by Kara Timmins
Copyright © 2019 by Kara Timmins. All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-578-57747-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019915572
www.karatimmins.com
For Alex.
1
The world around Eloy was cut in half. On his left, the world he knew: land, homes, people. On his right, an endless stretch of water. He turned toward this newness and let the sea air run over him. The clean breeze lifted something. The new water was different from that of the marsh in every way; most importantly, Eloy surmised, it moved. The smell of it didn’t remind him of the taste of forest berries, the presence of Vaylars, or the sound of clashing metal.
The slick wood of the ship that rocked under his feet reminded him of Neasa’s house in Valia. Just like her home, the Siobhan had been cleaned, polished, and maintained even as it had sat waiting for years as the conflict between Anso and Nicanor had moored it. In all that time, it sat ready to be useful again.
Eloy didn’t know how to manage the creaking vessel he found himself on, but he was eager to push away from the city of Oppo on his left and let the sea surround him. He wanted the ocean to wash the memories away—to cleanse him. Water had worked to calm his mind so many times before. After he and Corwin escaped from the Bowl, they had washed the filth away in the cold forest river. After Neasa, Malatic, and he had thwarted Anso’s men in the night, they had stripped down and let the clean water bathe them. Seeing the ocean for the first time, Eloy had wanted to sink into it and let what had happened with Nicanor, Anso, the Vaylars, all of it, go.
“Should we be doing something to help?” Neasa asked.
Eloy looked around at the seven men and one woman who made up the crew of the Siobhan—Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic made eleven. Neasa’s profile was framed by the early morning chimney smoke of Oppo. Her braid, the color of woven golden grain, draped over her shoulder and down her front to the middle of her chest.
Malatic moved up beside her and nudged her shoulder. “I’m sure they would love that. Do you know how to prepare a ship for pushoff?”
“Do you?” she asked, head cocked to the side.
“Nope. And that’s why I’m not helping.”
Neasa nudged Malatic and smiled.
“We’ll wait for the captain and go from there,” Eloy suggested.
When Eloy had seen Pup’s map, he’d thought about going to Oppo alone. He didn’t want to think about how he would handle something happening to Neasa or Malatic on this journey, but the thought had only lasted a moment. Eloy couldn’t imagine moving from day to day without them. He was who he was—the strongest version of himself—when he had them close.
“I think he’s coming,” Neasa said.
A bald head crested the edge of the deck and Captain Kern hoisted himself up. The crew announced his arrival with a hearty call of, “Captain!” The captain waved them aside, walking directly to Eloy, Malatic, and Neasa. Kern was slightly taller than Eloy, but, unlike Eloy, Captain Kern was narrow, with ropy muscles. He looked like he could have been born from the ship; his skin had the same dark shine which stretched over his tendons, veins, and muscles.
Eloy held out a piece of paper. “We have a formal request from Oppo’s ally and friend, Town Lead Pup, to seek permission to travel on an Oppo ship.”
Captain Kern looked around at his crew. He didn’t take the paper. “I heard.”
Eloy dropped his hand. “Will you allow it?”
“This is the first ship to set off in eighteen years. This is a shipping town, which means there are a great many people who want to be standing where you are. People who have spent their lives building and working on these ships, even when they didn’t go anywhere. I’m guessing this is the first time the three of you have even been on a vessel. So maybe you don’t understand that there are only so many who can sail on it.”
“I figured that,” Eloy said.
“You figured that. Well, you’ll have to be fast learners and you’ll have to be worth the space you take up and the supplies you consume. Just watch for the first few days. The three of you sit and see what everyone does. That’s how they learned it. That’s how you’ll learn it. Sit right there,” Captain Kern pointed to a crate under a sail, central to a web of ropes and out of the way of those pulling on them. He looked Eloy up and down and squinted, assessing. “What is it you want out there?”
“I’m looking for something,” Eloy said. “What about you?”
