13. The Composition of a Captain

The cozy smells of evergreen and spiced cider filled the little house, the mood punctuated by the crackling and popping of the fire in the hearth. If Casper closed his eyes, he could almost believe that he was back in his own home, preparing for Norditch's Midwinter Festival. Though the pangs of homesickness had dulled over time, there were still moments when the desire for his family was so strong that it nearly overwhelmed him.

But they're likely long gone by now. Time may have affected us differently under the curse, but it still flows normally for everyone else. Even if I were to find a way to break this curse and get us back, what kind of a home would we even be returning to? I doomed my crew the moment I accepted that deal.

"I didn't realize you had such negative feelings about fir trees."

He blinked. Sienna had dropped into the chair across from him at the table and was eyeing him over the tall pile of greenery that she had returned with after her morning stroll with Devri. After their late adventure the previous night, he had been surprised that she still had enough energy to be up and about before the sun, but she was gone when he awoke and returned an hour or so later with several burlap sacks full of evergreen boughs, red ribbon, and twine colored to match the soft, green needles.

"What?"

"You were staring at those branches like they knocked a hole in your favorite boat. I can do this myself, you know. You don't have to help me."

The ‘this' was tying the branches together into wreaths and garland for the Midwinter festival that he kept hearing about. Devri was apparently responsible for providing some of the decorations, and she had recruited Sienna's help.

He raised an eyebrow. "With one hand?"

She scowled at him, the expression both foreign and adorable on her freckled face. "Stop reminding me, please. It's bad enough that someone apparently wants to kill me, but it's even more rude that their poor attempts left me basically useless for a week."

"You're not useless. And I don't have strong feelings about fir. I was just…thinking."

"About the music in the crates that you said you would tell me about later?" She blinked big, sea-blue eyes at him. "I've been very patient. I didn't even try to pry the information out of Jem before he left this morning, though he likely would have been more than happy to tell me."

His eyes narrowed. "You spoke with Jem?"

"Of course I did. He was up and leaving about the same time I was."

Casper decided not to stop and examine exactly why it was that the thought of Sienna having a moment alone with his gregarious first mate bothered him. It shouldn't, after all. Jem was nothing, if not loyal, and he would never dream of approaching Sienna with anything other than respect.

But there was no denying the fact that Jem was sunshine where he was cloudy sky. Smiles where he was scowls. Easy chatter where he was grunts and one-word answers.

Jem was the kind of man that most women fell for.

He was the kind they walked on the other side of the street to avoid.

But I thought we weren't stopping to examine this topic.

"Ah."

"So we're back to that again, are we?" Sienna shoved some of the greenery to the side in order to clear a space in front of her. She picked up a few boughs and began arranging them in a circle.

"Back to what?"

"The dynamic where you act all grumpy and broody and don't actually talk to me."

"I don't—I'm not—that's…" He shoved his fingers through his hair with a frustrated growl. "I'm not trying to be."

"Well, I do feel better knowing that it seems to just come naturally to you. I will do my best not to take it personally. Now, about the music?" She frowned at the circle of green on the table before scooting the spool of twine over to him. "And while you tell me, you might as well start tying this all together."

"What about it?"

"What kind of music was it? How do you know that we don't have anything of the kind here in Faerie? What did you mean by saying it was yours?" Her questions came out rapid-fire, and her eyes were bright with unbridled curiosity.

The sight almost made him forget the crippling guilt and regret that accompanied the mention of the smuggled goods. "That's a lot of questions. I'm not sure I know how to begin."

"That's easy." She leaned the elbow of her good arm on the table and rested her chin on her palm. "Start at the beginning and tell me everything."

"Everything?"

"Yes. We're engaged, which means we don't need to keep secrets from one another."

He rolled his eyes. "Only for—"

"Four more days. Yes, I know." She mirrored his expression. "The music?"

Casper slowly unspooled a length of twine as he gathered his thoughts. Sienna handed him a pair of shears to cut it, and he started attaching the pieces that she had so meticulously laid out. "The music seemed to be a variety of pieces, for both solo and ensemble use."

"Instrumental or vocal?"

"Both, though mostly the former."

"What makes you say that we don't have anything of the kind here?"

He reached for more twine. "I know you don't. Or at least, you didn't. I've been in this realm long enough to have seen and heard a wide variety of different musical styles and genres."

She tilted her head. The action caused a strand of her vibrant hair to fall over her forehead, and his finger itched to push it back. "How is what we found different?"

"It's a little hard to explain."

"Try me."

"The music of Faerie is…safe. Controlled. Balanced. It can and does communicate emotion, but it does so in an orderly way. Tonalities are clear, tension and dissonance resolve into harmony, active tones move to passive. There are unspoken rules that all of your composers follow."

