The Ferryman and the Sea Witch

By D. Wallace Peach

The merrow rule the sea. Slender creatures, fair of face, with silver scales and the graceful tails of angelfish. Caught in a Brid Clarion net, the daughter of the sea witch perishes in the sunlit air.

The queen of the sea bares her sharp teeth and, in a fury of wind and waves, cleanses the brine of ships and men. But she spares a boy for his single act of kindness. Callum becomes the Ferryman, and until Brid Clarion pays its debt with royal blood, only his sails may cross the Deep.

Two warring nations, separated by the merrow’s trench, trade infant hostages in a commitment to peace. Now, the time has come for the heirs to return home. The Ferryman alone can undertake the exchange.

Yet, animosities are far from assuaged. While Brid Clarion’s islands bask in prosperity, Haf Killick, a floating city of derelict ships, rots and rusts and sinks into the reefs. Its ruler has other designs.

And the sea witch crafts dark bargains with all sides.

Callum is caught in the breach, with a long-held bargain of his own which, once discovered, will shatter this life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Wallace Peach
• Release date: Dec 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638770718

D. Wallace Peach

D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life after the kids were grown and a move left her with hours to fill. Years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books, and when she started writing, she was instantly hooked. Diana lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon's rainforest with her husband, two dogs, two owls, a horde of bats, and the occasional family of coyotes

Book preview

Table of Contents

Nautical Terms

Prolog

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

The Sea Witch’s Bargain

Ready for Another Adventure?

About the Author

Books by

Nautical Terms

These terms are simplified to

enhance an understanding of the book.

Please forgive any liberties.

Aftcastle: A stern structure that houses the captain′s cabin (and sometimes other cabins) and is topped by the poop deck.

Belaying Pin: a wooden device used to secure the running rigging. 

Bulkhead: a wall within the hull of a ship.

Bulwark: the continuation of the hull that rises above the deck.

Companionway/ladder: steps leading from one deck to another. 

Forecastle: the upper deck at a ship’s bow and the forward structure housing the crews’ living quarters.

Gangway:  the narrow opening in the bulwark used to board or disembark ships.

Gunwale: the top trim of a boat’s hull.

Quarterdeck/Helm: the upper deck behind the mainmast.

Poop Deck: the aftermost and highest deck of a ship.

Ratlines: lengths of line tied to form a ladder for crews to climb when stowing sails.

Running Rigging: the system of ropes, cables, or chains employed to control or set the yards and sails.

Sea Ladder: a rope ladder lowered over a ship’s side.

Sheets: lines used to control the corner(s) of a sail.

Square-rigged: a sail and rigging arrangement in which the primary sails hang from horizontal yards perpendicular to the keel. 

Standing Rigging: the system of ropes, cables, or chains employed to support a ship’s masts.

Top: a platform above the lowest sail of a square-rigged ship.

Weather Deck: the topmost continuous deck exposed to the weather.

Yard: a horizontal spar on a mast from which sails are set.

Prolog

The hemp net hung from the boom above the waves. Within its lattice of pinched knots, the slender merrow baked in the heated air. She had ceased her struggle while the sun tilted up and shadows pooled on the deck. Her graceful tail with its angelfish fins dangled from the end of her confinement. Beyond the reach of her fingers, swells rose and fell. Taunting, seductive. Rhythmic as they sloshed against the hull.

Gulls shrilled in circles above the ship.

Like a storm-torn sail, the tip of the merrow’s tangled hair dipped into the sea with each crest, shed droplets with each trough. The creature wept for her kind, for the sea breathing beneath her, a thin and desolate sound. The mournful plea filled Callum’s young head, overwhelmed the clamor of merriment arising from the Brid Clarion officers who’d captured her in their mesh.

We should free her. Callum drew his fish-knife. She’s dying. They’re killing her.

I spoke my mind, boy. The brig’s captain laid a firm hold on Callum’s scrawny shoulder. Put away the blade. It’s not our place to chart the course of another man’s conscience.

Callum bit off a retort certain to earn him a scolding. The captain had treated him kindly, hired him on as a cabin boy, and freed him from the oily bilges of Haf Killick. By the graybeard’s good grace, Callum earned a wage. At fourteen years, he scoffed down oranges dripping with sticky juice and learned a skill that would save him from ever returning to the bowels of the relic city.

He held tight to a hundred reasons not to endanger the ship or her crew, not to interfere with the amusement of those who served in the king’s war. Well-heeled officers bantered and drank gin at the bow. How could they plug their ears to the keening cries? Pretend her torment didn’t matter?

