Sky Song: Overture Read Free Page A

puzzle wheel. It is time we addressed it.”
    “Addressed what?” I asked.
    “Don’t play daft!” he cried. “I know you’re a woman.”
    “Captain, I—”
    “We have a few lads on board who are slight of figure and might even pass for a port in a storm, but if you take off that flight cap, we both know I’ll see it plain as day! You’re more than just a pretty lad with a rasp in his throat. You actually make a fine woman.” My stomach churned. He ripped off my cap, spilling my shorn blonde hair.
    My face got hot with shame. “I’ll leave the ship at the next port.”
    “You will not. I need your help,” he said, meandering towards his large four-post bed cloaked in heavy curtains. “This is my sister Molly,” he said and pulled back the brocade, revealing a red-haired thirteen-year-old girl. Her eyes were damp with tears and her mouth trembled. She clutched the gathered skirt of her striped gown, bunching the black ruffled edge under her nails.
    “Pleased to meet you,” the doll-like child sobbed.
    “I need you to make her stop crying so she can marry the emperor’s heir,” said Dirk. “You, being a woman, can surely understand such issues that plague the fairer sex.”
    I nodded in spite of being completely perplexed and a little insulted. Dirk went out of the room and closed the door, leaving me with the weeping child.
    “Err,” I started, sitting down beside her on the bed. “Hello there. I’m Clikk.”
    The girl said nothing, but cried and cried as if her favorite mutt had just now perished beneath a carriage wheel.
    “What is the matter?” I asked.
    “N-n-nothing!”
    “If there’s nothing wrong then why are you crying?”
    “I don’t know!”
    I tried imagining what made girls cry. I hadn’t wept since beggars cracked my lip with a pewter mug. There were a few tavern songs I’d seen bring a tear to the bar wench’s eye, and I tried to remember what they were about.
    “Do you not want to marry the emperor’s son?” I asked.
    “I should love to marry a prince.” She sniffled. “It is to be a wedding in the clouds on his ship the Crescendo. It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed.”
    Tears dribbled down her cheeks. She smothered herself with the captain’s pillow, bawling into it like a dying animal. It bewildered me to see a girl in such a fit without anything the matter. I went and banged on the door.
    Dirk opened it a crack, peeked in and hissed, “What are you doing? She’s still crying!”
    “I don’t know what to do!”
    “You’re a woman! Figure it out!” He shut me in and turned the lock.
    “Bugger!” I kicked the door. “Thinks he can lock me up.” I grumbled a string of filthy words that didn’t make sense in a sequence. If I went back out there as a failure, Captain Dirk would let everybody know Clikk was a woman. The men would never treat me the same again.
    Baker would feel so betrayed. He’d pissed in front of me countless times and had even put faith in me to look at his little pirate whenever he had anything resembling a rash after whoring. Worse yet, I’d heard all his disgusting jokes about wankers and shite and I’d actually laughed. I’d laughed because they were hilarious, but if he knew he was speaking to a woman like that, he’d never have the nerve to face me again.
    Too much was at risk. I went back to the girl, trying to think what helped me the night I was mugged. Beaten and robbed of my coin, I had curled up in the darkness, taking shelter beneath a broken cart as it began to rain. I had wept and pled with the gods to send me to my mother in heaven.
    Then it struck me. This girl was missing the maternal love her sod of a brother couldn’t convey. Whenever I felt sad, my own mother would cradle me in her arms and sing an old song, a song passed down through the generations. I hummed the melody to Molly, surprised I remembered it. The girl rolled over, her teary eyes blinking themselves dry.
    “What is that song?” she asked.
    “I