Swift had been in a life-or-death situation once before—with Ash, that terrible morning when Ash had tumbled off the dock and Swift had jumped into the rough waves after him.

  Sometime later, he’d overheard Mum telling Caius that, hearing Swift shouting, she felt he was already lost.

  To Mum, it was like Swift was calling for help from the beyond.

  Swift had nearly died that day. And he would’ve died willingly for his friend.

  But for this?

  No.

  No fabled treasure was worth dying for. And yet—he might die this dark morning, lost to its pursuit.

  As slow, twilit moments slipped past, the impasse in the water between the Star Strider and the bleak skiff grew stale.

  The sky shifted from sapphire to gunmetal gray. Dawn was coming.

  But it made no difference.

  A bank of sooty clouds was crowding the pale east. Clouds were roiling in from the north, too—maybe storm clouds.

  There’d be no sun shafting into the cove to chase away thrashers and monsters and warm him. There’d be no Regulus Borealis advancing to his rescue.

  The mist draping them felt as dead as a cold fish floating on acrid waves.

  The dawning sky grew grim in the pass behind Grog Blossom, easing closer.

  The thrasher in the depths assuredly rose.

  Swift dragged his oar through the water, forcing the Strider to slip toward the skiff.

  14

  The roar of an engine split the stillness.

  The skiff charged.

  Swift—bloodless—lost his grip on the oar and slipped, landing square on his rump in the base of the Strider.

  “Captain Corkscrew,” growled a salty voice.

  Swift jolted up. He knew that salty voice.

  On the skiff’s bench, a flashlight flaring on his whiskered grin, sat Justus.

  Swift, quaking, gripping the mast, pulled himself to sitting. “Father?”

  “Ay, me hearty!” Justus was roaring laughs. “It be your dear old da.”

  Swift flushed red-hot.

  Justus was holding his belly, his face a puckish grin. “I be grateful to good old Peabrain, Jolly Stormcrow, and even Mister Hogwash for seeing ye to quiet waters.”

  Oh, god.

  Swift sank deeper into the Strider’s bowl. “Don’t tell the others.” He peeked over the Strider’s gunwale. “Swear you won’t tell.”

  Justus steered the skiff near. “Don’t ye worry, Captain Corkscrew. Your secret’s safe with Captain Justus.”

  He tied the Strider to his tow and reeled her close.

  He gestured for Swift to step into the skiff.

  Swift hesitated. He examined the deep gray water for the outline of the shark.

  “Quite a beast that was,” said Justus. “Come.” He held out his hand. “The engine will have sent him cruising out to sea.”

  Swift took his father’s hand and stepped across the gap.

  Justus seated him on the skiff’s bench and moved a duffle bag close.

  Inside, a water bottle, snacks, and a blanket peeked out. “I don’t suppose you brought provisions on your escapade?”

  Swift reached for a water bottle.

  The movement spurred the cramp in his shoulder.

  Justus lifted a brow at Swift’s pained face.

  Swift contracted with the agony and doubled over.

  Justus leveled his eyes with Swift’s. “What, do you think, is the number one rule of sailing?”

  Swift, hardly able to draw breath for the pain, couldn’t speak.

  Justus took the bottle from him and unscrewed it. “Come back alive.”

  Swift swallowed what he could of the water, then dropped to his knees in the base of the skiff, trying everything to ease the brutal cramp.

  Justus caught his eye. “What would’ve happened if you’d tipped off the Strider in this state?”

  “I couldn’t swim,” Swift managed.

  “And?”

  “I’d be drowned.”

  “So, what’s the first rule of sailing?”

  “Come back alive.”

  Justus rubbed Swift’s shoulder and neck briskly.

  It hurt like everything, but after a minute, the knot came loose, and Swift could move. He pulled onto the bench.

  Behind Justus, the Regulus loomed through the pass.

  Edric, Caius, and Trystan were leaning elbows on the rail.

  The way they were watching him—Swift wished Justus had turned out to be Grog Blossom after all. Being done in by an undead pirate would be far better than what was about to happen.

