Page 43 of Dark Water Daughter

I suppressed a shiver and glanced up through the deck, sails and rigging to the sky aboveHart. There, the lights of more strange beings drifted through the muted sky like fingers through oil.

There were many more creatures in Tithe than I was used to. They stirred memories of a childhood before I had the coin, when I had spent days lost in a forest just like this, hiding from glowing monsters. Aftershehad let them take my brother and I. After they made us whatwe…became.

But my coin was gone, and every moment I spent in the Other was a risk. If I was careful, if I was quiet, my presence might go unnoticed. And if I was calm, my tether to my body would remain firm.

I hoped.

I looked back to the sea around me. At the same time, I pulled up a memory of Mary Firth at Kaspin’s, singing the snow to stillness. I recalled sitting across the table from her at the inn last night, her cheeks flushed with cold, lips red with wine. The way she had smiled softly at me through the crowd, before she robbed me of the only thing that kept me sane.

My consciousness fluttered in my skull like the dragonflies in their lantern. I closed my eyes, but the feeling only worsened. My dreamer’s senses converged like a summer storm.

“Mary Firth.” I stated her name and pulled at the memories again. Unwelcome feelings came withthem—longing,unease—butI embraced them, letting them blossom and pull my eyes out over the Winter Sea.

A new light appeared on the horizon, vaguely teal-grey against the blackness of the sea. It was faint, a candle’s reflection in a frosted window, but it was there. It sang, an unearthly song at the edge of my hearing. Her.

At the same time, movement caught my attention. I looked down through the deck ofHartand into the sea below. We were just offshore of the Wold and sandbanks, but the Dark Water was deep just below the ship. So murky. So endless.

White light surged through the depths towards me.

I pushed out of the Other and into my flesh. The cabin solidified, walls folding into place as I staggered to my feet. In the dragonfly lantern on the wall, the creatures churned in a chaotic, panicked swirl. For an instant all I could hear was the shushing ping of their bodies against the glass, then the ship’s bell began to ring.

I lunged out of my cabin and hit the bulkhead on the other side of the passage, clawing towards the companionway in the dark.

I came above to a chorus of shouts and a blast of cold wind. The anchor watch ran for the rails and, on the quarterdeck, Fisher grasped at a line and leaned over the water. White light flooded her face, but it did not come from the ship’s lantern.

It came from the sea.

“Mr. Rosser!” Penn called from the forecastle, where he stood precariously close to the rail. His knitted cap, as usual, threatened to pop off his bald head. “What is this?”

“Back from the rail!” I panted, sprinting up the quarterdeck stairs. “Something is trying to follow me back from the Other!”

Fisher did not flinch. Her eyes raked me, taking in my untucked shirt and wild hair. “The kind of thing thatcanfollow you back?”

I shook my head, breathless. “I have no clue. Where is Slader?”

“Still ashore with the harbor master, along with Mr. Keo and Ms. Skarrow.” Fisher named the bosun and gun captain, respectively. Her eyes strayed over the expanse of harbor between us and the docks. The light in the water was constant now, giving her eyes a bleached hue. “Tell me what it is.”

The instinct to flee felt like a thousand ants rushing up my spine, but I quashed it and joined her. Below, light swelled beneath the lightly chopping waves. “I am not sure.”

On the deck of every other ship in port, sailors ran to the rails. On the docks, the small figures of soldiers on patrol stopped to watch, rifles and lanterns in hand, and townsfolk on late-night errands clustered.

Without warning, the light beneath the waves shattered across our hull into hundreds of glowing creatures, each one the size of acat—sleek,equine and unmistakable.

“Morgories,” I said, dread turning my guts to water. Like myself, morgories were flesh-and-blood creatures that had one foot in the Other world and one foot in ours. They would consume anything and everything in theirpath—evena ship.

“Quiet!” Fisher called across the deck, raising her voice just enough to be heard by the sailors. She pointed to Penn. “You, Mr. Penn, get below and keep everyone in their hammocks. We wait.”

Penn left at a stealthy jog and silence fell, horrified understanding spreading acrossHartand the rest of the harbor. The hush was eerie, interrupted only by the swirl of morgories beneath the water, the creak of ships and the soft intake of Fisher’s bated breath.

The ship rocked on the glowing tide. Fisher grabbed a line and I seized the rail with frozen, aching hands.

“Lieutenants!” a nearby sailor choked. “Sirs, should we make for shore? Ifwe—”

“Hush!” Fisher commanded, but she looked to me, her eyes round with a fear her calm exterior masked. “They’ll eat the boats to splinters before you get a dozen yards. Our only hope is for them to lose interest or Hart to intervene, so shut up.”

Silence clapped over the deck. A hiss rose in its place, a slithering grate of rough morgory hide on the hull of the ship. Or teeth. It was a sound few of the crew would have ever heardbefore—andquite possibly would never hear again.

I was transfixed. This was a waking nightmare, boyhood terrors made flesh. I wanted to run or arm myself, to do anything except stand here praying I would not die tonight. But there was nothing I could do.

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