9
The first salvage was at anchor not far out from the shallows. A small sturdy looking fisher, easily twice the size of Mebre’s rowboat. The white painted hull had seen hard seas, and caring repair. The name, Gull’s Rest, painted across the stern in gray block letters gave Mebre a sense of welcome.
Rowing up alongside, Mebre struggled first with the knots to tie the two boats together. Clambering over the gunwale amid the willful bobbing of the two craft left Mebre splayed out on the deck, lightly bruised. A wave of intrusion greeted her when she got to her feet: this was another fisher’s boat and she was not invited. Atop the mast a gull called out as if sounding an alarm. She shook off that discomfort by busying herself with a nearby crate.
In a short while she’d piled a handful of harpoons, a well cared for chopping knife and a small handsaw into her boat. She untied and pushed off. She figured she could keep her guilt at bay by only taking what looked most useful, and nothing more.
A shabbily maintained, gull-stained deepwater gallea, Heavy Hold, was easy to skip. However, Mebre smiled when she saw the sleek hull of a medium-sized fisher painted in jade with blue-gray trim. The Whale Kin. Longer than the Gull’s Rest by a good bit, with a plentifully portholed rear cabin, a mid deck row of a dozen oar ports beneath a single mast, and an enclosed forecastle, the Whale Kin was also a working boat, but a wealthy one.
Once on board, she headed straight for the cabin, and found it locked, swelling its prospects for loot. Pa had shown her that most lock mechanisms give way to a thin bit of metal and a little patience. She snapped off the pointy bit from a fishhook and the only thing that gave her trouble were the multitude of fresh blisters she’d picked up from a morning of rowing.
The cabin had a mattressed bed built into the wall complete with sheets and a pillow. Built into the back wall was an ornate cabinet and Mebre threw the doors open. She found a number of delicate looking brass instruments. Their fluted curves and strange carvings filled her with mystery and anxiety.
Behind another cabinet door she found a small tapped barrel sitting horizontally on carved supports. It was nearly empty, lifting easily, but behind it was an untapped twin. With a bit of work and a few grunts of discomfort she managed to get the full cask onto the bed. She planned to wrap the best finds from the cabin up in the blanket and tie it off with rope to lower it down to her boat.
In a drawer she found two sets of fork, knife and spoon, made from fine steel with carved wooden handles. They went onto the blanket, as did a heavy pewter tankard. A gasp of joy burst out of Mebre when another drawer revealed several silk kerchiefs. Sea green with wave patterns, white with repeating black diamonds, deep eggplant with sky blue borderlines, all of them felt more natural to Mebre than the flower-embroidered yellow linen that belonged to Seyneb.
Eventually she got the blanket bundle down on deck, resting alongside the smaller haul for the Gull’s Rest. Her guilt had gone truant in the face of such fancy treasures.
She looked over the deck of the Whale Kin and saw there was so much more to explore. With the sun climbing as it was, Mebre didn’t think she had time to fully look everywhere. After a moment of consideration she chose the forecastle, committing to returning another day to check the mid deck. She practically danced the length of the ship until she came to the foredeck door, slightly ajar.
She pushed it open letting daylight reach into the interior.
A metallic stink came from within, escaping through the now opened door. The odor had layers, stuffy heat and human waste clung to the thick air.
She heard the buzz of many flies and her eyes followed the long stretch of daylight let in by the opened door. Inside was dim, hanging hammocks blocked what light the portholes in the bow wall allowed in. A dark stain covered much of the floor, appearing still slick in places. In the shadows just beyond the patch of sun a hand stuck out from a hammock, the stain climbed the limp fingers, over the palm and ended at the source: long river-like cuts in the inner flesh of the forearm.
Mebre turned away and emptied her stomach onto the deck. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and found herself running back to the stern where she’d tied up her own boat. The whole time her memories were stuck on a loop of the dangling captain and the cut wrist of this crewman. She found herself wondering if she’d come here before visiting the Gull’s Rest, what she might have found.
She took her belt-knife to the bowline rather than fiddle with the knot. Aboard her own vessel, she put her hands to the Whale Kin and shoved off from that haunted boat. She committed her back and shoulders to the splashing oar-strokes, ignoring the agony of her muscles, the rough grind of wood against the raw flesh where her blisters had been. She looked back to see if she was pointed in the right direction and she saw the dark smudge of the shore ahead, blurred by tears.
With a near roar of pain she doubled her efforts. She didn’t want to be on the water any more, she needed something solid under her. The Captain’s overturned stool flashed in her mind. The sway of his toes, pointed down and dripping with the aftermath of his demise, became the swell-driven arc of the bleeding arm.
She pulled hard on the oars and harder still on her thoughts, she tried to get Goldie in there, something comfortable, but the soft meows couldn’t fend off that horrible buzzing. When Ma and Rahim proved equally incapable of crowding out the horrible images she focussed on the circle of her oars: the push forward, the brace of her feet and the full-body pull backward.
She laughed realizing that it was just now that she understood Beylem’s point about pulling the oars from her feet. All morning she’d worn down her back and shoulders. It was the pain and the relief of her improved toil that she found some peace, some measure of stability against the roil in her.
With her body locked into the rhythm of the rowing, she was free to untether her thoughts. They flew out to the one spot she most wanted to be in that moment: the rocky shore out beyond the harbor tower, open and free. It was there for her, calling to her. A sobbing chuckle escaped, she no longer felt the aches of a day’s work. She smiled as her imagination let her find hidden paths up to the cliffs and the unknown lands beyond, green and open.
She was still there, imagining the unwalled horizons and undiscovered trees, when the grinding sandy sound of running aground signalled the shore. She sat for a moment, breathing, feeling the solidity of shore sand cradling her keel, and not much else. When she felt she could trust her groundedness, she stepped out of the boat and into the shallows.
The sun-warmed water on her ankles reminded her of going hand crabbing in tidepools with the other kids in Hyr Golos, when they were too young to know whose pa worked on the Legacy and whose had unpayable debts, or whose ma had sunk to feeding her kids kelp soup. Life wasn’t easy then, but the difficulties looked small to her now.
With her bowline tied to a nearby tree, Mebre grabbed her lunch and, as Beylem instructed, found a shaded spot to eat. Sitting cross-legged she opened the cloth-wrapped packet inside and found a half circle of bread and a bit of smoked fish wrapped in grape leaves. She balanced the fish on her knee and took up the bread, it didn’t make it to her mouth before the tears made it to her eyes. She let them come, lowering the bread hand down to her lap. She absentmindedly brushed snot from her nose but didn’t interrupt her sadness from doing what it needed to do.
“Do you need this?” A girl’s voice intruded on Mebre’s misery.
Mebre looked up to see a hand holding a handkerchief extended in her direction. She wiped her eyes and saw the girl who’d waved at her in the Hyr tree square.
“I’m Ehrten.” The girl said. “You’re not Seyneb.”
Our girl has found a friend her own age. Sweet!
Best one yet! and with that ending, I suspect I'm gonna like the next one even more