The Ocean in December

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

I feel the same slow, sly smile spread across my face that never fails to come out of hiding when I think about the Valley. The Valley, where the giant golden hills look like Midas himself ran his fingertips over each blade of yeast-colored grass. The Valley, where sailboats with masts so tall it’s shocking they don’t scrape the sky churn and slice through the rough river’s water. The Valley, where at the mouth of the river she boasts her teeth in sword-shaped bursts of white foaming water to greet the start of the ocean. She is angry and angsty, roaring her siren’s call to everyone stupid and in love with her enough to try to set sails on her waters.

The ocean is not always like this. The Valley is not always this. But every midnight on the first of December her normally green fields, calm waters, and empty skies shape-shift into a horrifically halcyon picture out of the eldest, scariest myth, and they stay that way for the entire month.

The green turns gold, the water deadly, but the skies—the skies are my favorite transformation. The skies fill with the dragons.

Their ginormous, reptilian bodies are packed tightly with muscle, covered by a thick, rough skin of violet or emerald or cobalt and more, shades I didn’t even know existed before I first laid eyes on them. I have only seen them from the ground while they were free in the sky, have never had the privilege of seeing their teeth reel back and their wings unsheathe.

But this year I can.

All that’s standing between me and a dragon is finishing first place in the most notorious race in the world—the Thalassophile. For December only, from the border of the Valley and all through the Walsian Ocean, the world comes alive with every otherworldly creature I have ever read about. And I read a lot. The magic cuts off at Cambrian’s docks, where the world returns to its mundane self. No one is sure why only this small piece of the world becomes magical in December, but we have taken advantage of it the same way we take advantage of everything else.

We make it profitable.

The sailor that makes it from Valley’s shore to Cambrian’s docks wins a dragon. Bets are placed in every corner of the world. Buying a ticket to see the sailors set sail or return to land costs nearly as much as last year’s victor, Nicholai Tear, made when he sold his dragon.

One dragon is captured each year for the winner. And when that one dragon is given a name by a human being, when it is taken from the Valley’s borders, it stays instead of disappearing with the others on January 1st.

I have never wanted anything more badly. And I have never hated anyone more than I hate Tear for being dumb enough to sell his.

When Tear was asked how he won, he said simply, “You just have to be clever.”

I’m not terribly clever, although I am certainly terrible.

It’s one of my favorite qualities about myself.

“Maple!” Christian Michael Lay—my as-of-twenty-minutes-ago-boyfriend—shouts. His light feet pound surprisingly loudly against the cobblestones behind me as he runs. There’s another two sets of footsteps behind him. They’re his friends, other tragic, brooding, adorably handsome artists from Christian’s studio, but I never bothered to learn their names. They, of course, know mine. They scream it now, echoing Christian’s own shout, but I’m faster. And, more importantly, far more terrible.

It’s that terribleness that made me take the painting. I thought about taking my dagger and slashing it through the art from my perfectly painted forehead to my chest, thought about ripping it in two, thought about taking Christian’s paints and throwing them at the masterpiece until it looked like a child’s finger-painting instead of a beautifully done portrait of me. But I couldn’t, because damn is it a work of art, and damn do I look pretty good in it, and damn if I am going to let Christian cheating Lay keep it.

So I did what any smart girl would do.

I let myself love Christian Lay and his paint-stained hands and his thin pink lips and his astonishing, colorful mind one last time, and then I snuck from his bed in nothing but one of his stained smocks and my knee-high socks, took the painting, and bolted.

My socked feet are quieter against the cobblestones than Christian’s and his friends’. Which is good. If they can’t see me and they can’t hear me….

“Sorry!” I shout as I sprint through a woman’s apple stand. The apples tumble, bruising their red, round selves against the hard ground. I feel bad enough to snatch two out of the air before they can hit the ground. One I toss to the woman. The other I keep for myself.

