Sirius and Katrina made it back to their own ship just as a dark shape appeared on the horizon above the dunes, and two other figures, made their way over the crest of the hill and on to the beach. One of them was supported by the other.
“He’s limping,” Katrina observed.
But her words fell on no ears, for Sirius had already covered half the distance between him and his wife.
Amanda played the flute one-handed now, while with the other hand she helped Neko hobble down the bank. She played a light slow easy tune. The sort of tune one might play when they’d just run several kilometers with a dragon in tow. Sirius took Neko from her and then gave her a quick survey. Her hair was singed on one side and her arms were covered in scratches and dirt, but she sent him off down the beach with a nod.
Sirius helped the limping Neko back to the ship.
Around Katrina, the remaining crew that had been on board, spilled down on to the beach. They grabbed the ropes they had laid out ready for the dragon and as Amanda lulled the dragon into an almost slumberish state, they fixed them around it like a harness.
Sirius ordered someone else to take over the flute playing while he talked to Amanda.
“What happened?” he asked, as he reached up to touch one of her burnt strands of hair.
“Neko tripped on uneven ground and dropped the flute into a hole. I got it back out, with a little bit of stemming and scrambling.” She showed him her arms. “I’m fine. Neko’s ankle is probably just sprained, but I left the healers with the other group.”
“Hmm,” Sirius reached up and cupped Amanda’s face near where her hair was singed. Then he looked out with worried eyes at the dunes.
“It was a close one,” she admitted. Then she followed his gaze and they both watched with a tension that only evaporated when Gemma’s joyous face appeared over the crest of the hill followed by the rest of her group.
Once all were back on board, Katrina filled Gemma and Bobby in on the events that had occurred on the other ship while Sasha wandered off to get a better view of the dragon.
“You should’ve seen him!” she gushed as she danced around on the deck, her skirts swishing out wildly. “He was wearing the most beautiful clothes.”
“Careful,” Bobby warned. “It’s bad enough admiring sorcerers, but you don’t want mum and dad hearing you talk like this about an aristocrat.”
Katrina sat down on a storage box that often doubled as seats up on deck. She sighed. “He really was the most beautiful sight you ever saw though.” Then she glanced about, noting with the lack of dark quips about sorcerers, that Salem was conspicuously absent. “Where’s Salem?”
Bobby shrugged. “Beats me. The inn keep said she saw him wandering off toward the docks. Once we get that dragon up in the air and ship off the beach, that’s where we’ll sail down to. Then we’ll row back in to pick up all the mead and other supplies and get Salem from the inn. Benny should be with him by now.”
As if on cue, a sudden large flap of wings drew their attention to the beach. All the baby dragons were asleep in the hold. All the crew were back on the ship. Now all that remained was to move the ship. And that began by moving the mother dragon.
Neko, now healed by Patchie, did the honours of launching the dragon. They had worked out 90 minute shift rotations to ensure continuous playing of the flute. Each shift would involve at least 3 people and no one was to play for more than 15 minutes in a row. The playing itself was simple. Crew had been instructed to make the dragon feel happy and energised as long as it flew where they wanted, and to made it sad if it veered off path.
“Poor dragon,” Sasha sighed as she leaned over the front of the ship and watched the dragon fly up and off the beach. The ropes connected to it’s harness tightened and the ship began to groan.
Her parents stood not far behind her, and Sirius upon hearing the words, stepped froward and joined her at the ship’s railing. “It’s for her own good. She can’t fit on the ship and we can’t let her stay here or fly off too far ahead. She won’t need to pull too much once we’re sailing but it’ll get us all there faster if she does a little. There’s not enough food for her and her babies here. Not forever.”
“I know,” Sasha replied. But still she looked sad.
“She’ll be free up once we get there,” Sirius told her.
Sasha looked at him and away from the dragon for the first time. “You’re not going to sell her?”
Sirius paused and replied honestly, “Only if we find a good trainer. A trained dragon is safer than a wild one.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “I promise.”