  “Out with it,” said Justus. What’s on that mind?”

  A sheet of mist blew in and swamped the Regulus from view.

  Swift let his eyes find his father’s. “They’ll say that I’m nothing more than a lad. They’ll tell me I’ll never grow up.”

  Justus collected the oars. “Growing up isn’t about running from storms. It’s about weathering them. Sometimes, it’s about conjuring them. And always, it’s about coming back alive.”

  “I did weather a storm.” Swift leaned forward, still trying to wrest his breath from the panic. “But they won’t see it like that. They won’t acknowledge that I sailed all on my own, all the way to this cove—swarming with sharks and who knows what else.”

  “That, you did. But you also tried to slip out from under us. To shortcut my instruction.”

  “I outsmarted the lot of you.” Swift shouldn’t have said it, but—there it was.

  Justus raised his brow.

  On the skiff, inside the sheet of shrouding mist dividing him from the gaze of his brothers, floating on his father’s sea—his sea—Swift felt more leveled with Justus than he had before.

  He sat a bit straighter, took a deep breath, and let it out. “I outsmarted everyone. I launched the Strider while you all slept. Then I piloted her brilliantly. I took on a massive challenge, and I managed it. You didn’t know at all what I was doing.”

  Justus held the oars out of the water. “Didn’t I?”

  The oars were marked: Elias Byron.

  This skiff, then, belonged to Justus’s long-time colleague—the psychiatrist, his close friend, Elias.

  So—Justus had arranged for Elias to ready the skiff for him.

  “If you’d seen me set off, you’d know I did everything right,” said Swift. “She flew.”

  “I saw.”

  Swift settled back. “How long were you following me?”

  “I kicked off the coast when you did. Though I was hidden by the mist, I was at the ready to snag you from the water, should the Strider have bucked you.”

  “So, you just let me take the Strider?”

  Justus relaxed the oars. “You carry a powerful thirst for the sea—I know. It’s been there practically all your life. And it’s a thirst I recognize. I thought your mishap on the Strider this afternoon might’ve shaken back your ambition, but your rigor with the sails today taught me better about your tenacity.”

  “And—you didn’t force me back to shore.” Could it be that Justus did understand him, even if only a bit?

  Justus settled the motor to humming quietly in its lowest gear. “When I was your age, I had the same draw to the sea, toward accomplishment, that I sense in you. You’re the fourth son I’ve raised up—a determined one, to be sure—and I’m a specialist in determined sons. I wagered you’d find your way out on the water by yourself one of these days. And then, yesterday, you got your hands on that old map. I judged it best that, if you were to have a go on the water alone, it’d best be on my watch.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all that back at home, then say we couldn’t sail?”

  “Free labor.” Justus steadied the skiff back out through the mouth of the cove. “A stunt like this would land you swabbing the deck of the Regulus for the rest of the summer, doing the details with the housework, and helping me tend my paper mess of a study.”

  “Okay, but you’re my father.” Swift eyed him. “You could make me do all that anyway.”

  Justus glanced back at the Regulus, holding his three grown sons. “You’ve not many summers left before you’ll be as big as them. Do you ever think of that?”

  Swift looked past his father at the dim faces of his brothers, looming through the mist.

  Each was sketched with early morning stubble. Their arms, resting on the rail, were dense with muscles and shaded with hair.

  A glance at his own self showed a hollow chest and skinny limbs, sinewy and peach fuzzed.

  “No.”

  “Just a handful of years, and you’ll be selecting a course in life. Whether you do the internship or not, you will be starting in with your University studies at sixteen. You’ve never wavered from that plan. And when that day—approaching so quickly—arrives, it won’t be simply north and west you’ll have to choose between. The world will stand before you, doors wide open.”

  Swift studied him sidelong. “What are you getting at?”

  Satisfaction spread across his father’s face. “It’s time we had our talk.”

  Swift froze on his bench, pinned like an insect. He stared at the clever smile on his father as the realization settled that this adventure hadn’t been at all by his own design.

