Inclement weather battered the Neverending Wave. Adrenaline sung just under Red’s skin and her hair would’ve stood at attention if not for the rain plastering it to her neck. The sails above rippled and billowed with a gale force of their own, their topmen barely visible among the flapping fabric.
One second she was in a row with Rigel on the deck, the next the halfling was flung backwards with a shriek snatched up by a clap of thunder. He hit the ocean and disappeared under the belligerent arm of a wave.
Panic snuffed out her anger and she grasped the rail, slick with briny water.
“Man overboard!” Red screamed. She flailed an arm in case her voice wasn’t enough. “Port side!”
A spot of blue appeared at her right—Ada, to the rescue. She shucked off her coat, swords, and thrust a rope into Red’s hands hard enough to stagger her. “Hold onto this or tie it to the boat,” she ordered, and with the other end secured to her belt, stepped up and dove off the edge.
Her dad and uncle rushed up to flank her left. Her dad took her end of the rope. Relief nudged in beside the fear—better their lives were in his hands instead of hers, since she was the reason Rigel was at risk of drowning in the first place.
Two quick tugs jerked the rope. Red cast her gaze over the water beside her dad. She saw Rigel, but no Ada, even though the twine was taut between them.
Keth heaved, bracing one foot against the bulwark. Rigel rose from the water, spluttering but not choking, and Ada followed, holding him round the waist with his head propped above hers. Keth and Rugarth scrambled to drag them both over, lurching with the ship. Ada landed on her hands and knees while Rigel somersaulted once before he tumbled onto his rear.
He clutched a tattered shirt clinging to his skin with a trembling hand. An angry mark seeped out from underneath the largest tear, restaining the cloth with blood, the edges of the wound crisped with bits of frost.
A cough and a wheeze escaped him before he jabbed a finger in Red’s direction. “That girl is dangerous!”
Red scowled. Ada flipped onto her butt, flicked her braid over a shoulder and rolled to her heels. Her chest rose and sunk from exertion, but her breaths came full and bereft the rasp of wetness. She spit out a stream of seawater.
“She—I swear, she knocked me over on purpose! Summoned some kind of—giant, ethereal tentacle—” Rigel continued to prattle uninvited, even as Keth helped him stand, his hand’s width the length of Rigel’s arm. “Left me this! Tried to kill me, she did!”
“If I wanted to throw you off, I wouldn’t have used a giant tentacle!” Red argued, too late realizing that didn’t buy much in the way of innocence. She backpedaled. “But I didn’t—I don’t have—”
“My daughter’s not in the habit of killing people,” Keth interrupted.
“I think we’d've noticed a giant tentacle,” Rugarth added.
“In this weather? I could barely see it!” Rigel exclaimed, swiping his sopping brow.
“We don’t have time for this right now!” Ada yelled, voice competing with the howl of wind. “Rigel, head below deck so Annie can patch you up. Rest of you, back to your stations; witnesses and explanations can come forward later. No buts! Go on!”
They scattered. Rigel staggered off, glaring at Red as he passed, but there was an undercurrent to it, a foundation of fear that his anger tried to step in front of as a shield. Remorse throbbed inside her, but she felt fear quail beneath it, too, like her heart would sprout wings and fly from her.
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At first she wasn't sure why or even noticed. For her first eight years it meant Valcyis was around and gave her a neat trinket or bauble, her uncle or someone in the town inevitably fed her cake, and she was allowed a little more freedom than usual. She heard more ‘yes’s’ than ‘no’s.’
Closing in on her tenth year, tension shared space in her home. Her energy had always clashed with her dad's, but it was especially noticeable on her birthday. When she skipped into her dad's room to announce the date, it was like impacting the ground face first after falling out of a tree. There was a flash of pain on his face before he swept her up in his arms and carried her downstairs to make breakfast, the hurt of the fall having passed.
It was the same with Val, whose energy normally matched her own. She would greet her with a big hug, squeeze a little tighter than normal, but her eyes looked faraway when she set her on her feet.
On her twelfth birthday, after she’d crashed, she rolled out of bed to refill a cup of water. Her family always spoke in hushed whispers when she slept, but their tone made her slow and loiter at the top of the ladder.
“—torturing yourselves every year,” Rugarth was saying. “Today's a day for celebratin’, always has been and always will be.”
“We know,” Val said.
