Jedit

Chapter 13

The sucking of the whirlpool was audible even above the howling wind and cries of the wounded. A terrifying sound, it seemed to clutch at sailors' souls and leech away their wills.

Drumfish, more a scatter of spilled firewood than a ship, spun lazily but steadily picked up speed. Water raced around the vessel in an unnatural swirl. Two men threw their hands to the heavens and screamed for the Sea King to save them. Even some of Adira's Seven slowed in hacking free the midmast that was pulling the Conch half-over.

"Get aloft!" Adira shouted, whacking people with a hard hand. "Making all sail is our only hope! Move!"

Pushed, prodded, and kicked, sailors and corsairs flew into action. As if by magic, sails began to fall from the tattered rigging as seasoned salts slashed furling strings with knives rather than untie them. Eager hands grabbed sheets and lashed them to anything that didn't move. Immediately the Conch of Cords strained like a hunting hound at the leash. Yet the dead weight of Drumfish's midmast threatened to sink her like an anchor into the widening whirlpool.

Still, thought Adira Strongheart wildly, the tangled mast was the only obstacle that prevented them from fleeing. The iron grapnels had been pried off the gunwales and snarls of rope severed. Now if the ship could only scoot before the wind-and never mind that they raced toward a granite shore-they might win free of the whirlpool and survive another hour on this ship-killing coast.

Bounding to the companionway, Adira vaulted to the quarterdeck and ran squarely into Master Edsen.

"Keep off my quarterdeck!" roared the merchantman hoarsely. He blocked the top of the ladder, glaring down at Adira. "I'm in command! You and your damned mercenaries have cursed us!"

"Belt up and steer three points before the wind!" snarled Adira. "It's the only way."

"Before the wind?" bellowed Edsen. Rain slanted now off and on, and silver droplets clung to his bearskin hat and vest. The waning day grew dim as the sky lowered. "We sheer into the wind, you damned fool."

With no time to argue, Adira cruelly punched the master in the crotch. As Edsen lost his breath and doubled over, Adira bulled her head into his belly and lurched backward while grabbing the ladder. Edsen pitched over Adira's head to crash painfully in the waist. The pirate queen charged onto the quarterdeck, a cutlass and dagger in her hands.

She bawled at the helmsman, "Steer three points wide, or you're a dead man!"

Eyes bugging, the man spun the wheel through a quarter-turn and let it steady.

A noise like the end of the world grated on the ears and chilled the heart. With a slithering roar, the misplaced midmast of the doomed Drumfish tore free of the Conch.

Adira Strongheart ran to the quarterdeck rail. Eerily, like some giant sea serpent in reverse, the varnished mast now corrugated like bark slithered along the shattered gunwale. What remained of Drumfish churned and bubbled as it sank into the whirlpool. The ocean spun like a potter's wheel, with the center dimpled a full ten feet below the water's surface. Drum' fish's torn sails, fractured deck planks, uprooted binnacle and ship's wheel, a broached longboat, and many broken bodies spun thrice in that awful gyre and then disappeared under the dark waves. The corsair's departing midmast whacked her splintered crow's nest against Conch's waist in one last vindictive blow, then plashed full length. Tugged inexorably from below, the mast whipped spray as it stood upright as if in defiance, then sank out of sight.

The danger wasn't over, for the whirlpool continued to grow, though it now sagged only six feet deep at the center. Adira wished she might drop a sea anchor off the starboard side, or else trim the sails to bite the wind, or try any of a dozen sailing tricks to free them from the vortex, but there was no time. Praying to the Sea King herself, Adira didn't even shout at the sailors scattered across the tops, for they worked as hurriedly as possible to free sails, let them drop, and sheet them home.

Slowly, after agonizing minutes, the merchant vessel kicked up her heels and lurched from the maelstrom's pull. Free, the Conch took on new life and fairly leaped as wind filled her tattered sails. Adira frowned as seawater gurgled into a rent torn in her side, but the pumps could eject it, if anyone could spare a hand for the pumps. Charting a new course closer to the wind for the helmsman, Adira hopped into the waist.

Simone the Siren, often Adira's navigator, met her captain where cordage and shreds of sails dangled. The waist was a dangerous place, for smashed longboats and pin rails, buckets and spars careened back and forth, easily able to sweep an unwary sailor out the nine-foot gap of missing gunwale.

Simone called above wind and rain, "We only broke free because that whirlpool sucked down Drumfish, you know! The jetsam blocked the gyre from catching us!"

