Venilia ✨ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unshelltered) wrote2016-12-12 12:29 am
unshelltered) wrote2016-12-12 12:29 am
Entry tags:
Introductions, or A Realization
"If you have a pin, I can buy all of our safe passage."
"What?"
As Agarmid Teo turned, the young man found himself staring at the speaker - a lovely young woman, he thought, with her shining brown hair intricately braided and twisted to frame her serenely smiling face. It was her graceful smile he noticed first, and then her large and gentle eyes, and quite lastly the small band of travelers she stood with who all looked most uncomfortable.
Two women and four more men stood in a half circle around their packs watching the exchange. None looked happy, but Agarmid was sure that was due to the price of the ferry. The rain and storm season was coming in fast now in this country, and only one ship dared sail. The captain was a well known miser and had jacked his prices too high for anyone to board his vessel in the good weather, but now there was no choice. To get to the capital, the sea had to be crossed. It was a solid two week voyage - and Agarmid did not have even a day to wait if he was to make his deadline.
"We can work for the coin," one of the young woman's companions was saying softly. This woman had dark skin near the color of night and eyes that sparked like liquid gold. Her tone seemed almost fearful. "Better we do, than this."
The woman with the braided hair did not seem to notice or hear her companion. Instead she held out her hand to shake his, and the young man reached for it without hesitation even as the rest of her party began to shirk guiltily backward.
"Hello," she said. "I'm Venilia. Or Venn, if you'd like. I like Venn."
He would never forget that, and he was sure of it. "My name's Agarmid," he responded. He tried to match her sweet smile with one of his own. Venn turned carefully to look over her shoulder.
"We are traveling together," she explained. Each in their turn nodded to Agarmid in greeting, though none gave their name. They were watching Venn with resigned eyes and for the first time, he wondered why. She was so earnest and gentle, anyone could tell that. Perhaps it was he that they were wary of, Agarmid considered. A stranger's presence would certainly be unsettling ...
Then Venn was asking him, "Will you join us at crossing?"
One of the men spoke in a deep baritone. A tattoo on his neck of a fish's tail bobbed as he spoke. He said, "It's just as expensive for one as for many to raise the coin. At least there's the company to keep."
Agarmid nodded. Before he could say anything, Venn shook her head.
"Not if he has a pin, or even a needle."
The light of sunset flashed over a weather vane in the heart of the village. It caught on the pretty opal charm the girl wore around her neck and reflected in her sparkling eyes. At once, Agarmid forgot his hesitation at Venn's sweet disposition. The others could be as wary of him as they liked, if she was going to be so friendly and pleasant to make up for them.
"I know this village," Agarmid found himself saying. "I grew up just across this sea, in the capital. I know well the reputation of this ship and its captain. It'll cost more than any pin's worth to go by him."
Another man nodded his agreement. His hair was shaved close, with an intricate rose pattern shaved closer. "It's so," he rumbled in a fine tenor. "I know it is. But you should know, this woman-- "
Agarmid must have looked offended for her, as the man quickly turned away. He could not have known that a dozen sailors were passing near to him, and within earshot.
Venn kept smiling her gentle smile at Agarmid and her companions all. "But do you have a needle?"
He did. He missed the look that passed between Venn's party when he set it in her hand, but Agarmid could tell that Venn was completely thankful. No one had ever been so grateful to receive a half rusted hat pin, he thought, for the look of utter delight writ on the girl's face was incomparable.
Carefully, he noted, Venn cradled the pin to her chest in both hands as lovingly as possible. She thanked him and spun suddenly on her heel as if to go. Agarmid flustered.
"Er," he began, "what happens now?"
"Now?"
Venn looked at the pin in her hands and said simply, "Now I'll go to pay our way. But I must be alone, in order for this to work," she stressed. "Attracta, won't you ready our things?"
The black woman with the golden eyes nodded stiffly. Venn waved and swept down the dirt-trampled path alone, toward the docks. Agarmid watched until she turned the corner out of sight before he looked at his new traveling companions and smiled nervously.
