Vol. 1 · The Blank Sea
Ch 23 Side Story I: Sol's Day
Sol jumped down from Kael’s bunk before dawn.
To be precise, he stood up on the pillow, stepped across Kael’s chin, pushed off his cheekbone with a hind foot, and landed on the floor. The sound of four paws touching down was very soft, nearly silent. Kael, half-woken by the stepping, reached up and touched the lingering sensation on his face, then rolled over. Sol was already out the cabin door.
The captain’s cabin door hadn’t been shut all the way. He pushed it open with the top of his head, squeezed through the gap, and his ruddy brown tail was the last thing to vanish into the crack. The dark brown tip flicked once in the dim corridor light.
On deck, the horizon was just turning pale.
The night-watch sailor was dozing against the gunwale. He lifted his head at the sound of claws tapping on the planks. Sol passed by his feet without looking at him. He walked along the port side for a stretch, stopped by the base of the mainmast, and raised his nose toward the wind. His ears turned a small degree, held still. Then he walked on.
He sat for a while on the anchor-chain coil at the foredeck. His tail curled around his body, the tip resting beside his front paws. Daylight came from the east, turning his coat from dark red to copper, and the teal gemstone pendant at his neck was dim in the morning light, like a drop of ink not yet dry. He sat facing the sea with his eyes half-shut for about a quarter of an hour, breathing slowly, ears twitching now and then.
It looked like he was doing nothing. But the night-watch sailor later told someone: “That cat was sitting at the bow at the crack of dawn. Like he was inspecting the watch.”
Ronn was the first person to bother Sol that morning.
To be precise, what he was after wasn’t trouble — it was data. He crouched on the main deck with a plank, a length of thick rope, and a strange bracket bent from wire laid out in front of him.
“Sol.” He patted the plank. “Come here.”
Sol sat on a coil of cable three paces away. One ear turned toward him. His body didn’t move.
“I just want to weigh you.” Ronn unhooked a small spring scale from his tool belt and held it up, waggling it. “It’ll be quick.”
Sol looked at the spring scale.
Ronn laid the plank flat on the deck, hung the spring scale’s hook on the bracket, and looped the rope into a sling. He patted the sling. “Sit in here.”
Sol jumped down from the cable coil and walked over slowly. He lowered his head, sniffed the sling, then stepped in and sat down. Ronn’s eyes lit up. He lifted the spring scale carefully. The sling rose about two fingers’ width off the deck. Sol sat inside with his tail hanging down, his weight pulling the spring to a certain mark.
Ronn leaned in close to the scale’s markings. “Four —”
Sol jumped out of the sling.
Not from fear. Not from discomfort. He simply left. Stepped his front paws out, pushed off with his hind legs, landed on the deck, and headed toward the stern without looking back.
Ronn crouched there, holding the empty sling and the spring scale.
“Wait!” He stood up and chased after him. The chisels and wire on his tool belt clinked and jangled. “I hadn’t finished reading it! Sol!”
Sol leaped onto a barrel lid. Ronn reached for him; he jumped to the next barrel. Ronn followed; he jumped from the barrel to the top of a bollard. Ronn circled around; he jumped from the bollard to the inner ledge of the gunwale and walked five or six steps along the narrow strip of wood, light as if strolling on flat ground.
Ronn couldn’t walk the gunwale. He could only run along the deck.
Castor came down from the quarterdeck and saw a seventeen-year-old apprentice chasing a cat with a spring scale across half the ship. He stopped.
“What are you doing.”
Ronn, out of breath: “Weighing — I was — he cooperated —”
“For less than three seconds.” Castor glanced at Sol, who sat on the gunwale licking his paw, then back at Ronn. “You thought a cat would stand on a scale and wait for you to read the number?”
Ronn started to say something, then swallowed it. He looked at Sol. Sol didn’t look at him. He was absorbed in licking each toe on his right front paw, sunlight picking out a layer of red-gold on the fur along his back.
“About four kilograms,” Ronn said finally.
“You sure you saw that?”
“Saw the beginning. Roughly four.”
“Roughly four.” Castor repeated it, turned, and walked away. Two steps later he looked back. “Clean up that mess on the deck.”
At noon, the cook Hein was cutting fish by the stove.
The ship’s galley was below deck — narrow, low-ceilinged, thick with the smell of smoke and salt fish. Hein pressed a silver sea fish as long as his forearm onto the cutting board, brought the knife down behind the head, and drew it along the spine. Quick, steady.
Sol crouched on the wooden rack beside the cutting board.
He didn’t meow. Didn’t extend a paw. Didn’t do anything that looked like begging for food. He crouched there, front paws together, tail curled in front of him, yellow-green eyes fixed on Hein’s hands and the knife and the fish. His gaze tracked the blade — head to tail, tail to head.
Hein was used to it. He kept cutting. The second stroke opened the belly; the guts slid out. The third separated the bones. He tossed the skeleton into the bucket and laid the fillets on a plate. Sol’s gaze moved from the knife to the plate, then to the bucket, then back to the knife.
“Not for you,” Hein said.
Sol showed no reaction. He kept watching.
Hein finished three fish. He scraped the scales and scraps together with the back of his knife and swept them into the waste bucket. Then he went to the stove to stir the soup in the pot.
When he came back the cutting board was spotless. One piece of fish was missing from the plate. The top piece.
