The Ghostfaces

  “I know that,” he replied.

  She gestured angrily at him once more. “So where did it come from?”

  “Up for’ard,” he replied tartly. “Nearly hit our starboard bow. Would have sunk us in all likelihood.”

  She glared at him, wondering how he could be so dense. He was usually quite intelligent, she thought.

  “I mean, where did it come from? It was a tree. A tree has to grow somewhere before it falls into the sea.”

  “Well, how the blazes would I know where it grew? I’m not an expert on—” He suddenly stopped, as the import of what she was saying struck him like a battering ram. His mouth hung open for a few seconds. “It was a tree,” he said eventually.

  “I think we’ve established that,” Lydia replied.

  He waved his hands defensively. “But you’re right. It had to grow somewhere. Trees don’t just appear in the middle of the ocean. It had to come from land. An island. Or something bigger.”

  He lashed the tiller in place and clambered awkwardly onto the bulwark, holding on to the backstay for balance. Even as he did so, he realized how badly he had been affected by dehydration. Normally, he would have sprung lightly onto the railing. Today, he struggled to make it. But he shielded his eyes and peered ahead into the gathering gloom, hoping against hope that he might see land.

  “Well?” said Lydia expectantly.

  He shook his head, downcast. “Nothing but the sea,” he told her.

  She frowned. “But it must have come from somewhere,” she insisted. He climbed stiffly down from the railing and took the tiller again.

  Thorn, who had noticed the little scene being played out, walked aft to join them. “What is it?” he asked.

  “There was a tree,” Hal told him. “It came out of nowhere and drifted past us.”

  Thorn looked at the two of them. The meaning of Hal’s words wasn’t lost on him.

  “If there was a tree, that means there’s land,” he said.

  “We know,” Lydia replied. “The question is, how far is it? And which direction?”

  “I guess we’ll have to wait for morning to find out,” Thorn said. “It’s getting too dark to see anything now.”

  Hal came to a decision. He called to Stig, who wearily made his way aft to join them. He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question.

  “How much water is left?” Hal asked him. Stig pursed his lips, then licked them, dry and cracked as they were. The very mention of water reminded him of how thirsty he was.

  “Two or three liters,” he said. “Enough for two beakers each . . . maybe.”

  “Dole it out,” Hal said.

  Stig looked at him in surprise. “All of it?”

  Hal nodded. “All of it. I’m sick and tired of having my mouth thick and parched. Let’s all have one decent drink. Tomorrow morning, we’re going to sight land.”

  Stig’s surprised look turned to doubt. He wondered whether Hal had lost his senses. “We are?”

  Hal nodded definitely. “We are.”

  • • • • •

  But they didn’t.

  Dawn found them swooping steadily across the heaving ocean, with no sign of land in any direction. Buoyed up by Hal’s unreasoning optimism, the crew had lined the bulwarks since first light, scanning the horizon ahead. Jesper clambered painfully up to the lookout position on the bow post. But even his keen eyes couldn’t see a trace of land.

  The memory of the night before, of the luxury of having one long, satisfying drink, was behind them now. They knew there was no more water, and with that knowledge, their mouths grew dry and tongues grew swollen once more. Speech was difficult, so for the most part they remained silent.

  They sat in the windward rowing well, downcast and dejected, heads lowered, shoulders hunched. The true enormity of their situation now faced them. But none of them begrudged Hal’s impetuous decision to drink the last of the water. Better to enjoy one last meaningful drink than to eke out the remaining few drops, they all thought.

  Such was the measure of their despair that none of them noticed the gull when it first landed on the tip of the yardarm, spreading its wings for balance before folding them neatly away and beginning to preen itself. It had been there for over ten minutes when it finally emitted a loud squawk and launched itself into the air, plunging almost immediately into the side of a wave to capture the fish that its keen eyes had seen just below the surface.

  It bobbed on the heaving ocean as it tossed the fish it had caught, turning it so it would be easier to swallow, then gulping it down.

