It was a remarkably clear evening by the gravesite. The sky was alight with stars, slowly dancing in their inscrutable way, wherever they were not washed out by the silvery fire of the full moon. Down below, much lower and closer to the village, it would have been a gorgeous night. Up here, though, the wind was cooler, and it brushed against bare skin like the skeletal hand of death.

Or, at least, that was how it felt to Gale.

She was sitting on the ground at Seeker’s Point, reclining against the back of Denner Fabellian’s tombstone, which she herself had placed there over a month ago, when his last dying breath had brought her back to her home. She had seen to his last wish – to be buried at Seeker’s Point – and had said her goodbyes, planning on returning to sea with the first ship to pass by.

But now it had been over a month, and Gale had yet to step on the deck of a ship. She had yet to feel the waves of her native seas rocking beneath her feet, or feel the wind as it caressed the sail of a fine vessel that followed the whims of Gale’s hands. It was not for the lack of ships; they came to port regularly this time of year. It was not for lack of interest; one look at the mark of the four winds on her cheek and the captains offered her as much as they could afford, and then some.

It was that Gale could not go to sea.

She told herself that she didn’t know why. She kept busy through the day, helping in the harbor or doing odd jobs around the village. Everyone knew it was a waste of her talents, Gale most of all. But whenever an offer came in to bring her aboard, no matter how fine the ship or how esteemed the captain, Gale always surprised herself by saying ‘no.’ She tried to lie to herself. She said that the ship was too crowded, or that captain too brash, but even as she heard her voice say these things in her head, she knew they were lies. There was nothing wrong with the ships or the captains.

There was something wrong with Gale.

She ran a hand through her long, wind-whipped hair and leaned her head back against the cool marble. She breathed in deeply, letting the brine-scented air settle into her lungs. She closed her eyes and listened, hoping – praying – that the song of the sea would call her away once again, as it had when she was young. But the song was quiet right now, a mere hum in the distance.

Gale did not know how long she sat there, listening to the wind and the waves, but eventually another sound began to bubble up beneath the song she knew. It was a colder sound, somehow, and darker, too. Gale tossed her head to one side, trying to isolate the sound, but she could not recognize it. It seemed familiar, somehow, yet she could not name it.

Until, that is, she opened her eyes.

Directly in front of her, hovering off the cliff of Seeker’s Point, was…something. It wore the shape of a man, but it was distorted and misshapen, and gossamer, like a waft of seaborne fog. It seemed to shimmer a pale blue in the moonlight, except where the eyes should have been. They were a darker black than the night sky, and they stared eternally onward. They stared at Gale.

Gale, in the increasing chill of the night, stared back, not daring to breathe. She forced herself to stand and took a step toward the figure, and then another one. The figure did not move from its spot, but it lifted one ghostly arm, pointing directly at Gale. Then its head shifted, tilting upward just slightly, just enough for the lines to become visible, the lines that were once a face. And, in that moment, Gale recognized those lines. It was her former captain, the captain of her beloved cutter, the last captain she had ever had on this world. In that moment, the figure opened its mouth and Gale heard a mind-piercing scream.

When she opened her eyes, she was still sitting at the tombstone, and she recognized the scream as her own.

Gale walked alone down the sandy shore. Her long, dark hair was tied up in a band of black velvet, and her right hand was fixed to her forehead. She had not been sleeping well. The dreams, the visions, had been coming more often, nearly every night now. And they all carried with them the same devastating images. Always, it was the ocean, and Gale stood near it on the shore. Always, it was her former crew, and one – or more – of them came for her. But they never crossed that invisible line between the water and the land. Their spirits, like their bones, would remain forever in the ocean.

As she walked onward, her mind spinning down the countless maelstroms of thought that plagued it, she began to hear the song. It was the song of a storm, the song of a long-forgotten fury that was bubbling up from beneath the foam. Gale had heard this song once before, when she had been a young girl. The elders of the village, when they spoke of that day, did so in hushed and superstitious tones as they called it a century storm. It was supposed to be the sort of thing a person only sees once in their lifetime.

