Frozen: Heart of Dread, Book One

by de la Cruz, Melissa

  “Fine,” he said, distracted, and walked off to the bridge to join Shakes.

  Nat leaned against the wall. Well, that’s done. She wrapped her arms around herself against an arctic draft, lonelier than ever.

  • • •

  She soon regretted the rash decision to move her belongings back to the crew cabin. She should never have decided to move. The captain’s quarters were cozier, warmer, with a real bed. Now she was back to sleeping on a blanket on cold metal mesh.

  She got the lowest bunk on the port side, and above her, Brendon snored softly, while above him, Roark’s nose whistled like a high-pitched teakettle. At least Farouk, who talked in his sleep, was at the helm, on duty, or else there would be three of them in a nighttime symphony.

  Liannan had taken the hammock on the other end of the room, next to Shakes, and Nat heard the two of them whispering quietly in the dark with a newfound intimacy. She missed Wes, missed knowing he was near. It wasn’t really the noise that bothered her, she realized; in fact, she liked it, after living alone, to feel the comfort of people around her. She just missed him, missed him even though he was only a few feet away. Did he miss her? she wondered. When she finally drifted off to sleep, she had no dreams.

  • • •

  The next morning she awoke to hear Shakes yelling. She ran up to the deck and found him kicking at the rail. Wes was holding his hands to his own head in frustration.

  “What happened?”

  “Zedric. Farouk,” said Wes, his cheeks red with anger.

  “What did they do?” Nat asked, feeling a stab of fear.

  “They’re gone,” Shakes said.

  “Gone?”

  “They abandoned us last night. Took one of the lifeboats and left. Farouk must have busted Zedric out,” Wes explained. He was disappointed in Farouk; he understood Zedric’s anger, but he thought the skinny kid was on his side, he’d thought he was loyal. It was difficult not being able to count on his crew, he thought. It wasn’t always like that, especially not during the war. He and Shakes were the only survivors of Delph company, but there had been others: Ragdoll, Huntin’ John, Sanjiv. All good men, all gone now.

  “We’re lucky they didn’t kill us in our sleep,” Nat said.

  Shakes pounded the nearest wall. “They took the rest of the supplies, left us with nothing. Not even a twig to chew on.”

  “But why? They won’t survive for long out there; why would they take that risk?” asked Nat.

  “Snipers took out the crew of the other ship. Somehow, one of them must have noticed, and figured that they’d rather take their chances with the RSA than with us,” said Wes.

  “They’re probably eating navy rations now, while we’re going to starve,” Shakes said moodily, lifting each bin and finding it empty.

  The rest of the group was gathered around the galley hopefully, but there was nothing to be found. Brendon removed a few crumbly wafers that Wes had given him from his pocket and shared them with the group.

  “Thanks,” Nat said, smiling. Brendon was the same age as she, but with a wise man’s face, and Roark a little older. They weren’t brothers, but from the same tribe, it turned out. Distant cousins, maybe. The genealogy of the smallkind was too complicated for Nat to understand, although Brendon had tried to explain earlier. She bit into the cracker. “I haven’t had these since I was a kid.”

  “I have never had one before,” Brendon said. “It is a very interesting flavor.”

  “We’re surrounded by water, and there’s nothing to eat. Where we’re from, we cut through the ice and fish,” Roark said.

  “Truly?” Shakes asked, curious. “All the fish I’ve ever had was some kind of replacement substitute. I thought the oceans were dry.”

  “Not our part of it,” Roark said.

  Nat shook her head. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Fish . . . the flash of the redback’s tail beneath the water . . .

  Of course!

  34

  “I DON’T KNOW WHY I DIDN’T THINK of it before!” Nat said, her face lighting up. “We can find food.”

  “Where?” Shakes asked. Even Liannan looked intrigued, although the sylph had explained that her kind did not require very much sustenance, which is why they were long-lived.

  “Out there!” Nat said, pointing to the gray sea through the porthole.

