The Dragon’s Daughter and the Winter Mage by Jeffe Kennedy

~ 6 ~

Itwasa miserable crossing. Even though they had packed away their winter furs and donned oiled canvas outer gear, Gen was soon soaked to the skin and colder than she’d ever been in her entire life. That was what came of not being able to shapeshift. Much as she resented the stricture and how truly awful she felt, she began to understand Astar’s reasoning. Some people being able to shapeshift when others couldn’t set them apart in a critical way when they all needed to work together as one.

And after a while, no one joked anymore about Jak’s insistence on absolute obedience. They were all in a small boat together, being tossed about on a stormy sea. Those metaphors might be overused, but they also captured something important: In that vastness of churning gray sky and water, they had only each other, all parts of a whole.

The first few hours were chaos. Nothing like five people learning totally new skills under pressure. And if she’d thought the water at Aduard had been rough, it was nothing compared to the waves they hit around the time they lost sight of land. Gen nearly panicked and gave up several different times—and only Jak barking at her to pay attention and do her job kept her from flying or swimming away. Not that she’d abandon her friends. Or, rather, she wouldn’t if she thought it through. The pressure, though, was killing her, and her inner hummingbird wanted nothing more than to fly away from it all.

Even normally unshakable Stella dissolved into tears at one point—and Jak treated her no differently than he did anyone else. Rhy had his jaw set in grim determination, and Zeph looked purely furious as only a drenched cat could. Astar hung onto the wheel, face red with the effort of holding them on the course Jak set. All the while, Jak leapt about with indefatigable agility, surefooted and alert, clearly in his element. Gen would hate him for it, except he worked harder than any of them.

Lena did her best to steer the worst of the crosswise gusts around them, but her dusky skin had paled with exhaustion to the point of being as gray as the rest of the world around them. Stella had briefly argued with Jak about using the Star of Annfwn to supplement Lena’s weather magic, but he’d told her in no uncertain terms that she had a more important job to do and that if she took her attention away from her set of sails, it would be dereliction of duty. That had led to the tears, which Jak ignored, striding away to yell at someone else. Gen no longer felt so envious.

After the first few hours, though, they began to work together better. She was getting progressively more tired, sure, but she’d grown kind of numb to it—and to the miserable chill. In fact, she felt overwarm during moments of intense activity, uncertain if the water rolling down her face was rain, seawater, or sweat. The roll of the wind and waves, and Jak’s orders in response, resolved finally into a rhythm. The first time she anticipated Jak’s order, moving to shorten a line even as he turned to shout at her to do it, he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

The feeling of accomplishment was almost as good as attaining dragon form.

By the time Jak shouted his sighting of land, everyone had grown at least accustomed to their tasks, if not proficient. They sailed their little ship into a sheltered harbor, the wind and water blessedly settling into tamer patterns as the small island rose up around them, a comforting hummock of rock frosted with greenery. Had Gen thought this landscape was ugly? It sure looked beautiful to her now, serene, mists coiling gently around the peak that disappeared into the low clouds.

Lena plopped down beside Gen, decidedly ashen. Rhy frowned in her direction before quickly looking away again. “How are you holding up?” Gen asked her.

“Frankly I wish I’d been given sails to manage. I think it would’ve been easier than trying to wrangle this tangled mass of weather.”

Gen held out one palm, showing Lena the angry blisters that had grown, popped, bled, and grown again. “Not necessarily,” she said, rolling her stiff shoulders. “I think I nearly wrenched my arms out of their sockets half a dozen times.”

“No chatter,” Jak snapped, jogging past. “We’re not anchored yet, and we don’t know these waters. Pay attention now. Gossip later.”

Lena stuck her tongue out at Jak’s back, and Gen had to swallow a giggle. No wonder they’d been friends for so long.

At last, Jak declared himself satisfied, telling Astar he could leave the wheel and lower the anchor. Astar slowly peeled his fingers from the wheel, his hands stiff and chapped bright red, and he moved ponderously, Gen’s abused body throbbing in sympathy. The boat bobbed some in the cove they’d found, but compared to what they’d been through, it felt glassy calm. Lena eyed the distance to shore. “I have a bad feeling we’re sleeping on the boat tonight,” she murmured to Gen under her breath.

“Everyone, tie off your lines if you haven’t done so already,” Jak ordered. “Make sure your stations are tidy. Then join me here on the deck.”

They were all moving slowly, but they also obeyed without grumbling, soon gathering around a table Jak had set up. “I think we’re here,” he said without preamble, pointing to a small island on the map. “It’s marked as having no facilities, no population, so we’ll sleep on the boat tonight.”

Gen groaned but restrained the protest that leapt to her lips. She also didn’t point out that a shapeshifter on the wing could determine exactly where they were on the chart. A shapeshifter on the wing could disappear, too, and never be seen again.

Jak glanced around at all of them. “Miracle of miracles. And here I thought nothing would shut you lot up.”

“We’re tired,” Rhy said shortly.

