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It starts off as a cough. It starts off as something scratchy at the back of Jay’s throat that she needs to clear. It’s nothing to be concerned about. Though she muffles a cough too many into her elbow, she waves it off before Gillion or Chip can worry.
“It’ll fade after a day,” she says. “I probably just need some water.”
It doesn’t fade after a day. Or the day after that. It persists for a week, stinging the back of Jay’s throat like a patch of nettle. Once its roots have sunk in, it starts to grow outward; a blocked nose, a dull migraine, and a rising temperature. Eventually, it gets to a point where Jay finds her vision swimming. When she looks out into the horizon, the clouds split and blur. That, above all, signals her to take some rest. A sharpshooter is nothing without her eyesight. She surrenders herself to Chip and Gillion’s dubious care, tucking herself into her hammock while they bicker over her head.
“No, Gill, we are not feeding her seagrass.”
“It’s a cure-all.”
“For a triton, maybe.”
“Even if it doesn’t work, it’s very nutritious, so it would still do some good.”
“Nutritious?”
“Yes, it’s good for your skin.” A weighty pause. “Perhaps you would like some, Chip.”
“What the hell are you implying?”
“Captains,” Alphonse interrupts, his bulky form appearing at the doorway. “According to my calculations, Captain Jay only requires rest and hydration.”
Gillion looks worried. “But what about food?”
“Captain Gillion, that goes without saying.”
“You guys worry too much,” Jay says, fighting the urge to laugh. Their concern is nice, but wholly unnecessary. “It’s not like I’ve never been sick before. I’ll get some sleep, it’ll pass, then I’ll be good as new. Easy-peasy.”
As soon as she finishes her sentence, the prickling in her throat becomes too great, and she muffles a wet cough into her hand. When she removes it, there’s a glob of green phlegm in her palm.
Chip and Gillion make twin noises of disgust. Alphonse simply says: “I’ll get your handkerchief.”
After Jay cleans her hand, Ollie comes to visit. He peers over the hammock, his small face creased in concern, and reaches out a hand to feel Jay’s forehead.
“How is she, Ollie?” Chip asks.
With the utmost solemnity, Ollie informs him: “She’s too warm.”
“Too hot, you mean,” Jay says, and her snicker devolves into another cough. This is alarming. If she’s getting delirious enough to make Chip-level jokes, it must be getting bad. “Urgh, I gotta get better, like, right now.”
“That’s the spirit!” Gillion says.
Jay’s only wearing her pyjamas, but her face is uncomfortably warm, and she can feel sweat starting to dampen her back. There’s also three layers of blankets on her. She begins to peel the top layer off, but Chip bats her hands away.
“No can do, Jay,” he says, drawing it up to her chin. “You gotta sweat it out. That’s how it works.”
Jay makes a drawn-out sigh. Gillion places a cool hand on her forehead, the air misting with his magic, and she leans into it.
“You should get some sleep,” Gillion says. “Do you want us to leave you alone?”
“Hmm, you can stay. Chip and Ollie can go.”
Chip makes an affronted noise.
“Or,” Gillion says, “we can get you a cold towel.”
“That works too.”
When Jay sleeps, her dreams are vast landscapes of nothingness. They’re broken up by flashes of sense-memory from her childhood: her mother’s hushed voice, the orange-lit lamp in her bedroom, the scratch of her doll’s hair against her chin. They leave Jay feeling disoriented, sick with nostalgia, but they’re an improvement from night terrors.
Until the next dream places Ava in the foreground. Until Jay hears her sister’s laugh again, sees the slant of her smile and the glint in her eyes.
“C’mon, jaybird!”
When she runs to grab Ava’s hand, the grip is soft.
Ava had calluses from archery. Her hands were deft, strong, capable of drawing a bow or braiding Jay’s hair. She was gentle and strong in equal measure.
She wasn’t the one in Jay’s dream.
This was the hand of a stranger. Of a memory gone wrong, a film reel unwinding into a projector at the wrong angle, replaying a moment that was more imagination than reality.
Jay wakes with tears streaking down her face. Her heart is pounding behind her eyes. The hammock sways, the ship creaks, and the room heaves a breath. The wooden beams of the ceiling seem to shift. A ribcage expanding.
Inhale… and exhale.