Sasha smiled and turned back to watch the dragon. With one final thrust, a strong beat of wings, and a little help from the crew’s telekinetics, the ship suddenly jerked free of the sucking sand, and slid smoothly from the beach and back out into the waiting sea. Sasha looked out at the dragon’s soft leathery wings, it’s rippling muscles beneath shiny black scales, and she wondered, not for the first time, what it would be like to ride one.
Sirius returned to Amanda’s side. He frowned at her singed hair, then reached up a finger to tuck it behind her ear. “Too bad you can’t heal hair.”
“It’ll grow back.” She smiled softly. “So, I noticed the other ship is gone?”
Sirius nodded. “I think they hired an aristocrat to teleport her off the beach.”
Amanda’s smile dropped away completely. “An aristocrat?”
Sirius nodded again. “He arrived on board just as we were leaving. After we’d done the magic. I don’t think he noticed anything.”
Amanda nodded and she turned back to watch the dragon, but her smile did not return to her face.
Once they were out on the water and turned parallel to the shoreline, Gemma, Bobby, and Katrina regrouped in the wheelhouse, where they could watch things from out of the cold wind. Shiv was steering the ship.
“Can I drive?” Gemma asked.
Shiv raised an eyebrow but he handed off the wheel without complaint.
Gemma took it with a grin. It wasn’t her first time steering but it wasn’t often that she got to.
Shiv watched, ready to take back over just in case. But it was relatively straight sailing. “I think it’s the dragon that’s really doing the steering, you don’t want to turn too far off from the direction she’s flying or she’ll tip us over.”
“How are they going to get her to stop?” Gemma asked.
“I assume they’ll just get her to hover?” Shiv replied with a frown. He wasn’t a fan of the whole dragon flies a ship thing as it was.
“Hover?” Gemma raised an eyebrow.
Shiv shrugged.
Bobby butted in. “Dragon’s can fly in place pretty well, and the rope’s long enough she might even be able to glide if the wind’s right. Maybe some telekinesis will help too.”
Shiv shook his head. “Ain’t nobody able to lift a dragon that big.”
“Yeah, but you could make it easier for her right?” Bobby replied.
Shiv gave a half shrug and tilted his head to the side. “Yeah, I suppose.”
They sailed a short way up the beach and then as they watched, something made the dragon pull back, and on deck the call went up to lower the anchors.
Gemma handed the wheel back to shiv. “How come Pete and Felix kidnapped Seraphina? It was for ransom right? Even though the town doesn’t really seem to have that much.”
“I think they saw an opportunity and they took it. Felix is the opportunistic sort, and Pete just has... had, a mean streak.”
Gemma screwed up her face. “They really are awful.”
"I suppose they would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids and your dumb... cantaloupe?” Shiv quipped. "Really, that’s what they’re called?”
“Plus one dragon,” Bobby grinned.
Shiv’s frowned. “I didn’t think the dragon helped?”
“The imaginary one helped,” Katrina replied. She couldn’t help but smile. Then, like Shiv, her smile faded into a frown. “You don’t think they knew about the sorcerer?”
“I think if they did, they’d still be here,” Shiv replied.
Katrina shivered. “Surely they wouldn’t risk going against a sorcerer though?”
“A sorcerer with partially compromised memories, that’s exactly the sort of thing an aristocrat would like to get their hands on.” Shiv shook his head.
“You think the sorcerers meant to wipe all his memories and instead they messed up and only got some or do you think maybe he’s hiding from them too?” Katrina asked.
“Who knows, sorcerers are secretive sort. They probably got rid of all the good stuff, left him enough to defend himself, but then that can be good stuff, and you know what they say about the best defence.”
“A good offense!” Gemma exclaimed with a grin.
“Exactly!” Shiv caught her eye with the pride of a good teacher.
Katrina sighed. She wasn’t so sure about that. There were other things, like stealth, foresight, politics. Strategies one could use to win without fighting at all, and yet, looking back she wasn’t sure how they could have both avoided the fight last night and ensured Seraphina’s safety. Maybe if she’d been able to see what was coming. “I think he’s a psychic,” Katrina blurted out suddenly.
The others all turned to look at her in surprise.
“The sorcerer,” Katrina explained. “He seemed to know stuff, like more than he should.”
