Water & Storm Country (18 page)

“It would be unusual for a lieutenant to be
seen repairing sails,” Barney says.

“Is there another?”

“Unfortunately, the sad state of the sails is
a direct result of an unfortunate accident involving the previous
sail climber. While performing his work he fell to his death. His
breath stank of grog.”

“I must train a replacement immediately.
Would that be acceptable to the men?”

Barney winks. “Given the need, I suspect that
will pass the men’s scrutiny. Did you have someone in mind?”

I chew on my lip, wondering whether the words
between my teeth are really as foolish as my brain is telling me
they are. “The job is dangerous and I will not risk the life of one
of the sailors. A bilge rat will do, someone good at climbing, like
that nasty girl who’s always cleaning the masts and glaring at
everyone. Bring her to my cabin when the sun is at its peak.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Barney says, the annoyingly
contagious smile returning to his lips once more.

~~~

“Get the scorch offa me!” The shout is just
outside my door and I can’t help but cringe when I hear it. It’s
her. Jade.

And from the sounds of it, she’s putting up
one helluva a bloody fight.

I’mafoolI’mafoolI’mafool.
What was I
thinking?

There’s a heavy thud on the door, and I
suspect it’s from Jade’s foot, rather than one of my men’s hands.
“Come in!” I shout.

The door is thrown open and a pair of
sailors—Sid and Monty—carry her in, trying to subdue her thrashing
arms and legs. Sid’s lip is cut and dribbling blood and Monty’s eye
is already showing purple from what I expect was a well-placed
kick, for it was he who apparently drew the short straw and was
forced to carry her legs.

“You!” Jade screams when she sees me, and I
want to step back at the ferocity of her verbal assault, but I
can’t. Instead I step forward.

“Leave her to me,” I say to the men.

“Sir, I don’t think—” Sid starts to say, his
knuckles white from pinning Jade’s arms to her side.

“Leave her,” I repeat.

When Sid hesitates for a moment, Jade twists
her head back and tries to bite him. He yelps, dropping her.
Because Monty is still clutching her legs, she tumbles face first
on the wooden floor. Monty drops her legs and they both scuttle out
of the room like crabs returning to their holes.

The door slams and I’m alone with her.

I reach down to help Jade to her feet, but
she slaps my hand away, pushes up, kneels, and stands; shoves me
back with a strength that’s disconnected from her slim build. Her
eyes flash with the anger of a sea snake who’s been disturbed from
its slumber.

The backs of my legs hit my bed and I sit
down.

“What do you want with me?” Jade says,
accusation in her voice. What does she think I’m going to do to
her? Her eyes are flitting from me to the bed and back again.
Oh
no.
She thinks I want to…that I’m going to try to…

“No,” I say. “It’s not what you think. I only
wanted to—”

“To what? To make me another of your
possessions? It’s bad enough that I’m chained to this ship. To be
chained to you would be ten times worse.”

“No,” I say again, thinking of how to get
this conversation back on track, if it ever was at all, but finding
myself utterly at a loss for words.

“No what?” she says, glaring, her hands on
her hips. “You have two big men drag me down here and you’re
surprised I’m jumping to conclusions?”

“I only wanted to talk to you. Like when you
climbed the quarterdeck stairs.”

“And you slapped me and threw me in the
brig.”

“You left me no choice,” I say, annoyed at
the pleading tone in my voice.

“You’re just like the others,” she says. Like
who? Like my father? Like Hobbs? Am I? Should I be?

“Then why did you tell me your name?”

The question closes her lips, stops whatever
retort or accusation that was flying up from her throat. She takes
a deep breath, swallowing it like a bite of gruel, closes her eyes
as if remembering something.

Eyes still closed, she says, “Why did you
save my life?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly.

Her eyes flash open. “You should’ve let me
die. There’s no life for me here.”

The despair in her voice surprises me. A girl
so young, so seemingly full of life, shouldn’t sound like that. It
reminds me of someone.
My mother
, I realize with a jerk.
Before the accident she had started sounding like that, more and
more with each passing day.

“I—I don’t know what to say,” I manage to get
out.

She sucks in another deep breath. “Why am I
here?” she asks, but this time there’s no accusation in her voice
and she sounds almost defeated.

“I wanted to—”

