I didn’t see Isolfr for four days.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. I went up on deck at night, standing in the sweet-scented wind while Kolur snored on unawares. But the water stayed dark and empty, and I felt a dull ache inside my chest. Maybe I’d been wrong to trust him—he’d toyed with me, then left me alone without any real answers.
One night, I felt a presence on the wind, a sense of intelligence swirling around me. I tensed and grabbed for my bracelet, thinking back on the warning Isolfr’d given me about sensing the Mists’ horrors. But this presence wasn’t a horror. It was simply there, surrounding me and the boat and the ocean itself, like it belonged in this place.
During the days, I spent most of my time hanging around Frida, studying her hand movements as she called down the winds. Papa could do a bit of wind-magic, and he’d taught me what he knew, but it wasn’t much. Frida was a real witch. Sometimes when she was tracking our path on the carved map, I stood a few paces away, behind the mast where she couldn’t see me, shadowing her movements with my own hands. I wasn’t trying to cast her spells. I just wanted to understand how the movements felt. She moved more like a dancer than a witch. Maybe that was the trick.
The day after Isolfr took me to the in-between place, I spent the morning watching Frida throw new protection spells over the boat.
“They wore out more quickly than I expected,” she told me, rubbing the bannisters with sparkling ground conch shell. “The north is tricky.”
My stomach tightened up. “Maybe it’s not the north,” I said.
She looked at me, her eyes clear. “Did something happen?”
I hesitated. Kolur still wouldn’t listen if I tried to mention Isolfr, but Frida was a witch. She had trained in Jandanvar.
“This boy, Isolfr,” I said. “He’s been swimming alongside the boat. I let him aboard last night and he didn’t hurt me at all, and I’m sorry if—”
But Frida had moved down the railing. The wind whipped her braid around, and she lifted her head and squinted at me. “You have to do much more spell repair once you pass Skalir. Everything’s thinner here.”
I sighed and dropped my head back. The sky was empty, a flat grayish blue that reminded me of the Empire mirror Bryn’s mother kept in her bedroom. So Frida wouldn’t listen when I said Isolfr’s name either.
In those four days, we never saw any land, only hunks of icebergs that Frida or I melted or moved with wind magic. They made me feel lonely, those icebergs, drifting out here in this emptiness on their own.
One day at lunch, we all sat huddled around a heat charm, eating the dried salted fish from our stores. We still had enough for a couple of days of normal eating, plus more if we skimped. Neither Frida nor Kolur had said anything about it, though.
“How long till your errand’s done?” I said, breaking the silence.
Kolur glared at me.
“I didn’t ask when we’d be back home.” The sails creaked overhead. “Just about your errand.”
Frida sipped from her water skin, silent.
“I told you, girl, it’ll only be a couple of weeks, and then I’ll have you safely back on Kjora.”
“It’s been a couple of weeks.” I pointed at the remains of our meal. “Are you planning to stop anywhere soon to restock? We’re going to have to start taking rations, you know.”
Kolur gave me a cool look and then turned to Frida. “How close are we to Juldan? I imagine we could stock up on supplies there.”
“Oh, not far. A day’s sail. Half a day if I can get the winds to behave. It’s a bit out of our way, but nothing too terrible.”
Juldan. I thought about Papa’s carved map. Isolfr had told me the truth, then; we were far north, although not as far as Jandanvar.
But Juldan wasn’t our destination. We were just resupplying.
I frowned across the meal at Kolur, wondering how much longer until I’d get to go home. I’d be much more excited about this adventure if we were actually doing something.
Kolur seemed to make sure he looked everywhere but at me.
I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep. Frida had done up the navigation calculations and announced that we’d be sailing into the Juldan port late tomorrow morning. My mind spun with plots to keep Frida and Kolur on land, to convince them to forget their madness and sail back to Kjora. Passage on a ship back to Kjora would be too expensive for a fisherman, and passenger ships were rare besides, so I figured I wouldn’t be getting home otherwise. But maybe I could try to convince a crew into letting me join them. Ananna had done that. She’d spun a good yarn about betrayal and set sail that very evening. Maybe I could manage the same when we were in Juldan. I could call down the winds, after all, and it wasn’t like Kolur needed me, what with Frida on board. Besides, if I joined with a crew, maybe I’d have a chance for a proper adventure, like the kind in stories.
