Page 13 of Astrid at Sea

“I woke up to use the bathroom. Someone was in there, so I went down the hallway to use the other bathroom. But when I glanced over my shoulder, I spotted the door open, and someone ran out. I tried to call after them, but they didn’t answer and kept running.”

I felt him frown. “It could have been one of the crew,” he mused aloud but didn’t sound convinced.

“Probably.”

“But it is strange.”

“Why would they run away from me?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured, a confused expression on his face. “I guess we’ll just have to ask the crew at dinner or something. Though I doubt anyone would own up to it as it’s rather strange.”

“Probably not,” I murmured and remembered something. “I know I’m your wife, Viktor, but I don’t want you to give mespecial treatment. We’ve been away from home for two days, and I haven’t been assigned any chores.”

“You don’t have to do chores, my siren. You just being here is enough.”

“It isn’t for me,” I frowned. “At the very least, I should pull my weight around here.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’m more than happy to do whatever needs to be done. Here, on the ship, I don’t just want to be your wife, Viktor. I want to be part of the crew.”

“We’ll find something for you tomorrow,” Viktor promised me with a kiss on my shoulder. “We’ll start small and see where we go from there.”

“Thank you,” I smiled at him before returning my attention to the water ahead, making sure I hadn’t steered off course with all the distractions. I doubted getting us all lost would land me in good standing with the crew. “How many more islands until we’re smooth sailing to Greenland?”

“Four more,” Viktor told me, tightening his arms around me. “That shouldn’t take us longer than four days—actually, we have five more stops left. After the fourth island, we’ll be smooth sailing to another island where we get most of our fur. We’ll probably spend the night there to rest, then leave for Greenland. After that, we’ll be heading to Treasure Island.”

“It sounds like we’ve overestimated quite a bit for this mission.”

“You underestimate how long it’ll take to get to Greenland,” Viktor chuckled. “After Treasure Island, we’ll probably stop again at Greenland to rest for a few days. Being non-stop on the boat for three or four weeks will be immensely tiring for all of us.”

I remained at the wheel until Gustav called us over for dinner. Then, Garth took over, multitasking, steering, and eating.

Dinner consisted of fried fish, roasted nuts and a slice of the bread from this morning for everyone. It wasn’t the most extravagant meal, but it was pretty good, considering we were in the middle of the ocean.

“How about we address the elephant on the ship?” Laurence grinned, making a show of glancing around everyone in the circle before his eyes settled on me.

My cheeks flushed. “Please don’t,” I groaned and buried my face in my hands in shame.

“It would be impossible not to, considering how wasted you were yesterday,” Dagfinn laughed. “The last time I was that wasted, Sophia and I conceived our youngest child. And the time before, we conceived our middle child.”

“We didn’t need to know that,” Caspian groaned and pulled a disgusted face.

“If we can talk about Astrid being drunk, then why don’t you want to hear about me being just as drunk?” Dagfinn complained.

“Maybe it’s because Astrid wasn’t talking about the conception of her children.” Roscoe pulled a face, looking just as disgusted as Caspian, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“No one encourage Dagfinn,” Viktor chuckled. “I don’t want to know about the conception of all his children. I already know too much as it is.”

“Speaking of being drunk,” I began in a desperate attempt to take the attention away from the topic of conception. “There’s something I wanted to ask you all about. I woke up to use the bathroom earlier, but someone was already in it. Naturally, I walked down the hallway to use the other one, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw someone running away from the otherbathroom. I called after them, but they didn’t answer. I was wondering who that was.”

“It sounds like they had an explosive time in the toilet and were too embarrassed to own up to it,” Caspian laughed, and I pulled a face again. Perhaps over dinner wasn’t the best time to discuss this topic.

“Can we please stop talking about explosive toilet times?” Gustav groaned and put down his half-eaten slice of bread, seemingly put off his food.

“I’m with Gustav on this one,” Hammond piped up, but he had already licked his plate clean and was staring at Latham’s plate next to his.

“Did you see what direction they ran in?” Garth asked, his lips curling down.

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