We left the shallow seas and the sandy isles the following day, our ship heavy with provisions and our hearts light. We would sail north, Hamilcar said, and in a few short weeks we would find ourselves on the shores of a vast green country, the land that my Khalim had called home. It must have been a gentle land, I thought, one of soft rains and bountiful harvests. My homeland was harsh, and my people scratched out a living among the mountain stones and struggled with one another for everything we had, and it had made me a warrior. I feared I would be too much a stranger in a country that produced healers.
For the time being, I was grateful for the chance to rest, after the days in which I had languished in the dungeon beneath Salmacha with only a stone slab for a bed and only the earthquakes for company. I had been reunited with Bran, and he had spent a pleasant day among the villagers, eating fruit and leaves from the trees. He was raised on dry steppe grasses; such a bounty as these islands provided must have been more than he had ever dreamed of as a foal. When I tried to lead him back onto the ship, he planted his feet wide and tossed his head, snorting his displeasure. I had to lure him up the plank with a basket of vivid pink fruit, the name of which I was told but cannot recall, and plenty of soft-spoken promises that his time in the hold would not be so long. He stared at me accusingly, his dark eyes wide and baleful, when I tethered him to his place below the deck. He would not acknowledge my presence otherwise for a full day, despite my frequent apologies.
I kept Ucasta’s tome wrapped in an oilcloth at the bottom of my pack, hanging from the iron hook that held my hammock. Its weight thumped against the hull as the ship swayed, reminding me of its presence. I thought to ask Hamilcar to interpret it for me, as he was fluent in the writing of many tongues, so that I would know if it was worth keeping or better thrown into the sea. In order to do so, however, I would have to touch its strange skin cover and look upon it again, so it remained where it was. Part of me hoped that I would forget about it, and lose it unaware, though I feared what might happen if another skilled and ambitious mage with no qualms against manipulating the dead were to come across it. It could harm no one while in my custody.
We bade farewell to the villagers, and they set off in their deep canoes back to the homeland they had abandoned in fear. Kannura bent down to kiss Hamilcar on both cheeks, and then his mouth, before she rowed her own boat away with a wave of her arm. I wondered if she knew how worried he had been when he had found her village empty. Though he’d spent the evening smiling and telling heroic tales of the fight beneath the earth, relief had loosened the tension in his shoulders, and his eyes had searched for her whenever she had wandered out of sight.
I spent the first day on the oars, pulling the Lady of Osona out of the shallows until a favorable wind caught our sails in the early evening. The work distracted me from my worries—about the book, about the people I might encounter when I reached land, and how they might reject me, and about Khalim, wherever he might be wandering. He had passed beyond death, beyond sickness and harm, but not beyond all danger. I could not reach him, and now that my own life was not in immediate peril, fear gnawed at my belly and turned my hands cold even in this tropical summer. I slept uneasily, awoken by the slightest creak of the ship’s timbers or change in the water, and I dreamt often of drowning.
On the third day, morning failed to come.
The sun rose, I’m sure, but it was so obscured by black clouds that it might as well still have been the middle of the night. A wave lifted the ship and dropped it from such a height that I was thrown from my hammock and dashed upon the floor. I woke in time to cover my head with my arms and save myself a terrible injury.
Adama and Kelebek had been sleeping in hammocks beside mine, and I helped them to their feet. Kelebek’s hands bled from where she had broken her fall and scraped them against the hull. There would be no more rest until the storm passed. Together, we pulled ourselves hand-over-hand toward the stairs and onto the deck.
Salt spray stung my eyes, and my bare feet slipped on the sea-drenched deck. Another wave crashed over the bow, knocking Halvor into the rail. Captain Hamilcar, his hat wet and its plume clinging sadly to the brim, shouted orders as he gripped the helm, but I could not hear him over the wailing wind.
Rain came in with a few heavy drops, followed by a torrent that made me think I had been swamped with the next roll of the ship. The timbers creaked and complained, and the sails above strained as the wind tore at them with greedy hands. Thunder rolled in from the east, ending in a deafening crash.
I was no stranger to storms. The sails had to come down before we lost them for good—or, worse, they took the masts down with them. My grip was strong and my feet sure. With one last look to assure me that Adama and Kelebek held the rail securely, I set off across the deck.
Even the worst of the earthquakes under Salmacha could not compare to the pitching and rolling of the ship. It was as though the wooden surface was a club swung by a giant, intent on knocking me into the air and then striking me down into the roiling sea. I fell to my knees and crawled on all fours, my fingers gripping the chinks between timbers.
I reached the mast as the first crack of lightning split the sky, turning the world to white. The ropes tied around its base had already soaked through, and they bit at my hands as I unspooled one and tied it around my waist. I knotted it twice, pulling it tightly and feeling the wet rope complain, and slung the rest of its length over one shoulder.
