The next morning when I woke, Lyre was already awake as well, sitting on the other bed. He had his feet pulled up from the floor and settled underneath himself, his hands rested passively on his lap, one on top of the other. He was very pointedly not looking at me. I sat up and stretched my arms out, then twisted to try to stretch my back some. I didn’t feel that bad, despite the mattress being thin and harder than I was used to. There was a bowl, a pitcher of water, and a small towel set on the table between the beds. It hadn’t been there the night before, so Lyre must have gotten it for me. I poured the water into the bowl and splashed some on my face, then rinsed out my mouth and drank some of it. It was very cold and surprisingly fresh. Drying my face off with the towel afterwards, I murmured, “Thank you,” to Lyre. He shifted slightly, but said nothing in return.
Then, completely ignoring my audience, I pulled my clothes off down to my underwear to begin studying myself. It was something I had decided as soon as I realized I could see so well without my glasses.
I had been involved in a car crash once when I was in my late teens, when a drunk driver had t-boned the vehicle I was in. I was seated on the passenger side, which was the side that was hit. Thankfully I remember very little of it or of my stay in the hospital, and being fairly young and in good health I made a quick recovery. The series of scars from that crash covered the right-hand side of my body. None of them were large or garish, but there were several and they traveled from my knee, over the hip, and up to my rib cage. The doctors had done their best to minimize scarring in the first place and many had faded over time. In truth, I hardly noticed them anymore.
They were all gone.
I stood and pivoted on my right leg. No twinge or stiffness in my hip. Most people didn’t know about the accident because I could walk fine, but sometimes I could feel the reminder of the old injury if I twisted just the wrong way when I moved.
I poured over the rest of my body. There were no scars at all. No scratches from my over-excited dog jumping on me before he had been taught to stop, no acne or ingrown hair scars. No shaving nicks, no stretch marks. But every natural feature was still in place. Most of my moles seemed about right, the small blue crescent shaped birthmark on my left shoulder was still in place. It also occurred to me that I was thinner. I had never been fat, but certain things had started catching up to me as I had approached 30. I could see the outline of my ribs under my breasts again, and the undersides of my arm had tightened.
I didn’t feel like I wasn’t in my body. But I also felt better than I had in years, and all the detritus and evidence of time spent living seemed to be missing. I wished I had a mirror so I could see if my fillings were still in my teeth, and I absentmindedly rubbed at my jaw as I thought about it. And there were other things. Unseen things regarding my health…
My eyes focused on what was in front of me. Lyre was still sitting on the bed, very still, staring at the ground. He seemed to have a little bit more color in his face for once. I wondered if it would have been more appropriate for me to dismiss him first, but I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. I dressed, putting on the clothes I had been wearing as I slept. “I guess you could show me around the ship now,” I said.
He frowned slightly, then held his hand out. I stared blankly at his open palm. For a moment, I wondered if I was supposed to tip him. Then he spoke softly, and I realized I couldn’t understand the words. “Oh!” I fumbled around my neck, grabbed the leather strap and pulled it over my head to hand the black stone over to him.
After the glow from the spell faded, Lyre handed the stone back and I carefully placed it around my neck again. “What did you say?” he asked.
“I said I would like to be shown the ship.”
We spent the next half hour briefly visiting each section of the ship. It wasn’t a large ship, but I did take my time examining things out of sheer curiosity. Down below decks there was a sleeping place for the slaves. There were three other slaves on the ship, two women and a man. The women were both present and asleep, sprawled on thin blankets and hay that had a damp, musty smell. Beyond their bedding area was the cargo hold where crates were piled with fabrics and spices from a place called Walsam. Lyre seemed a bit fidgety when I considered opening some of the crates, so I decided against it.
Above that was a storage deck full of supplies for the ship and crew – weapons, food, drink. There were two cannons, one on each side of the ship, and supplies for the cannons stowed close to them. “Do you ever have to use them?” I asked.
“We’ve been attacked by pirates a few times. We – the mages – are a pretty good deterrent once they realize we’re present. But we have had to use the cannons before.”
