Текст книги "Water & Storm Country"

Автор книги: David Estes

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

Chapter Nineteen

Huck

Every day the performance of the ship improves. Norris has been undeniably helpful, urging the men to work harder and faster. Budge, Ferris, and Whittle have led by example, the first ones up and the last ones to bed, toiling as hard as I’ve seen any sailors work, even those on The Merman’s Daughter. Every man, woman, and bilge rat does their part, following orders almost before they’re given.

Well, almost everyone. There are still the odd few who want the old days back, when they could sleep away half the day and drink away the whole night. Those ones have made the brig their home, seeming to relish getting sent there again and again, despite the ever-increasing awfulness of the conditions down below.

I’m sure they’re the ones spreading the rumors about Webb. Barney keeps me abreast of the latest theories, how Webb is being held against his will to fulfill some fetish of mine, or how he’s gone crazy and is strapped to a chair, never sleeping, spouting predictions of death to all who sail on the Mayhem. Barney claims the men don’t believe these ridiculous stories, but I know based on the strange looks they give me, that some do.

The official story is that he drank too much grog and fell overboard, which is more plausible than the current rumors, if less interesting. It seems the official story was dismissed as fiction the moment it was issued. And so it is. The real truth is a heaviness on my soul that I scarcely bare.

(That I’m a killer.)

Because the sailors are doing their jobs, I’m finding myself with more and more time to observe, to walk the decks, to watch the girl.

Every day she climbs the mast to clean. And every day she pretends I don’t exist, even when I’m obviously spying on her. But then everything changes. She starts doing things to acknowledge me, when I least expect it, when I’m starting to think I’m invisible to her. Sometimes she spits in my direction, leaving a wad of bubbly white at my feet; or she fakes like she’s going to throw her brush at me again, causing me to flinch and her to laugh; or she makes a face at me, like just looking at me makes her want to throw up, but then her smile gives her away. She’s enjoying our distant moments as much as I am.

And I am, although I shouldn’t be. What am I doing exactly?

I’ve seen my father a few times, when the fleet stops. We’re in the middle of the pack now, not the best performing ship, but not the worst either, and although my father is annoyed and frustrated that Cain and Hobbs were unable to discover the identity of my attacker, he’s begun complimenting me on what I’ve been able to accomplish on the Mayhem. Always these accolades are issued in private, while publicly it’s Captain Montgomery who receives his praise, at least when he’s vertical enough to do so, but that doesn’t bother me as much as I’d expect.

In fact, my father’s praise seems to fall flat at times. It’s what I’ve always wanted, right? To feel his pride in my chest, hear it in my ears, washing away the day I failed him and me and my mother.

(It’s because of the girl.)

(Because of what he’d do to her if he knew what she did to me.)

As I wonder how I’ve reached this point, marveling at the strange series of events that have made it possible, the bilge rat girl scrubs ferociously at a mast that has to be wearing away under her daily assault.

I pretend to scan the horizon, to watch the ocean, to do lieutenant-like things, when really my attention is on her. Waiting, waiting, waiting, for her daily sign of acknowledgement. Something that’s become a ritual for the both of us, something to wake up for.

That’s when the ritual changes.

She looks right at me and I can’t pretend to look at the ocean anymore, not when she’s looking at me. And I wait for the sign—for the spitting or the faked brush throw or the vomit-face—but instead, she smiles and my heart stops.

(It really does.)

And then she slides down the mast, smiling the whole way. My heart starts beating again, faster, faster, faster, because she walks toward me. She’s heading toward another mast, surely, to climb and clean it, but I know it’s not true, and then she passes by the wood column and moves toward the steps to the quarterdeck.

She pauses for a moment at the bottom, but then takes the first step. Every man, woman, and bilge rat stops what they’re doing to watch her, because everyone knows you must be a lieutenant or above, or invited by one, to climb those steps. But she’s doing it, and I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do, because I don’t want her to be punished, but she’s forcing my hand and

(Because I’ve killed to save her life.)

