Under Earth

by Ellen Renner

  For my father, Kenneth.

  The enormous shadow of a seabird slid across the waves and fell upon the Wayfinder. Storm, sitting in the stern of the ship, felt the hairs on the back of her neck stir.

  She slipped her tablet and drawing stick into the leather pouch at her waist and waited for the threat to make itself known. Lake, captain of the Wayfinder, stood a few paces from her, bare feet gripping the deck, hand light on the tiller. He was humming under his breath, his thickset body swaying to the sea’s dance. It was obvious that her uncle hadn’t seen the Air spirit’s warning. She was used to that – the Albatross seldom appeared to others.

  Storm was a witch: last year, when she had turned thirteen, the Elemental spirits had given her power over both Air and Water. Now she stood up and began to look for any threat lurking in the watery hills of the Second Sea. Storm counted eleven ships riding the waves in diamond formation behind them – all that was left of Yanlin’s once mighty fleet.

  The enormous white and grey wingspan of the Albatross suddenly appeared, tracking its shadow, circling over the following ships like the bird of prey it was. Storm’s stomach began to squirm the way it did whenever she saw any of the Elemental spirits. There was no sign of the Dolphin, but the Water spirit was seldom to be counted upon.

  “Hey, Storm! You spotted something?”

  It was Cloud, a childhood friend who had sailed with the fleet the previous year, the year of the Drowned Ones’ attack on Yanlin Island. Cloud had been lucky: he had survived. Many had not.

  “Back to work, boy!” Uncle Lake’s larger-than-average nose turned at once in their direction; his nickname with the crew, she knew, was “Trouble-sniffer”. “You’re supposed to be in the galley, gutting fish.”

  “I’ve finished, Master. Can I climb up to the crow’s nest and spell the lookout?”

  “How many times do I have to tell you that junior

  apprentices don’t do lookout duty? If there aren’t any fish to gut then go and mend nets!”

  Cloud’s eyes flashed rebelliously, but he retreated below deck.

  Storm’s uncle sighed and turned to her. “Do enemies threaten?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” She swayed to the roll of the boat that was part of her now, like breathing. The fleet had left Yanlin harbour only three five-days ago, yet it felt like she had always lived aboard this ship. She had become two people – the new seafaring Storm and the barely remembered girl who had died along with her mother.

  At Lake’s words, every pair of eyes on deck fixed on her. Storm felt her face grow hot. She was aware of the crew’s growing belief in her power and wished she could share their confidence. All because the Elementals had chosen to make her a witch! She would never get used to it – never lose the fear of failing these men, as she had failed Dain.

  She pushed the memory of her mother from her mind and glanced again at the Albatross, high overhead. What is it? she asked, knowing her plea was useless. The Elementals communicated only when they chose.

  But this time the Albatross replied: it sent mist to thicken the air, and Storm’s stomach turned over. “Enemies near!” she cried.

  Lake shouted an order, and the lookout high in the nest on the main mast sounded the warning bell. Its iron voice clanged across the waves. The other ships were fading ghosts in the thickening fog, but Storm heard their bells answering.

  And then, beside them, out of the belly of the sea, rose the dark shape of the Dolphin. The Elemental shot into the air, larger than the ship itself. Storm flinched as the spirit rose silently from the sea, blotting out the last of the light. The Dolphin cleared the Wayfinder’s three masts and slipped, sleek and dangerous, back into its Element.

  “Lower the boat!” Storm shouted to Lake, shuddering away her childish fear of the Water spirit. The Albatross and Dolphin had both shown themselves in warning. The threat was severe. She must seek out the enemy before they could attack.

  Her uncle obeyed her without question: thrice now she had sailed alone to face an enemy; thrice she had conjured a gale and blown predatory ships from other islands into the far distance. In a heartbeat, a small rowing boat was in the water. Storm ran to the rope ladder held by two sailors. She was startled to see that one of them was Cloud. He would get in trouble for sure this time.

  “Good luck! Wish I could come with you.” Cloud thumped her shoulder in encouragement.

  Storm nodded and swung herself over the side, barely noticing the longing in her friend’s face. She clambered down the ladder and dropped into the plunging boat. The mist closed around her as she took the oars and rowed deeper into the fog. Once clear of the ship, she shipped the oars and let the Dolphin take the boat where it would. This was hardest of all – allowing the Elementals complete control.

