I pulled those threads of wind into my nose and searched for the right notes, the right words. Instead of commanding the storm like an unruly hound, I thought to appeal to it—one power to another.
My song was a lullaby, simple and sweet. My emotion went with it—the same desire for freedom, peace and security that had fueled my voice as a child under the yew, at the gallows, and Kaspin’s auction. There was no questioning in that longing, only honesty.
“Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.”
The tendrils of wind whistling through the window eased. I held my breath for an instant, senses straining, hardly daring to believe I’d succeeded. The ship still rolled and complained, but the wind had lessened.
I sang again, and again. On the third round, I became aware of a new presence in the cabin but didn’t tear my focus off the window. It was likely just Grant.
The last of the wind retreated in a slow exhale.
“I can do nothing for the waves—at least, not yet.” I glanced over my shoulder. “But—”
It was not Grant who looked back at me, but a ghisting. She was small, translucent and smooth, hovering just beyond the wood of the bulkhead. Unlike Randalf’s Juliette, this ghisting—Harpy—had no face, simply a blank space between falls of straight, ghostly hair. She wore smooth skirts that I immediately feared might be tentacles, but as she swayed with the movement of the ship, I saw legs press against the fabric.
She was beautiful, I realized, in an abstract way, her only distinct features being the fall of her hair and the belt at her waist, from which hung an array of closed fans.
As I watched, awestruck, she picked up one fan and unfurled it with a deft twist of her fingers. She raised it to her face and watched me for a moment, even though she had no eyes. But the fan did. It had a full painted face with a secretive smile, a sharp nose and eyes the color of a spring sunrise.
She lifted the fan fully in front of her. It vanished but the face remained, now imprinted on the ghisting’s own head. She smiled at me, gave a graceful, liquid bow, and murmured. No sound came from her bowed lips, but a single word thrummed in my chest.
Sister?
I held my breath.
Harpy spoke again, and this time there was no question to it. Tane.
“Tane?” I repeated, confused.
Her smile slipped into a passive, blank expression. I couldn’t tell if my lack of understanding had caused it, or the ghisting simply couldn’t maintain any expression for long.
“What does Tane mean? Is it a name?” I asked. The ship still rocked, and I braced myself against the window frame. “Or a word? Do ghistings have their own words? I…” I trailed off, realizing how ignorant I must be of the creatures I’d grown up beside.
We do, Harpy said. She slipped forward, beginning to circle me with no regard for the tilting of the deck. She passed through the wood of the table and chairs, smoky wisps of her flesh clinging to their surfaces in her wake. We have our own words, our own thoughts, our own desires. Do you not know that?
I shook my head.
What do you know of us?
I felt as though this was an odd time to broach such a topic, given the ship was still in jeopardy and the ghisting should be attending to its hull and such—whatever ghistings did. But Harpy’s gaze was so intense, I had to reply.
“I know you begin as trees in the Wold,” I said. “Or a Wold, not necessarily Aeadine’s. You grow first in the Other, and sometimes your branches reach through the barrier between worlds and become our ghisten trees. Not always, but sometimes. If a Mother Tree is present.”
Harpy nodded slowly, liquidly. That is true. I myself entered this world through Aeadine’s Wold.
This admission, this similarity between us, struck me. I struggled to stand straighter, but the tilting of the deck didn’t allow it. “That’s where I’m from.”
I glimpsed Harpy’s smile again, quick and fleeting. In a way, she hedged. I grew there long before your arrival. Very long. A hundred years or more.
“Do you miss it?” I asked, because the question felt natural.
I do. Do you?
“Always.”
Harpy made a sympathetic sound and slipped closer. As do I. We’re both far from home.
“Do you wish you could go back?” I worried that the question was insensitive, given how she was bound to the ship, but I truly wanted to know the answer.
Harpy didn’t reply for a long moment, full of the creaking of timbers. I wondered if her attention was somewhere else entirely, then she said, No. And yes. I was never content in the forest—I wanted the world. When the Foresters came, searching for a ghisting to harvest, I drew them to myself.
That shocked me. “I thought…”
Ghistings are always prisoners, like you? Harpy finished for me. There was a time when the people of Aeadine remembered that we were allies instead of servants. But now… perhaps most have simply forgotten.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I didn’t speak, sensing she had more to say.
She selected another fan with absent fingers. Much has been forgotten.
“Like what?” I asked.
She lifted the new fan to her face and opened it. Before I could see what was on it she transformed from coy beauty to a twisted, bent woman with pointed teeth and a cavernous smile.
It was so grotesque, so unexpected, that I gave a startled shout.
Harpy vanished back into the bulkhead. I slapped a hand over my mouth, stifling myself before someone heard and came running.
Too late. A sodden, ice-rimed Demery opened the door, looming in the half-light, stance broad and hands braced to either side of the frame. The ship rocked again, and I just managed to keep my feet.
The captain surveyed me with haggard eyes. “What is it? Why are you screaming?”
“The ghisting.” I pushed loose hair from my eyes. “She startled me.”
“She likes to do that. Don’t encourage her.” Demery spoke the words in an off-handed way, as if his thoughts were already past the topic. “Did you still the wind?”
“Yes,” I replied, loosening the tension in my shoulders.
The captain’s stance also eased, but his scrutiny did not. “Good,” he decided. “We’d have lost more than a sail or two if you hadn’t come through.”
I almost grinned. “Thank you.”
Demery glanced upwards as the ship rolled again, then stuck a hand towards me. “Come above, Stormsinger. The night’s not over yet.”
TWENTY
Brothers
SAMUEL
In the midst of the storm, I foresaw Fisher’s death. The vision punched into my skull, leaving my inner eye filled with her motionless body, drifting into oppressive silence below roiling waves.
The bosun’s whistle shrilled, tugging me back into the moment—the wind and the waves and the tossing ship. Above me, sailors battled to lash the thundering foresail as their comrades hauled, yells and chanting almost drowned by the storm.
Then, as I had known it would, a shadow toppled from the rigging. I could not hear their shout, but I felt their ribs crack on a yard. I would have felt the crack of their skull hitting the rail too, but one leg snagged in the braces. Stunned and limp, they swung high above the deck.