The Emerald Sea Page 5

  “Damaris,” chastised Miss Quincy, “there’s no need for you to fret over—”

  “Go!” yelled Damaris, making us all jump. “If you’ve got any damned sense, you’ll all go now!”

  We went, though Miss Quincy lectured Damaris the entire way—at least until the wind and waves hit. The ship’s usual rhythmic rocking grew so severe so suddenly that many of us were thrown off our feet. Miss Quincy stopped scolding or saying much of anything at all. She hunkered down into a corner of the common room, her face pale and pinched. Not knowing what to do, some girls sat beside her while others took shelter in their cabins. When someone tentatively suggested going outside, Damaris called her a name that would’ve resulted in solitary confinement for the rest of the trip if Miss Quincy had been paying attention.

  “Stay sharp, because we might have to go back to the deck,” Damaris informed us, her brown eyes grim. “If anyone in the crew tells you to go up, go. If you see any water in your room, go up. If the ship doesn’t right itself, go up. Until then, stay out of their way.”

  “‘If the ship doesn’t right itself’?” I asked.

  As though cued, the Gray Gull lurched wildly, tipping so far that the wall I slammed against gave the brief, disorienting sensation of being the floor. When the ship rocked back to its original position, Damaris shot me a pointed look.

  Most girls stayed in the common room, so I went to my cabin, preferring the solitude to all the crying and wailing. I sat with clasped hands, murmuring a few prayers for our safety, but mostly offering pleas that Merry would be protected and taken care of if I didn’t make it out of this alive. Winnifred entered at one point and sat on her own bunk. She’d given me the silent treatment for most of the trip, but after long minutes of listening to the wind and the thunder, she asked, “Do you pray to Uros? Or to one of the angels?”

  “To Ariniel.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Why her? Why not to Kyriel, to battle the storm? Ariniel only guards the ways.”

  “Then she’ll know the way out of this. Seems like focusing on that is a lot smarter than running into a fight. No offense to the glorious Kyriel.”

  “I hope not.” Winnifred almost smiled at me. “We can’t risk any blasphemy right now.”

  A brief, taunting lull eventually marked the tempest’s eye, and then the onslaught returned with new force. Winnifred and I didn’t say a word after that until I spied water slowly seeping in between the planks of one of our cabin’s corners. I jumped up with a startled cry, just as Damaris’s voice rang out in the hall: “Get out! Go above deck! Above deck!”

  Winnifred was out of the room before Damaris finished, but I hurried to my trunk, fumbling at the lock with frantic fingers. Damaris stuck her head in and shouted at me to move, but I didn’t budge until the lid popped open. I grabbed the sheaf of papers that included all the letters I’d written on the voyage, as well as Olivia’s drawing. With shaking hands, I wrapped the pages in a piece of canvas and shoved the bundle into my bodice. The whole time, water continued spreading across the floor.

  By the time I reached the ladder leading up, the other girls had already gone above—except for Polly and Joan. They were forcibly dragging Miss Quincy along. Our chaperone looked like a sleepwalker, her blank eyes staring ahead without seeing.

  I helped them get her out, and then we joined the rest of the passengers in a section of the deck that was more or less out of the crew’s way. Around us, a nightmare raged. An eerie color, neither black nor green but some sickening mix of the two, had taken over the sky, obscuring all memory of the afternoon sun we’d stood in not so long ago. Lightning occasionally flashed above us, giving a brief view of the swelling, frothy waves. A blast of wind rolled the ship to its side again, sending people and equipment sliding.

  We heard the first mate shout about pumping water out from below, and then another gust knocked down part of the rigging. It crashed near the helm, barely missing a few sailors. I shifted to my knees and peered over the railing as rain lashed my face. When the next bolt of lightning flared, I spied only darkness on the water.

  “Where’s the Good Hope?” I cried. “What’s happened to it?”

  “It was on the starboard side,” yelled Damaris. “I don’t know if it’s there anymore.”