“No way,” Bobby replied. “Psychics are rare. Good psychics even more so. And he was old. Old psychics don’t exist.”
“Yeah, they all get death fixation,” Shiv agreed.
“What?” Gemma frowned at him.
“You know, they see a possible death, and because they’ve seen it, they get drawn to it, like they can’t look away, can’t help steering themselves toward it.”
“I thought they all go mad cause they see different possibilities and then they can’t tell what’s real anymore?” Gemma replied.
Shiv nodded. “That too. Mix of both.” He turned back to Katrina. “It’s more likely he was a mindwalker or a...”
“I thought half of them go mad too?” Gemma butted in.
“Not as often,” Shiv replied.
“It’s the Guardians that get the mindwalkers,” Bobby replied in a playful spooky tone.
Gemma rolled her eyes. “Guardians aren’t real.”
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Shiv started up again. “It’s more likely he’s got a future-telling spell or time travel or pretty much anything else.”
“He could be a minor psychic,” Katrina replied.
Shiv shrugged and turned back to watch out the window. They’d stopped now so he was mostly checking on the activity on deck.
“Time travel would be cool,” Gemma’s eyes lit up.
Shiv spun back to face her, “And highly illegal.” At the sight of her opening her mouth to object he added, “Even in the Greenstone valley. Even out here. And misused time travel is something the Guardians would get you for.”
Gemma squinted at him with one eye, unsure if he was just teasing or not but Shiv turned back to peer out the window on to the deck again. Guradians were a legend, god-like beings who had split this world from the human one years ago and who supposedly still kept some sense of order and peace from the shadows. They were nothing but rumour, a fairy-tale parents told their kids to get then to behave. There were many other organisations who kept law and order. They were region based ones whose rules varied from place to place. But no one ruled the high seas or her smaller islands, and none was ever credited with having quite so much power as the Guardians did.
The wheelhouse door opened and Amanda poked her head inside. “You kids coming ashore?”
Out on deck, longboats were being lowered. In the background, the on-duty flutist played a haunting tune. The kids hung over the side of the railing as they waited for their boat to be ready. In the distance, they could see the small figure of Seraphina waving from a dock. Bobby waved back with a grin on his face.
Sirius paused to watch them and then whispered to his wife, “It’s a pity he’s not going to be able to keep talking with the girl. Mail doesn’t come through here often.”
“Well, maybe we could alter the regular shipping route?” Amanda asked.
“Mmm, still wouldn’t be that often.”
“Or-” Her eyebrows went up as an idea came to her. “Maybe there’s a way to kill two birds with one stone.”
“Huh?”
“Boat’s ready!” Interrupted a voice.
Amanda squeezed Sirius’s shoulder. “I’ll tell you later.” She turned to Katrina, who had one foot over the railing into the long boat. “Katrina can I borrow you a sec. We can grab a later boat.”
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Katrina stepped back onto deck, a confused expression on her face.
“Hmm,” Sirius frowned at his wife, but he jumped on the long boat with the rest of his kids and soon they were off toward shore, leaving Katrina and Amanda on board the ship.
Katrina looked up at her mother curiously.
“You wanted to learn some spells. I’ve got one we can do,” Amanda told her.
Katrina followed her mother back to her parent’s cabin. It was larger than their room, with space for a double bed, a dresser, and a table with two chairs. Katrina’s new spell book lay on the table. She hadn’t even realised her mother had taken it during the time she’d been unconscious. She’d assumed it had still been under her bed where she’s left it after they’d done the spell.
“I’ve been having a look at what’s in there,” Amanda told her.
That was obvious to Katrina now, that her mother must have gone through it before agreeing to let her have it, but she’d been just so excited to be able to keep it before that she hadn’t even considered that.
“There’s a particular spell inside. One that allows you to communicate over long distances in writing. I thought we could make something so Bobby and Seraphina can write to one another. But first I want to cover some ground rules.”
Katrina nodded.
“Technically this is a teleportation spell.” Amanda flicked open a page. “Teleportation spells are one of the few that are relatively well-refined and widely known.”
