He blamed it on the crew’s superstition, claimed that they thought women aboard ship would bring ill winds. Three days out to sea, the captain asked her to remain belowdecks as much as possible. They claimed they’d be rich if they just had a bit of his luck. The sailors marveled at the way he spotted dolphins, schools of rays, bright striped tigerfish, the way he sensed the place a whale would breach the moment before its broad, pebbled back broke the waves. He abandoned his shoes and climbed barefoot and fearless in the rigging. He learned to tie knots and mend sails, and as his wounds healed, he worked the lines beside the crew.

The boy took to life aboard ship as easily as he took to everything else. The ship was their kingdom, and the sea a vast moat that kept their enemies at bay. They grew used to the clang of bells sounding the hour, the cry of the gulls, the unintelligible gabble of Kerch. The bread the boy and the girl were given spilled weevils, and their cabin was a cramped closet they were forced to share with two other passengers and a barrel of salt cod. Its crew spat and swore and gambled for rum rations. It stank of unwashed bodies and the raw onions the sailors claimed would prevent scurvy. It was a Kerch trader, its hold bursting with millet and molasses. Their crews were white mice who sang songs and scrubbed the decks with their pink tails.

They were the vessels of stories, magic ships with masts hewn from sweet cedar and sails spun by maidens from thread of pure gold. THE BOY AND THE GIRL had once dreamed of ships, long ago, before they’d ever seen the True Sea.

Siege storm book