Heart of Black Ice

CHAPTER 59

The stolen Norukai boat rocked on the open water as breezes gusted against the sail. Bannon’s hands were sore and blistered from pulling the oars, and Lila worked just as hard while he rested, but they had both been toughened aboard the serpent ship, and now they rowed for their own salvation.

They had escaped the Norukai islands the day before, and they vanished into the thickening night before anyone in the Bastion noticed their absence. The drunken revelry faded behind them, along with poor Emmett, who had been brave enough to help them escape, but not brave enough to go with them.

Sailing off, Bannon didn’t begin to feel hope until full night closed in. No Norukai ships could follow them in the pitch black. Even Bannon didn’t know where they were going. Their small boat sailed off into the open ocean with no charts, no food or water. Bannon had only a vague notion of where the mainland might lie, but Lila did not doubt him for a moment.

When the sun rose the next morning, they searched for any sign of land, or for pursuing serpent ships. Together, they inventoried the items in the boat—a coil of rope, a net, and a bone-tipped spear for fishing. Throughout the day, Lila stabbed into the water with the spear, and after nearly a hundred attempts, she skewered a fish and flopped it into the boat.

“Now we have dinner.” She used the jagged spear to slice open the belly and carefully removed the entrails. “We need these for the moisture. We will split them.”

Bannon grimaced at the memories it brought up, but accepted the offering. “We’ve eaten worse. Sweet Sea Mother, think of the lessons the Norukai taught us! Eating fish guts, rowing for hours on end. It may be the key to our survival.”

Lila sneered as she lifted the spear. “I would show King Grieve my appreciation in person, along with that vile woman Atta.”

Bannon forced a laugh. “I will not turn the boat around, even if you insist.”

She gave him a perplexed frown. “I was not serious.”

“Neither was I. Sometimes you are very difficult to understand.”

“My thoughts are perfectly clear. You should make more of an effort.” Lila’s face was discolored with purple and yellow bruises, and Bannon suspected that he looked just as bad with his split lip and bashed eye. They had little time to look at mirrors in the Bastion.

They shared the moist raw fish, and Bannon began to row, while Lila perched with the spear again, looking for another target to skewer.

By the third day they were parched and sunburned, and they still had seen no sign of the mainland or any other island. That afternoon, the only small change to the monotony was a spreading dark patch in the water, which Bannon recognized as kelp fronds. He reached down to pull up some of the strands. “The bladders have liquid inside.” He tugged hard on the slimy green ribbons. Rounded nodules in the stems were like buoys holding up the main plant.

“If you drink the salt water, it will eventually kill you,” Lila warned. “Your thirst will only get worse.”

“No, the water in the bladders is filtered through the kelp skin. It’s strong and tastes terrible, but it is drinkable.” Using his thumbnails, he pressed into the squishy sphere, cracked open the rind, and peeled it apart. The nodule contained only a spoonful or two of liquid, which he offered to Lila.

She frowned skeptically. “Are you certain?”

“Fishermen knew this on Chiriya Island.”

“Then why are you giving it to me first? To see if it’s poison?”

Bannon was disappointed. “No, because I was being nice.”

“Thank you. Sometimes I don’t recognize that.” She drank, grimaced, then swallowed. “It is as acceptable as the fish guts.”

“High praise indeed.” Bannon pulled on the strands of kelp until he found another nodule, burst it open, and sucked on the liquid inside. It had a strong iodine tang, and he had to force himself to drink it, but his mouth and throat needed the water. Using the saw edge of the fishing spear, they cut the kelp stems and loaded the boat with twenty intact nodules while they drifted among the seaweed.

The kelp provided a habitat for fish, and Lila deftly caught six with her bare hands, scooping them out of the water and dropping them into the boat. Bannon relished the feast. “Thank you, Lila, for everything. You did promise to keep me alive.”

“I have not saved you yet, boy.”

“I’m alive so far. I count that as a temporary success.”

When the waves grew choppy and the wind picked up, the gray clouds thickened into what looked like a smoke pudding. The fishing boat moved on at a swifter pace, but Bannon had no idea if they were even going in the right direction. He had seen many ocean storms from Chiriya Island, where he and his mother would huddle together in their cottage while his father would rage at the weather, which prevented him from going to the tavern.

The sail strained against the wind, and Bannon’s long hair whipped about. When the clouds burst and rain sheeted down, he and Lila welcomed the first spattering of raindrops. As the rain increased, they turned their faces up to the sky, letting the droplets wash their salt-encrusted cheeks, opening their mouths to catch any of the moisture.

“We have no containers,” he groaned. “All this rain will be wasted.”

“Drink your fill,” she said. Like a baby bird begging for a worm from its mother, she kept her mouth open and turned her face to the sky.

