The ship

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Rowen looked down into the windswept valley towards the hidden village, scanning the brilliant green for shadows. Parmenti had gotten so far behind on the climb she couldn’t see her friend anywhere. Rowen’s talent didn’t help. The air was clear and dry—providing her with no moisture to easily sink into. Fluffy white clouds rolled over the valley, but they were manufactured to conceal and had nothing to do with the weather. Rowen turned back towards the natural clouds above the cove and looked down in the direction of the water.

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Parmenti had been up in the night when Rowen woke. Her friend had felt movement in the air and lent her half-conscious, sleepy power to help the rest of the weatherwitches direct the natural wind and water of a storm. Rowen had felt nothing beneath the blue, not even a stirring from the great sea beast Eyodenyu, and so she had faded back into sleep without a worry. In the morning Parmenti and the weatherwitches couldn’t be sure what had woken them so the two had volunteered to check the harbour. It was worth it to be sure, despite Rowen’s expectation that nothing was amiss.

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​​The wind changed at her back and she turned again to see Parmenti trudging up from the valley, discouragement evident in her posture as she slouched after Rowen, who was much faster and always had been. Rowen smirked. Parmenti was soft and lovely, qualities shown in all her actions. Despite being so close in age they were vastly different. Sometimes Rowen wished she could be more like her friend, but Parmenti had never felt the fear that shaped Rowen. A fear that would probably always drive Rowen from deep inside.

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Rowen sighed and took off the pack she carried. She set it amongst the rocks at her feet and took out two shiny red apples, only slightly scuffed, then stretched and searched for a secure place to sit in the highest point on the island. She bit into one of the apples as she watched the whiteness below for any change. It was too soft and the flavour was muted. She had hoped to get the new ones when she stole them from the community hall but it appeared someone had put out the remains of last season’s harvest, probably expecting the younger women to do just that. She’d keep the other one for Parmenti.

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A false fog was omnipresent in the cove. It was always wetter there, closer to the sea, but the fog came naturally only sometimes. It was there most often by unnatural means, under the influence of Noksana and her apprentices. Held white and obscuring like it was now.

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Rowen remembered her own approach to the island, as she often did when she looked down into the cove. It came in flashes. The dark and damp of the ship’s hold. The stench of dirty men. Her sister—sick and listless—her father—terrifying in his rage, almost worse since he was rendered powerless at the sea’s mercy. The darkness shattering as water poured in. The smell clearing, replaced with a burning in her nose and lungs. Those came as images and flashes of sense. Striking and painful, but fleeting. The final moments remained a living story in her mind. That was when everything changed—when she had saved herself. When she had lifted herself above the waves that claimed her father and sister and entered a different world.

 

She had been ten years old. She was nearly twenty-three now and still the experience was vivid in her mind. It seemed impossible she would ever forget it.

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There was nothing but fog to see below. A natural storm must have woken the weatherwitches. Rowen usually felt those in the water and woke herself, but it was possible for her to miss them. The weatherwitches always made them so much worse, and that almost always woke Rowen. Perhaps something interesting would wash ashore.

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Every once in a while a hole would open in the fog and the water would sparkle. She enjoyed the play between the types of awareness the different forms of water gave her. Between the scattered fresh water in the fog—like a very light blanket—and the immensity of the salted sea beneath it—holding all the weight of the world—when it peeked through.

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A dark space appeared in the fog, followed by a flicker of light. Rowen was drawn to it. If she closed her eyes and focused, she could feel down into the great salt and across it for farther than any of them could see. Sometimes she was sure she could feel all of it. But Rowen didn't close her eyes. She watched the fog and the water closely. If the fog was heavy enough, wet enough, her subconscious could move it.​

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Then, in one of those dark spaces, she saw a shape that wasn’t meant to be there. She straightened, putting her half-eaten apple aside, trying to focus even harder, until her eyes felt strained. She had to rub them before looking back into the soupy nothing.

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There, again. A tall, straight shape, like a bare tree trunk, standing out against the fluidity of the cove’s gentle waves. A mast? Rowen gasped as it became obvious that what she was seeing was the remains of a ship. Not a spontaneous storm then—Parmenti’s stirring in her sleep had been the island’s defences coming into action, those of the weatherwitches—which included the water in the air—but not those of the sea. All the natural island forces but Rowen’s part. Why didn’t it wake her?

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Another shape, cloud-like and white, but solid—a sail? Rowen turned to look for Parmenti, even though she also worried she might lose the vision if she looked away from it for too long. Not a natural storm at all. The approach of a ship.

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No ship had come to the island with an intact sail during Rowen’s time there. At best she had seen splintered wood tangled in billowing fabric, half submerged but somehow still afloat. Once an empty lifeboat, with no sign of the behemoth that must have borne it there. She had never heard any of the other women speak of a functional ship either, not even the old women. Theodosia and Hart had come on a small personal craft but despite their talents even it had floundered in the rocks at the mouth of the harbour. If a ship was in the cove, and its mast was standing, with an intact sail no less, something else could be coming. The sound of Parmenti struggling up the last bit of the rise came from behind her.

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“Parmenti!” Rowen shouted, taking her eyes off the scene for a moment to direct her voice through the wind to her friend. “Get up here, you lazy wind wisp.”

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When she looked back the ship was clearly there. A whole ship, somehow. Now she could see the damage—the rails were broken along one side where it must have hit one of the stone walls of the cove on the way in. Part of the deck was revealed through the fog, covered in broken wood and other debris. It looked like the ship was meant to have three masts but only had one remaining upright. The second was bent over half-way up and lay across the rails, the sail that was meant to have graced it draped over the side. The third was broken off near the base and both it and the sail that had fallen from it were gone. Part of the ship’s hull had crumpled inwards and the whole thing sat dangerously low in the water.

