Sea. Sarah Driver

dark piece of wood from his pocket. It’s whittled into the shape of a ship. I’d know it anywhere – it’s a carving I made for Da, a tiny model of the Huntress. He takes it everywhere with him. A wave of sickness spreads through me.

      I steel my heart and bite my lip, hard enough to tear the skin. ‘Where did you get it?’ I ask, running my thumb across the wood. I try to blink away my tears, but one escapes and drips onto the runes that Da and me etched to spell our names. Mouse and Da.

      ‘Now, don’t take your sails down just yet, Mouse. I found it at the Star, and I’ve half a thought it’s like a paw print in the ice – a trail your da’s left behind, to let you know all’s well.’

      His words kindle a spark in my belly. Da knew we were meant to meet him at the Star Inn, so what if he did leave it there as a trace of himself ? That better be the truth of it. What with Ma gone, I can’t lose Da as well.

      ‘So who’s the sour-jowls, then? Why’s he here?’

      Bear rubs his chin. ‘I don’t know why he’s come back. I was just a lad when he left, about your age, and the thing is, his jowls were no less sour then.’ He leans closer. ‘Some folks just don’t know how to have fun.’ Bear picks up his bowl, winks at me over the top of it and gulps down the rest of his stew. ‘Shall we remember the leaner times and gift our heart-thanks to the sea-gods for this food?’

      ‘Aye,’ I mumble, ducking my head close to my bowl. ‘Blessings and heart-thanks, you gods of the sea.’

      Bear stands and cracks his knuckles against the ceiling. ‘Back to work,’ he says through a yawn.

      I watch the table opposite through a veil of steam. Stag sits on a wooden chair draped with polar fox fur, sharing a flagon of ale with Grandma. A great black crow hunches on Stag’s shoulder.

      Grandma’s voice is low. I strain my ears above the clatter of the crew to listen. ‘Not so long ago, the Hagglers showed respect to a captain when she went ashore to trade, and we could barely satisfy their demand for herring. Now the bakers won’t even buy a dusting of nutmeg and there are whispers of slavers and wreckers on every breath of wind.’ Scorn bubbles in her throat. ‘Trouble’s brewing, ports are fast closing. Friends are few. And gods only know what terrodyls are doing so far north this late in the season.’ She turns to a scroll and quill on the table, dips the nib into a pot of squid ink and scratches at the parchment.

      ‘Indeed, Captain Wren. Their habits have been odd of late, according to reports from the fishing villages and Hill-Tribe chieftains – though nothing has been heard from Castle Whalesbane for many suns and moons.’

      Just then, Sparrow plunks a wooden bowl carved with a jagged ‘S’ onto the bench and plops down next to me, grubby hands fumbling for a spoon. A gold brooch in the shape of an arrowhead gleams on his tunic.

      His face hasn’t seen a good scrub for gods know how long and dark circles ring his eyes. Look after him, Mouse, whispers Ma in my memory. But some days the looking after feels too hard. I send out a silent prayer to the sea-gods, begging them to keep away his shaking fits.

      ‘Din’t Grandma wash your face?’ I ask.

      ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘And I don’t care. Don’t like washing.’

      ‘I can smell that much, slackwit. I’ll have to do it then, won’t I?’ A stray moonsprite runs across my knuckles, covering them in silvery moon-dust.

      ‘You lemme be.’ He sighs over his food and rubs his eye with the heel of his hand. ‘Can I swap my arrowhead brooch for Ma’s dragonfly? Just for one day?’

      I shake my head. ‘Not on your life. Remember last time, when you let Ermine borrow it and he tried to feed it to a sea-hawk?’ At my words, a thrill flickers along my nerves, cos tonight I’ll get my own sea-hawk during my Hunter’s Moon celebrations. But the thrill feels like a betrayal of Da.

      Across the room, Stag’s crow thwawks and stretches out its wings, hopping from foot to foot. Stag turns his head slightly and the crow grows still as oak.

      Sparrow sighs, takes a spoonful of stew, then spits it out again and starts pushing his wobbly tooth back and forth with a finger. ‘When’s he coming back—’

      ‘I told you, I don’t know!’ I’m so sick of him asking questions when I’m just trying to get my head clear. Sometimes I wanna live underwater, even if it means being a merwraith, so all I can hear is my own heartbeat and the dolphins and whales calling.

      ‘Well I’ll tell you then. He won’t never be coming back,’ Sparrow whines, like somehow it’s my fault. He pulls off his boots and draws his knees up to his chin. The stink of his feet climbs into my nose. ‘That was his cloak, all right. And it were covered with—’

      I thump the table with a clenched fist. ‘I saw it too, little fool!’ I hiss. ‘A man as strong as our da can live without a sealskin.’

      Sparrow snuffles loudly and swirls his spoon through the stew. I think of the cloak draped over Stag’s arm and bite the inside of my cheek as I push my bowl away.

      ‘Where you going?’ pipes Sparrow.

      ‘Anywhere that ent here,’ I mutter, weaving past folk carrying bowls and flagons. I head above decks, cos I can feel my longbow calling, like she always does when I need to think.

      Sundown’s an hour away when we raise sail for the Wildersea; the great greyness we have to cross to reach the Bay of Thunder, for the Tribe-Meet. The Western Wharves fade behind us in the mist, and the foghorn booms.

      I’m out on the storm-deck, practising my right-handed shooting. Grandma’s black-cloaks keep arrows nocked to their bows as we sail past the closed ports of the Hill-Tribe chieftains, who watch, shields up, from their jagged fortresses.

      Leaving without Da feels every kind of wrong. But I ent gonna doubt him. If he says he’ll come home, then he’ll be here, sooner or later. I keep a tight hold of the carving in my pocket and treasure what Bear said – that it might be a paw print Da left for me.

      My last arrow thrums into the animal-skin target. As I lick the salt from my lips and stoop to gather my fallen arrows, I remember with a jolt that Grandma said to meet her in the lab. My pulse flickers as I race below.

      Grandma’s medsin-lab is marked with a sign saying ‘Leave Me Be!’ but I push open the heavy door and step inside. The stinks of boiled sea-slugs and algae greet me. I’m dwarfed by tall shelves crammed full of brown bottles, with labels written in squid ink. There are vials of wolf-fish blood, for keeping divers’ blood warm, and the dragonfish luminescence Grandma worked on for moons and moons, to make into night-vision eye drops for the night-watchmen. On the wall is a note: ‘A new-birthed oyster ent no bigger than a peppercorn,’ to keep her impatience in check.

      Grandma stands at her table, tipping a blue powder onto measuring scales. Beside her, glass tubes of jewel-bright liquid seethe and bubble. The table’s strewn with chisels, mallets and saws, and stained with dark patches of blood from her amputations and tooth-pullings.

      ‘Young Mouse,’ she says, without turning. ‘Come and help me brew this potion for Sparrow’s shaking fits. Fetch me three sea-slugs, if you please.’ I’d a mind I was being silent. How’d she know I was there?

      I dump my bow and quiver on the floor and turn to the shelf behind me. When I find the right jar I grab a rusty pair of forceps and pick out the scaly green slugs, dropping them onto a square of cloth.

      ‘So why’s this Stag here, then?’ I ask, idly digging the forceps into the flesh of a slug.

      ‘He’s a navigator.’ Grandma looks at me like she’s about to say more but her jaw closes again with a pop.

      ‘Aye,