Sea Change

(Fair warning--description of injuries and deaths that, while not gory, may still be uncomfortable for those with strong empathy.)

The Castuvol family's mother ship White Wings pulled in sail and, with every oar working to hold position, settled at a good passing distance alongside the grooved channel that separated one side of the Inside Sea from the other. Every wakened body not attached to an oar scrambled to the side for a first look at this solid line drawn on open water.

Delu, slow with sleep still in her eyes, missed her chance to get in front for a clear view. Rather than struggle through the ranks or climb shoulders, as the other youngsters were doing, she hoisted herself partway up the lookout's tower. This was off limits, strictly speaking, but she wasn't about to miss the event just because she was shorter than all the adults.

Then the spar she was climbing tilted abruptly, and Delu had to hug it tightly to stay attached. At the same time, indignant shouts rose from both ranks of oars at once--the unbalanced weight of nearly the entire family on one side lifted the far outrigger off the water, while the nearside one swamped.

From the top of the steeringhouse Aytish's commanding bellow cut through the confusion. "Dawn watch, w'y'get over to the outside rigger and hold it down?"

Response and action were swift. "Aye, mother captain!" called twenty voices as the identified crew members swung or hopped across the struts. The ship settled closer to level, and Delu exhaled with shaky relief. There was, after all, a reason free-climbing the tower wasn't allowed.

Still, she smiled with satisfaction and hummed while she bent a loose line into a foothold. A sailor was at home with the risk of falling, and anyhow there wasn't a tiderider aboard who hadn't swarmed up a forbidden height while still a lightweight youth. And with every head focused away from the ship, who'd be paying attention to her in the first place?

"Oy! Y'little tree-pincher!"

Delu's head snapped up at the sharp cry. The woman in the lookout swing was leaning down, shaking her hand in an off, off gesture. "Geddown, if y'don't want Aytish fetching you!"

Almost every head. "Morning, Pedyat!" She grinned cheekily at her sour cousin. "Get on down yerself and tell 'er, then!"

Pedyat glared, then settled her feet more firmly in the stirrups and fastened her gaze on the northern horizon again. Delu snickered. She knew Pedyat wouldn't leave her position just to tattle on a junior sailor for climbing the tower. From that swing, Pedyat had a better view even than Aytish. Not to mention she was supposed to be keeping an eye clear for that boat…

Her feet secured, Delu leaned out from the tower. To the north, the capital island of Mraydor lay invisible over the edge of the ocean. Usually only navigators and the most experienced sailors could know at a glance which direction it was, but at this place the floating line pointed it out as clearly as if it were the island's shadow.

Delu's eyes tracked the line from its vanishing point past the ship, where it swelled to a channel less than half the width of the White Wings' main hull, and on until it disappeared again into the west, toward Galtern.

Muttered commentary rose from the assembled crew to Delu's perch.
"So there's yer great conduit, ay?"
"Seems smaller than it ought to be."
"How d'y'think they can get a ship on that without it tipping off again?"

Walemin's conduit. Talk had been heard about it for years, but in the past ten months that talk had turned into rumors of cables being anchored at the bottom of the ocean, enough wire to wrap the entire island cluster and tie the ends together…and some kind of boat that was supposed to sail with no sail, leaving Mraydor at sunrise and docking at Galtern before midday, and returning to its home berth by sundown.

No one who rode the tides believed it could really be done. As young as she was, Delu had sailed between those two islands upward of a hundred times. With a strong current and good winds, the best they'd done was two days from Galtern to Mraydor, and twice as long going back.  Most tideriders dismissed the idea as coming from fool dockside dreamers thinking they could outship those who actually knew the craft. But Aytish was among the less skeptical mothers captain. If this fantastical boat had a chance of actually existing, she wanted to see it for herself.

If.

Delu swung her gaze back toward Mraydor. It was long enough past daybreak by now, and still no sign of the sail-less ship. She shifted her footing slightly, to ease the numbness that had begun to set up in her muscles.

Down below, the speculative rumblings took on a more satisfied tone.
"Probably sunk before it left harbor."
"Always said it was just another mad idea out of Mraydor."
"That Walemin. Wha'd'y'spect from someone never spent a full day off dry land?"

Until Pedyat hammered at the bell. "It's coming!"

Sailors leaned dangerously far over the edge. Delu straightened as much as she could on her perch. She glimpsed it herself, a speck on the far-distant point of that line, only a beat before the first voice below shouted "I see it!"

