The Wand & the Sea (15 page)

The magician nodded. “It is what we have hoped for, but I confess I am at a loss. If you don't know how to find them, Captain, and the king's maps are no help—”

“Hang on a tick,” said Morgan, giving a devious grin. “I
know
how to find 'em. I just ha'n't done it yet.”

“Why not?” Holly asked.

“Because, lassie”—the captain gave her a broad wink—“I ha'n't had you.”

The next day Holly awoke to the sound of rain lashing at the shutters, and a feeble gray autumn light struggling through the beetling clouds. She was cold and stiff, and Áedán had a dull gray cast about him. But he leaped into the hearth and lit a fire that he nestled in for a full five minutes, which restored his golden color and bright eyes. Holly picked him up and left Jade snoozing by the fire. She ran through the drizzling rain to see Ranulf, who was recuperating in Almaric's garden shed.

She was afraid she would find him weak, maybe even unconscious, but she was surprised to see him finishing up a hot mash that Almaric had given him. Though still bruised, the centaur had trimmed his beard and brown curls. Was it possible he was even less thin? Ranulf looked up from his breakfast with bright eyes and inclined his head. “My Lady Adept,” he said. “I owe you my life.”

It was perhaps more proper, in such a serious moment, to return the bow, but Holly stepped around a hay bale and gave him a hug instead. “Ranulf, you look so much better,” she said, then turned to the magician. “Almaric, how did you—”

“The Mounted are quick healers,” said Almaric, beaming modestly. “But I do have a few tonics up my sleeve that speed the process. I trust you slept well, Lady Holly?”

“I'm okay,” she said, though the events of the previous night before were catching up to her. It felt like she hadn't slept at all. “The captain said they were sailing at dawn,” she remembered suddenly.

“So Almaric has told me,” Ranulf said. “We had best ready ourselves.”

“So . . .” Holly had hoped Ranulf would have some wisdom to impart. “You think we should go with them?”

“Lady Holly,” said Almaric gently, “if you don't sail with the
Sea Witch
, there's no hope of finding the Adepts.”

“But
I
don't know where they are. How can I help?”

“I cannot say. But Morgan believes that having you aboard will make all the difference.”

“I—I don't exactly trust this . . .” Holly started to say
pirate
, then out of politeness, substituted
captain
.

“Once, many such crews plied the seas,” said Ranulf, “but today only a very few remain. Perhaps Morgan's crew alone. There be none else to trust.”

Holly left Ranulf to finish his breakfast and went to seek her own. The dawning sun had broken through the thinning cloud cover, lighting it in brilliant streaks of orange and pink. The sunbeams shot through the trees and lit up the hull of the
Sea Witch
as she came upon it. Holly halted in her tracks, spellbound.

The ship was magnificent, for all that it sat wedged among the ruined trees. Its two masts stretched twenty feet into the canopy, the square-rigged sails rolled neatly up, and all manner of complicated rigging stretched to the deck in a spiderweb array. Two long ropes like ladders reached up to the crow's nest, where one of the men stood peering over the treetops with a spyglass. The shallow keel was sunk into the fertile woodland soil, where it had carved a track. On the deck above—which curved above Holly's head and was too high to see properly—the crew scampered about, readying the ship for sailing.

But even this formidable sight was not the most surprising.

At the stern of the ship a figure emerged from a cabin. The sun glinted off a riot of black curls, and Holly knew it was the captain. The full beam of the sunrise hit Morgan's slight shoulders, smooth face, and lithe, webbed fingers. He stretched, pulled the hat from his head, and raked one hand through his hair.

No, Holly realized with a shock. Through
her
hair.

Holly blushed. Quickly, her memory rewound, and she recalled how Morgan had appeared in the moonlight, and then in the dim firelight of Almaric's cottage; how she had bellowed for ale, and strode so purposefully through the room; how she
was
tall, after all, at least six feet, and broad-shouldered for a girl. And her face was lean and darkened by the sun, and her brows as black as her hair, and still . . .

“Wow,” someone said breathlessly behind her, and she turned to find both of the boys staring up on deck, realizing their mistake just as she had.

“Um,” Ben said uncomfortably, “do you guys see what I'm seeing?”

“Well, what's the big deal?” Holly said, finding her voice at last. “A pirate can't be a girl?”

“That's not just a girl,” Everett said softly.

At that, the captain noticed them in the glade and gave them a broad wink before hollering to her crew.

“Oggler! Down to the deck, yeh bilge rat. All hands, fore and aft! To shore, and feed yer faces afore we sail!”

“Come on, quit staring,” Holly muttered, and pulled both of them toward the cottage.

Once Morgan and her dozen crew members had eaten their fill—Holly and the boys hardly had time to take a bite before they descended and cleaned out Almaric's larder—they prepared to set sail. Morgan and the crew climbed nimbly up a rope ladder that dangled from the deck down to the forest floor, and the captain bellowed, “Rowan! Throw down the stair!”

At that, a folding staircase descended like an accordion, and Holly and the boys followed Almaric and Ranulf aboard. Avery had already been taken aboard the night before and stowed in the brig, at the captain's insistence. From the main deck, Holly saw how the ship had cut a neat path through the wood and felled at least six large beech trees.

