of sling behind the large ship.
“Do you need me to help with anything?” I asked, sitting up and feeling somewhat inept.
“Eager to help hmm?” he smiled. “I like that, however I think I may have to do this part.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
He stopped and looked at me, as though sizing me up.
“What?” I asked. Did I look that incompetent?
“Come here,” he said and I could tell he was holding back a smile.
Teetering slightly, I carefully balanced myself as I stepped over the wooden seat and stood up near him.
“First mate at your service!” I saluted with a subtle “argh” at the end.
“Oh no you don’t,” he scolded. “You’re not getting out of being Captain that easily.”
I steadied my eyes on his. “You aren’t serious about this whole Captain thing are you?” I laughed.
“You were the last one in the water were you not?” he asked.
“Yeah but...”
“There are times when hesitation will make the decision for you,” he said. “And it’s not always the better decision.”
“Okay, so what do I have to do?”
“Alright eager beaver. Bring us up to the quarter deck,” he commanded, handing me a thickly braided rope that hung down from the ship.
I looked up and noticed that the rope wound through the large pulley system, which had me thinking that if I pulled it down, the sling would raise our small boat up in response. ‘Can’t be that hard,’ I thought as I reached up and wrapped the rope around my wrist and hand. Henry took a step back to give me more room. Holding on tightly, I pulled at the rope, but it didn’t budge. ‘Seriously?’ I thought. I didn’t need to look at Henry to know he’d have that coy smirk over his face, so I repositioned myself and tightened my grip. Lifting my legs this time, I pulled down with all my weight.
‘Click, click, click,... click,’ I heard the ratcheting of the pulley turning, and our boat moved an inch upwards.
“Ha ha!” I grinned, hands red from the squeezing rope, and full of ‘I told you I could do it!’
Henry looked at me with wide eyes. He appeared surprised that I could be so joyous over an inch. ‘It was a big inch,’ I thought. ‘And I bet he didn’t think I could do it at all, but I showed him!’
He just grinned and looked up. I followed his eyes to where the remaining several feet up to the back quarter deck awaited.
‘Ugh,’ my thoughts complained and I hopped up onto the bench seat and stretched up even higher this time. Grabbing ahold of the rope I tucked my knees up and pulled the rope down until my feet touched our boat again.
‘Clickety, click, click, click, click, click,’ the ratchet sang out and our boat once again moved upward.
“Shall I take over now?” Henry moved in close.
“It’s okay, I think I’ve got it,” I said calmly. I couldn’t allow this first task to defeat me.
“I really don’t mind,” he implored.
“Am I the Captain or not?” I asked, defiantly reaching up again to pull the rope down. Henry eventually sat down on the bench and watched as I pulled the boat up inch by inch towards the back deck of the ship. My hands were sore and raw by the time we neared the top. Then I noticed it. Something was written in large scrolling font across the stern of the ship.
“Narina Cavavel,” I mumbled, while reading it. “She’s a ship?” I panted.
“Mmmhmm,” he smiled. “She was named after a sea nymph who I met back in your world briefly when sailing through the Cyclades.”
“A sea nymph,” I paused. “You mean a mermaid? In my world?”
“Mmmhmm. Our worlds are not that much different,” he assured, and seeing my fatigue he added, “Have you finally come to your senses and wish for me to finish this job that is much more suited for someone with... “ He looked me up and down. “A few more pounds to them?”
He took the rope from my red hands, leaving me no choice but to watch him easily pull our boat the rest of the way up until it was parallel with the larger ship’s deck. I looked back down at the water a good many feet below us.
“Tali,” he said holding out his hand to escort me aboard the ship, “I would like you to meet Narina Caravel. She’s a mighty fine ship that has weathered a fair number of storms with me and she’ll treat you well, if you do the same with her,” he said.
“Will she now?” I asked, taking his hand.
“Watch your step over the gunnel,” he said, straddling the gap between the two boats.
The ship’s wooden deck was mildly worn, indicating a passing of time and her weathering journeys. I waited there as Henry secured the small boat to Narina by pulling it up over the side walls of the ship, which I learned were named gunnels (pronounced gunwales), and tied it off with some sort of sailor’s knot.