  “It’s a gull,” said Edvin.

  Lydia regarded him incuriously. “So?”

  He pointed at the bird as it shook itself. “A gull. Not an albatross or a frigate bird. They can fly hundreds of kilometers from the land—way out into the oceans. But a gull stays close to land.”

  As he spoke, the white-and-gray bird raised itself from the surface and flapped its wings vigorously, taking flight almost immediately. It gathered height and flew in a large circle to approach the ship again. Now twenty eyes were fixed on it. For a moment, it seemed about to land on the yardarm once more.

  Ulf rose up, waving his arms violently, and yelled in a cracked, croaking tone, “Shoo! Get out of it! Go home!”

  Startled by the sudden movement, the gull wheeled away and steadied on a course to the west. The Herons looked at one another, and hope sprang up in all their hearts.

  “He’s going home,” said Ulf.

  Wulf, as ever, chose to bicker with his twin, even at a time like this. “How do you know it’s not a she?”

  Ulf let his shoulders slump wearily. “All right. She’s going home,” he amended. “Home to dry land.” His uncharacteristic lack of protest was a sign of how weary he truly was.

  “And all we have to do is follow her,” Hal said.

  Stig grinned through cracked, dry lips. “How do you know it’s a she?”

  Hal didn’t answer. He had already brought the bow round to follow the exact course set by the rapidly disappearing gull.

  chapter seven

  Half a day had passed since they had sighted the seagull. The bird had long ago flown out of sight, and the ship continued to slide through the sea in its wake. Their initial excitement had died away, followed by disappointment and dejection as no sight of land eventuated.

  Stefan sat downcast on the deck, idly kicking his legs back and forth as they dangled down into the starboard rowing well.

  “I wonder if this is what happened to Wolfbird,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. Wolfbird had disappeared several years previously, after sailing out past Cape Shelter into the Frozen Sea.

  Thorn looked keenly around the circle of glum faces. They needed something to shake them up, he thought, to snap them out of this renewed bout of apathy.

  “I believe Wolfbird was taken by a giant sea monster,” he said artlessly.

  Not one of them thought to ask him how he knew that. There had been no word of Wolfbird since she had passed beyond Cape Shelter. But the mention of the giant sea monster drove all other thoughts from their mind.

  “Sea monster?” Jesper said. “What kind of sea monster?”

  “A big one,” Thorn told him. “Enormous, in fact. Big hardly does it credit.”

  “But what did it look like?” Stefan asked.

  Amazing, Thorn thought. They’ve gone for this story hook, line and sinker. He searched his mind for some of the wilder stories he had heard from sailors in the past.

  “Kind of spade-shaped,” he said, “with a huge staring eye on either side of its head. And it had fourteen long, bendy legs—like an octopus’s tentacles,” he added, warming to his theme. “And a beak like a parrot’s—big enough to tear a man in two.”

  “Could it talk like a parrot?” Edvin asked.

  Thorn turned his
gaze on the brotherband’s medic. Edvin’s expression was skeptical, and Thorn grinned to himself. Edvin wasn’t one to fall for tall tales. He’d probably seen the basic flaw in Thorn’s story.

  “No,” Thorn said, pretending offended dignity. “It could not talk like a parrot. But it could grab a ship and tear it in two.”

  Edvin raised an eyebrow. I’m on to you, the expression said. Thorn winked at him.

  The others were still digesting his assertion that the monster could seize a wolfship and rip it apart.

  “What would a monster like that be called?” Ulf said in an awed tone, visualizing the giant creature Thorn had described.

  “Anything it wanted to be,” Thorn told them. He was about to let them off the hook and say there was no such thing as a sea monster when there was a massive disturbance in the water twenty meters off their starboard side. A giant black creature slowly emerged from the depths. The water swirled around its glistening body and massive head, and one eye seemed to be rolled toward them, watching them. It was at least half again as long as Heron and it kept pace with them easily, sliding along on a parallel course.

