The baby came with the storm. From the sound of trees thrashing outside, she could tell it was a bad one: the sort that comes once or twice in a lifetime. But she didn't have much attention to give it. She wasn't planning on going outside any time soon.

By the time the trees started snapping, she didn't know there was an outside.

Afterwards, looking at the broken stumps, she remembered a sound like gunfire, almost lost in the screams of the wind. (Well maybe the wind wasn't the only thing screaming.) But at the time, she was standing under a waterfall that had nothing to do with the storm, or anything else outside her own body: it took everything she had just to keep breathing and not get washed away.

She did dimly register the moment when the roof lifted off, mostly for the sudden arrival of a hell of a lot of sea water and a live, wriggling crab that landed right on the bed. (Dorcas trapped the crab in a warming pan until the baby came. Later, it went in the cook-pot.)

The next thing she remembers clearly is the sound of newborn crying and the sight of her own whitened knuckles clamped to the headboard.

With a conscious effort, she takes back control of those distant hands and gently manoeuvres her body around to flop back against the pillows. Everything is streaming wet from blood, sweat, rain, seawater, or some combination of these, but the storm outside has passed as suddenly as the one inside.

Maisie gathers up the afterbirth and inspects it with suspicion. "All in one piece," she declares at last. "You done good, girl." She holds the afterbirth over the baby as Dorcas cradles him. When the blood stops pulsing down the cord, they tie it and cut it through. The baby's on his own.

Dorcas hands him to her, wrapped in a cloth. She wants to study his squashed and crumpled face, but he knows what he's doing, this one, for he stops his bawling and snuffles into her breast. She crooks a little finger into his gummy mouth and helps him latch on, not that he needs much help.

"Got a thirsty one there," comments Maisie with a grin. The baby sucks greedily.

Tsehu'alee smiles back; such eager feeding is surely a good sign. All she can see of his head is stuck-down black hair and one storm-grey eye. (He'll have black eyes like her, then, not light like Bob's.) With one arm cradling him and the other hand supporting his head, it's hard to unwrap him for a better look.

Dorcas pats her arm. "I checked already, Julie love," she says, flicking back the cloth to let her see him. "He's ain't very big, but he's just fine." She looks into Tsehu'alee's eyes as she says this, for they both know why it matters.

Tsehu'alee's other child, the one before this, was stillborn, and the one before him wasn't fine at all: her face was covered in sores. Amadi had to be coaxed to feed—not like this one—and she grew slowly when she grew at all. Now her teeth have grown in odd shapes and she can't see properly for the clouds in her eyes. She's not the only child with such problems—"languid" they call them—and the whores have a good notion of the cause.

But there's no mark of pox on this one. P'raps he was born lucky. P'raps the storm washed off the curse. Or p'raps it'll be back to claim him... But she won't think of that, not while he's healthy and strong and perfect.

He fusses at her nipple. The proper milk hasn't come in yet and he's not finding much to drink.

Tsehu'alee eases him off, wraps the cloth round him again, and kisses the soft spot where the top of his head rises and falls to the beat of his heart. He's still stained with birth-blood. He smells of salt and metal, and new life.

Tears prickle behind her eyes, but then the baby tries to turn his face up on his floppy stalk of a neck. He pushes a tiny clenched fist into her jaw and does his best to clamp his gums around her chin.

"That's not where the milk is, silly."

Tsehu'alee puts him on the other breast, watches him suck for a minute then doze off, apparently worn out by the effort.

Just before she falls asleep herself, she feels Maisie pull away the soaked bedclothes and tuck a dry blanket round her. She can see blue sky through the ceiling, which is odd somehow, but nice.

"You sure you don' wanna move downstairs?" asks Maisie.

Tsehu'alee shakes her head. "This is just fine," she whispers sleepily. "Everything's just fine."

~

Nine days later, the roof has been retrieved from the vegetable patch and more or less reassembled. The water's gone, the crab's been eaten, and life is getting back to normal. But it's clear this was no normal storm. It's brought down trees that have seen off hurricanoes, trees that stood strong through the big one when Hettie was a child.

The shape of the world has changed: the river's further away now, and the swamp wider. This could be bad for business, but the boatmen who sail the river—the ones who still have boats—say the ocean is closer and the channel deeper than before, so perhaps there'll be sailors passing through.

Tsehu'alee prays they'll have full bollocks and fuller pockets; the place is a mess. Although only the whorehouse was treated to a delivery of wrack, starfish, and startled crustaceans, there's reeking mud everywhere, salt has killed most of the crop, and several families are homeless; worse, four people are dead and three missing.

She will name the baby on her own. The others don't understand about the nine days: they think she's daft not to have named him already but, since she's left it so long, what's another day? They'll call him something else, anyway.

It's not easy. Smelly Mud, Smashed House, and Tree Stump are not good names; Scuttling Crab makes her shudder. Little Fish would do at a pinch, but she'll know the fish in question were nine days dead and rotting, even if he doesn't. She kicks ineffectually, but painfully, at a fallen tree. Maybe, just to see their faces, she'll name him Your Sister's Dead But Nobody Gives A Shit.

Poor little Amadi didn't even merit being numbered with the storm dead. Drenched and chilled in the rains ahead of the main storm—she was slow reaching cover—she died, spitting blood, two days after it passed: "Better, this way," René said. "Child like Amy weren't gonna live more'n a couple more years anyhow, an' you've another to mind now—a healthy one."

She pictures herself slicing a kitchen knife through René's eyeballs, turning the handle to smash his crooked teeth in. "Oh lookit that!" she'd exclaim, all innocent dismay. "Poor René cain't see nor talk right! He may as well jus' die now an' save us the burden of keepin' him. Ain't that right, René?"

She shakes the daydream out of her head and tries to focus on the still-nameless baby. René meant it kindly, or so she tells herself, and grieving for Amadi won't bring her back, nor get her brother named.

Sky, maybe. It's a girl's name, mostly, but no-one knows that here. Blue sky through the missing roof was the first thing she saw after he was born, and it's about the only thing that looks whole and friendly at his Naming.

She tips her head back for a better look just as the men winch up the last of the big roof beams and let it thump into place.

There's a sound like whssssssssssssssssssh as four or five score little birds all lift at once from the other end of the roof. Confused by the loss of their usual roosts, the flock wheels and dives, snapping through the air like a swept banner, finally carried away seawards with the cooking smoke.

Tsehu'alee smiles. "Fly to somewhere better, Flock of Small Birds!" she whispers, adding, but not aloud—not at a Naming—that anywhere but a pie-baker's would be a distinct improvement.

It's a good name, Tsaga'auweh.

The others can call him Jack.

~

Tall Ship Tales

Prologue 1 (Tale Minus One): Shine
Prologue 2 (Tale Zero): Names


Tall Ship Tales 1: A Keel
Tall Ship Tales 2: A Hull
Tall Ship Tales 3: A Deck
Tall Ship Tales 4: Sails
Tall Ship Tales 5: A Ship