“I know, I know, you wanted to burnin’ talk
to me, but why else? What’s the cover story?”

“I’m going to teach you to repair sails,” I
say.

She raises an eyebrow, as if surprised. “And
what if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll leave you alone forever,” I
say.

She lifts a hand to her brown forehead,
massages her skin. Seconds tick by. “When do we start?” she
asks.

I can’t hide my smile this time.
“Immediately,” I say.

N
othing my mother
put me through in training is as hard as taming a horse.

Especially when the horse is Passion, living
up to her namesake with every stomp, every gallop, every barely
thwarted effort to escape. The stables are nothing more than a
challenge to her. Thrice now she’s smashed through her gate, come
charging out of the stables, knocking stable boys and Riders out of
her way, snorting and whinnying when she felt the light breeze on
her nose.

And thrice we’ve brought her back.

Growing up training with my mother, I dreamed
many times of the day I’d receive my horse, how I’d jump upon her
and gallop off across the plains, wind streaming through my hair
and her mane, connected by a bond as thick and strong as bone.

I haven’t even thought about riding Passion
yet, and it’s been several weeks.

Sometimes she seems calm, almost tame, like
when she drinks from the water trough, but then I blink and she’s
kicking the trough over, spilling a lake of water through her
stall, smashing into the wooden sides as if her freedom takes
precedence over the wholeness of her body.

Freedom is an illusion.

Despite the silence that’s grown like a
pregnant raincloud between my father and me, his words fill my mind
more and more.

Listen to your father, for he is wise.

Is my mother right? Were her last words of
advice more than just words?

To make matters worse, Remy is already riding
his horse—a fully black stallion he’s named Bolt—the first of the
new Riders to do so. Around and around they run, Remy whooping and
hollering like they’ve been riding together their whole lives.

I look away from him and focus on Passion,
who’s straining against the six ropes anchored deep in the ground
that I’m using to keep control of her. If I had some help, I know I
could tame her, but unfortunately, a Rider taming their horse is a
solitary endeavor, part of the bonding process.

I approach her, hand extended in peace.
“Shhh,” I say when she snorts, a sound full of heavy air and a
warning. “I only want to talk to you.”

A change to my method is needed. I’ve tried
brawn, pulling her with the ropes, futilely fighting her weight and
strength. I’ve tried coercion, offering small morsels like apples
and carrots to convince her to perform small tasks, like walking a
short distance, or bowing her head, or strutting in a circle, but
she seems immune to bribery. Most of the time she ends up knocking
me over and taking the treats anyway.

I stop a few feet from her, speak to her. Not
a command, sharp and demanding obedience, but soft and with
meaning.

“You are perfection,” I say, receiving a low
grumble that vibrates her lips in response.

Obviously
, she seems to say.

“I am not.”

Again, her reply sounds like one of complete
agreement.

“I need you.”

A soft whinny, her eyes blazing.
I only
need myself,
is what I interpret.

“What if we were meant to be together?”

No response. Does she understand me? Has she
really understood anything I’ve just said, or are the responses
I’ve inferred just a child’s imagination?

Unfazed, I say, “What if our strength lies in
our bond?” No response. “What if apart neither of us are really
free, but slaves to not knowing what could have been?”

Her eyes, although as wild as ever, are fully
focused on me. She has stopped straining against the ropes.

The wind, which was so strong a moment ago,
has fallen silent, leaving us in a void of silence. Rider and
steed. Sadie and Passion. In my mind, our names melt together until
they are not worthy of the combined being we have become. No name
is worthy.

“We can be invincible,” I say.

And I see it in her eyes: a change, an
understanding, an agreement.

And she explodes forward, forcing me to jump
out of her path as she pulls up each and every stake, shooting them
into the air, galloping forward in a jumble of power and ropes and
pride.

And I’m laughing and shouting and panting,
watching her go. Watching her run across the plains away from me.
Because I know.

She’ll turn around this time.

And she does.

She stops and turns, looking back at me with
frustration. Although she thinks she wants to, she can’t go.
Because now she needs me too.

