The dock was swarming with people. A mass of shouting and shoving and cursing. No one had any thought for anyone other than themselves, and I was terrified. At least I suspected I was, somewhere hidden beneath my fluttery panic and excitement.

“Stay close,” Balro muttered in my ear, his hand clamped uncomfortably tight around my upper arm. My other hand was occupied with Sashada’s. She had taken it the moment we left the inn that morning and refused to let go.

I knew the danger of being stranded alone in such a place. Scarcely there a quarter of an hour and already the docks had claimed their first casualty. I hadn’t seen who it was. I hadn’t seen her fall to the ground and crack her skull open on the rocks below the dock, but I had heard her scream and I caught the sickeningly wet sound as she landed, and then smelled the blood, salty and bitter on the wind with the scent of the sea.

Would somebody go down and move her? I wondered, but then there was no time because everyone had begun boarding the ship.

A ship, not a boat.

I swallowed down the fear that rose inside my throat from my stomach and burned something terrible inside my mouth.

I had been on a boat before, many times. But never had I found myself on a ship.

It was a huge, groaning monster; a real dragon if ever I had seen one; with its large round belly, head like a snout, and sails like wings. It was horrible, and it was exulting, and my entire body shook with something that wasn’t cold.

Balro didn’t ask me if I was ready, and I was grateful because though I would tell him I was, it wouldn’t be true, and however brief our friendship was, I didn’t want to end it with a lie.

But he did see how I eyed the Radkkan soldier leaning casually against a post, watching the women swarming over the dock with bored eyes.

“You won’t have to worry about him. With a suitable incentive, he’ll turn a blind eye to anything,” was all he said, and I had to trust he was right.

Sashada embraced me tightly, and I returned the gesture with the same fire. When we pulled away, we stared at each other for a long moment to say, wordlessly, everything we wanted to tell the other.

“We’ll see each other again,” she said finally, squeezing my hands. “Don’t tell me we won’t, because I know we shall.”

“I hope so,” I told her in all genuine honesty, “I dearly hope so. Stay safe, won’t you?”

She smiled at me, and her smile was like rain in the sun, because we both felt the sorrow of our separation, but we also felt joy for each other that we had begun to forge our own paths.

“I will,” she promised and kissed me on both cheeks. “Try and find happiness, Judeth, wherever you find yourself. I know that there is joy out there for you, and you must not cast it aside for the sake of his memory.”

“I know,” I told her. “Though I don’t feel that I shall be truly happy again for a long time.”

A shout rolled over the crowds, and now the mass was moving even faster, and I was being shoved and jostled as they elbowed and rammed past me.

“Best get going.” Balro clapped me on the back. “This is the only ship headed to Seaggis. If you miss it, you’ll be stranded here another six-month.”

“You had better not let anything bad happen to Sashada,” I warned him, and he rolled his eyes, but even though his actions were dismissive, I felt he took my words seriously.

I hesitated for a moment, wondering what my last words should be.

I shall miss you?

No. No, definitely not.

Stay safe?

No.

Don’t drown?

Better advice for me.

I couldn’t decide, so I just settled on something simple. Simple, genuine, and respectable.

“Thank you,” I told him.

Then I was moving.

I didn’t look back at them as I made my way up the gangplank. I kept my eyes on my feet and my arms out for balance, but when I had made my way safely aboard, I searched the crowds and I found them.

They waved. Balro with a slothful half raise of his hand, Sashada with both arms, and I waved back, keeping my hand in the air even after the ship had pulled out from the harbor and my friends were no longer where I could see them.

My eyes were moist with tears that wished to be shed, and I let them, not bothering to wipe them away because there was no one here who cared enough to be bothered with them.

“Make your way below deck!”

The order was called several times to be sure everyone heard it. I had no idea which direction ‘below deck’ was, so following everyone else seemed like the safest bet.

That was when I noticed the child.

There was a young girl of perhaps five, huddled against the wall of the ship, limbs tucked up to avoid being stepped on by the stampede.

I lingered for a moment in indecision. Surely the girl had a mother.

