Morwenna nodded and, sharing a silent exchange with Rose, followed me below deck, where the sounds of the crew waking stirred. I led her to a place that no one had yet occupied because all of us who were left knew that some spaces could never be filled again.
My hand still recognized the knob on Billy’s door as something safe, a reprieve. I turned and pushed it open, and it was still as he left it. His endless tokens of a life spent on exploration. Paintings, drawings, molds all hung on the wood around a single narrow bed dressed in blue bedding. A nightstand and lantern next to it. How many nights had I spent on the floor beside it, avoiding how I felt for Rose?
Nights spent listening to him call me a damned fool and tell me I was wasting everyone’s time on stubbornness.
“You can stay here. No one will bother you.” I said.
Morwenna stepped into the room, surveying it.
“Grief is an ocean. Her own tide that recedes and floods often without warning,” she said.
I wasn’t surprised she recognized this for what it was. I’d seen enough of the Mysterious Deep not to question beings like her on how they knew the things they knew.
“It is.” I agreed. “It will claim me if I lose my wife.”
She turned and met my eyes–that same eerie blue that was Edmonds. A symptom of a creature of the deep forced to reside on land. He may not have been a full selkie, but there must have been a part of him that longed for the sea. No wonder he chose the Navy. It was likely his only choice.
Morwenna held my gaze, unapologetic and without concern for how uneasy her stare could make a man.
“It will,” she said.
I didn’t need to ask how she knew. It was simply true.
“Know that if anything should happen to her that you could have prevented, I will do far worse than force you to live on land,” I said.
She merely stepped forward, pulling the door shut between us.
“I am aware, Captain,” she said. “Mind the mist, and perhaps we will all live to see what comes next. Do not let your crew look too deeply into it. It merely wishes to keep its prisoner. Sail and forget it.”
With that, she shut the door.
Not two seconds later, Oscar was calling for me above deck.
If I were a betting man, I would have risked all the coins that my wife hadn’t commandeered recently.
Every heavy footfall was punctuated by an eerie sound of silence that should not have been. As soon as I made it upstairs, it was evident why.
The mist clung to everything. It ran across the wraith’s deck with a heaviness that shouldn’t have been there. It blocked out the sea and the village below us.
“What do we do?” Oscar asked, voice a hushed whisper.
All eyes were on us. The crew waited to see if they should panic. Whatever lead I gave them, they would follow.
“Continue our course. It will pass as we leave Angra.” I ordered before taking in my crew. “Whatever the mist shows you, ignoreit. If you wish to live, then you will make ready and stay on course. Understood?”
A chorus of agreement broke out, and with that, the ship lurched with the first movement away from Angra.
“It doesn’t want her to leave,” Dilly said, coming up beside me with Rose in tow.
“It does not.” I agreed. “What precedence does it have?”
“They call it the Mist of the Enchanted Isles. They believe it hides ghost islands and that to sail into it is…unwise.” Dilly said.
“We are about to do just the opposite.” Rose pointed out, hands on her hips.
“Aye, the unexpected will always keep 'em on their toes,” Billy said.
Billy.