The girl reaches the top. My heart races as she walks toward me. I stand, nearly stumbling on the crate I’ve been sitting on.

When she nears me, she stops. “My name is Jade,” she says, in a voice that’s much less rough than I expected. “I just wanted you to know that so you can stop thinking of me as the bilge rat girl.” I can feel the stares of the men on us, but at least this bold girl—Jade, what a beautiful name—is speaking low enough that no one else can hear her words.

And I have to do something or they’ll kill her and tell my father and it will all be over. The daily ritual, the shared secrets, my father’s pride: gone in an instant.

Jade nods, as if encouraging me.

“Huck,” I say, wondering why I don’t say Lieutenant Jones.

“What kind of name is Huck?” she asks, turning her head slightly, exposing her cheek.

I slap her, not soft and not hard, a quick snap of my wrist, not because she mocked my name but because she’s left me no choice.

I do it for her and it hurts me too.

She takes a step back, unsurprised, not so much as raising a hand to her reddened cheek. Her eyes dance with the smile she can’t show on her lips. “That’ll be a day in the brig for your nerve!” I shout, plenty loud enough for every man and woman watching to hear. “And the next time you dare to climb those steps you’ll swim with the sharp-tooths!”

But my words don’t match the smile I can feel in my eyes. Bowing slightly, she walks away, descends the steps, and allows herself to be marched to the brig by the two men who’ve stepped forward to carry out my punishment.

It’s all I can do to hide the mixture of astonishment and jubilation that stretches and pulls beneath the skin of my face.

~~~

Jade’s out of the brig and back on the masts. She won’t look at me. Is she angry with me for slapping her, for sending her to isolation? How could she be when she left me no choice?

There it is, a quick glance in my direction, the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Not angry.

So I can keep on doing what I’m doing, right?

But what exactly is that? Stealing moments with the bilge rat girl—Jade…so you can stop thinking of me as the bilge rat girl—carrying on like we’re building some type of a friendship? I laugh out loud.

“What is it, sir?” Barney says, approaching from the side.

Trying to pretend like I was generally scanning the ship, rather than focusing entirely on Jade, who continues scrubbing, I say, “I was just having a chuckle at the pathetic disrepair of the sails. It’s a wonder we sail at all.”

“Mmm,” Barney muses. “I’ve wondered why your attention has been on the skies as of late.”

I give him a dagger-filled glance, but I can’t hold it when I see the curved-sausage smile on his fat lips. “You know, I have some experience repairing sails,” I say, “from one of my apprenticeships on The Merman’s Daughter. My father insisted that to be a captain one day I needed to learn every aspect of a ship’s management.”

“It would be unusual for a lieutenant to be seen repairing sails,” Barney says.

“Is there another?”

“Unfortunately, the sad state of the sails is a direct result of an unfortunate accident involving the previous sail climber. While performing his work he fell to his death. His breath stank of grog.”

“I must train a replacement immediately. Would that be acceptable to the men?”

Barney winks. “Given the need, I suspect that will pass the men’s scrutiny. Did you have someone in mind?”

I chew on my lip, wondering whether the words between my teeth are really as foolish as my brain is telling me they are. “The job is dangerous and I will not risk the life of one of the sailors. A bilge rat will do, someone good at climbing, like that nasty girl who’s always cleaning the masts and glaring at everyone. Bring her to my cabin when the sun is at its peak.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Barney says, the annoyingly contagious smile returning to his lips once more.

~~~

“Get the scorch offa me!” The shout is just outside my door and I can’t help but cringe when I hear it. It’s her. Jade.

And from the sounds of it, she’s putting up one helluva a bloody fight.

I’mafoolI’mafoolI’mafool. What was I thinking?

There’s a heavy thud on the door, and I suspect it’s from Jade’s foot, rather than one of my men’s hands. “Come in!” I shout.

