by Liz Kessler
My brain whirred unpleasantly as I climbed up the steps to the deck.
I reached the top and blinked hard. After being locked in a dark room, the sudden sunlight was blinding. I closed my eyes and rubbed them. When I opened them again and looked around, I couldn’t help gasping out loud.
It had been almost pitch-black when we’d boarded the ship. Now it was midmorning and the sun was high in the sky.
All the sails were up, flying above us like enormous wings. The ship was on a tilt, the wind moving through the sails with a low hum. Calm blue sea surrounded us on every side. White frothing waves splashed against the bow of the ship as we sliced through the water. Above us, an unbroken blue sky was like a mirror to the ocean. The ship and nature working together, moving in perfect harmony as we slid through the ocean so smoothly.
It was utterly beautiful.
For just a moment, I kidded myself that I was here simply for the joy of it; I let myself pretend that none of the awful things I knew to be the case were really happening. I allowed a moment for my heart to sing, my eyes to drink in the beauty.
Then Hal grunted, “Come on. Let’s get going,” as he gave me a nudge — and the spell was broken.
“In here.” Sam pointed to a door in the center of the deck. We stepped inside, into an office with bench seats and a table. He nodded to a corner. “Sit over there,” he said to me.
I sat where he’d pointed, and we waited as the rest of his crew filed in.
There were six of us here. Ana was on my left. Luke and Dean were on my right. Hal stood in the corner by the door.
Sam was perched awkwardly on a stool in front of us. He took a breath, then swallowed. “OK, here we all are,” he said, his voice shaking.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Luke nudge Dean and laugh. Dean rolled his eyes in reply.
“I mean, obviously not all,” Sam went on. “Kat’s at the helm.” He cleared his throat again and wiped an arm across his forehead.
This was getting worse. Sam caught my eyes as he glanced around the room. His face was bright red. I tried to give him an encouraging look. He gave me a quick nod.
“OK, look, let me start again,” he said. “You may not like me. You might not want to be on this ship. I’m guessing at least some of you probably asked for a transfer to my brother’s ship when you heard you were with me.”
Hal looked down and shuffled his feet. Dean made a loud scoffing noise. Luke stifled a laugh.
“Thought so,” Sam said. “But here’s the thing. I don’t care. I’m not here to make friends, and neither are you. I’m here to do a job, and you’re here to help me. This is a contest, and I plan to win it. If you want to be on the losing side then I suggest you do what you like and ignore everything I say. But if you want to win, we need to be a team. Anyone got a problem with that?” He glared around the room. No one replied.
“Good,” he went on. “First off, this is Emily. I captured her on the cruise ship. She has local knowledge that could be helpful in our mission.”
Dean slouched forward. “If you captured her, shouldn’t she be in a cell or something?” he asked. His voice was rough and gravelly, and he didn’t look at me as he spoke.
“We are now twenty miles from land and getting farther away by the minute,” Sam replied. “There’s no chance she could swim back to land without risking her life.”
I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat.
“So I have decided to release her. She’s no threat and she’s more use to me as crew,” Sam went on. “Any more questions?”
No one said anything.
“Good. So let’s get to work. We got ourselves out to sea in good time. Now I need to share the challenge with you.”
Sam explained the task that he and his brother had been set. We had twenty-four hours — less than that now — to find a bay that was legendary, mainly for the fact that barely anyone had ever found it. We had a crew who looked at best uninterested, and at worst possibly mutinous, and a prisoner who was there under false pretenses.
Oh. And a poem.
“Here’s what my dad gave me,” Sam said, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket. “It’s a clue.”
He unfolded the paper and then read aloud the poem I’d heard Jakob read out to him and Noah on the cruise ship.
“Find it with math, with a compass and pen.
Or find it by bribing a hundred wise men.
Use a magical crystal that calls through the blue —
You’ll be wrong twenty times; only one way is true.”
The room went silent again.
