I stayed busy over the next week. In the mornings, I had Lyre teach me a little of the language before he cast the spell. He called the human language Blest. It was a simple language, and easy to pick up. The elven language was harder for me, sounding more musical and lilting, with vowel sounds I wasn’t used to making. Lyre was a patient teacher, but I suspected I wouldn’t have more than a passing command of a few words, though he seemed to think that would be enough. He admitted that beyond spellcasting, it was not a commonly spoken language.

I was even teaching him some English in return. He had tentatively asked halfway through the week before I went to sleep. “I’ve never heard it before. It could be useful to know,” he had said after making his request, sitting in the formal position he often used. He kept his eyes averted, and didn’t seem to be holding out a lot of hope that I would agree.

Useful? Not likely, I thought to myself, but said, “I would be glad to teach you. It’s called English.” I almost carelessly elaborated that it was dialectically American English before catching myself.

He smiled. After a few moments, he hesitantly ventured another question. “Do you remember anything at all of what your home is like?” It was the first time Lyre had asked me about myself. I shook my head, unsure of how to answer since I supposedly had amnesia. I tried to remember which way people averted their eyes when they lied so I could look in the exact opposite direction and ended up rolling my head to look around the entirety of the cabin like I hadn’t become intimately familiar with the small space already. I wondered how much people with amnesia could retain, wondered if there was some small detail I could safely say, and settled on an awkward silence. “I see,” Lyre said after a few moments, and didn’t press further.

By the end of the week, I realized that even after the spell was cast, if I concentrated hard enough, I could distinguish just enough of a differentiation that I could command the light to turn on or off. It was a small accomplishment, but it was something. And when the spell wasn’t cast, it was a lot easier to do.

I also started to learn to read Blest. At first, I lingered when I was getting food in Wrasker’s cabin to study the papers and map on his desk. He spotted me once when he was there and frowned at me, like maybe I was spying on him. “Is it a very hard alphabet to learn?” I finally asked, gesturing to the flowing script.

“Ah,” he said, the frown dissipating as he realized I couldn’t read his papers, “Not really.” He brushed his fingertips over the papers thoughtfully, then walked back toward the bed built into the far corner. He pulled something out from under the mattress and brought it back to me – a slim book with a red cover. “It’s fiction, a fairly simple read. Lyre could teach you the letters. He should probably teach you how to speak our language as well. It’d be wise since you’re in our lands now.”

“That’s a good idea,” I said, deciding to omit that we had already begun language lessons. I took the book from his large, rough hands. “Thank you, Captain.”

Though later when I presented it to Lyre, he turned a very bright shade of pink. “Did the Captain give that to you?” he asked, aghast. I assumed he had seen the captain read it before and nodded. “I see.” He didn’t elaborate on his reaction, but he did proceed to give a brief lesson on their alphabet and we started on the book, though it was quite slow going because I also had to expand my vocabulary. It seemed to be a cheesy romance of some sort.

I also picked up things around the ship quickly. I was hoping to truly earn the coin that the Captain intended to give me when he set me on my way. Mostly I helped with cleaning, swabbing the deck, washing bed pans and clothing, but I also learned how to tie a couple of basic knots and took a few turns in the crow’s nest.

I realized quickly that the slaves (as hard as it was for me to think of them that way) were used solely for spellcasting duties. They could summon fresh water to use for drinking, and the Captain used them to send messages from a specially enchanted mirror he had in his cabin, though the range on it wasn’t significant. From what I understood, the magic they expended filling the sails with air was quite exhausting, especially when they were required to cast it for hours at a time to keep the schedule that Wrasker demanded.

With Lyre attending to my needs, they were each doing longer shifts as well, and Wrasker was concerned that it was causing a delay. Still, he did mention that we had moved out of the Calm Strait, which the sailors called the cursed sea, and where they had found me. It was an area of ocean that strangely held no air or water currents, and as a result, pirates rarely lingered there. They didn’t need to keep using the slaves to keep the ship moving at that point, but Wrasker took great pride in the speed it gave his business.