The door is thrown open and a pair of sailors—Sid and Monty—carry her in, trying to subdue her thrashing arms and legs. Sid’s lip is cut and dribbling blood and Monty’s eye is already showing purple from what I expect was a well-placed kick, for it was he who apparently drew the short straw and was forced to carry her legs.

“You!” Jade screams when she sees me, and I want to step back at the ferocity of her verbal assault, but I can’t. Instead I step forward.

“Leave her to me,” I say to the men.

“Sir, I don’t think—” Sid starts to say, his knuckles white from pinning Jade’s arms to her side.

“Leave her,” I repeat.

When Sid hesitates for a moment, Jade twists her head back and tries to bite him. He yelps, dropping her. Because Monty is still clutching her legs, she tumbles face first on the wooden floor. Monty drops her legs and they both scuttle out of the room like crabs returning to their holes.

The door slams and I’m alone with her.

I reach down to help Jade to her feet, but she slaps my hand away, pushes up, kneels, and stands; shoves me back with a strength that’s disconnected from her slim build. Her eyes flash with the anger of a sea snake who’s been disturbed from its slumber.

The backs of my legs hit my bed and I sit down.

“What do you want with me?” Jade says, accusation in her voice. What does she think I’m going to do to her? Her eyes are flitting from me to the bed and back again. Oh no. She thinks I want to…that I’m going to try to…

“No,” I say. “It’s not what you think. I only wanted to—”

“To what? To make me another of your possessions? It’s bad enough that I’m chained to this ship. To be chained to you would be ten times worse.”

“No,” I say again, thinking of how to get this conversation back on track, if it ever was at all, but finding myself utterly at a loss for words.

“No what?” she says, glaring, her hands on her hips. “You have two big men drag me down here and you’re surprised I’m jumping to conclusions?”

“I only wanted to talk to you. Like when you climbed the quarterdeck stairs.”

“And you slapped me and threw me in the brig.”

“You left me no choice,” I say, annoyed at the pleading tone in my voice.

“You’re just like the others,” she says. Like who? Like my father? Like Hobbs? Am I? Should I be?

“Then why did you tell me your name?”

The question closes her lips, stops whatever retort or accusation that was flying up from her throat. She takes a deep breath, swallowing it like a bite of gruel, closes her eyes as if remembering something.

Eyes still closed, she says, “Why did you save my life?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly.

Her eyes flash open. “You should’ve let me die. There’s no life for me here.”

The despair in her voice surprises me. A girl so young, so seemingly full of life, shouldn’t sound like that. It reminds me of someone. My mother, I realize with a jerk. Before the accident she had started sounding like that, more and more with each passing day.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” I manage to get out.

She sucks in another deep breath. “Why am I here?” she asks, but this time there’s no accusation in her voice and she sounds almost defeated.

“I wanted to—”

“I know, I know, you wanted to burnin’ talk to me, but why else? What’s the cover story?”

“I’m going to teach you to repair sails,” I say.

She raises an eyebrow, as if surprised. “And what if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll leave you alone forever,” I say.

She lifts a hand to her brown forehead, massages her skin. Seconds tick by. “When do we start?” she asks.

I can’t hide my smile this time. “Immediately,” I say.

Chapter Twenty

Sadie

Nothing my mother put me through in training is as hard as taming a horse.

Especially when the horse is Passion, living up to her namesake with every stomp, every gallop, every barely thwarted effort to escape. The stables are nothing more than a challenge to her. Thrice now she’s smashed through her gate, come charging out of the stables, knocking stable boys and Riders out of her way, snorting and whinnying when she felt the light breeze on her nose.

And thrice we’ve brought her back.

Growing up training with my mother, I dreamed many times of the day I’d receive my horse, how I’d jump upon her and gallop off across the plains, wind streaming through my hair and her mane, connected by a bond as thick and strong as bone.

I haven’t even thought about riding Passion yet, and it’s been several weeks.

