Prince of Song & Sea
: Chapter 5

NORA FLUNG Gabriella back in line with the others. The people who had been tied with her were yanked back and forth. Gabriella bit again at the ropes binding her hands, and other sailors up and down the ship began to call out and tug at the ropes. Nora started tying Gabriella more securely against the mast, looking over her shoulder into the dark horizon the whole time. Eric used the slack in his line to crawl nearer to Gabriella.

“Mila can’t be here,” he said, but Gabriella didn’t hear him. Her watery eyes darted around the ship. Her nails tore at her bound arms. Eric stretched until he could lay a leg over her arms to stop her. “Vanni, help—”

“It won’t work,” said Sauer, coming to stand above Eric. “Go back to your place. Nora will tighten their ropes, and with any luck, we’ll all make it out of here alive.”

Gabriella threw Eric’s leg off her.

“Bad luck, Captain,” Nora said, and patted Gabriella’s shoulder as she passed, but Gabriella only continued working at her ropes.

Vanni, too, was struggling now, muttering under his breath and straining against the ropes. Sauer tightened Vanni’s bonds and quickly checked the rest of the line. Nora paced up and down the deck, pressing something into the hands of each pirate. They shoved whatever it was into their ears.

“Eric?”

He turned, but behind him were only struggling crew members.

“Sauer!” Eric got to his knees and pleaded. “Please—what is happening?”

Someone called out in the fog, but Eric couldn’t decipher what they were saying. A few steps away, Grimsby rose to his knees so that he could see the ocean, and he raised a hand as if waving. Sauer clucked their tongue.

“The Blood Tide is an old tale,” Sauer said, sitting down on the deck before Eric. They rolled a small ball of wax in their hands. “There were always rumors of ghost ships, but this ghost ship is nothing like those rumors. Vellona’s farther south than they usually tread. Once you acknowledge the ghosts are there, they ensnare you and force you to make a deal with them. Used to be they just offered. Now you have no choice.”

An itch burned on the back of Eric’s neck, beneath his skin and beyond any part of him that he could scratch. He needed to move, to turn and look at what was coming. He made to turn.

“Don’t.” Nora laid a hand on Eric’s head. “When they call out to you, if you answer, they can control you. When they appear, if you look at them, they can control you. When they wave to you, if you wave back, they can control you. Any response is enough for their enchantment to take hold. Cover your eyes when we do, and don’t answer their calls. It will slow them down.”

“The Blood Tide is what comes for the desperate.” Sauer divided the wax into two pieces and took off their hat. “When blood is spilled on the waves and desperation is in the air, the ghost ship appears. It doesn’t sail. It arrives in a bank of fog no matter where you are. The Blood Tide leads the ghosts to you.”

Angelina was right—there was a ghost ship in Vellona’s waters.

“The ghosts offer you whatever you want most in the world,” said Nora, sitting next to Sauer. “If you accept and go with them, you’re never seen again. If we’re lucky, they’ll get bored and leave within the hour.”

The itch on the back of his neck worsened, and Eric shifted. The creak of old wood filled the air. A watery, rotten scent washed over the ship.

“Please,” he said, and rubbed his face against his shoulder. “I’ve been looking for this place and the Blood Tide—”

“Is here.” Sauer pressed the wax into their ears. “Look at your hands.”

Eric looked down. His fingers were clawing at the rope, leaving long scratches in his skin. Eric jerked back, horrified that he hadn’t noticed, and shoved his hands between his knees. Down the line, Vanni nodded at something, someone, in the fog. Nora pressed the wax into her ears.

“But what is…”

Someone called Eric’s name from down below the rail, where the water met the wood. The fog crept over the deck, catching the light of the lanterns and glowing a pale yellow. Eric pressed his knees together, trapping his hands, but the deep need to free himself remained. An old ship emerged from the fog-soaked night, its boards the black of octopus ink and its ratty sails dangling in the dead air. It moved as if drifting above the waves, and a sliver of moon hung from the star-speckled dark above its splintered mast. A ghostly form with ruffled black hair and sky blue eyes stood at the bow.

“Mother?” Eric whispered.

A calm he hadn’t felt in two years washed over him. She was here. She was alive.

