by K. Ferrin
Ling’s breath caught in her throat. The darkness of the Darkling Sea was like the light of midday compared to the black wall of emotion that washed over her with Fern’s words.
“Do you realize how crazy you sound right now, Fern? I know you don’t mean that. It doesn’t even make any sense!”
“You don’t know anything, Dreskin. You and your stupid schoolboy belief in happy endings. Guess what? There aren’t any! The happiest we’ll get is the moment Fariss takes his last breath. You go on your stupid quest to find the navire, but I’m not wasting any more of my time with that. I’m going after Fariss. As soon as I can change, I’m out of here.”
Ling could hardly believe it was Fern saying such things. She had always been so focused and strong.
“You’ll die trying. There’s no way you’ll even get close to him, let alone have a chance to kill him.”
“I’ve been close enough to do it twice already. I’ll find another opportunity, and this time I won’t waste any time thinking about it. Now get out. I’m done talking to you.”
“Fern, please—”
“Get out!” Fern screamed the words so loudly Ling felt them like a physical slap. She lay down on her side below the window and wrapped her arms around her knees. She listened as Dreskin took a breath as if to speak and then expelled it without saying anything. After a moment, she heard steps, followed by the door opening and closing once again. She could hear Dreskin’s steps receding in the darkness. The bed squeaked as Fern lay down upon it, and the cabin fell silent.
In the distance Ling heard Drake shouting at the crew. She felt the ship pick up speed and pull to the side as they turned toward Nantes. She wondered if the crew was as relieved as she was to stop their endless drifting and begin moving with purpose once again.
From out of the darkness Ling heard what must be Amalya. She’d written about the girl’s habitual wordless babbling, the noise a constant grate on her nerves. Celene was with her—Ling could hear the woman laughing and talking to her daughter as if the girl could understand anything she said. They were walking toward her, much to Ling’s dismay.
“It’s scary in the dark, I know, but don’t worry, my darling. I’ll keep you safe. You are my last, and most treasured.”
Ling rolled her eyes. Amalya likely didn’t even realize it was dark. As their steps pulled just in front of her, Ling heard Celene speak once again. “I failed your brother; I won’t fail you, Amalya.”
All the anger that Ling had bottled up inside ignited at Celene’s mention of Fraser the rapist. Everything she’d been feeling since she’d flipped the cover of the grimoire closed this morning came rushing out in a gush of fury. Without thinking, she thrust her foot out, hoping it was directly in their path. She couldn’t see them, but her aim was true even in the pitch black. She felt a foot kick her leg and heard a crash as someone fell to the deck.
Amalya immediately began screaming as she did any time something unexpected happened. Celene dropped to her side, murmuring softly as she tried to comfort her daughter. Before Amalya could quiet down Ling reached out a hand, fumbling in the darkness, until she felt soft flesh, and she squeezed it. She hoped it was Amalya, thought it was Amalya just based on the location of her crying, and it was. The girl exploded into angry wails of frustration.
Ling yanked her hand away, shocked at what she had done. She moved away, hiding the soft sounds of her movement in the bellowing screams of the girl. For a moment Ling felt guilty, but then she hardened her heart. Celene deserved it, Ling thought. Celene had raised a boy to be a rapist, to be a man who felt entitled to the body of any women he happened upon. She grieved her son even now, though he was a man that had felt no compunction about stabbing an unconscious and wounded person to death, apparently uncaring that his own life blood spilled out onto the sand around him. Celene loved a son who had died without sparing a thought for the mother and sister he would leave behind when he died.
In that moment, Ling wanted to stick a knife in Celene as much as Fraser had wanted to stick a knife in Dreskin that night. But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. So she would take her small vengeances where she could find them. She moved off through the darkness with a grim smile on her face. Fern, her parents, Witch. The weight of her losses was heavy on her shoulders, but she would bear it. She had no choice but to bear it until she found a way to release herself from it.
Chapter Five
It was after lunch by the time Ling extricated herself from the pile of crates she’d awoken in. She’d hidden herself away there the night before according to the book. She had nowhere else to go. Fern’s fury made the cabin they’d shared off limits, and she wasn’t comfortable sleeping in the berth with the boatsmyn. Even if she had been, Celene and Amalya were down there. She still didn’t understand what happened to her at night, how her memory was reset, and she had no desire to discover her life through the grimoire under the watchful gaze of a nosy set of crew and passengers, not even the boatsmyn who shipped with Drake.
So she had hidden herself away in a narrow crack she’d found in the crates stacked neatly on the deck, a small lantern at her side, and spent the morning in a terrified knot as she flipped through page after page of her life.
That terror shifted slowly to anger, so much anger it felt like her small body could not contain it. It was a strange feeling, having no first-hand memory of all that had happened but knowing all of it was real. It was like reading a book. She’d find herself getting caught up in the story only to suddenly realize this was her life; this stuff had happened and was continuing to happen to her. Then she would feel her soul shrink up like a desiccated grape turning to a raisin in the furnace of her fury. And guilt.