But it was coming again.

Gale tried to turn toward the village to warn them, but found that she could not. Her body would not respond, and the song was growing louder. The storm was moving fast now, much faster than she remembered the tempest that had torn her little village apart so many years earlier. Gale looked out over the ocean and saw it. The sky was so low it seemed almost to touch the sea, and in return the sea seemed to reach up to greet it. The storm closed in like a living wall, pushing ever closer to Gale and the village of her birth.

Gale stood, immobile, and watched in horror as the storm and the waves surged toward the shore. Time itself seemed to slow, and as Gale held her breath, waiting for the world to crash down around her, she saw something within the water. At first, she was certain she was mistaken, but then she saw it, and she knew what was happening. The realization should not have surprised her, but it did. What did not surprise her was the moment that the wind and the rain rushed past her, leaving her untouched.

Gale was dreaming, and death in her nightmares would have been too easy.

As the stormfront passed her, she saw the detritus that was left behind in its wake. They stood like a small army, knee-deep in water, and they stared at her like they always did. It was her crew, of course, as it always was when Gale dreamed. She watched them all, and they watched her watching them. The song of the ocean, the terrifying song of the great storm, was lost to Gale now. It was behind her. But these, her mates, stayed ever in front.

Gale wanted to speak to them. She wanted to ask their forgiveness, to beg them to stop haunting her dreams. But Gale could not speak. Her own voice died in her throat just as those standing before her had died aboard their cutter. One of those ghostly figures, her captain, again, tried to step forward, but stopped mid-stride; he would not step on land. Suddenly, Gale understood. It was not that he would not step onto dry land. It was that he could not.

Suddenly, Gale was awake. Her sheets were soaked with sweat, and her breathing was barely controllable. The pale light of the moon washed over her body, over her marks, and she could feel it almost like a lover’s caress. As she struggled to calm her lungs, the truth of her realization pounded in her skull. The spirits of her fallen mates could not get to her because she was still on land. If she wanted to be free of them – and Gale wanted little more than she wanted to be free – she would need to go to them.

Gale needed to return to the sea.

It did not take Gale much time at all to decide to go. It took her considerably more time to find a ship. Had she been willing to sign on with a captain – who almost certainly would have gone where she needed to go as part of her negotiation – the process would have been almost instantaneous. But Gale was not convinced that the ship she took would ever come back. She knew, sadly from first-hand experience, that the area was common for raiders. But more than that, she suspected the fallen would claim the last of their number in the cold embrace of the sea.

Because of this, Gale needed a ship that she could sail by herself. Her village was primarily a fishing village, so small fishing boats were common enough, but even Gale did not relish the idea of rowing halfway across the ocean. Most of the sailing ships in the harbor were owned by private captains, and nearly all of them were too large anyway. Gale was comfortable in her ability to handle the work of three or four crew at once, but more than that and even she would struggle. She needed something smaller.

When she first found her ship, she was, initially, less than impressed. Her name was The Forge, which, besides being one of the least elegant names for a vessel Gale had ever heard, also made no sense for the ship herself. It was an old keelboat, designed originally for lazy river travel and shipping. She had wound up in the village because her old captain had died in his sleep on The Forge’s last run, and none of the rest of the crew wanted her. The longest serving crew had sailed her along the coast just to sell her for whatever she was worth. Figuring it was the best she could do, Gale paid twice that.

It took Gale nearly a week to get the river vessel in shape to sail the open water, and even so, she doubted it would make it there and back. Each night, the nightmares returned, and each day, Gale cared less and less about The Forge surviving the return voyage. Her crew was calling her, and they were not going to stop until she faced them. And so, with whatever supplies she could afford from her meager savings, Gale set out quietly one morning to no fanfare, no goodbye, and no hope of coming back.