The mast towered above me like a vast, bare tree. I had climbed to the sails of my longship on many an occasion, as the spring winds ravaged the northern seas, but it had not been nearly so tall. I tore my gaze from its dizzying height and looked instead at the rigging before me. I would never make it to the sail otherwise.
Once, I had climbed the side of the great worm as it laid waste to Phyreios. With only a sword and the texture of its filthy hide to aid me, I had reached the crest of its head. If I had completed that feat, I thought, then a rope ladder would be an easy task, even in a tropical storm.
As soon as my feet left the pitching deck, I understood how wrong I had been. My memories of the weather at sea had become distant and small in the years I had spent far from shore, and they no longer informed me of the danger. My stomach flew into my throat, and my heart fell to my belly, and I pressed my body into the rigging. The deck might as well have been a hundred miles below me; I could not move my feet to reach it.
The sound of tearing canvas, louder in my ears even than thunder, shook me from my fearful stupor. I could make the climb, I knew, and I could do no less after the crew had risked their lives to rescue me from Salmacha’s dungeon—and if the mast came down, dragged into the sea by the sail, I would suffer no less than any other soul on this ship. Bending my head against the driving rain, I willed my hand to open, my arm to reach, and I began to climb.
I forgot the discomfort of my wet clothes and the roar of the oncoming thunder. My hands ached, the strain of holding my weight to the rope as the ship did its best to throw me like a bucking horse curling them into painful claws. The pain did not matter, so I forgot it as well. There was no ship, no storm, no sea below. Only the climb existed.
Lightning flashed twice in quick succession, and a thundercrack followed close behind. The thought that we were not yet in the worst of the storm flickered distantly before I pushed it aside. Wind tore at my hair and my clothing, and the rigging shook beneath me. I lifted one hand and found a good grip before moving one foot, over and over, not daring to look farther than the next few inches of rope.
At last, my hand met wood: the main sail’s yard, to which the canvas still clung. It groaned and squealed like an injured animal as the sail pulled it back and forth. Far below, a towering wave crashed over the deck, and I felt its spray but did not look down.
I stepped through the ropes, letting them carry my weight while I hooked both feet into the rigging to keep me secure. The wind was like the hand of a giant, pulling me back. I dared lift only one hand to remove the coil of rope from my shoulder and loop it over the yard. One hand and one knot at a time, as the mast waved at the sky like a spear in the hand of a warrior issuing a challenge, I fashioned myself a harness and clambered onto the swaying beam. If I were to fall, a possibility that seemed more and more likely with each passing second, I would not crash to the deck or drop into the ocean, never to be seen again, but the ropes themselves were a danger: I might snap my neck if I were to be removed from the yard with enough force.
I could not stand even if I had wished to. I crawled, hand over hand and knee in front of knee, to the first knot where the sail was still affixed. I thought to untie it, but that would remove both my hands from their grips, and I was neither brave nor foolhardy enough to risk it. Wrapping both legs around the beam, I fumbled for the knife I kept at my belt and cut the rigging free.
The sail tore away with a roar of wind, and it flew like a flag, still attached by two more points. With both legs and one arm wrapped around the yard, I returned the knife to my belt. I would be useless if I were to lose it.
Hamilcar steered the ship into the oncoming wave, and it crashed over the bow, drenching the crew below. I could not watch—the rain ran into my eyes, and the sail stretched out over the deck before curling in on itself again, and fixing my eyes upon a point more than a hand’s breadth from my nose made me blind with dizziness. I inched forward, casting a wordless prayer for their safety out into the storm.
Rain came down in sheets, and I gasped for breath. If not for the motion of the ship throwing me from side to side, I would have thought I was swimming rather than climbing. I heard the sail shaking before I saw it, and felt the straining rope with one groping hand. I secured myself to the yard, drew my knife, and drove it into the center of the taut fibers.
The rope snapped with a sound like a tiny thunderclap. My knife twisted from my hand and fell out of sight. Pain shot across my right forearm as the rope struck me with all the force of the storm. Before I could remind myself to remain still, my hand jerked back, and I slipped over the beam.
My harness tightened across my chest. The backs of my knees, scraped raw from twisting over the rough wood, stuck painfully to the yard. I had not quite fallen, not yet.
Thunder assaulted my ears. It was as though I was trapped inside a drum, and someone beat upon it. Lightning, blue-white and brighter than fire, followed after before I could take another breath.
The main sail tore its last knot and flew away across the waves.
Back to Chapter XXI: Calm Seas
Forward to Interlude Three: The Broken Road
Thanks for reading! Brief programming note: United Healthcare has been holding my meds hostage for three days, and I am very sick. I should be able to pick them up today and get back to writing soon; I am still planning on having everything done on schedule, but I will let you know if that changes.
As always, I appreciate you! I hope your October is going at least a little smoother than mine.
Space Whales Press 
2 thoughts on “Journey to the Water Chapter XXII: The Tempest”