"Of course there are. They study for years to be able to understand how music and magic work together, and how to achieve the desired result. Without the rules, the magic would be wild, and chaos would follow." Sienna reached for more greenery and began arranging a second wreath. "Especially for Elves. They're not limited by Natural magic, but they also are unable to hear the music in the natural world as a frame of reference, so they rely on composers being very diligent and careful about what they write."

Casper nodded slowly. "And that makes perfect sense. However, in the human realm, music is a little different."

"And by different, you mean that it's not magic there?" There was a teasing lilt to her voice.

"Eh, it's magic, but of a different kind. But what I'm saying is that humans are not bound by the same constraints or concerns. We're forever experimenting and trying new things in an effort to use music to convey all those thoughts and ideas that are simply too deep for words to express."

A crease formed between her eyes. "What do you mean?"

He sighed and ran hand down his face. "It's difficult to explain in words. If I had a keyboard, I could show you."

Sienna straightened. "Wait. You're a musician?"

Something about the way she said the words cut a little. "Does that surprise you?"

She sat back in her chair and pulled a small evergreen branch through her fingers. "Yes. No? I'm not sure. I think I made up my mind rather prematurely when you first were asking about the capabilities of music."

"I studied music in a world where the only magic it has is in its ability to communicate emotion and beauty. That doesn't translate well to knowing just what kind of chord progression is needed to heal someone or grow a tree."

"Fair enough. So the music in the human realm is different."

"Yes. We've moved past all of the order and balance to a style where tension and dissonance are embraced as part of the beauty. Tempos push and pull as the need arises, and extra chord tones are used to add extra color and dimension. The rules are still there, but we break them as we see fit, and keep them when it suits us."

"That sounds chaotic."

"It can be. We even have composers who have thrown the idea of tonality out the window entirely, preferring to deal in uncertainties, and some who have embraced the idea that any kind of noise can be music. But, as I said, in our realm, the only consequence to come from such a thing is bleeding ears."

"As opposed to here, where that kind of musical dissonance could result in some dangerous forms of magic," Sienna concluded.

Casper nodded. "Exactly."

She blew out a long breath. "I suppose that answers the question of why these smugglers of yours would go to such lengths to bring in music. Our compositions are so closely monitored and examined before they are allowed to be printed that there are a limited number of new pieces every year. Music such as you're describing would never pass the quality and safety checks, but there are doubtless fae out there who would jump at the chance to get their hands on such potentially powerful music." She was silent for a long moment. "Casper?"

"Hmm?"

"When you said the music was yours, then…?" She looked at him with wide, questioning eyes.

Here it was. The moment that would lead to his greatest mistake coming to light. He sighed heavily. "I composed it."

"But I thought you were a captain."

He laughed mirthlessly. "Like I said—it's a little different in the human realm than it is here. Composers are not nearly as highly regarded as they are in Faerie. In fact, it's next to impossible to make any kind of living out of being a musician. Most of us have other jobs that we do to actually make money, and music is reserved as a pastime. I became a sailor and then a captain because that's what most of the Norditch boys grow up to do."

She nodded slowly, as if taking her time to absorb information. "But how did your music end up in the crates?"

"Whenever Jem and the Johns and I were home between shipping runs, we would spend the evenings together playing music in the local taverns and in the town square. I would write the pieces while we were out at sea, so we usually had brand new material, which the audiences loved. One evening, I was approached by a gentleman who said he was an agent with Hollander's Emporium. At the time, Hollander's was a large store that carried a little bit of everything, and the man said that they were wanting to break into the music business. He said that he had heard my compositions before, and he thought that they would sell well. I was elated, of course—the idea of being able to make a living as a musician had only been an unlikely dream before that.

"However, the agent said that before they would publish me, he wanted to take a sample of my work back to his superior. Like a fool, I handed over copies of nearly everything I ever wrote. A few weeks later, he wrote back and said that Hollander's was definitely interested in publishing my music, but that first he had an investor who wanted to hear a live performance. I convinced Jem and the rest of the crew that this was going to be our big break, and that we should cancel our shipping run in favor of meeting with this investor."

He closed his eyes against the shame that followed. "As it turned out, that investor was here in Faerie. When we started giving a concert of our music, we realized what exactly it could do here, so I backed out of the deal. Unfortunately, Hollander's kept all of my music, and they have been publishing and sending it through the breach for years now."

Sienna's eyes were thoughtful and sad as she studied him. They both had long since abandoned any pretense of completing the Midwinter decorations, and Casper's hands sat idly twitching in his lap.

"That's why you've been chasing the smugglers," she surmised. "Because you feel responsible that it's your music they're bringing through. But why not go after them in your own realm?"

"Because there it would just be my word against Hollander's. Besides, over there the music has no power—not like it does here."

He purposefully left out the part where he and his crew had been cursed to wander the Winter seas, and the part where he was the legend known as the Flying Dutchman. She had taken all of this news shockingly well so far, but he felt certain that even her equanimity would falter at the knowledge that she was essentially betrothed to a ghost.

