The sky was darkening, and Lady Griffin had already delivered two messages from their mother reminding them to return to the Sanctuary in time to dress for dinner. But at last the final nail was hammered, and the figurehead was in place.
It was a thing of great beauty: a majestic griffin with wings upraised so that they swept back on either side of the bow. The rich wood was polished to a shine, and there were touches of gilt to bring out the fierce eyes and finely carved feathers.
“It’s not ugly, it’s beautiful,” Lilah breathed.
She was right: the piecework look that had hung around the ship before was gone. The griffin completed the ship, though the mast and sails were not yet in place.
“Now this is being the very! The very ship!” Orlath said. He picked Lilah up and spun her around, presumably because the ship was too big to embrace.
“Not yet,” Celie said under her breath.
Beside her, she could hear Rolf also muttering something. Was he counting? Praying? She wasn’t sure. But he didn’t have to count very high, or pray very long.
A great shudder ran through the ship. They could all see it. Several of the men working on the upper deck shouted and fell to their knees as every plank resettled itself. The figurehead appeared to stretch and then freeze again, looking exactly the same save for a slightly fiercer glint to its eyes, Celie thought.
“There it is,” Rolf whispered.
“Like a bird ruffling its feathers,” Celie agreed.
“Or a griffin,” Pogue said in awe.
The men were scrambling to get off the ship, but the Glower family and their friends paid them no mind. They all hurried to get on the ship, to see if there had been any changes.
Though there were no changes to be seen, none of the Glower children were disappointed. It was obvious from the moment they stepped onto the deck that the ship had come to life.
“It’s like the Castle,” Celie breathed. “We were right.”
“What wonders!” Orlath cried. “The very nails did dance! Are you feeling a something?”
They were. It was exactly the way things were at home, something Celie never noticed until it was taken away. It was almost, but not quite, a vibration. Almost, but not quite, a sound. If you’d lived all your life with it, you would never notice it. But having spent the past weeks in the Sanctuary, Celie was acutely aware of the difference between the stones of Lulath’s ancestral home and the planks of the ship’s deck.
And so was Pogue.
His face was shining, and he looked around them in wonder.
“I can feel it,” he said, entranced. “I can feel it!”
Back home at the Castle, only the Glower family could feel the Castle, and it reacted only to them. Celie knew this was a blow to Pogue and others who spent a great deal of time there, and who respected and loved the Castle and the Glowers. She had assumed there was something in her family’s blood that made them part of the Castle.
But the look on Pogue’s face said it all: he could feel the ship.
“This is amazing!” he said. “I can’t believe it! I’m feeling the ship!”
“Well, I am not,” Orlath said, sounding just a little cross. Then he grinned with pride. “But to be sure: it is a fine, fine ship.”
“It’s not a ship,” Celie corrected him, also grinning. “It’s the Ship.”
Chapter
7
Do you think the Ship will be ready to sail by the night of the betrothal celebration?” Queen Celina asked, strolling across the deck the next morning.
“It is my thinking so,” Orlath said. “But only for the very short sailings. Will these many parts be in harmony? I am not knowing—not at the first,” he hastened to add. “It will be having small cruises of the harbor before there is the larger undertaking.”
“Celie, aren’t you excited?” Lilah whispered. “The Ship is almost finished!” She patted her hands together. “Lulath will be so happy when he gets back!”
“Um, yes . . . ?” Celie said, drawing her mind back to the present. “It’s very nice.”
“Nice?” Lilah arched an eyebrow. “It’s a Ship. Can you imagine the look on Lulath’s face when he feels it?”
“I know,” Celie said, moving restlessly around in the bow, picking up and putting down a belaying pin. She hadn’t slept well since Lulath had left to find the griffin rider village, though Lilah seemed to have moved from worry about him to anticipation of his return since the figurehead of the Ship had been put in place. “I—I just—”
“I know,” Lilah said.
“You do?” she asked. “Oh, well, of course you do—”
“You’re thinking I’ve forgotten about our quest,” Lilah went on. “But I assure you I haven’t! As a matter of fact, I have everything planned out.”
Celie was baffled. “Our . . . quest?”
“To find the unicorns,” Lilah said with impatience.
“Oh,” Celie said.
“Listen,” Lilah said, lowering her voice. “Have you noticed how Mother never mentions that anymore? How she only talks about building the Ship and then going back to Sleyne?”
Celie nodded. Although, really, from the beginning it had always been Lilah’s quest, and no one else’s.
“Well,” Lilah said, drawing Celie even closer to the rail, “I’m not going to let my dream be set aside. We have plenty of time to go to the Land of a Thousand Waterfalls,” she told her, using Larien’s older, more romantic, name.
“All right,” Celie said, not feeling even slightly romantic.
“What I’m planning,” Lilah continued, not noticing Celie’s lack of enthusiasm, “is to take the Ship out for one of these little harbor cruises that they’re talking about, and then we demand that the Ship take us to Larien!”
Lilah tossed her hair back and waited for Celie’s answer, but Celie didn’t know quite what to say. It sounded like Lilah wanted to steal her own ship. But was that stealing? It was Lilah’s and Lulath’s ship together, to be exact, but would Lulath go along with this plan?
She asked this last question out loud.
“Lulath will do whatever I ask,” Lilah said airily, but Celie thought she looked slightly worried.
“So you want to steal the Ship?” Celie said.
“It’s not stealing if it belongs to me,” Lilah said, answering that question at least—albeit in a very roundabout way. “And I’m not going to steal it. I’m just going to make sure we have everyone and everything on board that we’ll need for the journey, and then when we’re out in the harbor, I’ll simply command it.”
“I see,” Celie said.
“Don’t you dare get cold feet,” Lilah warned her.
“Me? This isn’t my plan!” Celie protested.
“But you want to find the unicorns, too,” Lilah said. “Don’t you?”
Celie paused, but she wasn’t really thinking about the answer. Of course she wanted to find the unicorns. She wanted to know that the griffins hadn’t killed them all. She wanted to prove that they could live peacefully in Sleyne with the griffins.