  Then, with a whistling roar, a huge spurt of water vapor erupted from the top of its head and the wind blew a cloud of reeking, fishy spray down upon them.

  Thorn felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in fear. It was as if the monster had appeared in answer to his joke. He wasn’t normally a superstitious man, but now he thought he might have tempted fate too far by mentioning sea monsters in this mysterious, unexplored ocean.

  For a moment, there was silence on board. Then, with cries of alarm, the crew scrambled across to the port side, away from the apparition—as if a further four meters would protect them in the event that the giant creature decided to attack. Hal leaned his weight on the tiller, swinging the ship away from the huge fish and snapping orders to Ulf and Wulf to re-trim the sail. The beast mirrored their course change effortlessly, maintaining the twenty-meter separation between it and them.

  “Thorn?” Hal called nervously. “What is it?”

  But the old sea wolf, for once, had no answer. His eyes were fixed on the huge fish. Its left eye—he assumed there was another on the right side of its head—seemed focused back on him.

  They heard a massive, whistling intake of breath, and the monster slowly arched its back and slid beneath the waves again, driving itself under with a huge fluked tail and leaving a swirling patch of disturbed water behind.

  As it departed, the Herons dashed back to the windward side of the ship, craning over the railing, trying to see into the gray water, looking for some sign of the great beast. They broke into an excited, fearful chatter, all speaking at once, all voicing their wonder at the sight they had just seen. While Thorn’s talk of sea monsters had enthralled them, none of them had completely believed it. Sea monsters were, after all, the stuff of myth and legend. They might or might not exist. Or so they had all believed until now. Now they had proof that huge animals did dwell in the depths of the ocean, and the knowledge unsettled them all—even Hal and Edvin, who had been inclined to be skeptical about Thorn’s story.

  Thorn himself was shaken. Up until now, the largest sea animal he had ever seen had been a bull walrus—but that faded into insignificance compared with the monster they had just sighted.

  It was a sobering, and disturbing, moment for all of them. None of them doubted the fact that, had it wanted to, the great fish could have smashed their ship to splinters.

  So intent were they on searching the ocean around them for any sign of the monster’s return that Lydia’s announcement came as a shock to them all.

  She had climbed onto the bulwark at the very edge of the bow to search for another sight of the fish. Seeing nothing, she raised her gaze to look farther afield.

  “I think I see land,” she said, a note of wonder in her voice.

  The excited chatter about the whereabouts of the sea monster was instantly stilled. The crew turned toward the bow, moving forward along the deck to join Lydia. A long, dark gray line stretched across the horizon ahead of them, reaching as far as they could see to either side.

  “It’s a cloud,” Jesper said.

  But Lydia shook her head. “Don’t think so,” she countered. “I’ve made that mistake twice before. This looks more substantial, more solid than any of the clouds I’ve seen.”

  Thorn had sprung lightly onto the upwind bulwark, holding on to the rigging to maintain his balance.

  “I think she’s right,” he said, after a few seconds. “That definitely looks like land to me.”

  The sea monster was immediately forgotten as a topic of discussion. Now the crew clamored out their agreement with Thorn and Lydia—with a few reserving judgment. Hal was one of the latter group. He felt that if he did believe it was land, and it turned out that he was mistaken, the disappointment would be too much for him to bear. But as the ship plunged farther to the west, the dim gray line began to take on harder focus and, finally, he joined in the chorus of relief.

  “It’s land,” he said. “It’s definitely land. We’ve finally made it.”

  Thorn looked at his young friend, unable to keep the smile of relief from his face.

  “Wherever it may be,” he said.

  chapter eight

  Exciting as it was, sighting land did nothing to relieve their most pressing problem—their lack of drinking water.

  As they came closer to the coastline, they could see no place where they might be able to go ashore. The land stretched north and south in an unbroken line of rocky cliffs, with trees growing thickly on top. The waves beat against their bases, sending towers of white spray high into the air in a constant rhythm.