"I know!" called Adira, though they stood only two feet apart. She glanced aloft. "Tell the hands to secure. We'll tack on my command."

"There's naught to sheet home to for half the canvas!" Simone cut her off.

"Do your best!" countered Adira. "We need to claw to windward."

"Won't happen!" Simone's dark eyes closed in negation. "We've lost half our backstays! Try to tack, and you'll shiver the timbers down on your head! Best we steer for shore! Lash the lubbers and wounded to a baulk and scout for a soft crop of rocks!"

"Never!" shouted Adira. "I won't surrender a ship! If the coast veers just two points west we'll weather it! Tell the hands we'll tack!"

"Aye aye!" Simone didn't argue. "All hands! Take care to tack for your lives'."

"What?" Adira spun as someone tugged her sleeve. No one stood there, and for a second Adira imagined ghosts and selkies and other sea haunts. Then she saw Whistledove Kithkin peeping up from under her cloak hood, the brownie barely taller than a crane.

"Whistledove! Why don't you man the crow's nest!"

"I did, but no one could hear me cry! What fish wears tall stickles on its back and tail?"

"Lots of fish." Adira's heart dropped into her belly. Queer, she thought, how the simplest questions proved so daunting. "What color? How big? Where away?"

"Greenish with brown webbing." The brownie was chagrined by her lame observations, but she stood far from her native hills. Her shivery voice piped above the wind, "The sail fin reaches high as our rail, I think. I don't know the creature's length. It follows in our wake."

Adira's eyes bugged at the ominous news so casually delivered, for Whistledove had no idea of the horrors that lurked in the deep. Hissing, Adira scampered back to the quarterdeck and ten feet up into ratlines. Straining her eyes, Adira saw nothing off the stern but churning waves, dirty gray and steepening. Perhaps, she prayed, the unseasoned brownie had imagined the sight or had just spotted flotsam from Drumfish.

She told Whistledove, "Carry on. We don't have time for new worries."

The ragged Conch of Corns no longer climbed and dipped but bucked and juttered through the water like a three-legged horse. With the sails set crossways to the rudder, the two helmsmen tried to force the ship to windward with the tiller alone. Simone and the sailing master had clambered aloft to direct the topmen. Old salts fished together mismatched lines and bypassed missing deadeyes. Acting on Adira's orders, her Seven lubbers and sailors jettisoned smashed boats and other furniture across the tilted deck and out the gap in the gunwale. Losing the junk both lightened the ship and made it safer, since fewer obstacles clattered and skidded underfoot.

Rain pattered. Whitecaps burst over the weather railing. Adira noted spume blew sideways past her nose. Oily clouds like black smoke boiled overhead, seemingly close enough to pierce with an arrow. Adira and her Circle had seized command, and it showed the baymen's agitation that no one objected. Master Edsen, lame from Adira's belly blows, had crawled below to his tiny cabin. Yet Adira couldn't relax for a second, for the oncoming storm still shoved them hard toward granite-studded waters not a mile distant.

Dashing everywhere at once, Adira helped rove new rope through a block, so the crew might hoist the mizzenmast main yard.

"It's bad, ain't it?" asked Virgil, worried but calm.

"Afraid to take your annual bath early?" Adira kept her voice light, refusing to concede the ship was doomed, nor to let the crew fret with idle hands. In her mind's eye their bodies washed up on foreign shores: stark naked, bloated and white, hair straggling like seaweed, skin nibbled by fish and crabs. In this moment, with them gathered round, so loyal and brave and willing, she loved her Circle of Seven as fiercely as if her children, and tears escaped her eyes. She snuffled to mask her emotion.

"Jasmine, if you've any weather-magic in your bag of tricks, now's the time to let it slip."

"I don't ply tricks!" corrected the druid.

Murdoch snorted. In rain with wet heads, Adira's pirates looked much alike, for they all wore the long gray sweaters and oiled leather jerkins. Belts were stuffed with cutlasses, short swords, daggers, and axes, though the only enemy was the awesome sea.

Murdoch said, "Hey, Adira. What happened to prize money? You let Drumfish slip through our fingers. Where's the profit?"

"Think of a lesson learned, landlubber," countered his captain.

"I wish I were on land. I wish I could swim." Peregrine joked, but her voice shivered. "We don't see waves like these in the Sukurvia."

