On deck Captain Stone stood firmly at the windward rail, watching the dark sea. In the waist Lady Belinda Hyphen-Dash-Throtestalking took in what she insisted on referring to as “the fresh salt air”, although everyone else on board thought it was just cold and wet.

Up on the foc’sle a sailor stood, dressed incongruously in plain canvas trousers and a ruffed shirt as a gentleman might wear. When anyone asked him about this he replied, “Ruff?” as if he had no idea what they speaking of. His shipmates gave him the nickname “Fido”, and tried to avoid him as much as possible.

Which was exactly his plan.

Well, not the Fido part.

There was something odd about that man Fagoe, he thought. You shipped a few landsmen every voyage, and some of them never quite found their sea-legs, although few of them emptied their bellies with such regularity as to be a threat every time he was sent aloft. Even with daily holystoning–routine scouring with sand and flat stones the size and shape of Bibles–the decks had begun to stain in places. What did the man’s stomach contain?

Whatever it was, the fishes approved.

His thoughts were interrupted by a shout of “Land Ho!” from aloft, and for once all of his attention focused on a single point on the far horizon.

Something had changed. The crew dangling from the cross-trees felt it. Lady Belinda in her deshabille felt it. The captain and the carpenter picking themselves up from the deck felt it. And the Mermaid Formerly Known as Figurehead felt it as she woke to unexpected consciousness in a splashing spray of effluent from Donald Fago’s stomach.

Her world was suddenly full of subtle forces and less-than-subtle smells. She felt the strong slow mind of the ship itself reach out to touch her, whispering, “Be Free!” and the wooden bonds that held her let go, dropping her into the deep dark ocean of Faerie as the ship tacked away and the crew tried with difficulty to obey, or even understand, the Captain’s shouted command of, “Clew up the larboard to stern of the forward mizzen carbunkle!”

“Most mysterious,” said Lady Belinda, perhaps still feeling the lingering effects of the spell.

The crew were busy bringing the ship around to a new heading now the captain was issuing coherent orders again. The sailors cast longing glances over the side, where the ship’s mermaid figure-head, Marie, was now swimming into the distance toward… something.

“I never would have believed it, had I not heard it with my own ears.”

“Heard it?”

“The men went for a full minute without swearing. I suppose there aren’t any oaths that start with ‘M’,” she mused.

“Merde,” he muttered.

Distant in the wake of the departing sea-bear the ship ghosted on toward the unknown shore.

Grace followed her sister Felicity awkwardly down toward where the women were digging for clams. It was a neap tide, the water barely moving over the course of the day. That made for difficult digging, but if they wanted to eat they had to dig.

The salmon run had been poor this year. The worst in the colony’s short history. The colonists had staked out nets and weirs as they had done the previous year, but had caught hardly anything before everything was swept away by a great storm and unusually high tide one late September night. By the time things were repaired the bulk of the fish were far upstream.

Grace dropped the baskets in a heap beside Felicity and another girl named Hope, who said in a voice laden with dramatic import, “We’re all going to die here.”

As Grace looked around she heard Hope muttering, “I hate this place. I wish I could die.”

Grace shook her head. It was bleak and barren, but beautiful in its way. If life was just a little less hard she might come to love it. If only a ship would come, a great stately castle of the sea, moving gracefully under sail… much like that one now drawing in close along the shore, in fact.

She let out a scream of panic and delight, bringing all the other women’s heads around in time to see a sailor lose his grip on the ratlines to be left dangling by one foot over the deck, while a brightly dressed woman amidships waved and called to them, her words unintelligable through the damp distance.

A ship! She would have sung the words had she not been using all her breath for running.

She had always been a big girl, but since their ill-fated ship had passed through the Straits of Annian to enter Faerie she had seemed to grow bigger by the day, tripping over her feet and running into things. How she envied the other girls, and even moreso the Fey, who were grace personified instead of merely named.

At the top of the path she paused. Her legs ached and her lungs burned. Her breathing came in long hard gasps. Through gaps in the trees she could see the ship rounding the point.

The wind was so light the ship seemed to move like a ghost, and she felt a sudden stab of fear: could it be just an apparition? Then she remembered the sailors shouting across the water, and the word that had silenced them. She didn’t think apparitions said that.

Her pace slowed further as she neared her journey’s end, but she was still going at a fair clip when a slim eldrich figure stepped out into the path before her and gave a courtly bow, sweeping his elaborately feathered hat off his head and saying in the formalized speech of his people:

“Grace my lady runs
through the byways of the wood.
I offer my aid.”

