No.
But protest was too late, the rope was around her neck.
No, it couldn't be. He was there, not ten feet in front of her. She could run, she could reach him, she could help.
She could no longer feel the deck beneath her feet. She couldn't breathe. Her head felt light, her body heavy; the sodden rope was a cold iron bar across her throat. Her body slammed against the pole of the mast as the ship rocked and she was hoisted higher.
But, they were her crew, her brothers, her family. They wouldn't hurt her, they wouldn't hurt her captain.
She gripped the rope tightly with her hands, trying to hold herself up with arms they had bruised, gasping for breath. She could still see them below. Now that her nuisance was dealt with, they approached Althander and surrounded him. Hard rain and blown spray washed the decks and beams, and glinted on once-trusted faces.
No. He would speak, he would say something, he would win their hearts again.
Althander opened his mouth . . . and a thin trickle of blood came out. He fell backward onto the deck, a knife in his belly.
No.
One by one, four more of the mates stepped forward. As if in ceremony, they took their own blades and pierced his body through.
Nerissa's body hit the mast again and she lost her grip on the rope. Stars danced around her vision, and everything she saw seemed shrouded in a mist. Flashes of stormlight made ghosts and fiends leap in the shadows. Fiends already grinned through the faces of her mates. The mist in her vision spread and grew red. She couldn't see, she couldn't breathe. She could do nothing.
Then a shudder reached her through the rope. Her vision cleared for a moment. With half dead eyes she looked at the world that swayed and rolled under her. The crew ran about. They were going to trample his body. No, there it was, sliding on the wildly rolling deck and leaving streaks of blood. What was happening?
The rope shuddered again. She was dizzy, so dizzy. A sound like thunder came, but it was too soft, too near. Full sail in the storm, the mast was going over, and it split the ship as it fell.
The encompassing waters of the sea seemed warm to Nerissa, and she felt herself drift away.
* * *
She was in her mother's arms, that much Nessa knew. She barely remembered her mother, though. As was an all-too-common fate of women who bear children alone and in poverty, the woman had died soon after the birth. Or, so Nerissa had been told.
Or rather, so she had gathered from the talk of those around her. No one had much time to spare to explain to a dirty, nameless, ill-sired child the facts of her parentage and what they meant. Though, apparently, everyone had at least a short moment to remind her how very, very lucky she was that she was allowed to continue living among them. Again and again. Utter strangers seemed fond of grabbing her ears and telling her what a good, kind man the old cleric was, and how grateful she should be for her bed of straw in the loft of his house. This was usually followed by a sharp pat on the head.
She asked the cleric once why he kept her, instead of sending her to an orphan's asylum. It would have been easier on him that way. He was always muttering that he wasn't meant to raise children.
"Because," the old man had replied, with an infuriating pity in his expression that she didn't understand. "You, child, are not an orphan."
He never explained further. The child could see no reason why not to, and hated him for it.
She would have been five or six, Nessa supposed when she had occation to look back and reckon the years. Probably six. In any case, she was old enough to remember clearly what happened when she met her father.
She had been playing between the legs of the cleric's rickety serve-all table, when the old man came in and wordlessly stood off to the side of the doorway. Two others followed him in, slight figures in rich clothes. One of them looked questioningly to the cleric, who nodded with some finality to where the girl crouched, hugging a table leg.
One of the strangers came and bent over her. He tilted her face up to his, and ran a finger over her brows and the ridges of her ears. After several ticking moments of studying her over and breathing into her face, he seemed satisfied, and lifted her from the floor with surprising strength and swiftness. She was too startled to cry out, and only looked back over the man's . . . the elf's . . . shoulder, as he bore her away. The old cleric did not meet her eyes, but shut the door after.
It was on the shipride after that the girl found her voice again, and employed it with vigor. Confused, afraid, and left alone in a small private cabin, she bawled and screamed and pounded her fists on the door. Every so often she'd hear voices beyond and redouble her efforts, but no one came. Eventually, she cried herself out, and in the unsteady orange light of a swinging lamp, the girl fell asleep, curled up into herself in the middle of the floor.
