Chapter 42

When the ship suddenly shifted to starboard, Tommy grabbed the railing tight, the sails straining under the force of the wind, and the yardarms creaking ominously in the background. The weather had deteriorated steadily throughout the day, with the sea becoming increasingly choppy and the gray hazy skies of the morning giving way to heavy clouds in the night.

He'd foreseen the storm's arrival, but he hadn't anticipated that the ship would pass through it. The vessel traveled farther and faster than a human could walk or ride in a day, and it moved in ways he couldn't foretell, sometimes following the tides and sometimes taking a roundabout course to avoid head-on winds. It rendered his weather sense almost entirely ineffective, at least from a distance.

The three of them then went to the upper deck, where they found no improvement.

"Should we take some action?" Tommy was the one who asked Magdalena.

It was she who responded after a minute, "The center of the storm i