But then my thoughts wandered away from the north. What if sailing home to Kjora meant that this Lord Foxfollow would follow us there? What if going home meant bringing horrors back to my parents and Henrik and Bryn?
I wondered if that meant I believed Isolfr. If I trusted him.
Things didn’t make sense.
I stayed awake through the night, staring up at the lantern’s light sliding back and forth across the ceiling. The air crackled like a storm was coming. My body buzzed. I rolled over onto my side and slid my hand under the knot of fabric I used for a pillow.
Sparks shot up my arm, radiating out from my bracelet.
I shrieked and yanked off the bracelet and stumbled away from the cot, dragging blankets and my makeshift pillow with me. The bracelet glowed.
I knelt down beside the cot, my breath caught in my throat. The air around the bracelet throbbed, humming with enchantment. Slowly, I reached out with one finger and poked it, this time prepared for the spark. It trilled up my arm, igniting all the residual magic inside me. I closed my eyes and grabbed the bracelet in my fist and concentrated—
Gray mist. Sharp, curving claws. Black ocean water. Light. Light. Light dripping like blood. Mist.
A scream.
I dropped the bracelet and jumped back. The air was still crackling around me. I leaned up against the wall and took deep breaths and tried to decide what to do. Kolur, I had to warn Kolur. Or Frida. No, she would have sensed the magic before I did, she should already know—
I heard a noise.
It came from up on deck: a slurred thump, a muffled shout. I cried out and then slapped one hand over my mouth. I was so scared that I started to cry.
Footsteps bounded past the cabin door, coming from the direction of the storeroom. They disappeared and reappeared overhead.
I was too frightened to move. I closed my eyes and strained to listen. The wind whistled around the Penelope, and it sounded as if it were weeping, too.
I thought I heard voices, droning with a low murmuring panic.
Sweat prickled over my skin.
Someone shouted.
I couldn’t stay here. Isolfr had warned me about this. He had chosen me for whatever stupid reason, and now that the time had come, I just stood in my room and cried.
Kolur and Frida were hurt or dead, and I was left alone on the Penelope to die, too.
I snatched up the bracelet. It was cold, but it didn’t make me see anything, thank the ancestors. I took a deep breath and eased open the cabin door. I leaned against the frame. I listened.
Voices.
As quick as I could, I darted into the storeroom and grabbed the big straight knife we used to clean fish. It still glittered with scales from the last time I’d needed it. I held the knife close to my chest. My bracelet burned me, it was so cold.
I slid forward, cautious, terrified.
The boat rocked with the weeping wind.
I finally reached the ladder, but my fear had me paralyzed. Voices drifted down from the deck, fevered and distorted from the wind. One of them sounded like a woman’s. Frida. Maybe she was hurt. Maybe I could save her. I’d never saved anybody. But Mama had. And Papa, too. Maybe there was a first time for everything.
I clutched the ladder and heaved myself up, the knife sticking out at an awkward angle from my right hand. The cold wind blew over me. It smelled of the sea, and it smelled of blood.
I peeked my head up out of the hatch. All the lanterns had burned out and everything was cast in silver from the moonlight. Two figures were hunched over at the bow of the ship. A woman, a man: Frida and Kolur.
Frida’s long, dark braid swung back and forth in the wind.
“Kolur?” I gripped the knife more tightly.
Kolur turned toward me. Something lay at his feet. “Hanna, get down below.”
“No! What’s going on?” I scrambled the rest of the way up on deck. Frida looked at me as well, her expression unreadable. “What is that?” I pointed with the knife at the lump at their feet. It didn’t move.
The deck was smeared with brightness.
“Well?” I moved forward, faking a bravery I did not feel. “What is it? What’s going on—”
I froze. The sails snapped in the wind.
