The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator

by Matilda Woods

  The captain had only just finished speaking when the nardoo reared up again. It flipped in the air – like it was doing a trick – and fell back down. A second wave, even larger and faster than the first, careered into the five whaleboats.

  This time the whaleboats were dragged right down into the sea. If any of the crew had been brave enough to open their eyes they would have seen creatures swimming beside them that lived so deep in the water they had never seen the sky.

  The nardoo took longer to call the second wave back. Some of the crew could not hold their breath for that long. They exhaled one final mouthful of air and then breathed in water. As the sea filled their lungs, they sunk to a place so deep and dark that no living creature called it home.

  When the wave finally receded, and the whaleboats rose back to the surface, only four boats out of five remained. The third boat – and all the men inside – was gone. One of the men in Oona’s boat had also been claimed by the sea. It was Peder. Oona imagined his son all the way back in Nordlor. Perhaps he was answering a question in class or maybe he was sitting down to dinner with his mother. Wherever he was, he had no idea he had just lost his father.

  Oona’s mind was dragged back to the Icelands when her own father, still living, rose to his feet once more. Despite the ferocity of the sea, the captain had not lost his grip on the harpoon. Before the nardoo could claim any more of his men, he aimed the weapon and fired into the night. This time he did not miss. The harpoon speared the nardoo in the centre of its back.

  A monstrous cry shook the air. The whaleboats rattled and their wood splintered. Around them, the sea screamed and the sky cried. The lights in the heavens trickled down, fading as they fell, until all the rainbow lights went out. After twelve hours on the hunt, and the loss of six men, the crew of the Plucky Leopard had caught the nardoo.

  OONA’S CHANCE

  Adeadly silence fell over the sea. Oona had never heard a quietness so loud. The wind had stopped. The waves had stopped. It felt like time itself had stopped. Then, Oona’s father yelled, “Grab the net. Let’s trap this beast!”

  The men rowed towards one another. Two men from each boat grabbed a corner of the giant net. Then, they spread back out. At the captain’s command, they sent the net flying through the air. It landed with a heavy thud across the nardoo’s back. The men hauled the injured creature in.

  By now, the nardoo had sunk low into the water, but some of its back remained above the sea. Its scales glistened softly in the night, but they weren’t as bright as they used to be. Oona wondered if the creature was dying.

  The men dragged the nardoo closer until it brushed against the side of the first whaleboat. The scales on its back were smooth and looked like ancient stone. Oona’s breath caught in her throat and her skin tingled.

  “Oona,” the captain said.

  “Yes?” Oona looked up towards her father. She had been sitting, frozen, beside him ever since the harpoon was fired. She saw something glistening in his hand. It was his whalebone knife.

  “My grandfather carved this from the bone of the first whale he ever killed. Then, he handed it down to his son who handed it down to me. I always wanted a son to pass it down to. But now, Oona.” He father looked into her eyes. They were the same shade of blue as her own. “I would like you to have it.”

  “Me?” Oona said.

  The captain nodded. He held the blade out towards his daughter.

  “Yes. It’s your knife now.”

  With shaking hands, Oona reached out and took the blade from her father. The knife felt heavy in her hands, and she wondered if she would ever have the strength to wield it.

  “Now,” the captain said, nodding towards the nardoo. “Up you get.”

  “What?” Oona asked.

  “This is your chance, Oona. This is your chance to show me what you can do.”

  Oona’s eyes widened with horror. It was bad enough that the men were going to kill the nardoo. She didn’t want to do it herself.

  “Don’t worry yourself, girl,” her father growled. “You can’t kill the thing with that.” He nodded towards the knife. “I just want you to make the first cut.”

  When Oona’s father saw that his daughter was about to argue, he said sternly, “It’s a great honour to deliver the first cut, Oona, even just to a whale. But this is no whale. This is a nardoo. A creature of legend. No man has ever captured one of them.”

  Fear of upsetting her father made Oona stand up. With shaking legs, she made her way towards the side of the boat.