"She'll be fine, won't she?"
The shaved head man, whose name Agarmid would later learn was Bob, grunted. "It's not her I worry for. It's the rest of us."
"What?" Agarmid frowned. "What do you mean?"
The other woman of the group stepped carefully around their packed belongings. Her black hair was choppy and uneven and her face was very round, just like the rest of her. She was called Maryellen and she hated it being misspelled.
"About Venn," she began slowly, "you see... "
Bob snorted. "She's an illusionist. A mind rewriter. We'll all be in for it if anyone on that boat realizes they've been paid the passage for six with a rusty needle instead of gold."
Agarmid's heart dropped into his stomach. "How could anyone mistake something so small for such a great sum?"
The others all shook their heads and began to gather their things. The young woman's braided face smiled brightly as she waved them down to the starboard ramp. The crotchety old captain limped along behind her with a self-satisfied greedy smirk.
Attracta saw the amazement on Agarmid's face. She shoved a heavy carton into his arms and jerked her head to the shoreline. "Yeah. She's that good. Now you'd best hope she's good enough to keep it up until we make land."
✨
Venn was a whirlwind of questions and friendliness once on board. She spoke to every crewman and sailor, even the cabin boys, delighted in learning all about the workings of the ship. The first day was brilliantly sunny and everyone was pleased. The waters and waves were calm and the wind was fine and strong.
When the ship had passed from the clear blue into the dark black water, smooth as glass, some sailors threw lines to catch dinner. The water was deeper now to catch bigger fish - a proper dinner size, one of them explained to a curious Venn. He laughed the hardest when the tug on his line turned out to be a mass of seaweed tangled and knotted with old rope.
The captain called it a good omen, signalling a last hurrah before the stormy season. "A mermaid's wedding dress!" he called it, and Venn had stared at the sopping wet pile of seaweed hanging over the edge of the boat to try and understand it.
"That's only a plant," she said. She looked a little disappointed. "Not a dress at all." The captain scoffed at her and walked away with a swagger.
"A mermaid's wedding dress," he repeated aloud for the rest of the sailors. "We're clear for sailing now, lads."
The warm, calm weather lasted only three more days.
As soon as the water became choppy and the skies dark, Venn vanished from the deck. No one, not even her companions, could budge her from her bunk. She had pulled her legs tight to her chest and sat curled in a tight little ball as the waves splashed the deck and the ship rocked uneasily. Even her smile faded away to nothing, though she was still as sweet and gentle as ever.
She moved for nothing, not even the ringing of the meal chimes. There was one member of the entourage, Grant, a barrel-chested black man whose lilac dyed dreadlocks reached his waist, who could lift and carry her to the table. Venn never refused him and once she was actually in the mess, the young woman brightened everyone's conversations with her personality. After dinner Grant took her back to her bunk where she resumed her self-imposed misery.
Agarmid could not understand it. She was so happy to see everyone at mealtimes, and always seemed so much brighter.
"Can't be helped," Bob said to him. "It's her first time on a boat."
Only Agarmid was surprised. She didn't seem seasick at all! Everyone else seemed to know already that Venn had lived a most sheltered life, and were very understanding.
"I don't believe she'd ever seen a paved road 'til I met her by one," Grant admitted. The tattooed man, whose name Agarmid had learned was Thames (and who had in addition to the fish tail on his neck a spearhead tattooed on his thigh), grunted his agreement.
"She's got a real innocence about the outside world," he said one night after Grant took her away from the mess. The others had agreed with his assessment. Agarmid wondered if her sweet smile might return with better seas and hoped against hope the storms held off.
They didn't.
They were exactly one week into the trip when the first storm hit. There was no turning back, not in those seas. The ship rocked and flew on the cresting waves, and with every wet crash Venn's smile grew darker on her paling skin.