But no one came for her.

“Hello,” I knelt beside the child and spoke gently, as soft as I could. “Where is your mother?”

She looked up at me with enormous brown eyes, and I could see that she had cried recently. Her round cheeks were red and uneven, and her dark lashes were damp and stuck together.

“Did she leave you here?”

Tears bubbled over her eyes and spilled down her face. I took this as my answer.

“My name is Judeth.” I reached out for her hand and felt her fingers curl around it. “What’s your name?”

“Asetha.” She wiped her eyes with one hand.

“Asetha,” I repeated. The decision was made before I had to think about it. Before I even had time to ponder my reasoning. I had never been especially fond of children, or at the least, I hardly spent time thinking of them. They simply existed. But I found I would not allow seeing one abandoned and alone. Not here. Not in a place where no one would care.

“Asetha, I am all alone now too. Shall we be alone together?”

“Can we?” she breathed.

“Hold on tight to my hand,” I instructed, and she did as she was told immediately.

I kept her close by my side as we followed the last of the people streaming down below deck. I felt her fingers tighten around my hand as we found ourselves cloaked in darkness; a darkness that was disturbed only by whispers and the sound of shuffling feet and the odd lantern here and there, each one held by a grim-faced man.

When we finally stopped, I supposed that we must have reached the belly of the ship. I could hear every creak and groan of the wood and the hiss of the water.

If the frame were to collapse, we would all instantly drown.

“You have the fare?” a sailor asked me. He had eyes that were permanently squinted like most Seamen’s, from the mean glare of the sun against the water.

“Oh, yes,” I told him, fumbling in my pocket for the coins Balro had pressed into my palm as we left our room. “And this ship is headed for Seaggis? Most certainly?” I couldn’t imagine what I would do if there turned out to be a mistake.

“Ay,” he agreed, accepting my money, and not blinking an eye at the child gripping my hand. “Though it be a long journey if I may say, Mistress.”

“How long?”

“About three month,” he said. “And that’s if we don’t run into any trouble along the way.”

Three months.

All the other women, for that was what made up the entirety of the ship’s hold, had settled down here and there against the wall or on the floor. There was no bedding. No hammocks.

Three months.

I repeated it to myself again. No matter how many times I did, it didn’t change.

Three months was a long time. It was a long time to be anywhere, but most of all at the bottom of a ship, surrounded by unfamiliar women and sharp sailors.

Three months was a long time to be alone.

I felt Asetha’s fingers again, this time gripping a handful of my skirt. I forced my fears down and did my best to smile comfortingly at her.

“Why don’t we find a place to sit down?” I suggested. “We have a long journey ahead of us, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

I didn’t let myself wonder about what would happen next. If I made it to Seaggis alive and well, would I take this child with me? What would we do? Where would we live?

Three months. I took a deep, steadying breath and sat down on a patch of empty floor, then patted the space beside me to encourage Asetha to do the same.

Three months was a long time; long enough for me to make a plan.

The first three weeks of the voyage passed with nothing of great significance happening.

We slept in the hold, all of us together, with no blankets or pillows. We had only what was brought with us.

Food was given out twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening. A small handful of hard, dry biscuits that tasted like cloth and dust, but filled our stomachs. We knew we had to be content with the small mercies these next weeks. Water was brought around only once a day in a bucket. Each of us would dip in a ladle and drink thirstily from it, before passing it to the next woman.

We were allowed up once to the first deck, when the waters were calm and the sailors weren’t busy, and then only for a brief time before we were brought back down again.

The nights were filled with the creaking and groaning of the ship, the shhh of the waves and sometimes the whispers of conversation, which would quickly peter out.

I would lie on the ground with my satchel under my head as a pillow, and my cloak shared between me and my new pet as a frail blanket. I would lay there and stare up at whatever was above me: lanterns, ceiling; trying to be comforted by the rock of the waves and trying to find enough calm inside myself to fall asleep.

Sometimes I would hum; quietly so that the others wouldn’t hear. If they did, they did not mind, or at least they did not say anything. Sometimes another voice would join in, or three, and there would be a moment of unity, and I felt as though I knew everything about everyone, though we exchanged no words.

