Oona had heard there was a saying in the South: a saying that the captain goes down with their ship. But up here in the North it was the cat who sank into the sea and the captain who was the first into the whaleboat.
“Ahoy,” Oona cried again. “A whale. I see a whale. We must take chase. But be quiet,” she warned the toy cat. “We do not want to gally the beast.” Oona crouched down and crawled along the black sand that lined Nordlor’s shore. She was about to catch the imagined beast, when someone stood on the end of her stick and snapped it in two.
“Oops,” came a voice, but it did not sound at all sorry.
Oona’s mind reluctantly left the Icelands and returned to the village of Nordlor. She looked up and her heart sank. In front of her stood her six sisters: Ina, Berit, Sissel, Trine and the twins, Onka and Plonka.
Oona dropped her broken stick and stood up.
“What are you doing here?” Her sisters never came down to the shore. That was precisely why she spent so much time there.
“We’ve come to fetch you,” Ina said. “Mother and Father are taking us to lunch.”
“And I’m allowed to come?” Oona said. She couldn’t believe it. Usually when her family went out for lunch they made her stay at home alone.
“Apparently, they want to tell us something, and it’s important we’re all there to hear.”
Oona dusted the black sand off her clothes. She was almost ready to go when one of her sisters spotted the toy cat sticking out of her pocket.
“What is that?” Berit said with a scowl.
“It’s a sea cat,” Oona replied. “He’s called Gillbert.”
“It looks like a plain old land cat to me.”
“No it isn’t. Can’t you see his eyes? They’re blue and have waves in them.”
“Where did you even get it?” Sissel asked.
“I bet she got it out of a bin,” Onka said. “A great, big, dirty bin.”
“Or maybe she made it herself,” Plonka said with a snigger. “That would explain the poor workmanship.”
“Gillbert isn’t poorly made,” Oona said. “He’s perfect.”
“Really?” Berit asked. “Let me see.” Before Oona could step away, Berit grabbed Gillbert and yanked him from her arms. Then, she ripped off one of his ears.
“Stop it,” Oona said. She tried to grab her cat, but Onka and Plonka held her back. “You’re breaking him.”
“If he wasn’t so poorly made, he wouldn’t be so easy to break.” To demonstrate this, Berit ripped off Gillbert’s tail and then used her teeth to pull out his eyes. She spat them on the ground and stomped them into the sand. “There,” she said. “He looks a lot better now.”
“You lardy catfish!” Oona yelled. “You slimy eel!” She broke free of Onka and Plonka and picked up a rock. She threw it at Berit’s head. “Give him back! Give him back now, or I’ll – I’ll…”
“Or you’ll what?” Berit said. “You’ll tell Mother and Father?”
All of Oona’s sisters laughed except for the youngest, Trine. Trine looked like she wanted her sisters to stop teasing Oona. But she was too frightened to speak up.
“They don’t care about you,” Berit continued. “They never have and they never will. You were meant to be a boy. Not another stupid girl.”
“That’s not true,” Oona cried. “You’re all just a bunch of – a bunch of lying, wobbly walruses!”
That hit her sisters deep. They all knew they looked like walruses, what with their greyish complexion and protruding teeth. Oona was the only one to avoid the misfortune of resembling one of them. She was small and delicate, like the first wild flowers that bloomed in spring.
“How dare you,” Berit said. “Mother told you you’re not allowed to call us that.”
“Yeah,” Oona’s other five sisters added. “Not ever!”
“Well, I did. And I’m not taking it back. Not until you give me Gillbert.”
“All right,” Berit said. “You can have Gillbert.” She pulled back her arm and threw the toy cat into the harbour. “There you go,” she said with a smirk. “He’s all yours.”
“You’re late,” Oona’s father said when she met her family outside the Rusted Anchor. It was one of five taverns in Nordlor. There used to be six, but on the day of Oona’s birth, the Sinking Eel had mysteriously burned to the ground. Many suspected Oona’s father of the crime, such had been his rage that night. But no evidence had been found, and so the crime remained unsolved.