  “You’ll have to lean right out,” her father instructed.

  Oona leant over the side of the boat until her arms were directly above the creature’s back. The nardoo rocked against the small boat and icy water splashed across Oona’s fingers.

  “That’s my girl,” her father said. “Push it right through the skin.”

  With a final glance at her father, to make sure she was doing it right, Oona drew back the whalebone knife and then drove it forward. But instead of cutting through the nardoo’s flesh, Oona cut through a piece of the rope that held it down.

  “Never mind,” her father said. It had looked, to him, like her grip had slipped. “You’ll get it the second ti—”

  Oona swung the knife for a second time. Another line of rope fell away, and then a third was slashed in half by the knife.

  “What are you doing?” her father cried. When Oona cut a fourth line of rope he understood exactly what she was up to. His daughter was not trying to kill the nardoo; she was trying to save it. He went to snatch the knife away, but before he could Oona leapt free of the boat and landed on the nardoo’s back.

  The creature rose and fell in the waves beneath Oona’s feet. A humming sound ran up through her legs. Despite the cold air and the icy water lapping against her shoes, Oona felt warm, like she was sitting beside a fire in Nordlor.

  Ignoring the yells of the men, and her father’s cries most of all, Oona knelt and cut through the rope. Slowly, piece by piece, the giant net slipped away.

  “Go on!” the captain cried to his men. “What are you waiting for? Stop her. Stop her now!”

  But fear of falling into the sea held the men of the Plucky Leopard back. Instead of stopping Oona, they watched from the safety of the whaleboats as she continued to cut the great creature free.

  Soon, Oona had cut away every piece of the net except one. She placed the blade of her knife beneath it, and the rope snapped in two. The entire net slid into the water and was swallowed by the dark sea.

  Oona had expected the nardoo to swim away, but it remained bobbing in place. For a moment, she feared it was dead – she was too late in her quest to save it – but then in the moonlight she caught a glimpse of one final piece of rope.

  “Don’t you do it,” Oona’s father yelled as she crept across the nardoo’s back. The rope that held the harpoon stretched out of the creature’s side and into her father’s hands. “Don’t you dare,” her father screamed across the sea. “Oona,” he yelled when she reached the harpoon, “If you do this, I’ll never forgive you.”

  For a moment, Oona paused. She looked across the water to her father. She had wanted so much for him to love her and for a while she thought that he had. But now, standing in the middle of the Icelands on the back of a nardoo, she realized the truth.

  For over ten years Oona’s father had treated her badly. On the night she was born he left her alone in the Sinking Eel. For the first decade of her life he made her sleep in a cold, dark attic. And as she neared her eleventh birthday he had tried to send her far away to marry a stranger. He had only started to like her, to be proud of her, when she grew brave and bold enough to do things that helped him. By saving Olf, she had made sure her father kept having nice dinners every night at sea. By learning how to steer and fish, she had reduced the amount of work he had to do. And by killing the creature disguised as an island, she had saved his life and his ship. The moment she tried to do something that didn’t suit him – the momen
t she tried to save the nardoo instead of killing it – he had returned to his old self.

  Oona had been so busy wishing her father would like her, she hadn’t stopped to realize that maybe she didn’t like him. This realization made the choice before her easy. She turned from her father and cut the final piece of rope. It went limp in the captain’s hands.

  Oona looked down at the nardoo. The harpoon had left a large wound in its back. Something thick and black leaked out from the cut.

  “You poor thing,” Oona whispered. She placed her father’s knife in the pocket of her coat and wrapped her hands around the end of the harpoon. “This is going to hurt,” she said.

  Oona took a deep breath and pulled on the harpoon. The piece of iron moved slightly in her fingers. The creature wailed and cried beneath her, and more black liquid trickled out into the sea.

  “This is the last bit,” Oona promised. “In a moment, you’ll be free.” She gave one final yank on the harpoon, and it slipped out of the creature’s back. The force of the pull was so great that the harpoon flew right over the nardoo and landed with a splash in the sea.