Holly craned her neck up to the sails, one hand on the rigging. The mast in the center of the deck flew a small square sail and a large, trapezoid-shaped sheet that stretched over the stern; the second mast, forward of the first, held two square sails; and the long bowsprit, which extended like a swordfish's nose off the bow, had two jib sails that Oggler and another crew member were busy unfurling. Above it all flew a black flag with a skull and crossbones.

“All hands below for descent,” called the pirate captain, and the men scurried to finish their duties before shoving past the others to open a hatch in the center of the deck.

“What're we doing?” Ben asked.

A red-haired crew member—another girl—noticed him. “We're puttin' to sea, lad. Now get below, Captain's orders.”

The passengers followed the crew down the hatch through a narrow passage that opened into a large open area crowded with barrels and lit by swinging lanterns. Holly found a porthole, and the boys crowded around her to watch what happened next.

With a great creaking and groaning, the
Sea Witch
began to sink.

The forest floor grew closer as Holly watched. The low shrubs rose to the level of the porthole. Then the grass split apart and they sank into the mud. Darkness enveloped the ship, and the only thing that broke it was the dim light of the lantern that swung from the ceiling.

“Uh . . . where are we going?” Ben asked. His face looked a bit green.

“To sea, I guess,” Everett said, though he sounded worried too.

“Where's the captain?” Holly asked the red-haired pirate.

“Morgan goes down with the ship,” she replied, as if that answered the question. Holly imagined Morgan standing at the wheel, the cavern opening beneath her, the dirt closing up over her like a grave.

“I can't breathe,” Ben said, coughing.

“Yes you can,” said Holly, though she too felt odd, as if a giant foot were standing on her chest. It was her imagination, she told herself. She knew they were underground, where there was no air, but Morgan had done this before, and the rest of the crew were all right; so they would be too. Ben's breath came in hitching little coughs, and he pawed through his jacket pockets for his inhaler.

All around her the hull moaned and creaked, and above she could hear cracking noises, as if the masts were breaking in half. Even the crew huddled together. From somewhere in the shadows a soft clucking told Holly there were chickens on board.

And then, just as the weight on her chest became unbearable, she felt a tiny bit lighter.

She took a tentative breath. And another.

“Look!” cried Everett, his face pressed to the porthole.

There appeared a faint greenish light, which brightened the longer they gazed at it. A moment later a fish swam by.

“We're . . . we're underwater,” Ben said. Holly could tell this was not an improvement in circumstances, as far as he was concerned.

“It's okay,” she said, striving to be calm. “The captain knows what he's—what
she's
—doing.”

And suddenly her stomach dropped, just as it did when she was in a rising elevator. A few more fish flew by the porthole, and then stands of seaweed and small creatures. The light became brighter still, until with a
whoosh
they broke the surface, and the crew gave a rousing cheer.

“On deck, on deck!” called Rowan, and the crew scrambled to the ladders.

Holly couldn't see how it had happened. The masts were perfectly straight and sound, glistening with seawater, which sluiced off the decks over the gunwale and dripped from the bowsprit. Yet somehow the sails themselves flapped dry in a brisk wind. And at the helm, looking damp as if from a brief shower, stood the captain, smiling at last, the salty spray on her face.

Holly and Everett ran to the railing and gazed out to sea. The land was nowhere to be seen. Ben nudged up between them.

“I just hope they have lifeboats on board,” he said.

For their first few days at sea, Everett and Ben and Holly spent a lot of time getting to know the ship. The
Sea Witch
was a brigantine, which for all its grandeur was a relatively small and speedy sailing craft. Amidships, it was about twenty feet wide, with all manner of rigging and coiled ropes and stowed casks and barrels and hatches in between. The deck, made of gleaming mahogany planks, ran about eighty feet end to end, with a raised poop deck in the stern, and a quarterdeck and forecastle in the bow. Everett thought it might feel like a rather large ship if there weren't crew running all over it most of the time, climbing into the rigging, yanking on the braces to turn the square sails, and swabbing the decks.

The crew, as many women as men, were tall, muscular people with rough, scarred hands. The women—girls, really, in their late teens—had webbed fingers like the captain. They worked quickly and chatted rarely. Rowan, the first mate, was a thin, ropy girl with kinky red hair and a sharp voice; she was always barking out orders. Kailani, the boatswain, was the friendliest. She climbed the rigging in her bare feet, her straight black hair falling down her back, and often grinned at Everett, crinkling up her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

Among the lesser crew were Innes and Quinn, two younger girls who despite their slight forms could crank the windlass as well as anyone; and Darcie, the cabin girl. The rest of the crew were men, about a dozen hands in all.

Everett and Ben shared a cramped cabin belowdecks with the skinny cook, who walked with a pronounced limp, and Oggler, the burly man who had pulled the boys out of the castle moat. Holly's cabin, which she shared with Kailani and Rowan, was a bit nicer; she even slept in a proper bunk instead of a hammock. The captain had the finest cabin, a roundhouse that curved out over the water beneath the poop deck. Everett reckoned he'd never see the inside of it.

The morning after they'd set sail, Everett came out on deck to find the old magician breathing in the salt air. Everett stood next to him against the gunwale, trying to get used to the rise and fall of the ship. Almaric seemed to have gained his sea legs in a hurry.