The second mate, a thin and balding man with deeply tanned skin named Fielder, was often the one teaching me what to do around the ship and how to do it. But once it was clear I had caught on, he left me to my own company. The crew was polite but distant – perhaps the Captain had warned them against becoming too friendly with me. Maybe they were suspicious of the fact that I had literally fallen out of the sky in a beam of light, or superstitious that it had occurred in the cursed sea. And like Lyre, the other elves stayed at the edges of everything, their eyes averted, refusing to acknowledge anyone unless a demand was made of them or they were actively casting. As I result, I made no close friends and kept mostly to myself – with Lyre as an ever-present and silent shadow.

Near the end of that first week, I expressed a curiosity about the cannons, and Lyre was taking me below deck to let me examine them. It had finally occurred to me that a cannon meant gunpowder, and I was curious about how easy it would be to hide some away, although I didn’t know what I would even use it for. As we entered the storage area where they were kept, I heard a gasp and the low angry murmur of a man’s voice, and looked up to see that a black-haired man had a woman shoved up against the wall, was pressed close against her. He slammed her head against the ship in a loud thump that elicited a pained whimper, and then began pushing her tanned robes up. Briefly, our eyes met – tears were streaming down her face, her blue eyes wide.

I don’t even remember fully what happened. My mind flooded with anger as I realized what I was seeing, and a strange series of electrical flashes seemed to erupt around the periphery of my vision. A powerful breeze swelled and swept through the room, causing my hair to fly up around my face, and there was an ominous rumble and the faint smell of ozone. There was a loud noise and the man cried out in shock, and I could hear the clattering sound of him falling into a nearby barrel and knocking it over, then a string of angry curses and shouting.

(Oh?)

Before I could fully comprehend what had happened, Lyre had grabbed me by the shoulders and steered me back out of the room and up the stairs. He walked me straight to my quarters. He pushed me into the room, then closed the door behind me. I stared at the door in shock, wondering what I was supposed to do. Lyre had never once so forcefully placed his hands on me.

I tried to think of what the weird flashes of light had been, tried to recall exactly what had knocked the man into the barrel. Whatever had happened had caused Lyre to panic. I felt the nervous crawling sensation of insects skittering across my heart, and I sat on my bed and kept my hand close to where the knife was hidden, in case I needed to grab it. I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths, and focused on listening for anyone’s approach. A strange suspicious anxiety loomed at the back of my brain, but I refused to give it words.

Nearly half an hour passed before the door opened and Lyre stepped in. I had heard him coming down the hall, had bounced up onto my feet to meet whoever it was, the knife hidden in my palm – just in case. He stared at me intensely. Then he closed the door and stepped closer to me, reaching out to push my hair back from the side of my head with one hand, tilting my chin up forcefully with his other hand. I opened my mouth to protest, but the words choked to a stop before I could even make a sound. I hadn’t realized he was taller than me until that moment.

“Are you a half elf of some sort?” he asked, his voice low. I realized that he was studying my ears. I tried to shake my head, but his grip was tight. He pulled my chin the other way to look at the other side of my head. “How…?” he started, then his eyes met mine and widened. He shook his head fiercely, lifted his hands into the air and stepped back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t….” Then he lowered his hands to his sides. “He didn’t see either of us walk in, so he thinks she managed to cast somehow, even without a Focus.”

“Is she okay?” I asked, dreading the response.

His lips thinned as he grimaced. It was all the answer I needed to feel guilt churn my stomach and creep up my throat. I plopped down on my bed. “It’s good that he didn’t see it was you.”

I hadn’t even put the thought into words. Hearing it spoken out loud, it was hard to deny. “She saw me.”

“Then she said nothing of it.”

Well, that only made me feel guiltier. “What did I even do?”

“You cast. But not a proper spell – something more primal. Elemental. You let out a burst of energy – like a storm. You threw him off of her. You can use magic.” Throughout the entire conversation, he did not bother averting his eyes at all, and he stared at me now, steadily, his expression hard to read. I could feel myself shivering. I could use magic? In a world where magic users were kept as slaves? I could feel the blood drain from my face. What was going to happen to me?

Lyre, seeing my reaction, knelt down in front of me, clasping my hands in his. I was certain he could feel the knife I held clasped in my palm, but he didn’t seem surprised or worried about it – if anything, his expression softened with sympathy. “We’ll keep this secret. As I said before, I will allow no harm to come to you. This doesn’t change that promise.”

