Chapter Thirty-Nine
Thirty-nine
Saoirse
Three hours pass before I can stop shaking. Two more, and I finally unclench my jaw.
We sail through complete darkness as the moon hides her face, guided by Brona and a scattering of stars until they, too, bury themselves in the gathering clouds—and even then I cannot rest. Every time I think of sitting down, or joining Aisling in the queen’s cabin to try to fetch some sleep, I feel the cold, hard crush of Maccus’s hand over my wrist. His fingers forcing my lips apart.
So instead, I walk.
Etain’s ship is twice the size of Faolan’s, painted and carved in ostentatious designs, though somehow it feels smaller.
My steps take me past gold-tinged sails and crew members whose names I don’t know.
Past Callen, who climbed onto Etain’s deck flushed and panting just as we were pulling out of the bay, a sack clutched triumphantly in their hand.
Past the stag carved into the ship’s helm, who seems to watch me as I go.
And all the while I carry Maccus’s hammer, hanging just a spare inch above the floor.
Its weight is tremendous. Or perhaps that’s just from holding it for hours on end. But I’m terrified to set it down or loosen my grip for even a moment—terrified I’ll want to hurl it into the sea and call it done.
So I carry it with me, studying the mark on my hand and waiting to feel something as the sky lightens overhead.
But nothing comes.
“Saoirse?”
I turn to see Brona frowning at the dotted hide lain over a barrel near the captain’s wheel.
She displaced the ship’s navigator the moment she came on board, backed by Etain’s orders and Aisling’s approval as well.
After spending the first hour making adjustments to the map with her dagger, a needle, ink, and a flag to determine the wind, Brona had set a course for Painted Claw.
But she’s glaring at it now, her eyes dancing from the map to the flag to the sea surrounding us.
“Come take a look at this.”
I walk the three paces to her side, then settle the hammer between us, shoulder throbbing the moment I’m spared its weight. “What am I looking at?”
“The wind patterns. They’re all wrong for the season. The currents too.” Brona strides to the side of the ship, peering over the railing with a heavy brow. In a low voice, she adds, “We should have hit the port at Painted Claw two hours ago.”
My heart judders, hand dropping to the hammer. “What?”
“I’m having to fight the ship for all she’s worth just to stay the course—and even that might not be enough.”
“Couldn’t you track our path by…”
She glances pointedly to the sky, and blearily, I look up just as purple streaks of lightning flicker in the farthest distance. There, the sky has forgotten the sun, flinging rain into our faces with the next abrupt shifting of the wind.
Not a single star remains in sight.
“I can’t tell you where we are now,” Brona admits, flattening a hand over her curls and then raking through them to form a braid. “Can’t tell you what’s behind or ahead. But…”
A crack of thunder rolls across the sky, and my skin prickles at the memory of Faolan’s mouth as he buried it into my neck during my first storm on the sea.
His arms had gone around me, caging me protectively against the captain’s wheel.
Goat’s hide had wrapped my ankle so I might keep my balance as the ship pitched to and fro.
“But we’re not equipped for a storm. Not the likes of which border Painted Claw.”
Brona shakes her head. “Not if we’re on the outside edge of it.”
“The outside…?” Realization dawns just as a bolt of lightning illuminates the murky clouds. “Surely not. It took three days last time sailing from Frozen Hearth.”
“Yes, well, we had Stiff Wind and a familiar crew then.” Brona flips the map hide closed and reaches for the one beneath, sleeve catching on the barrel’s wood.
She lets it rip without a second thought.
“And reliable currents. But see here?” She spreads the fresh map out, pointing to smooth lines carved and crossing over one another.
“This one should draw us down toward the interior of Painted Claw. It goes all the way down to Unbound Earth. But the second we got out of the bay of Lost Souls, another one sprang up—pulling us west.”
She cuts a finger across the hide, toward the center of the cluster of islands.
Toward the Scath-Díol.
“It wasn’t there a week ago, when Nessa and I sailed in.” Brona taps her nail once, then flattens her hand over the map. “I had to correct course. May have overcorrected. Which means we might have missed Painted Claw and be heading straight for the Teeth.”
My stomach swoops along with the ship. “You’re not serious.”
“As the watery grave.” Her voice tilts higher in an attempt at humor before she rubs at her eyes. “We should turn back.”
“I…” Maccus’s face flashes across my mind—Etain’s as well. “I don’t think we can.”
“Well I don’t think we’re ready to face whatever that is.” Brona thrusts a hand toward the sky, and as she does, something strange lights it up.
A flash of gold, there and gone a second later.
