Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(67)
“Thank you, Fort,” she said, taking the plate. She peeked underneath the cover and found the normal crusted slop leftovers. Today’s offering might have once been some mashed potatoes and seagull, though it was difficult to tell through the char. She figured the meals probably weren’t made of sawdust and rocks, despite the flavor, since she hadn’t died from malnutrition yet.
You still owe me for all this, he noted. Captain never did order me to let you eat, despite your new station.
“When we figure out the right payment,” Tress mumbled, “can we maybe start letting me have some that isn’t scraped off the bottom of the pot?”
Fort frowned. What? Tress, I save some for you and Hoid first thing, before I let the Dougs at it.
“You…what?”
It hit her like a hammer to the skull.
This wasn’t the leftovers.
This was what everyone ate.
“Oh…oh dear,” she said.
Fort had the decency to look down and shrug apologetically. We took turns after Weev died, he wrote. I’m the best we have. Ann’s concoction left half the crew sick for three days.
“Is that so,” Tress said. “Well, I think I have discovered a way I can repay you—and the rest of the crew—for the kindness you’ve shown me.”
Cooking here isn’t easy, he warned, holding up his palm beside the board after he wrote the words. We only have sea rations—most of it stale, canned, or dried. It’s hard to make palatable.
“I think you’ll be surprised,” Tress said. “Come get me tomorrow before you start cooking for evening mess…” She trailed off as she heard the bell on deck ring out a warning.
That wasn’t the three heavy strikes indicating another ship had been spotted. But neither was it the call to mess, which was a constant ringing. It was two strikes, then quiet, then two strikes.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Border ahead, Fort wrote, hand moving quickly as he practically bounced with excitement. Crimson Sea has been spotted. Want to witness the crossing?
“Absolutely!” she said, joining him in the hall, though she was strangely reluctant to leave her research. That was silly. She had no formal training in academics; her schooling had ended at basic reading and arithmetic. Surely she wasn’t secretly a scholar. A window-washing girl? If she’d been inclined toward research, she’d have realized it before.
The truth was, she’d simply never encountered a topic interesting enough—or dangerous enough—to engage her.
THE APPRENTICE
I’m not sure I can recommend visiting the spore seas. While there are places in the cosmere that are more deadly, few are so casually dangerous. Other locations will kill you with a roar or a cataclysm. But the spores, they do it with a whisper. One moment you’re enjoying a nice book. The next, you take in an unfortunate breath, get a few crimson spores in your system, and suddenly you’ve turned your skull into a colander.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it seems somehow more unfair than dying from a lightning bolt or a hurricane. Nature is supposed to announce herself before murdering you. It’s only sporting.
That said, the spore seas do have some sights to sell.
Fort made room for Tress by the prow, sending a couple of Dougs to watch from the rigging instead. It was evening, and this far away from the lunagree the green dome of the Verdant Moon drooped low on the horizon behind them—a mirror image to the Crimson one ahead. A vast red sphere in the sky, peeking over the horizon, with the sun hovering above it like an eager sibling.
Closer to the ship, just ahead, the verdant spores gradually mixed with the crimson, making a gradient where—from a distance—the center was a deep brown. The vibrant, shimmering red beyond seemed an ocean of blood, like the Crimson Moon had been shot and the Crow’s Song was sailing toward its corpse.
Tress hadn’t given thought to how wrong that color would feel. The Emerald Moon and Sea had, quite literally, colored everything she’d ever seen. It intimidated her to realize she was leaving it and entering that wounded red ocean instead. She’d been watched by the Verdant Moon all her life, and a very small piece of her—irrational though it was—worried she’d vanish the moment it stopped thinking about her.
As they closed the distance, then crossed the border, Fort leaned against the railing and held up his sign. You’re grinning.
“Sorry,” Tress said. “It’s just that this is terrifying.”
You smile when things are terrifying?
“I didn’t use to,” she said. “I think my brain is intimidated by how insane things are out here on the seas, and is trying to fit in.”
Fort rubbed his chin, but didn’t write anything else. She knew he was thinking about her supposed role as a King’s Mask, and how she wasn’t nearly as frightened of spores as she should have been. And again, it wasn’t that. She was afraid.
At the same time, she hadn’t realized how terribly beautiful those red spores would be. Nor how strange it would feel to be leaving the Emerald Sea. These were new emotions, and like new flavors, they could be simultaneously terrifying and intoxicating.
What else would she have never known about herself, if she hadn’t left her home island? Worse, how many people like her lived in ignorance, lacking the experience to fully explore their own existence? It is one of the most bitter ironies I’ve ever had to accept: there are, unquestionably, musical geniuses of incomparable talent who died as street sweepers because they never had the chance to pick up an instrument.