I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths. I kept my eyes closed as I considered my options. When I opened them, I looked into the steely blue-grey of Lyre’s eyes. “Starting tomorrow morning, you’re going to teach me to use magic,” I said.

The next morning, Lyre’s brief language lesson included more elven phrases. After that, he cast the language spell. I watched the Focus glow as he spoke the words, frowning. “Am I going to be able to use magic without a Focus?” I asked when he handed the smooth black stone back.

“Yes. The Focus isn’t necessary for casting at all.”

“Then why do you use it?” I asked as I placed it back around my neck.

“It works with these,” he said. He ran a hand along the intricate tattoo that covered the side of his head. “The tattoos inhibit our natural magical ability, so that we can’t cast at will. They also easily identify us as slaves to everyone at a glance. It’s called tethering. The Focus is like a key that gives us permission to access our abilities.” I had suspected that they were slave marks, but didn’t know their full purpose until now. “You should be able to learn to cast just fine. We can even start with something simple, using the elven phrases I taught you this morning.”

I reached out and traced one of the lines that curled up his cheek. “When do they give these to you?”

He went very still at my touch, and his eyes dropped instantly to the ground. I pulled my hand back quickly. “When we’re infants. Magical ability doesn’t really manifest until we’re closer to 10 or 11, but they take no chances.”

There was an awkward pause. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have touched you without your permission,” I said.

“You have no need to seek permission from me for anything.”

I shook my head as he spoke. “I’m not going to treat you like property,” I said, and for a moment the vehement anger in my voice surprised even me.

He looked up again and held my gaze for a long moment, a searching expression on his face. Then he cleared his throat. “Like I said, we can start with something simple.”

And that was the beginning of my first magic lesson. Since I already seemed to have an affinity for summoning wind, that was what Lyre attempted to teach me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy going. The first part of the problem was focusing enough past the translation spell to recognize the words Lyre had been teaching me beyond the perfect translation of what he was saying. But even past that, just speaking the words didn’t activate the spell. I focused hard on how I had felt the night before, but I failed to produce even the faintest breeze in that first lesson.

And I had other duties to attend as well. Lyre and I went up to the deck, where the Captain waved us over as soon as he saw us. “I’m afraid Lyre will have to take a turn with the casting today,” Wrasker said as he held out his hand for the Focus. “We had an incident the other night, and another slave is out of the rotation. I’ll try to keep him on duty only while you’re performing your work on deck.”

I nodded as I handed over the smooth black stone. “What happened to the other slave?” I asked, attempting to sound nonchalant. The Captain handed the Focus over to Lyre, and gestured for him to take his place near the wheel. I watched Lyre speak and perform the same spell he had just been attempting to teach me, summoning and commanding a gust of wind that caused the sails to billow and noticeably increased the speed of the ship. He made it look frustratingly effortless.

“She attacked one of my crew, and he beat her quite badly so she’s currently out of the rotation as she heals. This may slow us down even more. Sarks and his temper… If she dies, it’s coming out of his pay.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue. I kept my face carefully stoic as I excused myself and started on swabbing the deck. My mind felt like static as I worked.

There was guilt. There was loads of guilt, filling me so completely that I could taste bile at the back of my throat, like I had gorged on the bitter emotion. But more than the guilt, a certain degree of trepidation also started to build in me. What would happen to me if they found out that I could cast magic as well? Would I be enslaved? Would I be killed? I couldn’t shake any of the thoughts crowding my mind as I worked. I cycled through my other tasks as well, all equally mindless enough that I was never given a break from my racing thoughts. By the end of the day, I was both mentally and physically exhausted.

I ate some and waited for Lyre, and watching him cast did seem to help clear my thoughts. I thought of his promise to protect me. I had never thought of myself as being a person in need of protection. I knew home was far from being the safest, but if I had ever come close to being enslaved or harmed there, I wasn’t aware of it. In my little bubble of home, I always felt safe. And here, where I was a stranger in a strange land, I knew for a fact I wasn’t safe.

So I thought of his promise to protect me – a promise that would have annoyed me at another point in another place of my life – and I felt reassured.