Despite the danger they were in, the navigator smiled and Oona smiled back. They only stopped when water lapped at their knees.
“Make for the mast, young Oona,” Haroyld said. “It’s higher up there.”
Oona, Haroyld and Barnacles ran across the deck. When they reached the mast, Barnacles scampered up first. Then, Oona and Haroyld followed. As Oona helped the navigator into the crow’s nest, she feared this was the end: she, Haroyld and Barnacles would drown and freeze in the deadly Northern Sea. But then something caught her eye. Above her head a trail of lights – of purples and greens and shimmering gold – made the inky heavens dance. The Northern Lights were back.
“It’s a nardoo,” Oona said.
As the girl, the cat and the navigator watched, a nardoo breached the water beside the ship. Its scales glistened grey and green and silver in the night. There was a scar on its back, right in the centre, where an old injury used to be.
“It’s the one you saved,” Haroyld said. “That’s where you pulled out your father’s harpoon.”
As the three of them watched, the nardoo’s scales changed. No longer hard and cold, they grew soft and fluffy. The scales turned to feathers, and the fins turned to wings. The nardoo lifted itself out of the water and swam into the sky.
A large jolt and a long shudder rocked the Plucky Leopard. The ship moved. But it didn’t move forward or back, nor did it move to the right or to the left. It didn’t even move down into the dark, icy sea. Instead, the Plucky Leopard moved up.
As the ship rose into the sky, the water that had flooded into the Plucky Leopard now flooded back out. It crashed down on to the water below until only a few droplets remained. Then, they too trickled downwards and fell like rain on to the ocean.
The nardoo – the flying nardoo just like the one in her birthday story – pulled them up towards the Northern Lights. They passed through the rainbow clouds and into the sky beyond. The whole of the Northern Sea stretched out below them.
“Would you look at that?” Haroyld said. “Its just like one of my maps.”
Oona looked down at the world and smiled. Beside her, Barnacles looked down as well. He didn’t look amazed. He looked frightened. Before he could jump away, she scooped him into her arms and gave him a hug. “Don’t worry,” she assured the cat. “You’re not going down with your ship. Not tonight. You’re going up. We’re all going up.” She gave him another squeeze, and she swore she heard the grumpy cat purr.
The ship began to float through the sky. Haroyld looked down at the world below and then up at the stars.
“Why I never,” he said softly.
“What?” Oona asked. “What is it?”
“We’re flying south,” he said. “The nardoo: it’s taking us home.”
Though it had taken three months for the Plucky Leopard to reach the spot where it hit the iceberg, it took the nardoo less than three hours to fly it home.
“There’s Mournful Harbour,” Haroyld said as the blue water beneath them gave way to white snow. The river that led south had frozen over and snow had settled upon its surface. “And that there is the town of Whitlock. And look, Oona. Look down there.” Haroyld pointed towards the south where a speck of orange light shone amid a white world. “That’s Nordlor. We’re almost home.”
“Three blasted months,” Freydis muttered as she pulled the elk-skin cloak tighter around her body. That was her punishment for predicting the future: a three month ban from Nordlor for inciting panic and uproar. The elders had decided it. After all, her latest prediction hadn’t only upset one person. It had upset the entire village. They thought it best for everyone to have a break from the fortune teller and her horrid predictions.
But they would invite her back, thought Freydis. It was only a matter of time. She couldn’t wait for the day the sea robin flew into harbour with the news: news that the Plucky Leopard had sunk and everyone was dead.
“That will show them,” Freydis said. She bet they would welcome her back with open arms. Well, maybe not open arms. But they would start paying for her futures again. And when she had enough money she would move on to another village or town. The great Freydis Spits would be famed once more.
But for now, Freydis had been ostracized from the village and her new home was a tent down by the river. She had stolen some sealskins to keep her warm, but they weren’t doing a good job. She was about to fetch some sticks to make a fire when she heard the faint sound of laughter and two people crying out, “Hurrah! We’re home!”
Freydis poked her head out of the tent and looked around.
