Page 37 of Astrid at Sea

“Two,” Gustav answered. “But three of the other barrels surrounding them have also gone off. We can’t eat any of it without making ourselves sick.”

That was five in total. The last time I counted, we had loaded eight barrels of dried food onto the ship. That left three for us. And that didn’t include the portions that we had already consumed.

“Faeces?” Garth called out in question while Roscoe exclaimed, “Urine?”

“How could that have happened? Who would do that?” Manny asked, looking a little green in the face.

At his question, everyone shared knowing looks before slowly, one by one, they all turned to stare in my direction.

“What? Why are you all looking at me?” I snapped at them, a deep scowl on my face. “I’ve only ever used a bathroom.”

Despite the severity of the situation, they all burst out laughing. My cheeks flamed at the notion that they were all laughing at me, and when I turned to face Viktor, he bowed his head to rest his forehead against mine and playfully bumped the tip of my nose with his.

“We don’t think it’s you, my siren,” he laughed and nuzzled my nose again. “Kis.”

“Oh,” I murmured, my cheeks flaming harder. “It’s not Kis either,” I denied, turning to face the rest of the crew. “Kis only throws up when she has carrots, but there are no carrots onboard. And I’ve set her up a little toilet in the bathroom. I’ve seen her use it a bunch of times. I’m certain Kis isn’t behind this.”

“I don’t think it’s Kis either,” Gustav said. “It’s far too much to be cat faeces.”

“Who else would defecate in the barrels of food?” Dagfinn asked, serious. Humour from the earlier misunderstanding had long worn off now.

“It was me,” Crosby admitted in a small voice. When all eyes snapped to him, he bowed his head in shame. “It was dark and cold, and I was stuck on the bottom deck for days. I couldn’t tell which barrels had food in them. I promise I only used the ones that I thought were empty.”

“Well, they weren’t empty, were they? Why would we bring empty barrels aboard the ship?” Odin snapped with a fierce scowl on his face. “Well done, Crosby! You’ve just royally fucked us!”

“You’re supposed to shit out food! Not shit on it,” Dagfinn groaned and squeezed his eyes shut, deeply frustrated.

“I knew we should have made him walk the plank!”

“How are we supposed to make it to Greenland without food?”

“Is it too late to turn back and go back to Mann? Of course, we’ll teach them a lesson in respecting women, but we need food.”

“We’ll figure out a solution to the food shortage,” Viktor spoke loudly, commandeering everyone’s attention like the true Captain he was. “But for now, Gustav and Hammond, I needyou to look through the barrels and the little food we have left. If there is anything you think we can salvage, do what you can. Anything that we can’t, throw overboard.”

Everyone looked like they wanted to say something, even I wanted to, but Viktor’s definite tone kept us all quiet.

We were quick to move on to the important matter of where we would stop next since we had left Mann earlier than anticipated, but no one seemed to pay much attention, including me.

While everyone helped themselves to another glass of ale to get through the rest of the meeting, my eyes couldn’t help but flit toward Crosby. He looked so sad and lost, as if he didn’t belong here. Like he knew no one wanted him here.

Even though I knew the bulk of our problems were Crosby’s fault, I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The lack of fish was a bigger issue than Jerrik and Viktor had let on.

It had been suggested that there was only a slight fish shortage, and Jerrik hadn’t been able to find much these past few days. He had failed to admit that he hadn’t been able to findanyfish these past few days, and Gustav had been rationing fish from previous days as best as he could. Unfortunately, the last of that had run out, and if we didn’t catch any fish today, we would have nothing but dried fruits to eat for dinner tonight.

Naturally, as he was the one behind all of this, my eyes drifted to Crosby. When I found him already looking at me, I was quick to avert my gaze.

The last thing I needed right now was to give him the false hope that there could possibly be something between us. That there hadeverbeen something between us.

“Meow,” Kis called out to me, rubbing the side of her body against my leg. Unable to resist, I reached down and picked her up, holding her while she licked her paw clean. It looked dirtied with breadcrumbs that one of the crew must have fed her during breakfast. Either that or she had sniped it when no one was looking. The latter sounded more plausible to me.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I tutted, smoothing a hand down her head, between her ears like she loved. “You won’t like it out on the water. I know you won’t.”

Kis meowed again and looked up at me uninterestedly, telling me that my words hadn’t changed her mind.

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