True to her nature if not her name Grace plowed into him, sending him tumbling awkwardly into the wet undergrowth with a crash of broken branches and an incoherent “Oof! Look ouch where you’re ga! Ouch!” It was the first time she’d heard him say anything remotely interesting.

Taking a quick look around to be sure there was really no one watching she bent her knees and took an awkward jump flapping her hands together over her head where she hoped the rope would be. Apart from making her skin smart where her palms smacked together it had no effect, although she managed to keep her footing on landing, which she counted as a minor triumph.

She jumped again, this time catching hold of the rope and hanging on. The bell gave a single loud clang as she was left dangling, her toes barely brushing the ground.

Inevitably, Yee-Ha chose that moment to finally come out of the forest and ask if she was in need of assistance.

Christopher Marlowe heard the aftermath as he fumed his way along the path back to the village, furious his awkward wooing had been interrupted just at the moment of its fruition. The women gathering shellfish on the beaches heard it. Rothgar the sea-bear, browsing on berries, heard it. Even the sailors on the White Hart, which was rounding the headland and entering the bay on the rising tide, heard it.

And high in their arboreal fastness the five leaders of the Coastal Conclave of the Fey heard it.

“More of them arrive,” said Athis morosely, the Senior Junior and nominal leader of the Conclave.

“What shall we do in response?” asked the woman to his right. She went by the name of Slash, as her swordplay was famously deficient. She could only split a hare.

“Kill them and eat them?” Athis suggested. He wasn’t entirely disappointed when no one laughed.

“SPANIARDS!” he roared, brandishing his blunderbuss. “Fire cannons!”

“Father, the cannon are sunk,” Grace reminded him matter-of-factly. “And I don’t think that’s a Spanish flag at the masthead.”

“False colours! Duplicitous dogs! Dangerous! Violent! Not like us! Kill the lot of ‘em!”

Marlowe felt a flash of existential dread as he gazed across the water. “Your daughter is aboard.”

“Nonsense! She’s right here! Both of her!”

“Your OTHER daughter,” Marlowe clarified, which produced a sudden return of silence.

“Your har’un?” asked Tuc, using the Fey word for the English. Drunais could only nod silently in response, then asked plaintively, “Why would he leave me?”

“A ship,” Tuc told her, wondering why he didn’t keep his bewhiskered nose out of it.

Drunais thought for a moment, then decided all news was bad news. “He’ll meet some golden-haired harlot and leave me!” she wailed. “And I don’t even know what a harlot is!”

If she had been one of his wives Tuc would have rubbed his chin on her head and offered her a fish, but he didn’t think that was how land-dwellers did things.

Drunais gripped her lute and began to play.

“Ah,” replied the seal king. It was all so much simpler for his people. Females were only interested in mating once a year, and males competed for their attention with submerged acrobatics, gifts of fish, and singing the secret, silent seal songs of the sea… although on reflection maybe it was a little bit complicated after all. Hitting silent high notes isn’t as easy as it sounds. “I’m not sure his people settle their differences the way you do.”

“He would have! We could have! I’m not a child any more!” Drunais reminded her friend.

“And how old is he?” Tuc asked, and she moaned, “He’s probably a thousand! I never asked. He was too busy talking about ‘knife fights’.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s how they settle their differences. But I have no idea how they get the knives to fight.”

The Fey Conclave stood and gathered together, raising their voices in counterpoint song:

Siduri asked, “What is a ‘petard’?”

“Some kind of big crane, I think,” said Bil. “Or maybe heron.”

She stood up, put her lute aside and declared, “I will confront him!” Then looked around, “Or would, if I knew where he was.”

“On the beach in the bay, by the hu’run village, I expect,” Tuc said. “Waiting for the ship-people.”

She looked up along the path, then decided otherwise. A moment’s work stripped off her clothes and bundled them up, their fine waterproof outer layer forming a self-contained bag. With two quick steps she reached the water and plunged in, diving under the surface.

“Take care of her!” came a voice from the trees. Tuc nodded, “I will”, then flipped his tail and was gone.

The raccoon who had spoken scrambled down from his perch and sauntered along the rocky beach in the direction of the bay, curious to see what he might find there.

“What?” asked Cat, breaking his attention from the little cat who stood in the bow. But Marlowe was no longer listening. His eyes looked out on some other time, and his head was cocked as if hearing the sound of distant guns.