The thing at their feet was a body.
A body on the deck. A body that bled light.
Isolfr. In the moonlight, his body shone like alabaster. I shook and trembled and a bile rose up in my stomach. The boat seemed to tilt on the waves.
But then Kolur moved toward me and no longer blocked the body’s face, and I saw its features twisted up in an expression of fear.
It was Gillean.
Gillean of the Foxfollow.
The knife clattered to the deck. I stumbled backward. My foot caught on the edge of the hatch. Kolur grabbed me and pulled me forward. The sudden movement made my head spin.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” Kolur said in a low voice. “I woke up, and I found—” He nodded his head in Gillean’s direction. “You probably shouldn’t see it.”
I yanked away from him. The world seemed to have less air in it, like we were all underwater. Gillean stared blankly at me in the moonlight. Light smeared on his face, and there were ragged tears in his jacket, all soaked with that same bright blood. Bite marks. Slash marks.
From sharp, curving claws.
Frida put her hand on my shoulder. “Kolur’s right,” she said. “You should go down below. It’s safer. We don’t know how this man got here, but he’s from—” She hesitated. “He’s from the Mists. You can tell from the way he bled.”
“I do.” The confession erupted out of me. “I know how he got here.” A tear streaked down my face. Another. Another.
“You what?” Kolur stomped up at me and looked me hard in the face. “What? How could you possibly know—”
“I told you!” I shouted. “Isolfr, the boy in the water! He introduced me to—to—” I couldn’t say Gillean’s name. My voice trembled. “It’s Lord Foxfollow. He has horrors.”
I could tell they didn’t remember anything about Isolfr. And why would they? They were enchanted.
I grabbed my knife again and tore away from them, my tears hot and frustrated, and ran to the railing. The water was dark and still. No Isolfr.
“Where are you?” I whispered. I could feel Kolur and Frida staring at me. The horrors traveled on veins of magic, that was what Isolfr had said, and I had felt it earlier, the magic harnessed by my cheap protection charm from Beshel-by-the-Sea.
I grabbed the railing tight and closed my eyes and tried to feel the magic on the air. It hummed around me. Normal.
“What are you doing?” Frida’s voice was too close. My eyes flew open. She stood beside me, the wind tossing her braid out over the water.
“I’m feeling for disruptions in the magic.” I managed to keep my voice calm. “Lord Foxfollow killed Gillean—that man—and brought him here. Because he was—” I couldn’t keep my voice calm for long. “Because he was trying to help me.” The tears came again, this time so many that I could no longer see anything but smears of light. Frida drew me in close to her, and I buried my face in her shoulder. She smelled of life on the sea.
That kindness surprised me.
“The magic’s fine,” she said. “I felt the disruptions, too. That’s why I ran on deck. But I assure you that whoever was here is gone now.”
I pulled away from her and wiped my eyes.
“I didn’t see anything,” Kolur said. “Didn’t hear anything, either.” We all looked at each other. Not at Gillean. “I woke up when Frida came on deck.” Kolur was pale in the moonlight. “Whoever it was didn’t seem interested in hurting me, at least.”
“We’re under a spell,” Frida said. “That’s the only explanation. But I can’t feel it.”
“It’s Isolfr!” I said. “Kolur never wakes up when I talk to him.”
But they both ignored me. I couldn’t feel Isolfr’s magic either, only the wind, cold and sharp and steady. I looked out at the water. There was still a chance that Isolfr was responsible for all of this, that Lord Foxfollow was a fiction he’d created. He’d put Kolur and Frida under a spell, after all. Maybe I only trusted him because he was so disarming, so shy, so beautiful.
And yet my bracelet never burned when he was near.
“We ought to give him a funeral,” Kolur said, interrupting my worry. “Some kind of ritual. Get him off the boat, at least.”
Frida didn’t say anything.
“Bad luck to toss a man unceremoniously into the ocean,” Kolur said. “Creates ghosts, and you don’t want them hanging around a boat.”
“He’s from the Mists.” Frida’s voice rang out. “Even you aren’t that softhearted, Kolur.”