Delu stared at the speck until her eyes began to dry, then squeezed them shut. She'd begun to imagine the point moving. But when she looked again, it was true--the sailless boat was visibly farther along the channel, shifting closer and larger between one blink and the next. In another three breaths she could see that the boat truly had no sail, nor mast to hold one. And still it came faster…impossibly fast…she noticed now a swell in the ocean ahead of the boat, as if the water itself were trying to escape-

A horn blast startled Delu into almost letting go. The warning signal continued until Pedyat stopped to draw breath, and in that brief silence Delu heard Aytish roaring "-stations! Get into-" and then her voice was covered over by the horn again. The ship jostled as sailors scrambled away from the edge.

The horn stopped sounding at the instant the wall of water struck, the same instant that the spar punched Delu in the face and chest.

She'd been stood on, once, by a teenaged cousin trying to make the point she was in the way. It was like being under those boots again, that pressure on her sternum, slackening once it was satisfied she and the spar matched in speed, only to turn and try to thrust apart her quivering arms and legs as the ship's sway approached its turning point.

Then, for an instant, everything stopped moving. Delu exhaled, inhaled, braced herself again for the ship to sway to the other side as it recovered from the wake strike.

Wind tugged loose strands of her hair as the spar dragged her back across the ship's beam. It didn't slow when she expected it to, instead tilting faster, and a cold hollow opened in her gut with the realization that somehow the ship was actually going to capsize. An eerie whistling rose loud, joined by the strained crackling of distressed wood, laid over indistinct screaming.

The ship stopped tipping suddenly, and Delu slammed face-first a second time into the spar. With a thunderous crack the lookout tower tore itself apart an armspan above her head. The remaining stump recoiled, finally flinging her loose. She flailed in the air an instant. Sound stopped suddenly. The sky dropped out of sight, replaced by churning water.

Too dazed to panic, Delu reacted as she had been trained. She closed her eyes and tucked herself into a ball, hastening the spin. When she gauged her head was rising again she straightened out, arms and legs wide. Briefly she looked, saw the sea give way to sky, slammed her feet together and pointed her toes, pulled her hands in and clamped them over her face.

She sliced into the water perfectly. A cloud of bubbles tickled past her. The ocean felt her, weighed her, tested her. It pushed on her skin, tugged her hair. Her body slowed…stopped…

One beat after another sounded in her ears. The air she held clamped in her lungs began to burn. The ocean was taking his time making a decision. Delu stiffened, fighting the instinct to struggle. The ocean gripped harder on those who fought him, she'd been told. Let me go, she thought, hoped, wished, pleaded, prayed. Don't take me.

Don't take me.

Don't take me…

Don't…

Don't…

Don't…

Don't move…

Pedyat ordering her around again? Delu growled and tried to pull her head out of the interfering busybody's grip. Wasn't her job to fuss at the young sailors for oversleeping.

Don't move! Hold still!

…Couldn't be Pedyat. If there was anything that crimped sheet never demanded of her, it would be to do nothing. Leave me alone, she tried to protest, but only a dry gargle came out. There was something in her mouth. It didn't belong there, but she couldn't spit it out. Whatever it was didn't block her breath, but wouldn't let her move her lips and tongue. And when she tried to grab it off her face, she realized her arms were also trapped under something.

Easy does it!

She wasn't in bed--she was flat, her entire body pinned down!

Can you open your eyes? Can you see me?

Who was that shouting? Delu's eyes felt glued shut, but with a little effort at blinking she loosened their lids. Dark, watery shapes swam around, eventually coalescing into a blurry humanlike form. "Hhhhh?"

"Aytish. We're on Galtern. You've been very badly hurt."

She squeezed her lids repeatedly to try to clear the grit and tears from her eyes, frustrated at her inability to wipe them. It worked, at least a little. It was the mother captain leaning over her, and it was definitely not the White Wings underdeck in the background. "Hhh hhh hhhhh?"

"You need to be still. You've done a lot of healing here--please don't undo it."

Delu chilled at the tone. Aytish's voice shouldn't be shaking over the fate of a rankless cousin of four degrees' distance! What happened?!

The fog in her head thinned, revealing images that answered the question. Deep in the arms of the ocean, pleading for her life…spinning in the air, tossed from a broken spar…clinging to it as it carried her…a wall of water racing toward the ship…a fast-moving boat with no sail… "HHHH!"

