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“Lose something?” Captain Sarah Sharpe calls down to the approaching skiff. Even so late at night he’s an easy read, his straw-colored hair a dead giveaway in the lantern’s glow. And anyway, she’s been expecting him.
“Tell me she’s here,” Jacob says irritably as he pulls himself up the side of the ship, landing steady and gazing about the empty deck as if she might be hiding in one of the rope coils. “If she is, I’m gonna strangle her. And if she isn’t, then I’m definitely going to strangle her.”
Sarah tilts her head back towards the quarterdeck. “Set her up in me old quarters. Stowed away, can you believe it?”
“Ugh.” Jacob runs a broad hand over his face. “Great. Figures.”
“Running away after only a few months?” she says amiably. “That bad?” In the lantern light she finally gets a look at him after these months apart, although it feels like years. She’d gotten the odd letter and heard the more-frequent rumors, many not to be trusted, but he seems fine at least, hale and healthy, if stressed. That might be just parenthood, though.
“You don’t wanna know the half of it,” he says wearily. “I mean, yeah, we’re doing well enough, found us a place to stay and all, but ever since she heard ya were in port she’s been hounding me nonstop about wanting to come see ya and go visit Red, and damn if I’d let her, not with things still as they are.” A deep sigh, hinting at how exhausted he must be. “I’ll go grab her and get out of yer hair.”
“Ha!” Sarah barks, throwing her head back. “No you’re not.” She leans over the gunrail and calls off the rower. Jacob doesn’t argue or even react much, merely watches the small boat and it’s bobbing light head back to its pier, before turning to her with a slight question in the tilt of his eyebrow.
“Am I being pressed now?” he asks mildly. “That desperate to get me back?”
“You wish. We’re sailing with the morning tide, you can take off before then, easy.”
“You sure about that?” There’s a teasing edge now, that earlier tension in his shoulders and voice all going and gone. “Then I’ll have light enough to see what you’ve done to this fine ol’ beast.”
“Do your worst,” she says, clapping his back. Let him judge; she would pay a far higher price to have Jacob at home again on this ship. Together they step across to starboard, facing towards the open ocean, far beyond the shelter of this harbor. A lobster boat sleepily passes by, it’s traps piled high and reeking. This close to shore the smell is different, a reek of rotting seaweed, of fish, and the overall stench of a busy, working town. She’ll be glad to be back on open waters.
“Where you headed, then?” Jacob asks as he leans both arms against the railing, already slick with dew. Sarah goes and rests beside him, as natural as anything.
“Just a short cruise south to run supplies. Still trying to get our bearings on what to do, what with monster hunting no longer quite the thing.”
Jacob ducks his head and makes a little throaty noise, almost apologetic. She could blame him. Some do. Amongst the other hunting ships the Inevitables are pariahs, and there have been more than a handful of scuffles amidst the different crews, furious at their livelihoods being taken away. Perhaps that’s why Jacob moved to land—safer.
“You’re still afloat, though,” he mutters, tip-toeing around her when he shouldn’t be. Jacob runs his hand over the railing, the wood fresh, like new skin after a bloody wound and not yet darkened by sun and sea. With the eyes and face of someone who knows this ship as well as his bones, Jacob gazes about, at all the new masts and spars, riggings and balustrades. “She took a hell of a beating.”
“Aye, she did.” The Inevitable seems half new again but still the same old, weathered, steady ship. Sarah idly recalls something the Doctor had remarked as they watched workers secure the new triangular jib to the new bowsprit. “The Ship of Theseus twice over,” he had said, and Sarah had nodded and tried to recall why that sounded familiar. Maybe something Captain Crow had said, half a lifetime ago. “She’s got more life in her yet,” she remarks, laying a hand on the new wood, feeling the steady roll as of a great beast resting.
It’s a marvel the ship survived at all, having nearly foundered back in the shadow of the castle. After the events at Whiterock—for battle doesn’t seem the right word, nor attack—the Inevitable had managed to limp out of the city’s fine port, her crew having threatened and bribed the guards to lower the chain-gate, and then had hobbled to the nearest dockyard. There they repaired long enough to get to another further south, one with the right sails and spars they needed, as well as further from the capitol and the whole mess of it.