  Shakes shook his head. “Aw, man, I thought you had a real idea. There’s nothing out there but trash.”

  “No, no,” Nat insisted. “I was there—the day that—the day that we hit the trashbergs. With Daran and Zedric. We were looking out to the sea and we saw them . . . redbacks. There are fish out there.”

  Wes sighed. “There haven’t been fish in the ocean since—”

  “I’m telling you, we saw them. And Daran said he’d seen them before.” It dawned on her now what the Slaine brothers had been doing that week before Daran had drowned, when they were sneaking off by themselves. They were fishing! They were eating and hiding it from the rest of the crew.

  “If you’re right, then I can do it,” Roark said. “Donnie can help.”

  “Yes.” Brendon beamed, glad to be useful.

  “Too bad we don’t have any poles,” Wes said. “Or bait, for that matter.”

  Roark was undeterred. “Poles are not necessary for this endeavor. The essence of fishing is a good line. Something strong enough to hold the redback’s weight, but light enough to allow the sinker to pull the line down. Any ideas?”

  Wes smiled. Nat could tell he liked the way Roark thought. “I saw a spool of wires in the bilge, not the heavy stuff—it might be light enough to work.” He nodded to Shakes, who headed down to look for the wires.

  “Next to the starboard . . . ,” Wes called.

  Shakes put up a hand. “I know where it is, boss.”

  “But is it safe to eat?” Nat asked. “With all the toxins in the black water?”

  Wes shrugged. “It’s not ideal, but we can take the risk. We need to eat.”

  Nat agreed.

  An hour later the group had crafted two fishing poles, using metal tubing from the deck rails and the spool of wire Shakes found in the bilge. “There, that’ll do.” Roark nodded.

  Wes made hooks from bent nails and handed them to Nat, who finished the poles by threading the spinners and hooks onto the long delicate wire.

  Roark and Brendon grabbed the poles and got to work. Nat watched as they each cut a swatch of cloth from Brendon’s shirt and tied it around the wire. The cloth would act as a marker just above the waterline. If a fish tugged at the line, the little red swatch would disappear below the water. Cool.

  Nat turned to Roark. “What about bait?”

  Wes sighed. “We’ve got nothing to spare. I might be able to pull a worm from somewhere under the decks, but that’s about it.”

  “Again, that is not a problem,” Roark continued. “Only the bottom-feeders like worms. We don’t want to eat those anyway; they’re full of lead and who knows what else. We’ll be fishing near the surface where the water is a little cleaner. As for bait, we don’t need food. Watch.” Roark and Brendon whispered a few words, took a chunk of metal, and placed it on the hook.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Small magic,” Brendon said, grinning.

  “A little something to attract the fish,” Roark said. “Once it’s in the water, it will spin and dance just like a little minnow. When the fish start biting, there will be more.”

  Nat had been doubtful at first, but Roark’s idea suddenly seemed real. Her hopes soared: Perhaps they would eat today after all.

  “It’s true, then, what they say about you guys,” Shakes said excitedly.

  “What do they say?” Roark asked, his eyes narrowed, obviously knowing the deadly rumors about the smallfolk among mortal kind.

  “Only that y
ou are cleverer than most,” Nat said gently. “Isn’t that right, Shakes?”

  “I can help, too,” Liannan said, as she leapt from the boat and onto the icy sea, her slender form light enough that she could walk on water. The group watched in delight, and Shakes looked downright worshipful.

  The smallmen cast their lines and the sylph gasped. “They’re coming!” she said. “I see them down below.”

  Liannan tiptoed back onto the boat and joined Nat in watching the little red dot bounce along the surface. Roark gave the line a little jerk, trying to set the hook. They didn’t have reels, so they had to wind the wire around the pole as they raised the line. Halfway up he stopped. “He got away,” Roark mumbled. He looked up from the ice at the disappointed faces of the crew. “Patience—we’ll get him next time.”