"I'm alright," she said. No one believed her, but no one dared say so. All hope of an easy passage died and every prayer turned to seeing the ship safely to harbor. No such luck there, either. The initial storm died away for only a few hours before the next came.
Five days to port they were struck. The churning waters brought pieces of wreckage from the other storms to them. Fishing boats, stuck out too far from the capital had been destroyed they would learn later - boats whose fragmented hulls and masts swirled like wooden knives in the black, ferocious waters below.
A mangled scream from the lower decks confirmed the worst. The ship's engineer pounded up the ladders and stairs to the mid-decks, locking the flat doors behind him with a snap.
The captain appeared from the stairwell to the main deck. The travelers huddled together on one bed to take up as little space as possible as the bad news was delivered.
"We're taking on too much water, sir," the engineer sobbed. His face was white with terror. "Anyone'd drown who tried to go down to repair that hole, and the blasted storm's beating more water in with every wave. A patch won't hold from the inside."
Venn let out a sad sigh. "Oh, dear."
It wasn't much of a reaction. Agarmid wondered if she knew what it meant for a ship to take on water, if she hadn't ever been on one before. They were too far in either direction to hope for a rescue. The only luck they'd have, if the engineer could wrangle it, was to nail shut the lowest decks and pray it would keep them afloat.
Everyone else worried and sobbed softly. Even the stoic Attracta looked pale and afraid.
The captain sneered and hustled back to the stairs. He had a deck full of sailors to forewarn and get to hustling. A band of them might be able to staunch the cracks from below decks and aid the entire crew. A half dozen rushed past the bunks to seal the trap doors and the engineer stepped back to let them go by.
Venn stood slowly and sighed again, this one longer and sadder.
"I had really wanted to make this crossing, too," she said sadly. "It won't be fun after this."
Her friends shared an uneasy look.
"Venn," Grant began gruffly. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Look, I'm sorry, Venn. But - "
She wasn't listening. She was taking her time and turning all around the room. The girl with the wonderful sweet smile and gentle eyes was looking around at all her friends so fondly that it hurt them to try and speak.
"It's last ditch efforts," Thames muttered. His voice was eerie and hard to hear over the pounding waves. Agarmid shivered.
"It only needs to be repaired," Venn contradicted. As she spoke, her fingers flew through her long hair. When loose it fell in waves past her shoulders, and now she was braiding it as fast as her hands could manage. Then she looped and pinned the braid in a circle around her head and kept pinning her hair in place. "The engineer said so."
"It can't be done from inside the ship," Maryellen said gently. "Whoever tried would drown, and fail."
"From the outside, then," Venn decided. Finished with her hair arranging, she moved to the stairs but stopped short of going up. "But I'll need a mallet."
They exchanged another look. The engineer shook his head, too. "You? You haven't stepped outside a foot in days."
"I was being careful."
"It's a storm, girl," he continued. His warning sparked even in his eyes. As no one else was speaking he made it his point to put it to her plainly the situation they were in. "And a it's bad one, too. Not the worst this crew has seen, but this's the worst predicament, and the last. There's no coming back from sinking. We're all of us dead."
Venn shook her head and looked at him pleadingly. "I'll stop it. Please."
The man threw up his hands.
"Who am I to deny you? Take it, girl. Throw yourself into the seas for mercy with a mallet at your hip. It's no different than holding one inside of here."
She wrapped both hands tight around its wooden handle and graciously accepted his offering of long iron nails.
That was a little too much for her companions to stand. Bob took her shoulder in his hand and shook her, and Thames told Venn in a yell to sit and think clearly. Attracta and Maryellen shook their heads and frowned at her, adding that she was too naive for such thoughts.
Slowly, Grant took to his feet. His hands clenched and unclenched into fists. Even more slowly, he pushed Bob's hands away.
"Venn," he said quietly, "you're brave."
"Really?"
"Yes," Grant promised her. "Really."