Sometimes she seems calm, almost tame, like when she drinks from the water trough, but then I blink and she’s kicking the trough over, spilling a lake of water through her stall, smashing into the wooden sides as if her freedom takes precedence over the wholeness of her body.

Freedom is an illusion.

Despite the silence that’s grown like a pregnant raincloud between my father and me, his words fill my mind more and more.

Listen to your father, for he is wise.

Is my mother right? Were her last words of advice more than just words?

To make matters worse, Remy is already riding his horse—a fully black stallion he’s named Bolt—the first of the new Riders to do so. Around and around they run, Remy whooping and hollering like they’ve been riding together their whole lives.

I look away from him and focus on Passion, who’s straining against the six ropes anchored deep in the ground that I’m using to keep control of her. If I had some help, I know I could tame her, but unfortunately, a Rider taming their horse is a solitary endeavor, part of the bonding process.

I approach her, hand extended in peace. “Shhh,” I say when she snorts, a sound full of heavy air and a warning. “I only want to talk to you.”

A change to my method is needed. I’ve tried brawn, pulling her with the ropes, futilely fighting her weight and strength. I’ve tried coercion, offering small morsels like apples and carrots to convince her to perform small tasks, like walking a short distance, or bowing her head, or strutting in a circle, but she seems immune to bribery. Most of the time she ends up knocking me over and taking the treats anyway.

I stop a few feet from her, speak to her. Not a command, sharp and demanding obedience, but soft and with meaning.

“You are perfection,” I say, receiving a low grumble that vibrates her lips in response.

Obviously, she seems to say.

“I am not.”

Again, her reply sounds like one of complete agreement.

“I need you.”

A soft whinny, her eyes blazing. I only need myself, is what I interpret.

“What if we were meant to be together?”

No response. Does she understand me? Has she really understood anything I’ve just said, or are the responses I’ve inferred just a child’s imagination?

Unfazed, I say, “What if our strength lies in our bond?” No response. “What if apart neither of us are really free, but slaves to not knowing what could have been?”

Her eyes, although as wild as ever, are fully focused on me. She has stopped straining against the ropes.

The wind, which was so strong a moment ago, has fallen silent, leaving us in a void of silence. Rider and steed. Sadie and Passion. In my mind, our names melt together until they are not worthy of the combined being we have become. No name is worthy.

“We can be invincible,” I say.

And I see it in her eyes: a change, an understanding, an agreement.

And she explodes forward, forcing me to jump out of her path as she pulls up each and every stake, shooting them into the air, galloping forward in a jumble of power and ropes and pride.

And I’m laughing and shouting and panting, watching her go. Watching her run across the plains away from me. Because I know.

She’ll turn around this time.

And she does.

She stops and turns, looking back at me with frustration. Although she thinks she wants to, she can’t go. Because now she needs me too.

~~~

Coming to a tenuous partnership with Passion doesn’t help things at home. Father is still Father, full of unwanted advice and long periods of silence while he meditates, seeing visions that will cost other sons and daughters their mothers and fathers. Calamity and fire and death and pain and fear and madness.

I’m becoming more cynical of the function of the Men of Wisdom with each passing day. Of what use are predictions of the future if you can’t change them?

Sometimes just looking at him makes my chest burn with anger at the dual losses I’ve suffered. My brother and mother. My playmate and master.

But we suffer each other out of necessity.

When I see love and caring for me in his eyes, I return it with a glare, not feeling bad about it until later, when Passion chastises me by throwing me from her back. She only seems to do that when I’ve been cruel to my father, as if she can sense the anger inside me.

“I’m sorry, Pash, but you don’t know the history,” I say, brushing grass and dirt off my black riding robe. I crack my jaw a few times, feeling it click back into place. Passion allows me to ride her now, but only on her terms, and if she wants to discard me she does so with vigor and without regret.

He’s your father, her snort seems to say.

“And he’s a coward.”

After that comment she won’t let me ride her for the rest of the afternoon.

~~~

That night our tent feels more like a prison, such is the tension between us, thick and barred, twisted with barbs and spikes.