“Who’s there?” she hissed.
No one replied, yet the laughing and yelling continued. It took several more minutes for Freydis to realize the sounds weren’t coming from around her but above. Slowly, she looked up towards the night sky. A ship flew overhead. And it wasn’t just any ship either. In the moonlight, three golden words glimmered on its starboard side: The Plucky Leopard.
Freydis wailed and screamed like a wounded bear. “The blasted ship was meant to sink, not flaming fly!”
This was it. Her reputation was ruined. In tatters. Broken beyond repair! There was no coming back from this. So, before anyone in the village woke up, and despite the dangers of travelling by foot, she threw on her elk-skin cloak, grabbed her stick of shells and rattled off into the night. Forget finding the future in the North. Forget everything about the North. She was going to go south. Apparently, it was a lot nicer down there.
At two in the morning, like clockwork, the shutters of the Nordstroms’ cottage blew open. When she tried to close them, Mathilde could not believe what she saw. Right there in the sky, floating above the frozen river, was the Plucky Leopard.
Forgetting all about the shutters, Mathilde left the cottage and raced down to the dock. She got there just as the Plucky Leopard landed with a thud and then a crack on the frozen river. For a moment it looked like the ship was going to sink, but the ice held strong and it balanced on top instead of slipping beneath.
Mathilde’s eyes had been locked so intently on the ship that she did not notice the creature who carried it until it began to fly away.
Having rescued the girl who had rescued it, the nardoo let go of the ship and rose once more into the sky. It turned north and swam up through the stars. For the first time in history, the Northern Lights danced in the skies above Nordlor. With everyone else in Nordlor asleep, Mathilde was the only villager to see it.
Mathilde thought she would never see anything as magical as the nardoo again, but only one minute later she was proved wrong. Two figures emerged from a gaping hole in the hull. Even from a distance, Mathilde recognized them. It was Haroyld, her husband, and Oona, the captain’s seventh daughter. The latter was holding Barnacles the cat. Mathilde let out a cry of delight and ran across the ice to greet them.
AN UNWANTED WEDDING GIFT
Two Months Later
“We’ve spotted something, Captain,” a man said from the deck of the Keeling Fox. “Something in the water.”
“A whale?” the captain asked hopefully. This was the longest hunt they had ever been on. Winter had almost passed, and they were still two hundred miles into the Icelands. It was a miracle they hadn’t frozen to the sea.
The man shook his head. “It’s a ship. No. Boats. Four of them, full of men.”
“Well, drop one of ours. Go out and see who they are.”
The man gathered three others, and they rowed out into the icy sea. They bobbed beside the other boats for a few minutes before rowing swiftly back.
“They’ve gone crazy, Captain,” the man said upon his return. “They’re all mad.”
“What do you mean, boy?”
“Well, they keep talking about flying ships and fish that swim through the sky. Should we leave ’em?”
The captain of the Keeling Fox thought for a moment and then shook his head. “Better not. Bring them on board.”
The four boats were hauled on to the ship. The men inside
scampered on to the deck and kissed the wood. One amongst them approached the captain. He started to ramble words that did not make sense.
“And then it flew,” the man finally said. He wore the hat of a captain – a hat decorated with a golden leopard – but he did not look like a captain now. His clothes were in tatters, icicles hung from his beard and he had lost so much weight you could see the shape of his skeleton beneath his sallow skin. “And my knife!” the man cried. He grabbed at the captain’s jacket and searched his pockets. “Have you seen my knife? I think it fell into the sea.” The man started to cry and beat his fists against the captain’s chest.
“This one’s the craziest of the lot,” the man who fetched them said.
“Stark-raving mad,” the captain agreed. “Better lock him below deck. Don’t want him scaring the other men. We’ll drop him off at Fisherman’s Hell on the way home. They’ll be able to look after him there.”
Despite the absence of Trine, who had fled with the gardener Hermann two days before, the wedding of Prince Turnip to five of the Britt sisters ended up being a terribly grand affair. People came from all over the South to hear them say their vows. There were so many guests that the castle could not house them, and five hundred were forced to watch the ceremony from the turnip fields.