The merrow’s sorrow twisted Callum’s stomach. The unbearable lament dredged up memories of his mother’s death in a bleak hold and his helplessness to ease her suffering.

He ducked out of the grizzled man’s grip and hauled a bucket of water from the sea. Below him, the merrow’s copper scales baked and bristled into gray flakes. They fluttered to the surface like shed petals. He splashed the water along the length of her body and tossed the bucket into the waves for more. It wouldn’t be enough. Only the sea held the power to save her.

He drew the bucket up by its line. Movement between the swells snapped him upright, and he shielded his eyes from the sun. Captain, the merrow are coming.

The old man fumbled for his spyglass and pressed it to his eye. The sea witch. He slapped the device into Callum’s hand. Watch her.

Cut away the net, Callum pleaded. It’s not too late.

You may get your wish, the captain said over his shoulder. He strode across the deck to the admiral’s celebration.

Callum focused the spyglass on the witch. Blood drained from his face, and his mouth turned dry as sand. She swam through the wind-scoured waves, the spines of her fins slicing the water. Her tail undulated like a serpent. White-lipped rage hollowed her cheeks and sharpened the angles of her face. Nictating membranes hooded her unnatural black eyes against the sunlight’s shimmer. Three merrow trailed in her wake, their voices weaving into a ghostly dirge.

And with them came the wind. A strange amassing and curving of clouds rose out of nowhere. The sky bloomed with a greenish glow, drenching the brig in the eerie twilight foretelling a storm.

Callum clung to the rigging as the Brid Clarion officers pulled pistols from their belts. With frantic intensity, they shared a powder horn, loaded their lead, and rammed it tight. The captain pleaded his case with wringing hands, but they brushed him aside. The men marched to the gunwale, sighted along their barrels, and fired.

Lightning flashed in reply. The approaching merrow plunged beneath the waves. Callum yelled his warning, Captain, they’re diving.

The captain swore. He climbed to the helm and bellowed orders as Callum searched the waves, the spyglass forgotten. The sea witch’s silver tail slashed through the swelling brine like the stroke of a knife. Fins rippled along her body in a feverish dance. She disappeared beneath the hull.

Callum froze with the crew and officers, silent, waiting, the seconds unspooling like a weaver’s thread. A harsh scraping sound cut into the bow. It raked across the keel to the stern, sparing neither the flowery anemones nor sea-greens that clung to the ship’s belly.

Chaos erupted. Jacks shouted in panic as water sprayed into the hold. The captain’s orders to plug the leaks competed with the admiral’s demand for more gunpowder.

The sea witch breached the waves. She grasped the net and sliced it with a coral blade. A hail of shot littered the sea. Iron rounds speared the water. They thudded into the merrow dying in the net.

A fierce scream of grief and fury shrilled from the witch. Callum caught his breath as she slashed at the net. The sky’s whirling cauldron mirrored the turbulence in his belly. Behind her, the waves bloated. A wall of water mounded in the distance and raced toward the ship like a winter gale. Lightning flashed with a sharp crack. The echoing rumble shook the deck.

I’m cutting her free, Callum yelled at the storm. Fish-knife in his grip, he climbed the bulwark. Wind battered his body. He hung onto the rigging and leaned over the water. His knife swiped at the net. Once, twice. The monstrous wave curled and crashed. Another slice. Lines frayed and snapped. The net splashed into the sea.

A mountain of white froth roared into him. He crashed to the deck, tumbled, and pounded into a mast. Pain burst in his ankle. His reserve of breath blew from his lungs. The watery world tipped and rolled. Sparks flared in his eyes as something smashed his face. From every direction, the groan and crack of the wreck assaulted his ears. He kicked against the hull, chasing his bubbles. A sail trapped him beneath the surface like an iron lid. Lungs on fire, he grasped a tangle of rigging and, hand over hand, hauled himself to the sail’s frayed hem.

Mouth open, he burst to the surface of the littered sea for a desperate breath. Something gripped his ankle. A male merrow with jet hair streaming behind him drew Callum down like an anchor. Callum pried at the pale fingers grinding his bones.

Shattered wood rained around him with gear and cargo. Air bubbles ascended in pearly strands. Above him, sails wallowed as desperate men grappled for flotsam, and bodies sank like ghosts torn from their white shrouds.