Eric clawed at the rope around his left wrist. It scratched and bruised his skin. His mother was there, only minutes away if they trimmed the sails, and no one was doing anything. He could talk to her again, wrap his arms around her and listen to her complain about how she was supposed to be the tall one, and commit to memory the little things he hadn’t thought he would ever need to know. Her voice, her laugh, the little laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. He worked at the knots around his wrists with his teeth. He needed a sword.

It didn’t matter what she wanted. So long as he could speak to her now—about his curse, his coronation, anything and everything—he would give anything.

“I can hear you. Where are you?” Gabriella yanked at her ropes, sword smacking against her leg. “Mila!”

Her sharp cry drew his eye. Eric scooted to her and strained until his joints ached. He grabbed her ankle and pulled her close enough to use the sword looped through her knot. The sword cut halfway through his rope, edges fraying, and Eric worked the rest of it undone with his teeth. He needed to turn the ship and have his mother come up along the side. As they were, he’d never be able to reach her. His ropes fell away.

“Hang on!” he called out, and ran for the wheel. He was vaguely aware of Sauer and Nora reaching out to stop him, but they were too slow.

His mother laughed and said, “Take your time, sweetling.”

He would do anything to have her stay. She had only to ask, and he would give it.

The Laughing Dove and the other ship passed each other, prow to prow. Eric darted to the rail, reaching out until he could touch the figurehead. It was crusted in salt and crumbled beneath his fingers. A splinter stabbed beneath his nail.

Eric hissed and flinched. The pain cut through the haze in his mind, panic replacing his joy. Hand clutched to his chest, he whispered, “Mother?”

“Eric?” she called back.

His mother walked to him. Her footsteps left a trail in the salt coating the old ship. She was pale and shimmery, a veil of frost over glass. All the color save that of her eyes had been sapped from her, and he could see the ship through her. Each movement looked like agony, as if the air were as thick as the sea, and she dragged her long sword along the boards in a rattling scratch. She stopped at the rail of the other ship.

“Eric,” she said, and the words were the gentlest sound he had ever heard. Why was he worried at all? She had come back. “Come here.”

Grimsby shoved past Eric and threw himself over the railing. Eric grabbed him on instinct.

“Garcin!” Grimsby screamed. “The cliff! The cliff! Watch the rocks!”

A memory rose in the back of Eric’s mind. His mother had known a Garcin and rarely spoken of him. He had been a soldier from the same small town as Grimsby.

“Grim,” Eric said, throat raw. Had he been screaming? “He’s dead.”

Like Eric’s mother.

“None of this is real,” said Eric, tightening his grip on Grimsby. “That’s not my mother.”

As he said it, the odd tug against the back of his neck urging him to look at his mother eased. He was right. This wasn’t real. This was a trick. The ghost ship.

The Blood Tide!

Eric swept his gaze over the Laughing Dove—Max, locked in the captain’s quarters, clawed and howled at the door; Vanni chewed at the ropes around his wrists; and Gabriella sobbed Mila’s name so softly Eric’s heart broke.

“Eric? Sweetling?” this replica of his mother asked. This Eleanora had a lilting voice, but in his memories it was smokier. The blue of her eyes was too bright. The scar beneath her eye was gone. “I know where the Isle of Serein is, and I can take you to it.”

She wasn’t alone on her ship. Dozens upon dozens of ghosts crowded the deck, their pale forms overlapping until the prow was a solid wall of gray. They reached out across the rail with beckoning fingers, and they called out names and promises that sounded flat to Eric. He glanced at his mother, and she offered him the Isle’s location again. Eric shook his head and turned back to the rest of the people on the Laughing Dove. Sauer and the pirates were curled up tightly on the deck. Nora rocked back and forth, hands shaking against her face.

“Sweetling?”

Eric’s mother had never called him that.

“You’re not her,” he said, fighting the fatigue in his head. It was as if the fog that had borne the ship had slithered into his mind and dulled his senses. The splinter, Grimsby, and Max’s howls had weakened the ghost’s grip. Her voice was the final straw. “You are not Eleanora of Vellona. You are not my mother.”