Hein looked at the plate, then at the rack.
Sol was no longer on the rack.
Afternoon sunlight fell at a slant across the foredeck. Naia sat cross-legged beside a coil of spare cable, a worn halyard in her hands. She was using a bone fid to weave the frayed strands back together. Her braid hung over one shoulder, the small beads woven into it catching the light now and then.
Sol came from her right side. No warning, no sound. He stood beside her for about two seconds, then jumped into her crossed legs, turned once, and lay down.
Naia’s hands went still.
Sol adjusted his position in her lap. Front paws on her knee, hindquarters nestled into the crook of her crossed calves. His weight wasn’t much, but he was warm, and he’d chosen a pose that made it exactly impossible for her to stand up. He closed his eyes.
Naia looked down at him. Sol’s breathing had already slowed, ears relaxed and tilted to either side, tail tip resting on her ankle.
She tried to reach the fid beside her. Her fingers fell just short. Sol’s weight wasn’t heavy, but any movement of her legs would nudge him, and nudging him would wake him.
She didn’t wake him.
She sat there, the half-braided halyard in her hand, looking at the distant horizon. The wind knocked the beads on her braid lightly together.
Castor came across the main deck to fetch a tool. He saw Naia’s posture — cross-legged, motionless, work stopped, a cat on her lap.
He paused.
“You’re going to sit like that until dark?”
“You’re welcome to try picking him up,” Naia said.
Castor glanced at Sol. Sol hadn’t opened his eyes, but his right ear turned a small degree toward Castor.
“I’ll pass,” Castor said. He crouched, took what he needed from the toolbox, and as he stood he looked down at Sol once more. Sol’s tail tip moved, brushing Naia’s ankle.
Castor left. A few steps away, his hobnailed boot soles clicked against the deck.
Naia went on sitting. She set the half-braided halyard beside her knee and, with her free hand, lightly touched the base of Sol’s ear. His ear pressed toward her fingers.
As evening came on, Edmund was writing his log at the small desk beside the captain’s cabin.
Lamplight fell on his notebook. His handwriting was narrow and precise. He paused at the day’s wind-shift entry, unclipped his reading lens from the cravat pin, checked the barometer reading on the desk, then folded the lens away and went on writing.
He didn’t know when Sol had gotten onto the desk. He looked up to dip his pen and found Sol lying across the open left-hand page of his notebook.
Sol’s body covered exactly the first three paragraphs. Front paws tucked under his chest, chin resting on his paws, the dark teal pendant hanging down onto the page and pressing a faint indent into the paper. His eyes were half-lidded, the yellow-green irises turning gold in the lamplight.
“Sol,” Edmund said.
Sol didn’t move.
Edmund tried to pull the notebook out from under him. He pinched the edge of the paper between two fingers and tugged gently. The notebook shifted about half a finger’s width. Sol’s weight on it was not too much, not too little — just enough that the page wouldn’t come free but wouldn’t tear either.
Edmund pulled a little harder. The notebook shifted a fraction more. Sol’s body slid slightly with the page, but he showed no sign of being disturbed. He even adjusted his position, settling more of his weight onto his left front paw.
Beneath the left front paw was today’s barometric record.
Edmund gave up. He looked at Sol. Sol didn’t look at him. His breathing was steady, his tail swaying slowly at the edge of the desk.
He let it go. He fished a thinner notebook from the inside pocket of his coat, found a blank page, and started writing again beside the first one. His handwriting was a little less tidy than before.
Deep into the night. Only the watch on deck.
Corven leaned against the gunwale on the quarterdeck. His posture was the same as in daylight — arms crossed over his chest, head tilted slightly back. Black soft-soled boots silent on the planks. His eyes were open, pale in the moonlight.
Sol crouched on a bollard three paces from him.
He faced the same direction as Corven, watching the sea off the stern. His tail curled over the top of the bollard and hung down. Ears pricked, turning a tiny degree now and then, then returning.
Neither moved.
For a stretch there was nothing to hear but the hull slicing water and the faint creak of wood. Far off, something broke the surface — maybe a fish. Corven’s eyes flicked toward it, then back. Sol’s right ear swiveled toward it, then back.
Less than a second between them.
The watch sailor came from the foredeck to change shifts. Passing the quarterdeck, he saw the two of them. One man, one cat, facing the same direction, three paces apart, equally still.
The sailor moved on. His footsteps faded. Corven didn’t move. Sol didn’t move.
Moonlight came through thin clouds, splitting the deck into light and shadow. Corven stood in the dark; Sol sat in the light. His ruddy brown fur turned grey-brown under the moon, and only the teal gemstone on the pendant still held a trace of color.
It was nearly the small hours when Kael returned to his bunk. He pushed the cabin door open, didn’t light the lamp, and shrugged off his coat in the dark, draping it over the chair back.
He walked to the side of the bunk.
On the pillow was a small, warm weight.
He reached down. His fingers met soft short fur, then the contour of a small ear. Sol’s body rose and fell faintly in the darkness, breathing even. He had taken the right half of the pillow, curled into a tight circle, tail wrapped around his nose.
Kael drew his hand back. He lay down on his side, using the left half of the pillow. Sol’s body heat came through the thin pillowcase fabric.
He closed his eyes.
Just before sleep, the back of his hand touched Sol’s back. Sol shifted, moving half an inch toward his hand. Then went still.