Water & Storm Country Read Online Free Page A

Ripping, ripping,
crushing my life away.
    My father’s face, paler than the white sand
beaches of storm country; his blue eyes, wet at first, shocked, but
then later dry and red and full of spite. Anger directed at me and
my failures.
    I slam my fist against my bed pad, feeling
pain lance down my fingers when I hit the wood through the
stuffing. But the physical pain feels better than what I’m feeling
inside. I hit the bed again and again, and I realize the tears are
flowing now, which only makes me angrier, because
    (men don’t cry.)
    Do they?
    Do they?
    “Bring us the boy! Bring us the boy!” The
chanting begins above deck, and although the word boy is
meant to be a temporary label, I feel like it’s being shoved into
my chest with a hot iron.
    I rub my chest with one hand while wiping
away my tears on a blanket with my other—
    “Bring us the boy!”
    I stand up, smoothing the wrinkles on my new
blue uniform—
    “Bring us…”
    Squeeze my fists at my sides—
    “…the BOY!”
    —and leave my cabin, taking the stairs one at
a time, which I haven’t done since my legs grew long enough to skip
a step or two.
    On the top step, I pause, take a deep breath,
and emerge onto the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship, above the
officer cabins.
    A cheer rises up, but there’s laughing too,
and men elbowing each other’s ribs, telling a joke or two about
earlier today, reliving my defeat at the hands of a scrawny bilge
rat. Hobbs’ jokes are the loudest of all, careening across the
ship, bouncing off barrels and railings and masts, swarming around
me like relentless flies.
    Cain greets me with a smile and a firm
handshake, which I don’t return, because I’m distracted by the
hundreds of torches blazing across the ship, illuminating the
typically dark and shadowy deck. And I’m trying, desperately
trying
    (to find him.)
    But my father is nowhere to be seen. Did he
forget? Impossible. And yet he’s not here. He’s finally given up on
me, abandoned me.
    I feel a pain in my stomach so sharp it’s
like the bilge rat’s kicking me again.
    But no, this pain is worse. Much worse.
Because my father’s not here.
    “Cain?” I say.
    “He’ll come,” he says, reading my mind.
    Blood in the water.
    “He won’t,” I say, and Cain doesn’t respond
because he knows I could be right.
    As Cain leads me across the quarterdeck to
the edge, where it’s elevated above the lower decks, I scan the
crowd. Everyone’s here, even the women, having come up from below
deck, throwing aside their pots and pans and the clothes they were
cleaning. Come to watch me become a man.
    I recognize many men and boys I know and
love, like Cain, who have been my friends for as long as I can
remember. There’s Grubbs, the ship’s head cook, wearing a splotched
and stained apron bulging out with the curve of his well-fed belly;
a man who used to let me sit on his table and sneak extra rations
of gruel before it was served to the rest of the men and women.
Down the row is Croaker, the lookout with a voice like a crow, who
first taught me to climb the ladder to the very tops of the tower.
I spot a group of boys, jostling and pushing each other for
position, trying to get the best view possible. My friends. One of
them, Jobe, sees me looking their way and stops punching the kid
next to him to wave. I want to wave back, but if I had to guess I’d
say men don’t wave. So I just nod in his direction, finally feeling
the tug of a smile on my lips.
    Because I’m becoming a man! Whether my
father’s here or not, this is one thing he can’t stop.
    Cain clears his throat and a cheer erupts
from the men and women and boys and girls, louder than before—and
no laughs, no jokes. All for me.
    All for me?
    I feel a shadow from behind.
    My father looms over me, his admiral’s cap
like a dark cloud.
     
     

Chapter Four
Sadie
     
    “W hy didn’t they
stop to fight us?” I ask, hours later.
    Clang!
    I catch my mother’s sword on the broadside of
my