  Its engineer had been Justus.

  His father’s gaze on him was a heavy, steady pressure. Swift had always thought of Justus’s fathering as a pressure to perform. But this seemed different than what he’d felt before.

  He recognized it, now, as a pressure to become.

  Justus leaned in. “When the world stands before you, what will you do? You have academic and creative genius both at your disposal. Will you not seize that?”

  The glinting red sun sheared a narrow band of gritty clouds in the south.

  Its shine on the water was livening. It sparked in Swift a hunger to chase it.

  “I feel born to be an adventurer. That’s what I know.”

  “Adventure and treasure are well enough. But only to a point.”

  “No, think of it,” said Swift. “Discovering ancient relics would be everything—wealth; pieces of history uncovered; mysteries solved. Granted, I went about it a little carelessly this morning, but if I really were to find the Star of Atlantis, Mum wouldn’t have to work at all. And you could quit your job, too, and we could go sailing every day.”

  Justus studied him a moment. “I can’t help but see something lingering beneath the surface of all that ambition.”

  “There’s nothing lingering beneath the surface,” said Swift. “I do know myself.”

  “Your fascination, your obsession, with sea venturing is—to some degree—about Ash.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with him,” said Swift. “I never think twice about him.”

  “Oh, I think it does,” said Justus. “You perceive him to have what you think you lack.”

  “So? What if you’re right? Haven’t you and Mum always taught me to go after what I want.”

  “From a seasoned sailor to a novice one, I caution you not to waste your precious young years on the chasing of dreams. To quote one old sailor: ‘Come hell. Come storm waters. Come the Kraken. I’ll forsake all sound shores for the night-lighted passageways – untrodden reaches – for sun-brightened visions, for insights of stars.’”

  “That passage—how do you know it?”

  “That passage is famous,” said Justus. “Or, at least, it’s well-known among those keen to seas and treasure, who’ve learned a bit of Celtic pirate lore.”

  Swift widened his eyes.

  “I’ve told you, you’re not the first Kingsley lad to catch wind of the Star of Atlantis.”

  “Then you must understand,” said Swift. “Anyone, like us, drawn to the sea, would forsake everything for a chance at exploring, at chasing down treasure. That passage says as much.”

  “The sailor who penned those words doesn’t speak of old pirate relics, Lad. He’s after something richer. Higher.”

  ““Untrodden reaches. Sun-brightened visions. Insights of stars,” said Swift. “He’s clearly speaking of adventure.”

  “He indeed craved adventure,” said Justus. “And inspiration. Direction. A treasure for his heart to chase. You’re a brilliant lad. Don’t squander your giftedness dashing after trifles that won’t last.”

  “The Star of Atlantis is no trifle.” Swift focused on the glowing eastern sun, ascending through gray stripes of clouds. “It’s widely thought to be real. And it’s unfound. Imagine, if I were to discover it.”

  Justus watched the sun with Swift until it drifted into dawn-blue clouds, leaving the sea as dull as steel.

  Justus looked Swift in the eye. “Alright, let’s imagine that. A bit of excitement, I suppose, finding the Star of Atlantis would bring. But what, then? Will you let your life be defined by a moment of boyhood triumph? Why not lay those hungry eyes of yours, not on the north, nor on skittish waves, nor on whispers of sunken treasure, but on an adventure where you could be a true hero?”

  The tension in Swift’s muscles eased some as he settled into listening.

  “Wouldn’t you like to learn how to heal pain?” Justus went on. “Isn’t it better to address death straight on, rather than fear it? Would you not like to apply that brilliant mind of yours, those skilled hands, to an endeavor that might—as you desire—improve even the way medicine is practiced?”

  That was exactly what he dreamed of accomplishing in medicine. But just because it’s what he wanted—it didn’t mean he was capable.

  Swift lowered his gaze. “When we get back to your ship, if my brothers were to tease me about not being grown up, about lingering as a lad, they wouldn’t be wrong.”

  “But you are growing up.”