  She could see nothing but thick, grey-white mist. It was cold and damp, soaking through her clothes and into her hair. Water began to drip off the end of her nose. Storm sat, heart thudding, fingers clenched around the oar shafts, listening to the slap of the waves against the hull. The boat moved steadily through the water, as if pulled by a rope. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Her boat slid to a stop and magically floated in one spot as wave after wave passed beneath it. Storm’s heart pounded harder; she readied herself. The Albatross’s wind whistled towards them from the direction she knew instinctively was north. It blew away the mist.

  Fear and hatred squeezed the breath from her lungs as Storm saw that the predator closing in on Yanlin’s fleet was an enormous raft town! The Drowned Ones rode the waves only a few oar lengths away. The tribe of landless sea-dwellers had attacked Yanlin last year. Crews of ships captured by these sea pirates faced death, not mere robbery.

  But surely it wasn’t the same raft town she had defeated in Yanlin Harbour. Because that would mean…

  In that moment of doubt and disbelief, Storm saw her enemy. One face, among dozens. He, of all of them, was looking in the right place. Their eyes met, and Storm saw Nim, the Drowned One boy, turn the colour of ash.

  Later, when she strove to record the attack in the drawings she had begun to make as a sort of journal, she could hardly order the events in her mind.

  She remembered hate swelling her skin until she thought she must split in two. She jumped to her feet, readying her magic – the music of the Air. She would call the wind and punish those who had murdered her mother!

  Nim shouted. His mouth was a circle of fear; his eyes fixed on her. Later, she thought she remembered hearing him calling her name, as if in warning. But that was impossible – she knew the worth of the Drowned One boy. She had trusted him once and betrayal had been her reward.

  It was in that moment that disaster struck. Storm’s head flooded with memories of her dead mother – images and thoughts she had tried to bury with Dain. She struggled to focus. She searched for Air-music, but all she could hear was a white buzz of loathing. Storm looked into the eyes of the boy who had caused her mother’s death and knew she was about to die.

  Nim’s cry had warned them. He looked horrified, orange freckles stark in a sweaty face. Twenty-four arrows were notched, aimed, loosed. The shafts rose into the air as one, like a flock of startled birds. Storm thought of her mother. She would see Dain soon.

  Not if your body is lost, fool! shouted her mind-voice.

  The fear of final separation broke the spell. Storm dived into the sea a gasping mini-breath before the first arrows thudded into the wood of the rowing boat, turning it into a floating porcupine.

  A finger of pain scratched her shoulder, the salt-burn of seawater on raw flesh. She was shot! Terror dissolved the feelings of unreality. Storm flailed at the water, fighting it, her ears full of the enemy’s shouts. Sea-splashed eyes glimpsed bows drawn taut, arrows bristling, as she fill
ed her lungs and ducked underwater to take refuge beneath the boat.

  She was in the Dolphin’s kingdom, but the Elemental seemed to have abandoned her. Disgusted, no doubt, at her ineptitude. A muffled drumming bubbled in her ears as a second shower of arrows plunged into the water around the boat. She watched the shafts wobble as they met the Element’s resistance, slow, turn to float to the surface. The third downpour came, and an arrow grazed her leg. Storm’s lungs began to burn hotter than her shoulder. All day long, she had seen sharks hunting these waters. Her blood would bring them. She must do something! The Dolphin and Albatross would not save her if she did not even try to save herself.

  Storm made her body relax until she floated beneath the rowing boat as if already dead, head back, arms and legs drifting. The pressure in her lungs eased, and she found she could hear the music of Water at last – an endless surging, a flow-and-ebb, like the heartbeat of a leviathan. And through the beat came a wriggling-jumping-trickling thread of power. Her mind grabbed the thread and she felt its power flow into her. When Storm was shining-full of the Dolphin’s power, she focused a single thought and willed the magic to its work.

  The sea rushed away from her, rose in a wall of water, higher and higher. She was sucked behind, dragged in the wake of the mountainous wave surging towards the raft town of the Drowned Ones. She bumped and spun along the seabed. At last her body rose to the surface. Swallowing as much water as air, bruised and battered, Storm was tossed from wave to wave like a piece of limp seaweed. She found a leftover fragment of power to calm and thicken the water beneath her into a moss-wet mattress.