  I didn’t dare go look, but I prayed again to Ariniel to guide both our ships out of this. And I prayed that no matter how this ended, Adelaide would forgive me.

  Water sloshed over the deck a number of times, but amazingly, our ship always managed to right itself again. We were drenched by the time the winds began to slow, though my papers—tucked under my bodice—remained mostly dry. When it became clear we’d faced the worst of the storm, we then had to endure the agonizing process of waiting out the night to determine the extent of the damage. Even though the ship no longer heaved, we seemed to sit at an odd angle, and water continued leaking below deck.

  As the sun rose, we dared to emerge from our huddle. That’s when we learned the ship’s rudder, and therefore its ability to steer, had been severely compromised when the rigging fell on the quarterdeck. A mainsail near the bow had also taken irreparable damage, and even the figurehead had been shattered to splinters. Damaris told us the crew had no real way to navigate the ship anymore, short of rowing.

  “Which might be okay—except the captain’s got most of the crew working on the leaks,” she explained.

  I studied the gray, gray world and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to bring warmth to my chilled body. “How are we moving then? We seem to be going at a good pace . . . faster than the wind is. But that doesn’t make sense.”

  “We’re in the northerly current,” a gruff voice said behind us. We turned, and found a very haggard Captain Milford. “It runs up the coast of Adoria.”

  I searched frantically toward what I thought must be west. “Then are we there?”

  “Not yet. But near.” He glanced up at the crow’s nest, where a sailor scanned the horizon with a spyglass. “The northerly’s fast, and we can’t really counter it now. It’ll keep dragging us north for a while, but eventually it’ll lean west. As soon as we see land, I’ll have the men row hard.”

  “How far north are we?” I asked.

  The captain ran a hand over his sodden gray hair. “I don’t know. If the clouds clear tonight, I’ll be able to tell, but right now I’m just going by the compass. We’re well north of Cape Triumph, I can tell you that. The storm and the current have made sure of it.”

  He stalked off, and I tried to quell the unease in my stomach. Well north of Cape Triumph. What did that mean for us? Once we reached land, could we take another ship south? It’d be a delay, but I’d still be there ahead of Merry and have plenty of time to settle my situation.

  No land came into sight that day or the next. The clouds didn’t clear either. All we knew was that we were still going north, north, north. The sailors couldn’t fix the leaks, and we were permanently sentenced to the upper deck. The crew brought up as much cargo as they could and then continued their tireless pumping to keep us afloat until we reached the shore.

  I woke up on the third morning, hoping to see land, but only ocean greeted me. A flooded cargo hold had ruined most of our food supply, and the captain put everyone on strict rations, the passengers strictest of all. “The crew’s doing the work,” he stated.

  I paced around restlessly, hating the not knowing. Where were we? Had the Good Hope survived? Were they too drifting aimlessly? Those questions consumed me as we continued drifting, until shouting from the sailors finally snapped me to attention. I jumped up with several other girls and heard repeated cries of “Land, land!”

  We ran to the railing. At first, the horizon looked the same as it had these long, long days. Then I saw it—a dark smudge atop the water to the west, separating it from the sky. The crew buzzed with a new urgency as part of their number was displaced from pumping to rowin
g. Slowly, awkwardly, the Gray Gull turned, fighting against the swift current that wanted to keep dragging us north. The line on the horizon grew darker and more substantial. Soon we could see trees. And all of a sudden, I felt the ship lurch forward as we broke free of the northerly’s pull. Without that hindrance, the rowers made greater and greater strides. We entered into a race against time, trying to make haste to land before the leaks drew the sailors back to pumping.

  At a certain point, the rowers slowed as they assessed our landing conditions. The shore before us consisted of wide, empty tracts of sand watched over by a wall of imposing evergreens in the distance. The Gray Gull came in as close as possible before the captain ordered the anchor dropped, fearful we’d strike the bottom or other unseen obstacles. The ship couldn’t handle any more damage. As soon as we’d halted, a mad dash to get people and cargo off ensued.