  It took three tries before Roark finally hooked a redback and was able to pull the fish to the surface before it escaped from its crude hook. After the second catch, the two smallmen were shivering, and Roark handed his pole to the sylph, who cast the line far out into the water. Nat did the same with the second pole that Brendon had handed her, throwing the line as far as she could.

  Nat kept one eye on the red cloth and the other on the horizon. The shadows seemed to stretch longer as each minute passed. She was ready to give up when she finally pulled her first redback from the water. “I got one!” she cried, and Liannan hurried to help her wind up the wire. The red fish went wild when it landed on the deck. Nat nearly had to jump on top of it to stop it from flopping back into the waves. She laughed out loud as she held the fish in her bare hands. Its skin was as cold as ice and slippery like oil. Its muscular body flexed forcefully against her grasp. Nat realized at that moment that other than the bird a few days earlier, she’d never held a wild animal before. The redback thrashed in her grasp and Nat’s heart beat wildly. Is this what we’ve lost? she thought. Is this what the ice has taken from us? She wondered if that was what the Blue would be like, the redback so full of life that it was almost a shame to eat it.

  Somehow, the redbacks had brought a warm current with them, a clean stream of unpolluted water. “What is that?” she asked Liannan.

  “Water from the Blue,” the sylph said. “The oceans are melting, the world is changing, returning to what it was.”

  The girls pulled two more redbacks from the icy water before the fish stopped biting.

  Before they lifted their last one from the cold water, Shakes was already frying the fish. He and Wes had cleaned and prepared the day’s catch, gutting them, pulling out the bones but otherwise keeping the fish whole. The stove in the galley was busted, so Shakes had rigged up an impromptu one by mounting a cylinder of propane under a flat metal plate. The propane burned wildly—it looked like he was searing the fish with a flamethrower—but it worked.

  “Redback à la Shakes,” he said cheerfully, serving up the plates.

  The group gathered around the table with their plates of fish. Wes looked around at the expectant faces. “Well, what are you all waiting for? Eat,” he admonished. “I told you, we don’t stand on ceremony on my ship.”

  Nat was a little skeptical, seeing the skin was charred on the outside, but she changed her mind as she soon as she cut into it. The flesh was white and moist. She took a bite and smiled.

  She couldn’t remember enjoying a better meal. She remembered the small, silent meals at home, nuked fauxburgers while she watched a show on the nets. Even once she’d hired Wes’s team she had eaten alone, feeling uneasy in the company of the Slaine brothers.

  Brendon and Roark had found a rare jug of mead among the Nutri cans, and were pouring glasses all around.

  “More small magic?” asked Nat.

  Brendon nodded. “If only it had been enough to save our friends.”

  At the end of dinner, she saw Shakes and Liannan moving slightly away from the group. Nat felt some relief to discover that the lovely sylph was more interested in the first mate than the captain.

  “He’s got it bad, that one,” Brendon noted, motioning to the two.

  “Aye, that was fast. But then, can you blame him? She’s a sight.” Roark smiled dreamily. “They’re not called the Fair Folk for nothing.”

  “He’s not bad-looking himself,” Brendon teased as he took Roark’s hand in his.

  Ah. So that was their connection. Not brothers, after all. Not at all, Nat smiled.

  Outside, on the deck, Shakes leaned closely to the ethereal sylph, and Nat could see that Liannan didn’t seem to mind. Nat turned away from them to say something to Wes but stopped. The glow left her cheeks.

  Wes wasn’t there. His chair was empty.

  35

  THE NEW CREW SETTLED INTO PLACE. Brendon was better at plotting a course than Farouk had been. Something in the trashbergs made the compass go haywire and swing out of control, something Farouk had never been able to adjust for, which was why they had run into the trashbergs and veered out of course. Now that everyone knew about the stone, there was no more pretense concerning their destination—the Blue. Nat would spend the mornings up at the helm with them while Wes consulted the map, holding the blue stone up to his eye while he made corrections on the navigational pad. Brendon made concessions for the compass and plotted their course on the back of a coffee-stained document he found in the engine room. If they had continued to follow the compass, as Farouk had done, they would have kept traveling in circles.