Eric yanked Grimsby back from the rail and tied him to the ship.

“Grim,” Eric said. “Garcin isn’t real. None of this is real. It’s a trick.”

But Grimsby couldn’t hear him.

“Mama!” The pirate girl Nora crawled to her feet. A piece of wax had fallen from her ear, and her gaze was glued to one of the ghosts on the ship.

She slipped through Sauer’s fingers, and they lunged for her, eyes wild with panic. She threw herself at the railing, but Eric sprinted over and caught her about the waist. He threw himself back, and they hit the deck. Her elbows landed in his stomach, and her head clacked against his.

“Not real,” he muttered, keeping a tight hold on Nora despite his aching head.

She groaned and pulled away from him. “What in the world are—”

“You were about to leap over the railing.” Eric let her go, and they helped each other to their feet. He nodded to her head. “A shock breaks their spell for a little bit.”

“Deal with magic a lot, do you?” she grumbled, but stomped loudly next to a crew member’s head and hummed when they seemed to snap out of it. “It’ll come back. It takes a while, but if the ghosts don’t get anyone, they leave within a half hour.”

“How long has this been happening?” Eric asked.

From the corner of his sight, he could see the ghosts slowly crawling over the rail. A few plummeted toward the water. One grabbed the Laughing Dove.

She shrugged. “Sauer says it used to be just a scary story parents told kids, but a few years ago ships started washing ashore with no crew in sight. Dozens gone and not a mark on the boat. Sails still trimmed and oars crooked as if dropped midstroke.”

“Is that what happens to all of the ships you rob? No robbery, just ghosts?”

“No, we usually rob them and leave them in Riva.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said, and glanced at the rest of the crew. “Can we escape?”

Sauer, eyes downcast but growing mistier by the minute, grabbed Nora’s hand. “What’s wrong?”

“They don’t give up,” Nora told Eric. She wrote out a quick note on the palm of Sauer’s hand. “They can still get you even if you can’t hear or see them. It just takes longer for them to figure out how to communicate.”

“How do we get them to leave?” Eric asked.

“We don’t,” said Nora.

One of the pirates on the quarterdeck lurched to their feet. They signed something to whoever they saw among the ghosts, tears streaming down their cheek. Sauer and Nora took off running to stop them, and one of the Laughing Dove’s crew tore free of his bonds on the bow. He hit the railing before Eric could get to him, leaning down as if to help someone over the side. A ghastly hand reached over the railing and yanked him into the sea.

“Eric?” called his mother. “Come back.”

He peered over the edge of the ship, but the sailor and his ghost were gone. The other ghosts crawled up the side of the ship, hands sticking to the hull like suckers. Seawater washed through them, and salt hemmed each pale silhouette. Eric could see through them to the depths below, and he backed up, tripping over a muttering pirate. A ghost crawled over the side of the boat and left a puddle around its translucent feet. He faced his mother.

“You’re not real,” he said.

“Oh, sweetling.” Her voice trickled over him like warm sand. “I could be.”

Eric forced himself to look away. At the center of the ship, Gabriella and Vanni had figured out that they could help each other escape. Fear bubbled up in Eric’s chest as he raced toward them, and he laughed. It tumbled out of him before he could stop it; the image of them huddled like toddlers learning how to undo their leading strings made the whole thing fantastical and terrible all at once, and Eric caught Vanni by the wrist. Gabriella didn’t even look at her best friends.

“Please,” Vanni whispered, and reached for the railing.

Gabriella darted for one of the ghosts, and Nora raised her arm. Gabriella struck it chest-first and collapsed. Nora grabbed her shoulder.

“Gods, she’s sturdy,” muttered Nora.

Gabriella moaned and struggled to her knees. “Did I get kicked by a horse?”

“Not quite,” said Eric.

Vanni tried to tug himself free of Eric. “Let me go! He’s right there!”

“We can’t go around hitting everyone to wake them up,” said Eric, wrapping an arm around Vanni’s shoulders. “I don’t suppose the folks left on your ship can help?”

“Not without getting close enough to be enthralled as well,” said Nora.

Eric felt in his pockets for anything useful. All he found was his flute and a handful of lint-covered licorice candies.