Then he shook himself, and repeated, “I remember…”

“What?” asked Cat again, faintly annoyed, and Marlowe continued, “…everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Not… no. Just… only the dead. But there are so many. It feels like everyone. And a field of flowers somewhere…” his voice drifted off and Cat turned his attention back to the living.

Nearby on the sand the first sailor to come ashore stood up. He wobbled and waibled. He lurched and glurched. He fell to his knees again and moaned, “Landsick!”

“I beg your pardon?” Marlowe asked.

“Landsick! I have been at sea for so long! My stomach! It never gets used to the motion of the waves! But now it is no more used to the steadiness of the land! AAAAGHGGH!” He was noisily sick. Marlowe picked up the prostrate woman and moved away from him through the crowd of villagers and sailors who were eagerly mingling and greeting. Somewhere nearby Cat was shyly approaching the ship’s cat, Daphne, who had come ashore on a sailor’s shoulder.

“Let me take you away from all this,” Marlowe said to the unconscious Belinda, who stirred in his arms and spoke muzzily, “O Sir Reginald! I never dreamed it would be so big!”

Stone shook his head, looking around at the gray-green forest and sky, notably Spaniard-free. “The oaks of England still stand free.”

“Well I should hope so! No one putting trees in cages, I should think!”

Grace left her sisters to approach the two men. “I’m sorry, Captain, the air of this place disagrees with my father.”

Stone sniffed the wet air and nodded. “I don’t suppose you know the counter-sign?”

Grace shook her head, “I’m just an ignorant girl. Unless it’s, uh, ‘And the ashes stand tall’?”

Stone gave her a hard look. “As it happens, that’s correct, young lady.” She executed a curtsy, wobbling slightly in the process. She hadn’t had much opportunity to practice.

“We do live in trees ~ Where else would a thinker live? ~ Leaky wooden huts?” Athis replied.

Grace prodded her father, who intervened, “Well! That is! Yes. We have in fact got on with them very well, Captain. Which is not to say they aren’t in league! But in the meantime, very helpful. Yes.”

Stone considered. “I am Captain John Stone come to relieve Her Majesty’s colony.”

“Your language is strange ~ does ‘relieve’ mean ‘take away’? ~ I can only hope.”

Stone opened his mouth to reply but was interrupted by a piercing scream from down the shore. All eyes turned to the frozen tableau of Christopher Marlowe, the now-conscious Lady Belinda Hyphen-Dash Throtestalking, and a third figure in the water beyond them, striding forth in a froth of fury.

    ”My love, this is not what it appears to be!”

        ”You miserable two-timing hu’run bastard!”

“Don’t you speak to him so!”

    ”Be quiet you flaxen-haired harlot!”

“Harlot! Me! I’ll say what I please you low-born philandering poetaster!”

        ”If I had a knife I would make it fight yours, however you do it!”

Drunais kicked wet sand in Marlowe’s general direction as she spun on her heel and plunged back into the welcome cold of the Ocean, where her tears could mingle unseen with the infinite saline sea.

“Daphne! Is it really you?” said Cat, trying to bump his forehead against hers in that way cats have.

“Yo no soy el tipo de chica que habla a los caballeros que no han sido debidamente presentados”, he heard Daphne say as she pulled away from him.

“Ha! Funny!” said Drunais’ friend Skeezicks, the raccoon.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Cat. “What’s so funny about a cat meowing?”

“Oh no!” said Skeezicks, his eyes growing wide. “She said, ‘I am not the kind of girl who speaks to gentlemen who have not been properly introduced.’”

Cat’s heart sank.

“Why can I understand you but not this stupid cat?” Daphne asked Skeezicks in fluent Spanish.

The beach was empty, but for a group of three animals–two cats and a raccoon–off in the distance, and the Fey boy Yee-Ha, who approached her tentatively.

The rest of the villagers, the newly arrived sailors, and the Fey delegation had repaired to the village hall where Captain Stone, Athis and Grace’s father were meeting. Sir Hyphen-Dash had made it clear to his daughter she wasn’t wanted or needed, although Captain Stone had spoken up for her, having quickly understood how little grasp her father had on what passed for reality in these parts. Even Marlowe and Grace’s half-sister were gone, taking the strangely land-sick sailor with them.

“alone my Grace sits ~ contemplating empty bay ~ like you company?” Yee-Ha asked.