"Nor the jungle," added Jedit. He told the frightened lieutenant, "You'll gain shore safely, if not dryshod. I promise."

Despite the damp and cold, Adira's temper flickered like a coal. Dare Jedit allude to taking command after she'd blistered his hide earlier? Then she let it go, too busy to be petty.

With a heave ho, the riggers hauled up the yard on wobbly blocks. Adira's Circle gave a hoarse cheer at a small victory. Their captain turned away, a lump in her throat.

Prowling the ship, Adira Strongheart watched sky and shore, gauging their chances. Clawing seaward might let them ride out a squall, but a sustained storm would drive them on the rocks. Adira ordered Murdoch, who was handy, to help the ship's carpenter and sailing master fashion a sea anchor from a broken spar and spare sail. Glumsy on the slippery deck, they managed to shove it overside. As the hoop of canvas sank and bellied, it dragged like a wagon brake to slow Conch's speed. Virgil and Peregrine muscled and hoisted spars. Jedit carried lines as he climbed like a spider. Heath and Wilemina, with clever hands, wove new rigging from dangling ropes.

Indeed, everyone was so busy only Adira saw the monster strike.

As sudden as winter lightning, alongside the ship reared a green-black scaly head and neck high as the mainyard. The skull was elongated like a pike's, the neck sinuous as a snake's, and the mouth lined with white daggers. Fast as Adira could blink, the sea serpent hooked its impossible neck at a man slaving to hold the tiller. The helmsman barely shrieked. Adira was reminded of a bird pecking a worm as the serpent bobbed and bit. Its horny muzzle rapped the deck as razor teeth engulfed the man, snapping so hard one foot sheared off to bounce on pine planks. The serpent flicked its chin high, gnashing and crushing, then gulped and swallowed the broken man whole.

Consternation swept the ship. Howls and screams rang even over the ear-piercing wind.

In the tiny pause while the serpent devoured its victim, the Conch raced on. The fearful beast was left a cable's length behind. Yet the ship lost headway as the remaining tillerman deserted her post. Rudderless, pushed by the wind, with sails haphazardly trimmed, the bow came around, so the stern broached the half-gale. Immediately the ship's quivering roll degenerated into a slamming gait like a crippled horse. Men and women slid along wet decks to bang painfully into masts and rails and furniture. From long years of practice, Adira's pirates gripped something, but Jasmine, Peregrine, and Murdoch tumbled headlong until seasoned sailors nabbed them. Instinctively all scuttled toward their captain. Jedit Ojanen hunched as if ready to spring, snuffling the salt air with black nostrils.

Virgil fumbled his axe from his belt and held it up helplessly. "How do we fight that beastie?"

"Don't they coil around ships and crush 'em?" asked Murdoch, totally out of his element.

"Hush! Heath, Wil, nock your bows!"

Adira's keen mind sifted standard defenses but came up short. She'd barely believed sea serpents existed. Squinting into eye-stinging rain, she said, "If we batten the lubbers below-"

"It's back!" screamed Sister Wilemina and loosed a wild arrow into the sky.

Unexpectedly, the sea serpent flung its head above the port side, having swum or slithered under the ship like an eel. Water sluiced from its long green head in buckets. The mouth, a full six feet long, cracked to reveal rows of needle teeth. This time Adira saw the comb of tall spines that jutted from its head and stippled its spine. Shaking its head, perhaps to fling water from its eyes, the creature stabbed at the largest target-Adira's Circle of Seven.

"Back!" Adira slapped one arm wide to brush her crew out of harm's way. In her other fist sprouted her cutlass, though she didn't remember drawing it. Lurching against the unfamiliar lunging of the ship, she stabbed upward as the serpent drove down. A scaly head big as a coffin banged Adira's thigh as her cutlass pierced the thing's chin from underneath. The pirate queen felt the blade split skin like thin leather, then the point jammed in springy fish bone. The serpent waggled its head at the pinprick, ripping the cutlass from Adira's hand and almost breaking her fingers.

In that instant, Jedit Ojanen struck.

Unlike humans, the "ship's cat" kept his footing on careening wet deck by digging claws into pine planks. As the tiger's comrades spilled and skidded and dived to avoid the onrushing serpent, Jedit was free to act. Slinging a long arm behind, he swiped a huge circle. Black claws struck the serpent's head. Four long weals of skin were peeled from the monster's muzzle to hang in shreds flapping in the wind. Surprised and hurt, the serpent whipped its head back and paused, so it was left behind as the Conch of Corn's raced on directly for surf-drenched rocks a half-mile distant.