“Is it not common to keep mages on a ship?” I asked, trying to remind myself that pirates were not a thing to be reasonably excited about.
“Not entirely uncommon, but the Captain has sought out mages capable of… very dangerous magic.” I didn’t ask what kind of magic that would be. It was also hard to get Lyre to talk for very long on any subject – he answered all of my questions directly as I asked them, but didn’t seem keen to give full lectures.
Next was the deck of the ship. The first thing I noticed as we emerged into the sunlight was that the tattoos on Lyre’s skin shimmered. They actually looked almost beautiful, with a slightly iridescent quality to them, looping up into a pattern of leaves and flora that stood out starkly against his pale skin. Lyre pointed toward the aft of the ship – the Captain’s quarters were right under the wheel, and above the guest quarters where I slept. On occasion they would take passengers, though they weren’t exclusively a passenger vessel. On the fore side of the ship were the crew quarters, though Lyre only gestured to them and did not take me down into them.
As Lyre pointed out these areas, Wrasker spotted us from where he stood near the wheel, and called out to us. “Cassandra. Come have some food, lass.” I could see that the other male elf was casting the wind spell from there as well – he was hard to miss, being even taller than the Captain, though slighter in frame. Wrasker descended the stairs quite agilely for a man of his size and led the way into the room where I had been warmed the night before. There were a few other crew members present and eating, but the captain waved them away and they left, looking at me curiously and whispering amongst themselves. I smiled stiffly at them as they passed.
The captain offered me what they had been eating – a bowl of soup, with what seemed to be fish and some kind of root vegetable almost like a potato in it, and a few pieces of a very hard bread. I softened the bread in the soup and ate. Everything was very salty, but I was hungrier than I had realized and happily drank the broth down in large gulps. I cupped my hand around the bowl as I ate, enjoying the warmth.
Glancing around, I saw that Lyre was standing back by the door, hands clasped in front of himself. “Did you have a good night’s sleep?” Wrasker asked, seating himself at the table. There were several papers and a map on it now. I couldn’t understand any of the flowy script on the pages – the written word was just as incomprehensible to me as their spoken language.
I swallowed the soup in my mouth and nodded. “Yes, I did. Thank you for rescuing me. I’m not sure what I would have done if you hadn’t been nearby. I was very near freezing to death.”
“Indeed. The sea is unforgiving. You were lucky that we were able to find you as quickly as we did.” He paused for a moment. “The light that helped us spot you. That was an impressive display of magic that landed you there. Could mean that someone might come looking for you.” He studied me carefully as though my expression may give away some truth that I wasn’t willing to voice, but I shrugged. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure what any of it meant. “Regardless, I’m not apt to toss a woman out to her fate in these waters, but the quarters we have you in are usually reserved for guests. Paying guests.”
I nodded again. “I understand. I’ve never spent any time on a ship… that I can remember,” I added the last bit belatedly, recalling at the last second that I had claimed to remember nothing about my life the night before. “But I’m willing to learn what I can to help pull my weight around here. I fully intend to repay you for your generosity.” I wasn’t sure how I’d manage that beyond being helpful. I wasn’t even sure how helpful I could be. I felt butterflies churn my stomach as I wondered how long I’d have to serve on the ship to earn my way. At some point, I’d have to try to find out more about the world I was in – how I might have come to be here. And most important – why I had come to be here. As Wrasker said, someone could be looking for me. I needed to know enough to know whether I wanted to be found or not.
But I wouldn’t be able to do that without money or knowledge, especially if I needed magic to be able to communicate with anyone here and couldn’t read the language. “Well, I don’t intend to collect immediately. Settle yourself in, take a few days to relax and gather yourself. Then we’ll start you on some basic tasks. We’re at least three weeks out from our destination port – four, if the sailing isn’t smooth. From there, we’ll give you some coins and set you on your way, and consider ourselves even.”
I nodded, happily surprised that my tenure on the boat wouldn’t be overlong. “That’s… more than fair. In fact, it’s quite generous. Thank you, Captain.”
