Page 35 of Witchsea

“What?” I balk, but he takes my hand and pulls me forward in front of the wheel, standing behind me to crowd me into it. His entire body presses against my back, almost perfectly like we were meant to do this, and there is no space between me, the wheel and him. Heat flushes through my body as he leans down, his gravelly voice in my ear. “You need to guide the ship. You know where we’re going, Map.”

“I could crash us into one of those moons. Are you absolutely mad?” I turn my neck to look up at him, and he looks down at me, neither of us noticing the world for a long second. Our faces are too close. His breathing mixing with mine is too much, and my body likes all of this way too much.

“You’re the map. Find where we’re going,” he purrs, like he knows exactly the effect he is having on me.

Focus. I am the map, I can find the key, I’ve done it before, and I can do it again. Turning forward, I put my shaky hands on the wheel’s handles, and I close my eyes, trusting that instinct, that deep part of me that burst to life when the map appeared. The part of me I don’t know how to control, but I need it to guide me. I see the glowing light of the map. I feel it in my blood and deep in my bones.

“We need to go left,” I tell Ren, looking in the distance, and we both go silent. The biggest moon is to the far left, the tip of it looks like it is trying to climb into the sky itself. The very tip of the moon draws me in, and I can’t stop feeling the urge to go up there, to get it down. The key must be up there. Ren follows my gaze, his jaw tightening.

“Fantastic.” Ren spins the wheel, turning the whole ship rapidly to the side. I hold on tight, my stomach turning with the movement. The ship starts moving through the waves as Tracker leans down, and my eyes widen when I see his hands glow as bright as a star where he touches the deck of the ship.

“I thought your magic wasn’t working,” I shout out.

“I can guide the water around the ship,” he shouts back. “I just can’t track where we’re going. I can make sure we don’t hit any rocks or ships, though. We can’t be long in this graveyard unless we want to join the dead!”

The rocks? “Maybe hitting the rocks is what we need to do.” I look at Ren, but he is focusing on steering the ship, and instead, I get close to his neck tattoo. The tattoo is all connected as one image, made of swirls and eight spikes that go up to his chin, the tops of them are strange symbols. I’m sure I’ve seen this before. I have to pull my eyes up as the ship sways and my stomach turns. “None of us are going to be able to get up there without getting hurt or setting it off, right? If we climb it, it could blow up.”

“I’m going to climb it.” Ren offers himself up to the death trap.

“But can you touch the key? No, only I can,” I mutter. I’m not climbing that thing when it could explode into diamonds and kill me. “Maybe we knock one of the smaller rocks into it, and it explodes from a distance far away. Like an attack of your power?”

“It’s reckless, madness,” he states, but he sounds happy.

“Like you.”

“I know you do.” He winks at me and I turn back, shaking my head as his low rumble of a laugh echoes behind me. This sea is relentless, no matter how far we go into it, and I’m glad to be between Ren and the wheel, even if it’s tempting me into insanity.

When we are close, Chaos runs up the steps and takes the wheel off us, and I move to the rail near Tracker. “Watch her, Tracker.” Ren looks at me once, our eyes locking, and then he is gone. He pulls a dagger out of his holder, and he cuts a long line down his arm as he walks to the other side of the ship, his hat somehow staying on. Is it glued on?

I can’t do anything but watch as he goes to the very front of the ship, jumps on the tip like he’s not scared of falling in at all, and holds his hand up. Inky black shadows pour out of his fingertips like a storm of wolves, and they run across the water, the blackness of them almost glowing like the night itself. When they get closer to the rather small floating moon, they slam into it with a bang that rings out, and I let go to slam my hands over my ears.

“Hold on!” Tracker grabs hold of me, pulling me to the railing with his one hand around my waist.