Jay follows the rhythm of it, breathing around the shape of her grief. There’s a reason she tries not to think of Ava often. If she keeps returning to those memories, they’d be rusted from exposure to the air, their shiny surfaces blackened. If she preserves them, savours them, perhaps she can hold onto them for longer.
But it didn’t work, because she finds herself forgetting anyway. No matter how sparingly she beholds her sister, she is still dead, and there are no chances to make new memories; only the gradual fade of old ones. Grains of sand trickling down an hourglass, disappearing into an unending void.
Jay squeezes her eyes shut. She prays that her next dreams will be kinder.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I do.”
Jay barely recognised the voice coming from her own throat. Nor did her reflection hold any familiarity. She was dressed in uniform: a crisp white button-up, a navy skirt, and a dark red coat. The coat dwarfed her shoulders. Its sleeves reached her knuckles, and Jay rolled them back with a grimace. She was too small for this, too small for her bedroom, with her dolls and storybooks and the ship in a bottle Ava bought for her fourteenth birthday. It was a girl’s room, not a soldier’s.
Malenia hovered behind her, fussing with her hair. She kept doing and undoing Jay’s ponytail, her concern making her grip too tight.
It had been three months since news of Ava’s death reached them. Jay was barely eighteen. Barely over the cusp of adulthood. And she was enrolling in one of the most prominent branches of the Naval Academy.
The sleeve of the coat fell over her hand again. Too big.
The elastic seemed to be tearing Jay’s hair from her scalp. Too tight.
“Mom,” Jay said, “I can tie it myself.”
“I know you can.” Her mother offered her a small but pained smile. “Just… let me do this one thing for you, alright?”
So, she did. She held still as her hair was wrangled into a high ponytail. She didn’t say a word as her mother brushed her hair to her front, arranging it just so against her uniform. Malenia placed her hands on Jay’s shoulders. Their reflections in the mirror stared back: the perfect image of mother and daughter. Fit for a portrait. Jay’s eyes drifted to the empty space beyond their reflections, to the neatness of her room, to the packed suitcase on her bed. Fit for a portrait, except there was someone missing.
“Jay,” her mother said, and there was that characteristic heaviness to her tone that meant a talk was coming on. “I know you feel like you have something to prove, but if you don’t want to do this… You really don’t have to.”
Jay stayed silent.
“You don’t need to learn how to be a soldier. You could—”
“I could what, mom?” Jay interrupted. “I could stay here? I could live with you forever and work at the tavern for the rest of my life?” She whirled around to face her mother, misplaced anger simmering beneath her skin. “You’d keep me here, safe and stupid, rather than letting me go out and find the truth?”
Her mother didn’t rise to the bait. “Jay, you know that’s not what I meant.”
Her weary words brought Jay back to earth. She stared at her feet, abashed. Shiny uniform-grade boots stared back at her. “Sorry.”
Slowly, Malenia folded her into an embrace. She put her chin on Jay’s head, unconcerned, or maybe just unaware of messing up her ponytail. Jay blinked away the pressure behind her eyes.
“I’m just worried,” her mother said. The unspoken rang in the air between them: she had already lost a daughter. Now, she was sending another to the same institution that primed her for death. The same place that failed to protect her.
It’ll be okay, Jay wanted to say, but platitudes were meaningless now. Words were meaningless. Ava had said the same thing, no doubt. And look where she was now: buried six feet under, her life snuffed out by some outlaw scum, another martyr sacrificed to the Navy’s brilliant cause. Jay didn’t care for the bigger picture, but she’d fight as many battles as she needed to find Ava’s killer.
This was just the first step.
Safe and warm in the circle of her mother’s arms, Jay felt like a child. And there was no more room for that. She pulled back, schooling her expression into one of neutrality. Tucked her emotions away, packed them in boxes and shoved them under her bed with the other toys.
“I have to do this,” she said.
Whatever her mother saw in her expression, it was enough for her to heave a sigh. Her hand drifted up, as if to wipe invisible dirt from Jay’s skirt, or to fuss over her collar, but the hand dropped.
“Come back safe, alright?”
No promises.
“Alright.”
The next time Jay wakes, it’s to the sound of voices.
“… not cheating, are you?”
“Would a Chosen One cheat?”
“I’m just saying, it’s been three games and I haven’t even gotten close to winning.”
