Chapter 9
Nine
After the storm, I was treated with even more reverence by the sea dog rowers.
It did me little good for I’d caught a chill that no amount of shivering could free me from.
Each breath hurt more than the last, leaving me wondering if my ribs would simply collapse from the weight of gold bearing upon them.
My lips chapped from the salt in the air, and my eyes grew as heavy as my gown.
The sea dogs gave me what seemed like all the furs on board, three of them going bare-chested in the effort, revealing Maybewoman to be full-breasted.
Blue tattooed serpents wove around her breasts, with their open mouths and curved tongues flicked right where her nipples were.
I was too tired and achy to think of a new name for her or to react fully to the nakedness.
I grew colder, and my mind fluttered into the Dream World.
Each time I woke with the hint of a dream in my memory, I nearly cried.
From the shame of dreaming, yes, but also from opening my eyes to find yet more grey clouds above and black sea below, from the same ha, hwaah, ha, hwaah half-song, half-groan the sea dogs made as they rowed.
“Soten,” Twobraid said on what felt like our fourth day as he set a skin before me. There was wine in it. I knew because he’d offered it to me three times.
I didn’t even shake my head. I was too cold for that. I was too cold to exist.
He pulled the cork out. “Soten,” he said firmly, pushing the skin closer.
I wouldn’t have it. I had no appetite, and the idea of anything not scalding felt unworthy of the effort it would take to reach for it, unworthy of the cold that would seep into me if I lifted an arm outside the furs.
I drifted and dreamed. Dreamed and drifted.
Once, sometime later, when the sail was plump with wind, and the rowers weren’t heaving the boat forward, they gathered around me, sitting on the boat’s floor with their legs crossed apart from Farwatcher who sat at the tail, guiding the ship with two oars.
Everyone surely knew I was ill. Even a child would know. They began humming, and Maybewoman lifted her hands and made gestures in the air with her eyes closed as if she were weaving the wind.
“Stop!” I croaked. “Now! Stop!” My voice was hoarse with sickness, but still I whined.
I suspected them of attempting sorcery, which could only lead to peril for all.
I was suffering enough without curses to deal with, and terrifying though the sea dogs were, I needed them.
I couldn’t row the boat by myself should they be devoured by demons for attempting magic.
“Soten,” Maybewoman said, her voice soft and… pleading.
“No!” I shouted.
Fever came, and with it wretched fever dreams. I confused sleep and waking, growing deeply paranoid about the sea dogs, suspecting them of making me ill on purpose. Interestingly, in my altered state, I found it easier to understand them. Soten.
Soten was me.
I was Soten.
Pinkbeard brought me herbs to chew, showing me the chewing motion to explain. Sometimes I did chew them, but then I’d grow scared they were what caused my illness. He brought me my lyre several times.
“Soten, sole. Sole.” His voice was deep like the water below us, rough like it in places, but also smooth like it. He hadn’t touched me since the storm. But he did look at me often, and his looking felt like touching.
I blinked at him, understanding—or imagining that I understood. This will help, he was saying. Music was usually a great solace to me, so he was right. But his rightness didn’t matter—my hands were too cold to play.
There was another moment of significance, which I’m not entirely sure really happened in the Middle World. I may have been delirious. I may have been in the Dream World.
It was dusk, the sky was a pale violet colour just beginning to glitter with stars, and a large grey and white beast—three or four times the size of the boat—rose to the surface right beside us, its big eye looking at us. I managed to choke a little, too tired to become truly terrified.
One at a time, the sea dogs stepped gingerly forward, silently resting a hand or a forehead against the huffing beast, several of them leaning what felt like too far out of the boat to do so. Was it a whale? I’d always been told they were creatures of fantasy like dragons and gyrfalcons.
All eight sea dogs had a moment with the monster before they looked at me, expectantly.
I shivered.
They spoke some words and pointed at the monster. Soten-something-this. Soten-something-that. Pointing. Pointing.
“No,” I said, ready to cry from how tired I was.
Loudlaugher giggled and rushed to the side of the boat farthest from the beast, waving at the others to join him. They did, laughing all the way, causing the boat to tip as they all gathered in one place.
“This isn’t funny!” I said.
They continued to laugh as if it were, and I had only moments to free myself from the tangle of fur and approach the beast-side of the boat, my gown providing the counterweight needed to keep us upright.
The beast blinked and huffed more air out a large… nostril? a hole on the top of its head.
“Soten.” Pinkbeard’s voice drew my attention. He gestured to the beast, two times, three times, four times before I understood he meant for me to set my fingers on the creature.
I shook my head. No more monsters. No more sea. Please, just no more, I thought as I convulsed from the cold, my arms pressed so hard against my chest that the gold within my gown dug into my ribs.
Pinkbeard approached, the other sea dogs leaning farther over the edge to keep the boat level. He set a hand on the creature, and I knew by the softness of his words he was saying something like: See? There is no danger.
He gestured again.
I shook my head, frowning. “I can’t lean over the edge. If I fall in, I’ll sink. And it’s a monster. None of us should be touching it.” And you’re a sea dog thief. I shouldn’t be explaining things to you.
He smiled, and I thought, oh dear.
He gestured again.
I sighed. The world was made of madness, and more than anything, I wanted to be back in the nest of furs I’d made near the mast—the warmest place and the place farthest from the waves.
I raised a hand and moved it forward hesitantly, reaching with the pad of my pointing finger, closing my eyes and wincing as I felt the beast’s skin. I pulled my hand back quickly and opened my eyes to find Pinkbeard’s smug grin. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?
Oh dear, I thought again.
It was one or two days after the sea creature visited us (or I dreamt that it visited us) that Farwatcher shouted at me. “Soten! Soten! Eimja!”
I slid my face out from the bundle of furs I’d been using to keep my nose warm, every muscle in my body sore from shivering, my teeth aching from chattering. I scowled at the man who’d interrupted the misery of my illness.
“Eimja!” Farwatcher pointed, and I followed the tip of his finger with my gaze.
I gasped.
Land.
A thin sliver of bone-white protruded from the blackness, tufts of hearth smoke barely visible against the grey of the sky. Tears pressed against the back of my eyes. Thank all that is holy.