Chaos shouts loud to the crew. I pray Freckles, Clark, Mellyn and Wyatt are somewhere safe down below. “Wave incoming!” The second bang is louder than the first, and I cry out as a wave slams into the ship, water hitting us hard and pushing me across the back of the ship, with Tracker clinging to my side. He grabs the wheel at the last second, holding on with Chaos as we all float in the air, just for a moment, and then slam onto the floor with a crash as the ship hits the sea once again.

I scream as the silver diamond rocks cascade over us like rain, and Tracker holds my head to his chest as they plummet into us. Another wave crashes into the ship, washing the diamond rocks away into the sea and not leaving a single one behind. How is that possible? I push my wet hair out of my eyes as I stumble to my feet, seeing massive holes in the center of the ship and dozens of little ones in every surface. The ship rocks from side to side, like it is inches away from tumbling upside down in the sea, and I look for our captain. But he isn’t there. The front of the ship is empty.

“Ren!” I shout, panic seeping into my blood. Chaos reaches for me, but I leap over the rails, sliding down the wall, and I run down the ship, avoiding the holes. I run straight up to the front, looking for him, but he’s not there. I leap onto the tip of the ship, digging my fingers into the wood, and I look around in the murky sea full of floating rocks, full of wooden planks and debris.

“REN!” I scream his name into the sea, and like the sea itself gives him back, I find him floating face down in the distance, his hat drifting away in the water. I don’t know why I do it, but no thoughts about my safety even enter my mind as I jump straight off the ship for him. The wind whistles in my sore ears just before I crash into the cold sea. The chill of the water locks my body down, so I sink for a second before my instinct to swim kicks in. I swim to the surface, and with all the strength I have, I keep swimming right in the direction he was, even as the giant waves threaten to take me down with them. A wave builds right in front of my eyes, and I open my mouth to scream as it crashes into me, the force of it slamming me under the water.

I open my eyes.

The water shimmers with a million diamonds, the glittering rocks hovering around me as I see it. The key. It’s glowing blue, and it’s made of solid diamond. The entire key is beautiful. I reach my hand out for it, forgetting for a second that I’m mortal, forgetting that I need air or anything but the key. My body feels like I’m only the map, that I’m nothing more or less, and I need that key. The second my hand wraps around the key, I realize I can’t breathe. The glimmering diamond-filled sea loses everything that made it beautiful, and instead, it becomes a dark swamp of water, filled with rocks and promising death if I don’t get out right now.

Something wraps around my leg, and it burns. I look down as the tentacle of something gold slithers around my thigh, wrapping tightly. I smack my hands at it, panic taking over me as I try to swim up, breathing in water with every struggle. The creature starts yanking, pulling me down. “Come to my depths, child of fate. Come and dance with me instead of the god of darkness and shadows who walks this world. We will remake the sea and the stars and the light.”

In one swift moment, darkness explodes around me and the voice is gone. Ren swims down into my sight, catching my arm and yanking me straight out of the gold thing and to him. The tentacle falls down with a wail that echoes in my ears, and Ren’s shadows wrap around us, almost like an embrace, as he pulls me up to the top of the water and into the air. I gasp, inhaling the cold air, never more thankful for it as I cling to Ren, and he holds me tight to his chest.

A rope lands right next to us, and Ren throws it over our bodies before tightening it, and they begin to pull us up in the air and onto the ship as I continue to cough out water. I fall onto my hands and knees on the deck, cough a few more times, and roll onto my back, sucking in lungfuls of air.

“My ship is full of magic witches, and the mortal is the one who jumped in for me?” Ren coughs, sitting up.

Silence echoes as I sit up. “I saw the key and jumped in for it. Not for you.”

“Liar,” he hisses, and he is right. I won’t ever admit to him that I jumped in for him, because I panicked, because I threw out every plan I ever had, to risk my life for him. We both smile at each other, and I laugh. He laughs with me until we are both a mess on the deck and people are staring. I calm down enough to hear Ren’s quiet mutter. “That’s the first time I’ve made you laugh.”

Tracker shakes his head at both of us. “You’re both alive and well, then? Where’s the key?”