"Delu, take it easy!"

"That's the memory coming back." A stranger, standing somewhere out of sight. "I'm afraid the pain won't be long behind." A man's face moved into her peripheral vision, wearing something wrapped around his head. Not one of the family, not even a sailor. "We'll give you something else for that as soon as it's safe to do so. In the meantime, listen to your mother captain and keep still."

Delu stared at Aytish, gurgling and breathing hard.

"I know. You want to talk. I'm sorry--they're trying to push your face back into its proper shape."

That was the cue for the pain. Aches woke everywhere in her body at once--ribs groaned as she breathed, all four limbs throbbed in time with her heartbeat. And her head…it felt like having clamps on the inside and outside of her face. She tried to feel the roof of her mouth with her tongue but it still wouldn't move--and in the next instant, the pool of saliva collecting at the top of her throat vanished with a whirring sound. Wasn't she even allowed to swallow?

"They said the worst of it will be over with in another two days. I'm sure if you want it, you could get another round of deeps-cheater. There's no reason you have to be awake that entire time when there's nothing you can do."

That explained plenty. Every sailor had a medikit refresher annually, and deeps-cheater--the emergency anesthetic--got special mention every time. Don't mess with it, would put you out a full day at least, give only when absolutely necessary, life-threatening injuries, dose 'em and tie 'em down and full sail to the nearest hospital… Nod, nod, nod, nod, nod, never imagine needing the stuff. Well. At least now she knew it was no exaggeration. And as her heart continued to pulse a repeating hurt into and out of her extremities, she had to admit the idea of not feeling that for another day or two was awfully enticing.

Another part of the training, however, was that once you started using medicine as a convenience, inconveniences started looking like emergencies. Now that she was on Galtern, she wasn't an emergency anymore. "Hhh," she grunted, a negative reply that Aytish understood.

The mother captain smiled. "Delu…" Again that hitch in her voice! "I want you to know how proud I am of you. You did everything right, and saved your own life. You're a born sailor."

That was a good point.  However much pain she was in, it only meant that she was alive. A curious sizzling thrill flooded her from soles to scalp. She'd been given to the ocean, and he hadn't wanted her!

"…And I am so sorry that we have to do this."

So was she. Stuck on land until she healed. Not that she had any intention of complaining--considering how many times she'd been hit with a beam of wood as thick as herself, it was enough of a marvel that she still had a face. Anyway, once she was on her feet again she wouldn't even wait for the White Wings to make its way back to Galtern, she'd sign on some other ship as a fill-in until she caught-

"…no other answer. The new ship…"

New ship? What new ship?

"…smaller, so there wouldn't be room…"

What did that mean?! "Hhhh?"

"…up to me I'd hold an aux craft for you--"

Put a nine-year-old on an auxiliary boat? "Hhhh?!"

"--but that's not my say anymore."

None of this made sense! "HHHH!! HHHH!!"

The cloth-headed medical attendant popped into the space between them. "Hey now, young sailor, that's enough of that. Didn't you hear your mother captain tell you to rest?"

The man wasn't looking at Aytish, but Delu was, and this time she noticed the squeeze of her jaw, the internal flinch that passed under her face. There was something else, something worse.

"There, that's better," the attendant said cheerfully, patting a part of Delu's shoulder that she realized immediately was badly bruised. "Oh! Dear me--sorry about that," he answered her hiss. "Here, why don't I go get that pain treatment ready for you? That way you can have it as soon as the time's right without waiting for it to get mixed." With that he vanished from sight, his fading footsteps accompanying his diminishing presence.

The remaining silence cracked under Aytish's news: "I've stepped down."

Why? Why? Delu fought for words despite knowing the futility of it, and only succeeded in triggering cough-like spasms that outdid everything else in pure agony. Keep breathing.

It wasn't as if Aytish needed those words to guess at the question. "I made a rather disastrous decision, didn't I? And not one of the family got out of it without a scrape." She raised an arm wrapped in bandaging into Delu's field of view. "You're the worst hurt who lived. Half the dawn watch were swept off in the first wash. Rigan, Hensu, and Railu were the only ones we could find again. Now don't worry about your mother, Javour's all right. But Misclan and Oya, Strual and Shenyu, Aeldar…" A long pause. Aytish clasped her shivering hands together. "Hanef got trapped under the outrigger. Torral--he was cut through by a piece of broken timber. Pedyat…"

Pedyat? Pedyat died? Pedyat, who prided herself (among so many other things) for her ability to execute a perfect dive roll from any height?