Katrina frowned in confusion. She knew official teleport rings operated in certain parts of the world but she also knew they weren’t favored for regular transport, and definitely not for transport of high volume, low cost goods. “I thought teleport spells were really difficult and expensive?”
Amanda nodded. “To transport people and items yes, and they still require blood, mostly from blood banks for official transport, but to move something as small as words, not even the ink, just the shape, from one a page to another what you need is precision rather than power. We should be able to manage something small like that. I’m not sure over what distance we’ll be able to do but it’s worth a shot.”
“I thought precision was harder than power?”
“It can be. It’s probably easier for a firestarter to create a giant fireball than it is to successfully cauterize a wound or shape even a candle into an image, but precision is something I’m good at and there are ways of thinking about it that make it easier. Efficiency is the other thing that has to be considered. Power, control, and efficiency are the three pillars of good magic. You’ll do far more with precise control than you ever will with raw power but they’re both important. You may think efficiency is what will stop you getting killed, and it helps for sure, but control is what allows you to cut the magic off when you’re drawing too much. Of course, you need to be able to recognise you’re in that situation first. Understand?”
During the conversation the two of them had both taken a seat at the table.
Katrina nodded. Some of this she knew already. The three pillars her teachers at school had talked about, but they’d never really explained the difference or quite why each was so important.
Amanda clasped her hands together and leaned forward. “Tell me about the spell you did last night. How you did it. What happened.”
“The tracking spell?”
Amanda nodded.
Katrina took a deep breath and then she explained all the steps they’d done while her mother listened.
At the end of the explanation Amanda asked, “How do you know it worked?”
Katrina frowned, not understanding the question. “Because it drew an arrow that pointed to where Seraphina was.”
“How do you know it was pointing to where Seraphina was and not just to where you thought you’d find her? You’d already searched elsewhere. It wasn’t a bad guess that she’d be there.”
Katrina hesitated. She hadn’t considered that possibility.
“Usually when you cast a tracking spell, it draws a map, not an arrow. It might have just drawn what you expected to see. Magic is tricky like that. Magic whose effects you can’t be sure of is the hardest of all.”
Still frowning, Katrina replied, “I expected to see a map.”
Amanda smiled. “Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Alright, next thing you need to know. All magic requires infusement.”
“What?!” Katrina jerked her head up. “Spells are just infusement magic? But...” Katrina trailed off thinking back to the spell the sorcerer and her sister had done. There had been no infuser there.
“And they require the specific type of magic, usually contained within an item, or otherwise present in person.”
Katrina’s frown deepened and she dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her temples. “That makes no sense. I didn’t have any tracer magic.”
“What did you have? What items?”
“I had some of my own infusements in my pocket but they weren’t in the spell.”
“Maybe not intentionally, but they were close enough to you to use. What did you have?”
Katrina shrugged and furrowed her brow. “Empath magic, strength, telekinesis, water elemental, and dreamwalking.”
“You had telekinesis?”
“Are you saying, all we did was move some ink on paper?” She shook her head. “We took the ink out of the pen.”
“And removed it from the room? Were you watching it?”
Katrina sighed. The ink component had been left lying next to Sasha. It was possible they’d not seen as some of the the ink had worked it’s way up the side of the ice table and soaked into the paper from below. “But moving liquid is hard.”
Amanda nodded. “It is. But there were five of you and you gave it blood. An infusement stone and blood can be used to increase or alter your own power too, but that is dark magic, even for sorcerers.”
“Stone?” Katrina asked.
“Generic infusement magic is often sold in the form of stones or pebbles, sometimes marbles.”
“Why?”
“Don't know, it's just how they're sold.”
“How do they make them? I’ve never been able to put my own magic into an item.”
“I don’t know.”
Katrina asked several more questions but it seemed there was a lot that her mum just didn't know, and by the time they'd finished the spell, Katrina had more questions than answers. They did manage to get something working though, at least as much as they could test it here. And it turned out that her mother already owned a tracking infusement, in the form of a pretty silver compass.
“How come the sorcerer didn’t tell me? That I needed infusements and the right magic.”
“Well the infusement part is less important for you. Perhaps he wanted you to figure it out on your own or maybe he was just limiting what you could do. How much trouble you could get into.”