Callum gave up the fight, the merrow’s grip unforgiving. The sea grew muted and green. From the gloom, the sea witch bared her teeth, tail sweeping the water like a silk fan. Behind her, three merrow bore the sun-bleached body of their kin down to rest among the coral for the crabs to pick clean.

Vengeance burned in the witch’s inky eyes. Blood red hair, woven with seaweed, billowed around her head like a dusky cloud. Drown them all, she said, her unspoken command bursting in his head.

Merrow swam from the Deep, both male and female, beautiful and deadly. Jacks flailed and kicked, breathed water, and bucked. Coral blades flashed, clouding the water. Sharks ghosted in to feed. As Callum’s vision faded, a hazy shape materialized in the gloom, his ship descending into the fathomless Deep as if riding on a slanted sea.

Drowsiness coiled around him. Consciousness slipped away.

And he inhaled.

Air rushed into his lungs. Someone embraced him, a mouth on his. His eyes snapped open. He jerked away. The merrow clutched his head in her palms and yanked him back into the horrific kiss. He held her by the upper arms, at once pushing her away and craving her breath.

Breathe, she said inside his head, her melodious voice a softly curling tide. Without a sound passing between them, he heard her command as clear as a ship’s bell.

He gulped air, pulling it from her body as if his lungs would never draw enough. His thundering heart slowed.

Why? he asked, the word unspoken.

She responded with a sense of confusion.

Why help me?

She backed away, hair swirling with the blue luminescence of a jellyfish. High cheekbones cast shadows on her pale cheeks. She studied him with eyes like black shells, and her full lips thinned into a stern line as if to hide their softness.

Her ambivalence pulsed into his mind. Gossamer tentacles swirled from the end of her tail like a frilly gown, and her opalescent scales shifted colors in the thin light. Three pink gills on either side of her ribs rippled with the water’s movement. You aided my sister.

Her loss swept over him, along with his need for a breath. As though she sensed his desperation, her lips met his in a gentle, open-mouthed kiss. His first true kiss and bound to mark the strangest of his life, if not his last. Her tail pulsed against his legs as they rose. He surrendered to her control, no longer fighting the strange undulation of her body.

When they broke the surface, she pushed him away, flipped her tail, and dove. He threw his head back and inhaled the wind into his lungs. The storm had passed. Clouds peeled back to reveal an empty sea but for the brig’s debris bobbing in the tranquil waves. He swam to a raft of floating dunnage and hung on. Ahoy!

No reply.

He hadn’t drowned, but breath didn’t guarantee survival. The ship had anchored at the edge of the Deep, leagues and leagues from either Brid Clarion or Haf Killick, far enough that he’d perish long before he paddled the distance.

The sea stirred as a menacing shape slithered through the scattered flotsam. Callum drew up his legs, the presence of sharks fresh in his memory. The sea witch surfaced. Urchin's spines fanned from her temples and forehead in a prickly crown. Muscle threaded her arms, her body slim but bold-boned, skin drawn tight across her cheeks and throat. Her hair glimmered with pearls and beads of abalone, bewitching if not for the malevolence in her hooded eyes.

Naris tells me you are worth saving, she said, her voice low and full of sea whispers. She swam in a languid circle around him. What do they call you?

Callum, my lady.

The sea witch twitched a smile, revealing a row of sharp teeth. You may call me Panmar. She rolled onto her back with the slipperiness of an eel. Her fins and tail carved the waves, sparkling in the sun’s glare. You cut my daughter free, but you delayed. You lacked courage. She died for your cowardice.

The witch’s daughter? Callum’s fingers dug into the makeshift raft. He nodded but held his tongue. No words of remorse could justify or erase the truth, and his face burned with shame.

The sea witch sank beneath the waves and surfaced beside him, so close he tasted life and death on her breath. I offer you a bargain, mortal. Accept or drown.

One

Twenty years had passed since the shipwreck, and the injury to Callum’s ankle still complained, a nuisance after a long day on deck. He squatted and pressed his fingers against the soil of eight repotted lemon trees, feeling for dampness. They stood against the ship’s forecastle, free from the worst of the parching wind. The presence of something green and growing soothed his nerves with the same efficiency the precious fruit prevented scurvy.

Time’s runnin’ shy. His cabin boy fidgeted beside him. The ten-year-old’s nose twitched at an invisible fly as he stared round-eyed at the tart fruit.

Callum straightened with a grunt. He raked aside the sun-streaked hair blowing across his face and glanced beyond the boy’s shoulder where the sun paved a copper path atop the waves as it rolled toward the horizon. He picked a single lemon and handed it to Bryn to deliver to the galley. The boy didn’t need to see what would happen before the sea swallowed the day.

