Lost at Sea Bk. 02 Ch. 04

"The helm needs a course check," Danica said to Will as she passed by. Will nodded and scanned the skyline in every direction. He called up to the Lookout. "Land check!"

"Land ho, five of the clock, and six of the clock!" the lookout called down. Will walked up the stairs to the Sterncastle and looked out the back, scanning. After a while he could make out the land shadow in the distance, and a smaller one to it's right. That gave him a reference. He checked his compass and headed to the Captain's cabin.

He opened up the fold-out desk, pulled the chair off the wall and got to work. Navigation on the open sea was all about inference. Landmarks helped a lot, and already having a rough idea of where they were took a lot of the work out of it. This wouldn't take long. They were less than a day out from Bastard's Bay. The Kestrel was a decently fast ship, but the wind was low and they were burdened, so their average cruising speed didn't vary much. He slipped the map beneath a sheet of glass and made a few measurements. Then he marked out an area with a grease pencil and a protractor.

From there it was easy to find the two islands he'd seen on the horizon and triangulate the Kestrel's approximate position. From that point, he laid down a ruler to their first course marker and took a bearing. They wanted to head east-by-northeast until they reached the island of Barcola. It would take roughly two days if nothing out of the ordinary happened.

He closed up the desk and headed back to the Sterncastle. "East-by-northeast, Helmsman," he said to the stocky man at the wheel. "We'll be maintaining that for about two days."

"Aye," the helmsman said adjusting his course slightly. Behind him on the bench, Colin Strong was stretched out, asleep. WIll chuckled to himself. "Helm, if you need a break, let me know. Mister Strong needs his rest."

"Aye, sir," the young helmsman said, obviously agreeing. "I could actually use a break now to use the head, if you don't mind."

Will nodded and took the wheel. The current was tugging the rudder to port, but not strongly. He watched the swabs and riggers working on Lace's new custom rigging ladders. The vertical ropes were laid out in the flat-bottomed teardrop shape Will had imagined. The horizontal ropes were straight. The crew was sitting on the deck in pairs, working to splice and reinforce the ropes together where they crossed.

"Ship, ho! No colors! Three of the clock!" came the call from the lookout. Will squinted but couldn't see it. This was a fairly well traveled area. There were plenty of ships around. The lookout hadn't been calling them much, but a ship flying no colors was worth looking at. Right on cue, Danica climbed the stairs from the main deck and expanded her spyglass. Thirty seconds later she closed it.

"She's not moving, and not flying anything," Danica said.

"Any distress flags? Fire?" Will asked.

"No." Danica passed Will her spyglass. "Take a look for yourself if you want."

Will expanded the glass and scanned until the distant silhouette came into focus. Two masts. Long prow. Flat back. Sails up. Riding high. No colors. Not moving. "Looks like another Caravel, but she's just parked. She's not even rolling with the waves. She's caught. Is there a reef or shallow island there?" Will asked.

"You're the navigator, you tell me?" Danica shrugged.

Will shook his head. "There's a few disappearing islands around here, and two reefs. Our course shouldn't take us near any of them."

"Might just be a wreck." Danica said.

"If she is, she's a pretty one. Someone's going to make good money on the salvage if they can get her unstuck. I don't see any signs of distress or damage. She might have beached herself of purpose for repairs or something," Will handed the spyglass back to Danica.

"Well, we'll be going right past her. We'll keep an eye out," Danica shrugged.

____________________

Bella went down her mental checklist of everything she needed to do to prepare for this. Her foci and paints were laid out on the bed. She finished putting the last marks of the sigil she was drawing on the mirror. She was ready.

She was thankful that Captain Vex had worked so hard to help refill her internal energy reservoirs. That would help. She stuck her head into the wash room to look out the rear portholes. It was nearing dusk. Almost time.

Then she looked at the floor. "Damn it," she muttered. She hadn't thought of that. The floor was wood. The beams laid next to each other created small gaps. There was no way to draw a proper protection circle on a floor like this. She looked up at the ceiling. Same thing. She looked around the room, spying the bed, but shook her head. She did not want to ruin the Captain's sheets. Time was an issue.

She ran out of the cabin and carefully stepped over the ropes on the deck until she got to where Will and Danica were looking out at something on the horizon.

"I need a sail," she said to Will.

Danica turned around to look at Bella, then looked up at the massive billowing cloths overhead and laughed. "We're kinda using them."

"No, a smaller one. Maybe six or eight feet square?" Bella explained.

"You need a patch," Will said.

"I... guess so?" Bella shrugged. "If that's what a small sail is, sure."

"Go down to the hold and find my husband. Tell him Danica said you need a sail patch," she smiled. Bella nodded and ran off.

