"They've gone and shot out Henrietta's harness chain," he announced seriously. "Broke it clean in two! She's pulling us by the lead alone, which means we barely have any control and we're dragging low in the water. We can't escape unless I get down there and Reparo the harness chain straight away. I need you to take the reins and hold on as tightly as you can. It's absolutely essential that you not let go, no matter what, understand?"
James gulped, remembering a somewhat similar experience at the beginning of the summer. Only then, it had been Merlin and the brake lever of the Hogwarts Express. He leaned forward and gripped the trembling pole with both hands. "Got it!" he said, his heart pounding.
"That's a lad," Barstow nodded, speaking very quickly. "Just keep her aimed straight at the Poseidon, and don't slow down no matter what. Now pay attention: the steering pole is more than just a pole. It's a wand too. I need you to watch this gauge here. When the needle reads eightyeight knots, I need you to snap the wand upright and call this incantation: Pesceopteryx! Simple as that, right? That's a lad!"
Barstow leapt down the wrought iron stairway to the deck.
"Wait!" James cried, his voice cracking. "Say it again! How'm I going to remember that?"
"I'll help you," Petra called up, cupping her hands to her mouth. "Just watch the gauge!"
James looked down at the small brass instrument, his eyes bulging. The tiny silver needle trembled between the numbers fifty and sixty.
More magical blasts peppered the ship from both directions. The pirate ships on either side were coordinating their attacks, driving the Gwyndemere straight toward the Poseidon's Peril. Black sparks swirled, darkening the air. James glanced ahead. From his position on the brass chair, he could see the blockading ship very clearly. It looked alarmingly close, growing nearer even as he watched. Pirates lined the deck, shouting and waving wands and cutlasses. Henrietta churned the water, her serpentine humps plainly visible, her serrated back sawing the waves in half.
Barstow was leaning over the bow railing, so far and so precariously that James felt sure the man must tumble over into the ocean and be driven under the weight of the advancing ship. His voice carried on the wind as he shot Reparo charms into the water, aiming for Henrietta's broken harness chain.
"How fast now?" Petra called up to James.
"Sixty-five!" he answered. "No faster! The lead is just pulling the bow too far down into the water, dragging us! We're never going to make it!"
"Reparo!" Barstow hollered, kicking his heels in the air as he leaned over the railing. "Reparo, you great useless hunk of rusty iron! Damn and drat!"
James gripped the pole so hard that his knuckles were white in the sunlight. He craned backwards and saw crewmen clinging from odd angles on the masts, watching breathlessly, their eyes wide and waiting. The Scarlet Mist and the Three-Eyed Isis tracked the Gwyndemere on both sides, frighteningly close, hemming them in. James could hear the shouts and whoops of the pirates from their rocking decks.
"REPARO!" Barstow shouted, his voice straining.
"It's no use!" James called out, watching as the Poseidon's Peril filled his vision. The pirates on the deck had begun to scatter as the Gwyndemere bore down on them. Henrietta dove under the waves, preparing to swim under the other ship's long hull.
Below, Petra drew a deep breath. To James, she seemed eerily calm. She closed her eyes.
Deep beneath the deck, a dull clatter and a metallic clang sounded. The Gwyndemere lurched violently and rose onto the waves, buoyed up suddenly and virtually leaping out of the water. The steering pole loosened in James' grip, no longer bearing the full weight of Henrietta as she pulled the ship.
"Aha!" Barstow cried in disbelief. "The chain's repaired! Go! Go!"
James boggled, still looking up at the Poseidon's Peril. The Gwyndemere was rushing toward it, doomed to ram it in mere seconds.
"James!" Petra called. "How fast?"
James tore his eyes from the looming ship. "Eighty-five… just a little more…!"
"On my mark, mates!" Barstow bellowed, raising both hands.
"Eighty-eight!" James cried.
"Pesceopteryx!" Petra shouted, cupping her hands to her mouth again.