“You and the kid settling down, though?” Sarah says in a different tone, shifting from the more turbulent waters of politics and the past.
“No,” he responds with a laugh. “She doesn’t know the meaning of it, always wanting to run off and get in trouble. Apparently she did the same thing before at that children’s home, couldn’t go a week without an escape attempt. Should have known she’d make a run. She’s always looking out to sea, watching the ships through her glass like she’s itching to go back, and sure, I get that, but she can’t just go off any time she damn well pleases!”
“She’s got salt in her veins,” Sarah says with admiration. “Crow was right, she’s all vinegar.”
“Not helping,” he mutters. “Worse, the kid’s got a real knack for creatures, the more dangerous the better. I caught her luring a badger home before I managed to get it away.”
“You astonish me,” she says mildly, aware that the girl has already found the ship’s older cat, a vicious, ill-tempered brute and decidedly re-named it Gray. It’s likely sleeping with her now.
He shakes his head. “Honestly I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Things were simpler before. Not saying this life was easy, but it was ours.” He goes quiet, a slight embarrassed air as if admitting too much. Yet, even now he stares out to sea like a fellow pining after a girl, love-struck and forlorn.
The bell strikes the late hour. Sarah raises her head, watching the sailor who had struck it step away and vanish again, the ship feeling deserted, the watch almost surely asleep in corners or just giving them space. All clear, nothing much to think about in port. After this brief look she returns to her easy lean besides Jacob, who’s watching her.
“So,” he says, with a familiar cheeky grin. “Captain.”
“Someone had to be.”
“I give you joy of it,” he says. She doesn’t need a strong light to see the warmth in his eyes. She would have to be deaf to not hear it in his voice. “Truly.”
She’s been congratulated many a time, shaken many hands, but it means a great deal more, from him. He nudges her when she goes quiet, and she nudges him back.
“You’d have made a fine captain yourself,” she tells him. Honestly she thought she’d die long before she got the opportunity, or otherwise watch Jacob become captain and she’d be his right-hand. That would have been fine, as it’s Jacob and she loves him, trusts him. “Not many who can say they’ve ridden a sea beast and lived to tell it.”
“Ah, it sounds worse than it was. I know you were there when I told Captain Crow, but I couldn’t do it justice, not to him.” There’s a weary sigh, a soul-deep pain that she can’t touch. She knows Crow was like a father to him. She doesn’t know how painful that must be for Jacob, who has no other. He turns his gaze upwards, and she does the same, allowing him his silence, as if in mourning.
“D’ya remember those nights when you’d take me up to the crow’s nest?” he asks quietly.
“Years ago, ya mean? Sure.”
Jacob nods. “It was like that, when I was with Maisie. It was like the rest of the world didn’t exist, just us and a dark night and we could feel Red swimming and breathing, a steady low thing like waves on a shore. And I thought to those nights you and me’d sit up in the top and look at the stars.”
Of course she remembers. She’d race him to the top of the main and there they’d stay through the long hours of the watch. She’d teach him the stars, of legends she’s heard, while he’d pass to her bits of dried fruit or bread he’d pilfered, and in a quiet voice would ask her anything: about the far off places he had yet seen, of white sand beaches and people who all looked like her. He’d try to recall memories from before his marooning, had fought with himself and hated himself to find so much gone, not even the faces of his parents, and she’d nod and understand, because she did. Neither of them knew any home except aboard this ship. Neither had a name except what was given to them.
Other times they’d sit quiet, back to back and braced against the mast, and let the stars drift solemnly overhead, just them and a quiet world.
“Guess I miss it,” Jacob says, and she can hear that longing echoed in her own heart.
Sarah looks over, grinning. “You are going soft.”
He gives a faint laugh, gentle and as familiar as her own.
Here the sky is cloudless yet the stars are faint and obscured, a mixture of the ship’s lights, the lanterns lining streets, and the smoke of hundreds of cooking fires that waft up, nearly invisible but for what it all hides. The summer stars are going or gone as it comes onto autumn. Ursa Major and Ursa Minor—poor Callisto and her son—shift about to make way as new constellations, at once ancient and familiar, take their place in the steady march onward. There, over the stern, the Hunter stands poised to strike against the Monster with its burning heart. Further on: the Seven Sisters, those stars that feel strangely of home.