“Why do you talk like that?” she replied.

Before she could reply she noticed that Christopher Marlowe’s cat, Cat, was coming down the beach toward them, followed by the ship’s cat Daphne and a talkative raccoon.

“Perhaps I’ll become a cat when I retire,” Skeezicks the raccoon was saying.

“I didn’t know raccoons could retire,” Cat said. He kept stealing glances at Daphne, who ignored him.

“Of course they can!” said Skeezicks. “At least I think so.”

Daphne came up to Grace and rubbed her head against the girl’s knee. “Meow?” she asked, and then said, “Can I haz feesh?”

“Err… no, I don’t has fish,” Grace replied uncertainly.

Now what malignant fate does haunt my days,
come stalking cold across the Ocean sea
like some great pale and vicious cachalot
bent on sick vengeance? O, to yet be free
of dark entanglements! Drunais my love!
How simple would our life together be:
the two of us, like shepherd, shepherdess,
far from the madding crowd, we two can flee
from all that ails this fractious flagrant world!
I’ll go to you, go down on bended knee
and beg forgiveness. Now!”

“Christopher! Yoo hoo!” came a shout from behind him and he moaned, “Behold my life.”

“You took me quite unawares, being so unexpectedly alive,” Lady Belinda explained, “But now I can see… it was fated to be! My goodness, I made a rhyme! Perhaps I shall be a poet in this New World, like you, my love!”

Marlowe unavailing tried to gently pry her fingers loose. “It is more complicated than that, I fear.”

“Pish! Was ever the course of love more simple?”

Marlowe managed to free himself from her grip, but she immediately latched back on. “I wasn’t talking about love.”

“Do not too quickly take the branch, or
Hope will find
the White Hart upon the white sand.
Glance ahead, not by chance, do not stand
old attachments. Let her rage.
‘Carefully think, but not too sage’,
Cock your ears
Where the path turns and where the path veers
Don’t fear to dare
Where the blue water meets the grey air
In Nature’s chapel, the ocean’s lair.”

With another nod, Rothgar trundled off, leaving only a few disturbed branches in her wake.

Finally Stone spoke, “I don’t believe it! You mean to tell me all of Drake’s tales are true?”

“Sir Francis was here,” Athis said, “Making promises of peace ~ and quiet for all.”

“And then he showed up?” Stone asked, nodding toward the still staring Hyphen-Dash.

Athis nodded eloquently, “One hopes arrival ~ will before the winter storms ~ precede departure.”

Stone, who had a hold full of provisions, from plows to cows, replied simply, “I have my orders.”

Marlowe sensed the tension and stepped in to the fray, saying, “Perhaps a feast of welcome and thanksgiving is in order before any rash decisions are taken?”

Captain Stone was striding off toward the beach with his men, leaving Donald Vagoe to unsteadily attend Lady Belinda, who was again remonstrating with a downtrodden Christopher Marlowe. Grace moved to join her sisters but was quickly caught up by the village women, who chivied the younger folk to help out with preparations for the feast.

The day devolved into a swirl of frantic activity, setting out long tables in the meeting house and sending the hunters out for an extra deer. Grace offered to help carry things up from the shore, where her awkward strength would be most useful, so she was the first of her sisters to find out what a cow really looked like.

Despite these watchful eyes a few sailors took time from their busy day to pay Grace their respects, which became all the more respectful when they realized this wee chit of a girl was hauling heavier loads than they were along the path up to the village.

“That’s the lot, then,” Captain Stone said to Sir Hyphen-Dash as the afternoon shaded into dusk.

“Not a moment too soon! Spaniards lurking! Lurking I say! We must put it all within the stockade!”

Stone looked at the few paltry stretches of raised posts that constituted the “stockade” and replied, “They seem to be well protected already.”

“Humph! Of course they are! Best offense is a good pretense, I always say!”

“Hello,” she said, not questioning this time.

“Hello, Sassafras,” Rothgar said.

“Sassafras?” Grace asked.

“Or Saxifrage. Your name. Your true name,” Rothgar told her with a nod. “Stonebreaker.”

“What are you?” was all that Grace could think to reply, “And why does your nonsense always seem so… well, so sensible?”

“Ea,” he said, pronouncing the name properly, “do not speak! ~ It is not seemly to ask ~ nor right to answer!”

“I just want to know ~ why hu’run are free to talk ~ however they please.”

“They are not like us.”

“I have noticed this father.”

