Ship of Magic

After a few moments, the beating of her heart calmed. Her hand wandered idly over the pieced comforter that Nana had made for her. After a moment she twisted to stare out the porthole on the other side of the room. Limitless gray sea at the bottom, vast sky in the upper third. It was her favorite view of the world, always constant yet always changing. Her eyes wandered from the view to her room. The small desk securely bolted to the bulkhead, with its tiny railing to contain papers during weather. Her book shelf and scroll rack were beside it, her books securely fenced against even the roughest weather. She even had a small chart table that would fold down, and a selection of charts, for her father had insisted she learn to navigate, even to take her own bearings. Her instruments for that were within a small cushioned case that clipped securely to the wall. Her sea clothes hung on their hooks. The only decoration in the room was a small painting of the Vivacia that she had commissioned herself. Jared Pappas had done it, and that alone would have made it a valuable painting, but it was the subject matter that endeared it to Althea. In the painting, the Vivacia's sails were bellied full of wind and her bow was cutting the waves cleanly.

Althea reached overhead, to press her hands against the exposed timbers of Vivacia's body. She could feel the near-life of the ship thrumming through them. It was not just the vibration of the wood as the ship cut the water, it was not even the thud of the sailors' feet on the decks or their gull cries as they sang out in response to the mate's commands. It was the life of the Vivacia herself, so close to waking.

The Vivacia was a liveship. Sixty-three years ago, her .keel had been laid, and that long true timber had been wizardwood. The wood of her figurehead was also wizardwood, harvested from the same great tree, as was the planking of her hull. Great-grandma Vestrit had commissioned her, had signed away the lien against the family's holdings that her father Ephron was still paying off. That was back when women could still do such things without creating a scandal, back before the stupid Chalcedean custom of showing one's wealth by keeping one's women idle had taken hold in Bingtown. Great-grandma, Father was fond of saying, had never let other folk's opinions come between her and her ship. Great-grandma had sailed the Vivacia for thirty-five years, past her seventieth birthday. One hot summer day she had simply sat down on the foredeck, said, “That'll do, boys,” and died.

Grandpa had taken over the ship next. Althea could vaguely remember him. He'd been a black bull of a man, his voice always full of the roar of the sea even when he was at home. He'd died fourteen years ago, on the deck of the Vivacia. He'd been sixty-two, and Althea herself but a little girl of four. But she had stood beside his litter with the rest of the Vestrit family and witnessed his death, and even then felt the faint quiver that ran through the Vivacia at his passing. She had known that that shiver was both regret and welcome; the Vivacia would miss her bold captain, but she welcomed the flowing of his anma into her timbers. His death put her one life closer to awakening.

And now there only remained her father's death to complete the quickening. As always, Althea felt a rush of conflicting emotions when she considered it. The thought of her father dying filled her with dread and horror. It would devastate her for her father to be gone. And if he died before she reached her majority, and authority over her fell to her mother and Kyle ... she hastily pushed the thought away, rapping her knuckles against the wood of the Vivacia to ward off the ill luck of thinking of such a bad thing.

Yet she could not deny how she anticipated the quickening of the Vivacia. How many hours had she spent, stretched out on the bowsprit as close to the figurehead as she could get as they plowed through the seas, and stared at the carved wooden lids that covered the Vivacia's eyes? She was not wood and paint like the figurehead of any ordinary ship. She was wizardwood. She was painted for now, yes, but at the moment of Ephron Vestrit's death aboard her decks, the painted locks of her tumbling hair would be not gilt but curling gold, and her high-boned cheeks would lose their rouge of paint and glow pink with her own life. She'd have green eyes. Althea knew it. Of course, everyone said that no one could truly know what color a liveship's eyes would be until those eyes were opened by the deaths of three generations. But Althea knew. The Vivacia would have eyes as green as sea lettuce. Even now, thinking of how it would be when those great emerald eyes opened, Althea had to smile.