  Beneath Oona, the creature hummed with delight. A spout of rainbow shot into the air, and the sky above her head exploded with light. The water around the nardoo stirred as the creature’s fins and tail moved once more with life. Waves reared up around it, and the nardoo began to swim away.

  With no time to spare, Oona bounded and slid across the nardoo’s gigantic back. She raced towards the boat that held her father. It was the only one close enough for her to reach. She could see him watching her draw near. When she reached the edge of the nardoo’s back, she took a great leap into the air. As her legs floated above the icy sea, her father turned from her and said to his men, “Row.”

  With one movement of their arms, the gap between the whaleboat and the nardoo became too much. Instead of landing on wood, Oona fell through a sheet of ice and into the sea. She distinctly heard her father yell, “Keep rowing!” and then her head went under.

  This far north the sea was so cold that it hurt when you hit it. As soon as Oona went under her lungs gasped for air, and when she opened her mouth icy shards of water flooded in. Oona kicked her feet towards the surface, but the water made her body slow. Her heart ached as it struggled to pump blood to her arms and legs. Oona was slipping, flittering, between sleep and awake, between life and death, when she felt something push beneath her.

  It’s the nardoo, Oona thought. Just like she had saved it, the nardoo had come back to save her.

  THE ICY RIVER

  When Oona next awoke, she lay in a pool of ice on the deck of the Plucky Leopard. The four remaining whaleboats were lined up beside her. The rainbow lights in the sky had run away and now the heavens looked empty.

  “The nardoo,” Oona said. The crew stood in a circle, looking down at her. None of them looked happy. “The nardoo – it saved me.”

  “What are you blabbing on about, girl?” one of the men said. “The nardoo didn’t save you. It swam away and left you to drown.”

  “But…” Oona couldn’t understand. She had felt the creature below her in the water. She had felt it push her to safety. So, if it hadn’t been the creature who had saved her, who or what had?

  “It was Haroyld.” This time the captain spoke. “He was the one who saved you. The darn fool jumped in as we were rowing back. No idea why he did it.”

  “But it can’t have been him.” Oona searched the faces around her. The navigator was not there. “Where is he?”

  “Below deck,” her father said. “The sea has all but claimed him. I doubt he’ll last the night.”

  The captain stepped forward and knelt beside his daughter. “Do you know what catching that nardoo would have done for me?” he growled. “I would have been famous North-wide. For hundreds of years men would have spoken my name. ‘Captain Britt: the greatest fisherman who ever lived. While all the other men hunted whales, he hunted nardoos.’ But not any more, Oona. You ruined it. You ruined everything.” He reached into her wet pocket and took back his whalebone knife. “I gave you your chance,” he said, “and you won’t be getting another. From this day on, you are no longer my daughter.” Then, he stood up, turned his back on his seventh daughter and went to steer his ship.

  *

  A few weeks ago, Oona would have been devastated if her father had said those things. But now she had something far more important to worry about.

  Oona found Haroyld in his cabin. He was lying in bed. He looked like he was sleeping, only his skin was coloured blue. Barnacles was there too, curled up on the navigator’s chest. The cat opened one eye when Oona entered. Then, he closed it very quickly.

  Oona pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down. She took hold of Haroyld’s hand. It felt as cold as the Northern Sea.

  “It’s not fair,” she said as she looked down at the man who had jumped into the icy sea to save her. “This was your last trip. You were meant to make it back to Nordlor so you could retire and do all sorts of wonderful things. You were going to show me your maps too, remember?”

  The navigator did not respond.

  “It’s all my fault,” Oona said. “This trip was a mistake. I never should have come. I should have just gone south with my sisters. Then no one would have been hurt.”

  Again, the navigator did not move. As Oona looked down at him, a pool of sadness filled her body. Haroyld was nothing like her father. When she had first sneaked on board, instead of taking her back to a life she hated he had fought to let her build a life she would love. When all the other men had been cruel to her, he had been kind. And when all the other men left her to drown in the sea, he had jumped in to save her. Even though the captain ranked first on the ship, to Oona, Haroyld ranked even higher.