Bannon cupped his palms until he collected a few thimblefuls of water, which he slurped through cracked lips. He repeated the procedure again and again, but he was frantic to capture and store more rain. Puddles filled the bottom of the boat, but it was filthy water.

“We have no pots, no basins, nothing! And all this rain is coming down! Sweet Sea Mother.”

“Your clothes,” Lila said. “Take off your shirt and trousers.”

“What?” He touched his already soaked cotton shirt.

“Take off your clothes now, boy.” She began tugging at the fabric.

In a few moments he sat in only his smallclothes in the open boat. Lila spread out his shirt and trousers to be soaked by the rain; then she rolled them up in a loose wad. “That will hold some water, at least a few mouthfuls that will last for a day or two.” She touched the black leather band across her breasts and around her waist. “I would do the same, but my garments are inappropriate.” She frowned. “Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown my other robe away.”

When the winds grew so strong that Bannon feared the sail would rip or the single mast would snap in half, they took down the canvas. By folding the fabric, they were able to form pockets that also filled with rainwater.

As the storm increased, Bannon wound the rope around himself and Lila, lashing it to the gunwales. “If either of us is thrown overboard, we’re dead. This will keep us in the boat.”

“Unless we capsize,” Lila said. Her spiky brown hair was plastered to her head, and rainwater ran down her bruised face.

“It’s a chance we have to take.”

The storm lasted for hours, and though Bannon was queasy from the churning waves, the stolen boat remained intact. And when the rain finally stopped, around midnight, the weather changed to a thick fog. Mist rolled in like a clammy blanket that obscured their view of the horizon, even though there was nothing to see.

He and Lila were drenched and cold, and as the temperature dropped, their sunburned skin made the deepening chill even more miserable. Bannon saw that Lila was shivering, and he began to shiver, too. Downcast, she said, “I don’t think we will ever make it to land, Bannon Farmer.” When she intentionally used his name, he knew how serious she was. “I may not save you after all, but I did try.”

They were isolated in the impenetrable fog, alone in the wilderness of waves. “I don’t know where we are or how far we’ve come,” Bannon said, “but I will not give up, and neither will you. Maybe it’s my turn to save you.”

“Our first order of business is to keep warm,” she said, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him down to the bottom of the boat. As the collected rainwater sloshed around them, Bannon returned the embrace, drawing her close. Lila pressed as much of her body against his as she could, and Bannon held her tight.

“We can share warmth,” he said. “I’ve heard it’s very good for people suffering from extreme chills.”

Lila tucked her bruised face against his bare chest. “Yes, I believe it is helping.”

As they lay together, the sound and rocking of the waves soothed them like a lullaby. For a while, Bannon forgot that they were lost, and he fell asleep in Lila’s arms.

The next morning he awoke to hear an odd and unexpected sound, a distant rushing and roaring. He blinked and sat up, disentangling himself from Lila. The morazeth snapped awake and sat up next to him.

“What is that sound?” she asked, as if they might be under attack.

The fog had thinned, leaving only a grayish veil that began to dissipate as the sun rose. Even before Bannon saw the coastline, he recognized the sound of waves crashing against a shore. “That’s it! We found land.” He stood up so quickly he rocked the boat. “I don’t know how, but we found the coast. It’s a miracle.”

“It won’t be a miracle unless we make it to land,” Lila said.

Together they raised the sail and tacked into the breezes that drove them closer to the shore. He remembered being similarly lost and adrift in a small boat off of Chiriya long ago, the fog bank …

He gazed back out to sea, away from the shoreline. When he shaded his eyes in the bright morning light, he saw a flicker of humanlike figures on the waves, smooth heads with slitted eyes and wide fang-filled mouths. A flash of fear struck through him. If the selka attacked now, he and Lila could never fight them off!

But he realized that the selka wouldn’t attack. They had saved him and Lila. Sometime during the night, the sea people must have taken the boat and dragged it close to shore.

Lila was too focused on the land to notice the selka. She sat on the gunwale and grabbed the oars, pulling as hard as she could. When Bannon glanced back again, the selka had disappeared beneath the waves.

As they approached the coast, Bannon saw the mouth of a river, a bay, and the buildings of a large town, as well as numerous fishing boats heading out into the morning. Bannon yelled and waved, though the harbor was still far away. “We’re saved!”

Lila kept pulling on the oars. “We don’t know where we are, but those people will help us. We will warn them about the Norukai fleet that is sure to come soon.”

Bannon continued to watch the boats sailing out of the harbor, then scrutinized the buildings in the town. He saw the bridge that crossed the river to span the small bay. A flash of recognition suddenly struck him. “I know where we are, Lila.”

Already one of the fishing boats had spotted them, and Bannon could see tiny figures waving. She pulled harder on the oars as the boat headed in their direction.

“That is Renda Bay,” he said.