Jem would say he was perpetuating miscommunication.

He argued that it was just communicating subjectively.

More silence followed. Finally, Sienna shifted forward in her seat and started working on the evergreen again. "Well, for what it's worth," she said, looking up at him with a sweet smile, "I think it is an honor to be engaged to a composer whose work is so well-received that it has spurred illegal trade across the realms." She thought for a moment, then added with a wink, "For a week."

The smile had been enough to make his heart ache with longing, quite against his best intentions.

But the wink.

The wink had done him in.

"How many more of these do we have to make?" Casper shoved his needle through a cranberry, barely missing his thumb. He added two more before sliding them down the string to meet the others. Already a half dozen red garlands lay coiled at his feet. At least this was an activity that could be done in the comfort of the cushioned chairs by the fire, rather than the hard kitchen chairs at the table. His back still ached from the hours of sitting and tying that they had put in the day before, and he was fairly certain the smell of evergreen would ever be under his fingernails.

Sienna looked up from her own garland. She had tucked her legs up into her chair so that she sat cross-legged and balanced her bowl of cranberries in her lap. "Enough to make Devri happy."

"And how many is that?"

"She didn't say. But I gathered from the way she shoved the bag of cranberries into my hands and said, ‘Use these,' that she wants us to use them all up."

Casper eyed the still mostly-full bowl beside him. "I didn't realize when I agreed to this that we would spend almost two days doing arts and crafts."

She regarded him curiously. He was coming to both adore and hate that expression—it meant that she had grasped hold of something and was coming with her innocent question and blue-eyed smiles to peel back the layers hiding him. It thrilled him that she found him interesting enough to desire to know more.

But he also knew that the more she uncovered, the sooner she would realize that he was completely undeserving of her attention and affection.

"It was my understanding that all of these decorations are human Midwinter traditions. Are these not common activities in your realm?"

"Oh, they are. I just have never been this involved in making this many of them. Not even Short John's family had this many decorations, and they were the most excited about Midwinter of the bunch."

Sienna chuckled. "I've been meaning to ask you about that—what's the story behind Short John and Longest John?"

"It's pretty self-explanatory. Short John is the smallest one, and Longest John is the tallest."

"But why Longest? Why not Short John and Long John? Or Tall John?"

Casper laughed. "Because there are actually three other Johns on the crew. There's John Paul, and then Richards' first name is also John, and he's halfway between Short and Longest. We thought about having a Short, Long, and Longest, but decided that would get too confusing in high-stress situations."

"Who's the fifth?"

"Jem. His real name is John Mark, but he's always gone by the initials J. M., which eventually got slurred together into Jem."

Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "Did you purposely put out notices seeking men named John to join your crew?" She set her bowl to the side and stood, popping her fists on her hips and stretching out her back. She had abandoned the sling that morning, claiming that she was doing so little movement that it was hardly necessary.

"No, it was just an amusing coincidence."

Sienna crossed the room to the pile of wood that he had brought in just that morning. He had spent extra time the day before ensuring that the pieces were all small enough for her to carry easily in one hand. His week would be over sooner than he liked to think about, and though her shoulder was on the mend, it would be a while before it was fully healed.

"Speaking of Jem, have you heard from him since yesterday?" She returned with the wood, tossed it into the fire, and brushed her palms against her skirt.

The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Casper saw the strange blue sparks that jumped off the wood and the high-pitched wail of the diminished chord that rose as soon as the log hit the bottom of the hearth. He watched as the fireball began to bloom and had just enough time to tackle Sienna to the ground and roll away, shielding her body with his own, before it exploded outwards. He had no time for planning, no time for any other thought than that he had to do everything in his power to keep her safe.

It was over just as quickly as it had begun, leaving only the smell of charred fabric and cranberries in its wake. Casper gripped Sienna tightly and remained motionless for several long breaths before slowly peeling away and sitting up.

She looked up at him with wide eyes from her position on the floor. "What was that?"

Casper looked over his shoulder at the hearth. The fire had gone out, and the floor directly in front of the fireplace was blackened. Interestingly, the explosion seemed to have been contained to a small area, and only the front of both chairs and the unfortunate garlands that had fallen from his lap into the fire zone were damaged. He pointed out as much.

"Do you think this was on purpose, too?"

Her whispered words brought his head whipping back around to her. "Can wood be spelled or enchanted like that?"

She nodded. "I think so."

It was outside all night, which means that whoever it was that tampered with the cliff could have easily come back and done the same to the wood.

"Did you send a message to your wizard friend?" His voice shook with barely suppressed emotion.

Someone is definitely trying to hurt her, and this all started after she discovered the smuggled cargo in that cave—cargo that I am responsible for existing. I can't let her get hurt because of me. I won't.

She sat up and hugged herself, looking very small and terrified. "Yes."

"Send another."