“That’s it?” Ana piped up.
Sam turned to her. “Yes,” he said. “That is it. That’s all we have to go on.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Dean moaned. “How on earth are we supposed to find somewhere that probably doesn’t exist when all we’ve got to go on is a stupid poem?”
“Good question,” Sam replied, ignoring the rude manner of the question and just focusing on the facts. “It’s going to be hard. But here’s the good thing. Noah has only the same information. At this moment, the stakes are even.”
Luke snorted under his breath. Sam ignored him.
“They are as even as they’re ever going to be,” he went on firmly. “My father is retiring. He’s looking for a successor. Whoever wins this contest will be the pirate king.” Sam looked around at his reluctant crew. “If I win, I will handpick the most loyal, trustworthy, and capable people to join me, and they will have the best of everything.”
He paused. When he spoke again, something had changed. He sounded . . . in charge.
“So come on. Let’s get on with it and give it our best shot. Luke, take over from Kat at the helm and send her in here. We’ll fill her in on what we’re doing, and we’ll take turns steering the ship. From this point onward, we have one aim and one aim only: to get to Crystal Bay before Noah. Agreed?”
A few of the crew members mumbled their acknowledgment.
Sam banged his fist on the table. “I said, Agreed?” he shouted.
This time, there was a moment’s pause, and then everyone replied as if with one voice.
“Agreed!”
We split into groups to work on ideas. I was put with the girls.
“I’m Kat, by the way,” Kat said as she squeezed in to join us at the table.
“I’m Emily,” I said as I studied her. She was taller than Ana. Her hair was blond and rough like straw, her face ruddy and red from a life on the sea. Like the others, her clothes were simple: jeans and a T-shirt. Her jeans were belted with a big buckle that had a skull and crossbones on it.
“Here you go,” Sam said as he passed us. He gave us some charts to look at, a couple of pens, a copy of the poem, and some scrap paper.
“Don’t worry if you can’t figure it out,” Dean said as he left. “I’ll come and help when I’ve finished with the sails.”
As he walked away, Kat raised her eyebrows so high they disappeared into her hairline. “Did he really just say that?” she asked. “I mean, of course, we’re only girls. Our brains clearly aren’t as good as theirs. Seriously?”
Ana burst out laughing. I let a smile play on my lips.
“I think they expect us to just sit around simpering and smiling at them and telling them how mean and cool they are,” Ana said.
“I think they’ve forgotten how we girls got here,” Kat replied.
“How did you get here?” I asked.
Kat answered first. “My dad’s a banker; my mom’s a teacher. They sent me on a couple of adventure trips when I was little, and I caught the bug.”
“For this?”
“For adventure. For a life on the wild oceans. For something other than growing up in a McMansion like theirs, with a perfect lawn and spotless curtains, saying a polite ‘good morning’ every day to neighbors I can’t stand.”
“Why a pirate, though?” I asked.
Kat shrugged again. “Show me another life where a girl can spend the day fixing things,
catching fish, climbing ropes, sailing through storms. Show me a world where she can live by her own rules — and maybe I’ll consider exchanging this one for it. I had started working on a different ship. One of the guys there always used to antagonize me and tease me. He thought it was fun. I thought it was annoying.”
“So what did you do?” I asked.
“I challenged him to a duel,” Kat said with a grin.
“You did what? Does that really happen?” I asked. “Like, in real life?”
Kat laughed. “Yep. A dawn fight on the main deck. I got the whole crew to watch. Took me thirty seconds to get him in a headlock on the ground, begging for forgiveness.”
I laughed. “I’m guessing he didn’t bug you after that?”
“Nope. And word got around about it, so Jakob offered me a job.”
“What about you?” I asked Ana. “How did you end up here?”
Ana shrugged. “I grew up in a small town. It was fine when I was little, but when I hit high school, everything fell apart. My parents split up, I got bullied at school, my grades suffered. Fell in with a bad crowd.”
