“We’ll need to repair it at the next island,” Marin said.
“What’s the next island?” Dax asked. He was seated on the prow, scrubbing out the pot they’d used to make fish stew for last night’s dinner and today’s breakfast-lunch. It had been seasoned excellently with some kind of ground pepper mixed with other spices local to the last island.
“Ree?” Marin called.
“Yes, Captain!” Ree consulted the map. “It’s called Caltrey.”
“Hmm, I’ve never heard of it,” Dax said.
“A lot of the outer islands are too ordinary to make it into your ballads,” Marin said.
“There should be more songs about the ordinary,” Ree declared. “Like this. Right now. Us together. You, eating fish stew. Dax, scrubbing the pot.”
Marin laughed. “I’m not sure even Dax could come up with a good fish stew song.”
Dax held up the scrub brush. “That sounds like a challenge.” Deepening his voice, he sang,“You dip your spoon into the stew, and your heart, it follows—”
Sliding closer to the boat, Perri flicked his fin and splashed Dax.
Marin laughed harder. “Child prodigy, and that’s what you come up with?” She laughed so hard that she started to cough. She pounded on her chest until she caught her breath. Ahh, that was good. She couldn’t remember laughing so often or so hard before Dax and Ree came on her boat. “‘You dip your spoon into the stew’?”
“It’s a first draft!” Dax wiped the sea spray from his face.
“Just to be clear,” Marin said, “I’m not singing that.”
“But it’s nice!” Ree said. “It’s nice to celebrate doing things together.” He warbled,“You dip your spoon into the stew, and you know just what to do!”
Dax sang,“You dip your spoon into the stew—”
Ree finished,“And the sea comes into view!”
Both of them sang in harmony:“You dip your spoon into the stew, and your heart, it follows.”Then Dax:“If the stew is true—”Then Ree:“And the sea is blue!”And Dax:“You’ll know just what to do!”
Marin was laughing so hard that tears popped into her eyes, salt mingling with the sea spray. “There’s zero chance an audience wouldn’t think that’s a euphemism.”
“What’s a euphemism?” Ree asked.
“A euphemism,” Dax said, “is when you substitute one phrase for another that might not, um, be polite? Or, um, talked about publicly. And I didnotmean it as a euphemism.”
“Mean what?” Ree asked. “I don’t understand.”
Marin and Dax glanced at each other, their eyes met, and both of them dissolved into laughter again. As they caught their breaths, they heard the sound of trumpeting across the waves. Perri rose up in the water and swiveled his head.
Out in the distance, a pod of sea serpents was leaping out of the water, one after another in a rainbowlike cascade of iridescent scales and feathery fins.
Perri let out a squawk and then a cascade of trumpeted glory. He plunged beneath the surface, and she saw his back fin slicing through the water, speeding toward the pod. He was swimming so fast that the sea roiled around him, creating a path of frothing water.
The pod switched directions to swim toward him, and she counted nearly a dozen serpents in the water, all of varied length and size and color, far more than she’d ever seen.
“Friends of yours?” Ree asked.
Marin shook her head. She couldn’t help feeling as if a hand were clenched around her heart. She and Perri had sailed between the islands together for two years and never encountered a pod of sea serpents. Occasionally, they’d sight one in the distance, but never this many.
And Perri had never acted like this before.
“Family?” was Ree’s second guess.
“I don’t know.” Marin tacked into the wind, following the trail of churning water.