She slipped out of her hiding spot, leaving the book and lantern behind. She didn’t want to be seen, so she couldn’t risk the light from the lantern. She skittered lightly along the deck, feeling her way, picturing in her mind the detailed drawing she’d made of the ship, and listening intently for any indication of people nearby. She turned aside from any sound of movement or breath and successfully avoided contact with anyone along the way.
She slipped into the kitchen, swiped a small knife from the narrow counter, and slipped out again without anyone the wiser. She hesitated at the rich bowls of stew and black bread that had been set out for any hungry boatsmyn or passengers, but she left them behind. She had no need to eat, and while she had read that it was often a comfort for her to do so anyway, she had other things on her mind today.
She ducked back into her hiding place and lit the lamp, tenting the book around it to try to dim the light even further. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was, but she needed to be able to see for what she had in mind.
The grimoire said she couldn’t be injured. She would feel the pain, would feel bones breaking, muscles straining, but the injuries never actually happened. As soon as the source of the injury was removed, she was instantly whole again. She turned one hand palm up and studied the lines there, the intricate pattern that identified her and her alone, the pattern the grimoire responded to when she touched it. She wondered, briefly, if it would open for Evelyn when this was all over, and she thought it likely would.
She ran the knife along her thumb and hissed as it sliced her flesh. Pain exploded as the knife slid through, but just as the book had said it would, it left no mark behind. No blood, no scab, no scrape marring her smooth skin whatsoever. Her flesh closed immediately behind the blade. It was almost like drawing a knife through a bucket of the thick, sucking mud that surrounded Meuse. She could feel the pain of the cut, but even that faded quickly. Fascinated, she did it again, and then again after that. She brightened the lantern, watching closely as she cut, trying to determine how her body worked, how she could feel the physical pain of it but not experience the physical wound. She moved to larger cuts, slicing along the entire length of her forearm, poking at her shin, but every time was the same. Pain, but no blood, and no lasting injury.
The pain, she discover
ed, was a release of sorts. She had so much hurt built up inside, so much anger, and no real outlet for any of it. Much of it was directed at others—the feelings of abandonment from Fern’s comments, the rage at Celene and Amalya—but there was also a self-hatred that had bloomed inside of her like black mold in a wet washroom. It had been there from the moment she’d realized what she was that morning back in Meuse. It had been planted there by the actions of her mother and the look on Sera’s face, watered by the angry shouts of the townspeople she’d known all her life. She’d spent her entire life learning it, learning that magic was vile, and those that practiced it rotten. It was remarkably easy once she realized what she was for that black feeling to overtake her.
It had grown to an unmanageable size with the words she’d heard Fern say, and she realized suddenly that the cutting helped. It was like each slice of her own flesh sliced a bit of meat off the monster of self-loathing raging inside of her.
“Sit here, darling. Why don’t you draw for a bit?”
Ling looked up sharply and snuffed the dim light of the lantern. She didn’t recognize Celene’s voice from memory, but she knew immediately it must be her because shortly after a soft rump plopped onto the deck, the rhythmic scratching of wood on wood reached her ears, and the meaningless babbling began. The release she’d been feeling from the cutting vanished in a haze of red. She tried to find a way to get away from the two women, but the only way she could get out without making a racket was through the crack that Amalya was now blocking.
Ling rolled her eyes and scooted back until she could lean against the wall behind her. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared toward the opening. She sat that way far longer than she would have thought she could, feeling more and more furious by the minute. The girl rocked, forward and back, forward and back, rubbing the blackened tip of a piece of wood on the deck. She’d left these black smudges all over the deck, and Ling took it as a sign of Celene’s incompetence that the woman allowed her daughter to do it.
Lazy, she thought. Oblivious to how she and her daughter affect other people. Not to mention her son, the rapist. Ling scooted forward slowly, quietly, and leaned out toward the opening, stretching an arm through the narrow crack. She placed her palm flat against Amalya’s back and pressed firmly. It wasn’t hard enough to hurt, but Amalya hated being touched by anyone or anything. As the girl felt that first touch, she let out an ear-splitting roar and began rocking furiously.
“Oh! Baby girl, what is it?” Celene was at her side in an instant; Ling heard the rustle of clothing as Celene tried to comfort her daughter. Twice the girl began to quiet down, and twice more Ling reached out and pressed a hand against her. Boatsmyn began wandering by, asking if everything was okay before they moved on, annoyance at the constant wailing clear in their voices. Dreskin found his way to them as well, asking if he could do anything to help.
“I just don’t know what’s gotten into her,” Celene said. Dreskin had brought a small lamp, and in the dim light Ling could see her brushing a hand along Amalya’s forehead, pushing Amalya’s lank hair back from her eyes. “Something is setting her off; I just don’t know what.”
“Maybe you should bring her below; her cries are muffled down there. If the warlocks are out there—”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Celene interrupted him, her frustration clear in her voice. “I was hoping for some fresh air, for her and for me. But you’re right, we can’t risk it.”
Ling smiled, watching as Celene got Amalya to her feet and they began to walk away.
“I just wish I knew what was bothering her. She’s not usually like this,” Celene continued.