James repeated the incantation as loudly and accurately as he could, jerking the steering pole upright. Simultaneously, Barstow hollered an order to his mates in the ship's rigging. The response was immediate and shocking. Henrietta lunged forward, so quickly and powerfully that her entire body angled up out of the water, trailed by a sparkling wreath of seawater. Two leathery shapes unfurled from her back and snapped open like parachutes, spraying fine mist. Henrietta, it seemed, had wings. She pumped them in one enormous, muscular stroke and shot up into the air, her long body streaming lithely over the deck of the Poseidon's Peril, covering it with her shadow. Pirates scattered, and some even leapt from the deck, dropping their cutlasses as they plummeted into the heaving ocean below.
On the Gwyndemere, every sail unfurled at once, suddenly and powerfully, creating a deep reverberating thump of captured wind. The complicated riggings unfolded and flexed, acting almost like wings, and the great ship heaved out of the ocean, following in Henrietta's path. James held his breath, but the rest of the crew hollered and whooped, their voices rising in the sudden, rushing silence.
The Gwyndemere soared over the Poseidon's Peril, so low that her wet hull crushed the other ship's deckhouse, smashing it to matchsticks. She plowed over the Poseidon's main mast, breaking it like a twig and forcing the unfortunate pirate ship to roll over in the water.
James clung to the steering pole, his hair streaming behind him and his eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and terror. Henrietta moved through the air ahead of the ship like a massive, scaly banner, her body flexing and sparkling greenly, her great membranous wings swooping easily, drawing streamers of water across the sky. Finally, gently, she angled downwards, furled her great wings, and dove to meet her long shadow on the waves. She made very little splash as she plunged into the depths. Behind her, however, the Gwyndemere landed like a whale, pounding the surface and sending up an explosion of dense white water, drenching James. A moment later, the crashing waters fell away and the ship cruised on sedately, her sails flapping in the ocean breeze.
"A job well done, James!" Barstow bellowed happily. "I told you we'd be in for a wee tussle, didn't I? Why, I'm tempted to recruit you to a life on the high seas, I am! Not everyone can air-pilot an Atlantean razorback their first time out! I was sure we were going to end up riding the Poseidon home piggyback!"
James flushed, his heart still thundering with adrenaline. "Well, I don't think they got away quite as undamaged as we seem to have," he called sheepishly.
Barstow angled toward the wrought iron stairs, patting Dodongo cheerfully on his enormous head. "Ah, they'll be fine," he replied, climbing up and trading seats with James. "It isn't the first time the Poseidon's been turned turtle in the water. They'll have themselves a grand adventure of it, bashing their way through the hull into the sunlight, then repairing everything and turning her back over. Gives 'em something constructive to do for the rest of the day."
James felt himself grinning helplessly as he climbed down. Feeling slightly drunk on adrenaline, he angled over toward Dodongo and plopped down onto the edge of the cargo hold doors, resting his arm on the great ape's nose. He replayed the last few minutes in his head, not quite believing everything that had happened. Curiously, the thing that amazed him most was how Barstow had managed to repair the harness chain at the last possible moment. It had looked perfectly hopeless and James understood why: it would have been virtually impossible to see the broken harness chain under the waves, where it was being dragged by Henrietta. Furthermore, doing magic through water, as Merlin had implied earlier, was extremely tricky. So how had Barstow managed it?
James' eyes widened as he remembered something. Moments before the chain had magically reattached to the ship, Petra had been standing on the prow, her eyes closed, as if in deep concentrati
on. The last time James had seen anything like that had been…
"On the train," he muttered to himself. "On the Hogwarts Express with Merlin, when he'd made the tree grow beneath it, holding it up. But how could Petra…?"
He frowned to himself. Next to him, Dodongo stirred, pursing his lips and nodding James' arm off his nose.
James got up and looked around the deck, curious to ask Petra about what he had seen, but she was nowhere in sight. James found that he wasn't particularly surprised.
4. The Dream Story
The crew of the Gwyndemere left the sails up now that the journey was fully underway. The wind filled them and helped propel the ship swiftly across the face of the ocean. For her own part, Henrietta drove through the water like a gigantic corkscrew, never slowing, her scales sparkling wherever her serpentine humps broke the surface, her serrated back slicing the waves neatly in two.