But then, the morning would come, or at least what we thought must be morning, and we were all strangers again.

Almost a month in, the sickness began.

I remember the morning it started perfectly; every detail etched into my mind as though with a carving knife.

I woke to an uncomfortably familiar pain in my lower abdomen and knew, even before making sure, that I had started bleeding. Early. This caused a bubble of dread in my stomach that generally such a simple thing should not warrant.

It was a bad omen. I felt sure.

“Judeth.” Asetha pulled on my sleeve. “Judeth, what’s making that noise?”

It took me a moment to hear it, still thick-headed, and when I did, I thought at first that there must be an animal onboard. A mule by the sound it was making.

Then I realized that this was impossible. And then I saw her, the woman.

I did not know her name. She had very dark hair and green eyes, and I thought hers might have been one of the voices that accompanied mine during the night, but I couldn’t be sure.

She lay next to the wall of the ship farthest from me, next to three fair-haired sisters, oblivious to how they edged away from her. The woman’s entire body shook as she tossed and turned in what I hoped for her sake was sleep.

Even from our distance, I could see the sweat on her brow. She opened her mouth and let out a horrible wail that was broken by a violent fit of coughing.

The man who examined her stayed there for a very short time. Before he left, he informed us that she was very sick, and would most likely die within the next few hours. Then he was gone, and there was nothing left in his absence except panic, and the fevered moaning of a dying woman.

She left suddenly, half a day later, and we didn’t know what to do. When the men came down, they had handkerchiefs pulled over their noses and mouths, and they wrapped her up in her cloak and carried her away.

I didn’t have to hear the splash of her body hitting the ocean to know what they did with her.

She was the first of many similar deaths that occurred over the next two weeks.

The nights were no longer filled with singing. Instead, I would wake to the sound of screaming, coughing, and sobbing. The air was filled with the ghastly scent of urine, sweat, sick, and blood, and the darkness seemed suffocating.

I held Asetha close and whispered to her, hoping to block out the sounds of death that surrounded us, and wished with all my heart that there was someone to do the same for me.

It spread quickly. It killed the weak and left the strong struggling through a haze of illness that toyed with them, loosening its grasp, and then digging its claws in further. It was a living nightmare that never ended. A nightmare which neither through sleep nor waking could any relief be brought to. It was a creature that stalked me every night, laughing in the shadows and screaming with the voices of the women, and I could only wait because there was nowhere to run.

Every morning that I awoke from a fitful rest, I would lie still and wonder if, finally, it had gotten its hold on me, and every morning I would find that it had not.

Would I escape it?

By the end of two weeks, the first glimmer of hope trickled down like the small cracks of sunlight through the boards above us.

There was an improvement, was what was being whispered. Many of the sick were beginning to get better.

“Do you hear what the sailors are saying?” I asked Asetha, later one evening as I sorted out our evening meal of hard biscuit on a handkerchief between us. “They are saying the sick ones are not dying. The illness is weakening. Isn’t that such a good thing to know? Here, take some biscuit.”

I held out a piece, but though she received it, she did not eat it. I frowned at her. “I know it isn’t very good, but we must eat it. It’s all there is, and we must keep up our strength.”

She didn’t look at me. Her head was bowed, and her shoulders trembled.

“Asetha?”

There was something inside my stomach, something sickly and cold even before it happened.

She shivered violently and collapsed on the floor. I scooped her up into my arms and touched my fingers to her head, though I didn’t need to. I knew already that the creature had reached her.

“Asetha,” I whispered. “Asetha, speak to me.”

She let out a soft whimper, her eyes rolling back into her head, and every inch of her thin body shook. She coughed; a deep, lung-wracking cough that caused her entire body to convulse.

The other women were watching, some with sorrow in their eyes, some with pity, but none moved to help.

None could help, and they knew it. I knew it.

So, I held her. I held her very close and very firmly so that she could feel my presence and never fear she was alone. I held her for an unknown amount of time as she fell in and out of restless sleep.