Kolur frowned at her. “Ain’t about being softhearted. You know that. You’ve seen it.”
There it was, some hint at their history. But I wanted a funeral for Gillean too, and it wasn’t because of ghosts.
“No,” I said, and sniffled. “No, he needs a funeral. He wasn’t a bad person. He tried to help us.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve never seen him before.”
I sighed with frustration. Isolfr claimed he wanted me to trust him, but he also made me keep his warnings from Kolur. His logic was incomprehensible.
Frida smoothed down her shirt with her hands, a nervous gesture. “In all likelihood, this is a Mists trap.”
“It’s not.” Kolur turned away from her. “If it was a Mists trap, we’d be trapped.”
I shivered.
“Hanna, come help me.” Kolur dragged the chest containing our spare sails out from its place beside the masts. I glanced at Frida one last time, but she was gazing out at the ocean. She didn’t look happy. I left her there and went over next to Kolur. He pulled out a stretch of fabric.
“Oh, drop the damn knife, girl. Frida’ll watch out for us.”
“She doesn’t seem happy about us doing this.”
“She hasn’t had the run-in with ghosts that I have. I don’t want to risk it.” He nodded at me. “Help me with this sail. We’ll wrap the poor boy up nice and neat.”
I jammed the knife into the belt of my coat so I wouldn’t have to set it down. Then I grabbed the rest of the sail and hauled it out of the chest. “Do you know any rituals?” I said. “Funeral rituals? For the Mists?”
Kolur stopped and squinted up at the moon. “What makes you think I know rituals for the Mists?”
“You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets lately.”
Kolur looked at me. “My history ain’t that interesting,” he said. “And anyway it’d be dangerous to get involved with Mists magic. Northern rituals are fine. Just trying to keep the ghosts away.”
“Are you sure?”
“Know more about it than you do.”
I rolled my eyes. He glanced over at Frida, who was watching us with her arms crossed over her chest. “You ever think that maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with us?”
She glared at him darkly and didn’t respond.
It’s a threat, I thought, but I didn’t bother saying it aloud. Isolfr’s spell would guarantee they forgot it as soon as the words left my mouth.
“We need your help,” Kolur said to Frida. “You can keep watch over here.”
Frida sighed and walked over to us.
“This is dangerous,” she said, looking at the sail I cradled in my arms.
“You think I don’t know that?” Kolur gestured at me to hand him the sail, but I hesitated.
“How dangerous?” I said.
Frida swept her loose hair away from her face and looked at me. “We don’t always know what the effect of using our rituals on someone from the Mists will be,” she said. “Our rituals might attract Mist attention.”
“But I know damn well what’s going to happen if we just toss him in the water,” Kolur snapped. “The spirits’ll be on us before morning. You know it too.” He jerked his chin at Frida. She looked away, scowling.
“We’re not in a good position,” Kolur told me. “But I’m willing to risk it.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to toss Gillean into the ocean without a funeral either. He had tried to help me. He had been kind. Maybe our magic wouldn’t mix badly with his. Maybe the Mists had left our world and wouldn’t see what we had done. Maybe some things are just worth the risk.
“Now let’s see that sail,” Kolur said.
This time, I offered it to him. He grabbed one end and walked across the deck, spreading it out flat.
We worked in silence until Frida said, “I assume you keep a jar of anointing oil on board?”
“Bad luck not to.” There was no gloating about Frida giving in. Everything was quiet and somber.
Frida nodded and went down below. Kolur and I stood side by side next to Gillean. The sail we’d draped over the deck lifted up on the wind.
I shivered.
“You cold?” Kolur glanced at me. “I’ll tell Frida to charm one of her heat globes.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not cold.”
The night seemed endless, swarming around us, trapping us. When I looked over the railing, I couldn’t tell where the ocean ended and the sky began.
“Probably some victim from one of their squabbles,” Kolur said. He shifted awkwardly, and I knew he was trying as best he could to be a comfort. “They’ll send ’em through sometimes. Way of getting rid of the bodies.”