“Now be a good boy ~ obedient to our laws ~ troublesome no more.”

“I can only try,” he said sullenly, annoyed with his father for finishing the cycle rather than passing it back to him. He was satisfied to hear the awkward response to his hanging opening: “Do or do not! There is no ~ Uh… no try… um… err…”

“But darling!” said Lady Belinda as Marlowe turned away from her up-turned face, which was waiting to be kissed. The village bustled around them.

“I am not the man you once knew,” Marlowe said.

“I am not the cat you once knew,” said Daphne.

“Then who ARE you?”

“Just a stranger in a strange land, curious and seeking new experiences.”

“But I am a new experience!”
                        ”Nonsense, I know you of old.”                        ”Adiós”

“How does it feel to be a cow?” she asked, and was silently grateful when the only answer was a sloppy lick on the side of her head, imperfectly dodged. She untied the halter-rope and led the now docile bovine out into the open air. There was a half-finished hut that would do nicely for a barn.

Half an hour later she had most of the rest of the pile squared away in various buildings left empty by virtue of lack of anything to put in them. Poor harvest. Poor salmon run. Lots of clams, though.

She saw the land-sick sailor staggering toward the beach. He was muttering to himself, and she slipped close behind him and heard, “Dose, trays, cue at row, sinko, says…” She wondered if it was some new kind of poetry.

The village fires burned behind him, their reflections making flickering paths across the twilight bay. “Ahoy!” he called but no answer came from the ship. The little boat bumped up against the side and he tied an awkward knot before scrambling up the rope ladder. No one was visible on deck and it slowly dawned on him that he was the only person aboard… the other sailors had all snuck ashore and only he, Donald Vagoe, had obeyed the Captain’s order to return.

What passed for a canny grin was spreading across his face when Drunais pulled herself over the far gunwale and flopped to the deck, exhausted and covered in seaweed. He screamed and fell backward into the sea.

He said to Sir Hyphen-Dash, who was still fulminating. “It was not the Spaniard.”

“If not them who! SPANIARDS! Can’t trust ‘em!” And there was much brandishing.

Marlowe turned to face Athis and the Fae delegation. “It was my love, Drunais.”

“What! One of THEM! I knew they were in league! You know what this means?”

Marlowe shook his head even as he spoke the answer. “War.”

Dagan wrinkled his nose but Siduri said, “Might he teach to us ~ who are so flummuxed by this ~ the strange art of ‘war’?”

“Yes, yes! Si! I can! I will! These English, they are my people’s enemies!”

Athis asked, “If a rock fell down ~ doing you harm as it fell ~ would you ‘war’ on Earth?”

The little group continued through the dark forest amidst an abundance of blank looks.

Back in the village Grace asked her father, “Shouldn’t we go in search of the ship?” and he replied, “Nonsense! We have a battle to prepare for!”

Memories swirled up from the night before. Or was it a decade past? How many mornings had he awoken like this? Admittedly, generally with a more interesting companion. That night in… With… His mind wandered down red-tinged corridors of memory.

The noise outside faded, then returned with redoubled force as some mock attack took place. Although he was pretty sure that was an authentic scream. Putting swords in the hands of sailors often ended like that, he reflected.

Cat raised his furry head and Marlowe reached out to pet him, wincing as his brain throbbed within his skull. Then he heard his tired voice form unfamiliar and alien words: “Let’s go make peace, Plumbottom. Let’s go make peace.”

Marlowe squinted in the sunlight. He could see Grace and Felicity along with some of the older women carrying swords and the odd arquebus in the midst of the mostly male formation. Grace was holding a vaguely sword-shaped stick and looking resentful while apologizing to the people she accidentally struck with it. A sailor with a bloody bandage on his head kept his distance.

“Why shouldn’t they?” Marlowe asked roughly. “In my experience they die just as pointlessly as men.”

“But it’s wrong!”

“What, thinking that killing each other is a particularly efficient means of solving problems?”

“Of course not! What a ridiculous thing to say! But it’s men’s work!”

Captain Stone and the poet exchanged a look. “As a matter of curiosity,” Marlowe asked, “will ‘Victory’ find the ship? Will it provide stores enough to tide us over the winter? Will it do us any good at all?”

“There’s no time for idle debate! The enemy are near! They could attack in just forty-five minutes!” The English leader strode off toward where the gate would have been had the village had a gate. Marlowe and Stone followed him with Cat trailing grumpily behind, mumbling about his lost love.