“I’m looking for something.” Captain Kern turned and started instructing his crew.
2
The Siobhan sailed without incident for weeks. Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic sat on that crate for seven days. Eloy noted which rope moved which sail up, over, or down. Malatic mostly sat with his head in his hands, soft sickly moans escaping from his pale lips from time to time. Neasa split her attention between watching the crew and dolling out dry leaves from her pack for Malatic to chew on.
“Do you feel sick?” she asked Eloy.
“I’m okay,” Eloy said. Which was a lie. Every sway of the ship felt like an assault on his composure. But Malatic needed her more.
After a week of watching the crew work, Eloy jumped into the coordination of the daily tasks. Neasa followed a day later; Malatic, slightly more composed than he had been, two days after that. The better they worked, the more integrated they became with the rest of the crew. The ropes of the sails pulled, tore, and hardened their muscles until they were the same as their crew mates’, the only uniform that mattered to the people of Oppo.
Winding down at the end of the day was the hardest part. Without work to focus on and with nothing but wood, water, and sky to look at, Eloy couldn’t avoid turning his sight inward. He looked at Neasa and Malatic across from him on the deck, Malatic with his head on Neasa’s lap, his eyes closed, Neasa staring off into space, her thoughts roaming off somewhere. Eloy hoped she was thinking of Valia, or her forest. Anywhere but Anso’s camp or the marsh.
Eloy didn’t see the storm coming. Everything had been blue before he closed his eyes: sky, water. No clouds. No froth.
“Everybody up! All sails down!” Captain Kern yelled.
Eloy shot up, fully awake. The familiar blue of his new world was now a dark dusk of stormy gray. After weeks of being on the ship, he knew which ropes to pull to move the sails, but he didn’t know what to do in a situation like this.
Neasa and Malatic had been across from him when he had closed his eyes, but they were gone now, lost in the chaos.
“Eloy.” Captain Kern grabbed Eloy by the forearm. “Help with the light.” Captain Kern pointed to two men at the bow of the ship filling glass spheres with saltwater.
Eloy ran over to the two men and squatted down to pick up one of three hollow glass orbs from the deck. His fingers just barely linked together around the girth of glass, and the orb was already heavy without being filled. Eloy watched the other two, ready to step in as the assembly line moved. The sailor in front of him, a man named Aster, was squatting in a horse stance, supporting the weight of the full and sloshing glass orb against his shaking thighs. The other man stood in front of him and uncorked a ceramic flask. The second man poured the contents of the flask into the glass orb in a goopy stream. The ooze glowed green and thinned out as soon as it mixed with the saltwater, illuminating the nearby area. Eloy could see the strained faces of the two men in its green glow. Eloy knew this light. He’d seen it in the black pools in the forest of Valia, in the creatures that swam in the depths.
But he didn’t have time to dwell on the ingenuity. Aster waddled away, and Eloy moved into position for the man with the flask to fill the next orb.
The winds
were getting stronger, pulling and beating against them. Eloy widened his stance. He willed his body to be stiff and strong, a contender against the whipping storm. The ocean did the opposite. The water rolled and smashed against the rigidity of the ship and its sailors, using its fluidity to ally with the storm’s winds. The waves crashing against the ship seemed to crest higher and higher with each hit.
“Move it, Eloy!” the man with the flask yelled. “We’re losing light!”
“I think we lost it already,” Eloy yelled over the wind.
The last of the sun slipped away, leaving them fighting in the dark. The only light came from that first orb.
Eloy readied himself for the extra weight as the man with the flask stuck a funnel at the top, just as another wave crashed against the other side of the ship. The vessel rocked to its side. Everything went dark. Eloy dropped the orb with a thud and clung to the railing as they rocked back.
