Dark Water Daughter （The Winter Sea, #1）
H. M. Long
For Mum, who read every iteration of
Dark Water Daughter—from a child’s excited
scribbles to this final, long-awaited form.
PART ONE
GHISTING [gih-sting]—A non-corporeal creature from that world which is Other. Grown within Ghistwolds, they inhabit wood of various forms, and are predominantly utilized in the figureheads of ships. Once merged with the vessel, their task becomes one of maintenance and guardianship, protecting their new host from the rigors and threats of the Winter Sea. See also STRANGERS, WOOD-WIGHT.
—FROM THE WORDBOOK ALPHABETICA: A NEW
WORDBOOK OF THE AEADINES
ONE
A Song for the Noose
MARY
The first rain I called was misty and fine, billowing down the slate hills east of the Ghistwold. It crept over the roof of the inn, the steeple of the little stone church, and the jumbled roofs and chimneys along the river. It muffled the violet-gold morning as it came, diffusing beams of sunlight into an otherworldly haze.
I remember how that rain felt, heady and sweet, bold and bracing. I remember how it collected on my cheeks and the leaves of the yew above my head.
That rain was my quickening—the moment my sorcery awoke in a lilting, child’s song.
My mother found me beneath the yew, brushed dirt from my frock and took my face between her hands. Her wrists, mottled with scars, funneled my gaze into wide-set blue eyes, each iris rimmed with wisps of grey.
“Never do that again, child,” she told me, her voice cool and level. Over our heads, the yew rustled, and water fell from its narrow leaves in an innocuous drip. “They’ll take you away if you sing like that. Do you want to go away?”
I shook my head, unsure and unsettled. What I wanted to do was speak—I was dying to, with the wind curling in my lungs. I wanted to sing, to soothe the ache of it. But when my mother used this tone, I dared not disobey.
“Then hush.” She put a work-worn thumb over my lips. Every inch of her was rugged, from her fraying brown braid to the muscles of her upper arms, taut beneath the sleeves of my father’s jacket. “You don’t want to end up like your mama now, do you?”
That was the day she returned to sea. The summons had come, and there was no escape. She murmured in my father’s ear, kissed his cheek, and stroked my hair. Then she perched on her sea-chest, strapped to the back of a mud-splattered coach, and trundled out of sight down the long road between the Ghistwold and the slate hills. She watched me as she went, her gaze at once a farewell, a warning, and a reminder of what she had said.
She did not return. War had sparked again, a great war in a line of greater wars, and my mother’s place was with the Queen’s Fleet and the tens of thousands of men and women who protected Aeadine’s shores. But even in her absence, I heeded her warning. I did not sing again, not in the way that might command the wind and the clouds and, some said, water itself. I did not sing again for another sixteen years.
By that time, I had already begun to follow in my mother’s footsteps, footsteps that led me to the gallows and a rough hempen noose. There, my descent into depravity would soon come to a sudden, swinging stop.
“Abetha Bonning,” a justice in a trim white wig and black tricorn hat declared from beside the gallows, backed by the thick stone walls of Fort Almsworth and a single, pacing redcoat.
The redcoat glanced down but continued his route, the barrel of his musket resting against his shoulder, muzzle pointing towards the sky.
“That’s not my name,” I mumbled under my breath, though my heart hammered so loud I could barely hear myself. My skirts and bodice were soiled with dirt, and my shift and stays soaked with sweat despite the cool autumn day. I quaked against the noose, weak and disheveled and wishing for all the world that I’d never left the Wold.
The justice began to read a list of my crimes, his breath misting before him, but I stopped listening. The chill wind whispered to me, as it always did. It whisked over the heads of the thirty or so other prisoners in the courtyard, all clad in the same spoiled garments they’d been arrested in months or years ago. Men and women, sullen and scowling, desperate and sick. Shivering children, all bones and big eyes.
I closed my eyes and leaned into the wind, even now taunted by the urge to sing. Wouldn’t that be a fitting last act, to sing down the rain at my execution? Neither the infamous Navy nor murderous pirates could drag me to sea if I were dead.
Except I would not be dead. My heart clawed up into my throat. If I sang, this execution would stop. I would go back to a cell until the Navy—or someone worse—came for me, like they’d come for my mother.
There are fates worse than death, child. My mother’s voice drifted through my memory. But here, staring death in the face? I wasn’t so sure I believed her.
I wished I could have seen her again. I wished that, as soon as I’d been set adrift in the world five weeks ago, I’d gone to find her. I wished I’d tried, even if it was a hopeless task.
But I hadn’t had the courage, or the strength. Now I would die, never knowing what happened to the woman who bore me.
“If you’re not Abetha, who are you?”
It took me a moment to realize that the speaker was not the justice in the tricorn hat, but the criminal at my side. My companion in condemnation had a bag over his head but sounded young, with a refined accent to match his fine teal frock coat, buckskin breeches and high boots. To my further surprise, his clothes were clean. Except for his shoes, which were splattered with fresh mud from the trek across the courtyard.
“They let you dress for… this?” I asked, ignoring his question. My real name had fallen on deaf ears for weeks, so I saw no point in telling him. Even now the justice droned on, listing the many crimes of Abetha Bonning—who, as I stated previously, I am not. Nor were they my crimes.
At least, not all of them. Some of them were. Accidentally.
Saint, I truly was going to die today.
The other prisoner shifted his bound wrists against his coat, making silver buttons flash in the meager sunlight. “The clothes are a small grace.”
“Yet you’ve a bag over your head.”
“Yet I do. My identity is something of a liability. Come, tell me your name before we stand before the Saint and he spoils the surprise.”
“I doubt we’ll be standing before the Saint,” I murmured. I pressed my bound fists to my stays, trying to hold my watery stomach in place. Could he hear my heart pounding? I was sure he could. “I’d think this hatch would drop us straight to Hell.”
“Speak for yourself…” He left the sentence open-ended, waiting for my name. “Elizabeth?”
“Mary,” I admitted, though I was not sure why I bothered. I glanced at the justice, who was now reading an extensive prayer for mercy upon the damned.
I realized the justice had not named the man at my side, nor listed his crimes.
“Good day to you, Mary,” my companion said pleasantly, as if we were at a dinner party. “I am Charles.”
“Good day to you, Charles.” I laughed a little, a hysterical sound that was more of a choke. I blinked hard. The world felt less and less real with each passing moment. The wind was so cold—my skin pinched and muscles clenched. The other prisoners were so quiet, their despondent eyes fixed on my face.