The villagers were variously disposed at the edge of the settled land, watching as their Fae opponents took the field. Don Diego commanded them from a gently swaying litter carried by four bearers. Slash waved her sword uncertainly at the head of a considerable mob. In the back, Bil could be seen juggling two swords, a knife and a well-trained baby goose.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Marlowe muttered, not for the first time.

“Why not find their ship? ~ Then they could leave this, our home. ~ Return to their land,” Athis suggested.

“They will attack you if you try. They are dirty, duplicitous dogs!” Don Diego derided. “I will show you… in the morning… how to fight them.” His head was drooping as the swaying tree lulled him to sleep.

“I do not like this. ~ Fighting swords cannot resolve ~ questions hard or soft,” Siduri said, while Dagan, Slash and Bil nodded their heads in agreement.

“We must do something,” Athis told her. “Perhaps there is some trick here ~ some deep truth we miss.”

Slash asked, “We will play along?”

Athis: “Until the way is clearer ~ we will make like ‘war’.”

Bil, having abandoned his juggling, advanced on Sir Hyphen-Dash as Marlowe watched in horror. Lady Belinda squeaked in fear as the older man’s swing went wild and the Fae causally touched him on the head with the flat of his blade, then stepped back and lowered it. “I must say I’m shocked ~ by how much fun this ‘war’ is. ~ We should do ‘war’ more!”

Sir Hyphen-Dash roared and stabbed. Bil danced away unscathed. There was a loud report as an arquebus exploded, followed by a scream from the sailor wearing it. “Attack!” shouted Sir Hyphen-Dash, and the English surged forward.

“STOP!!” cried Marlowe at the top of his voice, rushing into the fray and trying to stop the tide.

Heads turned his way on both sides as the villagers bristled and brandished and the Fae smiled and waved. He could see Grace looking fierce with her vaguely sword-shaped stick pretending to ignore young Ea, who was surreptitiously watching her while casually flipping his sword end-to-end and catching it by the hilt. Off to one side Cat and Daphne were nose to nose.

The air of festive expectation from the Fae met the opposing grim determination of the English and was beginning to wither under the onslaught. Marlowe could see a frown pass across Athis’ face as he got an inkling that there was more to ‘war’ than harmless pomp and accidental circumstances.

For a long cold moment Christopher Marlowe felt the world turning on its axis about him. He stood in the centre. He began to speak.

He shouted, “For Saint George, for Elizabeth, for ENGLAND…”, then turned an even brighter shade of red than usual and slowly fell down, like bagpipes with the air let out, settling to the ground with a quiet ease he had otherwise lacked for all his life.

In the uncanny silence that remained Marlowe could hear crows cawing and cackling in the trees surrounding the village. He fancied they were discussing their coming feast.

He knelt beside the fallen man but knew what he would find. The body was still.

He looked up and caught Lady Belinda’s eye where she stood, stricken. For once he needed no words.

“FATHER!” she and Grace screamed as the battlefield erupted into chaos.

“My name is Graceful Saxifrage. You killed my father. Prepare to die!” She took what should have been a wild swing at him and was astonished when it connected with his head, hard enough to make a loud “THUNK” and causing him to shout, “Be careful with that!” to which she replied, “This is simpler than it looks!” and he ducked under her next swing saying, “You have a talent!”

They fenced for a few moments more, sword against stick. Her every motion was swift and, Marlowe had to admit as he tried to intervene, graceful. Somehow she had grown out of her awkward spurt and found the truth of her name, though he didn’t know why she had called herself “Saxifrage”.

Before he could separate them the villagers and Fae converged and he found himself in the midst of a melee, standing over their leader’s body, trying to make peace with the point of his sword. Without hurting anyone.

The sea-bear stood up on her hind legs and surveyed the field, sniffing the air while she did so. Fighters drew away from her in pairs, sticking close to their partner like interrupted dancers.

One of the juggling geese fluttered awkwardly down to land on Bil’s head, where it settled into sleep.

Marlowe glanced down at a motion near his feet, and saw Athis had reached Sir Hyphen-Dash’s body. The Fae’s hands made quick probes and touches, tapping above the heart and pressing his ear to the chest as if listening for an echo. He caught Marlowe’s eye and shook his head, regret full on his face.

Once she had everyone’s attention, Rothgar the sea-bear began to speak.