“Better than nothing,” he muttered, and pulled the flute free one-handed. “Sorry, Vanni.”

Eric let out a sharp note next to Vanni’s ear. Vanni winced and pulled away, and the sound cut through the screams and pleading on the ship. Even the ghosts quieted.

“What was that for?” Vanni smacked a hand over his ear and yanked away from Eric.

Gabriella grabbed him. “Shut up.”

The five of them that were awake froze. The ghosts, skittering over the railing, watched Eric with a holloweyed fascination. He looked at the others, and none of them gave any indication as to what to do. Slowly, Eric brought his flute back to his lips and played a simple song he’d first learned in the forecastle of an old Vellona ship. He couldn’t even remember the words now, only the notes and the way his mother had watched from over the crew’s heads. Her ghost shuddered and flickered out of sight. Eric stopped.

She reappeared only two steps from him, her hands outstretched and mouth open in a soundless scream. Eric stumbled back.

“Eric,” Gabriella said, “keep playing.”

He did and rose, the tune shaky. The notes wafted across the deck, bright and clear in the cold night air, and the ghosts all stepped in time toward Eric. He backed away and played a softer, slower song. They followed him.

Sauer and Nora had a conversation he couldn’t hear, and Nora gestured at one of the pirates still shaking off the spell of the ghosts. Now that they were following Eric, people were waking up. The pirate started singing, and the ghosts ambled after them. Eric let his song trail off and moved to join Sauer on the quarterdeck. Grimsby leaned against the mast.

“You alive, Grim?” Eric asked.

“With this headache, I must be,” muttered the man.

Eric patted his shoulder as he passed.

“This,” Sauer said, “isn’t something we’ve seen before. This is useful.”

“Can’t blame anyone for not trying this,” said Nora. “Who would’ve expected this to work?”

Eric glanced at the flute in his hands and said, “It is useful, and you know what, Sauer, I’ll make a deal with you.”

Sauer’s brown eyes narrowed. “You?”

“I’m Prince Eric of Vellona.”

Nora mumbled, “Crap.”

As the future king of Vellona, Eric could do almost anything. Piracy already carried a steep penalty, but attacking the prince would see every member of Sauer’s crew hanged.

“You didn’t know how to distract them or put an end to their spell,” said Eric. “Now you do. You owe me.”

Grimsby, as if sensing Eric was doing something he wouldn’t like, shambled over to them.

“And what do you want in return?” Sauer sucked on their teeth. “Your Highness?”

“More information about the Blood Tide. I’m looking for a place called the Isle of Serein, and the Blood Tide was mentioned with it. I want you to help me figure out how they are connected so I can replace the Isle.” Eric ignored Grimsby’s scoffing. “And with any luck, after that, these ghosts will be the next thing I take care of.”

If the ghosts came on the Blood Tide and the Blood Tide was related to Serein, then it followed that the witch was probably behind this horror, too.

Sauer glanced around the ship, their gaze lingering on the ghosts. “I wasn’t aware Vellona had enough money to throw it around so frivolously.”

“Oh, I’m not offering you money in return,” said Eric. “I’m offering your crew a pardon, barring any drastic crimes, of course.”

They’d be able to travel through Vellona’s waters without fear of being arrested.

“You’d pardon pirates?” Nora asked.

“Odder things have happened.” Eric gestured around them. “You will need to lead the ghosts away from us so we can escape. Of course, one of your crew will have to travel with us to ensure that you return to Cloud Break Bay and help me replace the Isle.”

“I will,” Nora said.

Eric nodded. “We’ll head for Cloud Break immediately, and you can replace us there once you escape them as well.”

Sauer let out a breath through clenched teeth. “You’re taking her hostage.”

“You are hardly in a position to argue,” said Grimsby.

“I very much am,” Sauer said. “You’re still outnumbered.”

“Stop it.” Nora laid a hand on Sauer’s arm and nodded to Eric. “I’ll go with you. I’ve got some stories about the Blood Tide, and I want that pardon.”

Eric and Sauer shook hands, and Sauer pulled him close.

“We will assist you if we arrive and she is well,” they whispered.

Eric nodded. “Deal.”