“Do you think he was telling the truth about sorcery school having physical entry requirements?"
“I don’t know. I do wish you weren’t so keen on it though. Sorcerers have strict rules and very harsh punishments for breaking them, and you’ve never been much of a rule follower.” Amanda reached out a hand and tucked a dark strand of hair behind one of Katrina’s ears. Then she sighed. “But, nor will I stand in your way if it’s what you really want.”
Katrina resisted asking what her mother thought about becoming an aristocrat instead. There were certainly less rules among the aristocrats. But new aristocrats were rare. Most aristocrats were born aristocrats. But even powerful family bloodlines did not ensure success. The political power aristocrats held was not easily gained, even for one who had powerful aristocratic parents. Outsiders though, had even less of a chance of success. Not to mention, aristocrats were hated even more then sorcerers were. Plus, it wasn’t like there was a school for aristocrats. Katrina just nodded and smiled gratefully. Maybe she could be her own thing. Few ever succeeded in changing the world on their own though. She would need to find powerful allies somewhere and sorcery school still seemed like the safest bet for now.
Katrina returned to the shore with her mother and her present for Bobby and Seraphina. Amanda walked off to go deal with the last of the mead shipment. Katrina found Gemma and Salem, hanging out near the edge of the dock. There was a three metre drop from the edge of the dock down to the sand, and off in the distance, further up the beach, she could just make out a purplish looking shack surrounded by piles of junk.
“Where did you go?” Katrina asked Salem.
“To see the technopath.” He held out his gameboy to show her, although it was off and she could see no difference. “They sold me some new batteries and they fixed the water damage, and got all the salt out. They said it was lucky it was already out of juice when I jumped into the sea. They had to open the whole thing up and dry it out but it works again now. I even gave the town kids a go. Also check these out.” He put his gameboy away and pulled out two blue palm-sized handheld devices with buttons and a screen.
“What are those?” Katrina asked.
“Cellphones.”
“What?”
“They’re like phones but without the cord, well except when you gotta charge them. Technopath got them from a world jumper and she said it seemed like they need a third component but then she altered the bits inside with her magic and now they talk to one another, like a walkie-talkie but you don’t have to say ‘over’ all the time. It’s simultaneous two way comms! And they play games too! Check this one out!” He showed her a game with a moving square which ate other squares and grew a longer tail.
She watched him play until he accidentally ran into his own tail and then the game restarted. “Humans are weird,” she remarked as she turned her attention to Gemma, who appeared to be looking at something down on the beach. “What are you looking at?”
Gemma held one finger up to her lips. “Shh.”
Katrina peered over the edge of the dock.
Further down the beach, on the sand near the water Bobby and Seraphina were holding hands and kissing.
Katrina gasped and gushed quietly with glee, “Sooo romantic.”
Salem peered around them to see what was happening. When he saw what they were looking at he scrunched up his nose and remarked, “Eww.”
“Oh, just wait, it’ll happen to you one day too,” Katrina told him.
Salem shuddered and returned to his cellphone. “No way. Not in a million years.” He shook his head.
They all turned as the boards of the dock creaked under the sound of someone approaching with much vigor. Sasha skipped up to them, a white taxidermy bunny clutched in her hands.
“How did you get that?” Gemma asked.
Sasha grinned and hugged it tight. “Dad bought it for me. He got a discount cause he bought some other things from the shop too. Said he was glad I told him about the shop. We went down into the lower part of it. The bit underground. You should’ve seen all the things they had. There were mini ships in bottles and things for real ships too, like sails and nails and magical items, and we also got a board game to play on the boat.”
“You are so spoilt,” Gemma replied.
“Magical items?” Katrina asked.
Sasha shrugged, grinned, and hugged her bunny, then she turned, and as she walked away she called back over her shoulder, “Mum said to tell you we’re leaving and to come back to the boat.”
Katrina turned to Gemma, “Do you think there’s really magical items under that shop?”
Gemma snickered. “Who cares, it’s not like you have time to go and look now.” At Katrina’s dejected look she added, “You can’t really complain, after all, mum’s teaching you magic just like you wanted.”
Katrina smiled at that and then a thoughtful look crossed her face.