She knows these stars. She knows their stories. Now, damnably, she wonders how many are just more lies.
A dog’s harsh barking from shore breaks the spell that threatened to lay hold over them, like they might stay there ‘til morning. Sarah stretches her back with a crack, leaning away and re-orienting herself to the ship and the night. Late, but not so late.
“Coffee?” she offers, thumbing towards the quarterdeck.
He peers at her, studying her as she had studied him, before the edge of his lips turn up, and he stands easy. “Add in some real food and I’m all yours.”
She finds one of the watch on deck and shakes her awake, telling her to go to the cook and ask for coffee and food to be sent in—decent food and fresh coffee, quick as they can—and then steps through the door of the great cabin, Jacob right behind. It’s strange: these quarters should have been his, by right and due course. She glances over as he enters, carefully watching for any hint of resentment, of possible anger or hurt. No, he just nods and says, “Ya turned the place all to hell. I like it.”
“A work in progress,” she says genially, stepping behind the broad desk and waving him towards an opposite chair as he dwells at the side, idly runs a hand over a locker—a mini armory if he were to open it up. She’s been steadily turning the place into her own. It was all badly damaged back at Whiterock, and anything she knew to be Crow’s she had carefully packed and put away in a sea chest, there for when she might find him.
For a few minutes they sit in silence, sipping coffee while Jacob steadily eats, ripping up the fresh bread and cutting away slabs of the cheese before jabbing them on the tip of his eating knife and toasting them over a brass candle.
“Still can’t believe you of all of us became a landsman,” she says eventually. “Gonna be a farmer now?”
“Aye, an ol’ fa-rmer,” he echoes in that nasal twang they’d always give to landsman, and for a moments it’s little Jacob before her, a barrel-chested teen striving to be another hard-headed and hardhearted adult. Then the ironic grin fades, and his shoulders slip as he mutters, “I don’t know. Still figuring out the details.”
Sarah nods thoughtfully. He’s never had a life outside the ship, not since the day they dragged him aboard. She doesn’t know what she’d do in his place, stuck on land like that. It had been a great fear of hers when she had first lost her leg, tossing about her hammock in a fever and dreading the thought of losing her only home, losing the only thing she was.
“I don’t think farming’s it, though,” he admits, turning the cheese as it sags and smokes in the flame. “Don’t got a clue how to make things grow. All I know is how to kill monsters. Wondering if I should be a butcher or the like.”
“No, that don’t seem right neither,” she remarks. “Maybe killing wolves or go for soldier, that might be a career for ya.”
Jacob shakes his head, slow and weary like a golden-haired dog. “Nah.” He looks to her, and there’s pain in his eyes that she doesn’t expect. “I don’t want to keep killing things.”
It’s silent, the words spoken like a confession. She realizes: they are. All they’re good at is killing monsters, and now this. Another time, she might have been alarmed. Horrified, perhaps. Might have gripped him by the collar of his shirt and torn into him for being a damned scrub, a soft, weak-hearted, selfish coward who had no place aboard this ship. The thought crosses her mind, she can almost see it, but there in front of her, she just sees a boy who’s lost everything he’s ever known, twice now.
The candle sputters as cheese drips into the wax. Jacob pulls his skewer up with a muttered curse, setting it on a piece of bread and then leaning back in his chair before sighing and sinking forward. He sits slumped over, jaw pressed tight as if awaiting her judgment.
Jacob Holland, done with killing monsters. What’s the world come to?
She nods, setting down her cup. “All right.” Rising to her feet, she goes to a locker. “Drink?” She needs one.
She eyes the bottle of Madeira, then the spiced rum, and decides upon the Port. Sweet, and welcome after the bitter dregs. Pouring them each a finger, she then reaches out to steal a date off his plate and leans back, wishing she had taken up the vice of smoking.
