Page 43 of A Princess, Stolen
“When the sea is rough, you can support yourself with your legs there and lean your back against the wall,” Troy explained to me while Sparta pretended I wasn’t there. Later, Delphi installed checkerboard strips on the dining table, “So the dishes don’t slide back and forth,” he said.
“How long does a storm like this last?” I heard myself asking dejectedly as I descended the steps of the tower behind Troy.
Troy shrugged. “I don’t know. The outskirts sometimes last a few days. I don’t go to sea regularly. Few of us do. Actually, only Castor and Sparta. Sometimes Delphi. The rest of us have moreor less received a crash course. But, if anyone can get a crew through a storm, it’s Nathan.”
“And why does he have so much experience with storms?”
Troy stroked his tousled hair and grinned crookedly. “I’m telling you too much, princess.”
I looked at him with a dull fear all over. We stood in front of the door that led out to the stern.
He sighed deeply. “Pan and Nathan are right, no one can say no to you, can they?” He glanced briefly toward the stairwell and continued. “Nathan grew up on and by the water. He grew up in Coldville on Buffalo Lake. Almost the entire crew is from there. The people in Coldville make their living from fishing. Even in winter when it’s minus twenty-eight degrees, they put their nets under the ice. At least, they used to.” I tried to remember everything. Coldville on Buffalo Lake, cold, fishing, but Troy continued. “Later, Nathan went down the Mississippi with his brother and sister, the whole river, mostly as stowaways, and later, when his brother was in prison, he hired on with trawlers to survive. But you didn’t hear all that from me, right?”
I knew about the trawlers but had forgotten about it. With all the other information, I wondered why Troy gave it to me so freely. Weren’t these facts important? Couldn’t I later tell the police that most of them were from Coldville, wherever that was?
For a moment, through the haze of my fear, I stared at Troy leaning casually against the doorframe. He was slim and, as expected, no more than four inches taller than me, maybe five foot seven. I wondered how a sensible-looking young man with a future had ended up with this group of serious criminals. Was he also from Coldville?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You don’t look like you belong in this group.”
“Phew!” he said as if he was insulted and gently nudged my arm. “You don’t look like a princess either.”
Despite my fear, I had to smile. “What do I look like?”
Troy leaned forward toward me. “Like an elf, a bit ethereal.”
“That was what my dad said.”
For a split second, Troy’s brown eyes glowed as if a wildfire was raging in them. The evocative worddadhad been mentioned. “And what do I look like?” he asked anyway.
“You said it yourself; like Orlando Bloom. Only your hair lies differently. Bristly.”
“Bristly? I’ll give youbristly!” Troy grinned, and suddenly, I didn’t feel quite so alone anymore. Troy seemed okay, apart from the fact that he was one of my abductors.
“Why are you telling me so much?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You have that effect.”
“What effect?”
“People trust you. I bet you won’t tell on us once you know the whole truth.”
“Of course not, I told you,” I said, perhaps too quickly. The Agamemnon rocked for a moment and I had to support myself on a mast, which were luckily everywhere. Then, I glanced at Troy. “What truth?”
He looked at me. “You’ll find out the truth when you get home.”
With that, he turned and led me further to the main deck at the bow where Pan and Taurus were stretching arm-thick ropes and lashing nets. “The ropes are for holding on to during the storm. Sometimes you have to repair or readjust something outside, but if a breaker like that hits you, it can wash you over the railing and off the ship.”
“A breaker?” That word made me forget all the questions about the truth that I would learn at home. With a queasy feeling, I looked out to sea again, and then Nathan appeared.
“We’re ready. The hatches are closed, nets and cranes secured, and ropes attached.” He said a lot more, but I didn’t understand the technical language. I only heard one thing before Nathan left again; the wind was already at force six and rising.
A quarter of an hour later, the deck was deserted in the wind and rain. Half of the men were holed up in their cabins, the rest were on the bridge. No one was allowed outside anymore. Troy checked the cabinets again, the handles of which he had tied together with cable ties before he took me to the command center.
When we entered the bridge, I was stared at with hostility from both sides.
“What is she doing here?” Sparta asked, the thin man with the dreadlocks, and coughed as if he were a chain smoker. “Why isn’t she in a room?”
