PREMONITIONS

Bryn entered the common room where the crew ate. Doubar and Firouz where already there along with two of the deck hands, Rentra and Julian. She knew Rongar was on deck manning the tiller because he had relieved her during the night. Sinbad was conspicuously absent. Bryn frowned. This was unusual. Doubar and Firouz slid over on the bench to make room for her. She greeted everyone and slid into the space that they had made for her. One of the things that she appreciated about the Nomad crew members was that they treated her as an equal yet also deferred to her as a woman. They expected her to do her fair share of the work on the ship, including the hard physical labor, yet they were careful not to swear around her or offend her with crude stories or jokes. She felt very comfortable around them.

"Sinbad?" she inquired quietly.

"Haven't seen him yet," Firouz answered.

"He might be still asleep," Doubar offered. "Everything's going fine. No need to disturb him."

"Okay. I was just asking," Bryn remarked.

"How was the wind last night?" Doubar asked, hoping to change the subject.

"Fair. Not as strong as yesterday. It was pretty quiet."

"That's what we like," Doubar responded. "Decent winds from the right quarter, and no storms."

Everyone grunted his agreement. Bryn served herself from the common bowls and the table fell quiet as everyone ate.

Bryn could tell from the way Doubar had spoken that he too was concerned over his brother's absence. It was a very unusual occurrence and none of the others even wanted to talk about it. Bryn had discovered that sailors, at least the ones she knew well, were unusually superstitious. So many unexplainable things happened that many of the sailors she knew didn't want to mention anything out of the ordinary for fear that it might bring bad luck. For instance, the shift schedule was never changed. It was considered bad luck. But no one wanted to say that. Bryn found that out when she had tried to swap duties once after she'd had a restless night and needed some extra sleep. No one was willing to change. She got the same answer. "You can't do that!" She asked why and was told you just couldn't. No one would even say it was bad luck. She only found out because she asked Firouz.

After an unusually quiet breakfast, Bryn excused herself and went up on deck. As was her routine, she immediately looked aloft and found Dermott. Before coming up, she visited the kitchen and found some scraps of meat. Dermott swooped down as soon as he spotted her on deck and she said good morning and fed him his breakfast.

Bryn had inherited Dermott after Maeve had disappeared. Bryn knew that Dermott and Maeve were somehow connected though no one knew how. Dermott had immediately come to her after Maeve disappeared and somehow she understood how the bird felt. The crew members all said that Maeve and Dermott could talk to each other. No one knew how this could be, but no one doubted that it was true. Maeve had many magical abilities. She had often been observed talking to Dermott and not just in the way you might with a pet, but having a real conversation. And often it happened that she would send the bird aloft to scout for the crew and then report that they should go this way or that way or that there was danger ahead, and it was obvious that she had gotten the information from Dermott, when he returned.

Bryn could not talk with Dermott, or read his thoughts, but she could sense how he was feeling. It was a vague shadowy feeling that she got, but she could also send him ahead scouting and get a sense of whether the way was clear or held some danger. She couldn't explain to anyone or even to herself how she could do this.

Now she stroked his feathers and could feel that he was uneasy. He fidgeted on her arm, walked back and forth, and picked at his feathers.

"Okay, okay, I'll go see what's what," she said and lifted her arm to signal that he should fly off. He turned into the wind and lifted off and flapped his way back up to his favorite perch.

Bryn headed back to hatchway that led below decks. She avoided the dining area by going through the galley and entered the passageway that led to Sinbad's cabin. No one else was around. She padded quietly down to his door and stopped outside. She listened. It was quiet. She wondered if he had already gotten up and was in the dining area having breakfast. Then suddenly she heard footsteps coming toward the door. She hurried past his door down the passageway.

The door opened and Sinbad stepped out. He looked down the passage because he heard footsteps. "Bryn?" he questioned.

She froze at the sound of his voice and half turned her body to look back. "Yes," she answered, not knowing what else to say. Then she recovered enough to add, "Good morning."

"What brings you down here?" Sinbad asked, knowing that her cabin was not in the direction she was headed.

"Uh, they needed another coil of rope above. I was just going to get one," she lied.

"Well, I don't think there are any in that storage area," said Sinbad, a little puzzled that Bryn seemed to have forgotten where things were. "Try the one next to your room."

"Okay. Sure. Thanks, I will." She was totally flustered now. She hadn't been willing to admit that she came down to check on him, and so she had lied about the rope. But it didn't come easily to her, and now she could feel her face flushing and she was all flustered. She turned and headed back toward Sinbad. He waited for her and then walked behind her up the passageway. She had the presence of mind to ask him about why he was just getting up. "You slept late today," she commented.

"Yeah, I had a rough night," he said by way of explanation.

"Oh?" She hoped to keep the conversation going.

"Didn't sleep well," he added and then was quiet.

She wanted to pursue the matter further but thought better of it. She continued up the passageway, turning to go through the common area and started up the hatchway steps.

She heard Sinbad say her name loudly and she stopped on the steps.

"The rope?" Sinbad asked. "You came down for the rope."