“We were never just hunters though, were we.” She tilts her cup, traces her thumb over the etched initials. It’s new, a gift from her blood sister on the event of her promotion. Sarah had mentioned once, maybe twice, how Captain Crow had his own beautiful set, his initials stamped in it, for the one she holds is marked in the same way, with a calligraphic ‘SS.’ For whatever you may need or be, my dear, her sister had written, both sharp and sweet.
Captain, she reminds herself. Still feels weird.
“We’re sailors. Even with all those monsters swimming in it, the sea’s our home. It’s in our blood.” She levels a look to Jacob. “It’s in her blood, too.”
Again he doggedly shakes his head. “It’s no place for a kid,” he says.
“You grew up on the deck of a ship. Hell, so did I.” She crosses her arms, and there’s a fleeting moment where she wonders if he thinks he’s better than them. “We didn’t turn out awful.”
He fixes her with a hard look in return, and the place between her flesh and false leg itches. She shrugs.
“The kid deserves better,” he says, heartfelt, and that earlier thought dissipates entirely. “I just… I thought I could give her better, so she can be safe and, and have a real life. An education! A place in society, not just the jagged edges of it. Besides, there’s no future for her here.”
“Ah, the world will always need us,” Sarah says assuredly, a lie to him and herself. On the further wall, pinned high, is a map of the known seas, it’s safe ports and passages, the paper rough at the edges and full of open space. There is enough for them yet. “Even if it don’t need hunters, we’ll adapt.”
It won’t be pleasant, nor easy. Already she chafes at the idea of this rough old ship being used as a transport or, gods forbid, a merchantman. But as long as she’s got wood between her and the sea, a mast and wind in her sails, she’ll survive. She’s good at that.
So is Jacob.
“We’ll adapt,” she says again to him, and he looks up at the tone of her voice. “You’ll get through, Jacob Holland. Even if you do become a farmer.” He grins, soft and weary. There’s something strangely young about him, or growing younger, as he fumbles with his cup between his broad hands.
“I think I could handle a small garden, anyway. Maybe I can do something with animals. Horses, maybe. Or cows,” he says with a grimace. Sarah pulls a face of her own at the idea of it. They’ll sometimes have the creatures aboard for fresh food, sweet doe-eyed beasts, fine enough on their own but not exactly fitting for Jacob. He scratches under his jaw, contemplative. “I don’ know, suppose I’ll see what comes. The kid would be happy with a bunch of animals about.”
She hums, pouring herself more of the port.
“Do ye remember me talking about my other sister up north, Brigid?” Sarah says thoughtfully. “She’s a naturalist, ya know, and a verra fine one at that, like her father. Maybe that’s the thing for your little monster-lover.”
Jacob’s brows pinch as he considers that, rubbing his chin and nodding. “A naturalist. Huh, you might be on to something. Studying the beasts, yeah. She’d need plenty of schooling for it, that’s a learned profession, but it might be just the thing.”
“I’ll mention it in my next letter,” Sarah says, leaning back more comfortably, keeping her eyes on him, still deep in contemplation. He gave up everything for that little girl. It’s almost heartbreaking, to see how much he’s fallen in love, and how much he’s grown. He’ll make a good dad, sure enough.
“Thanks S…” he catches himself, blinking before gazing at her with great affection. “Thanks, Captain.”
She scoffs, turning her head as her faces grows warm, and yet can still feel him looking at her with something like pride. The damn kid. Glancing over her shoulder out the window, she’s relieved there’s no sign of dawn yet. She’s not ready to have him leave. And really, why should he?
“This voyage, you know it shouldn’t take much more than a week,” she says, after a quick consideration. “Maisie’s already got a berth setup, and I’m sure we’ve got a spare hammock. We can handle a couple stowaways, I’m sure.”
He makes as if to argue, but there is longing in his eyes, his face open and easy to read. Then he sighs as if in defeat, but it’s all for show. There’s something settled about him, like a seabird that found shelter in a storm and now can rest easy. Or maybe like he’s home again. “If you don’t mind the extra company.”
“I should like it above all things,” Sarah says, and finds that same cool sense of peace. “But you know, you seem happy.”
“By God,” Jacob says, blinking fast as if stunned to realize it. “I think I am.”
She's happy for him, really. Yet within her heart something pulls, an unsung grief: by all the gods, I’ll miss you.
