“Yes,” Melily whispers. “But I was angry, and I wasn’t thinking. I did make her slam her face into the wall. I should have made them both forget, I guess, but… I can’t make someone forget an injury like that. I didn’t know what to do, so I just ran.” She sobs again and wipes her snotty nose onto her nightdress sleeve.
I cringe. “Is she hurt badly?”
Melily nods. “She definitely broke her nose and at least one tooth came out. She screamed and screamed, and I saw a lot of blood, and it was awful.”
I feel like a hole has opened beneath us, and we’re in danger of being sucked down out of the ship and into the tidewater.
“Melily, this is bad,” I say. “And Sharles called you a water demon too. He must have heard rumors about your family—or at least about sirens.” Will the Captain believe him too, I wonder? But what other explanation could there be? Why would Maryasa willingly hurt herself?
“I thought Sharles loved me,” Melily whispers, hugging her knees to her chest. “I’m so stupid, but I really thought he did.”
I hug her tightly and let her cry. And not that I approve of stealing, but I wish we’d acquired more handkerchiefs in Tak Ceseren.
Kindly Pavoya brings us a message the next morning. He tells us that although Melily and I can use the washing closets—which is a relief—we must otherwise stay in our cabin. “And if you don’t, the Captain says you’ll be locked in the hold until we reach Leistelle.” He adds an, “I’m so sorry,” while peering in at Melily who’s still sleeping. “He also let me bring ya this food.” He hands me a basket of seed crackers, vine apples, and smoked fish, as well as a bottle of water.
I’m amazed Melily can sleep at all. The storm is weaker, but the tide still tosses the ship.
“How is the girl?” I softly ask. “The one with the broken nose?”
“Not good,” Pavoya says, tapping his own nose. “It’s never gonna heal right, and her front teeth are out too…”
“Both of them? Oh no.” This feels like my fault. If only I’d found a way to stop Melily from falling in love with Sharles. I certainly tried.
“Is it true?” Pavoya asks. “Does Mollifae have dangerous powers?”
“No, of course not,” I say, hating that I’m lying to Pavoya who is always so nice.
Pavoya nods thoughtfully. “Women troubles aren’t new for Sharles, but—I was thinking about how he said Mollifae told that Tak Ceseren girl to hurt herself. And you know, I think something like that happened to me.”
“Really?” I say, glancing back at Melily who seems to still be sleeping.
“While we were in Tak Ceseren,” Pavoya says, “this man told me to show him and his friend around the Wanderlea, so I did. And I wouldn’t have usually.”
Fear bites into me.
“Nothing bad happened—I don’t think,” Pavoya continues. “They just walked around for a spell and left. Maybe they wanted to buy the boat? But still… I never let strangers on the ship, so it confused me, you know? Like, why did I do that?”
I probably don’t need to ask, but I do anyway. “What did they look like?”
Pavoya thinks for a moment, frowning. “Well, one was real skinny with wavy hair. And the other was short and thick, wearing a real nice suit. Why? Do you know them?”
“No,” I lie.
And when I shut the door, Melily rolls over, wide awake. “So they found us.”
I nod. “But they’re not here now—at least I don’t think they are. The ship’s so small we’d know. None of this makes sense.”
“No.” Melily frowns. “It doesn’t.”
Two nights later, I wake up suddenly. I think I heard a loud noise, and although the storm passed yesterday, I suppose it could have been thunder. I’m not sure what time it is either. My thoughts feel thick and sluggish as if it’s the middle of the night, but since our cabin has no windows, I can’t be sure.
And then I hear strange sounds: footsteps, voices, the thuds and wallops of doors being flung open and closed.
I push off my blanket and drop down from my bunk so that I can listen at the door. I don’t fully understand what I’m hearing, but I’m pretty sure people are moving through the ship’s passages. I risk the Captain’s wrath and crack open the door.
Fellow passengers hurry past in nightclothes. A few wear jackets and sweaters, and many of them carry luggage: chests, bags and latched travel cases.
“What’s going on?” I cry.