  “Plenty of trees and vegetation,” Edvin said hopefully. “That means there must be water somewhere.”

  “All we have to do is get to it,” Stefan said, and they all strained their eyes to see some kind of landing place. But there was none.

  They were barely four hundred meters from the cliffs, traveling at right angles to the land. Soon they would have to turn to port or starboard to make their way along the coast. The choice could be vital. They needed an inlet or a bay, somewhere they could find freshwater. Such a spot could be a few kilometers in either direction. Or it could be twenty or thirty kilometers away. There was nothing to guide their choice.

  Thorn and Hal exchanged a glance. “Which way?” Thorn asked.

  Hal considered the matter for a few seconds and, as he almost always did, automatically looked up to check the wind direction on the telltale. It was still out of the north, as it had been for days. He knew that, of course. But checking to make sure was an instinctive action with him.

  “South,” he said. “If we go north, we’ll be tacking back and forth into the wind. This way, we can run before it on one tack.”

  He shouted his sail orders to Ulf and Wulf as he let the bow fall off to port. They released the sheets, letting the big port-side sail swing out almost at right angles to the hull. The wind filled it as they tightened the sheets a little, and Heron drove to the south.

  “Eyes peeled, everyone,” Hal ordered. “We don’t want to miss an entrance if there is one.”

  The crew lined the starboard rail, peering intently at the shore that passed by them. For some time, there was no break in the cliffs, no sign of any inlet or bay that would let them approach the land.

  When it came, they very nearly missed it. There were two close-set headlands, with a third sited well inside, opposite the opening, and giving it the appearance of an unbroken coastline. It was Stefan who recognized the lack of breaking waves across the fifty-meter gap and, peering more closely, saw that there was a narrow inlet just visible.

  “There!” he shouted, pointing.

  Hal heaved on the tiller so that the Heron swung to starboard, Ulf and Wulf compensating for the new angle across the wind by sheeting
home and flattening the sail. Stefan moved aft to the steering platform and pointed to the gap in the rocks.

  “See?” he said. “There’s a way in there. Must be a small river.”

  Hal nodded, his eyes riveted on the almost invisible gap.

  “Get the oars ready,” he told Stig. “I don’t think I want to go careering in there under sail.”

  Stig nodded and shouted a series of commands to the crew. The ship was filled with the rattle and clunk of the oars being unstowed and then placed into the oarlocks. The crew members took their places on either side, ready to begin rowing.

  Hal waited until they were a bare hundred meters from the river mouth and nodded to Stig. The first mate called for Ulf and Wulf to bring the sail down and stow it, then to take their places in the rowing wells. With the sail down, the ship gradually lost way. She was almost at a stop when Stig took his own oar and called for the first stroke.

  Seven oars dipped into the water as one, then heaved the little ship forward. Hal felt the renewed life in the tiller as she started to move, swooping up the long ocean rollers at an angle, cutting through the crests and sliding down diagonally into the troughs once more.

  They made ground swiftly to the inlet. Lydia, with no rowing duties, was in the bow, keeping a keen eye out for hidden rocks or shoals. But the way in was clear.

  The tall cliffs towered above them on either side, blocking the sunlight and casting deep shadows over the water. Then they were through the entrance and Hal cried out in surprise at the sight that greeted him.

  He had assumed that the narrow gap in the cliffs was the mouth of a river. Instead, it turned out to be the entrance into a massive, wide bay, at least four kilometers across. Straight ahead was the long, narrow promontory that had seemed to fill the gap between the heads, but on either side, the bay swelled out into a huge natural harbor, fringed by heavily treed shores.

  The crew, hearing his exclamation of surprise, looked over their shoulders and paused in their stroke. Angrily, Stig urged them on again and they went back to work. But they continued to look over their shoulders at the huge enclosed space of water that now surrounded them.