I look over my shoulder, my golden-brown braid smacking me unkindly in the face, to see if they’re following. Christian runs straight through the apples, not slipping but squashing a few. The woman curses him. His friends hesitate. They like to talk about being rebellious and untamable, but, really, they’re schoolboys with paintbrushes. I love them all anyway.

“Maple!” Christian shouts again just as I’m turning, and so, because I am, as we have already established, terrible, I blow him a kiss.

His lovely face turns the color of the apples on the ground.

I laugh.

The sound cut off sharply when I nearly slam into a wall. Namen in a maze, all alleys and cobblestones and apple carts. It’s also nearly as terrible as I am. Thieves and cheats and smugglers are raised in this city. I’ve always wished that I was, too.

But, unfortunately, four weeks ago was the first time I’ve ever set foot in Namen. Christian, on the other hand, knows this city like he knows the painting I’m still clutching.

I’m not worried.

Christian may know this city. But I know the sea.

I can’t see it but I know when it’s close. Christian and I both like to wake at dawn. He wakes to paint. I wake to sit on the edge of the cliffs, my feet dangling over the side, to watch the waves crash, to dream about jumping in, to crave for December to come sooner.

I know the path I take from Christian’s apartment to the ocean by heart, but this isn’t that path, and I get lost anywhere on land, so I should be hopeless. Thankfully, no amount of alleyways can keep me from smelling the salt, from tasting the wind, from stopping the always-taunt string that connects my heart to the deep blue from tugging.

I follow the tug. Christian’s smock slides down a little, showing enough of my chest that a young boy selling bread drops his loaves to gape.

“Those boys!” I call as I pass him. “Be trouble for them, will you?!”

I know that he is when I hear Christian swear. He’s a quiet boy, my Christian, my artist, and even when he is angry his voice sounds like poetry. Half of me wants to turn around and swallow him whole. The better half wants to throw him into the sea and watch her swallow him instead.

I turn left sharply, braid slapping me again, and see the ocean.

I’ve ended up at the marina. I haven’t been here since I arrived. I don’t like marinas like this. They’re too clean, too quiet, too full of pretty women and fancy men and white boat shoes that are not by any means actually suitable to wear on a boat if you’re doing any sort of real sailing. But marinas mean ships, and ships mean sailors, and sailors mean home.

I run faster.

“MAPLE EVE!” Christian shouts, and I am so impressed by my quiet boy’s loudness that I nearly—nearly—trip. I do drop the apple, but I keep hold of the painting. I’m going to be buried with this stupid, gorgeous painting if it kills me—which, I guess if I’m being buried with it, it must.

I hit the docks, my socked feet dampening, and laugh when the wind blows and sets a few strands of my hair free from its braid, welcoming me home.

I pass a yacht that is too expensive and a fishing boat that is too smelly and a group of young sailors that are too handsome. I like my boys messy. Stained, with paint or blood or salt or nightmares.

There are two boys standing right in front of me, one of them with a long neck and black hair and the other smiling charmingly. I shove between them, pushing them apart.

“Hey!” the charming boy shouts.

The long-necked one sighs. “Leave it, Jason.”

At the end of the dock, in a small sailboat, is a young man. He has brown hair the color of wheat and skin that speaks of time spent at sea. His hands are calloused, his eyes are narrowed, and his feet are appropriately bare. His back is all muscle and his eyes all stories. That is a sailor.

I grin.

The fancy men and beautiful women leap out of my way as I sprint down the dock. I’m glad to know I’m frightening enough to avoid in all my five-foot-six, smock-wearing, paint-stained, bed-rumpled glory.

“Hey!” I shout. The boy at the end of the dock doesn’t look up from the rope he’s untying. He’s intimate with this sailboat the way a sailor needs to be, entirely lost in the world that is her and him and the lasp lasp lasp of the waves. It makes me like him more.

He doesn’t look up until I’m leaping from the dock onto his sailboat.