“And they led you here?” I asked.
“What? No! The bad crowd was who I came here to get away from!”
“Oh! Sorry,” I mumbled.
Ana batted my apology away with her hand. “It’s fine. I had a couple of bad years. Got into a few scary situations. Then one day, couple of years ago, a guy I knew said someone was looking for crew. He didn’t tell me the guy was a pirate, just that he had a fleet of incredible ships. I went along to apply, and — well — I got hired. Dad was long gone by then, and Mom was just happy I’d found something that I liked, so I joined up.”
“What she’s not telling you is that they took tests, hard physical tests, and Ana came in at the top,” Kat broke in. “As in, top of them all. She beat all the boys.”
“Wow. You’re both pretty impressive,” I mumbled, feeling out of my depth, in more ways than one.
“I don’t know about that,” Ana said. “I just know that being on a ship like this — it’s the only time I feel free.”
“Living outside of all society’s petty rules and regulations,” Kat added. “It’s the only way you get to find out who you are, instead of who society wants to mold you into.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. Something about their words felt as if it were snaking all the way through me and lighting something up inside me.
“So, what about you?” Ana asked. “How exactly did you end up here?”
I shrugged. I didn’t dare tell them too much, not yet. “Vacation gone wrong,” I said with a grimace. Before they could ask any more questions, I quickly added, “But I’m glad to have met you girls. I’ve never really hung out with girls like you before.”
Kat laughed. “I’m not sure there are many girls like us!”
“Hence why we’re not psyched about being told that making sense of a few lines on a piece of paper might be beyond us!” Ana said with a laugh.
I remembered what Luke had said about the girls when we’d come aboard. That they were probably cleaning the cabins and making the beds.
Should I tell them what he’d said? I didn’t want to make things worse, but something made me want to tell them. What was it? A desire to fit in? To show them I was like them? Impress them?
Why would I want to do that? Impress a couple of pirate girls?
I knew why.
Because despite the fact that, yes, they were pirates, and, yes, their morals might be a million miles from mine, I couldn’t deny that I was a tiny bit in awe of them both already.
It wasn’t just the stories of how they’d gotten here. It was the way they looked, the way they carried themselves. So at ease in their bodies, so confident, and so cool with their tattoos, their cutoff denim shorts, strong arms, and grubby faces.
I’d never met girls like them.
In a weird kind of way, I felt that I was like them. I was different from all the girls I’d grown up with my whole life, because I was half mermaid. But I was different from all the mermaid girls, too, because I was half human.
Ana and Kat lived outside the norm, too. And that meant we already had one thing in common, even if I’d never be able to tell them what it was.
So instead, I leaned forward, and in a conspiratorial voice, I said, “Shall I tell you what Luke said when I came aboard?”
The girls both stared at me with identical looks of surprise on their faces. Then Ana shrugged. “Yeah, tell us.”
Should I? Was it betraying a teammate? No, it was fine. Telling them was more important than protecting him.
“He, um, he said that you’d probably be inside cleaning the rooms.”
The girls stared even harder at me, then looked at each other. Ana shook her head. “See, that’s what we’re up against. They think that they’re the only ones who can be pirates. When it comes to climbing up to the crow’s nest to fix a broken mast in a force-ten storm, who does it without hesitation?”
“You?” I ventured.
“Dead right. They’re all talk. Act tough, talk to us like we’re their maids, but somehow do these clever little disappearing acts whenever there’s real work to be done.”
I laughed.
“Remember that time the cables snapped on the forestay and we had to braid them together with pliers to make them stick?” Kat asked.
“Uh-huh,” Ana replied. “Didn’t three of them try it?”
“Yep, and three of them failed,” Kat said. She held out her arm in a pose like a bodybuilder. “Till I had a try. Then, what do you know? I fixed it.”
“If Luke thinks we’re here to change his bedsheets and wash his undies, he can flipping well think again,” Ana said.
