The Neverfear
Anya looked radiant. She had embraced Christopher, clashing their heads together, laughing and rubbing her forehead and whooping for joy.
‘You seem very sure we’re going to win it,’ he said.
‘Of course we will! Christopher – don’t you see? This bond you have with the creatures! The Light! You’re going to find the fastest creature on the island and beg it to race.’
‘But you know I can’t hold it for more than a minute. The race will be longer than that.’
She refused to be disheartened. ‘Look at what you did with the birds! As soon as we get to the centre in Ceren, we’ll find you something to ride. A horse, or a twrch tryth.’
‘It is anothers criss-cross across the Archipelago! It means,’ said Ratwin, ‘goings through the Lithians Strait. Its can be difficult-harsh; we will needs every sails and every hands and claw.’
‘We’d better use more powdered wind,’ said Anya, digging with eager fingers for the bag, her face still shining with relief. She pointed with her whole arm, like Fidens Nighthand, and laughed ecstatically. ‘Onwards!’
The day passed fast and hot, and they soared over the water, making for Ceren in the west. But that night, taking his shift next to Ratwin, Christopher found himself suddenly shaking, his hands trembling on the tiller.
‘Whats is upit?’ said Ratwin. ‘Something is hauntsing your face.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Not nothings. I know nothings when I sees them, Christopher.’
He carefully did not look at the ratatoska, but out at the ocean. ‘What if I fail?’ he said to Ratwin. ‘We don’t even know what I’m going to ride. What if I can’t do it?’
‘You will do its because you must. You will not fails because you musts not.’
He had kept the fear down, down, out of reach and out of sight, and now like a great eruption it rose up in him.
‘But I have failed – I already have! I let Anya get bitten. I’m older than her, bigger, I’m supposed to be able to protect her.
I’m a guardian! And Irian – I didn’t stop them.
I shouldn’t have let us go down that alley – I should have seen it was a trap! I should have known.’
Every time he closed his eyes now, he saw Anya lying in the grass, her poor face deathly white, foam at her mouth. It was why he insisted on taking the night shift at the tiller.
‘You have beens brave before. You wills know how to be braves again. And you is not alone. You haves Anya. And Jacques. And me.’
‘I nearly let Anya die.’ Christopher turned to Ratwin. His voice was harder than he intended. ‘And what if I can’t do it? What then?’
‘Let me tells you something. The Neverfear, it’s not the sames boat as a year agoes.’
‘I know, but I don’t see—’
‘Hush! I is making a point. Every times, it smash-wrecks, and every times, Nighthand makes a new boat, with as much of the olds boat as he is ables to salvage. This Neverfears, it has the runners of the firsts, the mast of the seconds, some of the helm-up and gunwale of the fourths.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘My points is, you’re afraid.’
‘I do know that actually.’ His shame was growing harder, into something pointed and icy.
‘My importation is, each times the Neverfear is broken, it is rebuilt. It is not builts the same, but it is rebuilt. It is stills the Neverfear.’ Ratwin dipped the stump of her horn to Christopher.
‘So rebuild yourself. You was shipwrecked, backs there in the garden. It was vastly dark and more frightenings for yous than Anya because yous had to makes the choices. Don’t expects to be the same as yesterday.
You can’t be. You have to expects, before you are old, to be shipwrecked time and times over. ’
‘But—’
‘But. Here’s the secret-true …’ And Ratwin leaned closer, so that her stump brushed his skin.
‘This Neverfear is better than the last ones. Each times, Nighthand knows mores about how to build-up a ship. Each times, the ship is betters: toughers, bolder on the water. Each times it is defeateds it grows faster. That’s you, Christopher. ’
Christopher tried to think of it, tried to picture himself, cracked apart and rebuilt. The knot in his chest loosened a little. Shipwrecked, rebuilt, bolder.
Ratwin looked at him, unblinking, and then leaped down to the deck. ‘Althoughs …’ And she moved away into the darkness, her green tail twirling behind her as she walked along the rail above the black waves. ‘This one does smell more, of fishes.’