Now, normally, I am very coordinated, especially on a sailboat. But I’m also normally not wearing thick socks and clutching a giant painting and gasping because I hate hate hate to run, so I blame all of these things on the fact that I slide when I land, all the way to the other side of the boat, and nearly topple over, right into the salty, light water.

I don’t care, not really, but the painting can’t get wet, and I didn’t carry it across the city just to loose it to the sea.

But the sailor manages to save us both. He grabs me, moving fast for someone who was moving so slow just a heartbeat ago, his large, cool hands on my waist.

I sway, halfway over the edge.

He pulls me away from the water, taking a shy step back.

“Hi,” I gasp. “You need to hurry up and sail.”

He blinks slowly. Over his shoulder I can see Christian and his friends. They’re sprinting, but the charming boy and his long-necked friend are over being pushed around. The one with that charming smile grabs one of Christian’s friends by his shirt and yanks him to a stop like an owner would a dog on a leash. The long-necked one sighs in reluctance but grabs Christian’s other friend by his neck to pull him in close. He whispers something in his ear that makes him grow pale.

But Christian is still running. I know him well enough to know that he’d rather die than loose this painting.

I nod towards Christian. “You’d be a hero,” I tell the sailor, because all boys, messy or clean or old or young or tragic or perfect, want to be heroes.

It does the job.

He goes back to untying the rope, faster this time. I put the painting down, careful that it’s somewhere dry, and climb up onto the side of the sailboat. I want Cristian to see me, to remember this. To think next time before he kisses a pretty blonde backer in the barn when he thinks his girlfriend’s gone to sleep.

He’s close. Close enough that I can the panicked look in his eyes and the flush to his cheeks and to realize that it’s not just the painting he’s afraid of loosing.

Touch. Luck.

The sailor pushes off the dock.

I raise my hand and waive, a small smile playing on my lips.

“Maple!”

Christian leaps.

I could reach out and grab his hand.

I could do a lot of things.

Instead, I watch him fall into the ocean. When he resurfaces, gasping, I meet his pretty green eyes. I want him to remember me.

I know that he will.

I am not easily forgotten.

I watch Christian tread water while the sailboat slowly creeps out of the marina until he is nothing more than a black spot in the distance. The moment I can’t see him anymore and we are off, the wind cutting softly but cleanly through the sails, I sprawl on the deck, the painting beside me, and watch the sailor sail.

“You’re the son of a sailor,” I observe. I try to untie my brain. The damn thing whipped me too many times for me to rightly let it survive.

The sailor looks up from the rope he’s swiftly tying. “I’m the son of a sailor who was a son of a sailor who was a son of a sailor.” He watches my fingers unbraid my hair. I know what he sees—fingers that are lithe, that remember how to tie and untangle rope as easy as lungs remember how to breathe. “You’re the daughter of a sailor.”

“Actually,” I say, always happy to be a surprise, “I’m not.”

I finish with my hair. It tumbles down my strong shoulders. I know that my hair is beautiful. It’s dark but streaked with gold from so much time spent in the sun. Against my brown skin, it’s a shocking, vibrant thing that make boys loose the small amount of common sense they may have had.

“Do you have a name, son of a sailor?”

He blinks, “Kan.”

Kan is a good sailor. Good enough that even though the sailboat is cutting through the water, clean and steady, he keeps watching her bow carefully. He should, at least until we get into deeper waters. He should even then, if he’s really smart. Only fools turn their backs on the ocean. I should know. I’ve capsized once or twice—or three or four or thirteen times, depending on who you ask—from such a stupid mistake.

He finishes with his rope. “Do you have a name, art thief?”

“I do,” I say, but don’t offer it, and he doesn’t ask again.

He eyes the painting through a lovely pair of brown eyes. “That’s of you.”

“I’m glad your eyes work. My faith in your sailing abilities is solidified.”

“The boys chasing you. They painted it?”

“One did. The one who jumped. Although they’re all basically one person. You know artists. They try so hard to be individuals that they end up lost in the crowd anyway.”