There was no point in correcting him, so I just said, “All right.”
Frida climbed back on deck. She had the little stone jar of anointing oil—it was whale fat, really, that had been infused with herbs and blessed in a ceremony out on the wilds of the tundra. All sailors kept a jar on board, in case of death. Without the ritual, a soul would be trapped in our world as a ghost, one of the legion of the dead who haunt the living. And you didn’t want a ghost aboard a boat.
I thought about that time when I was a little girl and Papa made us all go inside and bar the doors. “They didn’t do the ritual,” he’d said, and all night we heard the shrieking and howling of that lost soul weaving its way through the village. So while I wasn’t sure if the anointing oil would work on Gillean either, I didn’t want to risk hearing those awful cries again. A cold wisp of dread twisted inside me and whispered that Gillean’s death was my fault, that it was Isolfr’s fault. He’d made Gillean speak. But Isolfr wasn’t here to do his duty and bless the deceased. It fell to me.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll bless him.”
Kolur looked up. He’d already opened the jar. “You sure?”
At his side, Frida frowned.
“Yes. It’s supposed to be a woman, anyway.”
“It’s supposed to be an acolyte of Kjorana,” he said. “Which you are not.”
I scowled. “I can stand in her place. Let me do it.”
Kolur glanced at Frida, who remained stone-faced. But he handed me the jar without more fuss. It was heavier than I expected and warm from where he’d been holding it. I knelt down beside Gillean. His blood glowed all around me. Up close, his face seemed—surprised more than scared. I’d never seen someone die before. Maybe it was a surprise for your life to be snuffed out of you.
I dipped my thumb into the oil and took a deep breath. There were tears in my eyes. He’d been kind to me. He’d tried to help me, best he could. He wasn’t the way the people of the Mists were supposed to be at all.
He’d been kind, and now he was dead.
I turned my face away from Frida and Kolur so they wouldn’t see me crying. I pressed my anointed thumb against his forehead. His skin was warm like he was still alive. Startled, I snatched my hand away, expecting him to move. But he didn’t.
In a blur, the incantation came to me—I’d learned it as a child, like all children of Kjora. “Release his soul to the great sea,” I whispered. “Let him find his way home.” I touched my thumb to both of his cheeks, then to his mouth.
A sighing filled the air, like a hundred birds taking flight at once. But there were no birds here. As quickly as it came, the rustling was gone, and I was certain I had imagined it. For a moment, I thought I saw a shimmer floating above Gillean’s brow, like a slick of oil across the surface of water, but then that was gone too.
I straightened up and wiped my eyes as discreetly as I could.
“We’ll need to wrap his body,” Kolur said softly.
I nodded and set the jar aside. Frida moved to help us, all three of us kneeling alongside Gillean and then pushing him at the count, one two three, onto the sail. Now that he was facedown, I could see the huge, jagged tears in his back, all glimmering silver.
“Something bad happened to him,” Kolur said, looking sideways at Frida. “Something very bad.”
“I can see that,” she said.
I didn’t want to think about Gillean’s wounds.
Together, the three of us wound Gillean up in the sail. His blood glowed dully through the fabric, like burnished moonlight. Kolur nodded at me, and he and I picked him up, end to end. It felt like casting a fishing net into the water. But this was all we had.
I reminded myself that Gillean’s body was just a shell, that with the anointment Gillean himself had fled to the great sea, where he’d swim among the souls of ancient fishes. It was only his body going into the northern waters.
Only his body, torn to shreds.
Gillean’s body landed with a splash and bobbed up and down with the waves. Kolur muttered a prayer to the ancestors and then turned away, but I stayed in my place, expecting Isolfr to appear.
He didn’t.
The swath of fabric drifted off into the moonlight.
When I turned around, Kolur and Frida were huddled close to each other, not speaking. I watched them across the deck. Frida was the first to break the silence.
“I’ll cast another protection charm,” she said. “You likely just sent out a beacon for the Mists.”
Kolur grunted. “You’d rather we keep the body on board, let him be a beacon for ghosts?”