“I’m sorry,” Oona said. She had spent thirty minutes trying to fish Gillbert out of the water. But her rescue mission had failed, and the knitted cat now lay forever lost at the bottom of Nordlor Harbour.
“Typical,” her father mumbled. He turned and entered the tavern.
“It used to be called the Golden Anchor,” Oona told her sisters as they followed their father inside. “But then it sank in a storm. One soul was lost and twenty others were saved.”
“We don’t care,” Oona’s five oldest sisters said at once. Trine was about to say something different, but before she could her older sisters grabbed her and barged into the tavern. One of the only times they moved quickly was when there was the promise of food ahead.
Oona sighed and followed her sisters inside. She knew a lot about ships; at least, she knew about the ones that had sunk. She owned a book all about them. But her father’s ship was a different story. Despite being the sole owner and captain of the Plucky Leopard, he had never let one of his daughters on board. Oona’s sisters did not mind, but one of Oona’s greatest dreams was to step aboard her father’s ship. She didn’t have to sail on it. She just wanted to see what it felt like to stand on the wooden deck and look over the rails and pretend that it was ploughing through the sea. But she knew her father would never let her do that. One of his favourite sayings was, “A ship is no place for a lady.”
The Britts sat at a table that looked out over Nordlor Harbour. As soon as they sat down a man came to serve them.
“Mornin’ all,” the man said with a nod. He wore a captain’s hat with a golden anchor stitched into the front. It was frayed and faded, but the anchor still shone. His name was Arvid and he was the ship’s former captain. “What can I get for you?”
While her family studied the menu, Oona looked around the room. She had been to the Rusted Anchor several times before, but today she spotted something new.
“You’ve got a stuffed cat.” She nodded to the tavern’s farthest corner where a tabby ginger cat with long whiskers stood frozen on a bronze statue base.
“Ah, old Mistress Bluebell,” Arvid said fondly. “Went down with the ship and dredged back up with it too. The only soul we lost. She’s got barnacles stuck to her fur and stinks like the deepest and darkest part of the sea. I’ve washed her eight hundred times, with soap and all. But I can’t get the blasted stench out. I used to keep her in the kitchen, but her smell was leeching into the food. Smelled lovely when she was alive, she did.” A smile branched across the former captain’s face. “Like roses at dawn and fish pie at dusk. She would’ve loved this place.” Tears shone in Arvid’s eyes. “I named the pie after her. She loved pie, she did. Snapper. Seal. Whale. Any type of pie. You just had to put pastry on the base, gravy in the middle and a lid on top and she’d eat it.”
“Enough about blasted cats,” Oona’s father said. “Let’s order.”
“But don’t you like your cat?” Oona asked. She would give anything to have a real cat of her own, even just a land one.
“You mean Barnacles?” her father said. “I would have thrown him overboard years ago, but the darn thing’s too fast to catch.”
“I wouldn’t go doing that, Captain Britt,” Arvid said. “I’ve never heard of a ship without a cat. Be bad luck, that would. Put a curse on the whole vessel.”
“Well, having a cat on yours certainly didn’t stop it from sinking. Now…” Oona’s father glanced at the menu. “I’ll have the reindeer steak with cabbage on the side.”
Wh
en it came time for Oona to order she said, “I think I’ll have Mistress Bluebell’s pie.”
Oona had almost finished her pie when her mother and father revealed the reason for the lunch.
“As you know,” their mother said, “your father heads north in a few months for the Great Hunt. And this year, we’re going to set off on an adventure of our own.”
At the word “adventure” – a word that had never left her mother’s mouth before – Oona’s face lit up.
“We’re going north?” Oona couldn’t believe it. One of her greatest dreams was coming true.
Around the table, Oona’s sisters reeled back with horror.
“It’s not true, is it, Mother?” Ina said. “You’re not making us go up there. Are you?”
“Oh, please, Mother. No. Don’t make us go,” begged Berit. “It’s dreadfully cold and the sea is so wet.”