Perhaps she’s going soft, too.
They talk on, past the changing of the watch and then later still. Occasionally they’ll catch the sound of someone stumbling back onto the ship from their revelries, stomping down below deck to catch a few hours of sleep. When Jacob starts nodding off she pulls him up by an elbow and over to her swinging cot, shoving him in and dousing the lights. Jacob doesn’t put up much of an argument, just some murmured nonsense and giving two gentle pats on her arm as she’s leaving. Her old bunk should be free still, with Maisie in the upper and hopefully asleep. For a night she’ll allow him the captain’s quarters. It don’t signify.
She goes on deck as a bell rings from the town, as the mournful sound echoes and fades into the surrounding hills, perhaps a call for morning prayers. She scans the town, obscured by fog and pre-dawn shadows, and finds a tall spire jutting over the tiled roofs of the houses, a blocky bell tower besides it.
The first time she ever set foot in a church—not the rigged setup on Sundays, those she only attended out of duty or boredom—but a real stone-and-mortar church, she had still been a gangly, long-limbed youth with little sense of reverence, but she understood well enough she was stepping into the house of a god.
It was beautiful. A cathedral in a distant land, with high vaulted ceilings and glowing stained glass windows, full of soft murmurs as men and women bent their heads over rows of candles, the faint smoke of incense catching the light, turning it all to beams. She recalls the quiet peace of it as she ran her fingers along a polished wooden pew. The black-frocked sisters and the father there had been welcoming and kind, but it wasn’t her place. She could almost sense it, that something beyond, but it wasn’t until she stepped out that she truly felt right. She remembered, it was just before a storm and the first breath smelled and tasted of it, that promise of rain and a wild sky, the wind kicking up and the light all strange and warm. It had reminded her of before, somehow, from that empty island on the other side of the world that had smelled of death, lurking in memories she can no longer reach.
For now, the sky is clear. There’s a hint of gray to the east, heading off the stars. Venus lays bright and low on the horizon. The rickety crow’s nest is a mere dark shape above, and she recalls back when she was a young girl herself and she’d go alone, quietly up the rigging when she couldn’t sleep. There in the top she’d sit under the endless sky, feeling unmoored. She would clutch at the rough wood, not out of any fear of falling, but fear that she might drift up and become lost to the starry depths. That huge expanse, so wonderful and terrible, pulled at her soul, and she had to hold on tight or she’d be lost.
The soft call of a kittiwake breaks her revery, the little gull skimming over the water with its black-tipped wings, flying all alone. Standing there, glancing up at the smoke-pale sky, she thinks about the silly fancies and long thoughts of childhood. The ship beneath her is solid and real, she is her captain, and she will lead her crew through any strait and into any battle. An old sea dog, with the scars to prove it and proud. Now, as captain, she’s to do it alone.
It’s wonderful and terrible, all at once.
*
* *
“Running five knots.”
“Carry on, then,” Sarah says, after taking the wheel to hand to get a sense of the ship pulling through the water, before releasing and securing it. Miss Merino stood at her side, hands clasped behind her back and standing by with idle interest. It’s been a fine cruise, days and nights of sweet clean sailing and kind weather. Far to starboard runs a distant shoreline, a long series of black hills broken by periodic lights from a village or lower ones from fishing vessels setting their traps. From below deck she can hear chatter as the crew swap stories and songs, with Jacob chief among them.
Perhaps having Jacob aboard should have been more strange. She’d half-expected him to edge up against her leadership, or perhaps that of the first mate, but other than a small incident here or there, it’s been smooth. More than that, his presence has been wholly welcome. The crew missed him, sure enough, are even protective of him, and they all dote on young Maisie.
“Uh, captain?” Miss Merino says from her side, jutting her chin forward. “By the bowsprit.”
And speak of the devil.
Sarah peers through the darkness and sighs as she spots a small figure leaning over the rail, her feet clear off the deck. Heading down, she takes no care to quiet her steps, yet even so Maisie takes no notice, if anything leaning further out over the sea foam.
“Miss Brumble,” Sarah says, making the girl jump, thankfully not straight into the sea. “Planning a late night swim?”