“Yeah, what is happening?” Melily calls groggily from her bunk. “I was having a nice dream.”
A woman who I think is from the UPT pauses long enough to gasp, “We either hit something, or a ripperblast went off, I dunno!” She rushes off, leaving me wondering what a ripperblast is.
I turn around and see that Melily has sprung up out of bed.
“That wasn’t a ripperblast,” she says. “That was a mechbomb. That’s what Douglen and Jeck were doing on the Wanderlea!”
My fear swells, pressing against the inside of my chest. “What’s a mechbomb?”
“A ripperblast with a timekeeper,” Melily tells me, and I can barely see her in the dark. “Stupid Jeck is obsessed with them, and—”
She’s interrupted by groaning sound coming from the hold. Our cabin tilts away from the door.
“What if the Wanderlea sinks?” Melily grabs both of my arms. “I don’t want to die!”
“Uh…” My thoughts feel like they’re slipping off a ledge. “It’s probably fine. If it’s a real emergency, the Captain will send someone for us.”
“You just want to wait here? That’s crazy.” Melily turns away from me. “We have followed their rules long enough. We need to get out of here.”
I’m scared of crossing the Captain, but I also don’t argue. Melily turns on the light—it flickers for a moment but then shines steadily as we grab passbooks and shoes. I also, very reluctantly, take the gunnerife out from beneath my mattress and buckle the holster under my nightdress.
The floor slopes even more steeply now, and I don’t hear people moving past our cabin door anymore. Instead, the sound of footsteps and voices trickles down from the deck above.
As we leave our cabin, our bedside light shuts off and so do the passage lights. Therefore, hand in hand, Melily and I struggle through the dark ship, and thankfully when we reach the gathery, dim moonlight shines through the windows. We clamor up the central stairwell, and soon we’re on the upper deck surrounded by a confusion of noise, passengers, and crew. Several shipsmen struggle to lower a saveship, while others hand out musty-smelling floatvests. As I pull a floatvest over my head, Melily and I are jostled over to the railing. I see a few passengers give Melily wary glances, especially the Tak Ceseren sisters—bandages hide poor Maryasa’s entire face—but no one speaks to us. I look down at the tidewater, and it looks different tonight, darker and thicker, like the oil used in factory machines. I also smell smoke.
“I can’t believe Douglen decided to just kill us both,” Melily hisses. “That’s so like him!”
I nod, tightening the waist strap on my floatvest and glancing around at the frightened, shivering passengers and the frantic crew. “He won’t just be killing us,” I breathe. “He’ll be killing everyone here.”
“Oh, he won’t care about that,” Melily says, and I notice that she hasn’t buckled the waist strap on her floatvest yet. “Trust me, there was this—”
Another blast tears through the Wanderlea. Skyfire seems to rupture under my feet. An unseen hand slaps me through the air the same way I’d swat a dampfly. I see white light, then nothing but black, and then I hit the tidewater so hard I lose all of my air.
Things go briefly dark and quiet—like I’ve fallen asleep—and then Melily is splashing toward me, yelling, “Nerene! Nerene! Nerene!”
She sounds far away, and there’s a high-pitched whistling in my ears.
I’m in the water, and I see fire. Orange blankets of flame unfurl and break apart. I hear people screaming, crying.
Douglen and Jeck didn’t just put one mechbomb on the ship—they put two.
Are there more?
I cling to my floatvest, which has risen uncomfortably up under my jaw. The water is cold too—so, so cold.
Melily’s still yelling. She’s pointing at me, and then pointing at something else, jabbing at the air, giving me instructions I can’t hear.
My ears pop and now everything goes silent.
I look to where she’s pointing, and I see a dark, floating hunk of something covered in wet ribbons of reflected firelight. Is it a raft?
No, it’s part of the Wanderlea—something torn off.
My hearing returns with a roar. “Climb on!” Melily shouts. “Climb on! And I’ll see if I can find the saveship!” It’s so strange to have her directing me like this, but she doesn’t seem to be as dazed as I am.
I swim weakly through debris: a travel case broken open, a wooden bowl from the cookery—an arm. I quickly look away so I don’t recognize who it belonged to.