“Mrrp.”
“What did Pretzel say?”
“She says you’re just incompetent.”
Jay turns her head. The room is only lit with a lantern, and she experiences a moment of vertigo when she realises it’s already night time. A pool of light falls around Gillion and Chip, sat on opposite sides of a chessboard. Pretzel is out of her orb. She perches on Gillion’s shoulder, probably whispering instructions into his ear.
The cold towel on Jay’s head has turned warm. Her fever has risen in full force, sapping the energy from her limbs, turning her thoughts syrupy and slow, reducing her voice to a nasal croak when she speaks.
“Guys?” she says. God, she sounds terrible.
Chip and Gillion are at her side in an instant. Even Pretzel looks worried. Jay wasn’t aware frogtopi could make expressions.
“Hey, how’re you feeling?” Chip says. His voice has an uncharacteristic hush to it.
Jay swallows. It feels like there are knives scraping the back of her throat. She might as well be marinating in her sweat. There’s a blockage in one of her nostrils, so the other one is parched. All-in-all, she feels like shit.
“Could be better,” she croaks.
Gillion removes the towel and puts his hand on her forehead again. She sighs at the touch.
“Her temperature got higher,” he says, low with discontent.
“Fevers don’t go away that easily,” Chip points out. “Give it a day or two.”
Gillion’s hand begins to glow blue with healing magic.
“I already said it won’t work,” Chip says. “Jay’s got an illness, not a wound.”
The coolness is pleasant against Jay’s overheated face, but otherwise, she doesn’t feel anything different.
“Thanks for trying anyway,” she tells Gillion, whose ears droop.
They get her a glass of water with perfect pH levels, according to Gillion. Some of the scratchiness in her throat abates. Chip retrieves some food from the kitchen. Nothing fancy, just bread and dried fruit. She’s queasy at the prospect of eating, but Chip insists, so she stomachs a few mouthfuls of bread and manages to nibble on a raisin. While she eats, Chip tells her about the fish and seagrass stew that Gillion tried making, but the result didn’t resemble anything digestible, so they dumped it over the side. Gillion complains that he’s never cooked with fire before.
“Cooking fish rids it of flavour, Chip.”
“It also rids humans of food poisoning!”
Jay’s not cognizant enough to hold a complete conversation, but she gives it her best effort, as if pretending to be healthy will make it true. She doesn’t like being sick to this degree. She’s deadweight to her crew. She should be up and about, pulling her weight, training, not lying comatose in her hammock and letting her friends do all the work.
“Anything happen while I was out?” she asks.
“Dolphin mail came,” Chip says.
“I saw a school of loach,” Gillion adds.
“Gillion kept cheating at chess.”
“Chip kept being bad at chess.”
“I’m not—”
“So, nothing happened,” Jay says. She chews on a piece of bread contemplatively. “That’s a relief.” She doesn’t know what she would’ve done if she napped through a whole fight. She’d probably be frustrated. If she wasn’t dead.
And that leads her to thinking about the possibility of getting attacked while sick. Would she hear the clashing sounds of fighting abovedeck? Would she have to arm herself, sick and feverish, and shoot with an unsteady hand? Would she aim true?
“I can literally hear you thinking,” Chip says.
“No, you can’t.”
“Yeah, I can.” Chip flicks her on the forehead. The burst of pain roots her in the present, brings her back to the here and now: sweaty, achy, and slightly sick from the rocking motion of the ship.
She aims a half-hearted glare at Chip. “Ow.”
“Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it,” he says. “I can tell it’s not a happy thing, so just stop. It’s that easy.”
“So easy,” Gillion agrees. “I stop thinking all the time.”
“We can tell, Gill.”
“Thank you.”
“Jay, we can hold down the fort, so don’t worry about us.” Chip smiles at her, easy and affectionate. “Just rest up, drink plenty of water, and take it easy.”
Gillion gives her a pat the shoulder. “It is your destiny to defeat this illness!”
“Oh.” Jay doesn’t know how to pin down the emotion welling up within her. She’s dangerously close to tears, but she’s not sad at all. Instead of facing it, she directs her gaze down to the piece of bread she’s got left. “Thanks.”
“Write home every week, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Be careful on the training courses. I hear they’re using real arrows these days.”
“Okay.”
“And make some friends. You’ll be spending three years there! It’ll get lonely without a friend.”