When I make a move to leave, to go for a walk, my father stops me. “Sadie,” he says, his voice cracking.

I whirl on him, unable to hold back the clench I feel between my ribs. “Unless you’re going to admit your faults, the hand you played in Paw’s and mother’s deaths, I suggest you let me go.”

His eyes are instantly clouded with tears, full of shame and self-loathing. The truth is in the heavy mist, raining from his eyelids and quickly forming into filthy puddles made dark by his deep brown eyes.

The light flickers like an omen.

I turn and he says, “Wait.”

“Admit the truth,” I say, not looking back.

“Sadie, I can’t,” he says and I know the tears are falling, dripping from his chin, splashing his weakness in his lap.

“You can’t or you won’t?” I say to the tent opening.

“Both.”

He can’t because he’s pathetically weak. And he won’t because he’s ashamed of himself.

“Right,” I say. “Of course.” My sarcasm only adds to the tension.

“I have something I have to tell you,” he says, and a sharp breath whistles between my teeth. Is this it? Will he finally admit his wrongdoing, be a man?

“Does it have to do with Paw or Mother?” I ask.

Yes.

“No,” he says.

“Save it for someone who cares,” I say, pushing into the night.

“Wait,” he says again, but I don’t.

I’ve got no one to talk to. Remy’s tried to speak to me a few times, but I’ve ignored him, and finally he stopped trying. Passion will only give me a hard time about the way I’m treating my father and I’m really not in the mood for a lecture.

With nowhere else to go, I run for the beach, nodding to the watchmen on duty as I pass the last few tents in the camp circle. Although the air is dry, lightning crackles in the distance, warning of an impending storm. Bumps rise up on my arms and I hug myself, rubbing them away.

The ocean is surprisingly calm, and I sit for a while, watching it breathe. They say Mother Earth’s hand extends to the very edges of the sea, at which point the Deep Blue governs itself, but I don’t know if I believe that. There are too many signs of the good Mother’s hand in everything. She paints the clouds overhead, lifts the seabirds on gusts and bursts of wind, heats the ocean with her fiery sun.

If anything, the Deep Blue is a footman to Mother Earth.

The moon is bright tonight, rolling out a carpet of light across the ocean, shimmering anywhere the water pops up. A small wave rolls onto the sand, reaching toward me, sending crabs scurrying out of the way.

The hairs rise on the back of my neck and I leap to my feet, spinning around, ready to defend myself against the attack I feel coming.

Remy stands statue-still, eyes as wide as a full moon. “You’re not going to hit me, are you?” he says.

I’m surprised to feel contradicting desires in my heart. On one hand hitting him sounds like a pretty decent idea, but a more mysterious, less-controllable part of me wants to be close to him again, to have things be like they were before, when we were growing closer, back when my world wasn’t dead and burned, back before we were Riders. When we could swim naked in the ocean.

Has he come to make peace?

I shrug. “I’ll hit you if you want me to,” I say.

He laughs, and I realize how much I’ve missed it. My nerves, which have been so frayed and torn lately, seem to twist themselves back together.

Pain wells inside of me, gathering itself in bunches, aching like deep bruises.

“Would hitting me make you feel any better?” Remy asks.

Probably. “There’s a good chance,” I say.

“Then do it,” he says.

But I can’t, not when I haven’t even told him why I’m so angry with him.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“My father sent me.”

What? “Why?”

“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. I went to your tent first and your father said you’d left. He seemed pretty shattered. Did something happen?”

If only. “Nothing happened,” I say. “Ever since my mother…” Why am I telling him any of this? “Should I go to see your father?”

“Yes,” he says, and there’s a hitch in his voice that tells me he wishes it wasn’t one of his father’s errands that brought us to speak again.

I have to tell him. I have to. Even if it fails to quench the flames of my anger, at least he’ll know why.

But I don’t. I walk away, leaving him standing on the beach staring forlornly at the moonlit ocean.