  She sprawled on her stomach, coughing and spewing. The wind brought the sound of swearing and screaming growing ever fainter. The raft was still afloat! The wave hadn’t crushed the pirate town, it was merely driving the enemy before it.

  “No!” Storm screamed at the sea, at the Dolphin’s betrayal. She listened, frantic, for a hint of Water-music, but all she heard was the slosh of the sea and seagulls crying overhead as they circled, hoping to make a meal of her eyes if she died. She had lost her magic again. She had failed Dain, failed Thorn. The enemy lived.

  “You should have sent a second wave to sink the raft! You had a chance to kill them! Why didn’t you finish it?” Cloud paced back and forth, hammering his fist into his palm, over and over.

  “Don’t go on about it!” Storm lay in one of the below-deck hammocks, staring at the ceiling. She wished Cloud would go away: he was making her head hurt.

  The Healer had cleaned and bandaged her shoulder and leg. She had lost enough blood to feel light-headed, but she longed to be above decks. She couldn’t think, shut up down here. And she needed to think. Why had her Water-magic failed after that first attack? Was it her or the Dolphin?

  “I tried,” she muttered. “I couldn’t manage it. Sorry.”

  “You couldn’t have really tried. A proper Weather-witch would have finished the job! I would have, if I was a witch. Maybe you just aren’t brave enough.”

  “What does that mean?” Storm pushed herself up on to her elbows.

  Cloud had stopped pacing to glare at her. “This isn’t the first time you’ve failed us! You let two of the raft towns escape after the attack on Yanlin. And now they come to finish their job because you didn’t have the courage to kill when you could! Have you forgotten Thorn?”

  Storm swung out of bed and nearly fell as her legs gave way. She grabbed the hammock with both hands and stared at him. “Have you forgotten that my mother died in their raid?”

  His face flushed red. “Sorry,” muttered Cloud. “I … I didn’t mean it.” His voice was strangled with frustration – he still doubted her. Was he right? Was she a coward?

  When she didn’t speak, Cloud shrugged and left. She watched him disappear through the deck hatch, his bare feet gripping the ladder rungs, every step slow and stubborn.

  Storm let go of the hammock and dropped heavily to the floor. Much later, her uncle found her lying there staring, dry-eyed, at the underdeck. He helped her back into her hammock.

  “I want to go above decks.”

  Uncle whirled round, wagging a finger. “You’ll rest until the Healer says otherwise. I’ve only just picked you up off the floor. Minnow will make my life unbearable if anything happens to you, and well you know it!”

  Storm rolled her eyes, but she had to smile at the mention of her young cousin. Uncle was right. When Minnow got an idea in his head he was an unstoppable force. Missing him was the worst part about being at sea for half a year.

  Lake returned to his theme: “The Drowned Ones tracked us down. It’s a big sea, Storm. No way they just chanced on Yanlin’s fleet. We’re easy enough to find: the trading routes haven’t changed for generations. They want revenge. I think…” Lake cleared his throat. “I think they want you dead, Niece.”

  It had happened less than a year ago. Using her newly mastered powers over wind and wave, Storm had sunk one of the three raft towns attacking her island. Many Drowned Ones had died. “Yes,” she replied. “They came for me.”

  Lake studied her, black brows knitted over worried eyes, and she winced as she saw possessiveness darken his gaze. She wasn’t just his niece – she was a Weather-witch, his most valuable cargo and Yanlin’s greatest treasure.

  “You’re to rest in your hammock until the Healer says you may get up,” Lake ordered. “And then you will stay on board this ship. No more sailing off in Finder. In a five-day we reach the Inner Sea. The Drowned Ones dare not dirty those waters. You’ll be safe enough from them then, but until we reach the Inner Sea, you’re ship-bound.”

  Storm nodded her obedience, only sighing a little in disappointment. Her uncle left quickly, relief flushing his face. Finder, the small sailing boat Teanu the Elder had given her, was tied to Wayfarer’s stern, bobbing in their wake like a seal pup trailing its mother.