One hundred chefs were hired for the catering. They created all sorts of wondrous dishes: turnip truffles, turnip tarts and savoury turnip jelly. They even crafted a special turnip wine which held the juice of thirty turnips in each bottle.
“But you can’t drink it yet, ladies,” Prince Turnip warned his five new wives. “It must have time to age. Ten years should do it.”
But while the Britt sisters may have had to wait for the turnip wine, they were now allowed to see what was housed in the northern wing.
“Come now, ladies. Hurry! Be quick,” the prince cried as he led them out of the Great Hall. He had a skip in his step. “It’s time to see the northern wing.”
The Britt sisters and their mother followed the prince as he led them across the courtyard.
“I’m sure you’re all going to love the northern wing,” the prince said. “Now that we’re married it will be your new home. Here we go.”
The prince stopped outside a large stone door. He drew an iron key from his pocket and turned it in the lock. The lock clicked, and the door creaked open. Air as cold as the North crept out into the warm sunshine. For the first time since they entered the South, the Britt sisters shivered.
“Aren’t there any fireplaces in this part of the castle?” Ina asked.
“No. No. No. Most certainly not,” the prince said with a shake of his head. “That would ruin the effect.”
“The effect of what?” Berit asked.
“The winter effect. When you live in the North winter lasts all year long.”
“The North?” Sissel said. “But we’re in the South. Aren’t we?” Suddenly she looked confused and unsure, like maybe they hadn’t caught a carriage over the border after all.
“Not when you’re in the northern wing. Here, I’ll show you.”
Prince Turnip stepped inside. The captain’s wife and her five daughters followed. As their eyes adjusted to the darkness (along with fireplaces, it appeared that no candles were allowed in the northern wing either) they gasped and reeled back with horror. Though none of them had ever entered the northern wing of Turnip Castle before, the room looked awfully familiar.
“Look,” Prince Turnip cried with delight. “It’s just like Nordlor only smaller. My grandfather had it built one hundred years ago. Isn’t it wonderful? It cost him two thousand golden crowns to make it all.”
“But it was meant to be full of treasure,” Sissel cried.
“Treasure?” the prince said. “Why of course it’s full of treasure.” He pushed his five new wives in deeper. The further away from the door they moved the colder the room became. Soon their breath came out in clouds of white and their skin turned very pale. Homes, just like the ones in Nordlor, branched out around them. In the distance, they could see the third floor of their own home: the one made from the broken wreckage of the Limping Lynx.
Beneath their feet, the cobbles moved as if waves were trapped beneath them. Even the air smelled like the air in real Nordlor: of salt and fish and whale oil smoke. The only difference was the sky. Instead of seeing a bright sun above their heads, grey stone and cobwebs adorned the dark ceiling.
“I’ve always loved the North,” the prince continued. “Nordlor in particular. ‘The Village of One Thousand Ships,’ my grandfather called it. He was too afraid to travel all the way up there himself, so he built a replica all the way down here. He loved the North even more than me. Spent his whole life building this collection.” Prince Turnip waved his hands around the room. “He collected maps and fish and barrels of whale oil. He even bought the broken mast of the Wandering Walrus. Apparently,” the prince whispered, leaning towards his wives, “that was the greatest whaler that ever sailed.”
The five Britt sisters whimpered. Then, so too did their mother. Somehow, they had found the only man in the South who loved the North more than their father.
“So,” Prince Turnip continued, oblivious to their displeasure, “you can imagine my surprise and utmost joy when Gertrund told me there were seven Nordlor ladies stealing turnips in the northern fields. I said, ‘Right, Gertrund. Take me to them now. I’m going to marry those young ladies and add them to my collection.’”
By now they had reached a replica of the Sinking Eel, and it made the Britts cry even louder.
“So that is what I am going to do,” Prince Turnip said loudly, so he couldn’t hear their cries. “Along with Little Nordlor I now have five Nordlor girls and an old Nordlor woman too! My grandfather would be so proud.”