  But with Brendon at the bridge, they kept to a straight line. He guided the ship deftly past the mounds of trash that cluttered the ocean. His small hands moved nimbly—he seemed to have a natural feeling for how Alby would react as he turned the wheel. Whereas Farouk preferred to smash through the smaller piles of ice and trash, Brendon moved gracefully around the obstructions, swerving through the crowded ocean without ever once hitting the debris. It made for a much smoother ride—free of the constant scraping sound that the ship made when Farouk had sailed it through the ocean.

  While Brendon kept them headed in the right direction, Roark commandeered the galley and the daily fishing. They were finally making good time and their fear of starving began to fade. It was a better crew than he’d ever had before, Wes thought. They worked as a team, like one unit, functioning smoothly. Some nights they were downright merry, with Nat leading the card games, and teaching them to play gin, whist, and snap, or poker if they were feeling punchy. The smallmen taught them the Layman’s Code, a way to communicate by knocking, as well as games they knew: Smallman’s Secret and Who’s the Sprat. Liannan tried to teach them a game from her people, but it was too complicated and involved high-pitched whistling and singing no one could imitate or understand.

  Liannan and Shakes tried to keep their budding romance under wraps, and aside from Shakes grinning like a maniac all day and Liannan blushing whenever he was near, they merely appeared to be very close friends, laughing over their cards, or teasing each other when the other had failed to guess the Smallman’s Secret.

  Wes was glad for Shakes, but he was also apprehensive for his friend; he had no idea what Shakes was thinking. In his experience, it was best not to get involved, but he was also a little envious of his friend’s happiness. Nat had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him, and he respected her wishes, even if being so close and yet so far from her made him feel uneasy. The sooner he dropped her off at the Blue, the better for everyone. Then he could turn around and forget they had ever met.

  That morning, she was standing too close to him again, helping them navigate through the strait. “Here you go,” he said, handing her back the stone when the task was done. His fingers brushed her palm, but he had learned to ignore the electric feeling, and he walked away from her quickly.

  • • •

  Nat watched him leave the bridge, feeling troubled at his abrupt departure. It was all for the best, truly, since there was no chance of them being together. But when she fou
nd him by the railing a few hours later, she went to him without thinking. “Your sister?” Nat asked, looking over his shoulder to the picture in his hand.

  “Yeah, that’s Eliza.”

  He showed her the photo of a little girl in a puffy snowsuit, standing next to a snowman. He was in the picture, too, his chubby arm slung around his sister’s shoulders.

  Nat stared at it for a long time. “How old did you say she was when she was taken?”

  “Let me see—I was seven.”

  “And so was she.”

  His eyes crinkled. “Shakes told you, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We were twins, but I came out first. She’s always been my little sister.”

  “So what happened to her—really?”

  Wes sighed. It was hard to talk about. He didn’t remember much. “There was a fire,” he said quietly. “Smoke alarms didn’t work. It came out of nowhere and then it was everywhere.”

  A fire that came out of nowhere. Nat felt a chill in her entire body. No. It couldn’t be true. “She burned?”

  He gripped the picture tighter. “No, that’s the thing . . . they never found a body. They said she must have disintegrated into ashes, but come on, there would have been something . . . something to identify her . . .”

  Fire and pain. She closed her eyes and could see it. The smoky ruins . . . the child burning within the flames . . .

  “She’s alive. She has to be. She’s out there somewhere,” he said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nat whispered. She was sorrier than he ever knew.

  “It’s okay.” He echoed the words she had told him the other day. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Nat did not respond. She wanted to reach out to him, but it was as if he were behind a wall of glass. He would hate her now. He would always hate her. She didn’t need to push him away, she already had. The fire. The child. The fire that came from nowhere. The child that was taken.

  “Wes, there’s something you should know about me . . . ,” she said, her voice almost inaudible, just as Shakes burst from the helm.