Chapter 29
the sea calls my name that night. I walk down to the shore at first light, give in and sink beneath the waves.
The sea is calm, but not content. As I pull myself through the water, running my fingers through seaweed and over the grit of the seabed, I detect a coiling, a tenseness.
But I cannot sense anything lurking, or any boats or ships other than our own nearby.
As I leave the waves, emerging on to the rocks below the castle to stretch out my limbs in the early sunlight, I give the inky waves a final glance.
I wish I could stay longer and float, adrift for a while.
But I know that if I stop, if I take even a breath, all this might not be here on my return. Tomorrow is for the sea.
Today is for the isles.
Eli has already risen, gone to meet with Joby and Mer to discuss the state of their ships.
When I get down to the kitchen, I find the remnants of his breakfast, and Amma busy around the huge wooden table, replenishing breakfast loaves and butter, passing out cooked eggs and sliced apples.
There are people from Rosevear here, and some of them are helping Amma.
They smile in greeting and I sit among them, eating breakfast, drinking a mug of milky tea.
Agnes walks in, sits down beside me and bumps my shoulder.
This small moment, this gesture, means everything.
For the space of a breath, I forget why we’re here, what’s happened to us, that we’re a whole people displaced.
We could almost be at her home, drinking tea in her room of finds and treasures, her cheeks dusted with flour after a morning spent at her father’s bakery, helping to knead the bread for the day’s baking.
Then it all rushes in.
‘Are you ready to train?’ I ask her.
‘Define train,’ she says, reaching for a hunk of bread and the salted butter, scraping it on before smearing some bramble jam on top.
‘We need to inspire them,’ I murmur, ducking my head close to hers.
‘So many women fought for their lives that night on Rosevear, but it was in desperation and fear. We need to be better prepared. We’ve never had the chance to learn, and we have to now.
All of us. I want them to feel ready for it not just to be terror that spurs them on, but hope. ’
Agnes nods as she finishes chewing. ‘Leave it with me.’
When I step out into the practice yard, shielding my eyes from the sunlight, I bump into Caden, standing with his arms folded.
He smiles and my heart thumps hard in my chest. For a moment, it overwhelms me.
In the bleakest moments during the Trials, I wondered if I’d ever be back here again.
Somehow, this time in the training yard stayed with me, a place I wanted to return to. To become stronger, more resilient.
To become a weapon I alone choose to wield, on both land and sea.
Caden nods towards the rack of wooden practice swords and I smile back at him. ‘Admit it, you missed this,’ I tease.
His smile widens further, face splitting into a grin. ‘All right. I missed this. I missed beating you.’
I laugh, reaching for a practice sword and we begin a series of drills, warming up our muscles with blocks, thrusts and jabs.
Agnes wanders in, reaching for her own practice sword, and copies the series of steps, and then Merryam and Pearl join us.
I notice a few women and girls gathered in the doorway, watching us.
Agnes beckons to them, but they shy away.
I wonder if this is too much, too soon, after the events of that night on Rosevear, if the trauma of that night is still too raw, if I’m expecting too much of them.
But then Grier, a girl who is now one of the seven on Rosevear, strides from the doorway, determination in her features as she grabs a practice sword from the rack.
She watches Agnes closely, mimicking her footwork.
She stumbles a couple of times, but keeps trying.
And Caden pretends not to notice her presence, focusing on my footwork, my jabs and thrusts, but I notice the slight flush in his cheeks, the smile ghosting on his lips that he can’t shift.
He wants to train them. He wants us all to be strong.
A lump forms in my throat as the first woman steps forward, reaching for a practice sword and moving to the edge of the courtyard.
Then more join us, gradually at first, until, an hour later, we’re a full courtyard of women and girls.
Some from Ennor, many from Rosevear and Penrith, all prepared to fight for our isles, our home.
I blink quickly, willing tears of pride not to leak from my eyes as I move through the steps, staring straight ahead.
One of the women of Penrith begins a work song – she starts the words and we repeat them in a call back to her.
My chest tightens as I sing with everyone, our voices steady and sure, just as they are when we mend the nets on Rosevear, when we clean a catch, when we rake over the slender fields.
Caden wanders among us all as we train, fifty or so of us: fisherfolk, bakers, farmers, mothers, daughters.
He occasionally adjusts someone’s stance, corrects a move, or footwork, sowing encouragement among us.
And under the spring sun we prepare the only way we know how, with a song in our throats and a will in our hearts.
This is who we are. Survivors. A people that faces every disaster head on and gets back up to begin again.
I catch the eye of a woman from Rosevear, the mother who had the cottage next to my father’s.
The woman whose child we rescued that terrible night when the watch first torched our homes.
She winks at me and I feel the tears spill over, tracking down my cheeks.
I’ve never felt so fiercely proud of my people, so sure of my place in this world as one of them.
There’s an ache in my chest, my fractured heart mending.
I may be siren, I may be my mother’s daughter, but I’m also my father’s.
I’m a daughter of Rosevear.
Eli waits for me in the kitchen at lunchtime, arms crossed, leaning against the wall as Amma chats to him. She’s a flitting bird, first at the hearth, then the larder, then at the table, and I barely catch her movements between blinks.
‘Are you up for a little spying, Mira?’
I grin at him, reach up and press my lips to his. Sparks warm my veins as he brushes a stray thread of hair behind my left ear, and that small gesture fills me with sunlight.
‘What did you have in mind?’
‘A trip to the mainland,’ he says, leaning in closer so I can see the flecks of starlight in his eyes.
I want nothing more than to kiss him properly, to align my body with his and feel his arms round me, but then more people pile in, laughing and talking, and I clear my throat, hiding the flare of colour in my cheeks.
‘You want to know what they’re up to, don’t you?’
He shrugs. ‘Since you escaped the Trials, there’s been nothing. No sign of the watch, no retribution. I know they’re gathering their forces, but Joby and Mer have found no vessels in the water surrounding Ennor. And unless you have sensed something in the sea …’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘It’s eerily quiet.’
He nods, as though that’s made his decision. ‘We’ll leave at dawn for Port Graine.’