Chapter Twenty-One #3
Overhead, stars began to freckle the sky, and Perri frolicked beside the sailboat, happy that they were all together out in the ocean again.
The silver patchwork sails caught the wind, and they picked up speed.
There was a crispness to the air, brightened by the sea salt, that felt a little like snow, though there were no clouds in the sky.
She’d pulled out her heavier coats from the storage in the cabin, gifting her largest one to Dax.
He’d belted it with a sash that oddly looked as if it belonged together.
He looked like a dashing pirate from a highly unrealistic ballad and not at all like the coiffed composer that she’d always seen by the docks of the conservatory.
He also looked as if he belonged out here, on the sea, with her—part of her everyday.
She couldn’t help stealing glances at him as she trimmed the sails, and she tried hard not to think about the future and just enjoy the present.
Every time she thought about him leaving, it felt like sea salt in her eyes.
Ree was perched up on top of the mast, and he was eagerly calling out everything he saw: a herd of merhorses to port, whitecaps to starboard, a patch of seaweed that was sparkling like the stars straight aft.
Breaking off his reporting, he asked, “How do you know which way to go? Are we not lost anymore?”
“Not lost at all,” Marin said. “We know where we were, and the stars tell us which way we’re going.
On the island of Nyra, there’s a Temple of the Stars, where the acolytes believe if they place their sacred stones in certain positions, it will keep the stars in their fixed patterns, aiding sailors on their journeys.
Regardless of whether that’s the cause or not, the stars are always there to guide us.
” She pointed to the east. “In the summer, the Sun Cat is in the east, but closer to the winter solstice, the cat continues its flight across the sky, disappearing from view, and instead in winter, the Three Dancers rise. See them?”
Three stars shone in a line.
“You follow them—the line they make—as if they’re an arrow, and they point to the Night Queen. She’s always due south and always the brightest star in the southern sky.”
“The Night Queen’s a star?” Dax asked. “I know a song about her—she led an uprising against the day. Claimed it was hoarding all the light. Stole a piece of it and put it in the sky, then stayed up with it to guard it against the day ever stealing it back.”
“Sailors think it’s another sun, like ours, around another world,” Marin said.
“Ooh, wow,” Ree said. He strained his branches up toward the sky. “I don’t see another world. Wouldn’t it be huge?”
“It’s very far away,” Marin said. “Supposedly, a sailor once tried to reach it. She filled her sails with stardust and rode the fiery tail of a comet.”
“Did she find it?” Ree asked.
“The story is unsatisfyingly unclear.”
“We could write a song about it,” Ree suggested. “Finish the story.” He looked at Dax. “I told Surot I’d write a song about her and her dragon love too. Also, I want to sing about the sea and being a sailor—because I am a sailor.”
Marin smiled. “Yes, you are. Perri, what do you want to sing about?”
Out in the waves, the sea serpent trilled high notes.
Dax guessed, “Fish?”
A negative trill.
“The ocean bluuuue,” Ree guessed.
Another minor run of notes.
“Dragons?” Dax tried, as Ree shouted, “Sailing!” Then Dax: “How to weather the fundamental loneliness of existence.”
Marin stared at him, while Perri let out a concerned query.
“It’s just something I think about sometimes,” Dax said. “Don’t you?”
She shook her head. “Is that what they teach you to sing about in the conservatory?”
“We do have classes to train our minds to contemplate…” He narrowed his eyes and studied her. “You’re laughing at me.”
She was pressing her lips together and trying not to laugh. “Never.”
“‘It’s the function of art to examine the pain of life,’” Dax said in an affected accent. “That’s a direct quote from Grandmaster Olenco. He teaches Philosophy of Music.”
Ree rattled his branches. “I don’t get it. Music isn’t pain.”
“Olenco believes that the highest purpose of art is to remind us of our shared pain. He considers that the only important music—the rest he calls mere entertainment.”
“And what do you say?” Marin asked. “Do you agree? Do you think the only important music is about pain?” It bothered her in ways she couldn’t explain to think that he could consider Ree’s song about the sea, or that long tavern ballad, unimportant.
He looked at her, and his smile turned serious.
“No, I don’t. All art—serious, frivolous, and everything in between—exists to say, ‘You are not alone.’ I think it’s equally, if not more important to share joy as it is to share pain.
” Dax was still looking straight into her eyes, and she felt as if something had shifted—and it wasn’t just the wind.
He then added, “But of course, Olenco’s class was the only one in the conservatory that I nearly failed. ”
“Olenco was an idiot,” Ree declared.
Dax smiled. “I won’t tell him you said that.”
Marin focused her attention on the sails, which had begun to luff. She guided the bow so they were back on a broad reach. She checked their course once more against the Night Queen and then said, “Perri was saying that we should sing about the stars.”
There was an affirmative trill from off the port side of the sailboat.
“How did you know that?” Ree asked, awed.
She shrugged.
“Before we sing about them,” Dax said, “would you teach me how to navigate by them?” He glanced at Ree and corrected, “Teach us?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” Ree cheered.
Looking up, she explained which star was which.
The Night Queen was the only one with a fixed position, but in different seasons, other constellations could be depended on to be in particular regions of the sky.
You could measure their position against the horizon and calculate a near-exact latitude and longitude.
Using the map, she explained how to navigate, pointed out a few particularly treacherous regions of the sea—an area known for whirlpools, another region rife with kraken, the kelp forest with its kelp creatures—and she pointed out the few islands that roved, including the floating islands of the cloud bears, which were unreliable for navigation.
You wanted to use islands that didn’t move around, if you were navigating by earthly landmarks. The stars were a more reliable option.
They traded stories of the constellations back and forth.
Ree had heard a few from the gardeners of Belde, and Dax knew a different set from the lyrics of collected songs.
All of Marin’s were gleaned from her travels.
As the moon shone down on them and the sea, they drifted from talking about the stars to singing about them.
Dax chose a simple melody to start with: derived from Ree’s tune about how much he loved the blue-blue sea. He refined it and taught it to Ree. “You’ll be the lead voice on this one. I’ll want you up on the mast, belting as loud as you can.”
Excited, Ree quivered. “I can do that!”
“Marin, after he sings the first verse, I want you to come in on the chorus and all subsequent verses. You’ll sing a third higher, and I’ll sing a third lower.”
“Sure,” Marin said.
“Great!”
“What’s a third?”
He taught her the notes, and she added them to Ree’s melody. He wove in his own voice, lower than Ree’s, and she heard the chords they made. “We can vary it a little too…” He saw Marin’s expression and changed to: “But let’s start with this.”
After they’d sung it through a few times, he instructed Perri to add his own vocals, rounding out the sound.
It was still the simple song, led by Ree’s sweet tenor, but with all the harmonies and layers it was transformed into something more—something that felt as glorious and pure and profound as the stars above.
Olenco is an idiot. You can’t tell me this isn’t important. Meeting Dax’s eyes as they sang, she was certain that he felt the same.
That said … she still wasn’t certain anyone would pay to hear them sing.
At that moment, though, with the music and the waves swelling around them and the stars as their audience, she didn’t care.