Returning to sea, to her sea, was overwhelming to Gale. She had sailed the rivers of Greth aboard the lumbering juggernaut of the Autumn Crane, but that was barely sailing at all. She had finally found a sea on Vegante aboard the Blazing Star, but those seas had been strange and foreign, and the less she thought about that ship, the better. And then she had fallen in love with the free and easy seas of Foraine on Captain Valerie’s Mourning Reign. But that had been little more than a whirlwind affair. Now that Gale was back with her first love, her own native sea, she realized fully what she had missed.

For the first hour, Gale sailed with her vision impaired by the tears she found herself shedding. The song of the sea welcomed her back with an earnest passion, and Gale felt herself sink into its embrace. She joined its song, almost tentatively at first, before she began to sing fully and clearly, as if every minute part of her being was signing out. The lone sail of the Forge bellowed up, and had Gale been listening to her mast instead of the sea’s joyful song, she would have heard it groan in its old age.

It did not take long for Gale to find her rhythm, either in the song or in the sailing. She sailed without stopping for that entire day, keeping on the most direct course to the spot where her cutter had been taken. She had not bothered to purchase any charts or navigation equipment; she knew these seas better than any cartographer. She let her mind wander for a time, thinking back on her first circumnavigation. She touched the globe that encircled her arm that marked that accomplishment, and she smiled as she remembered how the Master of Inks had commented, impressed, on her youth at receiving it.

As night fell, Gale slackened and then drew down the sails. Without a crew to keep watch, it would be dangerous to sail at night, and although Gale dreaded going to sleep now that she was out on the open sea, she knew she needed it. The Forge had a small cabin, and Gale had hung her hammock in it. It would serve well enough as quarters, and so Gale ate a very small meal of dried meat and, reluctantly, drifted off to sleep.

Whether mercifully or not, Gale did not dream at all that night.

It took Gale over a week to reach the spot, and that was with the most favorable winds that her native seas could offer her. To most people, it would have looked just like every other place on the ocean, with endless waves on all sides, and the sun drifting lazily and oppressively above. But Gale knew her charts, and she knew her waves, and she could feel in her bones as she drew close. They called out in spirit to the bones she knew lined the ocean floor.

Gale had been singing, or whistling, or humming, nearly the entire way there, but now, as the old keelboat pulled up to the spot Gale knew her cutter had fallen, she fell quiet. The winds began to grow still as well, as if they sensed Gale’s heart crying out for silence. The single sail fell slack, and without a word, Gale moved to draw it down. The sea was calm, and Gale spent the rest of the day waiting. She did not know what she was waiting for, but she waited regardless, knowing that whatever it was had to be here.

When Gale went to sleep that night, she somehow knew she would dream again, and when she found herself standing on her old cutter, she knew immediately that she had. At first, the deck of the cutter was clear, and Gale was alone. The clouds above were dark and low, swirling around the ship like a flock of buzzards. Around her, though, the seas were shockingly calm, but the water itself was black as tar.

She saw her captain first, standing on the water just a few lengths away from the deck. His back was to her, and the only reason she recognized him as the captain was the raider’s sword still protruding from it. Then she saw the others, the rest of the crew, standing on the waves in a circle around the ship. Each of them had their back to her, and they refused to turn around. Gale tried to yell for them, to talk to them, to tell them all of the things she had longed to tell them since she was first cast from this world.

But no words would come.

As Gale stood, her mouth moving in her silent screams, she began to get angry. The unfairness of it all crashed in on her like a tidal wave, everything that had happened since those damnable raiders had taken her ship. The litany of sealess planes, the cruelty of Raiker Venn, the bite of Vasco’s “little Pearl,” the sacrifice of Denner Fabellian, all of it washed over Gale and dragged her down into an abyss darker than the waves around her.

When Gale woke from her dream, she was shaking, but it was not from fear. Gale shook with rage. Her fists were clenched, and she could feel her nails digging into her palms. It was unfair. All of it was unfair. Even out here, even with Gale coming to the place they fell, the dead would still not speak with her. They would not hear her apologies, her explanations, her farewells. But they would face her, Gale knew. They would face her, even if she had to go down and get them herself.