She felt very sullen when a hand touched her shoulder to pull her from familiar dreams and uncurl her from her own small warmth. She didn't cry, but slouched limply as some sort of nursemaid went about the business of getting her washed and dressed in new clothes. All the time, the child expected a slap or a blow to get her out of her mood, but it never came. The quiet patience and expression on the woman's face--was it pity again?--made her more nervous than she would have been if she were struck. The girl wimpered in spite of herself.
At the end of a confusing day of being fussed over and herded, the child found herself planted in a stark marble foyer, with only a single rug and two grand, opposing doors to relieve the echoing hardness of the carved stone. The busy people, all elves, talked among themselves in words she couldn't understand, then left to stand outside of the building.
The girl heard footsteps. A tall elf--pale skinned, handsomly dressed, fair haired, with a frighteningly beautiful face--walked into her view. He looked at her dispassionately before exchanging words with a clerk who had followed behind him, then left with a bow. The elf did not touch her, and flickers of shame and loathing played across his face before a cool pride shut them out.
"I'll not suffer to release any child of mine on the world ill-educated," he said haughtilly, then added in faster, quieter tones, "Even if it is a halfblood she-b*****d."
With the air of one supporting an injured pride as well as a sense of personal morality, he left.
The clerk came back, and with perfunctory words, bid the child welcome to their noble school, and asked for her name. She looked up at him, wondering at the question. Name?
"What is your name, girl?" the clerk barked again.
She shook her head.
He struck her, and asked again.
* * *
Nerissa smelled seaweed and brine. So, she wasn't dead.
She coughed, and a light blast of sand flew away from her lips. Her head hurt, and breathing felt like a lot of trouble. Maybe if she got up, it would be easier. If not, she could always stop.
The bedraggled castaway managed to rock herself onto her side. Movement made the pain worse, and though her face was turned to the sky, Nessa felt like she was breathing in grit. Or shards of glass. Every breath ripped in and out of her coarsely, rattling. Still, the pain reminded her that she was alive, and a desire to remain that way rose to the surface.
If only it wasn't so bright...
Nessa put her hand to her throat, and her eyes went wide. Forgetting all other pains, she struggled to remove the noose from her neck, letting the heavy rope fall sickly to the sand as she collapsed to hands and knees. She breathed heavilly now, gulping air because she could, even though slivers and shards seemed to pierce her with every breath.
The rope. The hanging rope lashed her loosely to a bit of the broken mast. It had been meant to kill her, but seemed to have saved her life.
"You see that," she rasped, "I live, and you're all dead and drowned. Serves you right, every last-"
She stopped there, though. The irony was not quite complete. Her captain, her beloved captain...
Not just her captain. Her father. Her real father.
* * *
"What about that one. Seems such a likely child. What's her name?"
"What, that one? Pay her no mind. She's only Meloran's brat."
"Sorry, who?"
"A bit of driftwood left here by some seacaptain. He pays her bills and board and leaves the rest to us."
"I see. What's her name though?"
"Whelp, as far as I'm concerned. She's sullen and she's trouble. Ungrateful. We feed her, we give her work and learning."
"All that, hmm?"
"She's half-eleven, and half-wanted. Girl's lucky to be here in the first place."
"I think I understand. Ah, well, move along. I've got to find one to induct into the Temple in a week..."
The conversation and footsteps faded away. Whelp. She'd heard that one before. The girl never let them know, but she heard every word. Every breath of scorn, every understated point of derision . . . she always heard. How could she not? It surrounded her.
They didn't even have to say anything. The other girls in the school had visitors from time to time. Parents, relatives, and friends all brought love and comfort to thier hardworking children. They called their children by name. It was a world she lived alongside, never within. She tried to turn an uncaring eye. She tried.