“Uh, yes. I mean no! Captain,” Maisie says after falling back onto the deck with a salute, touching her knuckles to her brow like the other sailors.
The child, as children are want to do, took to this new life like a fish to water. Often Sarah would spy her with Jacob or another, scrambling up the rigging or tangling up the lines under the guise of teaching her knots. Drizzly and sunny afternoons were spent with Jemmy Ducks amidst the poultry and their nanny goat, and at each midday Jacob and the first mate talked over each other in an attempt at teaching her navigation. Little Maisie took every meal with the hands, listening to the sailor’s talk and picking up their speech like a bad habit. If Jacob ever puts that one in school, it’s going to be trouble.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Sarah asks, raising an eyebrow.
“No ma’am!” she pipes proudly. “I ain’t tired at all and I’ve been helping with the dog watch. That’s the short one, you know, and they said I was relieved at the last bell, so now it’s just the regular watch going on. All clear, by the way.”
“I see,” she says slowly, eyeing the girl, now bouncing on her heels. “Did you get into my coffee?”
“What?” Maisie scoffs, glancing aside. “No.”
Sarah Sharpe hums, debating if that’s a lie.
“I didn’t!” Maisie says, offended or feigning so. “It’s not even that long after dinner. I was just down below with Jacob and the others but then they kept going on and on. I got bored of all their talk about battles and all that dreary stuff.”
“Dreary battles?” Sarah says, almost laughing.
Maisie gives her a look of commiseration. “They started talking about maneuvers,” she says, as if that was answer enough. “And I don’t need to know if the stunnin’sails were raised aloft, nor how the wind was. So I left.”
“I see.”
“Sides,” Maisie says, turning her head, “I like it out here, all quiet and dark, it feels like when we were with Red. I keep thinking I might see her out there, but she wouldn’t be, would she?”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Sarah glances from the corner of her eye at this remarkable little girl who befriended the most terrible of beasts, who upended the world as they knew it. Yet here she is, as if not even knowing it.
At least Maisie keeps her feet on the deck this time when she leans over to watch the packets of water cresting against the ship, almost glowing against the dark sea. It’s mesmerizing, and despite the constant breath of it, time seems motionless. A full bodied breath of wind pulls at the sails, making the canvas and rope creak, a sound so soft and familiar Sarah wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been so conscious of the near silence. Gazing up, she’s sure the crow’s nest is empty, what with no monsters to spot and in such familiar waters there’s no need for a lookout. Sarah folds her hands behind her back as she looks back to the young girl, once more heaved up with her stomach over the railing to get closer to the spray.
“I saw Jacob earlier teaching you how to climb up into the rigging.”
“Oh aye!” Maisie says, leaping down with shining eyes. “I’m great at it, I’m already faster than him though he won’t admit it.”
“Is that so?” Sarah says charitably, afraid to think he might be rubbing off on her. “Has he taken you up at night yet?”
“Uh, well no.” Maisie peers all the way to where the topgallant is furled, far overhead. “We can do that?”
“Sure. Sometimes we’ve got to run up in the night in a full howling gale, but tonight’s as calm as you can wish. We can run up now, if you care for it. If yer not scared, of course.”
“I ain’t scared of nothing!” she says proudly, straightening up for another inch of height, which adds little to the overall effect of a small girl with too much bluster.
Sarah eyes the sails. She considers the glass in her cabin earlier, showing fair, and considers, too, the light wind and moderate swell. A crescent moon is already slipping towards the sea to be doused, giving a ghost-like glow to the rigging and sails.
“Come on, then,” Sarah says. “There’s not a moment to lose.” For once that moon is gone, they’ll be going near blind, with only the stars to light the way.
As she crosses over she can hear two soft thunks as Maisie tosses her shoes to the side; better to feel the rope that way, more secure. Good, Jacob’s teaching her right. Sarah swings herself onto the railing, her weight all on one leg, and Maisie follows without pause or fear, immediately clambering up into the broad bottom of the ratlines (“stop calling them ‘rat-lines’” she had heard Jacob chastise earlier, “It’s ‘rattlins.’ Don’t need you sounding like a lubber.”) Sarah watches her for but a moment before she tucks her false leg against the back of her shin, jumps single-footed into a square of rigging, and away they go, up and up.