"Bastards!" cursed Adira Strongheart at no one in particular. Her ample breasts heaved as she panted. "Damnation and hellfire! Jedit, Heath, the rest, fight that thing! Simone, Virgil, come! We've got to claw off the rocks!"

Used to obeying blindly in crises, pirates fell to. Murdoch, Jasmine, and Peregrine crabbed to a mast and unlashed eight-foot boarding pikes. Heath and Wilemina nocked their favored weapons, bumped rump to rump, and tried to watch all sides at once.

Following Adira, Simone the Siren and Virgil pulled handover-hand across a sloped deck and up to the quarterdeck. It was deserted, the officers having fled below. The tiller snapped back and forth like a dragon's tail, making the ship veer sickeningly. Virgil jumped on the long wooden arm, taking a painful rap in the ribs. Simone dived in, and together they steadied the vessel.

Virgil called to his mate, "What if that fish-beast attacks while we steer?"

"We die!" yelled Simone.

"Can't we just lash the tiller hard over?"

"No. There may be rocks! Belt up and bear down! Uh oh!"

Up the short ladder staggered Master Edsen and three officers. All carried cutlasses and murder in their eyes.

The master shouted, "Strongheart! You've been a jinx since you first stepped aboard! I'm taking command, and I'll kill-"

Far overhead, Whistledove Kithkin keened like a tern. Her tiny finger pointed astern.

The serpent struck where it had found good hunting earlier. Virgil and Simone sprawled on their butts but never let go the tiller. Edsen's officers dived back down the short ladder, leaving the two captains gaping in the open. Adira acted. Heedless of how she landed, she vaulted the low railing overlooking the waist. As she soared, she snagged Edsen's tunic to drag him along to safety. Half-turned, Edsen failed to see the fearsome head swooping. As Adira yanked on his tunic, the serpent sank fangs into Edsen's shoulder. The master howled as cruel teeth sheared muscle and bone. Pulled between Adira and the monster, the captain split apart. Dragged from Adira's fist, what remained fell and flopped like a fish. Blood spurted in a surf-washed cascade across the quarterdeck. Edsen died as the sea serpent tossed its chin and gulped down the master's arm.

An errant gust shoved Conch onward as the beast slipped below the waves.

Adira Strongheart earned her name again by hooking her boot toes in the quarterdeck railing. Shouting orders, she seemed to move the ship by her voice alone.

"Simone, Virgil, on your feet! You three, get forward and let slip the capstan! It's shallow enough to drag anchor! Seveners, stand fast to fight the monster! The rest of you ignore it and get aloft to tack! No, I'm not mad! We save the ship or die on the rocks!"

Forward, a woman shrieked as the sea serpent reared again. Jedit, Wilemina, Heath, Jasmine, and Peregrine rushed that way as Sergeant Murdoch slipped and crashed on a coil of rope. Dusk had descended, and footing was tricky in semi-darkness. Rain stung faces. Jedit Ojanen slit his eyes and tiptoed on thorny claws to the bow, then waited, watching both ways.

Silver flickered overside.

"That's not-" Jasmine gulped air. "That's its tail!"

Indeed, the tail whisked alongside the ship like a misplaced palm tree. Whip-thin, the tail splayed spines almost like a porcupine's. The curious sight seemed to hypnotize the human Seveners. Yet the warrior Jedit Ojanen whirled and skipped on clicking claws for the opposite beam. He reached the gunwale just as the creature's head leaped over the rail like a horse jumping a fence.

Gaping jaws of razor teeth drove at the orange-black warrior. A man would have died, snapped in two, but Jedit was no man. With a coughing roar, he launched like a stork and landed square on the sea serpent's nose. Four clawed paws gripped tight. Jedit saw two long arrows smack into the scaly head just below his. The serpent pitched and thrashed on a rolling blowing sea to flick off the stinging insect. Jedit plucked free one brawny right arm and stabbed straight as a ballista bolt. Four black claws smashed into the serpent's tiny eye and pulped it like a jellyfish.

Gargling in pain, the serpent snapped its neck back in one gigantic flinch. That mighty whipcracking action even Jedit couldn't overcome. As if flung from a catapult, the tiger splashed in the dark drink a hundred yards from the ship.