“Okay, mom, geez.”
Jay glanced over her shoulder at the ship waiting in the harbour. Droves of people were boarding; some merchants, some ordinary travellers, and some headed for the Naval Academy, just like her. She could spot those ones with their bulky suitcases and squared-up shoulders and fussy parents. She caught sight of a father ruffling his son’s hair, and something panged inside of her. She tore her gaze away before her mom could catch her staring.
Malenia didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy making sure Jay’s collar was lying down flat. She opened her mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by the horn of the ship. They were going to be departing soon.
Time dissolved into sea foam, broke apart like the white-capped waves that the ship churned through. The wooden deck rocked beneath Jay, the wind scraped its icy fingers through her hair, and she felt the tug of her ribbon too late—another stream of white soon joined the sea. Her hand was held aloft in the air, her fingers gripped around nothing. She quickly put it down, scrubbed a fist across her eyes, and turned away from the wind. The salt burned her eyes. That was all.
The ship heaved like a living thing beneath her feet. Day shifted to night, the stars wheeled overhead, then settled on the horizon as a cluster of lights. As the island drew closer, the veil of darkness was pulled aside to make room for a bustling city, a million points of illumination: glowing windows, streetlamps, the bright beams of vehicle lights. The passengers disembarked.
In no time at all, Jay found herself standing in a red brick building, trying not to fidget underneath the scrutiny of the Dean. She had come to meet the new recruits herself, but everyone knew she was actually there to see Jay. Already, Jay could hear the whispers rising around her:
“Is it really her?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Look at the hair.”
“D’you think she’s in my class?”
“Navy brats get special training. She’s probably in her own class like Ava was.”
“Shh, don’t talk about—”
“At attention,” the Dean barked, and was met with a row of sloppy salutes. Several people used the wrong hand. Others, obviously trying to copy their neighbours, were a beat too late. Someone in the back row had dozed off standing up.
Jay was the only one up to par. Standing there, straight-backed in uniform, though lacking the white ribbon, she was the image of a perfect student. The Dean didn’t even try to hide her approval.
“As expected from a Ferin,” she said, cast a steely glare over the rest of the recruits. “As for the rest of you—”
Jay tuned out when the Dean started giving the others a thorough scolding. It was almost second nature to her. Her father was Jayson Ferin, after all. There could be nothing in his life that wasn’t up to par, least of all his daughters.
Just a single daughter now.
“Dismissed,” the Dean said sharply. “You may go find your dormitories.” As the students made to run off, she turned to Jay. “Except for you, Miss Ferin. Come join me in my office.”
Jay felt the weight of glares aimed at her back. It was a prickle on her skin, lightning in the air. It wasn’t her fault, she wanted to shout. She didn’t ask for preferential treatment. She was just—
“Miss Ferin,” the Dean said, sharper. “Quickly, now.”
Ever the dutiful girl, Jay followed.
Jay wants to slough off her skin. She’s too clammy, too warm, the weight of her own body too much for her to bear. It’s alright to take up space in the world, her mother once said. You rely on others. You help them, they help you. That’s what it means to be alive. She’d been patching up a scraped knee Jay had received after falling from a tree. She remained tight-lipped about it because the tavern was bustling, and she didn’t want to pile more problems on her mother’s plate. But Malenia still found out, as mothers were wont to do, and she disregarded her customer for the time being to help Jay. The disinfectant was pale orange. It stung, but it was a sharp, cleansing pain. Discomfort could be good sometimes. Like aching muscles after a workout, the hurt of pushing yourself just one more step. Jay was always pushing herself too much, her mother said, and laid a kiss on the bandage. At what point was she just suffering for the sake of it? At what point does pain become pointless?
This, here, right now: feeling the slow-acting poison that’s spreading through her body, Jay gets her answer. This is when pain becomes pointless. This is agony without meaning. There is no way to construe a lesson from it. Time becomes defined by discomfort. She wakes in a sweat and goes to sleep shivering. Her throat feels like an open flame. She’s dimly aware of Gillion and Chip moving around her, and snippets of their conversation drift to her ears:
“—getting worse, I don’t know—”
“—nearest island?”
“—a three day’s journey at best—”
Fever overtakes her like a wave, and she has no choice but to drown.
