Spindle Fire (Spindle Fire #1)(29)

And she knows something else too, knows it deep in her bones like an echo in a long corridor: the beast is nigh.

Nearly as soon as she experiences the buzz of that thought, the dinghy lurches, the bow flying upward into the crashing waves. She’s thrown onto her back and swallows a huge gulp of seawater. Sputtering, she tries to sit up again, conscious that the spear is still in her hand, and that she could have stabbed herself—or someone else—with it.

“Gil!” she cries again fruitlessly. Her ankle throbs—it’s twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Encirclé!” she hears. The command has come from a different boat. They are surrounding one of the whales. She tries to picture the giant narwhal, with its long, majestic, glimmering horn. Tiny boats on all sides, getting closer. Men poised with their weapons. The great fish diving and surfacing, trying to get away. Faster, she thinks. Hurry. Escape.

Of course she knows where and how Deluce gets its oil—from the fat of these animals. And Isbe has witnessed many a hunt during her lifetime. Yet somehow this is different. She is flooded with awe, wonder, and repulsion.

Then she hears it: the zing of the harpoon’s spear flying through the air, followed by a noise Isbe can only describe as murderous. The creature has been hit.

It’s as though the whale’s cry contains the varied cries of whole families, of past and future beings: a strange and tragic symphony of mangled horns and snapped strings.

And then the world goes mute. Even the sea waits, eerily still.

Now a high, songlike wail breaks the silence. There’s a loud, angry splash. All the men begin shouting over one another again, and she hears weapons rapidly drawn.

“Round ’bout, Adeline! She’s diving! Sophia, Sophia! Losin’ line! All hands! ’At’s the pull! We’re losin’ ’er!” It’s the captain’s voice. He’s calling directions to the smaller boats, each of them given female names: Maria, Sophia, Adeline, Clementine, Clarabelle . . .

Then a frenzy of spattering and screaming as they try to stab the beast, many losing their spears if not their footing. A few have gone overboard, from the sound of it. She doubts they’ll be saved. Her breath clatters in her chest. Is Gilbert among them?

She tastes rust—and blood—in the salty air.

“The rope! Clarabelle!” the captain shouts.

“Close now! ’At’s you, lad!” Isbe is shoved, hard, in the shoulder.

She tries to breathe, but her lungs burn. The spear is slippery in her hand. The hunt has somehow, unthinkably, come down to her. The whale leaps, and her boat is jerked forward. It feels as though her heart has leapt up too, to clog her throat. Their oars are tangled in the harpoon’s line.

She chokes on saltwater. At any moment, they’ll all be tossed into the sea and likely battered to death by the giant, writhing fish.

The rope whines as it’s pulled tauter and tauter. The whale is yanking hard. It will drag them down with it, into the depths of the sea.

She realizes, with terror, what she must do, if she wants to live. The boat tilts and heaves again, and she’s nearly thrown over, but someone grabs and steadies her.

“Now! Now! We canna hold ’er much longer!”

She doesn’t know who made the command. The words surround her, coming from the wind itself. Now. Now.

The waves roar. The whale bellows. The rope hisses.

She only has one spear, one thrust, one chance to get this right. It’s impossible.

She clenches her eyes, listening hard, leaning into the movement of the dinghy even as she tries to feel for the movement of the agonized creature beside and below and before them. Now, now, now.

The waves lash. The whale moans. The rope sings.

Her heart stops.

The spear flies.





13


Claudine,


a Faerie of Considerable Stature

(in More Ways Than One)

Claudine would not have believed the rumors had it not been for a lack of jam. She finds herself this morning quite short of the sweet preserves that normally provide her only pleasure in waking up. Her maid trembles at her bedside, holding out a wobbling silver tray with a large hunk of rye bread on it, bare as a baby’s head. Claudine backhands the tray, which flies from her maid’s grip and clatters to the floor.

“So it really is true, then,” she mutters, adjusting herself against her giant stack of pillows; her body—a mountain underneath the thick burgundy quilt—heaves with the effort.

She’s heard the story by now. News travels fast in winter, when there’s nothing else to do but gossip: Princess Aurora of Deluce was found motionless on the upper floor of an abandoned summer cottage, lying next to an enormous golden spindle. A maiden’s scream drew others to the site. The princess, presumed dead at first, was in fact sleeping far too deeply to awaken. The maiden who’d discovered her promptly fell into a similar state. Others were able to send a messenger to gallop back to the palace for help.

The council sent out six of their best men and a wagon through the rutted, frost-covered roads to rescue the young princess. As the men loaded her onto the cart, however, one of them grew weary and hardly made it out of the woods before falling to the ground in an unshakeable sleep. The others hurried on their course, wrapping the princess in thick cloaks. But on the short ride back to the palace, the remaining councilmen too succumbed.