“I told them you and Eammon were cousins of mine stricken with an odd strain of gangrene,” Kayu replied. “I don’t think they’ll want to get close enough to see the veins or the eyes, but if they do, that will be our explanation.”
“Delightful,” Eammon muttered.
Kayu flicked the reins. “Come on, we want to make sure we get to the harbor before it gets busy.”
Two hours’ hard traveling after that, the four of them packed into the back of Kayu’s coach like fruit in a market box. Lyra just watched the window, but Eammon gripped Red’s hand, and Fife kept his eyes tightly closed.
“I didn’t miss this,” he said weakly, scrubbing a hand through his sandy-red curls. “I’d much rather travel on my own two feet.”
But then they stopped. And then there was the sea.
When they first disembarked, they’d just stood there, blinking in the early-morning light. Kayu and Raffe went to the dock, where a small ship listed back and forth in the tide, a handful of rough-looking figures preparing it for departure. Lyra followed after a moment, Fife trailing behind her, though his eyes kept sweeping over the ocean like he couldn’t quite fathom its size.
Red had never seen Eammon’s eyes so wide. He stared out over the water as if he was looking for its end, trying to trace it all the way to the horizon line. “It’s… huge,” he murmured. “I mean, I knew it was, but… I’ve never seen anything…”
He didn’t have to finish. Even in the brief years when he could leave it, before he was the Wolf, Eammon had never seen anything larger than his forest, never bothered to go so far as the coast.
“We’ll see how much you like it once you’re on a boat,” she’d said, pulling him toward the harbor and Kayu’s waiting galley. When they stepped on the gangplank, the sailors working over the ropes gave them a wide berth. Red bit back a bitter smile.
Now the coast was long gone behind them and the sun blazed noon-high, painting the ocean in shades of green and blue. The rocking of the ship proved not to settle well with someone who’d only ever known the solidness of forest floor.
The sailor working the sail at the stern glanced over their shoulder at Eammon. “Will he make it?”
“No,” Eammon muttered.
“He’ll be fine,” Red called, waving a hand in the sailor’s direction, hoping they wouldn’t come any closer. She still had her hood up, but Eammon’s was off. “Just not used to sailing.”
“Water with a squeeze of lemon,” the sailor said, turning back to the ropes. “Always helped me. Though it could be different with his… condition.”
Eammon swiped his wrist over his mouth again. “You have no idea.”
Red grimaced and pushed his sweaty hair from his eyes.
He leaned briefly into her hand, then waved her off, sinking to sit with his back against the ship wall and his chin tipped up. “Let me know when we’re close.”
She glanced out at the open water. “It’s a three-day voyage, remember?”
Eammon groaned.
“Go below and try to sleep. I’ll wake you for dinner.”
“I don’t think I can move, to be honest.” He cracked one eye open. “And please don’t mention food until we’re off this shadow-damned thing.”
Red tousled his hair before pulling up his hood, then walked to the prow, leaning on her elbows to look out across the water as the ship skipped over it. She’d never spent much time on boats and didn’t feel a particular affinity for the sea, but there was a freedom in it, salt-soaked and coarse. The Wilderwood in her was quiet, far more settled than she’d anticipated it being, so far away from earth and growing things. Experimentally, she flexed her fingers. The veins along them blushed emerald.
She tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the briny wind whip at her hair.
“I’m sorry.”
Her eyes opened. Fife stood next to her, staring down into the water, hiding his expression. He held his scarred hand close to his middle, the other gripping the railing. “I chose this, to save Lyra,” he continued, like he was afraid he wouldn’t start speaking again if he stopped now. “I chose to be bound to the Wilderwood. To you. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on you the way I did.”
Brief surprise chased itself into relief. Fife and Lyra had made up, but he hadn’t made any such overtures to Red or Eammon—though they all behaved mostly normally, it’d been a cloud over them, a tension in the air that wouldn’t dispel. Having Fife finally decide to speak to her about it felt like laying down a heavy pack she hadn’t remembered picking up.