"So that's your witch? I can see why you like her, " Danica said with an exaggerated leer. "Any idea what that was about."

"Witch stuff. I've learned not to ask questions," Will shrugged.

Below decks was cramped. She turned into the narrow center hall. Next to her the stairs continued to go down to the lower deck. Behind her was a door with a brass placard that read 'Galley.' Ahead was a hall dotted with doors on each side that eventually opened into the large, dimly lit middle hold. There were very few lights below deck. Even though it was getting later in the day the tropical sun was still bright up top, so plunging into the hold left her briefly blind. She blinked and squinted, her eyes slowly adjusting. "Make way," two crewman said, squeezing past her hauling a barrel between them. She pressed against the wall in a shallow doorway. "I'm looking for Mister North," she said. One of the crewmen jerked his head down the hall.

"Quartermaster's hold," he said. She headed down the hall feeling a bit scrunched by the low ceiling.

The mid hold was a wide storage space stacked with crates and barrels along the walls and against the two support pillars that stood in the center on each end of the hold. It occurred to her that those must be the masts. The center area was mostly clear save for the ropes and mechanisms that controlled the large hatch above that went to the top deck. She made her way through, avoiding the crew that was rearranging and resecuring the way things were stored.

Then she was back in narrow passages again. At the far end was an open doorway with a brass placard that read "Quartermaster."

The room looked like a prison or a bank. Floor to ceiling metal bars blocked off access. Many smaller crates were stacked against the walls, as well as a number of shelves, tall cabinets and a dozen footlockers. Nearly everything was roped or chained down. Mister North sat at a table on the other side, scowling at a stack of papers. He noticed the movement in the doorway and glanced up.

"Well now, you're a welcome change from my usual customers," North smiled. "You're Miss Fortuna, right?"

"Yes," Bella said. "And you are mister North?"

"That's what they tell me," North shrugged. "What can I do for our new ship's witch?"

Even though she was used to Bastard's Bay mostly knowing what she was, she'd had years to develop her good reputation there, and she had a Magistrate registration to keep people from acting on their worst superstitions. This was a new place, with new people and the fact that everyone knew what she was already made her extremely uncomfortable. Still, the crew of the Kestrel really did seem nice. She shook off the discomfort and focused on the job at hand. "Danica told me to tell you that I need a sail patch," Bella said.

North stood up and came to the bars. He opened the prison-style door and then shut and locked it behind him. "How big's the tear?"

"Tear?" Bella asked. Then she realized what he was thinking. "Oh, no. There's no tear. I just need to draw on it."

North looked amused. "Alright. Follow me."

They made their way back to the mid hold and over to a stack of crates. North looked at the numbers written on them until he found the one he wanted, then opened it up with a pry bar. He gestured to the stacks of folded cloth inside. "All yours. Find the one you want, put the rest back."

"Oh, and a hammer and nails?" she asked. North pointed to the mast. On it hung six hammers from pegs. A half full bucket of nails was roped to the base of it.

"Thank you!" Bella said, staring to pull cloth out of the crate. North gave her a smile and a nod and headed back to his office.

It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for. Her bundled up prizes in hand, she ran back up to the top deck and squinted through the glare. The sun was beginning to dip low on the horizon. Now she was in a race against nightfall.

Inside the Captain's cabin she stretched out the sail cloth on the floor and started hammering down the corners, trying to keep the cloth as taut as possible. Then she began to draw a protection circle. This needed to be precises. She used a needle and thread from her bag to sew a thread right into the cloth as an anchor point, then pulled out a little more than three feet of thread before tying the end of it to a paintbrush. Then she painstakingly drew out a circle by keeping the threat taut and dipping the brush into a small ink pot and using it to mark the arc of the thread until she had a full circle.

She looked out the portholes. The sky was beginning to turn darker colors. This was going to be close.

Around the perimeter of the circle she painted out symbols to draw and guide and repel various kinds of energy. Within two of the symbols she placed two lit candles, one black and one white. Right below where the mirror hung. Then she stepped into the circle, stood up and looked into the mirror. Piece by piece she tossed her clothes behind her onto the bed.

Naked, she began to draw on her own face, the markings perfectly matching the ones already drawn on the mirror.

Adjusting her position slightly, she matched up the marks on her face with the ones on the mirror so that they overlapped, matching them in her field of vision. The lanterns on the walls had been turned down dim. The candles lit at the edge of the circle gave her face a strange, severe cast.

Now came the hard part.

"At your hour, by your power, in the shadows and alone, by circle bound, the lost will be found, what is mine I will be shown.

In my own name and by my own will, I invoke the Traveler..."