  She put a hand to her head and felt her hair, which was gathered into a topknot. When she had been declared the first ever female Weather-witch, her girl’s plaits had been cut off and her tunic exchanged for a sleeveless one. Women could not sail with the fleet, so Storm was declared a non-sex, neither male nor female. She would never marry or have children – a fact she had been able to forget on the occasional mornings when she had been allowed to follow the fleet in Finder.

  It was good, therefore, that she had work to do. The next day, Storm set a cup of water on the floor. She crouched beside it and began to croon a soft, watery tune. All that day and the next, she sent the water spinning round and round inside the cup, first one way, then the other. Her Water-magic had deserted her. She had once again failed her people. Her skills must be at fault. She hadn’t been practising hard enough! That would not happen again.

  A few days later, as the fleet neared the Inner Sea, Storm was allowed on deck to observe the celebrations. The arrow grazes on her shoulder and leg had grown healthy scabs. Their soreness helped remind her that she had swum close to Death.

  “How will you know when the Second Sea stops and the Inner Sea begins?”

  “See there?” Lake pointed ahead and slightly to the left. Storm saw a dark pimple on the horizon. “The first of the inner islands, Boabar. A tall mountain sits at its heart, the fires that built it long dead. All sailors navigate by it. When it measures a hand’s width above the horizon, we will have entered the Inner Sea.”

  “And then I can sail Finder?”

  “And then you can stay on Wayfarer and behave yourself!” growled her uncle. “The Inner Sea may be free of Drowned Ones, but it’s home to countless privateers, and all of them would love to get their hands on our cargo. The Inner Sea is no place for a green youngster on their own, not even a Weather-witch!”

  Storm rubbed her nose in frustration, then went back to drawing in her journal, which she had brought on deck. She was trying to record the attack by the Drowned Ones so she could make it into a story one day, but her fingers were clumsy and stiff and the pictures made no sense. Finally she gave up a
nd simply watched the pimple that was Boabar’s mountain grow taller. At last, a cheer rose from the deckhands.

  “Foam, take the tiller!” shouted her uncle, and the second master bounded forward and took Lake’s place at the tiller. Foam, a short, round, nimble-footed man, gave Storm a knowing grin.

  “Follow me, Niece,” ordered Lake. “Time to make an offering to the Dolphin!”

  Heart thudding, Storm wove her away across the deck after her uncle. Cloud had told her there would be an initiation ceremony for those on their first voyage to the Inner Sea, and she only hoped it would not be too painful or embarrassing. Two boys, this season’s apprentices, waited anxiously in the bow of the ship.

  “You three, line up in front of me,” the captain shouted. “Whelk! Dip the bucket!” As one of the crewmen ran to dip a wooden bucket tied to a rope over the side of the ship, Lake whipped out his knife. “All right, first-timers, hold out your hands.”

  Storm saw Cloud slip to the front of the assembled crew. He gave her a reassuring nod. He must have decided to forgive her. A knot in her heart eased. Storm gave him a quick smile, trying to look unconcerned about the sharp knife her uncle was holding in a businesslike manner. The two other first-timers stuck out their hands, palms up. Storm took a deep breath and did the same.

  “Bucket!” roared the captain. And the bucket appeared, sloshing full of seawater, plonked in front of her uncle, who grabbed the nearest boy’s hand and stuck the point of his knife in the fleshy part of the boy’s thumb. Storm saw the apprentice wince. Her uncle held the boy’s thumb over the bucket, letting his blood fall into the water.

  Her turn. Lake was rough but deft. A sharp pain, then she was watching her blood fall – drop-by-red-drop – into the seawater and immediately disappear. She clenched her fingers over her stinging thumb as she watched her uncle do the same to the last of the new apprentices.

  The captain held the bucket high, as if it was a prize captured in battle, and the gathered crew gave a cheerful roar of approval. Lake walked to the side of the ship. “Trickster!” he shouted to the seas. “Dolphin! Spirit of Water! Ruler of the Seas! Drink deep on the blood of Yanlin! Greet our newest sailors, who enter the Inner Sea for the first time. Grant them the right to sail upon your Element. Don’t trick away their lives, for they have already given you their blood. All this we ask, in the name of the Unknowable One!” And he tilted the bucket of water and blood upside down and poured its contents into the waves.