“So let’s show them,” I said, before I could stop myself. “Let’s be the ones to figure out how to get to Crystal Bay. Let’s be the best!”
Ana let a slow smile spread across her face as she studied me. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s do just that.”
Kat grinned and nodded. “You’re on.”
Ana held her hand up for a high five, first with Kat, then with me. We slapped palms, and then, as we got down to the business of studying the charts and poem, and discussing possible routes and plans, I tried to fight down the warm feeling spreading through me.
I kept telling myself, They’re pirates, they’re pirates. They can’t be my friends.
I tried to convince myself that the only reason I wanted to work so hard with them was to stand a better chance of finding Aaron.
But I had to admit to myself that there was more to it than that.
Being with these girls, working together, laughing together, sharing ideas and plans — it was the first time I’d ever felt like I was with girls who were like me. Girls whom I could be myself with.
And I had to admit something else, too.
I liked it.
Ana and Kat were looking at the chart while I studied the poem again.
Find it with math, with a compass and pen.
Or find it by bribing a hundred wise men.
Use a magical crystal that calls through the blue —
You’ll be wrong twenty times; only one way is true.
I couldn’t make sense of it. All I knew was that Noah had an advantage over us. For one thing, he had Aaron, who would be better than anyone with the math and compass part — if Noah could persuade him to help them. And then they had Noah himself, who wouldn’t hesitate with the part about bribing a hundred wise men.
And what did we have? A reluctant captain, a crew who would mostly rather be anywhere than working for him, and a fake prisoner.
Our chances of winning this thing weren’t looking great.
No. I couldn’t go there. I shook off my doubts and tried to think. I had a deal to keep, and I needed to stick to my side of it. So I leaned forward and studied the charts with the girls.
Which was when it hit me.
I knew this chart! I’d studied the very sam
e one with Aaron. And I knew something else.
“We need to find Halflight Castle,” I said.
“Halflight Castle? Sam told us about that,” Kat replied. “It’ll be on here, won’t it?”
I shook my head “It’s kind of a secret. It’s not on any charts. It’s hard to find — but there should be indicators of some sort. Here, let me look.” I traced a circle around a wide area of sea, including the section we were in now. “It’s here somewhere. I’m sure of it. Finding it is our first step to finding Halfmoon Castle.”
Ana looked at me. Squinting as she stared, she asked, “How do you know?”
I paused. I couldn’t exactly tell them that I’d swum there through a long underwater tunnel, and a magical ring that belonged to Neptune had led me there, despite the castle being shrouded in a mist that kept it hidden from most people.
“I, um, well, my boyfriend told me about it,” I mumbled.
It seemed this was the right thing to say as they both smiled. “Boyfriend, eh?” Kat asked. “Bit young for a boyfriend, aren’t you?”
“I’m thirteen,” I said with a shrug. “I mean, he’s like my best friend, really. One of them.”
“But with kisses?” Kat said, then burst out laughing. Ana grinned.
“Well, yeah, maybe, sometimes,” I admitted. My cheeks felt as if they were literally about to burst into flames.
“Come on. Stop teasing her,” Ana said, nudging Kat. Then she turned back to me. “So, tell us more.”
“About my boyfriend or about Halflight Castle?” I asked.
Ana shrugged. “Both,” she said with a grin.
“Well, my boyfriend is named Aaron,” I began. “He was on the ship with me.”
“The cruise ship that Sam captured you from?” Ana asked, wide-eyed.
“Mm-hm,” I replied. I still felt awkward about the whole pretending-to-be-captured thing, but I had to keep it up. I paused for a moment. Could I tell them the truth? A bit of it at least? I couldn’t think of a good reason why not.
“Aaron was captured too,” I said. “By Noah.”
“What?” Kat burst out. “Seriously?”
“So Sam captured you to get one up on Noah?” Ana asked. “Good for him.” She nodded her head appreciatively. Yes! That part of the plan had worked.
