Chương 25: Cold Iron

Miriam sat in silence for a moment.

"That is a heartbreaking story, Captain." Cormac shrugged.

"In the moment it always seems that way, but everyone has a sob story to tell. Particularly those people who end up on a ship like this." She looked down at the remains of dinner. It had been a freshly caught fish, sparsely seasoned with salt only. Not her favorite meal, but by far the best she'd had since arriving at the Tír.

"I suppose you want to hear about the Realms Above now?" He smiled.

"I have been dying to hear about it." Miriam shrugged.

"I think you will be disappointed. There is no magic in my world - at least, not like fórsa. Little charms and spells here and there, but nothing reliable. While the people here are certainly different from mine, I found them to be more or less the same as people I knew when I was a human. I traveled the globe in my youth, and I found the same thing - no matter where you go, people are just people. With the same flaws and virtues, though often with a different look."

"Ah, but there you are wrong, for you've already said a mouthful of fascinating things! What do you mean by globe?" Miriam snorted.

"Surely you don't think the world to be flat still, do you?"

"The Tír is flat," he said confidently.

"With absolute certainty. Well, kind of a bowl, but more or less flat." She leaned forward.

"Really? What happens when you travel to the edge?"

"You reach the Forest Unending. We're not far from it now. If you walk outward there is forest that never ceases, but turn back even for a moment and you find that you have walked not a step from where you started." Miriam grinned.

"That is incredible. No, the Realms Above are a sphere. We're held to it by gravity, generated from the weight of the earth beneath us." Cormac nodded sagely.

"Weight generated by weight. That's very interesting - but tell me about your homeland. Stories of what it's like to grow up and live in the Realms Above - I always enjoy hearing more about the people. Not much of a scholar myself." Miriam obliged. She told him about Rory Callihan's house and the giant willow tree that had sheltered her for most of her life. About growing up surrounded by family and gruff, kind woodsmen. Working after school in the lumber yards, playing with friends.

She briefly touched on her adventures when she left home, but he seemed much more enraptured with little slices of her day-to-day life. She got through her marriage and her firstborn before the captain held up a hand.

"I will never tire of hearing these stories, Miriam! But I do tire because of… well, being awake for too long. I suspect we will have the opportunity for more such dinners - I'm certain we have more we each can share. Besides…" his eyes glinted mischievously.

"There is more rope to be made tomorrow and you have lost ground to cover." Miriam thanked him for the meal and the conversation and walked back towards her closet. The rest of the ship had already hit their hammocks, so it was quiet - quiet as a ship at sea gets, anyway. Looking around furtively, she made her way to the door to the keelwell. There seemed to be no one to notice her. Kneeling down, she observed the iron lock. It seemed a simple, chunky thing.

It had been decades upon decades since she'd picked a lock, but she thought it would be easy enough to unlock. She ran a finger over the keyhole briefly and had to stifle a yelp of pain. A thin ribbon of smoke danced up from her skin. Cold iron was deadly to the Sidhe, she realized. Even a lockpick of vines, on touching it, withered and dusted away. What a horrible fate had befallen Iohannes, she realized, to be locked in an iron cage as he was.

She could sympathize with Eoin's desire to free a friend from that situation. It also added a sour note to the stories the captain had told this evening - how could they keep another person in such tortuous captivity? Scrappy street urchin? Or opportunist with no qualms about thoughtless cruelty? The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Her hammock was welcome and after stripping off her outer clothes she sank into it gratefully.

She lashed a vine to the back of the door and pulled it closed behind her. As she lay there, swaying in the rock of the waves, she fished out Solas's Reel. The light emanating from it was brighter than it had ever been, but the gem itself seemed nowhere near full yet. She had one thing she wanted to try before she slept. Reaching into her mindspace she unleashed the lock she had placed on her water fórsa. Relief flooded her as a tension she hadn't even noticed before lessened.

She was suddenly full of energy - she could probably go days more without sleeping if she needed to. She then locked down her Life nature and felt tired again instantly. With a quick flick of the wrist she tried to lash her pants to the wall with Water. They stuck, the same as Maitiú's had, but dissipated instantly when she tried to make it self-sustaining. Apparently the amount and flow of fórsa that self-sustained a manifestation would be different from nature to nature.

Miriam sighed, and spent the next hour figuring out the right balance for Water. She wasn't sure if this would ever be necessary, but her multi-nature fórsa was an unknown advantage which had already saved her life once. She wouldn't let her other nature slide. Blight was left untouched and locked, the dark lake still, a cold pane of obsidian. ✧✧✧ Interlude 2 Miriam Callihan was having the time of her life.

The Isabella was a mid-size galleon, made for long ocean voyages, but it was filled wall-to-wall with humanity. She thought it would be harder to secure a position on board, but none of the people of Haresgarten seemed interested in filling the open jobs that apparently followed ships at sea like the plague. So with very little subterfuge on her part - just roughing herself up a bit and cutting her hair short - she managed to get a spot. Masquerading as a younger boy wasn't that tough for Miriam.

She wasn't a city girl - her hands were callused and her body toned from the constant work normal life in a frontier town demanded. She aped the mannerisms of the dozens of swaggering teenagers who had swarmed her only a few years ago - all confidence with no reason for it. To be fair, that was sort of Miriam's default as well, so it wasn't much of a leap.

The only really annoying thing was binding her breasts and wearing a thicker longcoat to hide her curves - it got quite hot below deck, the bindings sometimes made it hard to breathe, and the coat was a furnace. She spent as much time on deck as possible, where the cutting wind was actually cold and she could breathe easy. She had not anticipated how violently ill she would get the instant the ship pulled up anchor, but that was a problem of only the first few days.

Her fellow handful of Haresgarten recruits passed the bucket around together. Now she danced easily across the swaying deck, tying ropes and washing the wood. It was so utterly different from her life at the sawmill, in tiny Willowcrest, that she awoke every day bursting with the anticipation of new discoveries and adventure. She often found routine and monotony instead, but it was a new type of routine and monotony!

And of course - there was an end to this routine - in just another few months the ship would arrive in Marybel, the port city of the country of Hillensia - the original birthplace of Rory Callihan himself before her grandfather had crossed the ocean on his own adventure. Miriam couldn't wait. Of course, things couldn't go so well for that long. One crewmate seemed to always have an eye on her.

He was a greasy little man, with long greasy hair under a thin bandana and the scruff of a beard that never really seemed to grow in all the way. At first Miriam didn't think anything of it - there were men here who preferred boys, just like there were anywhere - but quickly it seemed as if the man's glare was less lecherous and more… greedy.

A month into their trip, after sneaking into the pantry to nick one of the dried apples the cook said were only for special occasions, Miriam turned to find herself alone with the man, whose name was Anton. He leered at her and began making threats. He knew she was a woman. He knew she'd been stealing snacks here and there. He would tell the captain, after which he would likely maroon her on the closest island. But… he would not do this, if she helped him out with just a few little… tasks.