Fable (Fable #1)(36)

I stumbled to my feet, sloshing in the deepening water. The ship groaned around me as I huddled into the corner of the cabin, wrapping my arms around my knees and drawing them to my chest. The muffled sound of the crew shouting and the knock of boots were washed out by the roar of the storm hitting the boat and the last bit of light coming through the slats flickered out.

She’s saying something.

My mother’s words found me, there in the black.

I pinched my eyes closed, her face coming into perfect view. One long, dark red braid over her shoulder. Pale gray eyes the color of morning fog and the sea-dragon necklace around her neck as she looked up into the clouds above us. Isolde loved the storms.

That night, the bell rang out and my father came for me, pulling me from my hammock bleary-eyed and confused. And when he put me in the rowboat, I screamed for my mother until my throat was raw. The Lark was already half-sunk, disappearing in the water behind us.

My mother called it touching the soul of the storm. When she came upon us like that, she was taking us into her heart and letting us see her. She was saying something. And only then would we know what lay within her.

Only then would we know who she was.





EIGHTEEN



She’s saying something.

I didn’t open my eyes until the first slice of sunlight cut through the darkness, casting down to the green water trapped in the cabin. The storm had barreled over the Marigold quickly, but it had taken hours for the winds to stop tossing the ship. We hadn’t capsized and hadn’t run aground, and that was really all any crew could ask for.

Hoarse voices sounded outside, but I stayed curled up in the dark for another few minutes. The water sloshed around me, carrying the contents of the toppled trunks like little boats around the cabin. A small box of mullein, a quill, a corked empty rye bottle. It would take days to get all this water from the hull and the sour smell would only get worse.

Sailing the Narrows meant braving the storms. Once, I asked Saint if he was ever scared when the dark clouds came for the Lark. He was a big man, towering over me from where he stood at the helm. When he looked down at me, his face was shrouded in the white smoke from his pipe.

I’ve seen worse things than a storm, Fay, he’d answered.

The Lark was the only home I’d ever known before Jeval, but in the years before I was born, Saint had lost four other ships to the sea demons’ wrath. As a child, the thought made tears well up in my eyes, imagining those beautiful, grand ships trapped in the cold deep. The first time I ever saw one for myself was diving in Tempest Snare with my mother, where the Lark now slept.

I pulled myself to my feet slowly, every muscle and bone sore from being thrown from the lines. Dried blood crusted my hands, my palms stinging where the skin had torn against the ropes, and I hit the hatch with my fist. The light touched my face as it lifted above me. Hamish crouched over the top step, and my eyes adjusted to the brightness slowly. The sandy hair that was usually combed back was stuck to his forehead, his spectacles fogged. Behind him, the heat of late morning was making the moisture on the deck steam like a pot of water.

Paj tipped his chin up at me, smirking. “Looks like our bad luck charm survived.”

I came up the steps, my boots heavy with water. All around us, the sea was calm, smoothed out in a clear, deep blue.

West stood portside, a length of rope belayed across his back. A deep gash was cut into the thick muscle of his forearm, and another grazed across his temple. The blood was dried in trailing lines down the side of his face.

I peered over the side of the ship to see Willa sitting back in her sling, biting down on the blade of a knife with her teeth. She propped her feet on the hull, working on the breach where the iron clasps that held the bowanchor had been. The rings had ripped through the wood in the force of the waves.

She pulled the adze from her belt and pounded a cone of raw wood into each hole. It would stop water from filling the hull until we got to Ceros, but there would be more work to do while it was docked.

Auster was suspended beside her, pulling at the rope that secured the loose anchor, but it wasn’t moving. Paj watched him over the railing with his jaw clenched, and I remembered the way he’d jumped into the black water. How he’d held Auster in his arms, his face twisted as he cried into Auster’s hair. I’d been right about the two of them. It had been clear as glass in the moment they landed on the deck.

Paj loved Auster, and from the look on his face as he peered up at him, Auster loved Paj.

Never, under any circumstances, reveal who or what matters to you.

It was the reason Saint had made me promise to never tell a soul that I was his daughter.

I looked up to a flap of the topsail dangling from the foremast, where the wind had ripped it through. In the breezeway, the riggings that kept supplies in place had also broken free. The Marigold would be anchored at least a week for these repairs.

Auster climbed the rope ladder and jumped back onto the deck, dripping seawater. “Must be a reef. I can’t see down that far.”

West was studying the surface below. “How deep?”

“Two hundred feet maybe? I’m not sure.”

I took hold of the rope and gave it a tug. “I can get it.”

But West kept his back to me. “No.”

“Why not? It’s only two hundred feet.”

“It’s the least she could do.” Auster glared at me, but humor illuminated his steely eyes. “Bad luck and all.”