Page 2 of A Curse of Salt

‘I like the way you make it better,’ she said.

‘I know. I’m sorry, I was in the village.’

Felicie’s brows creased. ‘Was it . . . ?’

‘It wasn’t Father,’ I assured her, offering what I hoped was a fortifying smile. I didn’t tell her who it was, or that he was the third washed home in just a week. I didn’t tell her a lot of things. ‘But yes, he was dead.’

When she shuddered, I felt it in my bones.

‘And the sea?’ Felicie murmured into the wooden lip of the bowl.

My fingers danced over her back, tracing a pattern of the purling waves across the cotton of her shift. If she were anyone else, I’d have lied. ‘Like magic,’ I answered.

I wasn’t supposed to love the sea, not the way I did – not when it only ever brought us ruin. Gods knew, nobody else did. But no amount of blood could ever taint that endless, ferocious blue. It lingered: saltwater pearls on my cheeks, my lips, my lashes. Flecks of the ocean’s ache followed me everywhere I went. Begging me to do the same. To follow.

Rain thrummed against the windows, lifting my gaze to the world outside. The storm had arrived.

When she was finished, I pressed a kiss to Felicie’s temple, took her empty bowl and left her to rest, occupying myself with chores as the sun sank and silvery light filled the kitchen. But as usual, keeping my hands busy did little to distract me from my thoughts.

Our father’s absence haunted this house more with each voyage, a shadow that lengthened in his wake. We’d come to whisper his name like a curse, as if prayers would ever be enough to bring him home. Northbay echoed with the truth of what had killed Father’s crew. Who.

It’d been centuries since any god’s name had been whispered with a shard of the reverence that the Heartless King’s demanded. I prayed to only one of those gods; believed in her only so far as she crashed against my cliffs. It was the Heartless King, his pirates, who loomed over us all, casting darkness down the coast and inspiring the stories we’d begged to hear as children. Back then, that was all they’d been – stories.

The dull thud of ceramic on wood broke the silence that stretched between Aberdeen and me at dinner. The sound was hollow, like most of our days here. Like my lungs, seizing every time I thought of the future that faced us.

How many nights have we spent like this? I wondered, glancing up at my eldest sister from across the table. Only four years apart in age, but there was an infinity between us, this valley of silence and cold looks that I’d never been able to cross. The fact that we came from different mothers didn’t seem to mean a thing; we’d never been even half the same.

Her silence grated on me, now more than ever. Her stoicism might’ve kept us alive in the hardest months, but with the world outside turning to frost, I couldn’t help craving a little warmth.

‘What’re we going to do?’ I ventured, braving the quiet. ‘What if he’s really gone?’

The words clogged my throat long after I’d forced them out. It was a struggle not to picture the stark reality ahead, not to imagine what our lives would become without Father.

Aberdeen didn’t even glance up when she spoke. ‘We’ll survive. We always do.’

Have, I wanted to say. We always had. Things were different this time. I could still smell the rot, still see the glassy eyes of those whose bones had rattled home to families just like ours. Ones with little chance of making it through the encroaching winter. But when Aberdeen said it, it sounded almost possible. Almost real.

I stared at her from across the table. Her dark, pointed features were shadowed. Impassive. Felicie and I shared our mother’s eyes; Aberdeen had our father’s. But her almost-black hair and sharp jaw – they must’ve come from her mother. Tall and angular, she was as far from Felicie’s soft, honeyed appearance as possible.

I blinked, scraping up the last dregs of soup with my spoon. Aberdeen was right, of course. We’d done it before, tiding over the weeks during Father’s voyages. I balanced the ledgers, cleaned the house, cared for Felicie when her lungs failed her. Aberdeen took whatever little we had to bargain with into the village. It took an iron will to refuse her; I always settled for the fairest price.

It was Father’s blood that drew us together on the coldest, hungriest days. An unspoken agreement that we’d grit our teeth and do what it took. Whatever it took. For Felicie, if not for ourselves.

The storm whistled through the broken windowpanes, shaking the timber of the cottage. The howl of the tempest masked the clang of our bowls as I tossed them into the sink, shoving the hair back from my face with a sigh.

Come home, I whispered to the wind. I didn’t know how much longer we’d last alone in a house so cold, in a land so close to dust.

Rain battered the thatched roof, the sea calling to me from above. I ignored it, scrubbed the dishes clean and retired upstairs, my restless mind soothed by the harmony of my sisters’ snores.

It wasn’t much of a life, but it was what we had. I’d do what I could to hold on to it.

I woke in the dead of the night, jolted into the cold, moonlit room. Voices shouted somewhere below, their words indistinguishable from the squall. Fists pounded against wood, against the roar of wind and rain whipping at the cottage walls.

I knew the voices, gruff and male, and growing louder. I glanced hesitantly between Aberdeen and Felicie, their faces peaceful in sleep, before tossing my covers aside and darting from the room. I hurtled down the stairs and raced for the door, throwing it open with my heart in my throat.

The storm ripped inside. Three rain-soaked figures clambered over the threshold, chased by the night. I knew two of them from the village, their gaunt faces sending panic ringing through me.

Water surged across the floorboards as they staggered in, supporting a third man between them. His head drooped against his chest, dark hair slick to his pale scalp.

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