“Maybe it’s the dark. Or the constant presence of the sirené.” Dreskin said as he walked along beside her. “It’s getting to all of us. Just an hour ago Cook insisted one of his knives had gone missing. It couldn’t have, of course. Who would take it? But he swore he’d been using it earlier, and when he’d gotten back from a walk on the deck it had vanished. We’re getting paranoid out here, all of us…”
Dreskin’s voice faded away, and Ling looked down at the knife clasped in her own hand and had to cover her mouth to stop from laughing out loud. Without knowing it, without intending to, she’d become a ghost aboard the Courser.
She spent the remainder of that day in her cubbyhole, in turns rereading the grimoire, imagining how she’d extricate herself from the others when they finally hit land in Caern, and cutting herself. As the ship quieted down and everyone went to their berths, she ventured out for another trip to the kitchen to take another knife, a much bigger one. She wanted to see how far she could go and still not experience an injury, and how long she could lose herself in the pain of it.
She avoided thinking about Fern or Alyssum, or what would happen when they left the relative safety of the Darkling Sea, or how Fariss could be arriving in Meuse at any time, hunting for any information he could find about her. She didn’t want to listen to that small clock that was ticking in the back of her mind that told her they had to close the breach before he got to Meuse, before he could find Evelyn’s body. She didn’t want to think about how Witch should never have given her the grimoire, should never have helped her leave, and that the world would be a better place if she were still strapped to that chair, hidden away in some invisible corner of Meuse.
Chapter Six
Amalya was screaming again, though this time it had nothing to do with anything Ling had done. A boatsmyn, in a rush to do some task, had tripped over her in the dark. Ling pulled up one of her pant legs and laid knife to it, feeling the explosion of pain as the sharp blade parted flesh that wasn’t flesh. She couldn’t see it in the dark—she dared not light a lantern with all the action on deck this morning—but it didn’t matter. Only the pain mattered.
Neither the endless tormenting of Amalya nor the arc of a blade across her skin changed anything; she knew that. But they broke through the endless tornado of her thoughts and emotions. They brought an agony of a different kind, a normal sort of pain and irritation that were manageable, grounding her in a world that had become decidedly unmanageable. They were the only things she felt any control over whatsoever.
Celene struggled to comfort her daughter and to remind the boatsmyn to tread more carefully in the dark. Ling could hear the frustration in Celene’s voice, and it made her smile.
When she wasn’t cutting or delighting in anything that caused Celene aggravation, she played a game of seeing how closely she could creep past someone without them knowing, how many knives she could steal and return or move about the kitchen undetected, and seeing how many days she could go without speaking to anyone else aboard. She’d gotten very good at it, too. She often heard Dreskin asking about her, looking for her, telling others to send her to Drake’s cabin should they see her. But they never saw her, she had gotten very good at avoiding people.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Shut the girl up.” The rough voice of a boatsmyn battered through the darkness. “They are out there, you know. The sirené and the warlocks, much closer than you think. Probably following us thanks to your git and her wailing.”
Celene said nothing back to him, and after a moment Ling heard his steps move off into the darkness. Between Amalya’s wailing sobs Ling could hear Celene’s own hitching breath.
“They are just afraid is all,” Celene said. “The constant darkness and the lurking sirené, it has all of us on edge. Dreskin said it himself.” Ling heard movement, and she thought Celene might have wrapped Amalya in her arms. Amalya’s cries were slightly dampened, but undiminished in their energy. “It will all be ok, you’ll see. Once we get out of this place. Once the sun comes back. It will all be ok.”
Ling wanted to laugh out loud at the woman. She was certain none of them would ever be ok again. She’d tried to be. She’d gone to see Fern three times, and three times she’d been chased out of the cabin. Twice she’d fled, cowering from the force of Fern’s words, each landing like an arrow to the heart. Once
she had been physically shoved out of the room, ducking her head away from Fern’s blows.
“They don’t know you the way I know you, Amalya. If they did, they would love you just as much as I do, my darling. They would know how special you are, how you help people. Just like Fraser did. You remember your brother, Amalya?”
Ling felt the flash of anger; she always did any time she heard Celene mention Fraser. She missed her son, grieved his death even still, after all this time and after all that had happened.
“For all his faults, he loved you, darling. And me too. You help all of us, though many people will never see it.”
Ling rolled her eyes, wondering if Celene would still feel that way if she’d seen how little Fraser seemed to care about them as he was dying. His last thought had been of killing Dreskin, nothing more. He’d loved himself plenty, but most definitely hadn’t cared one wit for them.
Ling climbed to her feet. She didn’t want to listen to this garbage.
“He had a rotten bit to him. Too much of his father in him, and that was my fault. I should have taken him away sooner. I knew it then as well as I know it now. I failed him, Amalya.” Celene’s voice was choked with emotion; Ling could hear tears wavering in it. “But I won’t fail you, and I won’t fail Drake. Or Fern, or Ling.”
Ling hesitated for a moment, wondering at Celene’s words, surprised at the heavy guilt she seemed to carry. Fraser had failed his mother. She was surprised to learn Celene thought it was the other way around. Ling shook her head and moved away in search of another place to hide.