I lean back to arch my neck towards the sun. It’s been too long.

“Why’d you steal it?” Kan asks.

“He was an asshole.”

Kan grunts in understanding. I open my eyes just in time to see him gather his mass of brown curls into a knot at the base of his neck. He has scars on his forearms.

I move my hair so it falls over one shoulder, tired of it being on my hot neck but not ready to let the braid come back just yet, and lean forward so my elbows are on my knees. “So, Kan, son of a son of a son of a sailor, where are you sailing to?”

Kan leans against the sailboat's mast. The boat is a small thing, but clearly loved. I can tell by the peeling paint, by the scratches on her sides, by the way he leans back trustingly, sure she won’t tilt because he knows her better than he knows himself. “You’ll laugh if I tell you the truth.”

“I like to laugh. Keeps me from being too mean.”

“All right then,” he replies, crossing his arms, “you’ll be mean if I tell you.”

I consider and grin. My brother used to say that I have a lioness’ grin. It’s the best compliment I've ever been given. “Probably. But you’re going to tell me anyway.”

He raises a thick brow. “And why’s that?”

“Because you’re dying to tell someone.”

He is. I know what it’s like to be so passionate about something, so excited, that you feel like you’ll explode if you don’t share the news with the entire world. I’m always like that. It’s a side-effect of being me.

“I’m going,” he answers, uncrossing his arms, “to Walsa.”

Ah.

He is a good sailor.

And he is going to Walsa.

Gods, did I pick the right boat.

“You’re racing in the Thalassophile!” I exclaim, not believing my luck.

He blushes. It could just be the sun, but I’ve made enough boys blush to know that it’s not. “I am.”

“First year?”

"Second, actually.”

I’m surprised. “What happened last year?”

“Capsized the second day and got dragged down by a mermaid. Managed to slice her with my dagger but by the time I was back up my ship was gone. It was stormy that day. She was nothing but planks and rope.”

I swear in appreciation. I’m more surprised he survived the mermaid than the shipwreck.

“But the race doesn’t start for another fortnight,” Kan continues. “I have time to take you wherever it is you want to go, so long as it’s not on the other side of the world.”

“Oh, that won’t be a problem. I’m going to the same place.”

It’s Kan’s turn to look surprised. “To watch the takeoff?”

“Nope.”

“To work for the tourists?”

“I would rather capsize than work for tourists.”

“You know someone racing?”

“Sure. I know you.”

“Then why….” He understands. Gapes. “You’re not racing?”

“I am.” When he keeps looking at me like a deranged fish, I add, “Third year.”

“Third?!”

“Third.”

I give him a second. Once he remembers how to form words, he asks, “What happened the last two years?”

I don’t want to think about the last two years. If I think about the last two years I won’t sail this year, and that’s….that’s not an option.

“I didn’t die,” I say simply. “Isn’t that all that matters?”

He’s still gaping. “You must be the first girl to ever race.”

“No. That would be Lana Clanyon. She raced ten years ago. Finished, too. Seventh place. And after her, there was Tanny Wen. I’m the third. And,” I add, because I have never been humble and don’t see the point in starting now, “the youngest.”

“Racer or girl?”

“Girl. The youngest racer was thirteen.”

“Gods.”

“He didn’t finish.”

“Gods.”

“Clearly weren’t around.”

Kan laughs. He has a good laugh, a sailor’s laugh, deep and stubborn and hard to earn. “A girl sailing in the Thalassophile.” He shakes his head. A few strands of his bun come loose. “Who would have thought?”

“Me.” I pull at the smock. “Do you have anything I could change into? And some food? And maybe a place for me to put this painting I worked so hard to steal so it doesn’t get sun-ruined?”

“You make yourself at home easily.”

“It’s one of my favorite vices.”

Kan shakes his head and starts for belowdeck, where I’m hoping he’ll find a sweater and food, preferably pastries. “I have a feeling you have quite an arsenal of those.”

I fight back another feline grin.

He has no idea.