It was late at night, I knew because the smell of the air was different. It was thick and putrid as ever, but it was different, and I loathed it because my eyes grew heavy and I knew that if I fell asleep when I awoke, she would be gone.

I brushed the damp strands of dark hair off the little girl’s brow. I wiped away the sweat that beaded along her skin, and I spoke to her, gently, constantly so she would know that I was still there.

“The food here is truly terrible, isn’t it?” I asked when there was a break in her coughing and she was laying in my arms, breathing heavy and labored. “When we get to Seaggis, we’ll find ourselves a feast and eat like queens for three days. Wouldn’t that be nice? I’m sure they must have some lovely things to eat. What would you like? I think I would like to have fresh bread with butter and roast pig, and mint tea. And maybe a cream cake too.”

I remembered the remains of the cream cake my mother had left for me in the satchel and closed my eyes to better remember the taste of it.

“Have you ever eaten a cream cake, Asetha? Rich cream like seafoam, sweet, and salty too, with a crust that melts on the tongue like a snowflake.”

There was silence in the darkness. I felt the steadily weakening beat of her pulse, where my thumb was pressed against the inside of her wrist, and panic stabbed at the inside my chest like the beak of a terrorized bird.

I felt suddenly that I needed to cry, and I did, silently. The tears slid down my cheeks where in the dark they could not be seen, and I made no sound. Aretha’s fists tightened around my sleeve, and she tried to say something, but nothing came out except for a choked gasp.

“Don’t speak,” I told her softly.

“I—“ Her fingers were vices clenched over the cloth.

I leaned closer to hear her.

“Am I going to die?” she croaked.

“No.” I swallowed down the tremor in my voice. “No, of course not. Try to go to sleep now. You’ll be better in the morning.”

“Will you—“ She had to stop and choke out a mouthful of bloodied mucus, before she could breathe again. I wiped her mouth with the hem of my dress and listened to the water beneath us. She couldn’t go down there. Into that deep, empty, cold ocean. It was no place for a child; even a dead one.

“Will you be there, when I wake up?”

“Of course.” I felt my lower lip tremble, and I bit down on it, hard enough to taste blood. “I won’t let go of you the entire night. I won’t even move.”

There was a smile on her face, barely distinguishable through the dark, but I saw it. I felt it.

“Good night, Judeth.”

Her hands disappeared. Her pulse beat once, twice, three times, then it was gone, and she was still.

“Oh,” I let out the sob that had been constructing my throat and hugged her tighter.

Somewhere during the next few hours, I must have drifted off, though I slept fretfully. My head burned and my lungs clenched painfully every time I tried to draw breath.

Dreams flitted in and out of my sleep. Voices, hands, cool fingers, a figure; always a woman. Sometimes she was my mother and other times she was someone else, but always she was whispering, smiling, stroking my hair away from my face or laying a cool palm against my head.

“My dearest love.” I let myself smile as I felt my mother’s fingers brush through my hair.

“Mother.”

Her embrace was warm and loving and everything I remembered it to be. In her arms, I could always find safety and comfort, and everything else I ever needed.

“Drink this, dear. Drink up. It’s only water.”

There was a foul taste in my mouth, and I tried to spit it out, but a hand clamped over my lips and fingers pinched my nose shut so I had no choice but to swallow it.

Now there was uneasiness in my stomach. Something wasn’t right, I wasn’t home.

I opened my eyes and sat up retching, but nothing came into my mouth but bile, and this merely burned my throat.

A pair of thin, gentle arms wrapped around me and pulled me back. I looked into eyes that were not my mother’s, and yet familiar. Hazel eyes in a pinched, thin face framed with pure white hair that wasn’t right for a woman with so little age on her skin.

“N—“ I coughed, and she smoothed her hand in circles along my back until I had calmed down. “Nahara?” My voice came out in a rasp, and I wondered that she heard me.

“You remember me.” She smiled.

“I tried to sit up again, but she pushed me down with a warm but firm hand.

“You are over the worst of it,” she told me. “But you are still ill. You must rest.”

