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“Yer da cares about ye in his own way,” Cal said diplomatically. Kenna rolled her eyes. If she wanted someone to agree with her, then she was looking in the wrong place. Cal was loyal to a fault and never spoke ill of her father, even when he deserved it.

There was a cry from outside for the boat to leave the harbor. Kenna rushed out of the room and went on deck to watch the boat slip away from the shore. It was gradually taken by the sea’s current, slowly moving away from land. A few children with smudges of dirt on their faces waved, and Kenna waved back. The land was receding before her eyes, and soon enough, there would be nothing around her but the empty ocean, filled with promise and fraught with danger. She had been expecting this day to come for such a long time, as though a sword had been hanging over her head, waiting to fall. Now it was happening, and there was nothing she could do to fight it. She was going to be the wife of a Spanish trader, and she hoped that he was the opposite of her father. She was a willful girl and didn’t want to be presented as a treasure. She had no qualms about being someone’s wife, but she hated the idea of being nothing more than an item to be traded.

As the voyage continued, Cal became more aggrieved with Kenna’s behavior. To the delight of the crew, she left her noble heritage behind and joined in with the shanties. She breathed in the salty air and laughed gaily at the freedom of the waves. Cal kept urging her to stay in her cabin where she could be protected, but these were her last days of liberty, and she wasn’t going to shun this experience. She knew that she was one of the few noblewomen who had the opportunity to experience a voyage like this. Perhaps there would be more in time as the world became bigger and the communication between countries became more frequent, but for now, she was doing something that few had done before. It was bittersweet, though. She kept thinking about how she would love to tell her mother about this, but those experiences would be resigned to letters she would write.

There were moments when it was impossible not to be despondent as she looked back towards home, and every time she did, there was a chill that wrapped around her. The days blurred in with each other, and she envied the men because at least they had their work to keep themselves occupied. Despite Cal’s objections, she insisted on sharing meals with them because she tired of her own company and wanted to learn about their lives and what had driven them to sea. She learned that some of them had nothing waiting for them on land, so they had sought fortune out at sea, while others were doing this to earn coin so that their families would not starve. Despite their rough and swarthy appearances, they were good men with their own sense of honor, and she knew that she was not in danger from any of them. Even if she was, Cal was there, lurking nearby and never straying far from her side.

She couldn’t stop thinking about the message Cal had to deliver either. To think that a noble would give all that up to come and enjoy a life at sea—it was almost unbelievable! She wondered what had driven him away, and also envied him a little as well. She was trapped by her destiny to seal a pact between two families, but he had found a way to escape the trappings of nobility. He had forged a life for himself out at sea, and she wondered if he would heed the call of home. She hoped that she would have the chance to meet him, if only briefly, because he seemed to be a remarkable man.

Days turned into weeks, and the initial excitement of being on a ship soon gave way to boredom. While the sky and the sea were beautiful to look at, it soon became a mundane sight because there was never anything else, aside from the odd sea creature slithering under the water or a ship passing by in the distance. The crew was irascible, and it was easy to find fault with each other as well. Kenna had found herself snapping at Cal more fiercely than usual, and she was annoyed that she let her emotions get the better of her. Cal took it in good stride, though, as if it was his duty to put up with her moods as well as everything else. It was also difficult for her because she knew that soon she would be in the arms of a strange man, a man she was supposed to love with all her heart. Every night, she prayed that her husband would be kind and romantic, that he would be everything she dreamed he would be.

Her prayers drifted across the open sea.

They were approaching the Spanish coast, although it was still a few days away, when a terrible storm rose up and struck them. The wind was vicious and swirled around, pulling the boat this way and that. The waves rose up, and water sloshed over the deck. Men slipped, and she heard the screams of some of them as they fell overboard. Cal grabbed her, trying to pull her back into the cabin where she was safe, but Kenna saw the sailors struggling against the elements. The sail fluttered and ripped, and the mast cracked. It teetered at an unnatural angle and shrouded the Purity in a dark shadow. Kenna screamed, but she knew she had to do something. One man was standing underneath the mast, trying to hold it up. A few others joined him, straining against the weight while others flung a rope around the mast to try and pull it back and tie it in place. Quickly, Kenna gathered her hair into a ponytail, fastening it tightly around the back of her head, and then ran to help them.

“Get back here!” Cal cried. Kenna turned back and glared at him spitefully.

“We hae been traveling with these men. I’m nae gaeing tae let them suffer alone. If ye want tae protect me, then help me help these men!” she cried, and didn’t wait for him to reply. She heard Cal curse as he followed her, and they joined in, being part of the crew as they stopped the mast from toppling over. As the sea settled, they helped with the labor of repairing the damage done to the ship, and the crew celebrated Kenna’s desire to help.

“I believe ye all owe me some coin. I dinnae think there’s a man here who bet on me lasting the whole voyage,” she cried, and was met with laughter and the clinking of coin as they tossed her some gold, deciding that she had done plenty to earn it. It felt good to have the respect of these men, and she was sorry that they were going to have to part. She knew she was never going to do anything like this again. If Senor del Rio were anything like her father, he would not want his wife to be spending time doing manual labor. The Purity limped towards the Spanish coast with a mast that was just barely hanging together, and Kenna knew that once she stepped on land again, her life was never going to be the same.

Still, she handled the pouch of gold she had earned with pride. But Cal was there to dampen her spirits.

“It’s unbecoming for a lady tae gamble,” he said. Kenna scowled and shook her head. It seemed unbecoming for a lady to do anything fun.