The Girl from Everywhere (25 page)

He laughed a little, but he was spinning his hat nervously in his hands. He glanced at the triangular corner of my room, the part behind the bow, which was bare but for some pillows and the tattered quilt Slate had wrapped me in when he’d taken me from the opium den. “Is this where you live?”

I shook my head. “It’s only where I keep my things.”

He stretched out his arms; standing where he was, his fingertips brushed the sides of the ship. “There isn’t much space.”

“I have the rest of the world.”

“Hmm.” He dropped his arms to his sides. “Have you ever considered a life elsewhere?”

“Oh, many times,” I said lightly. “And many places.”

“Spoken like a true adventurer.” Blake turned in a slow circle, and his eyes fell on my scattered books. He knelt to pick them up, but I crouched beside him, taking his hand in mine.

“Leave them be,” I said. “I’ll clean later.” Then I tilted my head. “Are you blushing?”

He pulled his hand back as though stung. Then he laughed ruefully. “It appears I am not so at ease in your territory as I am in my own.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, feeling bold. “The next time you try to impress me, I’ll press-gang you instead. We could use an extra deckhand.”

He grinned. “I’d rather find a way to draw you back ashore. Tell me, Miss Song,” he said, taking my hand this time, running his thumb gently over my skin. “Have you ever considered staying in Honolulu? I promise you, on this island, you will find a lifetime of adventure without ever having to raise a sail.”

I opened my mouth, partly in surprise, partly to speak, but I was interrupted by a knock at my door.

“Amira?”

For a moment, we were both still. The silence was
stifling. “Yes?”

“Can I . . . I wanted to talk to you. About last night.”

If I hadn’t been nearly nose to nose with Blake, I wouldn’t have seen it, the tightening around his eyes. “I . . .” I cleared my throat, trying to keep my voice light. “There’s nothing to talk about, Kash.”

He was quiet so long I thought maybe he’d gone. “As you say,” he said, finally. I didn’t hear his footsteps as he left, but I did hear his door open and close.

I sighed, and Blake dropped my hands and stood, taking a step back, suddenly quite formal. “Perhaps rather than—” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps I might indeed take a moment to speak with the captain.”

“What for?”

He straightened his shoulders. “
I
am no scoundrel.”

I pressed my lips together and took a step back myself. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Have I flattered myself to think you’ve enjoyed the time we’ve spent? I am not asking for a promise. Only an opportunity.”

An opportunity—and an escape, although not the one I’d planned. I imagined it then, not just another week, but another year, another decade—a lifetime here in the place
of my birth. Learning more than what I could in books, in paradise before the fall.

Although fall it would.

Knowing what I knew, the choice should have been clearer, but looking into Blake’s eyes, I couldn’t find the words to give him a real answer. Instead, I resorted to cowardice. “My father would likely refuse.”

“Perhaps he’s never considered that a ship is not the best place for a lady.”

“I’m not a
lady
, Blake. I’m a sailor.”

“But so nearly a local. You may consider extending your stay—just for a time? A year? Two? We could explore the hidden trails and the secret caverns and live on fish and fruit. I could even teach you to surf if you miss the rhythm of the water.” He took my hand again and stared into my eyes. His own were the color of the open sea. “We could map every hidden spot on the island.”

“Blake.” My mouth was dry. All I could add was “Please.”

He clenched his jaw, locking all the objections he wanted to make behind his teeth. Blake was indeed a gentleman. He stood the next few minutes in excruciating silence, his hands clasped and his head bowed, before I crept out of the room to check the hall.

The coast was clear, and quietly, we went above. Rotgut didn’t look at us, but he did raise one hand in a salute.

I walked Blake to the gangplank, where he stopped. “Come, Mr. Hart,” I said.

He opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then his eyes fell on the red lei lying on the deck, and he sighed. “Do you know, it’s customary for people leaving the islands to toss leis from the boats, in the hopes that they, like the flowers, will return someday to Hawaii’s shores?” He put his hat back on his head. “Good-bye, Miss Song. It’s been quite an adventure.”

I didn’t want to watch him go, but it was difficult to turn away. Once he was out of sight, I picked up the lei and let it fall onto the waves, where it floated like blood in the water. Would I ever reconsider? One day, might I grow old seeking a map of this place and time?

The thought terrified me.

I had promised myself years ago I’d never make my father’s mistake. I was not meant to drop anchor or seek harbor.

I went below, out of the island sun and away from the sight of the town, to hide in the bosom of ship, but she was like a sleeping beast. I didn’t know whether I was safe under
her protection or caught in her claws.

My room felt claustrophobic when it never had before, so I made a halfhearted attempt at clearing the floor, piling my clothes against the trunk, and stacking the books Blake had so nearly taken up. Half of them had been printed in the next century, although they covered the last few millennia.
The Gods of Egypt
, the Prose Edda, and here, Beowulf in the original Old English, the story of a hero who saved his people by killing a monster. Of course, if you consider Grendel’s mother, Beowulf was the monster who murdered her son. I closed the book and placed it atop a book of fairy tales: the old ones, the Grimm ones, the ones without happy endings. The ones that had been real.