Before his five new wives and his mother-in-law could escape, Prince Turnip bade them farewell, raced outside and locked the door to the northern wing behind him.
OONA’S SHELL
Far off in the distant north, spring had come to the real town of Nordlor. The mountains had thawed. Snow melted away and green grass sprouted out. The animals in the hills – the bears, the foxes and the little mice – left their winter slumber and awoke to a new year.
Two months had passed since the Plucky Leopard landed on the frozen surface of Nordlor Harbour. The iceberg had broken the ship beyond repair, and now it stood in the black sand of Nordlor’s shore. But it wasn’t going to be turned into a tavern or a house. It was going to be made into a whole new ship. They would remove the broken planks of wood and rebuild it. The ship wouldn’t be as large as the Plucky Leopard, but it would still hold the girl, the cat and the navigator.
“And when it’s ready,” Haroyld said to the girl sitting beside him, “we will sail to all the towns along the northern shore and make a new map of the North together. And we’re going to make copies this time,” he said. “Copies so it’s never lost at sea again.”
Oona smiled up at the navigator. Since returning to Nordlor, she had been living with Haroyld and Mathilde. For the first time in her life, she felt like she was with her real family: like on the night she was born she should have been born in a house hewn from the Little Skipper, not the Sinking Eel. This was where she belonged and who she belonged with.
An old cat pulled Oona from her thoughts. He rubbed against her leg and meowed with pleasure. In his two hundred years of life, Barnacles had never looked so proud or grand. Not only had he become the first sea cat to fly in the sky, he was also going to be the first sea cat in history to have ten ships instead of nine.
Oona, Haroyld and Barnacles were about to go to lunch – Mathilde was making an asparagus spring tart – when something brushed against Oona’s shoe. It was a shell. She picked it up and held it to her ear. Waves crashed inside. They sounded like the waves in the North. Then, they changed. Water turned to words, and the whisperings of a future trickled into her ear.
OONA BRITT WILL GO SOUTH AND EAST AND WEST AND NORTH.
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br /> SHE WILL GO FURTHER THAN ANY MAN OR WOMAN HAS BEEN BEFORE.
SHE WILL SAIL THE WORLD IN HER VERY OWN SHIP; A SHIP CALLED THE DAZZLING PEARL.
“Haroyld,” Oona said. She turned to the old man sitting beside her and smiled. “Forget making a map of the North. Let’s make a map of the entire world!”
Don’t miss
Alberto is a coffin maker, spending his quiet days creating the final resting places for people in the town of Allora. Then one day a mysterious boy named Tito and his magical bird arrive – flying from danger and searching for a safe haven. Can Alberto shelter them from the town’s prying eyes and the shadows of their past?
This is a story of life and death and of how hope can burn bright in a place faded by sadness.
THE COFFIN MAKER’S FIRST COFFIN
The town of Allora was famous for two things. The first was its flying fish and the second was the beauty of its winding streets. Tourists came from all over the country to watch the fish fly out of the sea while artists came to paint, in pigment, the bright houses that rose like steps up Allora Hill. There were so many colours that the artists did not have enough pigments to paint them, and it was rumoured (at least by the Finestra sisters) that the great artist, Giuseppe Vernice, invented a whole new colour just to paint the roof of their house.
“Splendid Yolk, it was called,” Rosa Finestra said to anyone who would listen.
“Derived from the crushed eye of a peacock feather,” Clara Finestra added with a wise nod.
Yet though the sisters gushed about their bright home, the one next door was even brighter.
Alberto Cavello’s house was the highest house on the hill. If you went any higher you would reach the graveyard at the top. It stood like a bright azure jewel glistening across the sea. And it wasn’t just bright. It was loud. It was loud when Alberto and his wife, Violetta, moved in. It grew louder when their first child, a girl named Anna Marie, was born; louder still when their son, Antonio, came into the world; and even louder when a little miracle named Aida wailed for the first time within its bright walls.
The Girl, the Cat and the Navigator Page 14