Water & Storm Country (3 page)

A cheer rises up from the heavy crowd, who
suddenly feel like they’re closing in, surrounding us, preventing
any chance of escape. I blink hard twice, trying to get the sweat
out of my eyes and the noise out of my head. My stomach clenches
when I see my father watching quietly as the brown boy stumbles,
regains his footing, and then turns to face me again.

I don’t know this boy—

Don’t want to fight this boy—

But I can’t let my father down again.

I squeeze my stomach muscles tight, bite away
my fears, and attack, swinging my real sword the way I always
practiced with my wooden one. The boy’s eyes go wide and he shrinks
back, narrowly deflecting the first of my blows with his blunt
blade.

Using this sword is nothing like a wooden
one. It’s weighted differently and feels unbalanced in my hand,
each slash becoming more awkward than the last. The bilge seems to
realize it and easily dodges my next attack, kicking me in the
stomach with a dirty bare foot.

I feel the wind go out of my lungs and I
gasp, clutching at my gut. Like before, the boy’s face goes from
fear to anger in an instant, and he kicks me again, this time in
the rear and I go flying, crashing into an empty barrel and
sprawling headlong on the deck.

My face is burning, so hot—red and burning.
Not from exertion or anger—humiliation. I’ve literally just had my
backside kicked by a bilge rat, a scrawny one no less.

But I’m not done yet.

Because my father is watching.

And there’s blood in the water—my mother’s
blood. Teeth snapping. I can’t fail him.

Not again.

I push to my feet, only to sense a brown form
charging from the side, slashing with his sword. I’m ready this
time.

I duck, pushing my fist hard into his
stomach. He doubles over and I knee him in the chin, launching him
back, his sword flipping end over end as it leaves his hand.
Leaping forward, I try to stomp on him, but he rolls away, grabbing
his sword. He stands to face me again.

I mutter a curse.

We dance in a circle, staring at each other.
There’s a fire in his eyes that wasn’t there when he was first
pushed into me. Anger? Violence? No and no, I realize. Desperation.
He’s fighting for his life, and I’m fighting for what? Pride? My
manhood? My father? Even
I
don’t know anymore, only that I
must continue on, finish what I started.

I slash and he blocks and I slash again,
narrowly missing and trimming a shred of cloth from his already
tattered sleeve.

My head spins and suddenly there’s a rush of
air all around me and I feel my blood pumping and my heart pounding
and sweat pouring out of me like rain, and I could’ve killed
him—that last swing could’ve killed him and I didn’t even take
anything off of it and if it had connected he’d be dead right now
and I’d have done it.

I’d have killed him.

I don’t even know this boy and he hasn’t done
anything to me except fight for his life and I almost killed
him.

I realize I’m breathing heavy and on the
verge of tears and my sword is lowered and the bilge rat’s staring
at me, probably wondering whether I’ve caught the Scurve because
I’m sweating, sweating so damn much that it’s pouring off my brow
and into my eyes, blurring my vision.

I stare back at him through sweat—or are they
tears?—and strands of dirty-blond hair that have come loose from my
ponytail, wondering whether we can just shake hands so he can go
back to his scrubbing and I can go back to becoming a man.

Sensing my weakness, he attacks with a fury.
It’s all I can do to raise my sword to block his attack, the metal
on metal contact ringing out, rising above the cheers of the men
around me, who have come to life again. He pushes me back and I
stumble. When he pushes again, I’m off balance and my legs get
tangled up and I trip, dropping my sword as I try to break my fall
with my hands, skidding backwards on my rear, coming to a stop.

I look up, panting.

My father stands over me, his lips a thin
line beneath his beard.

But all I can see is the motion of his head.
Shaking, shaking, back and forth, wishing I wasn’t his son and that
I hadn’t failed him yet again.

And then the tip of the bilge rat’s rusty old
sword is at my throat and I can’t breathe and I’m looking up at him
and I’m scared of him doing it, but I’m even more scared that he
won’t and I’ll have to face my father’s head-shaking and
disappointment.

The boy’s face is hard, and for a moment I
think he’ll do it, that he’ll kill me, but then he sighs and throws
down his sword, letting it clatter to the deck with a dull clang.
He stalks off and I close my eyes.

There are murmurs from the crowd, whispered
words I can’t hear, and plenty of words that I wish I couldn’t
hear.

“The admiral’s son…bah!”

“Beaten by a bilge rat, what an
embarrassment!”

“He’d be better off swimming with the
sharp-tooths if you ask me.”

Each comment is like a slash to the heart,
cutting off another piece of me, ripping me open. Hot tears well up
beneath my eyelids, but I won’t open them, not for anyone or
anything. Won’t let the tears out where
he
can see them.

“What a joke,” I hear Hobbs mutter before he
stomps away. There’s more scuffling feet and I know the crowd is
dispersing, going back to their morning work.

“Huck,” a gentle voice says. A kind
voice.

“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.

“W
hy 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.

As usual, a storm is coming, and a fierce one
at that.

“Patience,” my mother says, and then leaps
forward, the half-smile gone, her face hard with concentration. Her
blade cuts toward me.