Everyone was given a storm station on our first day on the water except me, my seafaring knowledge being so minimal that, in any crisis that could not be rectified with recitations of Pope or the Iliad, I would be more hazardous than helpful. When the others ran their storm drills, George told me the best thing I could do were a tempest to rise was stay out of the way. He also assured me that a storm at this latitude, this time of year, in such a short voyage, was as likely as a summer snow. Yet here we are.
I try to clamber back into my hammock, but the canvas is twisted, and I can’t stay on my feet long enough to untangle it. It’s foolhardy to even try to set it right again, let alone climb back in, curl up, and hope for sleep as the world ends around me. Even if the storm were quiet and still, I would feel myself starting to slip down the embankment and into anxiety, my brain supplying an almost constant list of new catastrophic fates that could befall us. I try to breathe more than a quick gasp but it feels like there is no air down here. My heart has taken on an uneven canter that renders my breath even more reluctant. I reach for the pocket of my coat, glad I was cold enough to sleep in it, and touch the spyglass, making certain it’s still there.
But as soon as my fingers brush the brass, a shiver runs over the back of my neck, and I’m overwhelmed again by that feeling of eyes on me. Suddenly I’m sure that’s why I woke. I wonder if it’s the storm—I read somewhere that, before a man is struck by lightning, all his hair stands on end. Perhaps that’s what’s about to happen to me. Lightning strike slots itself into my list of fears, just as the temperature in the cabin drops, a chill so abrupt I shiver in spite of my coat. The sound of the storm dies, like a blanket was thrown over to muffle it, and I hear someone calling my name.
Adrian.
I’m sure of it. As sure as if I had spoken it myself. I don’t move. Am I dreaming? Still asleep, this whole storm a fabrication of my overwrought mind and that clear, ghostly voice just another set dressing?
I dig my nails into my palm, and I’m awake. I’m awake and I touch the spyglass in my pocket again and someone is calling my name.
Adrian.
I can’t explain why, but suddenly staying still—staying down here—feels like walking past a house fire without calling for a brigade.
Adrian.
I stumble away from my hammock, stooped under the low ceiling, and clamber up the stairway leading to the top deck. My bare feet slide on the damp planks. The wind gusts down the hatch, wet and so salty it stings my dry lips. As I pull myself onto the deck, the sky turns momentarily rosy, the world lit up with an unnatural spill of champagne-colored light, before the darkness overtakes it again.
I stagger up the stairs to find rain flying in fierce volleys, the wind turning each drop into a white needle tossed horizontal with the deck. The crew are scattered thin. I can see Seb, one of the French boys, in the rigging, a lifeline around his waist connected back to the main mast as he tugs in the sails. They buck like stallions in the grip of the wind. A white breaker strikes the side of the ship, lifting the prow, and for a moment, I feel weightless.
I press a hand to my chest, expecting to feel my heart galloping even harder than before, but it is shockingly even. When I take a breath, it’s long, steady, and deep, three things my breath almost never is. I have become so accustomed to living on the edge of hysteria that this sudden calm is almost more frightening.
But I don’t feel afraid.
This time, my name comes from the storm, in perfect harmony with a crash of thunder.
Adrian.
I look around wildly, searching for whoever it is that’s calling me. Lightning splits the sky, the brief flash turning every raindrop into a lantern. The deck looks as shining and smooth as an iced-over pond still waiting for skates.
Adrian.
I know that voice. It’s like a song I recognize but can’t quite remember the words to. I have to find it.
Adrian. Adrian. Adrian.
“Adrian!”
A hand fastens around my shoulder and I whip around. It’s Monty, his free hand held over his face to shield it from the rain. A loop of rope is tossed over one shoulder, tugging at the neck of his sopping shirt. “What the hell are you doing?” He has to pull me to him to be heard. How did I hear myself called so clearly and so calmly when I can hardly make out what Monty is saying with his mouth against my ear?
“Get back down below! Now!”
He tries to drag me back to the hatch I came up from, but I dig in my heels. “Someone was calling for me.”
“Get down below—” The end of his sentence is drowned out by a growl of thunder. “—isn’t safe!”
“Someone needs me!” I realize he can’t hear me—aside from the storm, I’m shouting in his deaf ear. I struggle against his grip, the electric surge that pulled me up here making me slick and wriggly as an eel. “Let go!”
I try to wrench from his grip, but he drags me back around the way I came, only to find it barred—the hatches have been shut and battened with heavy pieces of canvas tarpaulin. He looks around, scanning the deck for any open door he can shove me through and out of the way, but I refuse to move. Something inside me has been hooked like a fish on a line by the sound of my name, and I know in my bones, in a way I cannot explain, that I am needed. I am being called. Someone is calling me. Someone is looking for me. It’s less that I hear it and more that I can feel my own name echoing around inside my chest.
Adrian.
“Adrian, come here!” Monty grabs for me, and when I dodge, I slip on the wet planking and fall hard. Monty tries to catch me before I hit the ground, but instead falls too. He lands on top of me, the breath knocked from both of us, though Monty recovers quicker. He pins me to the ground just as another wave crests the deck. For a moment I am underwater, my ears flooded and all sound dropped into bubbling silence. Then, with a rush, the world returns, and we’re both coughing. Monty spits out a mouthful of sea water, his hair pressed so flat to his head it looks painted on. I reach for my pocket, checking for the spyglass.
Monty pulls me to my knees by the front of my shirt, then yanks my ear to his mouth. “You have to get below!”
There’s another flash of lightning, and this time, I hear my name like it came from the ocean itself, a soft tidal voice in my ear.
Adrian.
My skin erupts in gooseflesh, and Monty’s hand falls away as I turn.
Beyond the prow, the waves are white capped and a thick mist has formed where the rain strikes the sea, blurring the horizon. Lightning cuts the air, in unison with a peal of thunder. In the brief flash, I see the silhouette of another ship through the night, this one the same color as the storm, from the sails to the planks, a gray that is less a color and more like the absence of any. It looks fashioned from the sea itself—its masts knobs of coral, the ratlines woven from kelp, each of the sails a school of tight-packed fish. While our boat is tossed like a toy, this schooner glides the stormy waters like it can anticipate where the waves will next break. It sails against the wind, hardly even swaying. The waves flog its side, the water eel-dark and punishing, but the ship does not waver.
The Flying Dutchman.
“Adrian!” I hear Monty shout, but he sounds farther away now. “Come away from there!”
I’m standing at the rail. I don’t remember how I got here. My hands grip the slick wood so tight my nails leave crescents in the lacquer. A swell of water breaks in over me, and I scrape the salt from my eyes with the back of my hand. When I look again, the ship is closer. Impossibly closer.