Chapter 12: A Crack in the Crew

The rescue from the reef should have drawn the crew closer together than ever — or so it seemed to Mira in the first hours after the storm, as she warmed herself by the galley stove under Barro's watchful care, the cook constantly pressing a blanket or a mug of hot broth into her hands. But by evening of that same day, it became clear: not everyone aboard had taken her singing as salvation.

"She controls the sea," Mira overheard through the half-open door of the crew's quarters, where part of the night watch had gathered. The voice belonged to one of the younger sailors, one who'd stayed neutral until now, on no one's side. "Before it was just rumors, old Hasso's superstitions. Now we've all seen it with our own eyes. She can move the water with a single song. And what if next time she decides to move it somewhere we don't want it to go?"

"She saved the ship," another voice snapped back — Dolf, apparently, whose support hadn't wavered an inch.

"Saved it this time. What about next time?" The first voice was strained, almost pleading, as if its owner desperately wanted to be talked out of his own fear but couldn't quite manage to believe it himself. "We have no idea what she actually is. Not the captain, not Hasso, not even she herself, it seems, fully understands what we're dealing with. And we're all on one ship with this… thing."

Mira walked away from the door without waiting for the rest of the conversation — she'd heard enough to understand: the crack that had first appeared on the night of the first storm was now spreading wider, fed by what had happened at the reef. Worst of all, she couldn't truly blame them for the fear. She herself still didn't fully understand what had happened at the rocks, what exactly had left her when she sang, or whether it would ever come back.

Kress, to her surprise, wasn't the loudest voice in this new wave of fear — a younger sailor, the one Mira privately thought of as "the sandy-haired one" without even knowing his name properly, had taken up the role of chief skeptic, and around him a small knot of others had gradually gathered — sailors who'd stayed neutral before but could no longer pretend nothing unusual was happening, not after witnessing real power on display.

Captain Darnveil, learning of the growing discontent, called the crew together that same evening — but this time the conversation came harder to him than before: he could no longer simply order the crew to trust Mira, because now fear had concrete, visible proof of its own rightness.

"I won't pretend I don't understand your worries," he began plainly, standing before the crew assembled on deck, Mira standing a little apart, between Tobb and Gretta. "What you saw today wasn't illusion, and it wasn't coincidence. Mira does have a power capable of changing the sea. That frightens me no less than it frightens any of you, believe me."

"Then why do you still keep her aboard, captain?" shouted the sandy-haired sailor, whose name, it turned out, was Fern. "With all respect — you could put her ashore at the next port, and all our troubles would end at once."

"Our troubles won't end, because the trouble was never her," the captain shot back, hard. "She didn't choose to be born with this gift any more than you chose to be born with two good hands capable of holding a line. The power she used today saved every one of you from dying on those rocks. If not for her, we wouldn't be arguing on this deck right now — we'd be going down with the wreckage."

"And if next time the power isn't so obedient?" Fern wouldn't let up. "What if whatever listens to her song decides one day it wants something more from us than just saving one ship?"

To this, Captain Darnveil had no immediate answer, and that pause — brief, but visible to everyone — told the crew more than any assurance could have. Mira felt the deck seem to drop away beneath her, though she stood on solid planking — for the first time since the night Gretta had promised her the crew didn't abandon its own, Mira truly feared that promise might not survive a collision with an inconvenient truth.

Gretta, silent until now, stepped forward and took her place beside the captain, arms crossed over her chest with the look of a woman who had no intention of retreating a single step.

"I'll put it plainer than the captain," she said, in a heavy tone that brooked no argument. "Some of you are afraid of Mira. That's your right. But as long as I'm boatswain on this ship, I won't let a single one of you turn fear into cruelty — not by word, and not by deed. Kress already got his warning after the first storm. It applies to every one of you equally. Anyone who disagrees — speak now, and I'll personally see you replaced at the next port. But whispered talk behind backs, in corners — that I won't tolerate anymore."

Fern didn't answer, but he didn't fully back down either — he simply fell silent, exchanging a quick, meaningful glance with a couple of equally uneasy companions. The rift hadn't vanished — it had only gone deeper, hiding behind outward obedience to the boatswain's order, and Mira, watching from her spot beside Tobb, found herself thinking for the first time since the voyage began: what if, to truly protect the crew from the power she carried, she'd eventually have to leave this ship herself — not because she'd be cast out, but because she herself would no longer be willing to subject these people to a danger they hadn't chosen.

She didn't say it aloud. But that night, lying in her hammock staring into the dark, she seriously considered the possibility for the first time — and the thought left her colder inside than any storm they'd already weathered.

Tobb, settled nearby in his own hammock, somehow sensed her mood, though the two of them had been silent a good half hour already.

"Don't even think about it," he suddenly said into the darkness.

"About what?"

"About running off at the next port for our own good. I know you, you're exactly the type to do something that stupidly noble." He shifted in his hammock, getting comfortable. "Fern's afraid because he doesn't understand. Dolf, Barro, Gretta, the captain, me — we don't fully understand either, but we've chosen to trust you instead of our fear. That's a difference that matters, Mira. Don't let a handful of frightened people override everyone else's choice."

Mira didn't answer for a long while, listening to the creak of the ship and the distant slap of waves against the hull — the very sound that now felt at once familiar and unsettling, like the voice of someone she now owed an endless debt to.

"Thank you," she whispered at last, but Tobb had already drifted off, and her words dissolved into the quiet of the crew's quarters, heard by no one but the ship itself.