A jolt of memory hit me like lightning to the chest at her words. My arms were empty.

“Asetha.” I gripped the woman’s arm. “Where’s Asetha?”

“The little girl is dead, dear.”

I knew she was. I had known it. I had held her knowing it. But knowing and accepting weren’t the same. They weren’t the same at all.

“Where is she?” I asked. “Where did they take her?”

I didn’t really want her to tell me. I didn’t want to know what was true: that they had taken the little Asetha’s body from my arms and had cast her into the ocean in the dead of night. Just like that, and now she was gone. Just like it had been done with James.

I wanted to cry and scream. Perhaps run to the higher deck and demand that they bring her back, but I didn’t. I was empty because I was alone now. Again, I was alone. The ocean was the keeper of my company now, and the ocean did not share.

I curled into a ball, letting my head rest in Nahara’s lap as she stroked my head, and my eyes were dry, though everything inside of me wept.

“Desislava, wasn’t that your name?” Nahara asked me after a while.

I watched the other women mingling. Together, but not close. There were significantly fewer of them than there were when we had started out, but there were still many. Many strangers. Many people who didn’t care.

“Judeth,” I corrected flatly. “My real name is Judeth.”

“Judeth. What a pretty, elegant name.”

Hearing my name in another voice caused an alien sensation to stir in my heart. Judeth. What I had always been called and yet now it sounded so foreign to me; because Judeth was a girl who lived with her mother and father in Saje, with a warm, happy home and a boy who loved her.

Who was I now?

Who was the girl who was all alone on a ship bound for a faraway destination? Who was the girl who had lied for her own selfish needs; who had sung with unknown women in the night and had held a dying child in her arms?

Who was I?

“I had a daughter once, you know.”

“You lost her?”

“That’s right.”

There was an old sadness in Nahara’s voice, a sadness that time could not weaken. It was an all-consuming sadness that was her entire being. “When she was quite young. We were walking down the street of Cthos, hand in hand, and one moment she was there, the next she was gone.”

There was a soft chuckle that I felt more than heard, vibrating through the woman’s hands.

“My hair lost its color the moment it happened. Can you believe it?”

I could believe it. It wasn’t like trying to believe in Seers and spells, because there was nothing magical about grief.

“What was her name?”

“Ingrith.”

There was a pause, and then Nahara spoke again.

“I imagine . . . if my baby had grown up, she would look like you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Just like you.”

This thought brought strange comfort to me as I began to drift once again into sleep.

“Sleep dear, it will all be alright.”

“Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Of course I shall. You needn’t worry about a thing.”

A little girl had asked of me the same thing, and I had given a similar answer, but she had never woken up.

Would I?

“You’re a strong girl, Judeth.” Nahara’s voice was calming and her arms around me were warm, though skeletally delicate. “This fever won’t be what shall take you from this world, I promise you that.”

Nahara spoke true. Every morning I woke up improved. Soon there was nothing left of the fever but a weakness in my body, and this I did not mind too much. I would lie down and dream of a better place. And I had someone who looked after me, who preened and petted me as though I were her own daughter. It was through this that I realized how starved for motherly love I really was, and perhaps how equally starved for someone to give it to Nahara had been.

“How long have we been sailing?” I asked one morning, feeling better because I had slept through the night with no interruptions, and the air had cleared up a bit. It was still salty and still close, but it was fresher, and my lungs were grateful for it.

“Almost a month and a half, dear.”

“So, we have perhaps only another month and a half left to go?”

“Yes!” She smiled down at me and patted my head. “My daughter is so clever,” she cooed.

“Your daughter?”

“That’s right.” She smiled at me again, but there was something different in her smile. Her touch too was different from what it was before as she stroked a hand along my cheek; wistful and dreamy.

“You’ve grown up so fine and beautiful. I knew you would, of course, I saw it the moment you opened your eyes.”

“Nahara.” I sat up and said slowly, “Nahara, I’m Judeth, don’t you remember?”

She blinked at me, and the clouds seemed to clear from her eyes.

