At four in the morning, the Atlantic finally stopped trying to kill them personally.
The Dreadnork still rolled unpleasantly through the swell, but the screaming gale had dropped away into dripping canvas, exhausted creaking timbers, and an entirely new kind of dread - total silence. The deck smelled strongly of wet rope, salt water, and spilled tea.
Octavia leaned against the rail, rubbing salt from her eyes, thoroughly reassessing her previous, lifelong confidence in the concept of “remaining alive.” High above her in the shrouds, AuntieDamsonCrumble was supervising emergency sail adjustments with the calm authority of someone born disappointed in other people’s knotwork.
“No, tighter than that!” she shouted downward into the gloom. “This is an ocean, not decorative string!”
Near the stern, Hedgehog and RandomHypatia had colonised the chart table beneath a swinging lantern, while several bedraggled gerbils conducted an emergency triage of their navigation equipment.
“The sextant is recoverable,” RandomHypatia muttered. “The chronometer is recoverable.”
One of the gerbils held up a dripping, disintegrated fragment of laminated paper with the careful grief usually associated with small funerals.
“But the constellation reference guide...” RandomHypatia continued, “...is now describing entirely new stars.” She pointed upward into the heavy, clouded darkness. “We need one clear patch of sky. Without it, we are blind.”
At that moment, ChristmasStars emerged from the companionway. She didn’t make a sound. She simply materialised, stepping onto the edge of the table as if she had always been a part of the woodwork. Nobody had realised she was aboard.
ChristmasStars ignored everyone. She walked across the map of the Atlantic Ocean, her dark paws leaving faint watermarks over the shipping lanes. Then she stopped. For several seconds, she studied the ink-lines with a profound, heavy concern for the state of modern navigation.
Then, with slow, deliberate grace, she turned in a tight circle and settled facing north-west, straight towards Maine.
RandomHypatia stopped speaking mid-sentence. Swashbuckled leaned forward, her face lighting up with a sudden, reckless delight.
High above the rigging, the thick underbelly of the storm-clouds shifted. Only briefly. A narrow fracture opened in the dark, and the cold, diamond bite of the northern sky pierced through. RandomHypatia glanced upward automatically, tracking the sudden light.
Then she looked down at the cat.
In the dim, amber light, ChristmasStars’ black fur seemed to swallow the room, and then it began to burn. Tiny, dust-fine points of gold shimmered along her flanks.
RandomHypatia’s breath hitched. Her eyes flicked between the sky and the fur.
There, curved across the cat’s left flank, was the unmistakable W of Cassiopeia. Orion stretched tight along her ribs, his belt gleaming in three perfect, golden pinpricks. And right at the crest of the cat’s shoulder, burning with a steady, quiet ferocity, was Polaris.
The cat examined the wet chart beneath her paws, where the golden point of her shoulder cast a faint, warm shadow.
A long, heavy silence settled over the deck, punctuated only by the creak of the timber.
“…good Lord,” whispered RandomHypatia, “she’s showing us the way!”
ChristmasStars blinked once, a slow, golden-eyed gesture, and tucked her paws neatly beneath her chest, pinning the map in place.
RandomHypatia snapped out of her daze and turned sharply towards the helm. “Turn! Three degrees north!” she barked.
Swashbuckled didn’t ask questions. She threw her weight into the wheel instantly. Above them, the great square sails groaned, shifting softly against the wind as The Dreadnork altered course beneath the stars.
Octavia stared at the cat, her mouth slightly open, the exhaustion forgotten. Nobody said another word. Because unfortunately, nobody appeared entirely certain the cat was wrong.
One cluster of gerbils began drying navigational instruments with napkins while arguing fiercely about whether seawater counted as “marine damp” or “ordinary damp.” Another group appeared to be conducting an emergency census of surviving biscuits beneath an oilcloth near the mainmast. Near the stern, two more were attempting to reheat a teapot using a lantern, a saucepan and what seemed increasingly like theological reasoning.
Then Swashbuckled looked up from the helm towards the starboard rail. Her expression changed instantly. She crossed the deck in three quick strides and leaned out into the darkness beyond the hull.
“Where is the longboat?” Swashbuckled demanded, her voice cutting sharply through the quiet.
Octavia rushed to the rail beside her, her stomach dropping faster than it had during the worst of the storm’s plunges. She strained her eyes, staring out across the shifting, featureless valleys of the Atlantic.
There was nothing. Just empty, rolling black water.
Throughout the entire gruelling night, the longboat had kept pace, rising and falling on the waves just a stone’s throw from The Dreadnork’s hull. Six fiercely capable Scandinavian women had been pulling at the heavy oars, matching the galleon’s erratic rhythm through sheer, stubborn muscle, all under the sharp, unyielding command of NotAtMyAge.
Now, the patch of ocean where they should have been was completely vacant.
“Did they capsize?” Octavia whispered, a cold spike of panic hitting her chest. “Did the storm take them under?”
“Not with NotAtMyAgeat the tiller,” Swashbuckled muttered, her jaw clenched as she scanned the darkness. “She knows how to ride out a swell better than any of us. But if they lost sight of our timbers in the thick of the downpour...”
“Then they could be half a mile away, or five,” RandomHypatia peered out into the gloom. “But the probability of an accidental reunion is mathematically discouraging.”
“NotAtMyAge!” JanesLittleGirl called out, having scrambled halfway down the shrouds. She cupped her hands around her mouth, throwing her voice into the empty night. “Serious Scandinavians! Can anyone hear us?!”
Only the low, heavy slosh of the Atlantic swell answered.
A devastated gerbil let out a low, tragic squeak, abandoning the soggy constellation chart entirely. “They had the pickled herring. And the extra dry socks.”
A heavy, suffocating stillness settled back over The Dreadnork. They were blind and drifting somewhere in the vast expanse of the Atlantic. They had lost their shadow, their muscle, and six of the toughest sailors they had.
They were entirely alone.