“Can we expedite this meeting, Captain Konyngrr,” Stella asked in a cool voice, “so we can eat something and get the sleep you’ve promised?”

Jak eyed her. “Yes. We’ll sleep in shifts. There’s four bunks below. That makes four asleep at a time, staggering by twos. Of the remaining three, two are on watch, one fore, one aft. The one not sleeping or on duty will spend the time eating and exercising.”

“Exercising!” Zeph burst out. “Not a one of us needs a workout after today.”

“If you don’t exercise tonight,” Jak replied evenly, “you won’t be able to move tomorrow. Trust me. Keep it light, but work those muscles and ligaments. Enjoy your brief walk in my mossback boots.”

Zeph fumed but said nothing more. Gen sympathized, as she’d love nothing more than to shift and return to a human body that didn’t ache in every pore.

“If there’s no further discussion, Gen, break out the rations. Rhy, you help her and get the water cask. Lena, Stella, Astar, and Zeph, you’re first in the bunks. After two hours, I’ll wake Stella and Zeph, and we’ll rotate every two hours from there.”

“I need to heal everyone first,” Stella said quietly.

“No healing,” Jak replied.

“But people’s hands are—” she began.

He shook his head. “If you heal them tonight, they’ll only blister again tomorrow, and you’ll lose progress on the calluses you’re building,” Jak said. “This was only the first day, people. We’ve got at least two more, and that’s just until we can start looking for Isyn. Healing for debilitating injuries only.”

Stella jammed her fists on her hips. “It’s just as well that Willy forbade sex, because I wouldn’t let you come near me, Jakral Konyngrr. I may never sleep with you again, you ass.” With that, she stomped away, heading for the hatch leading below.

“Do you want your rations?” Gen called after her.

“I’m too tired to eat!” Stella yelled back, voice wobbly.

Jak watched her go, a flash of regret in his eyes, but he didn’t follow her.

“I’ll talk to her,” Astar said quietly.

Jak nodded. “Eat first or sleep first—up to each of you. Gen, why are you still standing there?”

In the morning,they all resumed their stations and sailed away from their sanctuary. When the first gust of wind hit the little boat as they left the shelter of the island, it shuddered in every plank of wood and snap of canvas, Gen’s bones aching with every jarring motion. She’d gotten eight hours of sleep, but breaking it up into two chunks at a time left her feeling as if she’d barely slept at all. Jak had slept even less, only two hours total, so far as Gen could tell. When she mentioned it to him, he asked if she was questioning the captain, so she backed off.

Still, it seemed Jak spent most of the night working diligently on something with his hands as he paced the deck, sharp eyes looking out for trouble. When they took their stations in the morning, he handed out fur-lined leather gloves he’d cobbled together from a ruined jacket of his, commenting that at least it was good for something.

Stella almost refused hers, but Jak pulled her aside, saying something quietly to her. She wasn’t happy, stalking away from him with spine rigid, but she yanked on the gloves.

“I tried talking to Nilly,” Astar murmured to Gen, “but she told me to keep my nose out of it.”

“Good advice.”

“That’s what Zeph said, too.” He watched Stella settle into her station to check her lines. “But I’d hate for this love affair to fizzle so soon.”

“I’m surprised at you, Willy.”

“Why, because I didn’t want them to get together in the first place?”

Gen laughed a little. “No, that you have so little faith in the strength of their attachment. This is a bump. They’ll get over it.”

Astar gave her a curious look. “That’s what Zeph said, too,” he repeated. “Did you two consult?”

“No.” Gen patted him on the cheek. “We’re just wise.”

“Why aren’t you all at your assigned stations?” Jak barked.

Gen rolled her eyes. “Who knew Jak would be such a tyrant?”

“He’s worried,” Astar murmured. “It’s a lot of responsibility, captaining us through this crossing, with so much that could go wrong. I feel for the guy.”

Gen felt for Jak, too, but several hours into a sail that was every bit as rough as the day before, if not worse, she turned her misery into fury at Jak for putting them through this. It wasn’t rational, but when he barked a correction at her one time too many, she snarled back, beyond tempted to hurl herself overboard for a refreshing swim. Jak saw it in her, dark eyes snapping. “Going to turn tail and run?” he sneered at her. “You’re barely doing what the greenest Dasnarian sailor does before he’s eleven.”

“Youth is a beautiful thing,” she snapped back, but she sharpened up, promising herself to do better. She recognized Jak’s technique, of course. Her father was a soldier who trained soldiers. And she hadn’t missed that Jak made sure that Stella and Lena got the most and first sleep the night before.

“Look alive, people,” Jak shouted to them all from the prow, agile body moving with the pitching boat, rain and seawater lashing him, dark hair plastered to his skull. “We’re all cold, wet, and tired. You’re also learning your tasks well enough that you don’t have to think about every little thing. This is when people make mistakes. But look around you—there’s no room for mistakes. No one to save us if we fuck up. So we have to be sharper than ever.”