Maps are carved beneath her skin. Memory is built into the marrow of her, a silent cartographer, charting a course for home.
If you turned her inside-out, you’d find seawater, cobbled streets, an eagle-shaped tavern entrance. She’ll always recognise home, but will home recognise her?
Dear mom,
I’m doing well. Yes, they do use real arrows nowadays, but I haven’t gotten shot yet. I’ve just been doing a lot of the shooting. Not a single arrow off-mark. Some of my peers miss the target completely. I think the Navy has lowered their standards if these are the kind of second-rate recruits they’re allowing into their academy doors.
The teachers like me. Or at least they’re good at pretending they do. They have no choice but to like me. I’m a Ferin, for God’s sake. Antagonising me would be a death sentence. The students, however, aren’t too aware of this fact. I’ve found pens missing, schoolwork smudged mysteriously, and on one memorable occasion my uniform was stained with a substance I’d rather not name.
I’ve reported the instances every time and punishments are doled out suitably, but it becomes a chore. How many times will I have to subject myself to this? How many times until they learn? How many times until I smash Dylan’s stupid face into his desk
I’m so fucking tired of this place I hate my peers I hate the teachers I hate the stupid Dean who smiles at me like she knows who I am or why I’m here
She called Ava a star student and said I was shaping up to be one as well
Is that all Ava was to her? Another number on a ranking list another percentage on a test another statistic
I don’t belong here
Mom I miss you
I’m sorry
I don’t know if I can do this
It could be better, but really, anything can. The school hours are reasonable, the study load is heavy but nothing I can’t handle, and my test scores are always the highest. Even if my peers hate it, they can’t avoid the truth. When I’m out of here and I’ve got my own rank and ship, they’ll be sorry.
And when I find the bastard that killed Ava they’ll all be sorry
How are you doing? How’s business at the tavern now that I’m not there? How many times have the bandits tried to ransom someone since I’ve gone? I hope you’re not working yourself too hard.
I’ll write again soon.
Love,
Jay
“God, I can’t stand her.”
“She thinks she’s so much better than us.”
“You hit a few bullseyes and suddenly you’re hot shit? Is that how it works?”
“Her essays always end up in the high nineties.”
“Favouritism. Obviously.”
“If you cosy up to her, maybe her dad’ll get you a nice rank when you graduate.”
“Oh my god, that’s a good ide—”
“She’s coming this way!”
Like a flock of seagulls in the surf, clothed in white and blue, the group of chattering students dispersed. Jay rounded the corner. She cast a critical eye over the corridor, her gaze flicking over the individual students who all hid their faces, the passers-by who quickened their steps, eventually coming to land on a blond-haired boy. Part of the group that was so shamelessly gossiping within earshot. Too slow to escape, he found himself pinned with the weight of Jay’s glare; an arrow embedded into a wing.
Jay stalked forward. He tried stumbling back, but he hit a wall, and so he flung his arms up, shielding his face from the blow that was surely—
“Gossiping is against academy policy,” Jay said.
He lowered his arms, bewilderment crossing his features. “Huh?”
“It’s in the rulebook.” Jay looked on, uncaring, her eyes as warm as two flecks of flint. “Don’t let me catch you again.”
She adjusted her sleeves. They’d fallen over her hands again. These days, all Jay could think about were the details: the angle of her Ferin pin, the folds of her uniform, the numbers that her schoolwork received. Never under a ninety. If she relaxed for one second, loosened her hold for a moment, dared to exhale—she knew it would all keep crumbling down. So what if she spent more time in the library than in her own room? So what if her classmates whispered behind her back? She was here for one reason and one reason only, and it far outweighed anyone else’s purpose in being here. She was better. She was nobler. She was meant to rise above this place.
With one last withering look at the boy, Jay turned around, and walked off.
“O-or what?” a tremulous voice said.
Jay paused. A stillness overcame her, a dangerous calmness, the silence after the crack in the surface of a glacial lake.
“You’ll catch me, then what?” the boy continued, gaining confidence. It was Dylan. Of course it fucking was. “You’re gonna report me? For what? The teachers can’t suspend me for talking.”
A spark against dry grass. Quicker than a flashfire, Jay had Dylan’s collar in her fist, slamming him against the wall. His breath left him in a pained wheeze.
