Antony John - Firebrand

Alice turned to face me. “What?”

I closed my eyes and pictured the Roanoke sound as it had looked earlier: relatively calm, a gentle breeze. “I think she’s the one who unlocked the door during the night. I’m certain she opened this window, because it was closed when Griffin and I left earlier.”

Alice chuckled, but it sounded forced. “Let me get this straight: You think she knew where to find a secret key. And even though she had an injured shoulder, you reckon she jumped out the window. So how did she swim?”

“She didn’t need to swim. She just needed to stay afloat until the cutter picked her up.”

“The pirate cutter? Why would they rescue her?”

I couldn’t meet her eyes anymore. “Because Dare is Tessa’s son. The pirate captain is my uncle.”

Impossible,” murmured Alice. She placed both hands flat on the table beside her. “Dare destroyed our colony. He killed your mother—”

“You think I don’t know that?” I stomped over to the desk and prodded the logbooks. “It’s all right here.”

She ran a finger along the spines. “If Dare’s your uncle, then the Guardians have known all along. Maybe they know this ship too.” She narrowed her eyes as she ran through the meaning of it all. “We need to get out of this cabin, Thom. And we need to lock the door.”

“Why?”

“The Guardians have been lying to us about Dare our entire lives. My guess is they don’t want us to know what’s in those logbooks. If they get in here, they’ll destroy them.”

“And how are we going to lock the room?”

Alice pointed to the door. A ring of keys dangled from the lock.

“That wasn’t there earlier.”

“Well then, I guess it’s another thing Tessa wanted us to see.”

Once we’d locked the door, I headed straight to my father. The metal mesh of his cage had been too strong for me to break or bend, but I wouldn’t need to do either if I could open the lock.

I stepped into the tiny room beneath the stairs and gagged at the rancid smell of vomit and soiled clothes. Once my eyes adjusted to the low light, I saw the outline of his body lying horizontal against the far wall. I hated that Alice was seeing him like this. My father was a proud, strong man, but Dare’s men had savaged him.

I fumbled the first key against the lock at the center of the cage. It wouldn’t work.

“Don’t bother.” My father’s voice sounded empty. “Won’t work.”

Hearing him speak made me work even quicker. I was desperate to get him out, but angry too. “You sure about that? We found them in Dare’s cabin.”

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“Why didn’t you say that he was our uncle? Why would you keep that from us?”

Father didn’t respond at first, just breathed in and out slowly. “The morning after Griffin was born, thirteen years ago, Dare killed your mother. How could I explain that she died by her own brother’s hand?” He swallowed hard. “We couldn’t even avenge her death because he was gone . . . and we had no way to follow.”

My hands were shaking. Alice slid the keys from my fingers and continued trying them, one by one. None of them worked.

“He won’t have left the key,” said Father softly. “I’m sorry.”

I’d been sure it would work. Sure that we’d be able to release him, get him out so that we could tend to him. Now I was certain that he’d be dead before we reached Fort Sumter.

“Water,” he whispered, voice growing faint. “Griffin left a canister.”

I felt around on the floor and found it. It was too big to pass through the tight metal mesh, so I poured it slowly through the top. Father turned his head slightly and opened his mouth, tried to catch the drops as they fell. After a moment, he grew tired and rested his head against the floor again.

I took the keys from Alice and tried them all one more time. She didn’t stop me either. Just stayed beside me as I cycled through them.

“Go find Ananias and Eleanor,” Father said finally. “If they combine their elements, they might be able to bend the lock.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by combining elements. I wasn’t sure the lock would bend, either; the metal was the strongest I’d seen. But with no other way to get him out, I knew we had to try. The alternative was too grim to imagine.

As we left the room, Alice removed a key from the ring. “This is the one to Dare’s cabin. We’ll open all the cabins we can, but not that one. If anyone asks where we found the ring, we say it was hanging beside your father’s cage. Understood?”

I gave a nod and went to get Ananias. We needed to explore the ship, and fast. We needed food and a place for everyone to sleep. And Ananias and Eleanor had a job to do.

»«

One strike later, we’d opened most of the cabins and removed whatever we could use: blankets scattered haphazardly across the floors, utensils that had slid beneath rickety furniture. Even though there wasn’t much food on board, there was enough dried fruit, peanuts, and herbs to last a few days, which was more than we could have hoped for. More importantly, the hurricane had filled the ship’s water harvester. Once Rose emerged from her cabin, she’d be able to tell us if it was safe to drink.

Ananias and I entered the final cabin together. “Father wants you and Eleanor to combine elements,” I said, tossing him another dirty, moth-eaten blanket. “He says it’s the only way to break the cage.”

“I know. Fire and wind. He already asked me.”

“What did you tell him?”

He moved beside a porthole and stared at the sliver of barrier island to the west. The sun was low in the sky, bathing his face in orange glow. “I only found out about combining elements by accident, believe it or not,” he said, avoiding the question. “It was a few years ago. Eleanor and I were holding hands. She told me to make a flame. She wanted to see if she could move the air around it—make it dance, she said.” He closed his eyes, savoring the memory—not of the flame, I suspected, but of holding hands. His mouth slipped into an easy smile. “Turns out, our elements combined. She blew that flame three yards. Set light to a bush. I must’ve dumped a beach’s worth of sand on it before the fire went out.”

Story over, he seemed to become aware of me again. The smile faded.

“What did you say to Father, Ananias?”

He shrugged. “I said I couldn’t help him. Not yet.”

“Why?”

“Because Eleanor won’t hold my hand anymore. She won’t speak to me, or look at me. She won’t talk to Alice, either. Or her parents. Something is really wrong, and I don’t know what to do. I’ll give her space if that’s what she needs, but it’s like she’s slipping away from me. From all of us.”

“What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.”

I still wanted him to ask for Eleanor’s help. Kyte, Guardian of the Wind, was dead. Dennis had the element too, but he was in shock. Only Eleanor could do this, and if Kyte was correct, our elements were growing weaker all the time. And yet, as I looked at my brother’s face, I knew I had to let it go for now. It was the first time I could remember seeing him cry.

»«

Shortly before sunset, we assembled on deck. The three Guardians, too weak to stand, sat in a semi-circle around Kyte’s dead body. Dennis hugged his mother tightly, crying into her hair, while she stared ahead, unblinking. Rose stood beside her father’s head, staring down at the man she’d spent her life trying to please.

No one spoke. Someone should have been offering thanks for his life and blessings for his safe passage to whatever lay beyond. But what thanks could be offered for a life cut short? How could we hope for safe passage while his rust-red clothes reminded us how sudden and violent his death had been?