Page 16 of Dark Water Daughter

Her eyes rise to the great tree above her. She sings again, and the voice responds again.

She is still staring at the tree when her mother emerges from the forest. She scolds the girl for staying out so long, but when the girl tells her that the tree can sing, her mother goes quiet.

“Can’t the tree sing, Mama?” the girl asks. “Is it special?”

“It is special,” her mother replies. Her pale grey eyes are guarded as she looks up at the grand tree. “This tree is the heart of the forest. The Mother Tree. But she cannot sing, Mary. Ghistings and humans do not talk to one another. You’re being foolish, and you shouldn’t stray so deep into the Wold. Come home and leave her be.”

Mary does. And as she ages, her waist narrows and her skirts lengthen, she decides she must have been mistaken. The Mother Tree could not have joined hersong—itwas just the creak of branches, or the wind in the trees.

But sometimes when she wanders the Wold, singing to herself, she still swears a voice replies.

***

SIX

The Elusive Art of Stormsinging

MARY

The shadows of the sails crept across the deck as our second day out of Whallum closed. The sun neared the horizon in a cloudless sky, bleached and crisp and sparkling with cold. The wind was frigid on my cheeks, but not as bad as it could have been.

The Winter Sea was poised on the edge of true winter, the longseason—eightmonths of theyear—whereonly ships with ghistings and Stormsingers dared to challenge the waves. It was a season for covert warfare and risk-taking, a time of terrific storms where an enterprising smuggler like Randalf could make a fortune in one fortuitous venture.

I sat by the mainmast on a stool, dull-eyed and wrapped in my musty cloak. Whatever courage and stupidity had fueled my escape back in Whallum was long gone, stolen by a day tied to the foremast in the wind and salt and cold. Now, simply sitting on a stool felt like luxury.

Freeing me hadn’t been a kindness or a reward, however. It was purelypracticality—ifRandalf left me there any longer, I’d have died.

So he had given me a blanket and allowed me to spend a night near the stove in the galley. My gag had vanished and my hands were freed, but I was no less a prisoner. The waves were my shackles now, stretching to the horizon. Even the tips of Aeadine’s ragged peninsulas were gone from sight, swallowed by sea fog and distance.

The only way off this ship was into the waves.

My last Stormsinger drowned herself.

I remembered what Randalf had said back at Kaspin’s and shivered. But part of me took the idea and tucked it away, grim and abyssal though it was.

Around me, Randalf’s crew went about their work. They watched me, constantly. I slept in fragments at night, terrified that I’d wake up to a shadow creeping into my closet, or the ghisting’s unearthly face. To make matters worse, I was barelyfed—I’dearn better food, Randalf said, when I proved my value.

The storm I’d conjured to cover our departure from Whallum hadn’t been enough to do that. Apparently calling a storm was a lot easier than dispersing one or maintaining a good wind and, as Randalf had speculated to Kaspin, I was untrained. The Navy’s Stormsingers were apprenticed and instructed from a young age, but I’d been hidden in the Wold, voiceless, for my entire life.

It had taken a mere hour for me and everyone aboard ship to realize I had no idea what I was doing. Now I hummed to the winds by luck alone, and every time the sails luffed my hunger gnawed deeper.

A blond-haired sailor strode by, cracking a cake of hardtack between his teeth. I stared at the food, eyelids flickering with want. I knew I shouldn’t look at him, shouldn’t do anything to attract attention, but I was so hungry.

He noticed my interest. Circling back, he scratched crumbs out of his scraggly beard and squinted down at me. He still held half the cake in his hand. It was plain, a little charred, and desperately enticing.

“Hungry, love?” he asked.

My humming died, and with it, the wind I’d been currying. The sails began to sag, changing the pattern of shadows on the deck from full to rippling. Woodsmoke from the ship’s stovepipes wafted past us.

I forced myself to look away from him. “No,” I said, and began to hum again.

He crouched, forcing his face into my line of sight. There was frost on the brim of his hat and the whiskers around his mouth. “I could make sure you were fed right well,” he said contemplatively, biting off another chunk of the hardtack. Crumbs rained down into his beard and onto the deck, and I could have cried at the waste. The sailor cocked a grin, looking at my lips as he added, “Take care of you, I would. Keep that mouth of yours full.”

Above us, the sails luffed again with a thunder of canvas.

“Witch!” the helmsman shouted.

Before I could respond, another shout went up from a lookout at the fore of the ship. “Sails! Sails on the horizon!”

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