Eloy had saved himself, but he couldn’t help Aster. The wave threw him, and Eloy watched clinging and helpless as he went into the water. Aster held onto to the orb and sunk with it. He became a shadow in its light. And then there was another shadow, at least half the size of the ship, that passed over the orb, something that swayed a large fin behind it from side to side. A hunting monstrosity. Eloy watched it pass from nose to tip in the back-glow of the orb until it disappeared in the blackness again. There was a splash on the surface of the water, the fin quick as it turned, and then there was no more glow.
Aster and his light in the dark, swallowed.
Eloy couldn’t move. The wood of the railing bit into his hands as he clenched until the joints of his fingers burned.
“We need light!” a man from the deck yelled out again.
The only light, the first glass light, bobbed up on the ocean surface in the distance. Spit out.
3
A part of Eloy was surprised to see the morning sun. Something in him hadn’t believed the ship and its crew would stay on top of the ocean surface. He couldn’t remember very much after he’d watched Aster fall into the water. There had been movement—filling up the remaining glass orbs, pulling ropes, hammering wedges, securing equipment. The action was all done in a mind-wiping panic. Spurred by the desperate need to keep the Siobhan, a ship that had once seemed so sturdy and strong, afloat.
Eloy wanted the morning rays to warm him. He wanted the shaking in his tired muscles to stop. He wanted to feel relief. But the cold was in his bones, as if ice filled the canals. He tucked himself between some crates and faced the front of the ship. He didn’t want to see the ocean. It would never look empty to him again.
The greatest gift the morning gave him was the quiet. Most of the crew was asleep in the belly of the ship, an unusual occurrence, but they’d earned their rest. The only ones still awake were Eloy, Captain Kern, Neasa, and Malatic. Captain Kern was pacing from the front of the ship to the back, staring out at the sea as if challenging it to try its hand at battle again. The soft padding of Captain Kern’s shoes against the wood was so consistent it almost broke down Eloy’s strength to stay awake.
Eloy had his attention on Neasa and Malatic, but they had their backs to him, looking out at the sea from the bow. Malatic had his arms folded over his chest, and the muscles in his back were so tight that his shoulders were almost at his ears.
Neasa said something. Malatic shook his head and turned away from her.
Eloy continued to watch as she stood staring at Malatic’s back, seemingly trying to find the right words to say. She eventually turned and walked toward Eloy in his nook.
“Is there room for one more?” she asked.
“Always.” Eloy scooted aside and pushed one of the crates as far as the securing straps would allow.
The space had just enough room for Neasa and Eloy to sit side by side.
Eloy looked at Malatic. “Everything okay?”
“He’ll be fine,” Neasa said. “This is beyond what he knows. Has ever known. He’s dealing with it as best he can.”
“It’s beyond what we know too.”
“True. But we were ready for something different, something challenging. At least, I was.”
“Was?” Eloy asked.
“Am,” she said. “He’s not used to feeling out of control like this. If he takes that frustration out on me, I can’t be angry with him. I feel his anxiety, though. I don’t know what kind of strange magic that man has cast on me.”
Eloy smiled. “I thought you hated him when we first met him.”
“I did!” Neasa laughed. “Like I said, strange magic.”
“Do you really think he’s going to be okay?” Eloy asked.
“I hope so,” she said. “I know he’ll be better when we get on land again.”
“I think all three of us will be,” Eloy said. “It doesn’t seem to affect the others like it does us.”
“They’ve been waiting their whole lives to be out in the ocean,” Neasa said. “They’re living their purpose. Speaking of, do you feel like we’re going in the right direction?”
Eloy tugged at the worn leather cord around his neck and pulled the disc-shaped black stone out from under his shirt. “I want to say yes,” he said, “but things don’t feel the way they used to.”
Neasa kept her eyes on the stone. “What do you mean?”
“I used to think I could feel it pulling me toward where it wanted me to go. Like it wanted to be in the place where this treasure is supposed to be, but now it’s . . . quiet. Cold.”
