The island came into view.
No one made an announcement or called it out. No shout from the crow's nest, no ripple of excitement through the deck.
The island was simply a dark line, low on the horizon, and then it slowly shaped itself into something solid as the ship drew closer.
Rock, then green, then the faint suggestion of structures near the shoreline.
From a distance, it looked ordinary enough.
A trading port, perhaps. Nothing as sinister as the man in the cell's words had suggested.
And that, more than anything, unsettled the crew.
The captain made his orders clear before they reached it.
"Everything stays normal," he said, his voice carrying across both crew and passengers. "No panic, no whisperin' where it can be heard. We dock, we resupply, and we leave. Don't tell nobody nothin', you got that?"
His eye moved across them.
"Anyone starts talkin' about monsters and curses to the wrong ears, you'll wish you hadn't. You can panic when you're back home."
No one argued, but that didn't mean that the tension and fear left them, but it was forced down, buried.
Life on the ship continued as it had the past week. It wasn't normal, but they pretended it was, for their own sake.
Sonder wasn't on deck. She returned to her guard duties in the hold below deck.
It was dim and still. She and four guards were watching the man in the cell, but as nothing had happened with him specifically, the sailors were bored and had grown less fearful of him, but not when it came to getting to the island.
One sailor came down and told the others that they were almost there.
Though he was whispering, Sonder could hear it, and if she could, she assumed that the man in the cell also could.
She looked to him, and he faintly stirred.
The man hadn't moved much the past week. But he wasn't asleep. His presence had become steadier.
Unlike the times when Sonder had lost him when he attacked the ship out in the open, he seemed more steady, but physically, he seemed to have become weaker.
Maybe unlike she did, he needed to eat and drink but hasn't done much of either the past week.
Sonder went up to the cell.
Not close enough to reach the bars but close enough.
"You know we've arrived," she said.
It wasn't a question.
His head lifted slightly. "I know. I can feel it, my kin, calling to me to come home."
"You have been quiet."
"There was nothing left to say," he replied.
She went closer and held a bar of the cell with her hand. "If what you said about them was a lie, even if it wasn't, there must be a way to solve this without any violence."
"We're far past peace and far closer to violence than ever. Just a few more hours and it will all be over, if you want it or not."