The day turned long, hot, and hazy bright. James, Ralph, Albus, and Lucy remained on the decks until tea, and then spent the rest of the afternoon in the galley dining room, playing Winkles and Augers or drawing at the long tables with Izzy. James was surprised at how good an artist Izzy was and how amazingly prolific her drawings were. Petra had provided sheets of cheap parchment for the girl as well as a collection of crayons and quills with magically coloured inks that never ran out.
It wasn't just that Izzy's strokes were so confident and swift as she created her pictures; the pictures themselves were hauntingly engaging, somehow simplistic and complex at the same time. Entire landscapes would be summed up in three or four quick lines, whereas a tree on a hilltop would require fifteen minutes of careful, dense detail, overlaid with half a dozen unusual colours, creating something that almost seemed to hover on the parchment, or push past it, into some sort of invisible papery dimension. James tried studiously to mimic Izzy's style with no success.
Lucy sat across from them, her cheek resting on her forearm as she watched the blonde girl draw. "What's that one, Izzy?"
"It's the gazebo," Izzy answered without looking up. "The one in Papa Warren's lake."
"You mean on the lake?" Lily asked, peering across the table from her own artwork, which was much less expressive and decidedly happier, with a huge yellow sun smiling down on a simple rendition of the Burrow.
Izzy shrugged. "Either way. I only saw it once. But I remember it. I'm drawing it for Petra."
James leaned closer. There were two small figures standing in the gazebo, both girls, one taller than the other. Izzy had done a remarkably good job at representing both herself and Petra standing under the gazebo's low roof. James couldn't tell, however, if the gazebo was overlooking the lake, floating on it like a boat, or even submerged under its surface. Izzy wasn't a witch, of course, so her drawings didn't move, nonetheless there was something about the background of the gazebo picture that seemed to shift and pulse, just outside the range of vision. The drawing was strange and surreal, and James found he couldn't look at it for very long.
At the opposite end of the galley, Persephone Remora sat playing a complicated octocard game with one of her younger charges, a boy with lank black hair and pasty skin.
"Vampirates, I've no doubt," she said loftily, carefully covering one of the cards with her hand. When she lifted it, the card had turned over, revealing a picture of a capering, grinning skeleton. "I suspect they normally only hunt the ocean's face by moonlight, but it may well be that they smelled the presence of their kin. Perchance they meant for us to join them."
"Begging your pardon, Miss," one of the kitchen mates commented as he gathered the tea cups and spoons, "but there ain't no such thing as vampirates."
"I'm quite sure that that is what they would have you believe, sir," Remora sniffed delicately. "A secret and mysterious sect are they, known only to those who are doomed to be their prey."
The mate shrugged. "As you say, Miss. Person'ly, I always did find that a deadly reputation worked much better on the open sea than mysterious secrecy. Saves you having to prove yourself over and over to every new ship you chase after. Frankly, even if they do exist, life amongst your secret vampirates sounds like nothing but work, work, work, if you ask me."
"Excuse me," Remora said tiredly, rolling her eyes, "but I don't believe I did."
The young man sitting across from Remora sighed. "Mortals," he said under his breath, pretending that no one else could hear him. James saw the boy glance sideways, but James acted as if he hadn't noticed.
Eventually, after a dinner of lobster bisque, fresh sea cucumber, and Atlantean colossal clam pudding, James stood on the deck again and watched the sun dip into the distant watery horizon, turning huge and red as it went.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight," Barstow said, crossing his forearms on the deck railing next to James. "But that sky doesn't look like anybody's delight to me. Too hot and still, like a beast lying in wait. What do you think, James?"
James shrugged, unsure how to respond.
"I smell a storm in the air," Barstow went on, nodding. "A big one, methinks. Not tonight, but in the morning maybe. Could be we'll pass beyond it in the dark. Or it could be that we'll need to be prepared for a bit of a blow tomorrow. I understand you played Treus in a school rendition of The Triumvirate. Is that right?"
James glanced at Barstow, who was grinning at him crookedly. James nodded sheepishly. "You've been talking to Albus. It was just a Muggle Studies production, so we didn't do any of the magical bits, or at least not with real magic. The storm was just a big fan and a painted backdrop."