"Jedit!" At the quarterdeck, cursing and weeping bitter tears, Adira Strongheart nevertheless tended her command. By shouting herself hoarse at topmen and tiliermen, she directed a new strategy to tack the ship. One by one, with heart-stopping thumps and slams, the sails shot home and bellied. Forced onto a new tack, the caravel's nose pointed southward. The wild gut-churning pitch smoothed. At the bow, the anchor had been let go, but there was no indication the iron caught bottom. Adira took small comfort that they rode deep water, yet she could hear surf burst on rocks, always a bad sign. Song of the Sea King, how could she be so thirsty with all this rain running down her bosom? She could have drunk the ocean dry! And how could Jedit be drowned? He'd seemed unkillable!

Sailors howled as the serpent again slung its sharp head over the prow. Water slung in silver wheels as the jaws waggled. The beast seemed torn between suffering a ruptured eye and an empty belly. Half-blind, the sea serpent stabbed at a sailor and missed, biting instead the oak capstan and chipping long teeth. Swinging, unable to gauge distances, it chased a woman with champing jaws but slammed into the foremast. By then Murdoch had crabbed forward to pink the beast with his boarding pike. Snapping in anger, the sea serpent yanked the spear from the sergeant's grasp, then bashed the butt on the deck and splintered the shaft. Murdoch raised both arms as the bloodied spear point barked off his hand. In diving, the addled serpent whacked the hull so hard that Adira felt the blow at the stern.

"It won't be back!" crowed Simone through gritted teeth.

"Neither will Jedit!" Unable to savor victory or trouble, Adira looked west, east, high, low. Booming spume at the east made cold terror squirm in her belly. The half-hidden rocks were perilously close. The sky westward boiled blacker than ever, as if clouds sought to crush them. Wind and rain lashed like whips. Everyone's teeth chattered. Fearing for her crew, Adira despaired. They'd never escape the eastern shore. Perhaps she should run close to shore and abandon ship. Small boats and even flotsam and hatches might survive the grinding surf, though any survivors would likely die of chill.

"Dira, look!" Simone's shout broke the captain's glum thoughts.

An orange-black arm curled over the port gunwale. Slowly, as if carrying the world on his back, Jedit Ojanen crawled over the side and collapsed in a sodden matted heap. Snorting water from his black nostrils, streaming water, the tiger-man looked up as his comrades surrounded him. Amber-green eyes were lit by fiery anger.

He growled above the roar of wind and wave, "Where is it?"

Before anyone could answer, the serpent reared like a waterspout on the opposite beam. Still jigging its head, flinching from pain, the dim-witted sea monster nevertheless recognized the assailant who'd half-blinded it. Hissing, with jaws gaping wide enough to swallow a cow, the serpent launched like a missile for the tiger-man. Jedit too gave in to savage nature and leaped six feet off the deck to claw and rend.

Adira and her pirates goggled at the strangest arid fiercest clash ever witnessed. Half-flying across the cramped tilted deck, the enraged sea serpent sliced ratlines, shrouds, and furled sails with wicked teeth in a frenzy to snap Jedit in half. Yet the ship wore a thousand such lines, and with a hideous strangling gasp the sea serpent entangled itself in a giant net. Thrashing only hooked the beast deeper, for its iron scutes snagged a hundred spots and wedged it tighter. Before anyone could blink, thirty feet of furious sea creature was enmeshed in the rigging of the Conch of Cam's. Snapping, twisting, hissing, the beast gnashed its dagger teeth against a pine mast.

Jedit pounced.

Yowling, coughing, roaring, the man-tiger landed astride the serpent's twisted neck and sought to rip snaky head from squirming body. Blood geysered and was whipped to froth by storm wind. Jedit gouged a hole big as his arm in the serpent's neck, a gory portal gleaming white with bone, while the bloody head snapped and jigged to catch the tiger's legs. All the while, the berserk tiger roared an ear-wracking caterwaul.

Adira cursed anew at Jedit's battle madness, for endless yards of the serpent's thick body still kicked in the water alongside Conch. The wild struggling made the balky caravel impossible to steer. At the tiller, Virgil couldn't keep his feet on the deck. Stays and rigging were sheared anew so sails billowed and flapped.

The pirate captain gasped to Simone, "Fetch axes! Hack that beast through the body before it drags us under."

With a heart-stopping jolt, the Conch of Cortis beached.