Grace left Ea and Belinda left Don Diego to approach their father’s body. Marlowe stood back, but before the inevitable weeping could begin he said, “He died well, in the manner that he lived. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. But I respected his integrity. He was no hypocrite: friend or foe you knew where you stood with him, and that’s a virtue far too rare.”

Grace looked up at him, incipient tears in her eyes. “What do we do now?”

Marlowe looked around and saw everyone looking back at him. Even Captain Stone. Apparently he was the leader now. It was a pretty toy to be a poet, he thought. He realized the sun was shining. He looked up and saw the sky was clearing.

“For I can see blue skies… through the trees… with my eyes, and I realize… we’re going home,” he said, for no reason he could properly account for.

Christopher Marlowe looked at the ship and the ship, in the form of Marie, looked back. He tried to keep his eyes on her… eyes, he reminded himself. I’m trying to keep my mind on her brea… eyes.

After Rothgar’s intervention had put an end to their abortive war he’d left Captain Stone to take charge of the funeral pyre for Sir Hypen-Dash and hurried to see the ship, their only tie to home. Grace had followed with him, her face now stoic. Hope walked beside her. Felicity had stayed to boss the village women around under Captain Stone’s nominal authority.

The ship stood upright by dint of her keel being wedged tightly into a gap of rock that thrust inconveniently out of the sand like a toothsome mouth of the Earth gnawing on the wood. “We are going to have to break that stone to set her free,” he said, and wondered why Grace started at his side.

“I thought you were staying in the village,” Marlowe said to the new arrivals.

“Only to get things organized, which I did. But this is my ship,” Captain Stone told him.

“I can free her,” Grace said again, while Mr Scott the carpenter walked around the hull and frowned and muttered, “The keelson canna take it, Captain.”

“I think we can deal with this,” the captain told her, taking off his hat. “Clearly prayer is called for, and God will send a higher tide to lift her free. With a name like yours I’d expect you know nothing is accomplished without Grace.”

“Tide and time have never answered my prayers,” he said.

“Perhaps you should try praying to God instead.”

The poet simply shook his head, his attention drawn up the beach where the Fae Five were approaching, lead by Athis.

Drunais’ face went pale and her eyes went wide when she saw her father. “Christopher! He will be so angry with me!”

“What’s the worst he can do?” Marlowe replied. “Beat you?”

“Much worse! He could send me off to my mother!”

Unformed images swirled around in her mind. She wanted the ship free. She wanted to go home. She wanted her father back, however frustrating he’d been while alive.

Marlowe suggested pry-bars, but whatever location for prying he named the muttering carpenter insisted “the keelson cannae take it” or “the skantlings cannae take it” or “the sternpost cannae take it”. They needed something that would push everywhere, smoothly at the same time.

She thought about the clams they’d been digging on this very beach just the day before, and their long humorous “trunks”. The Fae boy Ea had told her they had water inside, making them swell…

Her gaze became a squint as she looked through the lens of her imagination to a future that didn’t quite exist yet. “I know how to set the ship free,” she said again.

“We cannae do it, Captain!” the carpenter complained. Not for the first time Grace wondered why the man was held in such great esteem, as his only contribution seemed to be telling people what “cannae” be “doone”.

Water was lapping at the stern-post. There was a crowd of villagers and sailors now standing on the beach watching.

Finally, by dint of Tuc volunteering to carry a rope through the narrowest place they were able to pull the trunk through. At the same time a group of village people came down the beach carrying a long log. Grace had them place it near the flaccid trunk near the ship’s bow.

As the tide came in she held the trunk open, letting it flood with water. Soon she was standing up to her knees. She gestured to Felicity, who had been organizing. “Now.”

Uncrewed, and increasingly far from shore…

He took a few bold steps into the water and then stopped, frozen.

“What’s the matter, Captain?” Grace asked as she squeezed the water out of her dress. “You can swim to her!”

“I’m a sailor! I can’t swim! Just prolongs the agony if you’re lost overboard.” He seemed to remember a time when that argument made sense.

“I will assist you, my Captain!”

He turned to see the mermaid Marie floating gently on the tide, her arms reaching out to him.

“Err… ah… Very well, just let me get us underway and we’ll discuss your future opportunities in mermaiding and general figure-heading…”

Marlowe laughed. It was the first time he’d felt happy in… how long? Since yesterday? It seemed longer.