  Swift’s mind flashed through possible retorts until he settled on the one most likely to bore him a way out.

  “I’m thirteen.”

  “And strikingly capable, you are, at thirteen. Your grades are higher than anyone in your school has ever achieved—including all your brothers. Your abilities with mathematics and chemistry are a decade beyond your years. Your skill with languages is simply savant. And you’re a fair rival for each of your brothers, ambition-wise. Even as you sit here before me—at thirteen.”

  Swift imagined old Mister Hogwash, slumped behind Justus in the skiff, grinning.

  How could Justus think it reasonable to pin him with the Talk just now, with all that pirate play bright in both their minds?

  With all Swift’s commands still ringing in the fog, his mind still dazzling with the thought of the Star of Atlantis.

  “The point I’d like to drive home is this,” said Justus. “If you cast off your giftedness for the sake of chasing fables and dreams, I wager that you’ll look back on the choices of your boyhood with regret. I’d like to see you embrace your giftedness, and the medical internship—entry-level training with a renowned doctor—is a perfect solution.”

  “Perhaps you could find me a renowned pirate to train with, instead.”

  Justus, chuckling, drew the oars. “Just think—you yourself would be capable of the feats Caius accomplishes every day in his rounds.

  Despite Swift’s doubts, after this day, managing sailing feats of which he’d not imagined himself capable—after sensing a close understanding from Justus—Swift felt himself soften more than he ever had at the thought.

  “The internship accepts thirteen-year-old applicants,” said Justus. “You’d apply now, then begin studying for your entrance exams just after your fourteenth birthday. Caius and I would, of course, help you prepare. And winning a seat, you’d no longer be just a passive observer of Caius in his studies. My Lad—you’d be his peer.”

  Swift loved every bit of the medicine Caius was studying. But he couldn’t help but be dizzied by Trystan’s thousands of hours of cello practice; by watching Caius leave to stay for days at the hospital, working as a tech of various kinds while his friends seemed to forget about him; by hearing of how Edric’s freedom had been vanquished in touring—

  Their workloads would seem nothing to what Swift, competing for the internship, would face.

  “I can’t handle gore like you and Caius can,” Swift tried.

  “Handling medicine’s grotesqueness comes with practice.”

  Justus might be right that a stronger stomach might come. But the suffering. Doctors must stand by and watch suffering.

  “But”—Swift looked his father in the eyes—“the fox.”

  Swift’s stomach still ached from the sight of its torn leg, mangled from a trap or a fight. His ears still seemed to ring with the animal’s whining.

  He’d tried every way to approach the fox, to gain his trust so he could get him to a vet. But every time he moved near, a rumbling growl would replace the whine. The fox was near death and probably knew it. And all that pain and the terror kept the poor thing from peace.

  “Doctors deal in suffering, to be sure,” said Justus.

  “Not just suffering,” said Swift. “Doctors must deal in death.”

  “Their business, though, is the easing of fear and of pain. Think on the stories that Caius comes home with. And think of how gentle he is with your own bumps and bruises.”

  Caius on the ship, his face now plain through the thinning mist, was smiling. His eyes were trained hard on Swift.

  He seemed to know the Justus Talk was happening.

  Caius was quite happy with the current their father had pushed him into. But Caius was Caius.

  Swift laid his gaze back on his father. “What if I’m nothing more than a lad? What if that’s all I ever can be?”

  “Being a lad is well enough. But keep in mind—you will be a man, and much longer than you’ll be a lad. Part of being a lad is planning to be a man.”

  “But that’s just it.” Swift cast a glance at his brothers. “You expect me to be like them—I couldn’t possibly be.”

  Justus, too, fixed his gaze on the Regulus. “Do you know why I named my ship as I did?”

  The Regulus Borealis—the King of the North Wind.

  “I imagine it’s because you’re something like Odin,” said Swift. “Kingly and powerful.”

  “I don’t have to tell you that ‘Regulus’ not only means ‘king,’ but it’s also the name of a star.”

 

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