“I might have stayed,” I said. “I might have looked for him. I might have learned.”
“Fewmirrormages are as lucky as your captain,” she said. “I knew when I met Jak that he would lose himself to the mirror.”
I looked down at my bare feet, surprised they weren’t bear.
“The mirror form is appealing,” she said. “But the more often you become your mirror, the more you want to, and the more you lose of your true self. The life of your mirror consumes you.”
“So, my father chose being a bear over being my father?”
“He was a child himself,” she said. “And you were difficult from birth.”
How words became knives.
“But I suppose I was a difficult woman. I have always been my own.”
True, that. At least she knew.
“He was a drunk,” I said.
“He drank, yes,” she said. “But so does your captain. The mirror is a painful, unforgiving craft. The drink helps numb the sensations.”
She gazed off at the hazy horizon.
“I was traveling through the Spits and met him when Istopped at Sky.” She smiled again. “He was younger than I, and charming. Brave, bold, full of adventure. He wanted to leave while I wanted to stay. Sky is a beautiful, wylde place.”
“I hated it,” I grumbled.
“All children hate their hometowns,” she said. “They think the world has more to offer. Tell me, Daughter—does it?”
I looked up at her. I wanted to tell her all, to spill my sorrow and confusion and struggles and rage onto her proud and perfect head. She had been a horrible mother, had bent me in ways that had skewed my thoughts and stunted my heart. But I didn’t know her life journey, either. I’d been too young to ask, too wounded to care. And maybe she didn’t deserve my thoughts, my sorrow and confusion and struggles and rage. Maybe they were mine and mine alone.
I was, like her, my own.
“I’m making my way,” I said finally.
“I’m happy for you,” she said. “Even Corvallan had heard of your chimeric.”
“I don’t know what it means,” I said. “But I’ll find out. I’m stubborn.”
“Like your mother.”
Forge, she was right.
“Dream sweet,” I said.
“When the moons meet,” said she.
And so, I left her, trying to control my feet as I crossed the deck and leaped down the stepladder. I didn’t go to the pit for Able Whacks but carried on down to the galley. I wept again that night, soundlessly and alone, arms wrapped around the little doll of Bilgetown wood because I had no one else to do the job. I’d never had arms to rock me to sleep, never had a lullaby or even a kiss good night.
That night, I dreamed I was a bird. I could just reach out my hands and watch them grow feathers. I could bring my armsdown and feel the air lift me up. Up, up, up over the sea, my eyes sharp to take in all below me. I saw whales and dragon eels, flocks of seabirds and great schools of fish. And I saw a winter hawk soaring through a storm toward a ship, reaching out his gray talons to grab a harpy by the hand.
I woke with a start, almost rolling from my hammock with the shock. I swung for a long moment, heart thudding, feet hanging over the canvas, before I hopped off and onto the deck. The ship was dark with few lanterns aglow, and I made my way quietly to the companionway near the captain’s cabin. Dev was on Dog Watch, but still, I stood at the dark doorway, listening for anything that might tell me he was awake and alone.
There,the clink of a bottle, and softly, I rapped on the wood panel that served as a door.
My head was light as I heard the chair scrape. My heart raced at the sound of his step. The door slid open, and he leaned out, his sea-dark hair dishevelled, eyes heavy-lidded.
“Ensign?”