Another snicker from Gemma, as she got to her feet to follow Salem and Sasha. “Anyone ever tell you you think too much?”
“Hey Gemma?” a thoughtful Katrina asked.
“Yeah?” Gemma raised an eyebrow.
“Will you teach me sword fighting?”
Gemma was silent a moment and then she narrowed her eyes. “I thought you wanted to avoid fighting? That it was uncivilised.”
“Yeah well, I’ve changed my mind. I figure a little extra knowledge never hurts.”
“Won’t it take away from your other activities?”
Katrina shrugged. “I don’t need to be an expert, just the basics. Just in case.”
Gemma eyed her awhile, trying to suss out if Katrina had another angle she was playing at. Whatever it was though, she couldn’t see it. “Alright, want to go practice now then?”
“In a sec, I just need to give Bobby and Seraphina something. And let them know they gotta say good bye.”
Seraphina glanced down at the notebook Bobby’s sister had given her. She looked out at the giant ship and watched as the dragon pulled it’s ropes tight again and began to pull it away. Then she opened the book and wrote neatly with her newly gifted pen, ‘I miss you already.’
She watched as the words faded into the sheet and a moment later, new words appeared, ‘I miss you too.’ She smiled and wiped at her eyes as a single solitary tear fell onto the page and vanished just like the ink had.
On the deck of the ship, swords clanged and then a very tired Katrina fell onto a nearby crate, one hand raised to fend off her sister. “Hang on, I need a rest.”
Gemma laughed, and then turned to go chat with Bobby, who stood near the railing, looking longingly back at the town of Hush.
“What’s that?” Gemma asked of the notebook in his hands.
Bobby showed her. “Katrina and mum made it, so I can write to Seraphina. Hopefully it will still work as far as home, but if it doesn’t dad says he’ll sail back through at some point, especially if it turns out the mead sells well.”
“Hmm, that’s much more useful than Salem’s cellphones.” She glanced up at the crow’s nest where Salem sat playing on one of his new electronic toys. Beside him, Sasha happily sketched pictures of cantaloupe and dragons with her dad’s as of yet unreturned fancy fountain pen.
“His what?” Bobby asked.
Gemma chuckled. “I’ll show you later.” Her face turned more serious. “Hey, do you think Salem was right, about needing to practice the things you might need to do in the heat of battle before you’re actually in battle? Mum didn’t hesitate setting Pete on fire last night, but the whole time I was fighting that guy who was trying to kill me I never once....” She trailed off.
“I don’t think killing people is what Salem meant.”
Gemma shook her head. “But he’s still right. My instinct was not to hurt the guy. But I think instinct shouldn’t tend towards peace when you’re in the heat of things. Because if you’ve no time to think, that’s probably because someone is doing violence to you and you need to protect yourself. Reacting instinctively with violence makes sense. But I spend so much time trying to not set things on fire.” She leaned against the railing and her eyes found Katrina, who still rested on a crate. Her sister’s sudden interest in sword fighting had got her thinking.
“Or the heat of the moment could be when you’re mad,” Bobby replied calmly. “Like back in Rambandit. I think if more people defaulted to talking first then the world would be a nicer place.” He picked at splinter on the ship’s railing.
Gemma rolled her eyes. “If all the kind people default to talking even when someone is attacking them then they’ll be no kind people left because they’ll all get killed. Rambandit was a mistake but it’s not as bad as what could have happened last night if mum and dad hadn’t turned up. If I’d just...”
“That relies on the assumption that most people do bad things without reason, but most people probably think they’re doing what’s right.”
“Well there are people who are mean without reason, as well as those with selfish reasons, and they shouldn’t be talked to. It does no good.”
“I think you’re wrong. There are exceptions sure, but most people are good.” Tension crept into Bobby’s face and his hands curled into fists.
“Your definition of good or my definition of good?” Gemma inquired, “Anyway, it’s not like you tried to talk those pirates out of attacking us on the beach. You think that would have worked last night?”
Bobby frowned. “That wasn’t the right action at the time.” He paused and a new expression crossed his face. “But dad and Katrina did go talk to Felix remember?” He raised his eyebrows at her and a smile twitched at the edge of his mouth.
