it come. The fog approached the Cleaver like a tidal wave, as wide as she could see from starboard to port—pale, faintly blue, and ominously silent.
They had encountered fog before and even the denser banks thinned once the ship was moving through, but the waterbreath intensified and utterly engulfed them. Molly felt as if a saturated bag were on her head. She gasped and couldn’t breathe, which made her heart begin to race, which made her pant and hyperventilate and panic even more. Mr. Knacker and the second mate were hazy at her side. The sails disappeared. She couldn’t see her feet. Captain Veer shouted orders from behind her on the forecastle but his voice was oddly muted in the hissing of the mist.
“Worse than I expected,” Mr. Knacker said beside her, choking on the words until he coughed, and coughed again.
“Cup your hands around your mouth,” the second mate instructed.
Molly did so. It kept away the thickest of the vapor, and she finally got a breath and felt her heart begin to calm. The temperature had risen ten degrees in half a minute and the air smelled of gardens after heavy summer rain.
“It’ll be clearer in your cabin,” Mr. Knacker said, “at least until it settles. Can I help you find your way?”
Molly clasped his elbow and breathed through her hand. He had bragged to her once that he could walk the deck blind, and now he proved it: she could see only an arm’s length away. They shuffled to the hatch, where he guided her below. Before he wished her well and shut the door above her, Molly saw the waterbreath pouring down the stairs, where it spread upon the floor and pooled ankle deep.
Hurrying to her cabin, she passed Mr. Fen. He was lying in his hammock, dozing it would seem, but she felt as if his eyes opened slightly in the dark.
The atmosphere was thickening; the walls began to sweat. All the moisture would be ruinous to Nicholas’s lungs. She entered the cabin, went to her brother’s side, and tucked his blanket more securely, hoping to keep the air from dampening his clothes.
“The most extraordinary fog is filling up the ship,” she said, smoothing down his cowlick and kissing him over the eye.
Nicholas looked at her and frowned, seeming puzzled by her face, as if she might have been a figment of an ongoing dream. He dropped his head and closed his eyes, possibly asleep. She cupped her hands above his mouth but couldn’t feel him breathe and took them off again, fearing she would stifle him completely.
Molly’s skirts hung heavy and her lungs felt full. She crawled beneath the blanket in her own swinging cot. Waterbreath slipped through every crack and filled the cabin. It was only midday but dark had come upon them, and despite her fascination and her fear, she fell asleep, terribly fatigued from drowning in the air.
* * *
She woke beneath a solid weight, unable to open her mouth and thinking, in the gloom, that her head had gotten tangled in her own sodden blanket. When she tried to throw it off, her arms refused to move. Every part of her was pressed down tight against the cot. There was just enough light to see the waterbreath around her, like a dark foggy night with an inkling of the moon. Hot, putrid air pulsed around her throat. She heard a moan and thought it was Nicholas, but no—the moan was with her, and the pressure on her chest was someone else’s body.
The shock made her struggle and she almost freed her face. Mr. Fen’s palm tightened on her mouth.
“Quiet,” came his whisper, “or I’ll suffocate your brother.”
Molly wheezed through her nose. Had he really said “brother”?
Mr. Fen’s lips were just below her ear, but he had forced her head sideways and Molly couldn’t see him. He groped her breast and squeezed his legs, slippery bare, around her stocking. She could tell that he was dressed in nothing but a shift. His nether part was firm and slid above her knee, up and down, back and forth against the muscles of her thigh.
She saw it clearly in her mind and longed to shrink away, but a deeper sort of weight had paralyzed her limbs. He ground against her leg. She struggled not to cry.
She thought of Elise in bed with the chimney sweep, remembering their joy, and then she prayed, small and wordless, that he wouldn’t push inside her. Mr. Fen’s balding