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Rowen suppressed a shiver. There would be bodies on board. Usually they were washed overboard when a ship broke up, and the women might find them on the beach over the next month or so, or they were dragged into the depths with the remains of the ship and never found. But this time there must be some still aboard. Maybe most of them, given how intact it was. She did shiver then.

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“Par—”

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Parmenti squeaked in surprise as Rowen scared her with her shout, which caused Rowen to jump in turn.

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“Rowen, you—” Parmenti stopped speaking with a sputter.

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Rowen looked back at her to find the young woman’s gaze riveted to the cove.

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“Oh my…” was all her friend added.

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Rowen nodded and turned back to the ship. As it broke through the sheets of fog in glimpses it was obvious it sat impossibly low in the water for how it moved. The fog parted around it and flowed over it and made it look like a dream. A ghost ship. A ship of the dead. Maybe not all dead. They might have a new member to add to their community. They should, for the ship to have made it this far. There had to be a reason it was so intact. There had to be a reason it continued forward despite the water it must be taking on. Its arrival couldn’t only be possible because Rowen didn’t stir to sink it. Shipwrecks meant bodies but they were also the way all of the women and girls had originally come to the island. All but Parmenti.

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Rowen relaxed a little. She picked up her apple again and took another disappointing bite. “Here.” She handed the second apple to Parmenti.

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This ship’s arrival couldn’t be a bad thing. Rowen felt a swelling in her chest at the possibility of a new water girl for their community. She had lifted herself clear of her wreck and onto the beach with the spray of the waves, and the old women had been impressed with that. If there was one out there—still so young—who could bring a whole ship with her, held above the water that crashed in to claim it… Rowen hoped.

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The wind whispered around Parmenti’s hair and ruffled through her clothes, blowing past Rowen after. Parmenti giggled nervously and Rowen knew why the wind shuffled so. Her friend held the apple absentmindedly and hadn’t tasted it.

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“I’ve never seen a whole ship before,” Parmenti said. “Best I’ve seen are Flower’s drawings.”

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The ship that had brought Rowen to the island had started its journey very whole indeed. It had been strong and restrictive, like a cage with iron bars that no little girl could hope to escape.

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Rowen remembered disappearing under the water when her ship wrecked. Believing she belonged to the sea at last, that she was meant to end there. Then splashing onto the shore amidst a spattering of shattered wooden boards. Coming back to the world of the living—the world of earth and air—as she coughed out the water that had joined her. As Theodosia emerged from the forest up the beach, old even then. Serene but still terrifying in her power. Rowen screaming. Crying. Then comfort as the old woman reached out to heal her. Safety. Security. Community.

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Something moved under the fallen sail on the ship’s deck. Rowen tensed. Maybe it wasn’t a water girl. Maybe Eyodenyu was stirring down there afterall and had a gargantuan claw in the remains? Or maybe it was one of Flower’s plants or August’s various decomposing fungi, taken a particularly enthusiastic hold? Rowen looked sideways at Parmenti. Or the wind? The sail lifted off the deck and what were unmistakably tanned arms pushed the fabric aside. A wave of emotion rocked Rowen. The first glimpse of a new community member.

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Then a whole person climbed out of the newly revealed hatch and onto the deck and Rowen’s excitement evaporated. A survivor, but not one for the island. As the distant figure clambered out of the darkness, another quickly followed.

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Rowen stood and turned to find the clouds that had rolled over the cliff tops had darkened and were pushed back in vertical lines. It might have been Parmenti that did it, with her wind and the water of the air, but then Rowen felt the weight of the clouds in her mind, heavier than normal and so wet. She forced herself to relax. Sometimes she still couldn’t control it. Times when she remembered her old life and the fear. Times like this.

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“We have to tell the old women,” she said. “There is an intact ship in the cove and there are living people on it.”

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“They’re not people,” Parmenti whispered. “They’re men.”

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Rowen dropped her apple and ran past her frozen friend. She leapt down through the rocks towards the valley. The soft green grass that had been so relaxed minutes earlier was now as rigid and tense as the clouds, pushed flat by the quickly accelerating wind. As Rowen ran she remembered the pack she’d left behind and kicked a stone with her bare foot before she could consider the pain it would cause.

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She slowed and cursed as Parmenti caught up to her. They ran across the flat top of the cliff towards another ridge, where they could descend into the valley, towards the oldest cottage on the island. The one where Theodosia and Hart lived. Where they could almost always be found, since they got too old to work in the gardens.

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The old women needed to be told their way of life was at risk. Rowen scanned the mountain for Mal. Why had Eyodenyu not been brought to bear against the ship? Why had the beast not surfaced and taken it under, or batted it with a claw and rended it into a thousand pieces? The ship’s presence must be Mal’s failing. Or Noksana’s and her weatherwitches. Rowen had not worked to sink the ship because she hadn’t known it was there, and therefore had not failed. It made her uncomfortable to think that she was the cause, as the implications of a ship with live crew and maybe passengers truly began to weigh on her. Why hadn’t she felt its approach?

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But it shouldn’t have made it regardless. The sea wasn’t their only defence. Far from it. The weatherwitches—Rowen glanced at Parmenti—had at least as much to answer for as the woman who was bonded with the great sea beast beneath the waves. As much as Rowen did, or more. Many had failed for a ship to arrive intact. Or had the others not felt it either?

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How long would the ship take to make landfall on the beach? What would the people on board do? What would the old women recommend the community do in response? Rowen tried not to worry too much as she sprinted across the grass. She may have failed to stop the ship, but now that it was there the question of what to do with it must be put to the community.

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Release date: TBD!