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Forgive me, Judeth.” She smiled again, but it was tight and strained. “I’m afraid I don’t feel all that well. The fever wasn’t too kind to me, you know. Perhaps I might lie down?”

I shuffled over to give her room, and she rested her head down upon her arm and closed her eyes.

“You look so much like her, you know,” she whispered, just after I assumed she had fallen asleep. “So similar to what she would have looked like, I could almost convince myself you were her. My poor baby. I did a bad thing.”

Nahara’s words left me uneasy. I tried to shake it off and tell myself it was nothing. She was confused, that was all. Confused because she too was recovering from the devastating fever. She would be well again soon.

Nahara slipped into an uneven pattern where half the time she was convinced I was her daughter Ingrith, and the other half, she called me Judeth. I could never predict when she would change. It would happen at any moment, and it was strange and uncomfortable, though sad and warm too.

“Such lovely hair.”

Nahara beamed as she pulled out a comb from her dress pocket.

“Come, Ingrith, sit down here in front of me, and I’ll comb it for you.”

“Nahara.” I sighed. “Nahara, I’m Judeth.”

“Don’t be silly.” She laughed and ran the comb through my hair with a loving, tender hand. “Don’t say such things. And you must stop calling me Nahara, love. Call me ‘Mother’.”

I opened my mouth to tell her again, to insist that she remember who I was, but I couldn’t. As time went on, I was unable to correct her at all. Nahara, when she was delusional, was happy, caring, and warm. When she was sane, she was sad, quiet, and ill.

I’ll play along, I decided. Just for a while, I’ll play along, then when we get to Seaggis, I’ll find someone who can help her.

And so I did. I played the part of Ingrith, Nahara’s lost daughter, letting her praise me and love me. I had a mother again, and it would be a lie if I said that I did not enjoy it. I did, parts of it. When I was lonely, I could crawl into her lap, and she would embrace me. When I was sad, she would comfort me. When I woke from a nightmare, she would soothe me. But it wasn’t me. Her eyes saw Judeth less and less and it was saddening because though I was taken care of in every way, I was just as alone as before.

“Eat up.” Nahara smiled at me one morning after I was sure that I was completely better. She held out a piece of hard biscuit between two fingers.

“I’m not hungry, Naha—Mother,” I told her. The waves were larger than usual, and my stomach was unsteady.

“But you must! You’ve become so thin.”

I shook my head.

Nahara pushed the biscuit to my lips. “Eat up now, Ingrith. Or Mother shall be cross.”

I allowed my lips to be pried open, for her to stick the morsel into my mouth, and Nahara clapped her hands together, smiling in satisfaction.

“There now, that wasn’t so hard, was it, my lovely? Now, finish that and then I shall give you another. It is not as good as what I would make, but you must still eat it. When we get to our new home, I shall cook you a feast.”

I had no choice but to allow her to feed me, and then when I felt well and truly ill, I let her to hold me and whisper comforting things in my ear because I didn’t know that I was willing to trade a warm, loving mother for a grey, empty one.

The waves grew steadily worse as the days went on, and the sun no longer existed. Everything was cold and bleak.

“It will pass, my lovely,” Nahara comforted me after three days had passed and there was no improvement in the weather. “You mustn’t worry. You’ll see. The fifteen nights will end. The clouds shall open and sunlight shall warm us. Soon you’ll wake up and the ocean shall be still as glass.”

This time, Nahara was wrong. Each morning I woke to colder air, more wind, more darkness, and more waves.

The desperation that had since fled after the departure of the killing fever came back. Women hugged each other, or themselves, and whimpered. Some prayed; hands clasped tight in front of their breasts as they closed their eyes and murmured in low voices. To the gods. To the spirits. To anything that might be pressed upon to grant us our lives.

We were no longer allowed up.

The bad news came at the worst time. Some cried, some just placed their faces in their hands, and some fainted. I had a rock in my stomach. A large, cold stone that settled there firmly when I heard what was said.

We were running out of food. There was very little to feed the sailors, and less still for us. Fresh water was almost scarce, and the storm was growing dangerous.

