Princess Elodi's Arc

Chapter 52 of 55

The ship rode the cold current all morning. Elodi walked the deck and could not tell the hour. Clouds still hung gray overhead. No sun broke through. The mermaid's stream carried them east, but Elodi kept glancing at the flat water, waiting for it to turn on her. King Erik climbed up from below with a plate. Steam rose from a fresh-cooked fish. "I haven't seen you eat at all," he said. "I made this for you. Please eat." Elodi smiled and took the plate. "I'm sorry. I'm just tired. I'm scared, and I'm afraid to admit that." Her father sat beside her on a coil of rope. "Afraid of what?" "A mermaid pointed the way," Elodi said. "I trusted her. But every story says her kind lure sailors to drown. I steered your whole family down a current I cannot see, on the word of a stranger from the sea." She set the fish down, untouched. Captain Blackwell crossed the deck and heard her. "You want proof," the captain said. She knelt and drew a bucket of water over the side. She pressed Elodi's hand into it. The water below the surface ran cold, colder than the sea around them. "Feel that pull. No song does that. That's a real current, and it runs east. Yue told the truth." The otter chattered and pawed at the bucket. Damon joined them, wringing seawater from his sleeves. "I climbed the nest again," he said. "The clouds are thinning to the east. If land waits that way, we'll see it by afternoon." Elodi held her hand in the cold water and made herself believe it. Facts, not fear. The cold was real. The pull was real. She let out a slow breath. "Then we hold this course," she said. "All the way." By midday the clouds broke. A thin gold line cut the horizon. Damon shouted from the ropes. "Birds! I see birds!" Elodi ran to the rail. Gulls wheeled ahead, the first she had seen in days. Birds meant shore. Then the wind shifted. It carried a smell across the deck, green and warm. Soil. Trees. Land. Elodi gripped the rail and laughed, a sound she had not made in a week. "The mermaid kept her word," King Erik said quietly. He stood beside his daughter and watched the birds. Blackwell climbed to the wheel. "That's a coast ahead, sure enough. But I don't know it." She frowned at the gray shape rising from the water. "These aren't waters on my charts. We're home to land, girl, but not to any harbor I've sailed." Elodi's laugh faded. The doubt was gone. Yue had told the truth. But the shore ahead belonged to strangers, and she had no idea who waited on it.