The Navigator Series · A short story
Salem
A short story by Cheyenne Richards
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The story
One day. Two sixteen-year-olds. A storm off Salem Harbor, and the choice that changed everything between them.
This is the story before the story. The day that explains everything about who Ellen and Perk became—and why it took them a decade to find their way back to each other.
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Sample
April, 1830
Ellen paused in the ropewalk’s doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. The air was heavy, thick with pine tar and hemp dust, and the great spinning wheel thrummed through her boots. Whirr-click-thunk. Whirr-click-thunk.
She found Perk where she always did, in the center of the vast cordage spiderweb.
At sixteen, he’d grown tall enough that the low beams forced him into a permanent stoop, shoulders curved inward, tar-stained hands feeding out the same endless fibers.
Something fierce and protective flared in her chest. Every day since school ended, he’d become less himself. First, he’d stopped cracking jokes. Then his wry smile became a rare event. Now he wasn’t even dreaming of going to sea anymore, even as she was growing into life aboard.
Three months had passed since she’d navigated the Californian through the Hen and Chickens shoal in the fog, earning the respect of Captain Papa and the whole crew. The triumph still sang in her blood. But saving the ship had been easy compared to convincing Perk to save himself from Marblehead.
“You spin backward all day.” Her voice echoed down the corridor and Perk wavered in his steady toe-heel shuffle before he caught his balance again. A sailor’s reflex, she noted.
The workers’s chattering stopped, flustering her for a moment as they turned in unison to stare at her intrusion. But this was too important to let herself be intimidated. She took a breath and forced herself to push through it. “Don’t you ever wonder what’s up ahead?”
When Perk turned, she saw him try to summon his old grin, but it died before it reached his eyes, leaving only a weary acknowledgment of her presence.
“Why, Ellen Prentiss. Come to inspect the working classes, have you?”
The Navigator Series
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Subscriber exclusiveSalem
Book One
The Navigator
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A Course to Steer
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About the author
Cheyenne Richards is an award-winning historical fiction author who writes sweeping novels about the women who claimed the sea—drawn from true stories, deep waters, and the lives history nearly forgot. She lives and writes aboard her sailboat Pristine, currently working her way around the world.