As soon as Jay completed the action, she felt sick to her stomach. She hated this manic surge of anger. She hated how easily it rose to the surface. She hated how she relished in it.
I’m no different from them. No different at all.
Dylan, who probably had a death wish, kept talking. “Now, that’s what you call a breach of academy policy.”
“Shut up.”
“What if I said no?” he grinned at her. “Are you gonna order me? Are you gonna pull rank? Wait, you don’t have one.” His grin morphed into a scowl. “You’re just like the rest of us, so quit acting like you’re better.”
“Okay,” said Jay. “I won’t.”
She reeled back her fist.
I’m no better than any of you. I’m worse.
Jay jolts awake. There’s sweat drying on her upper lip. Her hairs stick on the nape of her neck. The room sways around her, and in the darkness, the furnishings seem to come alive, their shadowy limbs all reaching for her, so Jay pulls the blanket over her head with a cry—
The door clicks open. Chip peers in, holding a bowl in one hand and a lantern in the other. Jay puts the blanket down, trying not to look like she’d just been hiding. Her face burns with embarrassment, or maybe it’s just the fever.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey,” he responds, and shuts the door behind him. “How’re you feeling?”
“A bit better.” Jay clears her throat. It doesn’t hurt as much as she expected. “I can think in full sentences now.”
Chip pulls up a stool next to her. The lantern is placed onto the ground with a metallic clink. The light chases away the shadows, gives definition to the half-formed monsters that were reaching for Jay. She can see the borders of the room now, can trust her eyes to perceive what’s real and what’s not. Chip, sitting in the orange glow of the flame, is the most trustworthy of them all. He reaches over to feel her forehead.
“Thank goodness,” he says, his mouth lifting. “Your fever’s gone down. Y’know, you were knocked out for almost a whole day, shivering and—” his voice falters. “—crying. You were saying stuff in your sleep. Even when you opened your eyes, it was like you didn’t recognise me or Gill. We were really worried.”
Too burdened by honesty, or maybe just too awkward in his vulnerability, Chip breaks eye contact to look down. He stirs whatever’s in the bowl. It looks like porridge. Jay can’t smell anything, but the sight of it reminds her that she hasn’t eaten for… a while. Since Earl isn’t on the ship anymore and Gillion can’t cook to save his life, it means that Chip made it. For her.
Jay doesn’t know how to take this. She’s bore all sorts of pain in her life, weathered grief and withstood violence, but a bowl of food made by a friend has the power to undo her. What has she come to?
Chip notices her staring.
“It’s congee,” he says, and when Jay blinks at him, he explains: “It’s kinda like porridge, except it’s made with rice and water and it’s savory. Or, well, it’s supposed to be. Right now it doesn’t really taste like anything. I could get some pickled vegetables if you wanna eat it with flavour…?”
“It’s alright.”
Chip hands her the bowl. Jay lifts the spoon to her lips. Like Chip said, it doesn’t taste like much, but it’s warm, and her stomach doesn’t feel queasy when she swallows. Feverish heat relinquishes its hold on her, and a new glow takes up residence in her chest. Jay imagines it spreading throughout her, suffusing her limbs, chasing away the poison of her illness. Her spoon clinks against an empty bowl, and she looks down, surprised. She’s finished the whole thing.
Chip looks pleased with himself as he takes back the bowl. “I knew that’d get you to eat.”
“I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I can’t, really. You can barely call this cooking. All I did was throw some rice and water into a pot—okay, well, I also added a pinch of salt, but still, it’s not really—”
“Chip,” Jay interrupts, “just take the damn compliment.”
Chip huffs out a laugh. He ducks his head, trying to hide his expression, but too late—Jay already sees the beginnings of a smile on his face. “I know you’d do the same for me if I got sick.”
Jay doesn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, I would.”
The lamp flickers. The ocean laps at the hull of the ship, and far away, carried across the waves by the wind, a sea-bird makes a lilting cry. The flame has dimmed, but Jay isn’t scared at all. The darkness feels hushed, precious, and it reminds Jay of her childhood, the first time she and Ava stayed up late in secret. The sense of sanctuary. The knowledge that they could do whatever they pleased, whispering secrets to each other, protected by the cover of darkness. No one would know; not the moon, not the ghosts of the Navy’s legacy, not even their parents.
