‘I intend to bypass the Pirate Isles. I know you need supplies. I am not the Mad Ship, to care nothing for my crew’s lives. I can compromise. We can stop briefly in Bingtown. Then I will go up the Rain Wild River to Trehaug. For Silver. To become the dragon I was always meant to be.’
‘What of me?’ Captain Wintrow asked discouragedly as he came to join the discussion. ‘What will Etta think of me? Do you think I will ever be able to return to Divvytown if I do not bring Queen Etta the news of her son’s death?’ He shook his head. ‘It will be the end of my career there. Perhaps even my life.’
Althea and Brashen and Boy-O were coming to join them. Did they fear a mutiny on the ship?
Vivacia was silent for a time. Then she said, with both firmness and regret, ‘I know only that I have been too long a ship. Wintrow, I am trapped. I need to be free. I will free myself. As you should free yourself. It has been years. Etta will never love you as she loved Kennit. She is a woman whose love was won by coldness and neglect. She thought a man who did not beat her loved her. And Kennit? He never admitted to himself that he cared for her as anything more than a convenient whore. He was fonder of you than he ever was of her. Wintrow, go home. Take me home. It is time we both were free.’
So long a silence followed the ship’s words that I wondered if they had all left. I opened my eyes to slits and saw Althea set her arm across her nephew’s shoulders. The crew stood embarrassed for him, looking aside from his downcast face.
‘She’s right.’ Boy-O whispered the words. ‘You know she’s right.’ But at that confirmation, Wintrow shrugged away from Althea’s touch and strode away from both family and figurehead. I judged it better to continue to feign sleep and never speak to anyone of what I had overheard.
Most of Vivacia’s crew was from the Pirate Isles. The ship’s refusal to put into port there left those sailors bereft and resentful. I felt the tension simmer and was puzzled. The crew knew it was not Wintrow’s decision, but the ship’s, so what did they expect him to do? But when we were within sight of the Pirate Isles, Captain Wintrow offered his compromise. He gave our ship’s boats to those who wished to leave Vivacia’s deck and go to Divvytown. Only one boat he would keep back, despite knowing it would not hold us all should some disaster befall Vivacia.
Yet given the opportunity, it was only a dozen or so who chose to depart. Some who had long sailed with Vivacia decided to stay with her, to see her become the dragon. ‘That will be a tale to tell for years, and a sight I will not miss,’ declared one man. And at that, two who had sought to leave decided to stay. Wintrow bade farewell to the others and assured them that the ship’s accountant would see them paid. And Boy-O said to the oldest man, ‘I trust this to you, to give to Queen Etta. All of you leaving the ship here, this must not go astray.’ But what he gave them was only a rather plain necklace with a dull grey charm on it. I did not understand while the crewmen were so stricken with gravity. They promised him many times it would go directly to her. The boats were lowered and we watched them row away across the waves. And we left the Pirate Isles behind us.
That night Captain Wintrow got very drunk, and Althea and Brashen with him. Boy-O stood the night watch and commanded the ship. Clef kept him company, and Per. They sat on the foredeck, near the figurehead, and sang some rude songs. The next day, they all went about their work with blotched faces and shaking hands. Amber and Spark helped to fill the gaps left by the departing sailors, and the ship seemed almost to sail herself in her drive to reach the Rain Wild River.
I had another episode of the sickness in which I became weak and feverish. When Amber sought to reassure me that all would be well, I said that I’d been through it before and wished to be left alone. Amber seemed to find that astonishing, but acceded to my wishes. It was Per who brought me water and soup and when the fever had passed begged permission of the captain that I be allowed to take a bath in his quarters. I was given a tub to stand in, a cloth to use and a bucket of hot water. I had longed for a tub full of steaming water, but Per explained that given Vivacia’s refusal to stop in the Pirate Isles we had to conserve our fresh water. With what they gave me, I could rid myself of most of my peeling skin. I emerged a colour that was a shade closer to Per’s skin and feeling much better.
It was peculiar that the very boredom of our uneventful voyage became difficult for me. After months of plotting each day how I would survive, there was suddenly very little for me to do. No one expected chores of me. Over and over, I was told to rest. In those idle hours, I was left to recall every detail of what had befallen me. I tried to make sense out of all that had happened. My father was dead. The people who had stolen me were dead, or mostly so. I was going ‘home’ to Buckkeep Castle, to a sister I did not know well and a niece who was a baby.
I thought of the things that had been done to me, and the things I had done to survive. Some, I could scarcely believe. Biting Dwalia’s face. Watching Trader Akriel die. Becoming the Destroyer, and killing Dwalia and setting fire to Symphe and burning all the libraries. Had that truly been me, Bee Farseer?
I had dreams, both those full of portents and the ordinary kind. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. I wandered the walls of Withywoods, calling for my father, but only a wolf came to me. Trader Akriel crawled after me, screaming that it was all my fault. I tried to run from her, but my legs were jelly. A blue buck leapt into a silver lake and a black wolf leapt out of it. A dozen dragons rose in glorious flight. Dwalia stood over my bed and laughed to think I had believed I could kill her. I dreamed of a woman who ploughed an immense field, and golden grasses grew up to be harvested into creaking wagons. I dreamed of my mother saying, ‘He may not seem to love you, but he does’. I dreamed I watched a grand ball in an immense, festive chamber through a crack in the wall.
Some I wrote down on the paper Beloved had given me, and some I kept to myself. He came to me one evening and said, ‘I propose that we sit down together, and you read your dreams to me, and we discuss them.’
I did not want to share them. Writing them down made them important. Reading them aloud would make them even more so. I said nothing.