“And from what you told me it's what Penny'd want, too.”
Red's blood chilled. She rarely heard her mum's name.
“We know that, too,” Val replied, irritation colouring her voice.
“It's not her fault,” her dad rumbled.
“I think she can tell something’s up,” Rugarth said, and Red heard his footfalls, lighter and more dexterous than her dad's. His olive green skin and pop of red hair passed the base of the ladder and she ducked into the shadows. “If you get it all out in the open, you can celebrate two lives instead of tryin’ to celebrate one and grieve the other at the same time.”
“You don’t think it’ll ruin her birthday?” her dad asked.
“It might in the beginning? Not sayin’ it’s not a possibility, but she’ll also get over it, I think. She’ll appreciate the honesty.” Rugarth shrugged and moved again, out of sight, but she saw his behemoth of a shadow from the firelight. “Won’t know until you try, won’t we?”
“Do you think now’s a good time?” her dad asked. “Shouldn’t we wait until she’s a bit older?”
“As far as I’m concerned, telling these things to ‘em young is usually better. Longer you wait, the more time she’ll have to figure it out herself and the more time she’ll have to build resentment.”
“I’m not sure,” her dad said.
“Isn’t it better comin’ from you instead of...I dunno, her own head?” Rugarth asked. “A stranger?”
“I’m not sure,” her dad repeated.
“How do you know what’s best for her?” Val asked.
“I don’t, ‘course. I just like havin’ everything out on the table. I think she’ll be tougher if you don’t shy away from these things. Less sheltered, y’know?” He sighed. “I’m not speakin’ out of my ass. I had two girls.”
A chair scraped across the floor, followed by the heavier footfalls of either Valcyis or her dad. She inched back closer to the opening, her breath held in her chest like she’d captured it in a jar and was scared to let it go. She caught the edge of her dad, stroking his beard.
“This is just advice, Kethy,” Rugarth continued. “I think you’re potentially hurtin’ yourself as much as you’re potentially hurtin’ her.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” he murmured. She barely caught it. She might not have if she wasn’t so familiar with his voice.
Rugarth put a hand on his shoulder. “I know it’s not an easy decision; can’t say I personally know a lot of kids who share a birthday with their mum’s death.”
The words hit like a sucker punch to the stomach, and Red gasped as if she had been struck. Their attention snapped in her direction, so she fled, ditching silence altogether and running to get that glass of water she’d got up for in the first place.
Her hand shook as she filled her cup from a pitcher. It was so obvious, she felt stupid for not realizing it sooner. Of course her mum’s death anniversary or whatever it was coincided with her birthday. Penny’d died giving birth. She knew that. She’d just failed to make the connection between her heart and her head.
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Red tore into a sprint the moment they broke the treeline. Her dad gave a startled "Wait—" while Rugarth barked an "Oi!", but she was gone, running and running and running until her lungs burned with the heat of a fire's coals.
She saw it through the trees, but in azure pieces broken up by trunks, teasing her. Now the horizon began and ended with liquid emerald and the air tasted of salted winds instead of pine.
She skidded to a stop by a cliff's edge, bowing over with her hands on her knees, but her head remained fixed upright. She'd never set eyes upon anything like it – it was inimitable. The waves swept in against the rocky base below her and she peered down into beds of inky seaweed, dark enough to almost be black.
She had so little breath, and any left was stolen by the sea, sparkling with mid-afternoon sun. She hadn't believed her dad or Rugarth when they talked about how pretty it was, and she had feigned disinterest up until she started seeing a different kind of blue through the vegetation. She'd grown up in one place for fourteen years, so far inland that the ocean was just a word to her; she wouldn't have been a teenager worth her salt if she didn't dig in her heels about leaving.
It wasn't just a trip like the ones Val took her on – it was her entire life uprooted and dumped onto the deck of a ship. But seeing the ocean in all its splendour – it made it ache a little less.
She heard Rugarth stop beside her, panting as well, and then the weight of a heavy hand on her shoulder.
"Gorgeous, innit?" he asked.
"We get to be on it every day?" she asked, tearing her gaze away to look up at him. His eyes were on the water, too, and the breeze whipped his hair in striking red ribbons.
"That's what sailing is, right?" Rugarth asked with a wink, and gave her a friendly clap on the back that she felt through her entire ribcage. "C'mon. You went off the trail, girly – town's this way.”