They made it through that day with only a few errors, working far better as a sailing team, and collapsing into even the alternating sleep schedule was welcome. They talked little, simply eating and then sleeping or taking up watch or repairs under Jak’s eagle eye.

It was on the afternoon of the third day that the mistake happened.

They were tacking against the wind, making for an island that should be populated, and everyone was excited about the possibility of sleeping a full night in an actual bed with a warm meal in their bellies. Gen’s skin itched to shift, too, a craving that came even before food at that point. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone so long without shapeshifting. By the look on the other shapeshifters’ faces, they felt the need, too. Gen was daydreaming a little about which form she’d take—maybe they could all go flying or running, as she’d had a bellyful of ocean at that point—and Lena was picking her way over a loose coil of rope, moving aft at Jak’s instruction, so she could attempt to shift the wind more in their favor.

A sideways surge of water tipped the boat precariously, Lena losing her footing as she lurched with the sudden tilt of the deck.

“Lena, watch out!” Rhy shouted.

At the same moment, a stray gust of wind caught the sail Rhy was handling, the rope spinning through his fingers, the boom snapping around behind him and thonking him on the head with a crack audible over wind and water. With the sail flapping empty, the boat skewed sharply, pitching suddenly in the other direction—and throwing Lena overboard.

It all happened so fast that Gen found herself blinking at the place where Lena had been as if the problem was her eyesight.

“Nooooo!” Rhy howled, abandoning his station. Jak was on him in a flash, using the surprise to smash the stronger shapeshifter back into his seat.

“Man your sail!” Jak shouted in his face.

“I’m going after her!” Rhy shouted back, struggling against Jak’s leverage—and stranglehold.

“No!” Jak shouted. “We lose this sail, we’re all dead. Everyone stay on task. Lena is a strong swimmer, and Gen is going after her.”

It took Gen a moment to process that, a large part of her brain still grappling with Lena’s sudden disappearance. Then Jak was hauling her to her feet. “I’ve got your station. Orca form. Go!”

She was obeying—Jak’s burred order reminding her of her dad in the best way—before she processed what a good idea it was. As she flung herself into the raging sea, she shifted, the pleasure of it almost orgasmic after so long in human form. Of course orca was the best choice for these waters. Even in the dim light and tumultuous waves, she could use echolocation to find Lena, and she’d have the strength to pull her a long way if necessary. In the sudden quiet of below the surface, she marveled that Jak had clearly thought ahead to that eventuality to have a solution so readily at hand. Something that she herself should have done.

Swimming a circle, she sent out a series of clicks, listening for anything she could learn from the echoes that bounced back. She hadn’t spent enough time in orca form to develop any real expertise on the finer points. That was a funny aspect of shapeshifting—much of a given animal’s abilities were instinctive, which was fortunate or flying would kill a lot of young shapeshifters—but much was learned, too. Just as animals refined their skills as they matured and over the course of their adult lives, only time in a given form allowed a shapeshifter to get really good at some of the more esoteric skills.

So she was probably like a bumbling calf sending out her bursts of clicks and sorting what her orca brain told her the echoes meant—but she found Lena surprisingly easily. Her friend was thrashing in the turbulent water, fighting her rain slicker but staying afloat. Lucky that Lena was a such a strong swimmer, having spent her childhood bodysurfing in the seas of Nahanau.

Gen made for her, hoping Lena would understand that she was a rescuer, not a killer whale on the hunt for a tasty snack. Orcas didn’t eat humans, of course, but not all humans remembered that, especially when confronted with one in the water. She breached next to Lena, who—thankfully—gave a cry of relief and lunged for Gen’s dorsal fin, levering herself onto Gen’s back. Cheers in the distance indicated they’d been spotted.

Swimming carefully so as not to dislodge her rider, Gen made for the boat, which pitched alarmingly in the rough sea. How were they getting Lena back aboard? Her friend didn’t have much strength, her teeth chattering as she shivered against Gen’s whale body. Then Gen spotted a figure scaling a rope ladder down the side of the boat, clinging with athletic grace and sure knowledge of his place on even a wildly pitching sailing ship. Jak, naturally.

Gen swam up as close as she could, scraping against the ship uncomfortably, doing her best to keep in place in the churning water. Not at all easy without more practice than she’d had. Then Lena’s weight disappeared from her back, and Jak’s triumphant shout signaled success. Gen swam a circle to double check, confirming that Jak had a soaked Lena between him and the side of the boat, Astar leaning over the edge to pull her up.

Jak turned back to Gen and gave a hand signal for her to get back aboard. She briefly debated the best way to do that. A seabird that could leap from water to air would be the best bet, but she wasn’t sure if any of her avian forms would handle this weather well. Maybe mermaid so she could swim to the rope ladder, grab on, then shift to a good climbing form like monkey. Swimming closer to the ladder, she went to shift… and couldn’t.

She couldn’t move at all.

Everything went black, icy cold.

Then nothing.