And unsought, unasked, an image rose in Kindred’s mind, forming out of the miasma and chaos of the last few days.
She saw herself falling down through the Sea, the green fading into black and then a darkness without color or shape but inhabited nonetheless, first by wyrms and their slumbering vines and ants and roaches and then by larger creatures, some with eyes like the world, glowing, some with fearsome teeth and tails and tusks, some whispering endlessly in languages never written down or heard. She saw the world below and herself, alone, or perhaps not alone, falling through the Forever Sea, through the forever that no one talked about. Below the waves, Kindred found everything.
“Kindred? Hello?” Ragged Sarah snapped her fingers in front of Kindred’s face, pulling her up and out of the darkness. “I said I’ll check back later on to change the bandage and give you some more salve.”
Kindred nodded, feeling the dregs of the daydream leaving her. As she got up to go, Ragged Sarah put a hand on her shoulder.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, but I’m really sorry.”
Kindred put her own hand—the left one, unwrapped—on Sarah’s but didn’t say anything.
* * *
Alone, Kindred returned to the fire, to her fear.
She sang high, soft songs of entreaty and reached for the fire with her unburned hand.
And pulled back, hissing her pain at the flames.
She sang low, pulsing songs of demand and reached for the fire with her unburned hand.
And pulled back.
She sang quick and pulled back.
She sang dissonance and pulled back.
Again and again she tried, but the fire had taken her seed of fear and sown distrust. It did not see her as a friend and it did not see her as one to be trusted.
Kindred felt tears of anger pushing at her eyes, and suddenly she was a young girl again, ten years old, maybe eleven, and she was sitting on the deck of Revenger as the Marchess lectured her.
“You can’t be afraid of the fire, child. It’s a living thing, this blaze, and it responds to strength and self-possession. Do you have strength? Do you know yourself?”
Kindred had flexed her muscles, eliciting a laugh from the Marchess.
“Not strength of arm. I mean here.” She pointed a finger, poking Kindred in the chest. “Do you have strength here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Her grandmother shook her head. “You have to know.”
The Marchess stared into her eyes and stuck her hand into the flames.
Kindred gasped, but her grandmother only laughed, opening her mouth wide, letting the mirth escape onto the wind.
“Now you.”
They’d sat on the deck all day, her grandmother pushing her, encouraging her, mocking her, entreating her, and Kindred snaking a single finger toward the fire at first, then a few fluttering fingers, then a hand—flashing into the fire and then back—and then, slowly, beginning to sense the fire in her mind, she had put her hand in and held it.
Her grandmother sang during each attempt, and when Kindred finally left her hand in the fire, feeling the waves of flame caress and flicker around her skin, welcoming her, she’d heard the fire singing back, a ghost voice echoing in the long caverns of her mind.
“Do you hear that?” her grandmother stopped her song and asked, smiling wide.
Through the astonishment, the sting of tears in her eyes, Kindred could only nod, mouth open, hand buried in the hearthfire.
It was a memory she cherished: her first time communing with the hearthfire, her first time feeling purpose aboard a ship.
Sitting in front of the fire now, memories of pain raging through her hand, Kindred felt anew the poke into her chest, the intelligent eyes appraising her. Do you have strength? Do you know yourself?
“Yes. Yes,” she said, gritting her teeth. She plunged a hand, unburned, faithful, deep into the fire.
It burned at first. Kindred had heard the crude protestations of other keepers on other ships refer to the process as “breaking the fire,” as one might break a beast, tame it, conquer its spirit. Disgusting and repugnant.
Instead, Kindred thought of it as a self-statement: she told the fire she was strong, she was confident, she knew herself. She did not ask the fire to be anything other than what it was; instead, she asked the fire to see her in itself, to see her for herself.
And after a moment of fiery panic in which the flames pushed back, exhaling heat and worry, the fire saw her, joying again through her mind, an old friend worried for another only to find out she will be all right. The heat faded and left her hand again in the comforting flick and pulse of the flames.
She considered her other hand, the black wrap still smoking slightly, but she knew it to be folly. The fire had welcomed her anew, but it could not cure her hand. Kindred shuddered a little thinking of it, remembering skin bubbling, blistering, blackening.
A pulse of wind came over the deck and Kindred breathed it in, stilling herself. She let her fears and anxieties be drawn away to disappear amongst the forever thrash of the Sea.
She focused on the task at hand.
The Errant leaned starboard-way, and Kindred looked through the bones until she found the three thick splinters tangled together in the ash that were causing the tilt. Green deckhands, untried and untrained, often stepped aboard a harvesting ship thinking the hearthfire was good only for keeping a ship up, keeping it away from the vast nothing below the waves of green. They soon understood their ignorance.
Singing a high, lilting song, Kindred broke the connection between the splinters, her movements awkward as she found her way with just one hand, missing the dominance and surety of the other.
A wind sighed out from the fire as the pressure from the awkwardly fused bones released. The hearthfire flickered and flushed a deep, contented purple and The Errant groaned as long timbers shifted and stretched against one another.
The ship tipped back toward equilibrium.
Kindred watched the deck swing to true and go past, the weight and speed of it all too much. Grasses and seeds and pollen exploded into the air as The Errant rocked itself to a point of stability and crushed the Sea plants to either side of it. The sky was briefly clouded with the eructations of the Sea, and Kindred’s ears filled with the cheers of the crew.
She was back. The Errant sailed true again, and the Forever Sea stretched ahead. Kindred released a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding and stood, quieting her song into silence.
Captain Caraway gave her a nod.
“Best keeper on the Sea!” came a shout from above, and Kindred looked up to see Ragged Sarah, her smile wide, looking down from the crow’s nest.