He stood. “For now, you’ll still have use of Lyre, as he can cast the spell for you, and he can chaperone you while you are on the ship. I don’t expect anyone will mistreat you, but my men rarely have women working alongside them.”
“Oh? I thought two of your elves were women?” I blurted out without thinking. Then I realized that they might not even think of elves as people and felt a bit of indignation at the thought. Then the Captain’s next words made the pit of my stomach drop completely.
“Well… women they aren’t allowed fair use of,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
“I… I see.” Although I had suddenly lost my appetite, I forced myself to quickly finish my soup and dismissed myself. Without waiting for Lyre, I made my way to my quarters, refusing to look anyone in the face as I went, feeling utterly disgusted with everyone on the ship. I closed the door behind me and ran my hands up my face and through my hair as I processed what I had just been told. And so casually at that.
The door bumped into me as Lyre attempted to enter the room, eliciting a slightly startled “shit!” from me. I stepped back to let him in. He entered, and closed the door behind him, then stood in front of it. I stared at him for a long moment.
He glanced up at me briefly before averting his eyes again. “Don’t worry. As the Captain said, you’ll be safe. I’ll make sure of it. No harm will come to you while you are under my protection.” He must have seen the concern on my face and assumed that I was scared.
I couldn’t even think of the words to explain that I wasn’t really terrified for myself. That I was disgusted by the practice of slavery. That the casual dismissal of these slaves being assaulted made me feel physically sick. That I was frustrated that any fuss I made might be immediately laughed off, or worse. That I was at the mercy of the Captain and the crew because I certainly couldn’t walk off the ship in the middle of the ocean in protest. I thought again about how quickly I had almost frozen to death in the water. Instead, I made a weird, strangled throaty sound and plopped down on the bed. I slipped my hand over to the edge of the mattress. At least the knife was still there.
I spent the rest of the day stewing in my frustration. At one point I did snap at Lyre to at least sit on the bed, which he did obediently. As it grew dark, he said, “On.”
The lamp on the table flared to life. I stared in fascination. I realized that the light was steady and not flickering – there was no fire. I sat up from the bed and moved closer to the lamp, placing my hand on it – it generated warmth, but nothing dangerously hot. Opening it, I could see that there was a stone seated inside, glowing brightly. “Is this magic?” I asked, poking at the stone cautiously.
“Yes. It’s been enchanted for common use – so that those without magical ability can also benefit from it. If you want it to turn off, you have to say off.”
Curious, I said, “Off.” Nothing happened.
A strange series of expressions flitted across Lyre’s features, what I think may have been confusion followed by realization followed by amusement, but then he had carefully controlled his face again and said, “No, you have to say ‘off’ in the elven tongue. If the language spell is translating everything for you, that distinction doesn’t come across, I suppose.” And then he said “Off” again and the light dimmed before dying completely and left the room in darkness. I tried to focus on how “off” may have sounded different or distinct in each time it was pronounced, but my brain couldn’t pick it out. The language spell translated everything perfectly.
“And to turn it on?”
“On,” he spoke again. The stone’s light grew until it lit the small room entirely.
I sighed. “I guess you’re going to have to turn my lights on and off for me then,” I said, feeling a little annoyed. I pulled my knees close to my chest, wrapping my arms around them as I stared at the magical light. To some degree, all I wanted to do was pout some more, but having spent the entire day doing nothing but that, I was finally sulked out. No – none of this would do. If I was here in this world, I’d have to be able to function in this world. “Tomorrow morning, before you cast the spell… teach me the words.”
“As you wish,” he responded.
I curled up on the bed, and turned to face the wall. I closed my eyes. I was going to have to stop letting my own sensibilities carry my attitude and get used to this world. I would have to start with learning what I could to earn my passage on this ship, and learn the languages of this world. That would be the first step. And once we made it to port, I’d figure out my next step from there. I steadied my breathing and forced myself to clear my mind. “Off,” I heard Lyre command the light, could feel the room darken from behind my eyelids. Soon I was asleep again.
mehryment 