Designed for speed, the Windwraith sailed swift and sure in a breath of breeze. But above the Deep, the wind died. The sails luffed, and she drifted. Nailed to the wheel’s stem, the nautisphere spun. The crew awaited him at the rail where the prisoner knelt, hands bound behind his back. His mouth hung open as he sobbed, face contorted, eyes squeezed shut. Callum didn’t ask the luckless victim’s name or what crime he’d done to deserve his fate. This time, Varil Thayne, King of Brid Clarion, had delivered up the sea witch’s sacrifice.

Callum never questioned the choice since he lacked the power to change it.

His first mate, Jala, with an unlit pipe hanging from his teeth, stood beside the kneeling man like a bronze statue, legs parted, arms folded over a broad chest. He’d braided his silver beard, and his hair curled in a halo around his shiny pate. Gold earrings matched the chain around his neck, both remnants from his days of piracy, days ended when the witch cleansed the sea of ships.

At Callum’s nod, Jala wedged a thick hand under the prisoner’s armpit and hauled him to his feet. The mate scowled a dislike of the witch’s bargain equal to Callum’s. The rest of the crew shared the sentiment, but not one of them would survive a night on the Deep otherwise.

Kill me first, the man begged, the fiery sun burning in his eyes. Kill me before you throw me in.

Not my choice, Callum said. He canted his head toward the sea.

Jala gave a forceful tug on the man’s arm, and they shuffled to the deck’s edge.

Callum pulled his coat over his shirtless chest, a minor formality defining the ritual’s beginning and end. For a decade, he’d tried to explain to the victims what would occur below the waves, that death existed as one possibility among many, confidences he’d no way of knowing. He’d attempted to assuage their fears as a means to temper his own sense of guilt, but all his yammered wishes and excuses had offered little in the way of comfort. His words had been useless sounds that year by year withered into silence.

The sea-witch required royal blood, and until her vengeance was satisfied, each crossing of the Deep required a sacrifice. The task fell to him. To the ferryman.

The sun slid its belly into the sea, no ominous threat of death in its golden descent. Callum strode forward, never late, never inviting Panmar’s wrath. He gripped the prisoner’s shirt in a white-knuckled fist and pushed him the last step to the bulwark.

The man’s legs went weak. With a desperate howl, he twisted from Callum’s fist and scrabbled toward the ratlines. He grabbed a belay pin to wield as a club and swung at the air.

Callum glanced at the vanishing sun. Jala made a soundless offer of help, but Callum shook his head. No need. He outweighed and out-muscled the prisoner. Before the man could land a strike, Callum’s full weight hit him in the chest and slammed him into the standing rigging. The belay pin clattered across the deck. He spun the man around and heaved him from the ship.

The prisoner’s cry ended with a splash.

Callum straightened his coat and calmed his heartbeat. Though he rarely lingered for the drownings, the man’s resistance had notched up the ache in his ankle. He shifted his stance as he leaned on the gunwale. Jala joined him, the silent mate sharing the burden of the gruesome duty.

The sea doused the sun’s flame. Below them, the prisoner flailed and shouted against the hull. As the merrow rose from the Deep, their scales shimmered in the amber twilight penetrating the waves. Callum hid the lurch in his gut as the creatures pulled the man under.

She’s watching, Jala said with a tilt of his head, puffing smoke into the changing sky.

Callum followed the mate’s gaze. The sea witch swam on the surface of the blackening Deep, tail reflecting the rust of the sky. A flicker of a smile touched her lips, her bargain as unforgiving as an anchor’s chain. He refused to flinch, a prisoner no less than the drowned man, a sentence he’d borne for more than half his life.

Beyond an expressionless stare, he paid her no heed, and when the sea returned to its serene sloshing, she dove with a flick of her silver tail. His hands released their death grip on the gunwale, and his shoulders relaxed. We head for Haf Killick at dawn, he said and retreated to his cabin.

He hung a lantern from a wire hook. Its frugal light glinted off the brass buttons of his coat, the polished wood, and oiled leather. Shadows swayed with the sea’s pitch. Streaks of darkness undulated across the low ceiling and walls, a table strewn with maps, the empty gin bottle rolling back and forth with a clink and thunk, clink and thunk. He captained a well-ordered ship, a necessity when storms ground their teeth, when problems with running rigging might make the difference between life and death.