A brass pulley attached to a long rope clanged against a tall mast that reached up into the sunny blue sky.
“It’s called a crow’s nest,” Henry said, following my eyes up the mast to where a basket-like platform sat near the top. “Do you want to see it?” He hopped up, took hold of a patchwork of ropes and looked back at me with a sense of adventure. “Come on, I’ll help you climb up these ratlines.”
“Ratlines?” I mused. “And I suppose I’m the rat in all of this?”
“Captain Rat perhaps?” he smiled. “But you really shou
ld become familiar with this boat before you sail it.” He held out his hand for me to take it.
“How do you suppose I’m going to be able to sail this boat, let alone captain it, if I’ve never sailed before?” I laughed at the ridiculous thought of it.
“You had never swum before today, and yet today you swam.”
“You call that swimming?” I huffed.
He just smiled and helped steady the ratlines, which were a sort of interconnected rope ladders that brought us up to a small platform near the top of the mast. From there we had a great view of the lake and the ship itself.
—
He toured me through every part of the boat, explaining that the front of the ship was called the bow, and the back was called the stern. There was a port and starboard side which were left and right, but I kept mixing them up and had to keep processing that the port had the same number of letters as the word left and that seemed to do the trick.
He showed me the lower deck where the crew’s quarters were located, and the hold where barrels and crates filled with goods and produce would be kept for the crew to live on during a long sail from shore. He showed me how to raise the anchor and rig the sails that were entirely white except for his insignia HT&M that was embroidered neatly on a crest in the centre.
“You ready to catch the wind now?” he hollered from the deck floor, clamping a rope down into a cleat.
“Okay?” I replied unconvincingly, not knowing just what I was getting myself into.
“You’ve got to sound more confident than that, if you’re going to Captain this ship,” he said. “Here, take the wheel.”
I stepped up to the helm and looked down at the large wooden wheel he had instructed me to take. The wind had picked up a fair bit and blew my curly hair into my face, making it exceedingly difficult to see anything. “Do all Captains feel this inadequately aware of what they are supposed to do?” I asked pulling back the hairs that had blown into my mouth.
“At first perhaps,” he replied. “However, most Captains start as deck hands and move up to first mate so they can learn the process slowly. Unfortunately you took so long to get into the water today, that you will have to learn by your own mistakes.” He smiled a cocky grin at me.
“Is that so?” I said. ‘I’ll show him who’s Captain,’ I thought and jumped down to where he had tossed my knapsack. From it I pulled out the hanky I had grabbed from his pocket earlier that morning, folded it over once so that his insignia was on the front and wrapped it over my head. I secured it with a knot below my hair so it would hopefully keep the hairs out of my face.
“As you can see,” I said, pointing to the embroidered script over my forehead that matched the one on the sails of the ship. “I’m the Captain and I’ll have no more cocky banter aboard this vessel,” I giggled.
“Argh Captain, it seems I’ve boarded a pirate ship, what with your nature to steal from unsuspecting hosts.”
“You can have your hanky back when I leave,” I assured him.
“Nonsense,” he said. “It is yours to keep as it suits you much better than it ever did me. Now, take the wheel and let’s see how good a Captain you really are.”
I hopped up behind the wheel again and took it with all the confidence I could muster.
“As Captain, it is your responsibility to make sure that everyone is safely doing their job,” he instructed. “This means you have to ready everyone before you gybe.”
“Gybe?”
“Swing the sail from one side of the ship to the other, which is often the case when you change direction.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to remember all he was teaching me.
“When you are ready to gybe, you would call out, ‘Ready about?’
“Ready about?” I asked, thinking, ‘I’m not ready for any of this!’
He looked at me.
“What?” I shrugged my shoulders.
“Although it is a question, you must ask it with confidence, as if it were a command. Shall we try that again? Ready about?”
“READY ABOUT?” I called out with confidence. Apparently I did well this time, because he smiled.
