“Why did they attack such a peaceful event?” Kirsten asked. “It doesn’t make sense. Grandwood has always been a peaceful place.”

Maija shrugged, “I don’t know. The attack came so suddenly. All I know is that they fought without honor. They killed unarmed men, women, and even children. I was trying to save a child when they captured me.”

“Is that how you got the bruises on your face?” Kirsten asked.

Maija nodded. As she nodded, a guard came down the stairs. They looked at each other wide-eyed and worried the soldiers knew they were talking. Nobody moved or made a sound as the soldier walked down the hallway. With a club gripped firmly in his hand, he looked into the cells for whoever made the noise he’d heard. Kirsten and Maija held their breath and tried to look asleep when the man peered into their cell.

They heard shouts coming from above. The soldier hustled back above deck, responding to the commotion and slamming the door behind him.

Within a matter of minutes, the ship began to rock more fiercely than before. Waves crashed over the deck and water spilled through the cracks in the ceiling. The shouts from the men above them were now drowned out by the howling wind.

“The sounds this ship is making don’t instill confidence,” Kirsten said. “I hope the ship doesn’t come apart at the seams.”

Night came and Kirsten and Maija closed their eyes hoping everything would be okay.

Kirsten awoke cold and dehydrated, her head throbbed. Water seeped through the crack overhead. She watched as the liquid formed into droplets and fell splashing into the small pool on the floor. The air in the hull was thick with damp wood and vomit. The storm had sent many people over the edge unsuccessfully fighting off seasickness. She tried to avoid thinking about the smell. Maija and Kirsten hadn’t been among those who became ill from the ship’s motion. Kirsten worried about some of the prisoners’ living conditions and feared that many of them wouldn’t survive. She could only guess at how long they would be locked up down in the ship’s hull. All she could do was take her captivity one day at a time. Make it through today, she kept telling herself. Just make it through today.

Once the ocean waves stopped crashing over the side of the ship, Kirsten and Maija heard rain begin to fall on the deck above. They figured the fresh water dripping through the cracks would be safe to drink. Using the bowl the guards had given them, they collected the rainwater. Over the course of the night, they collected enough to fill the bowl and took turns drinking its contents. Drinking the water helped Maija hydrate again and she seemed to be faring better than the day before.

Downing the last of the water from the bowl and placing it back under the slow drip, Kirsten said, “I didn’t sleep very well last night. It was the first time I’ve been on a ship during a storm. I thought we were going to sink.”

“I didn’t sleep that well either. Mostly because laying on cold hard wood that’s constantly wet isn’t exactly comfortable,” Maija said. “I overheard some of the soldiers talking late last night after the storm passed. They said three of their ships trailing us did not emerge from the storm.”

“Really?”

“I hope they weren’t carrying any of the people who were captured,” Maija added.

“I can’t imagine how scary that would be,” Kirsten said concerned. “I wonder where they’re taking us?” She looked up at the light now showing between the boards.

“I’m not sure,” Maija responded. “But wherever they’re taking us, it can’t be somewhere good.”

“I hope we’re not going to be cooped up in here much longer. I just want to stretch my legs and walk around. It’s hard to do that in this small cell,” she said as she demonstrated that it only took her three steps to reach the wall separating them from the next cell.

The two of them went silent when they heard several pairs of feet come stomping down the stairs and open the door. Two leather clad soldiers were dragging someone who looked to be unconscious. Kirsten watched as they dragged the person down the hall toward their end of the hull. They opened the cell door and tossed the person into it. She heard the limp body thud as it hit the ground. One of the men saw Kirsten was watching them from her cell.

He slammed the bars with his club and said with a thick foreign accent, unrecognizable to Kirsten, “What’re you looking at, darling?” Kirsten looked away trying not to provoke the soldier. The man said, “That’s what I thought,” and closed the cell door next to them. They left just as quickly as they came, remarking how bad the smell of caged humans had become.

Kirsten thought there was something familiar about the person they stuffed into the cell next to them. “I think that was my brother,” she said to Maija once the soldiers were out of the hull. She pressed her face up against the bars and whispered loudly, “Thomas.” She waited, listening intently for her brother’s voice to respond. For a moment there was no response.

She was about to call his name again louder when she heard his voice say, “Kirsten?”

“Oh, Thomas, it’s you!” Kirsten blurted out. Just then the door at the end of the hallway cracked open. A soldier popped his head in and listened for the noise he thought he’d heard. It didn’t take long before the soldier cursed the foul smell of the hull and gave up trying to catch whoever had made the noise.

