Kindred coughed out a laugh, surprised.
“I failed out long before the bookmavens began discussing other roles aboard a ship. I didn’t even make it through the core instruction in hearthfire-keeping before I was dismissed.”
Sarah’s smile grew wider somehow.
“What a scandal. No wonder Rhabdus has been such an almighty ass to you. You know she was a guest maven at the schools, right?”
Kindred nodded, rolling her eyes.
“She never shuts up about it.”
Their laughter filled the darkness for a few moments until Sarah held up a hand, cutting Kindred off.
“Do you hear that?” Ragged Sarah’s eyes were wide, her breath held. Kindred held hers, too. Waiting.
There.
Rising above the constant noise of the city, sharp and piercing, came the cry of a bird, part scream and part song, all wild, all untamed. Kindred might not have even noticed it without Sarah, who stood motionless, her body angled toward the noise, a smile held on her face.
“A jay,” Sarah said after the birdsong had died away. “Sometimes, I feel like I spend more time talking with birds than I do people. It can be a lonely job.”
Kindred nodded, thinking of the tiny pocket of stillness that surrounded the hearthfire. The blaze was set in a metal basin in the center of the deck; no walls or ropes blocked it off, and a crew member might walk near enough the fire to feel its heat any time of day.
But none did. Instead, Kindred—or sometimes Rhabdus—sat there, trying to sing peace in the eye of the storm, alone, surrounded by the crew.
A moment of silence, full and comfortable, passed, and then Sarah stepped closer, handed Kindred the letter, and then, tentative and careful, she gave Kindred a hug.
It was a quick thing, Ragged Sarah’s arms around her for a moment and then gone, the smell of her hair, a rich, heavy oil Kindred couldn’t place—there and gone.
“I heard about the Marchess; the news is all over Arcadia. I’m sorry.”
Kindred never considered repeating what Red Alay had told her, though whether it was because she didn’t fully believe it or didn’t think Ragged Sarah would, she wasn’t sure.
Instead she said, “Thank you.”
Kindred took the letter and walked down the dock until she was clear of The Errant, the deck dark save for a few lights coming from the captain’s quarters, and nothing stood between her and the Sea. She sat, letting her legs dangle over the edge, feeling the rustle and caress of grasses shaping themselves around her legs, and she let her legs sway in their movement in return.
Blending with the Sea.
“Will you stay?” Kindred asked into the moonlit darkness, staring down at the letter in her hands, feeling the weight of it and wondering if she could open it.
And Ragged Sarah did, sitting beside Kindred without a word, near enough for their shoulders to touch just slightly if Kindred shifted or moved at all.
The prairie wind sighed and the moon hung like a lantern and the Sea whispered encouragement.
And Kindred opened the letter.
* * *
Kindred.
An old scribe once wrote that the prairie is a daydream, and if that is so, then I go to lose myself in it.
I will not miss this surface world. Every day we strive more to break the environment to our will. Flatten the Sea. Sell the water. Chain the animals and order the plants. In our arrogance, we have forgotten ourselves to be a product of this place. A participant in it. One star in a grand constellation.
The blight is in us, moving our arms to destroy the rhythm of the Sea, closing our eyes to the sight of a sunrise, turning our ears from the wind.
And now the Sea has begun to die. I have looked beyond our grasses, into the wonder of the Roughs, and the sickness is there, too. I am going below, Kindred, to find the source of the Greys or die trying. Something moves below us, and it calls to me. As it calls to you, I suspect. If you seek me, look beyond. Look below.
Some will think me dead. And perhaps they are right. Every attempt to go below—for the crassness of wealth, for the stink of power—all have ended in death. But I have given myself to the Sea, have become the sail to its wind, and it pushes me down now. If I don’t answer this call, Kindred, I will wither and die more profoundly than ever I could by falling into the darkness, if falling is what I will do.
I will not miss this surface world.
But you, my child, I will miss. Remember, the prairie holds worlds, and the wind beneath the Sea is unceasing. Listen for me in the grasses and listen for me below.
My love for you is.
* * *
Kindred let the letter rest in her lap for a moment, open to the moonlit night. She listened to the grasses, closed her eyes, and let the prairie wind fill her.
But she could not hear her grandmother’s voice, not outside of her memories, no longer out in the world.
She sat with the letter in silence before passing it to Ragged Sarah. Maybe she should have kept it private like Red Alay and the others had with their letters. Maybe she should have hoarded it as her grandmother had hoarded so much: forcing Kindred to watch her build the hearthfire and shape the bones without ever actually telling her how to do it. “You have to steal my techniques, Kindred,” she would say when Kindred complained. “I have worked hard to gain them, and so will you.”
Over time, Kindred had developed her own techniques, her own approach to keeping the fire: equal parts technical and artistic, equal parts mind and spirit. Of course, when she had tried that approach at Arcadia’s seafaring schools, the teachers had laughed at Kindred’s intuitive approach and her claims that she could hear the song of the fire clearly, followed soon enough by mockery and then anger. The Marchess had taught Kindred to listen to the flames, to blend with them, but the teachers and bookmavens at the schools demanded total domination over the flames, and Kindred simply couldn’t—or wouldn’t—obey. It had always been about spirit, about curiosity, about finding something within herself.
While Sarah read, Kindred pulled a small coin from her pocket, barely big enough for a slice of bread, and flicked it out into the Sea, watching the moon’s light catch and release it over and over as the coin turned in the air. For a moment, Kindred thought the coin might stop on the surface of the Sea or slow its descent among the grass.
But it dropped through.
“She writes like one of the poets,” Sarah said, handing the letter back to Kindred.
“Yes, she does. Did.”
“Why didn’t she finish the last line, though?” Sarah touched a finger to the final line. My love for you is.