Adira and her crew were flung on their faces like drops of water as the ship snagged on rocks. Virgil fared worst. Trapped between tiller arm and taffrail, he was swatted as if by a sledgehammer across the ribs. The tiller yawed, setting him free, but swung and whacked him again as he fell. Crumpling to the wet deck, Virgil didn't even wrap his arms in pain, but fell like the dead.

Upperworks snapped like twigs. Masts, spars, and yards whipped once and broke. Lines parted like arrow strings. Tangled wood and cordage rained from the skies and made a shambles of the deck. A corsair was flicked into the sea like a fly. Heath and Wilemina were hurled together so hard one's arm was broken. Simone slid into the quarterdeck railing, broke through, and tumbled into the waist. Even Jedit Ojanen, busy rending the dying serpent, was knocked off by a mass of falling cordage.

The ship careened as if kicked in the stern, then bobbed on the tide, shifted, dropped, and spun free. Blinded by brutal pain in her hands and knees, Adira sensed instinctively they'd grazed a hidden rock and bounced off. Yet the damage was done. The Conch listed to port. Half her bottom must have torn out, Adira knew, and she took on water.

"Abandon ship!" Adira tried to shout, but only wheezed, winded. Grabbing drunkenly for support, she again spilled to the deck, slicing her hand on a jagged splinter. Cold spume scoured her wound and made her whimper in pain. Fear for her crew clutched her guts. This was it, she thought wildly. They'd feed the fish, and none would mark their graves except gulls.

Dizzy and sad, Adira crawled on bruised knees to help Virgil, but bumped into jagged stiles, all that remained of the quarterdeck railing. She'd gone the wrong way. Where was she, anyway? To her blurry rain-swept vision, this queer place resembled a jungle with a giant snake wrapped in tangles like vines. Crabbing around, she reached Virgil and tried to lift him, but her bleeding right hand lacked strength. Chestnut hair soaked by rain and blood stung her eyes.

"Virgil, brace up! Damn you, we need-"

With a horrendous jolt, the ship struck again. This time it stuck fast, but Adira Strongheart didn't know that. She skidded headlong over the shattered rail into the waist. A storm giant clouted her head with a mast, or else she banged her skull. She lay staring at black clouds with rain dappling her eyes, unmoving. Perhaps her back was broken. Under her aching spine she felt the ship grind on rocks, lift, slam again, grind, lift, smash down. A few minutes, she thought, and they'd swim. Drown.

"Adira." The roiling sky was eclipsed by a face of orange, black, and white stripes all dripping crimson blood. Jedit's whiskers were broken on one side. She started to giggle, for the cat man looked so serious.

In his odd antique accent, he purred, "Hold still. Your head is bleeding."

"Leave me alone." Adira croaked. "Help Virgil. I couldn't wake him. Peregrine can't swim. Where's Simone? And Hazezon?"

"Safe, all safe." Shifting a fallen spar, Jedit hooked a brawny arm around Adira's back and lifted her gently, though it still hurt. Even the tiger stumbled as the ship smashed to bits on unforgiving granite. Detached from her body, Adira watched swirls of gray go past.

Distantly she heard Jedit say, "Adira's dazed. Her last command was to abandon ship."

Someone answered. Another argued. Adira didn't care. She tried to say, "Get Virgil," but ran out of air. Cradled in the tiger's mighty arms, with his wet-cat stink filling her nostrils and his body heat glorious as a campfire, Adira listened to people talk, call names, babble. Jedit gave orders in Adira's name to hurl flotsam overside. The tiger was oddly calm, given his berserker rage to kill the sea serpent a few moments ago. But he could swim like a tiger shark, thought the captain idly. He needn't worry.

"Heath! Heath, swim to that hatch!" The tiger yowled through a fog in Adira's mind. "To your left! Left! Keep Wilemina's head above water! Good thing Adira wrapped you in wool, eh, Simone? We'll float. Yes, go. I'll follow. Does anyone see Peregrine? Whistledove, cleave to Jas-"

Wood splintered like a forest rent by a hurricane. Or were such storms called cyclones on this coast, wondered Adira? Someone screamed the ship was giving up the ghost. Adira felt like a ghost herself, airy and floating, beyond pain and care.

"Brace, all!" warned the tiger. Adira's stomach lurched as the cat jumped high and far overside. Water crashed over her: in the face, nose, mouth, ears. She gargled and strangled and sucked down an ocean's worth of water. It filled her lungs, she was certain. There was no air anywhere. Her mind flickered like a dying coal.

So this is drowning, she marveled, then thought no more.