Chip makes to stand, dusting himself off though there’s nothing on him. “Right, well, I’d better wash this bowl. Get some rest.”
“Hold on.” Jay stares at the blankets instead of Chip’s face. Her face feels warm, but it’s not because of sickness. It’s embarrassment. “Can you… stay here?” She quickly adds on: “Not for long, I know you’ve got—stuff to do around the ship.”
Chip doesn’t answer. After a heartbeat of silence, during which Jay horribly regrets her request—she’s not a kid anymore, she can brave the dark by herself, how dare she impose this on her friend—he sits back down. The bowl and spoon are placed gently on the ground.
“I’m always down for hanging out with you,” he says.
A relieved smile crosses Jay’s face. “Oh. Cool.”
“So, how’re you doing?”
“Better, but still terrible.”
Framed by firelight, Chip wears an expression too heavy for a nineteen-year-old to carry. “Is there anything I can…?”
Jay wonders if he’s seeing another scene right now. She wonders if Arlin had made him congee when he was sick, sat with him through the fever, wiped his sweaty face with a cold towel. She wonders if anyone else had done that since the Black Rose pirates disappeared.
“You’re doing just fine,” she says.
A journey is not a journey unless you come home. In a voyage, you may not retrace your steps—every valley must be crossed once, every river a revelation, every footstep made with intent of going forward. Circle the globe once, and return to plant your feet in the soil of your home. Return, carrying the experience of your journey. Return, having realised that there’s no place you’d rather be than home.
But you’ve outgrown it. Can a butterfly dissolve back into the cocoon? Can a bird reconstruct its eggshell?
Jay turns to look behind her shoulder. The path back home stretches for miles over land and sea. She knows it by heart. She could navigate it with her eyes closed, following nothing but the rhythm of tides and wind. Whether or not home wants her back is a different story.
When she starts walking, her footsteps layer over ones she’s already taken.
The Dean was willing to overlook Jay’s infraction. She knew the weight that the Ferin name carried. She was even prepared to pretend that Dylan started the fight himself. When Jay requested to go home, she was shocked.
When she asked why, Jay just answered: I don’t think I’m meant to be here.
The voyage back seemed to take longer. This time, with only the sea as witness, Jay let herself cry openly. If there was no place for her at the academy, what good was her birthright? How would she ever avenge Ava’s death? When she saw her sister one day, sometime in the distant future, how could she stand to face her?
Malenia accepted her return with open arms. Jay sank into her embrace gratefully. Though her eyes pricked, her tears had already been spent.
She was only gone for a couple of months. She fell back into the routine of working in the tavern with alarming ease. Maybe this was where she was meant to be all along. Her lofty dreams of revenge, her blood-stained fantasies—they were just that. Fantasies. Short of becoming an outlaw herself, the academy was only way to find Ava’s killer. And she wanted to tear her skin off at the prospect of going back there. Maybe she just wasn’t meant for violence.
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she dismissed it. She remembered the savage pleasure of ramming her knuckles into Dylan’s face. She was still a Ferin; violence ran in their blood as surely as iron did.
Ava was righteous and kind. She fine-tuned that urge into a force that protected others. In that aspect, she was like their mother.
Jay, on the other hand…
She tried not to think about it. She sank into the idyllic rhythm of the town. Did it matter if she woke up some mornings with drying tear tracks on her face? Did it matter if she looked to the sea with a fire simmering underneath her skin? Did it matter if she never unpacked her toys, but never threw out her uniform, existing in limbo?
She was home. And that was all that mattered.
The dawn is a hazy, blue consciousness that Jay drags herself into. Her mind is silent. Her skin isn’t clammy with sweat. Sometime during the night, her fever must’ve broken.
Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders to ward off the morning chill, she makes her way to the deck. She’s aware that this probably isn’t the wisest action. If a breeze blows too sharply, she might find herself shivering and shaking again. But that’s a problem for future Jay. Present Jay wants some fresh air.
The hatch opens on silent hinges. Jay peeks over the top. On the far end of the deck, Ollie and Chip and Gillion are all curled up together, three blankets layered over them. Ollie is in the middle. Chip and Gillion bracket him on either side. The sight makes Jay smile, helplessly endeared. At the prow of the ship, Alphonse stands at attention, his lamp-like eyes scanning the ocean.