They told us to remain calm, that everything would be alright, but they were frightened too. I could see it in their eyes and seeing that they were frightened caused a hopeless fog to settle in my mind.

Two months and a week in. We were so close.

One day I found that I too was praying for our safety: for a miracle. That we be left alone, because if we died now, it would be unbearable.

I woke to the sound of rushing water. For one paralyzing moment of fear, I thought we might be under the sea, but then I realized it was just rain. Just a lot of rain, falling so thick and heavy that it was streaming down through the cracks above me.

The ship rose and fell. I could feel each climb and each descent, every lift, and every dive.

Some of us rolled, slipping along the floor, and crashed into others.

I held tight to the ground and pressed myself against the wall. I had been terrified now, for so long I could hardly feel the difference of this new terror.

For hours; three, maybe four, I waited for the moment when we would hear the crunch and groan of the skeleton of the ship collapsing under a colossal wave of water.

We would die, I knew. Some of us might swim, but we would all die. We were not close enough to Seaggis to make to land, and too far from any other island to receive help.

Shouts of the men above kept us all in a constant state of panic. We could not hear what they said, only that they were shouting.

I was so terrified I couldn’t even cry.

“If you’re going to take us,” I whispered to the sea, “just take us. Stop your games. Let it be a swift end.”

It did not take us. The rainfall lessened, and even though the wind grew stronger, we were still alive when evening fell.

“Ingrith?” I twitched as I heard a voice. The first quiet voice in many hours.

Nahara opened her eyes. She was lying against the wall, wrapped in her cloak. Her skin was nearly as pale as her hair, and there was a faint tinge of green to her color.

She squinted at me, then smiled. “Oh, Ingrith. There you are.”

“Are you well, Mother?” I asked.

“I’m terribly thirsty.” She rubbed her throat and grimaced. “They haven’t given us any water for an entire three days. I think I shall go and ask them for some.”

She made to stand up, and I pushed her back. “No, no, you mustn’t, Mother. You are not well. I will go.”

“Such a dutiful child.” She brushed a strand of hair from my cheek and smiled. “Be careful, won’t you? The waves are stronger than usual.”

I promised her that I would be extremely careful, and made my way carefully across the room, crawling on all fours; picking my way between the people laying here and there on the floor. They paid me no mind.

There was a passageway leading from our hold to the stairs that led to the deck. I paused, holding onto the wall for support, just behind the curtain that separated the two spaces when I heard voices speaking in hushed and urgent tones in front of it.

“It’s no good, I say. There’s nothing else to be done.”

“I cannot.”

“Shall we all starve then? Or be brought under?”

“I won’t do it. I can’t.”

There was the sound of a mouthful of spit hitting the ground and a muttered curse.

“You have done it before. You did it with at least seven of them who was dead.”

“But that’s because they was already dead. These ones are all alive, and breathing, and frightened.”

“They’ll die anyway, lots of them. Whether it be from thirst, hunger, or the storm. It’ll make no difference.”

“It’ll be my hands what’s doing it. That’s the difference.”

There was another curse, this one louder than the other.

“I’m not telling you to drown all of them! Only the older ones. The crones and hags. They’ll die within the next few years even if they survive this.”

“I’m not doing it. ‘Tisn’t right.”

“Fine, then. You stay here. You be a coward, and I’ll do it. You’ll thank me for it later, you’ll see.”

“Their blood is on your hands.”

“Shut up and find me a bit of rope. Do it now, or you’ll join them in the water.”

I didn’t understand. I wasn’t even sure that what I had heard was true, but I did know one thing. There was a plan to save the ship, and it involved the death of over half the women waiting frozen and terrified in the hold.

“Oi! You! Get down here and help me!”

“Which ones?”

“The old ones.”

“They all look old in the dark and everything.”

“All the ones with grey or white hair. Make sure you don’t frighten them neither. We can’t have a stampede of hysterical women running around. Not in weather like this.”

A new streak of icy fear hit me like a blow.

There were many women among the entirety who had white hair, but the first to come to mind was the one who called herself my mother.

Nahara.