“Now the crew would reply, ‘Ready!’ and you would then respond with, ‘Helm’s alee!’”
I hollered out, “Helm’s alee!”
“Good, now slowly turn the wheel to the left about a half turn and the sail should cross over the deck and fall into the wind,” he said.
I turned the wheel as he instructed and the ship leaned slightly until the boom at the bottom of the sail responded by swinging sharply across the deck. Henry was quick to duck out of its way as it passed over him. The sail puffed out full and round and I felt Narina begin to move forward through the water.
“What do I do now?” I asked, feeling the pull on the wheel.
“Hold course until we get a bit closer to the other side of the lake,” he said.
A gust of wind suddenly pulled the sail and tugged at the wheel, but I held tightly to the course we were on.
“We want to eventually line up the boat with that narrow gate over there in the wall.” He pointed to a large crack in the crater’s rock wall that opened down to the water in the shape of a ‘V’.
“But we’re going in a different direction!” I said.
“That’s because you need to tack,” he responded. “The wind doesn’t always blow in the direction you want to go,” he said. “If it did, you could simply run with the wind, but quite often you need to tack back and forth until you eventually arrive at your destination.”
“So I tack?”
“Yes, which you may want to do soon.”
I hadn’t noticed how quickly the port side of the ship had crept towards the sharp rock wall. Flustered, I quickly turned the wheel in the opposite direction, causing the boom to swing across the ship. It nearly swatted Henry in the head as it did.
“That’s why you are supposed to call out, ‘Ready About’ BEFORE you change course,” he scolded, pulling himself up from the deck.
“Sorry,” I said, gritting my teeth.
The sail ruffled slightly as the ship leaned into its new direction and then puffed out round on the other side of the ship.
—
We tacked back and forth several times across the lake, each time I made sure to call out ‘Ready about?’ to make sure that Henry was ready to tack, and with each turn I felt ever more confident with the feel of the wind on Narina’s sails.
When we finally got close enough to the narrow opening, which was in reality quite a bit wider than it had first appeared from the other side of the lake, he had me stall the boat and lower both the main and foresails.
“Not too shabby,” he smiled.
I grinned, proudly having secured the rope into a brass cleat on the deck.
“That should do until the tide goes out,” he said as he unlatched the chain wheel that held the anchor up inside the ship. The wheel instantly unwound and I heard the anchor splash into the water below.
“What happens when the tide goes out?” I asked.
“When the tide goes out, you’ll have to lift this anchor up and the water will draw Narina through that large crevice and out to sea,” he said. “BUT, first things first. Are you hungry?”
“YES!” I said, stomach grumbling.
Henry pulled out the blue blanket from his bag, fluttered it up into the wind and opened it wide as he laid it down on the ship’s cedar deck.
“Have a seat with me Captain!” he said.
I sat down on the blanket next to him, and he reached into his bag and began pulling out some good things.
“I had Ethal pack us a picnic lunch, which really should be considered dinner seeing how fast the day is going.” He pulled out item after item: a brick of cheese, a loaf of bread, some salted meats, a small jar of olives, something called pickled
herring and a bottle of wine. The blanket between us was soon filled with a casual dinner spread.
“Oh and it appears she even packed us desert,” he smiled, pulling out a small carton of fruit.
—
Our shadows stretched long across the blanket as we ate the feast before us. I even tried the pickled herring, which ended up not being as bad as I’d imagined. Actually, the vinegar mixed with fish, onions, spices and sugar was quite a pleasant combination and I wound up eating two full pieces.
“What are you writing?” I asked seeing him holding the Troth in his lap.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” I said trying to peek over his knees.
“I’m sketching,” he responded.
I leaned over the book to see what he was drawing and was surprised to find a detailed pencil sketch of my own face staring back at me.
‘So this is what he sees?’ I thought, and found he had quite skillfully captured the highlights and shadows of my face. It was the way he drew my eyes though that had me most intrigued. They looked out from the page with confidence; with some sort of mystery in them, and I wondered if I really did appear that way. He had even drawn the scarf over my hair with his insignia on it.
Myth Page 32