Her carefree smile almost returned in full force, but Venn shook her head before it could. She looked almost afraid as she told them all, "You won't think so soon."
Then she ran.
Agarmid followed her to the top of the stairwell, followed closely by the traveling group, and they all stopped behind her when she froze under the little archway. Together they looked out on deck. Waves thrashed the boat and men were roped together to stay on board. The captain shouted and harassed them from the mast.
He caught sight of the people in the doorway and exploded with rage. "Get out! Get back! Idiots, fools! Planning to swim for it?!"
Venn tightened her grip on the mallet.
"I'm really not brave at all," she said. Agarmid heard her. He tried to yell that she was wrong, but she was quicker. Venn leaped out of the doorway and onto the deck. It took her legs three quick strides to reach the port side.
But something was wrong. Agarmid kept staring and could not understand. Someone behind him was gasping and the sailors began to yell and swear, a sound which quickly became shock and surprise.
Venn did not have legs to run with. When her hands caught the side of the ship and she vaulted herself overboard, her torso was followed not by a pair of legs but a glistening barrage of fish's scales. A glimmer of pink and gold cut through the black sea and then there was nothing at all.
His mouth was dry. Agarmid blinked hard, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. He, and all the others on deck, had run to the spot she had dived from. "What?" he asked, and then in a louder voice he asked again, "What?"
"Oh," Thames said. His face fell. "Oh, no. Oh, the pendant."
The pendant? Agarmid still did not understand, but the others did. Maryellen gasped.
"The patching," she said. Her eyes were wide. "And the waves. She wouldn't step out of the bunks when the - oh, the waves were splashing so on deck, and it stopped her. Of course."
Bob nodded. Grant let out a nervous laugh. The captain stared below the water without blinking.
"Well, I'll be," he said. "Who'd've thought it?"
"Thought what?" Agarmid asked timidly, and Attracta touched his shoulder. She pointed to a spot below the churning waters and his gaze followed her golden eyes. It almost couldn't be seen it was so faint, but there it was. The glint of scales not so far away.
"Our Venn," Attracta told him, words that froze Agarmid to the side. "She's a mermaid."
✨
"What?"
As Agarmid Teo turned, the young man found himself staring at the speaker - a lovely young woman, he thought, with her shining brown hair intricately braided and twisted to frame her serenely smiling face. It was her graceful smile he noticed first, and then her large and gentle eyes, and quite lastly the small band of travelers she stood with who all looked most uncomfortable.
Two women and four more men stood in a half circle around their packs watching the exchange. None looked happy, but Agarmid was sure that was due to the price of the ferry. The rain and storm season was coming in fast now in this country, and only one ship dared sail. The captain was a well known miser and had jacked his prices too high for anyone to board his vessel in the good weather, but now there was no choice. To get to the capital, the sea had to be crossed. It was a solid two week voyage - and Agarmid did not have even a day to wait if he was to make his deadline.
"We can work for the coin," one of the young woman's companions was saying softly. This woman had dark skin near the color of night and eyes that sparked like liquid gold. Her tone seemed almost fearful. "Better we do, than this."
The woman with the braided hair did not seem to notice or hear her companion. Instead she held out her hand to shake his, and the young man reached for it without hesitation even as the rest of her party began to shirk guiltily backward.
"Hello," she said. "I'm Venilia. Or Venn, if you'd like. I like Venn."
He would never forget that, and he was sure of it. "My name's Agarmid," he responded. He tried to match her sweet smile with one of his own. Venn turned carefully to look over her shoulder.
"We are traveling together," she explained. Each in their turn nodded to Agarmid in greeting, though none gave their name. They were watching Venn with resigned eyes and for the first time, he wondered why. She was so earnest and gentle, anyone could tell that. Perhaps it was he that they were wary of, Agarmid considered. A stranger's presence would certainly be unsettling ...
Then Venn was asking him, "Will you join us at crossing?"