Suddenly, Gale’s hands relaxed, and the breath escaped in a slow exhalation through the nose. She took just a moment to collect herself, and then she began to sing. She did not know where the song came from, or how she knew it, but she knew the song was dark. Once, in her last moments aboard the Blazing Star, Gale had sung a song so dark, so dangerous, that the sea itself had nearly stood still as the storm raged around it. This song, somehow, was something even darker.

It was night, but still the sky darkened even further. The winds answered Gale’s song, and their anger rose to match her own. The ocean seemed to stab upward, whitecap waves like knives thrusting toward the air. The Forge pitched and tossed as Gale stood there, singing louder and louder. Lightning flashed in the sky and thunder followed instantly. The ship began to turn into the maelstrom that was forming beneath it. The wind surged forward, and Gale heard a loud crack as The Forge’s mast snapped.

Gale had only a moment to see the shadow of the mast, cast from a flash of lightning, before it struck her head, and she fell to the deck unconscious.

When Gale came to, the storm was still raging. She could feel the cold rain rushing down her flesh and the wind pulling her hair. The song that she heard around her was loud, so loud she could barely hear anything else. She tried to join the song, perhaps urge it to calm itself, if just a bit, but the pain she felt stilled her voice. The deck was slick with rain and seawater, and Gale was still disoriented from the blow to her head. She tried to stand but couldn’t, but she did manage to sit up and lean her head back against the remnants of her mast.

She sat there for a few moments before a shadow passed over her, and she froze. Slowly, she opened her eyes, and there, directly in front of her, was her captain, her former captain. The sword was still stuck through his chest, and his skin was bloated and blue. His eyes were vacant - no. Not vacant. There was something deep in those sickly black eyes. There was suffering. Torment. Pain.

The spirit of her former captain reached out its hand, and Gale recoiled, but the remaining fragment of the mast stopped her from retreating. Gale could not see her own eyes, of course, but she knew that they must have been wide with the fear she felt pressing upon her heart. Gale tried to speak, to beg his forgiveness, or at least to utter aloud the apologies that had echoed through her head ever since that day. But as always, no words came.

But then, Gale saw it. Looking upward, she could see the captain’s mouth, and while his eyes bespoke suffering beneath the waves, his mouth bore the same smile she had seen when she served aboard the cutter. It was not a cruel smile, nor an accusing one. It was a genuine smile, a smile that said he was happy to see her. And his hand, which he had extended toward her, was not reaching to grab her. He was offering it to her, as one would to help someone stand.

Her hand was shaking when she reached out to take his.

The Captain pulled Gale to her feet, and around them, Gale saw the rest of the crew. They moved in closer, but Gale saw the same smiles on their faces, as well. No one spoke; Gale suspected that none of them were able. But the messages were clear: We think about you. We miss you. We love you. We do not forgive you.

Gale’s mouth hung open. She heard the words, although she knew they had not been spoken. They sounded in her ears in the crew’s own voices. Gale tried to make sense of it when she felt his hand tighten around hers. She looked at his mouth, and saw his smile grow.

We do not forgive you, Gale, because there is nothing to forgive.

She felt the tears come to her eyes, and she did nothing to stop them. It had been so long since they had been together, so long since they had last sung their songs, told their stories, and shared their marks. It had been so long since that beautiful cutter, who Gale had known like a sister, had sliced through the waves like a knife through hot butter. She had missed them all, of course. But standing there, seeing them smile at her as they had so many times before, she realized that what she had truly missed was Gale.

She missed the Gale who sailed with these men and women. She missed the Gale that danced upon the cutter’s boards, and sang to the winds from the crow’s nest, or the bow, or the helm. She missed the Gale that she had been before the raiders had taken her ship, and her mates, and the voice in her dreams. She missed a Gale without fear, without regret, without loss. She missed the Gale that she had almost forgotten she was.

Gale opened the eyes she hadn’t realized she had closed. She saw her captain and her mates, and while they still smiled at her, it was a nervous smile. Gale looked around, and she saw the deck of The Forge begin to break apart. She looked back at them, imploring them for their advice. Their response, without voice or sound, was simple: survive.