“Shhhh,” Thomas urged her. “Keep quiet, Kirsten. It will anger them if they know I’m talking.”

“What did they do to you? Are you okay?” she asked him in a more hushed tone.

“Yes, I’m fine; a little banged up I guess, but I’ll be fine,” he replied. “When they brought us onto the ships, they didn’t bring me down here with the rest of you. They brought me to Thargon.”

“Is he the beast that killed father?” she asked.

“Yes,” Thomas sighed still coming to terms with what had happened to their father. “He questioned me for hours on end, torturing my mind with some kind of magic or something. He kept asking me where I got my powers. I didn’t know what he meant. It didn’t make any sense; I don’t have any special powers. I was so worried about you because he kept telling me he would kill the rest of my family if I didn’t tell him. Finally, when the storm came, something distracted him and he stopped interrogating me. I tried to escape when they weren’t watching, but they knocked me out and I just woke up when I fell on the floor down here. How are you doing, did they try to get anything out of you as well?”

“No,” Kirsten said. “They just put a bag over my head and tossed me in here. I’ve been trying to stay out of their way. The soldiers will beat you just for talking too loudly.”

“I don’t know who they are or what they want with us, but I’m glad they didn’t do to you what they did to me,” Thomas said. “They must think I’m someone else.”

“Did you happen to overhear anything about where they’re taking us?” Kirsten asked.

“There was some kind of two-way mirror or something that Thargon used to talk with someone. Unless he was just talking to his own reflection, which he very well could have been, because he’s clearly a psychopath.”

Kirsten chuckled a little at Thomas’ description.

“I didn’t understand most of what he was saying because he’s been speaking a strange language that I don’t recognize. It could be the soldier’s language, because Thargon speaks Landish with the person in the mirror but addresses the soldiers in the foreign language. When he was talking to the mirror, I heard him mention something about Dark Water Bay, I’m not sure if that’s a real place, but it could be where they’re taking us?”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Maija said, chiming in on their conversation.

“What does it mean?” Kirsten asked her.

“I remember my grandfather saying something about it being in the east. I can’t remember exactly, but I think he said it was along the Marauder Sea’s shoreline.”

“Who is that with you?” Thomas asked.

Kirsten answered, “Her name is Maija; she was working the competition when the attack started.”

“Thanks for the information,” he said. “And it’s nice to meet you.”

“Thank your sister,” Maija replied.

“I helped her out a bit,” Kirsten said.

“A lot, a bit,” Maija said. “I probably would’ve died had you not helped me.”

“I wonder what they’re going to do with us when we get there?” Kirsten asked. Neither of them responded to her question because they didn’t know what awaited them. One day at a time, Kirsten reminded herself.

For the next week, the three whispered back and forth. They kept a positive attitude considering the grave situation. One day, a soldier brought down several more prisoners and jammed them into the cells with others. The three were not the only ones whispering to each other. Soon there was conversation flowing among all of the people in the hull. They quickly found out who was in each cell and how they were faring. Many people were beat up, but didn’t have life-threatening injuries. Those who weren’t going to make it had already passed.

Kirsten and Maija had torn up part of their burlap sacks, tying them off to create smaller bags. They filled them with the rotting grain that was in their cell and passed it through the bars to those who needed it the most. Several people talked of escaping the cells, but their conversations didn’t last long before someone would dismiss the idea. Once a man had attempted to tackle a soldier who was putting a prisoner into his cell. The soldier was much stronger and apprehended the starving man. The soldiers took him up to the deck and he didn’t return. After that incident, many of the people who had whispered of escape stopped. They were beginning to lose hope that they’d ever get off the ship.

Almost two weeks had passed since they were forced onto the ship when Kirsten had the idea. She was thinking about how the man who had tried to tackle the soldier completely took him by surprise. Had the Westland prisoner been stronger, they might’ve succeeded. She knew their ship would eventually reach its destination and then the prisoners would be offloaded. When the soldiers came to accompany them off the ship, the prisoners would most likely be taken up as a group and then placed somewhere else. If all of the prisoners took on the soldiers at the same time when they were being brought off the ship, they might be able to take the soldiers by surprise. Kirsten estimated there were now about twice as many prisoners as there were soldiers. If she could convince the rest of the prisoners to follow through with her plan, they would outnumber their enemy two to one.

She shared her idea with Maija, who seemed to think it was about as good an idea as any.

“What do we have to lose?” Maija asked when she heard Kirsten’s idea.

Kirsten told Thomas next, who asked her more in-depth questions about timing and the signals that they would need to communicate with one another. Kirsten was feeling better about the plan already and now had something to look forward to.