~~~

Coming to a tenuous partnership with Passion
doesn’t help things at home. Father is still Father, full of
unwanted advice and long periods of silence while he meditates,
seeing visions that will cost other sons and daughters their
mothers and fathers. Calamity and fire and death and pain and fear
and madness.

I’m becoming more cynical of the function of
the Men of Wisdom with each passing day. Of what use are
predictions of the future if you can’t change them?

Sometimes just looking at him makes my chest
burn with anger at the dual losses I’ve suffered. My brother and
mother. My playmate and master.

But we suffer each other out of
necessity.

When I see love and caring for me in his
eyes, I return it with a glare, not feeling bad about it until
later, when Passion chastises me by throwing me from her back. She
only seems to do that when I’ve been cruel to my father, as if she
can sense the anger inside me.

“I’m sorry, Pash, but you don’t know the
history,” I say, brushing grass and dirt off my black riding robe.
I crack my jaw a few times, feeling it click back into place.
Passion allows me to ride her now, but only on her terms, and if
she wants to discard me she does so with vigor and without
regret.

He’s your father,
her snort seems to
say.

“And he’s a coward.”

After that comment she won’t let me ride her
for the rest of the afternoon.

~~~

That night our tent feels more like a prison,
such is the tension between us, thick and barred, twisted with
barbs and spikes.

When I make a move to leave, to go for a
walk, my father stops me. “Sadie,” he says, his voice cracking.

I whirl on him, unable to hold back the
clench I feel between my ribs. “Unless you’re going to admit your
faults, the hand you played in Paw’s and mother’s deaths, I suggest
you let me go.”

His eyes are instantly clouded with tears,
full of shame and self-loathing. The truth is in the heavy mist,
raining from his eyelids and quickly forming into filthy puddles
made dark by his deep brown eyes.

The light flickers like an omen.

I turn and he says, “Wait.”

“Admit the truth,” I say, not looking
back.

“Sadie, I can’t,” he says and I know the
tears are falling, dripping from his chin, splashing his weakness
in his lap.

“You can’t or you won’t?” I say to the tent
opening.

“Both.”

He can’t because he’s pathetically weak. And
he won’t because he’s ashamed of himself.

“Right,” I say. “Of course.” My sarcasm only
adds to the tension.

“I have something I have to tell you,” he
says, and a sharp breath whistles between my teeth. Is this it?
Will he finally admit his wrongdoing, be a man?

“Does it have to do with Paw or Mother?” I
ask.

Yes.

“No,” he says.

“Save it for someone who cares,” I say,
pushing into the night.

“Wait,” he says again, but I don’t.

I’ve got no one to talk to. Remy’s tried to
speak to me a few times, but I’ve ignored him, and finally he
stopped trying. Passion will only give me a hard time about the way
I’m treating my father and I’m really not in the mood for a
lecture.

With nowhere else to go, I run for the beach,
nodding to the watchmen on duty as I pass the last few tents in the
camp circle. Although the air is dry, lightning crackles in the
distance, warning of an impending storm. Bumps rise up on my arms
and I hug myself, rubbing them away.

The ocean is surprisingly calm, and I sit for
a while, watching it breathe. They say Mother Earth’s hand extends
to the very edges of the sea, at which point the Deep Blue governs
itself, but I don’t know if I believe that. There are too many
signs of the good Mother’s hand in everything. She paints the
clouds overhead, lifts the seabirds on gusts and bursts of wind,
heats the ocean with her fiery sun.

If anything, the Deep Blue is a footman to
Mother Earth.

The moon is bright tonight, rolling out a
carpet of light across the ocean, shimmering anywhere the water
pops up. A small wave rolls onto the sand, reaching toward me,
sending crabs scurrying out of the way.