Page 11 of Beneath the Haunting Sea
That’s all they had to their name now. A handful of hairpins.
“What happened to you after my party?”
Weariness dragged on her mother’s face. “Guards shoved me into a carriage. I was given water, once or twice, but nothing else. I’vebeen on the ship since yesterday morning, not knowing what became of you. The Captain gave me food, but I wasn’t hungry.”
“Mama, you have to eat something! You’re in shock.”
“All my hopes for you—for your future. Gone forever.” Her voice cracked.
For a moment, Talia imagined herself in Eda’s place—Empress of Enduena, a lifetime of luxury, arranging the world to align with her every desire.But that’s not what she really wanted.
She wanted her father to be alive and well again; she wanted to inherit Irsa, like she’d always planned. To visit Od with Ayah one day, and see all the things her friend described in such wistful detail. Maybe marry, maybe not, so long as the choice was hers.
But that future had vanished the moment she sat down for breakfast with the Emperor. That futurehad never truly existed.
Talia clenched her jaw. “We’ll carve out a new life together on Ryn. You’ll see.”
Her mother stared out through the porthole, a crease in her forehead that Talia never remembered seeing before. “We shouldn’t be here. We should never have set foot on this ship. The sea listens. The seaknows.”
“The sea is just the sea, Mama.” Talia took her arm, tugging her gently awayfrom the porthole. “Come on. Let’s find some breakfast.”
They ate belowdecks in the crew’s mess, nothing more than another small cabin crammed with a rough oak table and a pair of sagging benches. There wasn’t even a porthole here, which made Talia unaccountably anxious—she didn’t like being shut away from the sunlight and the sea. The cook, a grumbling Odan with fierce black brows who lookedas though he’d never smiled in his life, served them more tea and fish and biscuits. To Talia’s relief, her mother finished her whole plate and seemed to perk up a little.
Talia tugged her mother up from the bench when they were done, fighting off the feeling that the ship was squeezing all the breath from her body. The two of them climbed the narrow steps leading from the hold up to the maindeck, Talia shoving open the hatch at the top. Sunlight hit her full in the face, and the sea air assailed her senses: salt and fish and a wild tangy freedom that made her skin prick. She could breathe again. She tilted her head back, staring up at the main mast, canvas sails billowing full. Sailors scaled the rigging, hauling lines and shouting to each other. They looked like gangly spiders, climbingsilk ropes up into the wind god’s domain.
Her mother laughed and rushed over to the port side rail. She had eyes only for the sea.
Talia followed at a slower pace, adapting her stride to the continual rolling of the ship. She stood beside her mother, curling her hands around the wooden railing as she stared out into the fathomless waves. They stretched forever into the horizon, all blue andgreen and gray, glinting gold where the sunlight touched them. A longing she didn’t have a name for rushed up to swallow her. She felt full for the first time in her life, when she’d never known she was empty.
“Have you ever seen the sea before, Mama?”
Her mother was leaning her elbows on the railing, the wind teasing strands of hair loose from her braids. “When I was a little girl, my fathertook me to the port in Evalla. I wanted to stay forever, but we had to go home again and I thought it would break my heart.”
The ship crested a wave and water splashed up over the rail, sending a thrill down Talia’s spine as it drenched her to the bone.
Seawater dripped from her mother’s chin. “I felt something then, calling out to me. It’s even stronger now.” She peered at Talia, an odd lightin her eyes. “Are you sure you can’t hear the waves singing?”
Talia looked back out over the water, and for an instant she imagined shecouldhear something, the haunted thread of an otherworldly music. But then she shook her head and it was gone again. “It’s just the wind, Mama.”
Her mother didn’t seem to be listening, a secret smile on her lips. She shut her eyes and started humming.
Taliaglanced uneasily between the sea and her mother. “Why don’t we explore the rest of the ship?”
“Go ahead, dearest. I’ll stay here. I need to understand what the sea is telling me.”
“It’s not telling you anything.”
Her mother shrugged, the funny little smile back again. “You could hear it too, if you listen.”
“Mama, there’s nothing to hear!” She was beginning to fear that five days shut in acarriage with no food had addled her mother’s wits.
“Just listen. Just listen.” She started humming again.
Talia turned from the rail and strode away. She refused to think that her mother’s strange melody was the very echo of the music she imagined hearing in her head.
She paced the main deck, watching the sailors hauling lines to adjust the sails, counting the bells that marked out watchesevery half hour. She scrambled up onto the smaller deck at the rear of the ship that formed the roof of the great cabin—she heard one of the sailors refer to it as the ‘poop deck.’
The ship rolled beneath her, wood creaked, and lines snapped. A few of the sailors started singing, and their rough-sweet voices mingled perfectly with the wind and waves.