One of the men spoke in a deep baritone. A tattoo on his neck of a fish's tail bobbed as he spoke. He said, "It's just as expensive for one as for many to raise the coin. At least there's the company to keep."
Agarmid nodded. Before he could say anything, Venn shook her head.
"Not if he has a pin, or even a needle."
The light of sunset flashed over a weather vane in the heart of the village. It caught on the pretty opal charm the girl wore around her neck and reflected in her sparkling eyes. At once, Agarmid forgot his hesitation at Venn's sweet disposition. The others could be as wary of him as they liked, if she was going to be so friendly and pleasant to make up for them.
"I know this village," Agarmid found himself saying. "I grew up just across this sea, in the capital. I know well the reputation of this ship and its captain. It'll cost more than any pin's worth to go by him."
Another man nodded his agreement. His hair was shaved close, with an intricate rose pattern shaved closer. "It's so," he rumbled in a fine tenor. "I know it is. But you should know, this woman-- "
Agarmid must have looked offended for her, as the man quickly turned away. He could not have known that a dozen sailors were passing near to him, and within earshot.
Venn kept smiling her gentle smile at Agarmid and her companions all. "But do you have a needle?"
He did. He missed the look that passed between Venn's party when he set it in her hand, but Agarmid could tell that Venn was completely thankful. No one had ever been so grateful to receive a half rusted hat pin, he thought, for the look of utter delight writ on the girl's face was incomparable.
Carefully, he noted, Venn cradled the pin to her chest in both hands as lovingly as possible. She thanked him and spun suddenly on her heel as if to go. Agarmid flustered.
"Er," he began, "what happens now?"
"Now?"
Venn looked at the pin in her hands and said simply, "Now I'll go to pay our way. But I must be alone, in order for this to work," she stressed. "Attracta, won't you ready our things?"
The black woman with the golden eyes nodded stiffly. Venn waved and swept down the dirt-trampled path alone, toward the docks. Agarmid watched until she turned the corner out of sight before he looked at his new traveling companions and smiled nervously.
"She'll be fine, won't she?"
The shaved head man, whose name Agarmid would later learn was Bob, grunted. "It's not her I worry for. It's the rest of us."
"What?" Agarmid frowned. "What do you mean?"
The other woman of the group stepped carefully around their packed belongings. Her black hair was choppy and uneven and her face was very round, just like the rest of her. She was called Maryellen and she hated it being misspelled.
"About Venn," she began slowly, "you see... "
Bob snorted. "She's an illusionist. A mind rewriter. We'll all be in for it if anyone on that boat realizes they've been paid the passage for six with a rusty needle instead of gold."
Agarmid's heart dropped into his stomach. "How could anyone mistake something so small for such a great sum?"
The others all shook their heads and began to gather their things. The young woman's braided face smiled brightly as she waved them down to the starboard ramp. The crotchety old captain limped along behind her with a self-satisfied greedy smirk.
Attracta saw the amazement on Agarmid's face. She shoved a heavy carton into his arms and jerked her head to the shoreline. "Yeah. She's that good. Now you'd best hope she's good enough to keep it up until we make land."
Venn was a whirlwind of questions and friendliness once on board. She spoke to every crewman and sailor, even the cabin boys, delighted in learning all about the workings of the ship. The first day was brilliantly sunny and everyone was pleased. The waters and waves were calm and the wind was fine and strong.
When the ship had passed from the clear blue into the dark black water, smooth as glass, some sailors threw lines to catch dinner. The water was deeper now to catch bigger fish - a proper dinner size, one of them explained to a curious Venn. He laughed the hardest when the tug on his line turned out to be a mass of seaweed tangled and knotted with old rope.
The captain called it a good omen, signalling a last hurrah before the stormy season. "A mermaid's wedding dress!" he called it, and Venn had stared at the sopping wet pile of seaweed hanging over the edge of the boat to try and understand it.
"That's only a plant," she said. She looked a little disappointed. "Not a dress at all." The captain scoffed at her and walked away with a swagger.