“I’m not going. I won’t. I just won’t, Mother,” Sissel declared.
“We’ll smell of fish,” Trine said with a wrinkled nose.
“We’ll die!” wailed Onka and Plonka. They threw their arms dramatically in the air. “We’ll all just die if we go up there.”
“Settle down, girls. Settle down,” their mother said. “Of course we’re not going north.” She cast a dirty glance Oona’s way. “We’d never do that to you.”
Oona’s sisters cried with relief, making such a mess that Arvid had to stop serving other customers and fetch a mop to clean the tears up.
“Then where are we going?” Oona asked when the floor was dry.
“While your father sails north,” Oona’s mother said. “We’re going to go south.”
“South?” Oona felt like she was going to vomit. Going south didn’t sound like an adventure; it sounded like a nightmare. Nothing exciting ever happened down there. “What am I going to do in the South?”
“Why, you’ll all get married,” Oona’s father said.
“Just like every girl dreams,” her mother added. Tears of joy glistened in her blue eyes.
“Married?” Oona’s jaw dropped. “But I’m only ten.”
“Almost eleven,” her father corrected. “That’s when girls are allowed to marry down there.”
“And you won’t be expected to have children for at least two years,” her mother offered.
“Children?” Oona’s jaw dropped even lower. “But I don’t want children. I want a cat.”
“You can have mine,” her father mumbled.
“Oh, hush,” Oona’s mother told her. “Don’t speak of such things. Every girl wants to be a loving wife and a doting mother.”
Around the table, six heads nodded in agreement. A seventh remained firmly still.
“But it’s not fair,” Oona said. “I don’t want to go south. I want to stay here. Please, Father.” She turned to the captain. “Can I stay here with you?”
The captain shook his head. “The North is no place for a lady.”
“But … but…”
Around the table, Oona’s sisters laughed.
“Why would you want to stay in the North,” Ina said, “when the South is so much better?”
“It’s warmer,” Berit said.
“There are lots of handsome boys, who don’t smell of fish,” Sissel added.
“The cobbles aren’t wet,” Trine declared.
“There are princes in every town,” Onka gushed.
“And,” Plonka added, “the sun shines every day and it never gets dark, not even at night.”
“Besides,” Oona’s mother said. “Why would you want to stay here? You don’t even have any friends.”
“Yeah,” Ina said. “No one in the North likes you, not even us, and we’re your family.”
Oona wanted to say that Ina and her mother were wrong. But the truth was, they were right. She had never been liked or loved by anyone. She had no friends and she didn’t feel like she belonged to her family. Even greater than her wish to go north, was her wish to be loved. And she wanted her father to love her most of all. It took her a long time to figure out why his love was so important. It was because she admired him. He was brave. He was successful. And he was the captain of his very own ship. Oona had a feeling that if she could be all those things, then he would love her too.
Freydis couldn’t understand why the girl looked so sad. If she were eating a pie fresh from the oven, she would be ecstatic. She licked her lips at the thought. Back in the day she could have bought one hundred of them. Now, she couldn’t even afford one. This was the third year in a row that she’d eaten all her meals from a bin. She used to live like a queen, she did, before that blasted fortune: the one that she got wrong.
Freydis stepped away from the window and shook her head. Captain Britt had wanted to tie her to the mast of his ship after that one. He had wanted to sail her into the Icelands and drop her into the sea. And it wasn’t an empty threat either. A shell had whispered the same thing not four hours before Oona Britt was born. That’s why she hadn’t gone to the party at the Sinking Eel.
Just one word wrong, Freydis thought as she walked away from the Rusted Anchor. Just the one: boy instead of girl. What about all the other bits she got right? The captain’s wife did give birth to a baby who grew to be bold and brave. His other six daughters were certainly disappointing. And – the biggest bit of all – she’d predicted the captain’s wife was pregnant three months before she started showing!