"She didn't even drown. It's hard to believe--but I've never seen anything fall so fast. The tower dragged her so far under that…she suffocated before she came back up."

Just as well she couldn't speak, this time. Aytish and Pedyat shared a grandmother and were almost of an age, as close as two ends of one rope; of course she would grieve. But it was hard for Delu to dredge up sympathetic thoughts about someone whose only interactions with her had been to scold and nag. Instead, she let herself remember the others. All cousins, some distant in relation and in attitude…but Misclan, twice Delu's age and much nearer the core of the Castuvol matriline, had nevertheless often been a willing partner in mischief. Hensu had given Delu her final passing dive, and handed over her own ration of candied sours as a celebratory gift. Torral, one of those few who'd enjoyed spending his free time entertaining the youngsters.

"It's so hard to give up on people who could still be swimming…but we had to go. We had so many hammocks filled with injuries. You…Hiral, his leg got crushed…Basa's head was cracked--but he didn't survive the trip here. I don't know--I'll never know if a few extra hours would have saved him." Aytish wove and unwove her fingers. "One poor choice, and I destroyed a tenth of the family. And it's not just that--with so much damage to the White Wings, it would be cheaper to rebuild her entirely. But we can't…we don't have the backing…" She started to press her fingers to her eyes, then yanked her hands away. "Stassi--she's mother captain now. She and a barebones crew are on their way to Scaetra to collect the new ship. And when they come back…less than half the family will be able to go with them."

Delu's skin prickled. That half would be the those most closely related to the mother captain--the new one. Stassi's children, then her siblings and their kids. After that, the rest of her grandmother's descendants. Aytish was one of those, Stassi's aunt--why wasn't she part of that barebones crew?

Because the former mother captain had been given the job of breaking it to the peripheral family members that they weren't family members anymore.

She was Delu Ex Castuvol now.

She didn't think it could get worse, but it did. "Galtern has agreed to accept the rest as compensation for treating our wounded. Those twenty and older will get work and places to stay, but each on their own, at least for now. Which means--I'm sorry, Delu, I truly am--until Javour can earn a place where you can be with her, you'll have to go to an orphan farm."

A long, hard exhale was the closest she could get to screaming. She was a sailor! Maybe not with the size and strength of an adult but she'd passed her dives, could handle an oar, knew all the winds and their seasons--she could run across a stretched-out sail as easily as across a ship's deck. She'd circuited the entire cluster of islands at least fifty times in her life, crossed more than half of the long ocean gaps…and now she'd been condemned to a life trapped on a dead pile of rocks!

Aytish's outline was blurry again. "You won't be alone. All the Castuvol children will be going to the same farm. And you'll still be out on the water every day."

Out on what water? Shallow water wasn't ocean. It was land that was wet.

"I'm sorry," Aytish repeated. "I know this feels like the end of everything. But you're young, younger than you realize, and time passes faster than you think it does. You'll be back with Javour yet. And Stassi's not forgetting anyone--she'll do all she can to clear our debt and bring the family back together. Someday you'll stand again on the deck of a Castuvol mother ship. Keep that in mind, and you'll do well. Remember, hope is the best of all healers."

Delu knew what that saying meant. Keep pretending something impossible might happen someday, so you don't get driven screaming mad by how terrible your life is now. Hope wasn't enough--she needed a plan.  One that didn't involve sitting around waiting for someone to come pick her up. Aytish might spin a fine fancy, but the kind of lucky tides it would take to double a fleet's wealth didn't rise often.  It might be decades before Stassi could work her way up to a ship big enough to hold the entire family again--and that's if she ever did.

Because that was the whole point behind this new conduit, wasn't it?  Just another way for groundpounders to cheat tideriders, to get out of hiring sailors to carry them and their goods around the islands.  No, she couldn't count on Stassi.  Nor Javour--what could a sailor really do to earn her way on land?  Even if Javour were allowed to get her daughter out of the orphan farm, Delu wouldn't go.  She couldn't, just couldn't, stand to live on dry land.  Javour would understand that.

Delu would leave Galtern as soon as she was able, by herself if she had to.  She'd fill in on any ship that would take her.  Or--she'd go to Scaetra.  Work the canals and passages, or maybe the shipyards.  She'd build a boat if she couldn't buy one.  And if she couldn't have a mother captain again…she'd be one.