Winterbay Read Online Free

the Captain chooses his successor. The Wind Strike ’s Captain was fading; he didn’t have much time left. I was in the running to be the new First Mate along with a boy named Vincent; tall kid, muscles, way stronger than me. Smart, too. I hated him.”
    Mira could imagine. It had to be a tough road, being as small and demure as Olive, rising up in such a physical world.
    “One day,” Olive continued, “Vincent and I were both on rigging duty, which meant climbing the masts. You do it with harnesses and lanyards, and as we were gearing up, I noticed one of the straps on his saddle was torn, on the inside, near the buckle. I could tell it wouldn’t hold his weight very long. A part of me knew if Vincent fell climbing the mast, he’d be penalized for not checking his gear. So … I didn’t say anything.” Mira had to strain to hear the girl over the rumbling of the ship now. “Figured he’d fall ten or twelve feet at most, get bruised, knocked out of the competition, and that would be that. He made it all the way up to the first rigging with that strap before it broke. That’s almost thirty feet. Broke a leg and a few ribs. He never walked the same way again.”
    Mira could guess the rest. “You got the position.”
    Olive nodded. “For all of a month before I resigned and left the Wind Strike. It wasn’t just the guilt, you know, it was seeing the truth of it. A real First Mate would never let someone go up on a mast with a tattered harness. I didn’t deserve that position, so I left it, joined up with the Wind Rift, and started all over.”
    “Why are you telling me this, Olive?”
    “Because wanting something really bad, being willing to do anything to get it, isn’t a good thing. You might end up doing things you’d never do otherwise, things you’d regret. People have their lines, lines they normally won’t cross, and in times like that those lines start to blur.”
    Mira sighed. She was probably right, but it didn’t matter. “I have to have this, Olive. It’s the only way I can fix things.”
    “If you have to have it, you have to have it,” Olive replied. “All I’m saying is, remember what your lines are.”
    The two girls stared at each other a moment, considering, and then Olive looked back to the wheel. She’d said what she’d wanted to, and Mira respected it.
    “Can’t take you to Winterbay,” Olive told her. “The timeline just won’t let me. I can drop you close, though, near Chicago.”
    Mira nodded. It was close enough. “I appreciate that.”
    “Winter’s almost done here, but up there it’s still kicking. Cold like that, it cuts right through you. Hope you packed long undies.”
    “I never told you?” Mira smiled. “I wear long underwear exclusively.”
    Olive smiled back. “Winds guide you, Freebooter.”
    “And you,” Mira answered back. The Wind Rift rumbled east as the sky darkened behind them, and the chill of the night began to set in. It felt even colder now than yesterday.

Ice and Fog
    Though Mira could see ice everywhere in the moonlight, she could still sense the inevitability of spring. The waters of Lake Michigan were no longer frozen; instead they had disintegrated into an eternally stretching field of slush that parted and spread outward as the big wooden ferry was pulled through it.
    Mira looked to where the ropes on either side of the craft stretched ahead and disappeared into the morning fog. They were attached to a wheelhouse somewhere in that haze, pulling the craft slowly toward it. Winterbay lay at the other end of those ropes, a place that even in the best of times was unfriendly to her … and these were definitely not the best of times. The thought of it made Mira shiver, and she pulled her coat tighter.
    As Olive had said, Strange Lands artifacts were banned here. For that matter, so were Freebooters. Mira had stashed her own artifacts near the shore, buried in the basement of a crumbling apartment building in a city ruin. As much as she