They tried to turn one to her as well, to forget that circumstance has placed someone like her among them. They were supposed to ignore her, to pretend that she was just a part of the surroundings. . . but she heard the whispers.
"They say her father was a seacaptain."
"None other than Meloran. He signs the papers that pay for her."
"No, is that true?"
"I heard he got blown by a magic wind to a siren's island..."
"Don't be daft. It was a regular storm that took him to a human port town."
"And a human port..."
"Only one kind of magic there..."
The rest was usually lost in tittering giggles, though the worst bits were always punctuated with stinging glances in her direction. She never let them know that she felt them. She avoided meeting their eyes. Most of them thought she was just slow and stupid, in spite of the marks she got in the classes. Few ever tried to speak to her directly. Fine. The shared silence let her wait out her time there in relative peace.
But what was she waiting for?
She watched the teacher and the visitor walk away. They were going to offer a future to a girl in the school. A future that they never even considered her for. It didn't matter that her marks proved her bright, and a hard worker. She remained there because they suffered her to. She wasn't to expect more.
The realization dawned slowly. There was no point to her waiting. Nothing better was going to come to her in the hands of another. Not in this sterile, proper, longsuffering school. Yes, she'd learned. They would never give her a chance to use that learning. She was growing up. Because of who and what she was, she would never marry; no proud elf would have such a wife. She looked ahead and her future was as empty and bleak as the edge of the sea in a fog.
Quietly, she slipped out of the door to the kitchens, out the side of the building, and walked away. They wouldn't look for her. She wouldn't go back.
* * *
The months after were hard and cold. She made her way to a wharf and begged and stole there. She got thinner. She missed her warm bed, and the things she had left behind in her sudden departure, but she didn't regret it. Even here, she was no lower than she had been there. Here, at least, she didn't have to listen to the whispers.
Still . . . she would have liked a better blanket. Or a hot meal.
The girl sat huddled between two barrels at the end of a pier. She had a rag over her head to shade her eyes, and felt tired, weak and sleepy.
"What's this?" A warm voice said. A slender, but rough and wrinkled hand reached down to lift the rag, and the girl found herself looking up into the genial face of a weathered old man. He had crinkles in the corners of his eyes, and his few wrinkles stood out in his shiny, wind-red face. Slate-gray hair streaked with white stood out in two funny peaked wings from either side of a magestic, though battered, captain's hat.
"What have we here? A child of the sea, is it," he said, wearing a benign smile. "Aye, 'twas the sea what made you be, and you're her daughter true. This you'll see well enough in time, hmm?"
He laughed. It was like music. He held out a hand.
"Come with me, and we will see the sea together. I have a beautiful ship, the Spyridon, and she sails with the tide."
The girl looked into this strange old man's eyes uncertainly, but his smile remained kind. And there was something else . . . not pity . . . but caring.
"I am Althander," he said, "I captain that boat, and have a place for you on my crew, if you will, dear child of the sea. Dear Nerissa Maris."
She took his hand. A sudden and overwhelming love for this strange old man overtook the girl . . . for the crinkled eyes that had seen her, for the mouth that had smiled . . . for the warm voice that had spoken her name.
Her name.
She was Nerissa Maris.
* * *
Gingerly, bit by bit, Nessa shrugged off the coils of crusted rope and tangles of seaweed that still wound around her. She felt oddly numb now. He was gone. The thoughts touched her, but she didn't feel them. Not yet. Did one feel it when the world ended?
Slowly, she got up. She found something to hold onto.
Her captain was gone, and she would grieve. Her world was gone, and she didn't know where to go. But she still had her name. Nothing could take that from her.
She had her name.
Nerissa took a step forward.
* * *
They catch the bitter wind in sail Above the darkest night they dwell And every sailor howe'er brave Knows he's standing o'er his grave
The fiercest storms do not run deep Nor touch the secrets oceans keep Through steep waves that rise and fall The fool thinks he can fathom all
* * *
[R]unesong · Wed Nov 23, 2005 @ 07:50pm · 4 Comments |