She didn’t answer, only looked at me one last time. I stared back at her, and I got the sense she was studying me, trying to make sense of what had happened. I tensed and waited for her to say something. But she didn’t.
Frida faced the north and lifted one hand against the wind. The sails groaned as the wind shifted. I walked over beside Kolur, my arms wrapped around my stomach. I wanted to draw into myself and disappear.
“Don’t worry, girl,” he said. “I’m sure it was just bad luck.”
I wondered how many times he was going to repeat that. I hated hearing it. I hated that I couldn’t correct him.
“Still, I gotta admit, I’m not looking forward to sleeping up here alone.” He looked over at Frida. The wind blew her hair straight back away from her face, and her magic settled over us, prickling and almost warm. “It’s gonna be a long night till morning.”
“I’ll stay up here with you,” I told him. “To keep you company.” I smiled a little. It was the right thing to do, just like anointing Gillean and sending him out to sea despite the danger, even if Frida didn’t see it that way. “I don’t imagine I’ll be getting much sleep tonight.”
He laughed, although the laugh was thin and nervous. Frida’s protection charm pulsed through the wood of the Penelope. She dropped her hand and the sails swung back to accommodate the northern wind.
She walked over and stood beside us. “I’ll stay on deck tonight, too,” she said. “It’s not a night to be alone.”
I wasn’t going to argue that point, and I wasn’t going to deny the protection of Frida’s magic, either. Better to have it there than nothing at all.
• • •
Dawn broke after an uneasy night. I only realized I’d fallen asleep when I awoke to a beam of pink sunlight settling across my face. I was curled up beneath a pile of seal furs, sleeping on a hammock I’d tied between the foremast and the mainmast. Frida slept on beside me. Kolur was up at his usual place at the wheel, sleeping too.
Everything was calm.
I crawled out of the hammock and stretched. My head was fuzzy. In the soft light of morning, it was hard to believe that last night a man, a man who’d been trying to help me, had died. Except I didn’t have to believe it. I knew it had happened, and the pale stains soaking into the wood of the deck were just more proof.
I wanted to distract myself, so I set about checking the rope and the enchantment on the sails. I made sure that all the other magic running the boat was in order. Frida’s charm was still in place, strong and steady. All of Frida’s navigation notes were locked away, but I checked the carved map, placing my finger on the spot of ocean where I thought we were. Juldan was only a few finger widths away.
The Penelope glided slowly through calm waters. I wandered over to the bow and cast the charm to look for ice, just to have something to do. But I didn’t find any; the water stayed dark and murky as always. In truth, I was as much watching for Isolfr as I was for ice. But I wasn’t sure what I’d say, what I’d do, if I found him.
He’d put Kolur and Frida under a spell. Maybe he’d done the same to me.
I leaned against the railing, breathing in the cold scent of the sea. I wondered if Gillean’s soul had found its way. Even in the calm, lovely morning, remembering his face made my stomach flop around.
I was still staring out at the water when I noticed something flicker beneath the surface.
“Isolfr?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
No answer.
“If it is, you better get up here. Something terrible has happened, and—”
The flicker beneath the surface skipped away. Probably just a fish. I leaned back.
The flicker returned.
It was stronger this time. Brighter. It didn’t move like a fish. Flicker wasn’t really the right word—swirl, maybe. Like cream dropped into the hot black coffee Mama fixed sometimes.
Only this felt—sinister.
And my bracelet was growing cold.
I didn’t move from my spot, only kept my gaze on the place where the brightness swirled around in the water. Maybe it was magic left over from the ice-finding spell. But if that was the case, I knew, then my bracelet wouldn’t be burning into my arm.
The swirl thickened, became solid. It rose out of the water, a thick gray mist.
The mist rose and rose until it formed the shape of a person. Two bright eyes appeared. They blinked once.
The magic inside of me rioted.
The mist-man disappeared.
“Hanna!” Kolur pulled me away from the railing. “Don’t let them see you.”
I was dizzy. Frida was already at the railing, drawing up the wind. I closed my eyes and concentrated, trying to feel for abnormalities. But my heart was racing too fast. I couldn’t get a hold of anything.