  The passengers were allotted only a few of the dinghies, requiring multiple trips to ferry us over. Although the distance wasn’t too far, the minutes dragged by as I watched the boats edge through the waves. The wind had picked up over the last hour, and even if it couldn’t match the storm’s intensity, it still challenged the little boats. One almost capsized and was saved only by a sailor’s skillful maneuvering.

  I wasn’t so lucky. I volunteered to go in one of the last passenger dinghies, and when we were about twelve yards from beaching, a rogue wave flipped us over. I hit the sea face-first, and everything went black for a moment as the cold shocked my system. Water filled my lungs; the taste of salt flooded my tongue. Struggling, I managed to turn myself around and touch the bottom with my feet. The water was shallow enough to stand in, but my dress felt as though it had gained a hundred pounds. It became a trap. An enemy that wanted to drown me. Twice, I fell back into the water before my shaking legs finally stayed upright. Coughing, I tried to move forward, but my steps fumbled, and I had to fight for every inch. I struggled against the heavy dress, against the waves, against the muck sucking at my feet.

  “Hold on, you’re almost there.”

  An arm linked through mine, lending me support. I glanced over and found Damaris walking with me, a tired smile on her face despite her equally soaked state. She and I staggered out of the sea, onto a rocky beach dotted with patches of snow. The bitter wind that had made us capsize whipped around us, and I wondered if it was cold enough to freeze my wet clothing. We collapsed onto a small patch of bare sand and huddled together. Gently, she patted my back as I continued coughing. The bitterness between us vanished.

  “It’ll come out. You just got a mouthful, that’s all. Happened to me plenty of times when my brother used to push me over our pa’s fishing boat. I always got him back, though.” I spit out seawater by way of answer, and Damaris pointed farther down the beach. “That one went over too. Cargo, from the shouting. The captain wouldn’t make that much of a fuss over us.”

  Most of the water seemed to be out of me now, but my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I watched anxious sailors right their flipped dinghy and try to recover a few bobbing crates. Beyond it, the Gray Gull sat at anchor, listing at a sharp angle as more little boats streamed from it. Seeing its damage from this distance gave me a horrifying new sense of just how much peril we’d been in.

  I closed my eyes a moment, trying to push down my fear, trying to ignore the cold seeping into my bones. How had this happened? How was I sitting here, freezing on an abandoned beach, when I was supposed to be getting ready for balls in the grandest city in Adoria? This had never been part of the plan. I was supposed to be living a luxurious life, reuniting with my friends, and providing for Merry.

  Merry.

  Just thinking of her steadied me. When I opened my eyes, I felt a little calmer, and the world became clearer. The world. The new world.

  Another dinghy rocked precariously in its crossing, and Damaris started to rise to go help, but then it recovered for a safe landing. Four girls climbed over the side, faces frightened and legs rubbery. I made a quick assessment of the other groups scattered throughout the beach. “That’s all of us, then,” I managed to say. My throat felt raw. “I wonder how long they’ll keep going back for cargo.”

  “Until it sinks, I imagine. The captain’s lost his livelihood. He’ll want to scrape every bit of profit he can out of this.” She waved as the newcomers shakily made their way over to us. “The more he can sell, the more he can recover.”

  “But he can’t sell all of it. Some of it’s Jasper’s and the other passengers’.”

  “Yes, but where is Jasper? Where are we, for that matter? The captain’s going to be looking out for himself. And we are too, I suppose. I hope you’ve been saving that energy of yours to get us out of this mess.”

  The four girls sat beside us, and we all snuggled together. “Thank the Six,” muttered one. “You can’t pay me to get on a boat again.”

  Winnifred gazed at the Gray Gull with a scowl. “Well, we may need one to get to Cape Triumph.”

  “Maybe we’re not that far,” said Joan hopefully. I watched with envy as she hunkered into a cloak that had managed to stay dry.

  “Or maybe we are,” returned Maria. “Maybe it’ll take months to get there. Years.”