  While Oona looked at Haroyld she noticed something poking out from the pile of wet clothes beside his bed. She dropped to the ground and carefully pulled a piece of soggy parchment out of the navigator’s coat. She tried to unfold the parchment, but it broke and fell to the floor. Haroyld’s map – the map he had spent fifty years drawing – was ruined.

  “I’m so sorry,” Oona said.

  Remembering her own map, Oona ran to the storeroom and retrieved it. Then, she returned to the navigator’s cabin.

  While Barnacles continued to sleep on the old man’s chest, Oona found Haroyld’s ink and quill and some folded parchment in a box. She laid the parchment across the floor and placed her map beside it. Then, very carefully, so the tilt of the ship did not ruin the marks, she started to draw him a new one.

  Barnacles was disgusted. After the men hauled poor Haroyld out of the sea, they had shoved him into his cabin and left him there to die. It had been left up to Barnacles to change the navigator into a dry set of clothes and tuck him into bed. Then, he had lain on the man’s chest to keep him warm.

  Barnacles had not been able to sleep a wink since. Fear kept him awake: fear that the navigator would stop breathing and never rise to pat him again. He was still awake when the girl, Oona, came in. She sat beside the kind old man and spoke to him. When she found his spoiled map, she had started to draw him a new one. She was still there now, five hours on, trying to get the marks just right.

  As Barnacles watched the girl work, a wave of guilt and then another of shame washed over him. It had been wrong to lock her in the storeroom all those weeks ago so Olf would get angry. It had been wrong to rip those eight holes in her coat. It had been wrong to chop off her hair. And it had been wrong to slip those old fish bones into the captain’s soup so Oona would get in trouble and he would be praised as a hero.

  By breaking the rules, Oona had saved the Plucky Leopard, not sunk it. If Oona hadn’t stowed away, Olf the cook would have drowned. If Oona hadn’t hidden on board, the crew would have been killed by the island creature. And if Oona hadn’t run away to sea, a nardoo – one of the greatest creatures in the Northern Sea – would have died a horrible death.

  For the first time since they lef
t Nordlor, Barnacles saw the truth. The female child wasn’t half bad. In fact, she might just be better than the entire crew put together. All of them except, of course, for Haroyld. And, if he could have his own way, there would only be two people on his crew list: the girl and the navigator. The other men could drown as far as he was concerned, especially the heartless captain.

  Haroyld’s wife woke with a jolt. Despite the still night air, the shutters on the bedroom window had blown open. Even though it was too dark to see her clock, Mathilde knew what time it was. The shutters always blew open, every morning, at two. She and Haroyld had even tried barricading the shutters with a thick iron lock, but no matter how large or strong the bolt, they would always break free and swing for hours in an unseen and unfelt wind.

  For years Mathilde and Haroyld had wondered why this happened. Then, by chance, one evening in a harbour to the north, Haroyld met a survivor of the ship their cottage was hewn from. He recalled the night that the Little Skipper was lost. A great storm had lashed the boat for hours until finally, at two in the morning, the wind had ripped the bow right off.

  Mathilde climbed out of bed and hurried over to the window. Despite wearing four coats and three pairs of mittens, the cold air still reached her. Freydis Spits may have been wrong about an early winter, but she had not been wrong about the deadliest, darkest and coldest winter in fifty years. It was like the sun had forgotten about Nordlor, perhaps about the North all together, and instead of rising bright above them every day it didn’t rise above them at all. Almost a week had passed since she had seen the sun and sometimes she feared she would never see it again.

  Everyone in Nordlor felt the same. Hardly anyone left their homes any more – except to fight over items at the weekly markets – and when they did they passed one another in silence and despair. Nordlor had become a village full of walking ghosts: a town inhabited by people paler than the moon and colder than the winter wind. It felt like every piece of the village was slowly dying in the darkness, and by the time the sun returned there would be nothing left.