Everything out there had become confusing and strange, and Kindred felt pulled in every direction—forward for the captain, back for Little Wing, below for herself. Something important was happening inside of her, and though she couldn’t yet articulate it, Kindred knew in that moment that somehow, Sarah was part of it, this woman who seemed to be one thing but held a secret, softer side away from the world.
“There. Lean back on that,” Ragged Sarah said, tying off the rope, making a looping chair for Kindred. From the forest of ropes hanging and slung and tied off from the mast, Sarah took one and pulled, and Kindred ascended, the new hearthfire cradled in one hand.
The mast was a spike of reality in front of her, cut through with the gold and silver and blue lettering of ancient spellwork—a relic of an age when the Silent Men of Arcadia still carved the masts from Trees of the Valley, a single mast offered by a single tree, carved and enchanted all in a single night.
Kindred had never met the Silent Men before they shut their abbey doors forever, great locks on the outside filled and sealed with clay, doors on top of which huge wooden crossbeams were angled, nailed, and secured. The story went that, after the last beam was put in place, the abbey forever sealed away at the edges of Arcadia, a bag of coin—the final payment for the builders—was launched out of one of the high windows along with a note. It read only, Forget about us, for we have forgotten about you.
It had taken several years for anyone to become familiar with mast-making, with the delicate spellwork necessary to hold a prairie ship together. Finally, after a period of intense despair among the shipping world, a man from the Mainland, the Border Baron, had found the answer and begun production of functioning masts again, each one carved with the necessary magical runes that could pull the hearthfire’s magic into the rest of the ship and keep it afloat.
Still, with the shipping delays from the mast-making families, Arcadian sailors had out of necessity taken chances on the inexperienced work of the guild mages in those in-between years. Kindred shuddered at the memories of stories told over drink in taverns: ships ripped apart in the Forever Sea’s fickle winds, masts enchanted wrong and unable to sing in tune with the hearthfire, spontaneously catching fire or fracturing with great, doomed cracks.
Kindred stared at the etchings as she rose; below, Ragged Sarah’s arms moved in a steady, slow rhythm.
At the top, Kindred placed one careful foot onto the crow’s nest and then the other, pulling herself under the guardrail with the crook of her arm, not trusting her burned hand beneath its many layers of cloth. She sat down on the small wooden platform, cradling the splinter of hearthfire in her hand.
From here, the Sea was an impossible beauty, a world of green describing the wind’s dance. Kindred peered through the space in the guardrail, feeling every dip and rise of The Errant, every pitch a hundred times over, understanding the ship’s movements in drastic ways.
“Spectacular, isn’t it?” Ragged Sarah said as she appeared, scaling a single rope with ease. She climbed into the crow’s nest and slumped back against the guardrail.
“It’s amazing,” Kindred said, hushed and reverent, letting her eyes rake over the endless green of the Sea. She felt as though she were seeing anew a person she’d known forever. Here was her Sea, seen and loved as if for the first time. “I can’t believe I’ve never been up here to see it before.”
Ragged Sarah laughed, sitting easily in the cramped space, her legs folded in front of her and yet somehow still splayed, the bend of her knees and fall of her arms at once constrained and luxurious.
“I’ve yet to sail on a ship where the nest wasn’t the best place to be.” Sarah looked out toward the Sea, and Kindred let herself imagine for just a moment that they saw the waves in the same way. Not as a field from which to harvest plants, coin to be snatched. Not as a space to be traversed, an obstacle between a sailor and her destination, her next payday. Not as the flat, featureless thing so many believed it to be.
It lived wildly. It moved and danced. It breathed and offered breath.
A prairie Sea, sky-deep and stretching past the horizon. In the sliding fingers of wind, grasses flipped and angled, darkening away from the sun’s direct light. From so high up, it looked like great shadows skimming over the surface of the Sea, driven by the wind, searching endlessly.
“Let’s get started,” Ragged Sarah said, gesturing to the metal bowl set into the floor of the crow’s nest.
Kindred set the splinter carefully inside.
Ragged Sarah nodded, dropping in a few stray plants pulled from her pockets, curious curling leaves, a deep red flecked through with bits of green and gold.
“What are those?” Kindred leaned close, forgetting about the hearthfire for a moment, which stretched high and flicked a gentle warmth on her jaw and face.
Sarah pulled back, eyes wide.
“Careful,” she said, panic in her voice.
Kindred looked up, confused, still wondering after the strange, beautiful plants now burning bright.
“What?”
Sarah’s eyes were wide as she reached out one, two fingers to touch Kindred’s jaw where the fire had caressed her. Kindred felt her face flush as Ragged Sarah’s callused fingers slid over her jaw and cheek, which were both probably smeared with day-old coal dust.
“No burn? I know you can hold the fire and work it with your hands.” Hand, Kindred thought involuntarily. “But your whole body is safe from it?”
“I have given myself over to the fire,” Kindred said, slow and confused. Had Sarah never spoken with the keepers on her previous ships? Was it different on pirate vessels? “As long as I’m careful”—she held up her still-bandaged hand—“and don’t ask too much of myself or the fire, it won’t burn me.”
Ragged Sarah shook her head, flashing her teeth in a grin.
“Amazing. I didn’t know you had such control over it.”
Kindred grinned too, shaking her head.
“It’s not control. It’s trust and partnership.”
Sarah cocked her head but didn’t say anything.
“I’m sure it was the same on your . . . previous ships, wasn’t it?” Kindred asked, nearly saying pirate ships instead.
“The keepers from the Once-City I sailed with treated the fire like an enemy to be watched warily and, when the time called for it, beaten into submission. They were nothing like you,” Ragged Sarah said, shrugging. “I’ve never met a hearthfire keeper—even one on Arcadia—who moved with the fire like you do, Kindred. You’re different.”
Kindred felt warm blood fill her cheeks, and she was grateful for the shout from below.
“Get a move on!” came Little Wing’s voice from below.