  Her melodramatic words elicited silence and glum expressions from the others. Years? I didn’t have that. I had just over three months. That spark within me blazed back to life, countering the cold, and I sprang to my feet. “It doesn’t matter where we are or how far! We are getting to Cape Triumph. The rest of you can sit around and mope, but I’m going to find Miss Quincy and make a plan right now. And I’m going to make a blasted fire!”

  I stomped off, not caring if they followed, but a few moments later, I heard the sounds of rustling skirts and footsteps on the hard sand. Miss Quincy sat with the rest of our girls farther along the beach, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. She’d said almost nothing in the days since the storm.

  I peeled a few freezing strands of wet hair from my face and stood over her. “Miss Quincy.”

  No response.

  “Miss Quincy.”

  Nothing.

  “Miss Quincy!”

  She flinched and turned her gaze upward. “We need to get everyone together,” I told her. “We need to make a fire. And then as soon as they have all the cargo ashore, you need to talk to the captain and find out where we are. He said earlier we were drifting north, and maybe he’s got a better idea now just how far we went.”

  She looked past me, slowly taking in the long, desolate beach. Inland, to the west, the terrain turned to patchy forest dusted with snow. No sun was visible in the gray sky. There were no buildings, no signs, no indications that any humans had ever been here before us.

  Miss Quincy licked her lips and simply said, “Maybe.”

  “Maybe what?” I leaned down to her, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Maybe you’ll talk to him? Maybe he knows where we are?”

  She looked away. “There’s a lot to think about, Tamsin.”

  “We need to think about making a fire before we all freeze to death!” I had to resist the urge to shake her and remind her she was supposedly our superior, that it was her job to look after our party. Instead, I turned to the others and asked, “What can we burn around here?”

  “Driftwood,” supplied Damaris promptly. “If it’s not too damp.”

  I sized up the girls, determining who appeared the least exhausted or terrified. “Polly, Pamela, Joan. You go search. Gather anything you can and set it in that open spot there.”

  The three looked surprised and then jumped to obey. There was comfort in being given direction, I supposed. While they searched, Damaris and I discussed kindling, and I made a point of speaking loudly and keeping my body language open to Miss Quincy, as though she was part of the conversation. I expected her to join in at any moment. She didn’t.

  When we had enough material for a fire, a merchant who’d tr
aveled on the ship gave us the flint he used for cigars. Before long, he, the other passengers, and the rest of the Glittering Court girls had gathered around the humble greenish flames, taking what heat we could. I rubbed my hands together over and over, trying to keep my fingers from going numb.

  Out at sea, the Gray Gull sat far lower in the water than it had when we came ashore. The sailors still fought their way back and forth, and a sizeable amount of goods rested on the beach now. I strolled over to the pile, dismissing the nailed crates, and found a traveler’s trunk that opened easily. I had no idea who it belonged to, but the cloak inside fit me. I gathered the rest of the contents and those of another trunk before heading back toward the fire.

  “Hey,” called a sailor. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Keeping us from getting frostbite, not that it’s any business of yours.” He glanced uneasily at his captain, out of earshot, but didn’t stop me.

  I handed out dry clothes first to the girls who’d gone into the water and then to anyone else who needed another layer, which was pretty much everyone. The clothing we’d brought wasn’t exactly designed for wilderness survival. Miss Quincy still sat in her stupor, but some of the others began discussing what to do next. The Gray Gull had primarily contained cargo, so there were only four other passengers besides the Glittering Court cohort. Two were the Baxters, whom Polly had admired. The third passenger was a merchant too, and the fourth was a short-spoken man whose only plan was to find adventure and fortune. He’d certainly already achieved one of those goals.

  As twilight fell, Captain Milford finally called an end to gutting the Gray Gull. He summoned all the sailors back to the beach and stared sadly at his disappearing ship. I allowed him a few moments of mourning before I strode over.

  “Captain, we need to talk about we’re going to do.”

  He gave me a scathing glance, his face ashen. “There’s no ‘we.’ You’re not my responsibility.”