“They’re close by.” Frida turned toward us. “That was a scout. We need to get down below, into the cabin. Hanna and I—” She hesitated, just for a second, her eyes flicking over to Kolur. He stared blankly back at her. “Hanna and I will have to use what magic we can down there. It’ll be easier to protect a smaller area.”
Kolur nodded. “Hanna, do as she says. Gather up your strength, girl.”
I wasn’t sure that was possible right now. “This is because of us,” I said. “Because of the body. They followed it—” I felt sick. The funeral rituals. All I’d wanted was to honor Gillean, and now look what had happened.
“Don’t think about that,” Frida said. “Come.” She put her hand on my back and turned me toward the hatch leading down below.
And then we both stopped.
I was certain we saw it at the same time.
A warship, towering toward the sky, big enough to cast a shadow over the Penelope. It looked carved out of gray stone, and towers rose up from its deck instead of masts, all of them billowing mist.
It was sailing right toward us.
I froze in place, trapped by the warship’s shadow. Beside me, Frida cursed, then shouted Kolur’s name.
“I see it!” he called out, his voice strained and small.
The ocean churned around the warship’s prow, frothy and grayish white. I couldn’t see anyone moving on its deck. It was a hollow, empty ghost.
“It’s the Mists, isn’t it?” I asked.
Frida hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “Yes. I think so.”
After we had cast Gillean into the sea, he had drifted toward the west, sinking as he went. Trailing light. And now this ship, huge and monstrous and run by magic, was sailing toward us. From the west.
I thought it was the right thing to do, casting the rites. He died because of me. But now we were going to die too.
Kolur shouted behind me. I couldn’t make out what he said, his words distorted by my panic. But Frida called out, “Right away!” and bounded off.
I still couldn’t move.
“Hanna!” My name rose out of Kolur’s shouting. “Hanna, get the hell away from the railing!”
An enormous dark wave, rising from the warship’s path through the water, swelled underneath us. The Penelope rocked back and I went skittering across the deck, landing hard on my back next to the masts. For a moment I stared, dazed, at the pale blue sky.
“Hanna!”
The boat lurched.
That broke me out of my spell. I scrambled to my feet, clinging to the mast for support. Kolur glared at me over at the helm, where he was fighting the wheel for control of the Penelope.
“Turn the sails!” he roared. “That ship’s not turning away.”
I nodded.
“Don’t use magic. It’s too dangerous right now.” The wheel whipped out of his grip and went spinning, and the boat spun with it. Everything tilted to starboard. I toppled sideways, grabbing on to a loose rope before I tumbled over the railing. As soon as we righted again, I went to work, loosening the knots and dropping the sails. Kolur’s words echoed in my head—don’t use magic. I listened to him. Now was not the time to be contrary.
We rocked back up. I stopped thinking about Kolur’s orders and just acted on them. I’d shifted the sails plenty of times without magic, but always on calm seas, and never when the situation was so dire.
The boat tilted again. Freezing seawater splashed over me, so cold I gasped and nearly dropped the rope. Shivering, I drew the rope tight and tied it off in its new position, although my hands trembled so badly, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make the knot.
I tied off the second rope just as the boat lifted up on a great wave. For a moment, we stayed there, at its peak, higher than a fishing boat should be. The air sighed around us. The warship was close and so tall that it blocked out the sun, and I clung to the mast and stared up at it. Figures stood up on deck now. Men with no faces, lined up in rows, watching us.
It was the longest second I’d ever known.
And then we plunged back down. Seawater poured over the deck, burning with cold.
In the shock of that freezing water, magic stirred. Wild magic, tumultuous and deep and unfathomable. I held on and stared at the dark gray side of the warship, and I knew I was going to die.
Water rose up around us, glittering in the sun.
The magic tasted like salt on my tongue.
And then the ocean crashed down on the Penelope, and for a moment, all I saw was light splitting through the murk, and all I felt was a cold so deep, it sank straight to the marrow of my bones.
Then darkness.