"A mermaid's wedding dress," he repeated aloud for the rest of the sailors. "We're clear for sailing now, lads."
The warm, calm weather lasted only three more days.
As soon as the water became choppy and the skies dark, Venn vanished from the deck. No one, not even her companions, could budge her from her bunk. She had pulled her legs tight to her chest and sat curled in a tight little ball as the waves splashed the deck and the ship rocked uneasily. Even her smile faded away to nothing, though she was still as sweet and gentle as ever.
She moved for nothing, not even the ringing of the meal chimes. There was one member of the entourage, Grant, a barrel-chested black man whose lilac dyed dreadlocks reached his waist, who could lift and carry her to the table. Venn never refused him and once she was actually in the mess, the young woman brightened everyone's conversations with her personality. After dinner Grant took her back to her bunk where she resumed her self-imposed misery.
Agarmid could not understand it. She was so happy to see everyone at mealtimes, and always seemed so much brighter.
"Can't be helped," Bob said to him. "It's her first time on a boat."
Only Agarmid was surprised. She didn't seem seasick at all! Everyone else seemed to know already that Venn had lived a most sheltered life, and were very understanding.
"I don't believe she'd ever seen a paved road 'til I met her by one," Grant admitted. The tattooed man, whose name Agarmid had learned was Thames (and who had in addition to the fish tail on his neck a spearhead tattooed on his thigh), grunted his agreement.
"She's got a real innocence about the outside world," he said one night after Grant took her away from the mess. The others had agreed with his assessment. Agarmid wondered if her sweet smile might return with better seas and hoped against hope the storms held off.
They didn't.
They were exactly one week into the trip when the first storm hit. There was no turning back, not in those seas. The ship rocked and flew on the cresting waves, and with every wet crash Venn's smile grew darker on her paling skin.
"I'm alright," she said. No one believed her, but no one dared say so. All hope of an easy passage died and every prayer turned to seeing the ship safely to harbor. No such luck there, either. The initial storm died away for only a few hours before the next came.
Five days to port they were struck. The churning waters brought pieces of wreckage from the other storms to them. Fishing boats, stuck out too far from the capital had been destroyed they would learn later - boats whose fragmented hulls and masts swirled like wooden knives in the black, ferocious waters below.
A mangled scream from the lower decks confirmed the worst. The ship's engineer pounded up the ladders and stairs to the mid-decks, locking the flat doors behind him with a snap.
The captain appeared from the stairwell to the main deck. The travelers huddled together on one bed to take up as little space as possible as the bad news was delivered.
"We're taking on too much water, sir," the engineer sobbed. His face was white with terror. "Anyone'd drown who tried to go down to repair that hole, and the blasted storm's beating more water in with every wave. A patch won't hold from the inside."
Venn let out a sad sigh. "Oh, dear."
It wasn't much of a reaction. Agarmid wondered if she knew what it meant for a ship to take on water, if she hadn't ever been on one before. They were too far in either direction to hope for a rescue. The only luck they'd have, if the engineer could wrangle it, was to nail shut the lowest decks and pray it would keep them afloat.
Everyone else worried and sobbed softly. Even the stoic Attracta looked pale and afraid.
The captain sneered and hustled back to the stairs. He had a deck full of sailors to forewarn and get to hustling. A band of them might be able to staunch the cracks from below decks and aid the entire crew. A half dozen rushed past the bunks to seal the trap doors and the engineer stepped back to let them go by.
Venn stood slowly and sighed again, this one longer and sadder.
"I had really wanted to make this crossing, too," she said sadly. "It won't be fun after this."
Her friends shared an uneasy look.
"Venn," Grant began gruffly. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Look, I'm sorry, Venn. But - "
She wasn't listening. She was taking her time and turning all around the room. The girl with the wonderful sweet smile and gentle eyes was looking around at all her friends so fondly that it hurt them to try and speak.
