by H. N. Klett
And Hailey did not.
Hailey padded over to him in her bare feet.
“What is it, Dad?”
“Now, daughter, is that how your Grandmother Rose taught you to greet your elders?” He gave her a wry smile and scratched at the stubble of a few days’ growth on his face.
She wrinkled her nose, mocked a curtsey, and said in an overly flowery voice, “I’m sorry, dearest Papa. How may I serve you?” Her high cheeks glowed bright with mischief.
“Better.” Orin mockingly gave a bow and a big toothy grin in return. “You know you shouldn’t be climbing around the rigging. You know what your grandmother would say.”
“It’s no place for a lady,” they both said.
“But it’s the only place I could get an accurate sighting…” She felt herself whining and hated it. She sounded like a little girl.
“You need to start listening to your grandmother. She knows best. Ladies don’t climb rigging.”
Exasperated, she let out another long sigh.
“Then how am I supposed to take the readings?”
“I told you, I already did them this morning.”
Hailey wanted to tell him her readings were always more accurate than his, but he knew it, so she thought better of it. Her father was a proud sailor, and a good one. She wasn’t sure how he’d react if she corrected him publicly. It was bad enough to be insubordinate to the captain of a merchant ship, but for a woman to do it might cause more trouble than she could handle. Grandmother Rose’s lessons had taught her as much.
She looked down at the deck in surrender.
He took her by the shoulders. “Look, I know you love navigation, and you are good at it, but I can’t have you doing it anymore.”
“But…” she stammered, “if I’m good at it, why not let me?”
“Because you are a young lady now. Climbing around the rigging and playing with charts is no job for a young woman. That’s not how things are. You are supposed to either enjoy the view on the deck or stay in a cabin and out of the way. That is what everyone expects. That is what your grandmother expects.”
She shook off his grip and looked at him defiantly. “It’s not what Mom would have expected.”
The towering man’s face went dark, and the once kind eyes flashed like thunderbolts. She was right, and he knew it, which made him all the angrier. Rebecca had been her own free spirit and did as she pleased, thumbing her nose at what was proper or not. It was one of the many things that he’d loved about her and that his mother hated, and she reminded him of that every chance she could.
He glanced around the deck to see if any of the men had taken notice of their exchange. If they did, they didn’t show it and went about their business either swabbing the deck, carrying supplies around, or working the rigging.
“Look, Hailey,” he said with a sigh and ran a hand over his pulled-back hair, “your mother is gone, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I want to make sure you are taken care of, and this is how we do it.” He placed a large hand on her shoulder and tilted his head, imploring her. “Your grandmother is doing her best to raise you the right way. The proper way. It’s the only way you will be able to fit in and someday find a man who can take care of you.”
“Why can’t you take care of me?
“Because I won’t always be around! Neither will your grandparents.”
“Then why can’t I just take care of myself without a—”
“That’s enough!” he barked.
Out of the corner of her eye, Hailey saw two sailors flinch.
He ran both hands over the top of his head and held his breath for a moment. Then he released it, sounding like a teakettle hissing as he let his arms drop to his sides. He could scream and fight with the crew all he wanted, but his daughter was an altogether different matter.
He looked at her with exasperation and frustration. Through gritted teeth he said, “Hailey, that’s not how things work…”
She stared at him blankly. She couldn’t understand what had happened, what had changed in everyone’s mind once she became a teenager. When she was younger she’d had free rein to learn and do as she pleased, and Dad was never this distant with her. She could explore the ship, do things to help out, get dirty with the crew. She could even read any book she liked, even the secret banned ones, which were vibrant and full of knowledge and wonder.
Every evening the two of them would get together and talk about all she had done and learned and he would delight in her achievements. Her future had seemed as open as the view of the horizon from the top mast. But as she got older, her view shrank more and more every day. She could no longer explore or get dirty. The things they gave her to read and learn from now were dry, dull, and uninteresting propaganda from the Church of the Ancients that told her what to do and how to act. Her father stopped asking her about what she learned and had been spending less and less time with her. The once great horizon she had seen became a small window through which she could barely see anymore. A framed portrait of a young lady for some man to own one day.
Orin turned and paced about in a short circle to calm himself, to get his bearings. He reminded Hailey of a spoon swirling milk into a cup of tea. It had the same calming effect.
After calming himself after several turns, Orin finally stopped and rounded on her.
“We should be back in port by noon. Have you read that primer your grandmother gave you?”
Hailey sighed and deflated, slumping her shoulders forward, and began a whine that Orin quickly silenced by holding up a meaty hand.
“Look, Hailey, she’s doing this to help you. You need to read it.”
Hailey snorted.
“Come on now, you promised.” He paused and changed tactics. “You do know it will be me that she will go after if you haven’t done your reading, right?”
She did, and he knew Hailey hated how her grandmother went after him. Grandmother Rose was like a furious hen, constantly harassing and pecking away at him till her dad gave in to whatever she wanted. If Hailey didn’t read the primer, Grandmother Rose would be all over him the second he got off the boat, all claws and feathers. She couldn’t let her do that to him.