Maisie’s a quick learner, to be sure, but slow enough that it throws off Sarah’s own rhythm to keep an eye on her, staying close but not too close and careful to not tug at the lines. They make it to the first top without incident, a large U-shaped platform, large as a dinghy and the easiest one to climb onto. They don’t linger much before moving on to the next. The dark-lantern’s glow dims the higher they climb, and then vanishes almost entirely as they leave its radius of light.
“You need to move with the ship,” Sarah calls out towards where Maisie is fumbling about with all the grace of a drunkard, now that the roll is more pronounced. She can feel her struggle rather than see it, like the twitch in a spider’s web. “Move as it goes. Hand up now, steady, wait for the roll, now yer other leg…”
She’s careful as Maisie slowly gets to the lubber’s hole, guiding her by word and hand before the child hoists herself up onto the platform. Sarah then swallows a little pride and follows her through it. It’s more akin to a halfway station, a pause between the top and the nest, a tight space but secure enough. Maisie is panting open-mouthed as she clings to the mast with both arms. Sarah can almost hear her trembling, although whether of exhaustion or fear, it’s hard to say.
“How ya doing there?” Sarah says, grinning.
“That was easy,” Maisie wheezes, gulping in air. “I could do this all night.” Aye. They’re definitely rubbing off on each other.
“We can rest here a minute,” Sarah says, pulling her good leg up and letting her other hang over the side. She lays a hand upon the beam and can feel the faint vibration of the ship, the pull on the sails, a faint list to larboard. They might need to reef some, but it can wait until morning. A sudden pendulum swing sends them tilting over the ocean as the ship crests an errant wave, making Maisie squeak and clutch at the mast.
“I figured after riding the Red Bluster this’d be easy,” Sarah remarks, her body swaying instinctively as the ship steadies.
“Red was a lot calmer than this.” Maisie peers over the side, breathing in sharp before coming back to clutch tighter. “A lot lower, too.”
As Maisie’s heavy breathing subsides, it grows quiet. From below, there’s still the sound the bow breaking through the water, and the creaking of the ropes. Mostly, though, it’s quiet. The topgallant—the uppermost sail—is furled above them, a thin dark patch against the starlight. Higher still, the sky looms. The hazy band of the Milky Way glows in a long trailing line like a river.
“Did Jacob teach you the stars, yet?” Sarah asks.
“He mentioned the north star, but that was at noon so didn’t help us much. And uh… think that was it.”
“You’ve more to learn, then. See that little cluster there,” Sarah says, pointing to them. At Maisie’s faint ‘umm,’ Sarah tries a different tack. “Ya know how to find Orion’s belt?”
“That’s easy, they’re uh… they’re right there! The three little ones,” she says excitedly, leaning forward in a way that makes Sarah’s heart drop to her stomach.
“Keep on the damn ship,” she mutters, yanking her back. “But fine. That there’s the constellation of the Hunter, Orion. If you look you can see his shoulders and legs, and the curve of his shield before him, and hold a spear overhead.” Sarah pauses as she sees that great figure in the sky, one she used to be proud of.
“Now, if ya follow his belt left and down, that’s Sirius, the real bright one. But what I want you to do is go the other way, follow his belt to the right and you’ll come to a red star. That there’s called Aldebaran.” The burning, bleeding heart of the Monster, but she thinks that’s not part of the story the kid would much appreciate. “Now go further, ya keep going and there you’ll see them. A little group of stars all together.”
Maisie raises her hand to trace that line, and then says, “I see them! Right there.”
“Those are the Pleiades,” Sarah says, and it feels like introducing family, one to the other. “They’re the Seven Sisters, or the Sailing Stars. They’re ours, as much as Polaris.”
At her side, she can hear Maisie murmur under her breath, and again stretches out her hand to retrace that line with her finger, from Hunter to Monster to the Sailing Stars. Sarah pulls her telescope from an inner pocket, unrolls it and catches the stars in her line of sight, as if assuring they’re all still there, before passing it over to Maisie. She struggles to keep her gaze steady, and makes little frustrated noises as she lifts the glass up before setting it in her lap to squint, before doing it all over again, fighting the sway of the ship. Finally she must find them, for she goes quiet and still for a long moment.