But no. All anyone in Nordlor cared about was the boy bit. One word had ruined a thirty-year career. And word up here spread. The night Oona Britt was born, eighty sea robins were sent into the air. They flew to villages far and wide, carrying the same message: Freydis Spits is a fraud.
She, the Great Freydis Spits, a fraud? How dare they! Even now her cheeks flared red with rage. Her reputation had been ruined North-wide.
For years Freydis had wondered why the shell told her the wrong fortune. It had never happened to her before. After much deliberation, she had come to the only solution. She must have heard wrong. It was obvious to her now. She had heard the word “son” instead of “one”. She wasn’t losing her touch. She just needed to clean out her ears.
But even after Freydis cleaned out her ears, the people of Nordlor refused to buy any more fortunes. Slowly, her money had run out and she’d had to sell her carriage for food. That had been her second mistake. It was too dangerous to travel by foot in the North. Until she could afford a new carriage, or even just a horse, she couldn’t go anywhere.
In protest at the unfairness of it all, Freydis had taken a vow of silence. She had not voiced a single prediction in almost ten years. That’s right. She didn’t tell anyone about the Sinking Eel burning down or the polar bear lying in wait to kill those five men in the woods.
Yes, Freydis Spits was a woman of principle. If no one cared to listen, then she would not speak. But things were getting desperate. Eating out of bins. Washing in the fjord. Knitting winter clothes out of dead grass. This wasn’t how a fortune teller was meant to live.
No. The time for silence had passed. Freydis Spits had to become a famed fortune teller once more, and there was only one way to do that. She had to find a shell with a future grand enough to sell.
THE WRECKAGE
Oona Britt liked a lot of things about Nordlor. She liked the way it always smelled of salty water and fresh fish. She liked the way the houses bobbed on the cobbles like they were made of waves instead of stone. And she liked the way the whole village seemed to freeze in winter. But the one thing in Nordlor that Oona liked most of all was school. Unfortunately for her, like most of the wonderful things in Nordlor, school was only for the boys.
Once, Oona had asked her mother if she could go to school as well. But her mother had just laughed and said, “Why would you want to learn things at school when men can explain everything for you?”
Oona could not understand her mother’s logic regarding these things and nor did she want to. But luckily for her, she had discovered a way to overcome th
is obstacle all by herself.
In Nordlor, school was held every day from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon. Like most important gatherings, it took place in the village hall. And while everyone knew where the village hall was, only one person had discovered the hidden hole in the ceiling that led into the roof. It was through this space that Oona climbed every morning at eight. Then, for the next five hours, she would peer through a gap in the wood and watch the lessons below. In a way, it was lucky her family didn’t care about her. Otherwise, they would have wondered what she got up to every day.
But even with a hidden spot in the roof, attending school wasn’t an easy task. The ship that made the village hall had sunk amid a wild storm, and every day at eleven a monstrous gale ripped through the roof space. The wind roared so loudly that Oona could not hear a word from the classroom below until half past twelve in the afternoon. Luckily, Oona always brought a book along so she wouldn’t get bored.
Oona owned two books: The Twenty Greatest Shipwrecks in the North and Great Northern Sea Tales. She had not bought the books herself, nor had she written them. Instead, they had been given to her. The only problem was, Oona didn’t know who by. It was the one great mystery in her life.
Every year on Oona’s birthday she would awake to find a present on her window sill. The present would be wrapped in brown paper and tied together with sailor’s string. But there would never be a card, so she did not know who had sent it.
For the last ten years this stranger had given her birthday presents, and they always got her the right thing. So far she had received a knitted blanket with her initials “OB” hand-stitched into the side; several toys, including a miniature whaleboat that could float on the river just like a real one; an abacus made of seashells; a bag of sweets shaped like the greatest whaling ships in the North; a small wooden sea chest; two books, one about shipwrecks followed the next year by one full of sea tales; and, just this year past, she had received her knitted cat, Gillbert.
Oona knew the presents weren’t from her sisters or her parents. They never gave her anything nice. In fact, some years they didn’t give her anything at all. So, they must have been from someone else. But who?
The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator Page 2