Barstow nodded gravely. "But I bet it gave you some idea of how such things happen on the high seas. Don't you worry. This won't be any magical storm like what nearly overtook the fabled Treus and his crew. There's no Donovan in a jealous rage, whipping up any tempests for us to sail into. Still, even your average, run-o'-the-mill Atlantic squall can put a scare into an unwary traveler's soul. You'll be prepared to keep everyone calm since you've had a taste of it before, even if it was just a big fan and a painted backdrop. Am I right?"
James nodded and frowned seriously, gazing out over the waves.
On the horizon, the sun seemed to bleed and ripple, bloated deep red. And then, so swiftly that James thought he could see it happening, it slipped beneath the rim of the world. Darkness fell over the ship like a curtain, with no stars this time, and only a low moon, thin as a sickle, on the opposite horizon. Lanterns were lit on the masts, but their light didn't reach the water. The ship seemed to ply an invisible, cavernous lake, impossibly deep and full of mystery. Barstow went to take his shift on the brass chair at the ship's prow, and James bid him goodnight. Not liking being alone on the deck between that featureless black sky and bottomless, invisible ocean, James quickly descended into the comforting closeness and warm lantern-glow below-decks.
Quietly, he made his way to the tiny stateroom that he was sharing with his brother and Ralph. For now, the room was empty. Two sets of narrow bunks framed a single porthole with a sink below it. The porthole window was seamlessly black, like an onyx eye. James twitched the small curtain closed, then hunkered and pulled his duffle bag out from beneath the lower bunk on his right. A moment later, he clambered up to the top bunk, his wand lit and Petra's parchment parcel in his hand. He sat cross-legged in the center of the rough, woolen blanket, set the seamless packet onto the pillow, and tapped it with his glowing wand.
"Revelierus," he said carefully. Like an origami flower, the parchment blossomed, unfolding and spreading, until it had returned to its original form. A small sheaf of loose parchment, covered in Petra's neat, dense handwriting, lay on the pillow. James could read the title, written in larger, flowing script along the top: The Girl on the Dock. It was underlined darkly, the lines embedded in the parchment, as if they had been made with a lot of force. James realized he was holding his breath. Slowly, he let it out, picked up the first page of Petra's dream story, and began to read.
The Girl on the Dock
It is the middle of th
e night. The moon is huge and high, reflecting off the surface of the lake. I lead Izzy by the hand, out of the woods and toward the shimmering lake. Suddenly she stops.
"I don't want to go there," she says.
"Why not?" I say. "It's only the lake".
"I just don't want to go, that's all," she replies, shaking her head.
She is afraid, yet I do not think she has seen the dagger I carry concealed in my other hand.
"It'll be alright, Iz," I say. "I'll hold your hand the whole time."
Izzy looks at the lake and then up at me with large, serious eyes and nods once. We continue toward the dock, but she stops again at the top step.
"I don't want to go any further, Petra."
"But I want to show you something," I say. I am surprised at her reluctance. I tighten my grip on her small hand and coax her down the stairs to the wooden planks of the dock.
"I don't want to see the gazebo," she says. "It's creepy. Please, Petra." I realize she has remembered the incident with the dead spiders; the day I saw my mother's face in the lake, the day I understood I could still bring her back, if only the sacrifice was great enough. The dead spiders were only enough to show me her reflection. To speak to her, I must offer something much more. I told Izzy that I was looking down in the water because I could see the old sunken gazebo in its watery grave, but she suspects more. She is unusually sharp in my presence. Her own mother would barely recognize her.
"It's not the gazebo that I want to show you," I tell her.
"What then?" she asks.
"My mother." I answer, and raise the dagger in one hand, Izzy's open palm in the other. She screams and begins to struggle, pulling away and trying to pry her hand out of mine.
"Stop fighting me, Iz," I plead. "It'll only hurt for a moment. Just a little blood…that's all. I need to talk to my mother! She'll tell me what to do, Iz. She'll tell us both."
Izzy is terrified and my words do not calm her. Some part of me knows I should stop, and yet I do not. I must finish the task. I grip her wrist and lower the dagger point.