“The Pleiades,” Maisie mutters, long in her accent and full of reverence, lowering the telescope and simply gazing up at them. “Why the sailing stars?”
“On the day those stars rise with the sun, or when they become the morning star in other words, that’s when we know it’s time to unmoor and head to sea. It’s called their heliacal rising,” Sarah says before glancing over. “You stay on this ship long enough, you’ll learn all that.”
There’s no response right away, as Maisie gazes up, taking in the expanse of the sky and then looking down at the world below. “D’ye think Jacob would let me?” she asks quietly. “Stay here?”
“You might convince him yet, if it’s what you want. But I’ll tell you this,” Sarah says, keeping her voice low. “You’ve got time, and you’ve got choices. And you’ve got people that care about ya.”
“It’s still a bit strange,” Maisie admits. “Having someone that cares.”
“Well you’d better get used to it,“ Sarah says, rather sharp. “Jacob’s still getting his feet under him, you’d best not make it harder than it needs to be.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have run away.”
Sarah smiles and softens, proud of this girl, all salt and vinegar and full of heart. “Ah, but you’re learning, it’s what ya do. Now then, ready to go higher?” There’s a pause, a nervous little sound of agreement, but still Maisie stands, gripping the ropes tight. “Carefully, to be sure.”
They go, slow and careful, the deck lantern long since hidden by the sails, the moon’s pale afterglow also now gone. It is a pure darkness that they climb through.
“Easy,” Sarah calls out when there’s a small gasp as Maisie’s foot slips. Sarah catches her ankle and puts it back upon a rung. The little girl doesn’t move for some moments, nearly frozen, and that would be the worst thing. But after a few breaths and some testing pulls, as it making sure the ropes won’t give under her slight weight, Maisie begins once more to climb, testing each foothold before moving up. “Good,” Sarah mutters, nodding with satisfaction and letting go of a breath. To keep going, that’s the key.
As they near the top the rigging comes all to a point, growing narrow enough that even Sarah feels that familiar swoop in her stomach when she skirts past and around Maisie, leaning over the edge and knowing black oblivion is on the other side. Maybe they should have done this in the daytime, she thinks pointlessly as she braces herself against the taut rope, wrapping a leg about the outer seam, braced at knee and ankle and hip, and then gripping the sharp wooden edge of the opening.
“Take my hand,” Sarah says, holding out for Maisie. “It’s right above us.”
Sarah guides her up and through, following after and sinking down with relief, her own heart hammering in her chest. Children: the worst. They sit upon the small crow’s nest, open all around and small enough that even Maisie’s legs hang off the edge, at least until she pulls them up closer, tight to her chest as she gazes out, with not a word spoken.
It’s silent.
Not even the sound of wind or rigging, and they might be entirely alone in the universe, apart from every living thing. The sky opens above them, huge and endless. The Milky Way glows, soft at the edges and blue-green like the depths of the ocean.
Sarah looks to it and an old shudder runs through her. Here is that siren call, a god’s whisper that you are nothing and might be swallowed whole, and if you don’t hold on tight, you’ll fall, the world inverted. Maisie, too, must feel it, because there is a small, faint gasp and then her hand finds Sarah’s and grips hard, holding on like a lifeline. And she knows, she understands, it’s not a fear of falling.
No. It is not fear, or at least not something so mundane.
It is that piercing sense of looking upon divinity, more terrible and more powerful than anything on this world. She remembers, then, another name for those little blue stars, a word from those far islands where she had come from, a place that was once home.
Matariki. The Eyes of God.
Perhaps it is that god that watches over them. She feels something tug at the spirit within her, the same thing that tugged on her as a child, neither kind nor sinister, simply what is, ancient and familiar and full of mystery. Maisie grips her hand tight, and it is like Jacob, all those years before, the ship and the sea alive beneath her, salt spray drying on her cheeks and running in her veins, the sky wrapping around the horizon like great speckled wings.
For a time the world is only them, and starlight.