The small gathering had dispersed as people headed back to the village to prepare for the coming voyage, led by Felicity. The Captain managed to fend off the attentions of his salacious figurehead for long enough to raise a single sail and turn the ship’s head toward the entrance of the bay.

Marlowe waded into the water and inspected the remains of the rocks that had trapped the hull. The little outcropping was split and shattered. He looked at Grace, who was lost in thought. “Come on, Stonebreaker. It’s time to honour your father.” Grace nodded. It was time indeed.

As evening gathered the Fae arrived in ones and fives, helping quietly, silently, unasked and unorganized, to move the whole of the village’s worldly possessions into the ship which Captain Stone had grounded on the sand as the tide went out of the bay.

The carpenter was busy caulking and patching while the Fae moved up and down the gangplank, stowing and stashing, stashing and stowing, and then doing it all over again.

The villagers rushed about, frantic and flumoxed, while the Fae calmly loaded their lives away in the ship’s hold. When the work was done there wasn’t a stick standing where the village had been. Only Sir Hyphen-Dash’s funeral pyre remained as evidence that the English had ever settled here.

“MOOOO!” came the sound from somewhere in the forest nearby. Athis rolled his eyes.

“Do you think perhaps there might be glory without war?” she asked him. He looked perplexed, then shrugged. “They say with love anything is possible.”

“You mean..?”

“I mean I love you, my lady. You have been the one good thing I have met on this journey.”

“Then you must return to England with us and make peace between our peoples! After all, it isn’t as if you could us any harm. What would you do, send an armada of a thousand ships against our island? What a disaster that would be!”

“As you say, m’lady.”

Cat jumped down from the fire just as the log on which he was standing burst into flame. He landed with unsurprisingly feline grace in front of Daphne. Skeezicks was in the background watching carefully, muttering to himself, “Is this what cats do? O! I could do that… hmmm… maybe not…”

“Let it go,” Cat said firmly. “You’re well fed. You don’t need to kill to live.”

“It is my nature,” Daphne replied.

“And this is mine,” said Cat, catching her a cuff with his paw and hissing. She shrank back and the mouse ran for the safety of the outer darkness. Cat watched it go with a smile.

Not for the first time Marlowe wondered why sailors were always in such a rush. If he had a penny for every time he’d heard that call and been told there wasn’t a moment to lose he’d have… three pounds sixpence, the part of his brain that had not forgotten his legacy as a merchant tanner’s son computed.

He’d led a well-traveled life. And now the end of all his travels was come. One last voyage home. He wondered if any of his family or friends were still alive. Time ran differently, here among the fae, certainly if the past two days were any indication. Perhaps he was returning to a changed world, a world where men flew through the skies, where lack of want brought peace between nations, where poets and artists were duly honoured by their peers.

He shook his head sadly. No fairy tale of knowledge nor the long result of time for him.

As he turned away from the fire a figure in the shadows caught his eye.

“A thousand years, love ~ so I will remember you ~ as the summer ends.”

“The summer will not end within my soul
while still the memory of you remains
to remind me how the wave’s long roll
of time and chance reality constrains.
We are not fated to combine as one
No matter how our courses closely run.”

He drew her close and kissed her. While it lasted, it lasted forever.

“98 pounds, six ounces and a scruple!” the mate replied.

“Funny what a difference a definite article makes,” Marlowe said absently to Cat, watching the moonlit shoreline turn and drift. Or perhaps it was the ship. Nothing seemed quite real.

He looked around the deck. Bundles and bags were still scattered everywhere, although the crew were already busy stowing and stacking. Marlowe felt worn out, as if he’d lived a vigorous year or more in the past two days.

Lady Belinda stood at the rail, Don Diego by her side. She was waving goodbye to the Fae. They did not wave back. Toward the stern Captain Stone was fending off the blandishments of Marie the Mermaid, although Marlowe thought he detected a certain yielding of the Puritan’s frosty demeanor as he pushed her away. “Call me Fish-Tail,” she said. “All my friends do.”

Cat commented, “Then I suppose we should be grateful for a more humane Author, and Artist.”

“We are the authors of unfolding fate:
the captains of our time, our human lives.
A change in course can never come too late
while still the heart has love and sinews strive
to build a better world where peace may grow
where one day children never war will know.”

On the beach the Fae were watching. “Do you think we should have told them?” Siduri asked Athis.

“They’ll find out soon enough,” Athis replied, as the ship vanished into the not-quite-distance.

Somewhere nearby Rothgar the sea-bear swam on through the deep.