“Climb on! Ugh, you’re so slow!” Melily shouts, shoving me against the floating piece of ship.
I scramble over hard and sharp edges, and my heavy, wet boots make it so difficult to move. If I could stop to unlace them and let them sink into the cold water, I would. Whatever I’m climbing on is also unsteady and partially submerged, which makes dragging my soaking wet self up on top of it even harder.
I shiver when I’m finally out of the water, although something warm drips down my upper arm. Blood. My blood.
And I’m not alone on this tattered raft either. Pavoya slumps against a triangle of broken boat, hugging a framed image that I can’t see. “Oh hey,” he says as if we’re meeting in the gathery to prepare a meal. “Lousy way to wake up, huh?”
“I’ll be back,” Melily shouts, already swimming away. “Once I find us a saveship!”
But will she return? I watch her, concerned, as she vanishes into the slick, black shadows.
I should dive into that darkness and try to help her and other people too.
But my arm feels like it was stabbed. I prod the cut—it’s deep.
And if I leave this hunk of ship, I might not find it again.
I snag something in the water, a length of broken shelving. Using my good arm, I start paddling the raft back toward the burning Wanderlea. But before I make much progress, a third boom sends streams of water into the air, scattering the flaming remains of the ship and sending out huge waves that push us even further away.
“Melily!” I scream, and is she dead? I hear a few faint voices, but they seem to be drifting further away. I paddle harder. “Help me!” I cry to Pavoya. Why isn’t he helping?
“It’s no use,” he says.
So he’s just admitting defeat? “If we’re going to help anyone—or save ourselves—we have to do it now!” I say.
“We’re in the current.” He’s not talking loudly, but it’s suddenly so quiet it seems like he’s shouting. “Even if we had a whole group of people paddling with real paddles on a ship that was, uh, ship-shaped, we’re at the current’s mercy. Or I suppose you could say merciless… cy.” And he laughs. How dare he laugh? There’s nothing funny about this.
I stop paddling, though. I’m too sore. Instead I hunch over the splintered chunk of shelf and shiver. In my wet clothes, the air feels even colder than the water. And I’m so frustrated with Pavoya.
But when he makes a gasping-whimper that I’ve only ever heard come from a dying amphib deer, I realize he’s in worse shape than me. The framed picture he’s cradling covers an ugly gash across his ribs, and even in the moonlight, I see red flesh, bone, and lots of blood.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, immediately forgiving him for laughing.
I can’t see any sign of the Wanderlea anymore, and even more frightening, I can’t hear anyone calling for help either. The silence above the water seems to reflect the more terrifying, suffocating silence waiting for us below.
Poor Pavoya’s injuries look fatal, but I try to help him anyway, because what else can I do? I tear off the bottom of my nightdress, squeeze it as dry as I can, and then pack the fabric into his wound. He seems to be in shock because he doesn’t cry out in pain—instead he sings.
The song sounds familiar. “What is that?” I ask, trying not to think about his soft, misshapen middle or the loose, broken bits of bone I feel through the fabric.
“It’s the Threegod song of mourning,” he tells me. “I always liked it cause it has a part for all the gods, and they’re not all the same you know. They have different personalities… they’re…” And then his words sink back into his song.
“I don’t like Threegod,” I say, unable to act like I do even now. “The Threegod Priests are terrible.”
“True, true. Many are,” Pavoya says. “But they aren’t the gods.”
“It’s hard to separate them,” I say.
“Well, I don’t go for…” Pavoya continues, pausing to groan in pain. “Reverence and rules… not much fun.” His eyes close halfway, and then he says, “What about you? You want to sing? Pray? I feel…” Again he takes a long, thoughtful time to say anything else. “It’s worth a try.”
I look down at my blood-covered hands—all Pavoya’s. I want to comfort him by agreeing with him, but it also seems wrong to pretend. “If Threegod exists, they only love uplanders,” I say. “I’m a deeplander. We belong to the Water Goddess, but we’re not allowed to worship her anymore.”