"Right, right," she said quickly. "Thanks. Guess you're not the only one that needed more sleep."

She laughed and banged herself in the head with her palm. She came back down the steps and went out the other passageway toward her cabin and the storage area Sinbad had mentioned. She decided to go back to her cabin. She needed to be alone for a few minutes. She entered the room and sat down on her bunk. The strange flashes were starting again. She closed her eyes and tried to will them to come. She had tried to control them in this way before but it had never worked. A few times she had been with the crew and had gotten these sensations. The first time she had ignored them and said nothing. She had not been with the Nomad crew very long and she feared they might think she was crazy if she mentioned seeing things. And she and the crew bumbled into an ambush and were lucky to escape unscathed. After that, she tried to express how she felt. She would say, "I don't feel right about this place" or "I think we'd better be ready for trouble". Each time she was right. And after a few times, Sinbad started listening to her advice. Lately, he would ask, "Bryn, are you getting any feelings about this place?"

Sometimes she just saw colors or vague shapes, accompanied by a feeling of uneasiness or dread. Sometimes the vision was clearer, a face or a scene that flashed vividly into consciousness.

She got up and paced back and forth. She saw a blur of blue and white and could hear a deafening roar. She shivered as a feeling of cold dread passed over her. And then it was gone. Everything seemed normal. Somehow she knew that the image was connected to Sinbad, but she didn't know how she knew that.

Now she didn't want to be alone anymore. She wanted to be busy, be around the others. She exited her room and went to the storage area and found a coil of rope to bring up. She slung it over her shoulder. She knew no one really wanted it, but in case she saw Sinbad again, she wanted to have it. She walked briskly down the passageway, up the stairs and into the bright sunshine.

She noticed right away there was a stiff quartering wind blowing. She smiled. They would make a lot of distance today if the wind held. She headed over to Rongar. He pointed at her shoulder and gave her a questioning look. She answered, "I thought we might need it." Rongar shrugged his shoulders. "I'd better go see what work Doubar has for me today," she said, and walked away. She felt better now, in the sun and the wind.

The rest of the day went normally. The wind held and the Nomad sailed quickly through the sea. The ocean was behaving. The swells were just what you would expect considering the strength of the wind. Everyone's mood was light when there was a good wind and today was no exception. The day passed quickly and soon it was sunset. The crew always waited to eat their evening meal until after the sun went down. There were always chores to be done during the daylight hours, whether it was mending sail, or scrubbing decks, or retying lines. Once sunset came it was the end of the work day.

Supper went well. Sinbad seemed a bit more like his old self than he had lately, and the day's good sailing made everyone happy. Doubar and Firouz joked back and forth, and Sinbad smiled and laughed at their good-natured ribbing. After supper, the crew relaxed. Sinbad, Firouz, Doubar and Rongar started a card game. As usual, one of the deck hands had the early evening watch.

Bryn excused herself, went back to her cabin and got some sewing that she wanted to do and came back to the common area. She enjoyed this part of the day the best. They were her family. It was pleasant there, in the varying light of the candles, with the gentle rocking of the ship and the men's voices as they played. Bryn set to work on sewing a new outfit. The one she was wearing was getting shabby and it would soon need replacing. She had discovered that when you wore the same outfit 14 hours a day on board a ship, day after day, it wore out fast. As she sewed she thought back on the last nine months. That was as far as she could think back, because she had no memory of any events before that. It saddened her that she might have a family somewhere, worrying about her. She might have sisters or brothers or cousins.

All she could remember was that she was on a ship, there was a big storm and somehow she had ended up in the sea. The next day she found herself washed up on the beach of an unknown island with a terrible headache and a huge bump on her head. In the last nine months there hadn't even been a hint of memories before that day. It was as if her life had started anew the day after the storm. Later that same day she had discovered Sinbad similarly washed up on the shore. She had spent a lot of fruitless time trying to remember anything from her previous life. She had been able to guess at a few things from the way she had been dressed. Her clothes were common so she knew that she wasn't from a wealthy family. Her hands had seen hard work. She knew how to handle a sword and fight hand to hand. Someone must have trained her to do those things. They weren't skills you acquired without a lot of practice.

But the thing that she spent the most time thinking about was the bracelet that she had on her left wrist. It was identical to the one that Sinbad wore. In her mind that meant that there was a connection between them, a deep, maybe mystical connection. She could feel it. From the moment they had met she had felt a strong bond between them. Yet even now she wasn't sure exactly what the nature of the bond was. She liked and respected him. She felt close to him. She was attracted to him but not in the way that she had seen other women attracted to him. It wasn't physical. It was that she knew deep down that his fate and her fate were closely connected. She had the feeling that she needed to protect him at all costs.

When Doubar's shift at the tiller came, the card game broke up, and shortly after that the men drifted off to their own pursuits. Bryn waited until Sinbad left for his own cabin and then she too left. She had kept an eye on him as she had sewed but hadn't detected anything unusual in the way he acted. Shortly after she got to her cabin, she felt sleepy and decided to turn in for the night. She was glad she was not scheduled for a watch tonight; she would be able to sleep through.