“Go away,” I say.
“Open your eyes,” Cain says, more firmly this time.
“No. Leave me alone.”
“Your father’s gone,” he says. “It’s just you and me.”
Great. Even worse. My father is so ashamed of me he wanted to get as far away as possible. Me, a man? Ha! I’m not even a boy, not even better than a bilge rat.
I open my eyes, squint as a ray of sunlight shoots between the billowing sails rising above me. Feel the warmth of a tear creeping down my cheek, tickling my skin.
Men don’t cry.
I wipe it away with the back of my hand.
Cain looks at me with eyes bluer than the ocean. “I saw what happened,” he says.
“Yeah, everyone did,” I mutter. “I got my ass kicked.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You could’ve won. You were the better swordsman, but when you almost cut him, you freaked. You practically let him win after that.”
“I almost killed him,” I whisper, as if saying it any louder might take away the almost part, leaving the brown boy lying bloody on the deck, my sword through his gut.
“True,” Cain says. “But you didn’t. You chose defeat over ending a life. A brave choice.”
It doesn’t feel very brave. Feels awful. “Father will never make me a man now,” I say.
Cain laughs and I frown. “He doesn’t have much of a choice,” he says. “Plus, he’ll be itching to get you off his ship as soon as possible now.”
I glare at him. “Thanks for the reminder.”
I see movement over his shoulder, on the shore, and I crane my neck to look around him. “What is it?” he asks, turning to follow my gaze.
Dozens of dark Riders spill onto the beach, their black horses stamping and bucking, their swords gleaming in the morning light. Watching us. Waiting. Almost like they’re hoping we’ll come ashore and fight them.
~~~
Because I’m the admiral’s son, turning fourteen and becoming a man means leaving The Merman’s Daughter, the ship I’ve grown up on, the ship I love, from its flowing white sails to its polished decks to the songs of the sailors in the morning, bellowed on the wind as they work. Songs of glory and victory and bravery.
Songs about people who aren’t me.
The men are singing now, and their song is for me, but I clamp my hands over my ears and try to block it out. I haven’t seen my father all day, which is fine by me. Seeing him will bring me nothing but pain.
My entire cabin rocks back and forth, as the waves flow beneath the ship. I welcome the gentle, calming motion, a source of normalcy in a place that’s feeling more and more abnormal by the day.
Maybe leaving is a good thing.
Maybe all I need is a bit of change to become a man.
Maybe not.
Blood in the water. Ripping, ripping, crushing my life away.
My father’s face, paler than the white sand beaches of storm country; his blue eyes, wet at first, shocked, but then later dry and red and full of spite. Anger directed at me and my failures.
I slam my fist against my bed pad, feeling pain lance down my fingers when I hit the wood through the stuffing. But the physical pain feels better than what I’m feeling inside. I hit the bed again and again, and I realize the tears are flowing now, which only makes me angrier, because
(men don’t cry.)
Do they?
Do they?
“Bring us the boy! Bring us the boy!” The chanting begins above deck, and although the word boy is meant to be a temporary label, I feel like it’s being shoved into my chest with a hot iron.
I rub my chest with one hand while wiping away my tears on a blanket with my other—
“Bring us the boy!”
I stand up, smoothing the wrinkles on my new blue uniform—
“Bring us…”
Squeeze my fists at my sides—
“…the BOY!”
—and leave my cabin, taking the stairs one at a time, which I haven’t done since my legs grew long enough to skip a step or two.
On the top step, I pause, take a deep breath, and emerge onto the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship, above the officer cabins.
A cheer rises up, but there’s laughing too, and men elbowing each other’s ribs, telling a joke or two about earlier today, reliving my defeat at the hands of a scrawny bilge rat. Hobbs’ jokes are the loudest of all, careening across the ship, bouncing off barrels and railings and masts, swarming around me like relentless flies.
Cain greets me with a smile and a firm handshake, which I don’t return, because I’m distracted by the hundreds of torches blazing across the ship, illuminating the typically dark and shadowy deck. And I’m trying, desperately trying
(to find him.)
But my father is nowhere to be seen. Did he forget? Impossible. And yet he’s not here. He’s finally given up on me, abandoned me.
I feel a pain in my stomach so sharp it’s like the bilge rat’s kicking me again.
But no, this pain is worse. Much worse. Because my father’s not here.
“Cain?” I say.
“He’ll come,” he says, reading my mind.
Blood in the water.
“He won’t,” I say, and Cain doesn’t respond because he knows I could be right.
As Cain leads me across the quarterdeck to the edge, where it’s elevated above the lower decks, I scan the crowd. Everyone’s here, even the women, having come up from below deck, throwing aside their pots and pans and the clothes they were cleaning. Come to watch me become a man.
I recognize many men and boys I know and love, like Cain, who have been my friends for as long as I can remember. There’s Grubbs, the ship’s head cook, wearing a splotched and stained apron bulging out with the curve of his well-fed belly; a man who used to let me sit on his table and sneak extra rations of gruel before it was served to the rest of the men and women. Down the row is Croaker, the lookout with a voice like a crow, who first taught me to climb the ladder to the very tops of the tower. I spot a group of boys, jostling and pushing each other for position, trying to get the best view possible. My friends. One of them, Jobe, sees me looking their way and stops punching the kid next to him to wave. I want to wave back, but if I had to guess I’d say men don’t wave. So I just nod in his direction, finally feeling the tug of a smile on my lips.
Because I’m becoming a man! Whether my father’s here or not, this is one thing he can’t stop.
Cain clears his throat and a cheer erupts from the men and women and boys and girls, louder than before—and no laughs, no jokes. All for me.
All for me?
I feel a shadow from behind.
My father looms over me, his admiral’s cap like a dark cloud.
Chapter Four
Sadie
“Why didn’t they stop to fight us?” I ask, hours later.
Clang!
I catch my mother’s sword on the broadside of my own, spin to get in close to her, but she pushes me away with a strong hand. Although my legs are tiring, I feel reinvigorated when I suck in a deep breath of the cool, salty air.
Mother dances to the side, onto the hard sand, her feet lithe and graceful like an animal’s. “I don’t know,” she says. “They don’t always fight. Sometimes they move past us, searching for a safe place to land, to refill their freshwater supply.”
I shove the tip of my sword in the sand and release it, letting it spring back and forth in the wind. Put my hands on my hips. “But why do they get to choose when we fight. Why can’t we attack them for a change?”
She looks at me with an amused expression, her black ponytail dangling in front, over her shoulder. Her dark brown skin almost seems light brown against the darkening sky, which is one single mass of black clouds with no beginning and no end. Down the shoreline, lightning flashes in the distance. The wind picks up, tossing my untied hair around my face as easily as it picks up a fallen feather from one of the dozens of gulls that swirl overhead, cawing and crying. The waves are dark blue and churning, crashing on the sand with the strength and power of ten horses. The Deep Blue is restless.