“You’re allowed here. And calling on four gods is surely better than just calling on three. Fourgods…” Pavoya chuckles in a raspy sort of way. “Sounds good. An improvement.”
I nod. “But I don’t know any Water Goddess songs or prayers. I don’t know how to… find her.”
Pavoya startles me with a horrible sounding belch, and for a moment, he doesn’t seem to be able to talk at all. But then he says, “This… this is how I think about it; if there are divine beings out there, even the finest temple song would sound like a toddling singing to them. And do you care if a toddling sings poorly? No. It’s all sweet to hear. So just… make it up.” He gestures gently with his left hand, but even that small movement makes him gasp in pain.
I like his perspective, but I’m not the sort of person who can just make things up. And the Water Goddess, if she is out there, feels far away. Maybe she’s sleeping in that statue in Beth’s Museum, trapped inside.
Pavoya doesn’t wait for me. He makes up his own prayer for her—or rather a song. And as he warbles it, we hold hands. I should be comforting him, but it’s the other way around.
There are only a few stars out and only one waning moon, so I can barely see him in the dark. Our ragged raft bobs gently, the tide sloshes around us, and the steady wind is surely pushing us further away from anyone who can help.
Pavoya’s soon too weak to keep singing, and he eyes the gunnerife holster on my leg. The buckle glints in the faint moonlight, visible now that I’ve torn away half of my nightdress to pack fabric in his wound.
“I think… maybe,” he says. “You should use that on me—or let me use that on me.”
I put my hand on the weapon, hiding it from view. “Someone could still help us.” It feels like a feeble thing to say because how likely is it that a ship will cross our path? Even on the Trident we rarely saw other boats, and when we did they were often far away. And yet it seems too soon to do something drastic. I know Pavoya’s wounds aren’t going to heal on their own. But at the same time, only a few hours ago we were sleeping peacefully, unharmed, and safe on the Wanderlea. If things can go horribly wrong so swiftly, it seems oddly reasonable to imagine that our situation can be set right just as fast. “Not yet,” I say. “Please.”
Pavoya gives me an understanding look. “In the morning then.”
I nod bravely. “In the morning.”
He rests his head on my shoulder, and I rest my head on his gray hair, and when dawn stretches blister pink across the water, there’s no need to use the gunner
ife.
At some point while we were shivering and trying to sleep, Pavoya must have quietly become a death shadow and wandered off into the dark.
I cry, wishing that I’d known him better, and I’m also distraught that now I have to deal with his body. A part of me feels like I should keep him here because he’d probably want to be burned in a Threegod temple. But it doesn’t seem bearable or a good idea to share my raft with a corpse for a long time.
Even though Pavoya was a small man, his body is still heavy and the raft unsteady. Therefore it takes me a long, grisly while to manipulate him over the side of what I suspect is a piece of the main storage hold. The cut in my shoulder hurts when I try to drag him, so I end up mostly shoving him into the water with my feet.
“I hope Threegod welcomes you,” I say as kindly as I can, and I kiss his brow before giving his shoulders a final push that sends him sloshing off into the waves.
It seems right to keep the wooden frame he cradled safe with me, though. I didn’t take a close look at it the night before, and now I see it’s a small ink drawing of a lighthouse. I wonder if Pavoya drew it, and instead of watching his colorful clothing drift down into the darkness, I watch the blurry reflections of clouds in the rectangle of glass that protects the drawing. Those fuzzy shapes are soon even more distorted by my tears.
I hope Melily reached one of the Wanderlea’s saveships. I hope she’s with good people who will be patient with her. I hope we both survive.
It’s strange to think that Sande still drifts on the tide too, and it seems like such bad luck that we’re facing similar troubles and can’t face them together.
So I drift, and I wish Pavoya were still alive and with me. It’s much worse to be alone. The sun blazes down, cruel and hot, and my tattered, shortened nightdress doesn’t give me much protection. The cut in my shoulder stings, and I’m unbearably hungry and thirsty. I would have thought I could last a day at least without longing for food as well as water, but I’m already desperate to eat.
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