Neasa finally looked up from the stone and into Eloy’s eyes. Eloy didn’t like the touch of fear he saw in her face. “Do you really think we’re going the right way?” she asked.
“I’m sure we’re on the right track,” Eloy said. “Captain Kern may not be open with what he’s looking for on the other side of this journey, but I’ve heard others talk about the land on the other side. Captain Kern is heading toward something, and my gut says he’s the one to follow right now. But more than that, I know what the Seer said, and I know this is what she meant when she said that the way blocked by Nicanor and Anso was the way to go. I knew it when I saw the map at Pup’s house. We’re going to be okay.”
Neasa settled back against the crate. “I believe you. I have since the beginning. There’s no reason for me to stop now.”
“Since the beginning?” Eloy raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe not the beginning beginning.”
They both looked at Malatic, his shoulders dipping down, the tension and anger leaking away.
Neasa stood up. “We should go get some sleep.”
“What about Malatic?” Eloy asked.
“He’ll come down soon.” She held out a hand, which Eloy took and pulled himself up to standing.
Without the protective cover of the crates, the ocean surrounded him again. Seeing it almost made the ten steps to the hatch seem too exhausting. He followed Neasa down through the hatch door and down the ladder.
It was a wonder there was still breathable air in the room full of hot breath, salty sweat, and digestive gases. Still, the heat and smell of the room felt better than being on deck. Eloy knew the sense of comfort was an illusion, the unknown creatures of the depths just a few fragile walls away. Even closer now, just hidden.
The fear seemed to be entwining its fingers in his guts and squeezing. It made his already weary body sick with fatigue. He understood Malatic and his anger; Eloy was feeling it crawl up inside of him too.
Eloy laid himself on a mat against the far wall next to Neasa, her outline a shadow in the dark hull. Sleep grabbed at him and his eyes closed. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed—he guessed not long—before the hatch opened again and Malatic made his way over to them. Malatic lay down on the other side of Neasa and she rolled to her side, her back to Eloy, and draped an arm over Malatic. Eloy heard Malatic exhale slowly, a relinquishin
g sound, where it mixed with the mingling cloud of breath in the room.
Eloy fell back asleep, this time for a long while.
4
The hull was empty by the time Eloy woke up, and he could hear the purposeful stride of his companions working above him. He couldn’t tell the time of day, but his body felt as if he’d been sleeping for most of it.
He wanted to slink up the ladder unnoticed, but most of the eyes of the crew were on him when he was up. The expectant looks from the others made Eloy feel uncomfortable, as if they were waiting for something. The late afternoon sun hung heavy, threatening to dip into twilight.
Eloy walked over to Neasa. “Why didn’t anyone wake me?”
“Captain Kern said it’s tradition to let rest where rest allows after losing a shipmate,” Neasa said. “They’ve been waiting. I’ll let Captain Kern know you’re up.”
Neasa disappeared into the group and Captain Kern spoke out from the back of the boat a moment later. “Everybody to the back!”
There were no voices as the crew moved toward his command. The familiar sloshing and slapping of the water against the side of the ship, the clanging and clacking of iron ruts and bolts of the stern, and scratching and shuffling of the feet of the crew seemed louder than it had the day before. There were no voices until one spoke above all the sounds.
“When the sea wants,” Captain Kern said, “she doesn’t ask. We don’t ask why. We don’t condemn. Her hunger is mighty. Yet she resists taking all. The sea that takes is the same sea that keeps us afloat. We have lost our crewmate Aster to her depths. He was our brother on the ship and is now our guardian in the sea, sitting at her side, bidding for our safe passage. Farewell our brother of the sea, our brother in the end.”
Everyone but Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic held their right fist to their chests. “Farewell our brother of the sea, our brother in the end.”
“Now we take the day,” Captain Kern said, “to rest should rest allow, to laugh where joy can be found, to drink if there is drink to spill, and remember, honor, and celebrate our brother Aster and his sacrifice.”