A toss landed his coat on his berth. He pried a sturdy knife from his table and sawed a notch in a beam. Nine shy of four hundred souls. His hands had cast them all to their deaths.

And that wasn’t the worst of his sins.

~*~

Sleep eluded Callum. He took a nip from his flask and lay on his back on his narrow berth, listening to the ship’s creak, eyes on the moonlight glazing his window. He bore secrets, hidden scars born of betrayals. Discovery crept closer with each passing day, and what would he do when the truth ripped his life in two?

He threw off his thin blanket and wandered onto the deck, barefoot and shirtless. A lungful of fresh air cleared his head, the tropical night balmy, the breeze fluttering the sails. Rigging tapped and clanked, sounds he noticed when the crew slept.

He relieved Tasa, the jack on watch. Her thatch of golden hair bristled like a scrub brush, backlit by the lantern at her shoulder. Another creature of the night, a loner of few words, she spent her wages on books, content to mind the wheel during the quiet hours when she read undisturbed. Without a word, she abandoned her seat on the transom.

A blue-water vessel, the Wraith sported three masts, square-rigged with a lateen sail on the mizzenmast for hauling close to the wind. Callum had accepted the ship as a gift from the Haf Killick queen. Not a surprise since he was the only captain capable of crossing the merrow’s trench without wrecking. Long, sleek, and swift, his ship boasted a square tuck stern and pronounced beakhead at the bow. She was a ship of forty crew, thirty gunports, and not a single cannon.

And she was home.

A gibbous moon outshone the pageantry of stars and reflected on the inky water like hammered silver. Beyond his vision, where water met sky, the merrow’s wistful voices sang. Their haunting melody unwound like an enchanted thread, wordless and strange. It embedded a hook in his heart.

When Tasa descended into the hold, seeking her hammock, Callum whispered to the waves, Naris?

The water burbled, and a tail splashed in reply. He scanned the surface, seeing nothing. Then her fair face rose from the depths. Shell-white hair swept back against her skull and clouded the sea like spilled milk. Sleepless again, Ferryman? Care to swim?

With the sea ladder unfurled, he stripped off his leggings. He dove naked into a sea as black and warm as a womb. Naris swam beside him, her scales glistening like slivers of glass as he worked the evening’s execution from his body and mind.

When his muscles tired and limbs were spent, he swam back to the hull and floated on his back. The figurehead loomed above him, a carved merrow pocked by decades of weather. Moonlight cast shadows in the hollows of its eyes and cheeks, its face spectral. What would happen if I stopped the sacrifices?

Naris turned in the unhurried swells, her serenade silenced and expression dark. Her strange black eyes shone like polished shells. "My mother will sink the Windwraith and drown your crew."

What if we no longer sail by night? No longer cross the sea? He glanced at her. What if we no longer sail at all?

You accepted the terms. You are bound to fulfill them.

I no longer care about the consequences.

And the sea never has. She swam under him and surfaced by his arm. Her playful smile revealed the barest glimpse of sharp teeth. I wish to show you the Deep at night.

He grunted a negative. The sea no longer frightened him. Shallow reefs bordering the trench hosted colorful corals, anemones, and urchins, schools of angelfish, and solitary rays. He’d ventured with her breath into the sunlit waters to harvest oysters from their crusty beds. But he’d no interest in plunging into the fathomless Deep. Especially not at night.

She rose from the water like a breaching fish and lay across his chest. Her weight pushed him under. More powerful than he in the watery world, she drew him down. She placed her mouth on his as they sank into the gloom, the kiss far more intimate than their first. His body relaxed, eyes closed, her lips consuming his attention. The sea cooled with the increasing depth, and his ears popped as they adjusted to the water’s growing pressure.

Open your eyes, she whispered inside his head, the strange wordless exchanges no longer startling him. Hold your breath. She pushed him and with a flick of her tail, moved away. He would have gasped if he could do so without drowning. Suspended in the black void of the Deep, he stared in wonder, surrounded by a bloom of luminescent jellyfish, their white bells pulsing and long slender tentacles trailing in the deep-sea currents.

He floated in another world, one unseen by his kind. They’re beautiful.

Do not touch them, Naris said. They will sting.

Leviathan shapes loomed beneath him, gray upon the obsidian depths, larger than his ship. The water wobbled with the movement of their fins. Naris glided around him, her tail sleek and tentacles swirling, pushing the more curious of creatures away before she kissed him again and returned him to the surface. He grasped the ladder