Sarah Driver - Sea

Sparrow’s stopped singing; now he’s just sobbing amongst the bed-furs. My brother’s sickly as a merwraith and full of heart-sadness, especially when he sings with the whales. Even more now that Da’s been away trading since the last full moon.

Thunderbolt, Sparrow’s pet moonsprite, sits on a pillow and chatters softly. Grandma plucks her from the pillow and drops her into a glass bottle, making a silvery moon-lamp that she hangs from a hook. It spills pale light across Grandma’s oak table, where the big crinkled map is nailed down, spotted with puddles of blood-red sealing wax. Furs, silks and velvets are heaped in one corner and chests are stuffed with golden eggs, onyx, jade and boxes of pearls. My diving sealskin hangs from a nail, still dripping wet from my morning dive.

That’s one of the things I’m best at – diving for pearls. When I collect more than three in a day Grandma tells us her best stories as we huddle amongst our blankets and furs.

Now I ent expecting stories, though. Just a flaming earful.

Grandma catches my jaw in her hand, checking my face for hurts. ‘You won’t be in need of stitching – I’ve a mind some of my crew will, though. Ent no place for a child on deck when terrodyls come near, girl. Half a hundred times I must have told you!’

‘But I ent no child. I just shot one of the terrodyls!’ I wave her hands away and fling myself down on the bunk I share with Sparrow. ‘And I’m the only one with the beast-chatter, so only I can understand—’

She scoffs. ‘You think we need beast-chatter to hear the hate in them terro-wails? You brought the creature down to crush us! Count yourself heart-glad we’re striking distance from land, with the damage you’ve done to that mast. By dawn we should be docked. But we’ll have to battle to make it through the night.’ Her voice is weary and her brow is furrowed with crags.

‘What am I to do with my arrows ’n my poison then? Save them for the merwraiths, when we’re good and scuttled?’

Grandma sits at her table and mixes sea-mud, kelp and herbs to make an ointment for my arm. ‘That’s enough o’ your flaming lip. If your da returned to find you dead and buried at the bottom of the sea, what would I tell him?’

‘That I died like any good captain; saving her crew.’ I scowl and pick a nib of hardened skin from around my fingernail. Bright blood wells and I suck it clean.

‘Twelve moons old and captain already, is she? I think not. I’m hopeful the gods will gift me a few more moons yet, my girl. And any captain knows better than to put the lives of all on board in danger, for the sake of showing off.’ Grandma seizes my arm and rubs ointment into my scorched skin. Her silver rings scrape me and I try to push her away but her hand’s clamped tight as a limpet.

My cheeks begin to burn. ‘I didn’t do it for showing off – I done it to avenge Grandpa, and to keep us safe! And it’s barely sundown. I’ll be thirteen tomorrow night! Sparrow’s eight and he ent even asleep yet!’ I splutter and almost choke on my words.

A small smile tugs at Grandma’s mouth. ‘Never mind what your brother’s doing, though he should be snoring by now. We might have need of his voice again afore the sun wakes. Off to the privy, now, Sparrow.’

‘Yep, off you go,’ I say, smirking at my brother. ‘Just be watchful that bigtooth shark don’t leap up and bite your behind while you’re peeing.’

Sparrow yelps and burrows deeper among the blankets. Grandma fixes me with her glass eye. Story goes, her eye went blind when she half turned to merwraith, when the ship of her childhood sank at the hands of wreckers and she nearly drowned. I stare back into its sea-green depths, hard and unblinking.

All of a sudden the fierceness drops out of her face and she starts to chuckle. ‘Gods have mercy,’ she gasps after a moment, clutching her sides. ‘Sparrow, off t’ the privy ’n I’ll hear no more about it. Mouse, get yourself into your nightclothes. You’re to get to bed, and stay put whilst I tend to my injured.’

She turns and clomps up the stairs, herding Sparrow before her. ‘My hide’s much too ancient for all this child-rearing caper,’ she exclaims. ‘Not enough that I’m captain and medsin-maker and—’ her grumblings fade as she disappears through the hatch.

I strip to my smallclothes, dry myself with a scrap of linen and wriggle into my nightshirt. One of my fingers is grazed raw from my bowstring, so I lick it clean and dab it with Grandma’s ointment. When I scoot onto our bunk and prop open the porthole the night rings with the siiigh and shhhhh of whales breathing.

In the sky, the great green fire spirits dance and ripple, stretching far away into the distance. Grandma says their pictures are gifts, to show us what will come and what has been. She says they showed our Tribe that I’d be a captain, before I was even born. At Sparrow’s birth the spirits said he’d be a whale-singer – and sure enough, he was singing before he could talk. I search for some sign of Da among the fire spirits as they flicker with life. But there’s naught of him there and my heart aches with it. ‘Da?’ I whisper.

Sparrow clatters back down the steps into the cabin. ‘You ent gonna see Da up there. He’s waiting with the land-lurkers.’ He jabs me in the ribs with his elbow to make me budge up on the bunk. I’m about to elbow him back when I see the way his hair sticks up in a nest cos I ent got round to brushing it today.

‘You better fetch that brush from—’

‘Shhh!’ hisses Sparrow. He bounces up on tiptoe and grabs the edge of the porthole to peer out.

A knot of women pass along the storm-deck, right below us. ‘Carpenters,’ I whisper, cos I can hear the little silver hammers on their belts chiming as they lug wood to patch some of the damage to the Huntress .

‘Bleeding nippers running about, bringing troubles on us,’ says one. ‘They should be kept below when the beasts come near! Captain’s granddaughter or no, it can’t go on!’

‘Aye, she could’ve scuppered us! We’ve a long night ahead.’

Me and Sparrow stare at each other. ‘I was just trying to keep our Tribe safe, and this is the heart-thanks I get?’

‘I’m cold.’ Sparrow pulls the porthole closed with a bang. ‘Who cares about the stupid carpenters? Can I have a story?’ he begs. He plops himself down amongst the bed-furs and wriggles his hand under the pillow to search out a crispy old starfish.

I sigh. ‘Crafty little bargainer, ent you?’ I shut one eye and squint at him. ‘All right. Just one.’

He pulls off a starfish arm and shoves it into his mouth. ‘No sky-monsters! And no stogs – Thunderbolt hates all giants cos they gobble up sprites and spit out their wings.’ The moonsprite hops about inside her glass bottle, making a tiny thudding sound like a moth beating against a lantern.

‘Gods,’ I mutter, rooting around under the bunk to grab the long, smooth walrus tusk with the pictures of Sparrow’s favourite story etched into it. ‘Next you’ll be telling me you still believe in the ghost of Captain Rattlebones or—’

‘Don’t!’ Sparrow shrieks, face gone pale. ‘You’re only allowed to tell the story of the Storm-Opal Crown!’ He nestles in next to me, peering at the pictures in the tusk. His yellow hair smells like nutmeg and his feet are cold as stones.

‘Get them freezing planks off me!’ I move the tusk to catch Thunderbolt’s moonlight. ‘One hundred moons and suns ago, long after the first oarsman beat his drum, but while you was still just a puny sea-spark on the wind—’