“Oh, don’t look so smug,” she replied.
Bobby’s smile softened and widened and his posture relaxed. “How are you going to practice killing people anyway?”
Gemma sighed. “That’s not quite what I meant.”
“No?”
“Well...” She sighed again.
“Mum only set the one guy on fire, and he was dangerous. Everything else was non-deadly. Maybe want you need, is to practice thinking faster.”
“But if you only ever practice pretending to punch someone then when the time comes to follow through you won’t be ready, no matter how fast you think, you won’t have done the actual thing.” She held up the wooden sword she’d been fighting Katrina with, and then gestured to her own real sword at her belt. “Wooden sword so you know know what it feels like to get hit and make a hit, real swords once you know how to hold back. When we sword fight we cover both bases. I feel like I need a wooden equivalent for fire practice too.”
“Well, make a wooden dummy then, but maybe wait until we’re not on a wooden ship. There’s no reason you need to practice on an actual person.”
“Maybe. There was more to it though.”
“You don’t practice actually stabbing someone.”
“But the first time I did it, I wasn’t ready for that either, it was only cause dad was there then too...” she trailed off suddenly realising she’d been mostly thinking of herself. “How are you? After last night? And the fight and everything?”
He sighed. “I feel like I’ve been messing up. I got so distracted by Seraphina that I wasn’t paying attention. Not to Sasha and the dragons, or Katrina and her sorcerer, or Salem and how he felt about the sirens, or you and...”
“You’re not our keeper you know,” Gemma replied.
“Yeah, but I’m your brother. I’m the oldest brother. I’m supposed to look out for you guys.”
Gemma shrugged. “I can look after myself.” Then she studied his face pensively. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe talking is a good default. Maybe what I need is one of those mazes where you have innocent people jump out as well as bad guys and you gotta fireball the right ones. Maybe I could set one up in the forest, or out of the forest. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I do feel better for having talked to you now.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Really?”
“Yeah,” she replied truthfully. She was silent a moment and then she nodded at the sword at her hip and looked up at him with a sly grin. “You wanna fight?”
He laughed. “Yeah, okay.”
Katrina watched as Gemma and Bobby sparred back and forth across the deck. She’d watched them before, but this time she paid closer attention, to their posture, to their footwork, to where they tried to strike. Holding a sword had been more difficult than she remembered, let alone blocking all the hits. Maybe if she watched them long enough she’d figure out how to fight smart. After all, it wasn’t just about strength and speed. Of that she was certain. If only they’d move a little slower.
A new flutist took over, another sombre song, but this one had a hint of something else, a longing, but not for the past. It was hopeful, happy, forward looking. A longing for the future.
Sirius had given Pierre the ship’s wheel and he now stood at the bow of the ship with his wife, both of them with their eyes on the upcoming horizon.
“It’s peaceful out here,” Sirius remarked.
Behind them swords clanged and the flutist played, but Amanda knew what he meant. Their kids were nearby, all safe, all busy and focused. The music was gentle and the dragon a beautiful sight to behold. The sun was getting low but the sky had cleared and light gave the water a golden glow.
She smiled and leaned in close to him. “You know, we never finished that song. It would suit this tune I think.” And before he could ask her to sing it, in a voice that was not quite perfect nor what you might call beautiful, but which was in tune and in time, and as warm and welcoming as a cozy winter fire she sang,
“And though she lost,
Him long ago.
She knows just where,
She needs to go.
She'll meet his ghost.
Below the hill.
One small step,
And then she'll fall,
Into his arms,
buried deep.
Owned by the sea,
To keep, and keep.
But love's a thing,
That’s never gone,
It finds a way,
To linger on.
Just out of reach,
Of all the waves.
It soars and skims,
Forever plays.
A tale that's twisted,
Into things.
A voice that whispers,
On the Wind. ”
Half way through, Sirius joined in, his deep voice complementing hers. And when they finished that song, they started up a new one, happier and more upbeat until, behind them, their kids joined in as well and eventually many of the crew. Soon their voices were lost in the air, taken over by a new sound, as the wind began to sing.
The End