But Hailey decided that if she was going to give in, she was going to make a show of it. She sighed dramatically.
“Fine.” She folded her arms and looked off over the rail.
Orin smiled and said, “That’s a good girl.” He waved over his first mate, Rufus, who had been unsuccessfully trying to ignore their conversation as he worked.
Rufus Sprada was a tall, thin, and wiry man with dark, angled features that reminded Hailey of a snake, and she trusted him just as much as one. Whether it was just his odd appearance or that she felt like his narrow eyes were always on her, she never liked being around him. He gave her the creeps.
“Rufus, could you take the young lady to my cabin to make sure she reads her primer?”
The first mate fixed Hailey with a smile that she swore had fangs. Most people annoyed Rufus simply by their existence, but children like Hailey annoyed him even more. She knew he felt that she got underfoot and slowed up work, and work was everything to the man. Ever since she was little, he was always the first one to look for an excuse to get her out of the way.
“Gladly, sir.” He winked at her.
Hailey glared at her father and he shrugged in reply.
“Sorry, Hailey, but a promise is a promise.”
Hailey didn’t look back as Rufus escorted her the short walk off the quarterdeck to the captain’s cabin. Rufus opened the door, did a mock bow to her, and pushed her in. As he shut the door, he grinned his serpent smile at her and said, “Have fun reading your book!”
She heard him chuckle as he leaned against the door, standing guard. To Hailey, it was apparent that the situation mirrored her life. Forcefully shoved into a place she didn’t want to go, to do something she didn’t want to do, and trapped with no way out.
Chapter 2
Haile
y looked around the cabin and saw it was the same sparse wooden box it had always been. Space on any vessel was a premium, especially in the captain’s quarters. Though most of the crew had only hammocks and fourteen feet apiece below decks, the captain was afforded a small room with a trundle bed.
Until recently, her cot lay beside it, now removed. Her father had moved her to her own private hammock below, separate from the crew, on this trip. When asked why, he only told her that a young lady needed her space. She thought this ironic because even though this cabin was sparse, it had far more room than the space she had been allotted below.
She walked past the simple wooden table, behind which sat the captain’s chair, and made her way to the pictures that hung on the walls. It was an uncommon luxury to hang a picture on any wall of a ship. Due to the sea’s rolling nature, it took work to keep them there. Captains didn’t usually waste time on such things. They had ships to run, crews to keep in line. The last thing they wanted to bother with was decoration. Her father was different, though. He’d spent so much of his life on the sea since her mother died, he started to make what once was a temporary cabin into a home. Little by little, he was rebuilding his life. The life of a man whose home was the sea.
Inspecting each piece, Hailey wasn’t sure if the nails holding the battered frames to the wall of the cabin did more to hold them together than hang them up.
There were three paintings that hung on the wall. The first was a painting of the Arrow at port; her mother had painted it years ago. The second was a framed map showing their home shores of Daden. The third was the most special of all. It was different. Compared to the other two, it was much more carefully cared for. It was a portrait of her mother. She had died three years ago when Hailey was twelve, old enough that she could remember her, and for that she was thankful. Looking at her portrait, she couldn’t help but notice in the reflection of the glass how much she had started to look like her.
Hailey reached her arms out to the portrait of her mother, feeling the frame, its painted wood smooth under her fingers. She felt along the right side for the familiar spot she had found many years ago. There was a small click and the portrait swung aside on hinges like a cabinet door to reveal a hidden compartment with a lock on it.
Like all merchant ships, there were several hidden compartments in which to smuggle contraband. This one in particular held the most valuable contraband in the world, at least to her. She pulled a pin out of her hair and set to work on the lock.
She had been an especially curious child. She knew that her father and mother made a habit of collecting and keeping banned books, and being a voracious reader like her mother, she longed to read them.
One day her father caught her trying to get her hands on the books behind the portrait. After that he installed the locked door on his secret cabinet. He promised that she would one day read the books that they had collected, but only when she was older and mature enough. Of course, being restricted from them only meant her need to understand what was in them grew stronger. Why had the Queen outlawed them? She had to find out.
Hailey had learned to pick locks from one of the shiftier transient crewmen who had sailed with them for a few years. She was a fast learner and quickly gained access to the books on her own, mostly while her father was working on deck or away in town trading and possibly acquiring more rare books. She suspected her father knew of her little invasions, though he never directly mentioned it. When her grandmother came to live with them, he became more quiet about the private library. Grandmother did not approve.
Hailey worked the lock with her hairpin, gently feeling the pins slide into place. The door sprang open with a slight pinging sound, and there before her were the leather-bound books she had grown to love. She knew each one of them by heart. Stories about the colonial rebellion against the Crown, passionate treatises on the reasons the colonies should be independent, the histories of the first cities and the grand council that later gave way to the monarchy; it was all there. Her eyes lit over each leather-bound volume as if she were a mother duck counting her chicks to see if all were accounted for.