"It's last ditch efforts," Thames muttered. His voice was eerie and hard to hear over the pounding waves. Agarmid shivered.
"It only needs to be repaired," Venn contradicted. As she spoke, her fingers flew through her long hair. When loose it fell in waves past her shoulders, and now she was braiding it as fast as her hands could manage. Then she looped and pinned the braid in a circle around her head and kept pinning her hair in place. "The engineer said so."
"It can't be done from inside the ship," Maryellen said gently. "Whoever tried would drown, and fail."
"From the outside, then," Venn decided. Finished with her hair arranging, she moved to the stairs but stopped short of going up. "But I'll need a mallet."
They exchanged another look. The engineer shook his head, too. "You? You haven't stepped outside a foot in days."
"I was being careful."
"It's a storm, girl," he continued. His warning sparked even in his eyes. As no one else was speaking he made it his point to put it to her plainly the situation they were in. "And a it's bad one, too. Not the worst this crew has seen, but this's the worst predicament, and the last. There's no coming back from sinking. We're all of us dead."
Venn shook her head and looked at him pleadingly. "I'll stop it. Please."
The man threw up his hands.
"Who am I to deny you? Take it, girl. Throw yourself into the seas for mercy with a mallet at your hip. It's no different than holding one inside of here."
She wrapped both hands tight around its wooden handle and graciously accepted his offering of long iron nails.
That was a little too much for her companions to stand. Bob took her shoulder in his hand and shook her, and Thames told Venn in a yell to sit and think clearly. Attracta and Maryellen shook their heads and frowned at her, adding that she was too naive for such thoughts.
Slowly, Grant took to his feet. His hands clenched and unclenched into fists. Even more slowly, he pushed Bob's hands away.
"Venn," he said quietly, "you're brave."
"Really?"
"Yes," Grant promised her. "Really."
Her carefree smile almost returned in full force, but Venn shook her head before it could. She looked almost afraid as she told them all, "You won't think so soon."
Then she ran.
Agarmid followed her to the top of the stairwell, followed closely by the traveling group, and they all stopped behind her when she froze under the little archway. Together they looked out on deck. Waves thrashed the boat and men were roped together to stay on board. The captain shouted and harassed them from the mast.
He caught sight of the people in the doorway and exploded with rage. "Get out! Get back! Idiots, fools! Planning to swim for it?!"
Venn tightened her grip on the mallet.
"I'm really not brave at all," she said. Agarmid heard her. He tried to yell that she was wrong, but she was quicker. Venn leaped out of the doorway and onto the deck. It took her legs three quick strides to reach the port side.
But something was wrong. Agarmid kept staring and could not understand. Someone behind him was gasping and the sailors began to yell and swear, a sound which quickly became shock and surprise.
Venn did not have legs to run with. When her hands caught the side of the ship and she vaulted herself overboard, her torso was followed not by a pair of legs but a glistening barrage of fish's scales. A glimmer of pink and gold cut through the black sea and then there was nothing at all.
His mouth was dry. Agarmid blinked hard, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. He, and all the others on deck, had run to the spot she had dived from. "What?" he asked, and then in a louder voice he asked again, "What?"
"Oh," Thames said. His face fell. "Oh, no. Oh, the pendant."
The pendant? Agarmid still did not understand, but the others did. Maryellen gasped.
"The patching," she said. Her eyes were wide. "And the waves. She wouldn't step out of the bunks when the - oh, the waves were splashing so on deck, and it stopped her. Of course."
Bob nodded. Grant let out a nervous laugh. The captain stared below the water without blinking.
"Well, I'll be," he said. "Who'd've thought it?"
"Thought what?" Agarmid asked timidly, and Attracta touched his shoulder. She pointed to a spot below the churning waters and his gaze followed her golden eyes. It almost couldn't be seen it was so faint, but there it was. The glint of scales not so far away.
"Our Venn," Attracta told him, words that froze Agarmid to the side. "She's a mermaid."