Chapter 10 #2
The implicit question, of course, being, Do you think I can be healed?
Because no matter how I try to convince myself I have the heartbreak under control, a deep-down part of me knows there’s no stopping it.
Yet these four are the picture of vitality, happiness even. It makes treacherous hope spring in me.
“None of us believed him at first,” Josephine says quietly. “And we might still be proven wrong. But I don’t think we will be.”
Lydia follows the back-and-forth with her eyes, looking quiet and thoughtful.
“And if that should happen,” Zimri puts in, “I’m no worse off than I was before. Still penniless. Coin burns a hole in my pocket, literally.”
He turns out one of his jacket pockets to show me that, indeed, the linen lining has a hole through its bottom, the cloth around it singed but the hole perfectly round and even. As if someone cut it out with scissors, held a match to the edge, and ironed the whole thing.
A startled laugh escapes me, heart beating fast. “How do you know what favors to do?”
Now Ezra picks up the conversation, all of them seeming to finish one another’s thoughts so easily. “You think,” Ezra says, “what would the finfolk want me to do? For instance, last month I was fishing in the bay and found a dolphin that had gotten fishing net tangled around it.”
My stomach flips at the strangeness of it. Asked what the finfolk wanted, I would have said To sink ships and end lives, not To save helpless sea creatures. “Aren’t you afraid of them?” I ask in a whisper.
Zimri shrugs. “For a while before this, I crewed a merchant ship. Transporting furs, sugar, and the like all around Hainei, Tarasca, Nulusk. In all that time, the finfolk never bothered our ship. Made me think maybe it’s not them, it’s us.
” His voice is gentle, but his eyes, steady on mine, hold a challenge. “It’s the whaling.”
A bell rings down the deck, three short peals, making Lydia and me jump, though not the others.
They all start to get to their feet with resigned expressions as men emerge from belowdecks.
“It means to gather at the forecastle,” Ezra tells my sister and me, tilting his chin toward the raised deck at the front of the ship. “Some sort of announcement.”
As I get up, my skirt catches on Lydia’s satchel and it tips over, two bread rolls spilling out. Lightning fast, she grabs them and stuffs them back inside. “In case I get hungry later,” she says, not meeting my eyes.
“You know you can just ask Willa in the galley if you get hungry.” Zimri offers a hand to help me to my feet. I pretend not to see it and push myself up. I’m not sure if Silas has told them about my heartbreak, but I don’t want him to feel the scales through the gloves.
“She was the cook on the ship I sailed with before the Whistler,” he goes on. “Lovely woman—she’ll give you leftovers if you make sure to ask nicely.”
“Great,” Lydia says brightly.
I’ll need to talk to her later about being more judicious.
It’s not a good look for a Fairfax to be hoarding extra food or getting special treatment from the cook, not when the captain and crew are already skeptical of our presence.
But there’s no time to address it now as we move toward the forecastle, parting ways with the Whistler crew in the crowd.
Captain Mance stands six feet up on the upper deck, surveying his little kingdom as the crew gathers below. He gives Lydia and me a magnanimous smile as we take up spots side by side near the back of the group, and irritation curls in my stomach.
I was a small child, and Lydia only just born, when Papa ordered that women were to be allowed to crew whaleships.
While I don’t remember it, I’ve read through his correspondence from that time, and I know Obadiah Mance was one of the loudest voices opposing the edict.
He claimed it would distract the crews, that women were meant to be sitting pretty in their houses in Kirkrell, not doing the ugly and dangerous work of killing whales.
I make myself return his smile without baring my teeth, though I long to drop the Lady Fairfax facade, to show him that beneath my gloves I’m the ugliest and most dangerous thing on this ship.
I feel a warm presence to my right a moment before August’s hand finds the back of my neck, fingertips idly toying with the soft short hairs coming loose beneath my braid. “Don’t mind Mance,” he whispers, warm in my ear. “He’ll get used to you.”
August. The mix of feelings that has recently become so familiar, relief and want and uncertainty all tangled together, flows through me like liquor. I nod and lean into him as the gathered crew quiets, waiting for something to happen.
For what seems like a long time, Mance just stands there and looks at us, cigarette smoke curling around his head, a dingy halo.
Men exchange glances, shift on their feet, uncertain.
Mance’s eyes, watery blue beneath a tanned, leathery brow, travel from sailor to sailor seemingly at random, lingering on each person, taking their measure.
“A good crew, I think,” he says finally.
“A brave crew. But then again, Fairfax Company men always have been. And still we find ourselves here. Chasing the beasts farther and farther from our home harbor, spending months under the sun and in the ice, while our loved ones keep watch for our sails on the horizon.”
Murmurs of assent throughout the crew, long-suffering sighs.
I press my lips together and keep my head high.
No one’s looking at me—all eyes are fixed on Mance—so I try to push down the hot self-consciousness I feel.
The harsh conditions of whaling aren’t my fault.
It’s always been thus—even if the whales have gotten scarcer, the journeys harder, in my lifetime.
I thread my hand through August’s for support. He gives mine a reassuring squeeze.
“Most of your faces are known to me,” Mance says, beginning to pace. “But this journey will be different from any you’ve undertaken before. The port in the arctic will allow us at last to gain the edge on the whales and their fae protectors.”
I don’t mean to do it, but my eyes flit to Silas, who has emerged from his room for Mance’s speech.
Nor are mine the only eyes—I see several faces turn subtly his way at the mention of the finfolk.
If he notices, and I’m quite sure he does, he pretends not to, standing tall and straight with his eyes on Mance.