She grinned widely as she spotted a book she had never seen before on the end. Her dad had disappeared a long time when they were at the port in Baron’s Bay. Usually his hunts for new books didn’t last long. This one had taken most of the day, and when he returned he looked worn down and tired. Looking over the elaborate binding of the book, she could tell that he’d traded many a favor to get it. Sliding it out from the cabinet, she held it and admired the craftsmanship.
Bookmaking was truly an artisan’s game, and this one was an amazing prize. The journal, only slightly larger than her hand, was wrapped in rich red leather that was soft to the touch despite the hard spine. What was curious was the ornateness of it. A woven knot of silver inlay adorned the cover and was punctuated by a silver skull with two dark ruby eyes. Protruding from under the woven knot and skull, metal bands stretched out and wrapped around the book, keeping it firmly closed.
She shut the cabinet, swung the painting back in place, and made her way behind the desk to admire the book more closely in the light coming through the windows. This book was a puzzle to her, unlike all the others, for it was locked. She had to find a way to get into it. She turned it over in her hands, looking for clues on how to open it.
She knew one thing, at least. The skull on the cover told her right away that this book had something to do with the mythology of the phantom pirates that were only spoken of in hushed tones. You didn’t have to be a merchant’s daughter to hear about the ghost pirates; just live by the sea and you’d hear any number of tales. Many sightings of their ghostly black ships were rumored from port to port, despite how much the Crown or the Church denied they ever existed. They were said to be the souls of sailors and explorers lost at sea, searching the world for more crew and more treasure.
Perhaps once, there were pirates, long ago, but with the iron fist of the Crown, no one would dare think of such a thing today. Truth or fiction, there were plenty of stories about them, most riddled with skeleton captains and crews staring at you from skulls with fiery eyes and the treasure and plunder they would take from unwary vessels ensnared in their creeping mists.
The only ghost that Hailey knew about was the vacuous hole that was left in the world when her mother died. Her absence haunted Hailey and her father on a daily basis. Hailey would have traded a thousand pirate treasures just to have her back.
Again and again she turned over the book, and it would not yield its secrets to her. She could see that there was no visible way to open the book. No keyhole, no release latch; it was all smooth metal. The bands wrapped around the book to a design on the back cover and dove into the metal work of the emblem on the front cover. She traced her finger around the knotted design surrounding the skull, hoping to find something. She thought maybe there was a trick to the skull and its weird red eyes. She pushed on the ruby stones, thinking that it might pop open to reveal a keyhole or something, but instead she felt a slight pinch and her finger began to bleed.
“Ow!” she exclaimed, more out of surprise than pain. There must have been a rough piece she cut her finger on.
She set the book down on the barren table and stuck her finger in her mouth. The eyes of the skull looked different to her somehow, as though there was a slight red glow to them, but she dismissed it as a trick of lighting. But then the straps on the book popped open with a sound she could have sworn was a sigh, and she jumped slightly.
The fine hair on the back of Hailey’s neck began to stand up, and the air felt charged, static. She stepped forward, finger still in her mouth. The skull on the book watched her with its smooth, simmering ruby eyes. She reached out to the cover and pulled it open to reveal…
Nothing.
She flipped the pages. One after the other was blank and unremarkable. Hailey couldn’t help but feel cheated. She wondered if it was just a sketchbook or something. But if that were the case, why the orna
te cover and lock?
The pages felt odd to the touch, as if they were made of a fine cloth material, not paper. She had just placed her hand on the page to feel its texture when the book sprang to life.
Words bubbled to the surface of the page like oil erupting from the ground. Words and images began to run across the page, racing to fill it. Hailey picked up the book excitedly. When she did, a large ornate map appeared and hung in the air before her.
She could see the whole of Ephryae. She could see the tropical continent of Vregora, whose port of Baron’s Bay they had departed just days ago. She could see her home port of Daden, nestled in the island of Arwend, jutting out off to the southeast. All the smaller islands like Aibronne, Iconen, Eolan, Agoth, and even the tiny Eyica islands off the coast of the largest landmass of Phesin. They were all there floating in the air before her. Small arrows danced over the map, indicating wind and weather fronts. Small little flags denoted names of ports and there were even tiny markers showing boats, including the Arrow itself.
Looking more closely at the tiny image of their ship, she could see not only the direction they were going, she could see the speed and the time that they would arrive at port based on their present course. She would have remained transfixed on the living image before her if she hadn’t noticed the book. She watched as pages changed from bright white to solid black to bright white over and over again, only stopping when she gave the book her full attention. Then it cleared to a blank page.
Then urgent words were quickly bubbling up on the page. Hailey read:
HAILEY, YOU ARE IN GREAT DANGER! YOU MUST HIDE ME!
“What?” she found herself asking the empty room. How did this thing know her name?