Jay makes her way to Alphonse. His head doesn’t move, his eyes don’t blink, nothing to indicate that he detects her presence. But he says: “Captain Jay, I advise you to go back belowdecks. The temperature outside is below optimal.”
“I won’t be out here long,” she promises. “I just wanted to get some fresh air. And maybe see the sunrise.”
Alphonse pauses for a moment. “The sunrise is approximately six minutes and forty-three seconds away.”
“I think I can handle being outside for six minutes.”
“It’s your call, captain.” In other words: it’s not my responsibility if you get sicker.
They stand in the morning stillness together. The ship is wreathed in a fine mist, giving the scene a dreamlike feeling. But the planks are solid beneath Jay’s feet, the salty air dissolves on her tongue, and the chill bites into her cheeks. This is very much real.
A glimmer of gold on the horizon. Then, all at once, the sky gives way to daylight. Like a flower unfurling, like a hummingbird taking flight, like the rush of a thousand other living things responding to warmth, Jay feels something in her chest crack open. The sunlight bathes her face in its glow. The breeze picks up, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, like the hands of a long-lost sister. Even the tune of it whipping through the sails sounds like her laughter.
Radiance bleeds into the ocean, turning the dark, unforgiving waters into something more familiar. Something more like… home.
Jay stands with her feet steady on the deck of the ship.
She realises: her hands are always steady on the trigger of her gun. She looks injustice in the eye, finds a beating heart on the other end of the barrel, and doesn’t hesitate before shooting.
She realises: to take joy in destruction is to be human. To let it consume you is another matter entirely. She has inherited all manner of things from her bloodline—fiery red hair, a war-machine’s legacy, and a grief to last her whole life, but an inheritance is not a promise. She is not her father, and she never will be.
She realises: home doesn’t exist anymore. It ceased existing the moment she returned to her childhood bedroom after Ava’s funeral. That place could never be her sanctuary again. She could retrace her steps, darken the doorstep of her mother’s tavern once more, but it’d be a temporary stop. A visit. An anchor will never find purchase in the shifting sands of her hometown.
It doesn’t occur to Jay to feel distraught. Rather, she’s filled with a hush of calmness. Home was a place, a person, a feeling—one way or another, its foundations were going to crumble. Its loss comes with a great relief. Now, home is what she makes of it.
“Jay?” Gillion’s groggy voice floats out over the deck. “What’re you doing out here?”
“Getting some fresh air,” she calls over her shoulder.
She hears the sounds of movement, blankets shifting, limbs being disentangled from each other. Soon enough, the other three members of her crew have joined her. Ollie muffles a yawn into his hand. Chip stretches hard enough for his spine to pop. Gillion pulls up a globe of water to wash his face. Jay watches quietly, and her chest fills with a love so great that it steals her breath away.
How has the answer eluded her for this long?
“It’s not too cold for you, is it?” Chip asks. He eyes the blanket over Jay’s shoulders anxiously. She gets the impression that he’d go and fetch another if she even slightly indicated that she was cold.
“Not at all,” she says.
Gillion places a hand on her forehead. He breaks into a relieved smile. “Thank goodness, your fever’s broken.”
Before Jay can respond, she’s interrupted by the sound of a stomach growling. They all look to Ollie.
He flushes. “I’m hungry.”
Chip loops an arm around his shoulder, laughing good-naturedly. “And that’s our cue for breakfast! C’mon, guys, there’s still some congee left.”
“I’ll catch myself something,” says Gillion.
Chip levels a finger at him. “If you get fish blood in my bowl again—”
“Worry not, I’ve calculated the trajectory of the blood spray! I’ll behead the fish in a different direction this time!”
“Y’know,” says Jay, “I wouldn’t mind a little fish blood in my breakfast.”
The look on Chip’s face makes her double over in laughter. Gillion stands up for her, insisting on the nutritional properties of fish blood, and in response, Chip tiredly says: “Just go catch your fish, Gill.”
After Gillion dives overboard—but not before giving Chip another earful—Jay follows Chip and Ollie belowdecks. She pauses for a moment before closing the hatch. She drinks in the sunlight, the open seas, the sensation of wind in her hair. The dawn’s embrace lingers within her, pulsing in her chest like a second heartbeat. Jay would much rather have this warmth than a fever.
Then, she closes the hatch and makes her way back home.