There’s just the slightest hint of defiance in the tilt of his jaw, the way his arms are crossed over his chest.
“You all know Livyati go north to mate and raise their calves,” Mance goes on, “but how many of ye have seen it with your own eyes?” Back and forth across the forecastle he paces, slow and natural like he’s an extension of the ship itself, powered by the wind just like the swelling sails over our heads or the Fairfax Company flag rippling in the breeze.
Silence among the crew. Most of the men seem riveted; they’re utterly silent and still, giving the feeling of a collectively held breath.
When I steal a glance at August, even his constant habitual smile has slipped away, as it sometimes does when he’s lost in thought or listening intently.
His face is open and serious as he listens.
“I won’t promise smooth sailing, mind.” Mance’s tone is gentler than I’m used to hearing from him, almost fatherly.
“None of ye are greenhands here. You know what waits in the north, the cold, the icebergs, the fae with their storms and curses.” He lifts his face to the horizon, casting a long shadow out over the deck.
“But anything tries to stop us, we’ll break them with our iron hull and our iron will.
And when we reach the north—it’s something to behold, sailors.
The sun never dips beneath the horizon. I tell you if you look over the prow, you’ll see more whales than water.
The spouts coming up like a field of flowers. ”
He laughs, loud and free and unexpected, a sound that fills the ship from prow to stern and rings out over the sea; and the crew joins in, low laughter and slow smiles, lips split to show teeth.
It puts me in mind of a pack of wolves, the leader’s howl taken up by all.
But as goose bumps spring up the backs of my arms and August’s low chuckle sounds beside me, I realize I don’t want to run from it. I want to join the chorus.
“Gloriously easy pickings it will be, men,” Mance goes on, dropping his voice almost to a whisper, and like puppets everyone falls silent to catch his words.
“Like that same field of wildflowers if the blossoms were jewels and every blade of grass was gold. All you have to do is reach out and pluck them. All these years, we’ve done little more than hold the line against the whales and the waves.
Now, here is where we gain ground. Here is where we turn the tide. ”
A small smile tugs at his weathered face as cheers rise up all around, and much as I dislike Mance, even though I can see how his words are calculated to appeal to our bravery and sense of duty, I can still feel the stirring of ambition in my chest, the feeling that triumph is within reach if I were but to stretch out my arm.
I look up at August, wanting to share this moment with him, but his eyes are still pinned to Mance, bright in thought.
A beat, and he blinks, glances down at me and smiles as Mance says, “Now to choose the whaleboat crews.”
Another ripple of excitement goes through the crowd, but my stomach drops as August gently detaches his hand from mine.
I thought … I don’t know why I thought the selection of the whaleboat crews would be a private affair, perhaps a list of names tacked up outside the captain’s cabin door.
Not like this, selected in front of everyone.
August moves away from me, through the crowd and up the stairs to the forecastle, and across the deck I see Silas is doing the same thing. They take up positions on either side of Mance. August’s face is bold and confident, eyes roaming the crowd; Silas is very still, eyes fixed on the horizon.
Mance doesn’t waste any time, barking out six men’s names I don’t recognize—but each name falls like a blessing in the crowd; I see the sailors he’s chosen straighten their backs, chins lifting as the captain’s esteem settles like a mantle on their shoulders.
Then August steps up. His blue eyes roam the crowd, never quite landing.
“Thomas Gardner,” he calls out. “Abel Noham. Amos Tucker. Gideon Pierce.”
My mouth is dry. We spoke about this earlier. How I wanted to be in his boat. He won’t forget.
“Noa de Silva,” he goes on, and maybe I imagine the infinitesimal pause, the way his eyes skate over me before he finishes, “And Caleb Brewster.”
Numbness spreads through me as the men turn to congratulate one another again, puffed and beaming.
And they are all men. I can feel my cheeks heat with anger and embarrassment, but I’m not worried about anyone seeing it, because no one’s looking.
The crew brushes past me to clap one another on the shoulder, Good man, good luck, and it’s like I’m not here.
I don’t exist. I breathe deep, willing down the tears that threaten to prick at my eyes.
“Ezra McNaughton. Josephine Haskins.” Silas’s voice cuts through the crowd, clear and commanding even as the Heralder men don’t hush for him.
I scarcely hear him myself, my blood pounding in my ears as August descends the stairs to convene with his chosen crew.
“Zimri Pires. Teuila Roha. And Annie Fairfax.”
I almost don’t register it at first—Silas’s words float over my head.
Then come the snorts of surprise, the scoffs hastily turned into feigned coughs, sailors’ eyes landing on me before they’re quickly averted again.
Only then does it sink in. Silas picked me for his whaleboat crew. Not August, not my fiancé. Silas Price.
I can’t process it. It’s all I can do to stay calm, taking deep breaths to cut through the rising anger in me, my wrists and fingertips itching as scales and claws threaten to break through.
As Mance calls out for the crew to get back to their duties, Silas descends the staircase but doesn’t go into the crowd, rather turning toward the staircase and his cabin. What’s his game? Does he pity me?
Someone calls out my name—Lydia?—but it feels as though the sound is coming from very far away.
I can see August’s red-gold head dipping among the crowd, but I don’t want to talk to him.
I don’t want to hear his apology, or likelier, his explanation.
My skin itches all over and suddenly I feel desperate to be anywhere but here, here where everyone could see I’m unwanted, if they ever bothered to turn in my direction.
So in the end, I’m the one to turn on my heel and flee for belowdecks.