Gale nodded and tried to speak. This time, though, she succeeded.

“Thank you,” Gale said, and then she woke.

Gale’s dream had been real. At least, the part about the ship had. When Gale regained consciousness, she did so to the horrifying sound of The Forge’s deck splitting in two. The storm raged around her, and beneath her, and the sea itself seemed to open up. The ship, or what was left of it, was being pulled downward in a circular motion, and Gale knew what that meant. The ocean was claiming another of her ships, and soon her bones would be with the fallen.

Gale looked over the edge of the floundering keelboat and into the darkness of the whirlpool beneath it. She had always loved the sea, and wanted to die in its arms. But now was not the time. This was not what she wanted. This was not what her mates wanted for her. But as the wood splintered and the wind peeled the nails from the boards, Gale realized she might not have a say.

The railing that Gale was holding broke away suddenly, and Gale was thrown into the cold water. She held on tightly, using the wooden flotsam to stay afloat, but she was running out of time. A sudden, desperate thought occurred to her, but it was too horrifying to consider. She had just gotten her world back; she could not simply walk away from it.

Even as she thought this, however, the waves pulled her beneath. She kicked upward with all of her strength and broke the surface, a few feet away from the broken railing. She reached for it, but the torrent pulled her under again, and she felt her lungs begin to fill with salt water. She closed her throat and fought, regained the surface a second time, and purged her lungs, but in the blackness of the storm-choked night, she saw the railing pulled down into the abyss. Gale tried to regain the ship, or at least the small part of it still floating, but she had been pulled too far away. Then a massive wave crashed over her, and she was turned upside down and pulled below.

As Gale fought to regain her bearings, she swore she heard a voice in her waterlogged ears. It was the voice of her captain, issuing his last order. It was the same thing she had heard from the crew before she woke to this nightmare. It was the same order she suddenly knew, with certainty, he would have given that day on the cutter, had he still lived.

Survive.

Gale would have cried if her eyes were not already burning with saltwater. She knew what she had to do. But this time, she would make the choice herself. This time, there would be no guilt, no loss. And this time, she would not go far. Gale closed her eyes. She thought of the wind. She thought of the waves. She thought of her cutter, her captain, and her crew. She thought of Vasco, and Valerie, and Denner Fabellian. She felt the ink on her leg catch fire, even beneath the waves. And then, she felt nothing, as she was set adrift, not in the seas of her home, but in the infinite oceans between worlds.

For just a moment, a moment that seemed to draw out to an eternity, Gale knew abject fear. Her mind drifted back to the first time her world had cast her adrift. She thought of the world she had found herself on, a world of endless land, with so little music on the winds. She feared that she would find herself there again, and that she would not be able to escape this time.

But then, in the vast, featureless oceans of reality, Gale made her stand and said no. There was no sound, of course. Gale never made sounds in her nightmares, except to scream. But Gale was finished screaming. Gale was finished drifting. Gale was a Speaker. Gale was a navigator. Gale was a sailor. And Gale was not afraid. The Eternities were blind, but they would not be deaf. They would hear Gale.

Gale sang.

She had no body, no voice, but she felt the endless nothing vibrate with her song, and she felt it pull her back toward her world. She had no legs, but she felt the fire of Denner Fabellian’s name, and she brought herself toward him. She had no mouth, but as she sang, she smiled the smile that her mates had worn, and she brought herself back. She was not pulled through the aether by an object’s draw or by a friend’s sacrifice. She pulled herself through the aether because she wanted to.

Gale returned to her own world, stepping out onto Seeker’s Point, looking out over the sea. She could hear the distant song of a fierce storm just beginning to die down. Here, though, the skies were clear, and the moon kissed her skin to welcome her home. Gale smiled, and she said a silent thank you to the ghosts in the ocean.

She would sleep well tonight. And first thing tomorrow, she would sign on to a good ship, and Gale would finally, fully, return to the sea.