“What was—”
Her face pales, jaw flagging at once.
“No.”
The wind shifts again, straining against the sails overhead before filling them as wide as they’ll go.
It’s enough to jostle my footing, sending me into the barrel and knocking over the rolled-up hide left on the deck.
I grab its narrow edge, swearing as thunder rumbles across the sky, pounding against my head.
When I look up again, Brona’s staring at the new hide, covered in drawings dissected by thin black lines.
Creatures of the sea fill each corner of the map: dolphins, fish, some I recognize and others I don’t.
But there is something at the far right edge of the map, between all the tiny gaps representing stars—something drawn among a series of jagged pillars emerging from the ocean like rotting teeth.
It’s a sea serpent. Massive and fanged, with a long, twisting tail.
As the sails stretch to their limits and fog gathers rapidly across the waves, I remember the story Faolan recounted last summer, his lips pressed against my ear: one of Róisín and the slain oilliphéist whose mighty jaws, it was said, became the treacherous channel we know as the Teeth.
“Brona?”
She stays quiet.
“Brona, what is it?”
Blinking hard, my friend taps the side of the hide three times with her longest finger, then jerks her head up to search the skies with a desperation she won’t name.
“He wouldn’t,” she repeats. “Faolan wouldn’t be this stupid—not on purpose.”
“Brona, please.” I catch her arm even as she curls her hands around the edge of the barrel. Behind me, I hear footsteps. Yawns. Aisling and Callen emerge, the first looking red-eyed from crying, the second still half-asleep.
“What’s going on?”
Brona releases a hard breath, then slams her hand onto the barrel and rounds on us. “It’s hatching season for the oilliphéist.”
“Oilliphéist?” Aisling releases a shaky laugh. “But they’re—”
“I swear to the gods if you say they’re just myths—”
“I wasn’t going to say myths.” Aisling cuts Brona’s threat neatly in two even as her cheeks flush to match the veins in her eyes. “But if a great, hulking serpent was swimming around the Crescent, surely word would have gotten around.”
“These aren’t like the oilliphéist of old—they don’t grow to the size of the one that formed the Teeth. At least, not this close to land.”
Aisling’s smile falters before she turns on Callen. “Have you seen them, then?”
Callen holds their hands up. “No, but—”
“I have.” My chest shrinks as they turn on me, a cord tightening just at the middle.
One spun of fascination and fear. “In the cottage near the Dromlach Cliffs, I’d see their spines cresting the waves come spring.
The first year, I thought they were dolphins, then sharks prowling for fish, until I realized the birds had fled their presence.
It was strange. Even the nestlings seemed to fear chirping until they were sure they’d passed on. ”
Brona clutches her sore shoulder as she gives a firm nod. “They were breeding. Every child on the Dromlach Cliffs knows of the beasts.”
Again, Aisling lets out a small laugh, though it’s quieter now. Less mocking, and more like willful disbelief. “Right, like every child on Bridled Stag is warned of the púca who want to lead you into the woods.”
Brona glares as lightning flashes, reflected in her eyes.
We’re sailing closer.
“Every child of the Dromlach Cliffs knows not to swim in spring or autumn because the currents change their minds as quickly as the beasts who use them to get in and out of the deep. We’re not stupid, Your Majesty.”
“I didn’t mean—”
Brona turns her back. “It’s rare that anyone sails the Teeth these days, but even I don’t dare venture near them after the autumn equinox.
Oilliphéist require storms to hatch, and the worst ones blow in as the air cools.
” Her face relaxes as she finds her resolve, but I can’t quite feel it myself, my hands cold and clammy.
“So we turn around.”
Brona stiffens, her eyes on the skyline. “…Aye.”
But she still doesn’t move.
I step closer, mouth drying as I do. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.” Brona starts for the captain’s wheel, flagging the crew’s attention by raising her good hand. “I didn’t see—”
All four of us jump as another, larger burst of gold shatters across the sky, this time taking on a proper shape. Wings stretch over the turbulent clouds, bolting up from the waves and vanishing into the next pocket of wind.
Brona’s breath escapes in a hard gust. “He wouldn’t.”
My jaw drops as I look from her to that strange mark in the sky, a vague memory trying to surface. One of a bundle of feathers Faolan had shown me in those first days, taking pity on me as I got familiar with the ship.
“These you’ll want to keep clear of any flames.”
“Why? They look harmless.”
“They’ll flare up into the sky straight toward the clouds—a signal to any other wayfarers if we’re in trouble.”
“But isn’t the point of piracy discretion?”