Why did the stories I knew best never end well?

But why too did I feel at home among them?

I could never give up the myths, the maps, the ship that had shaped me. Blake’s home might be paradise, but my home was the
Temptation
.

The last book in the pile wasn’t a book at all, but the covers of the hymnal that protected the map Joss had sold me. I sucked in a breath. I knew then how to get my father what he needed. I took the map with me as I went above and, with a new sense of purpose, knocked on Slate’s door.
“Captain?”

It was a moment before he responded. “Yes.”

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his elbows on his knees, his palms open toward the sky, his jacket flung over the chair. By his mussed hair and flushed cheeks, he must have just lifted his head from his hands, but when he saw the look on my face, he scrambled to his feet. “You found something.”

I met his gaze. “You’ll teach me.”

“Yes.”

“Then this is the last map I help you with.”

“I promise,” he said quickly, but I shook my head.

“I’m not asking you,” I said. “I’m telling you. This is the last time.”

He caught his breath, then let it out, something softer than a sigh. “I always knew you’d abandon me once you knew how.”

“I’m not abandoning you,” I said. “I’m letting you go.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“But you want the map, and you need my help.” My claim sat in the air between us, and he did not contest it. “You said it yourself, Slate. Sometimes a person has to let go of something to make room for something more important.
You have to choose.”

He was quiet for so long, I began to fear he’d made the offer without thinking I’d accept, but as I watched, his expression cycled from sorrow to resignation and then to something like relief. “You’re right, Nixie,” he said at last. “I’ll let you go too.”

I bit my lip to keep it from trembling; he’d let me go a long time ago. After all, you can only hold one person tight if you’re holding on with both hands.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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A
s promised, a note came from Mr. D midweek, setting the time and the place for our next meeting:
10 p.m., at the business of our mutual friend.

We arrived late at Joss’s apothecary. The captain had lingered over dinner and dithered when he was dressing, and as we were leaving the ship, he stopped dead just off the gangplank and wouldn’t move for half a minute. Then he started walking again, but slowly, and he hesitated once more on the street outside the shuttered apothecary. Slate didn’t want to go in.

I shared his reluctance, although my reasons were different. But we were committed to the scheme, and it was unwise to loiter outside. Although curfew was only for native citizens, we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves just now. Kash pushed on the door to the Happy House;
it swung open easily. A candle flame shivered in the gloom.

“Come on, Captain,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. I took Slate’s arm and pulled him along.

That same peculiar odor hit my nose, of dust and leaves and bitter tinctures, but in Auntie Joss’s place behind the counter, there stood a behemoth of a man, with knuckles like walnuts and eyes as narrow and impassive as gaps in window blinds. His presence confirmed my suspicions even before I smelled the smoke. We were not meeting in an apothecary.

He moved his chin almost imperceptibly toward the crooked stairs behind the piles of crates at the back of the shop. I led the way, grasping the rickety rail with one moist hand. Stepping down, I was nearly blind in the dark, following the sweet reek in the air with my other hand in front of me. When I touched velvet fabric, I pawed at the curtains to reveal a bleary light.

The room was wide, larger than the footprint of the apothecary above. The ceiling was low, and the blue smoke gathered along it like storm clouds. Some parts of the wall were plaster, some rough wood; there was a section with peeling wallpaper, as well as a portion of unfinished stone, but along all of the walls were bunks with thin mattresses, some occupied, at least physically, by dreamers. On a chair
in the corner, a bored woman, nude to the waist, plucked the strings of a
guhzeng
.

Guided by another woman with a pocked face and downcast eyes, Auntie Joss approached. She wore a rich silk robe and carmine on her wrinkled lips, which cracked into a courtesan’s smile as she greeted us.

“It’s been so long, Captain,” she said. “Pity your friends are waiting, or we could talk about the past.”

“I have no friends here,” Slate muttered.

She laughed lightly, as though he’d made a witty joke, then turned her unseeing eyes on me. “And Nix, welcome back. If we had more time, we could talk about the future.”

“Joss. Didn’t you know that selling opium is illegal these days? Although I suppose it’s hard to make ends meet, selling our secrets.” I started to follow Slate and Kashmir, who had gone with the young woman off into the smoke, but Joss grabbed my arm and leaned in close.

“Why, Nix,” she said, her cloudy eyes wide. “They are not yours alone. I wasn’t always blind. I used to be able to read maps too. Perhaps another time, I can tell you my own secrets. For a price.” She released my arm, but I was rooted to the floor. The temptation to ask her then and there was formidable, but I had brought nothing to barter with.

I caught up to Kashmir and Slate as they reached a large rug, surrounded by piles of flat, tattered pillows, where the four members of the Hawaiian League were sitting.

“Captain! Miss Song,” Mr. D said as we joined them on the floor. “And the math tutor.” His expression was careful and even. “Or was it the dancing instructor?”

Kashmir inclined his head and gave them his charming smile.

Of all the conspirators, only Mr. D seemed comfortable here. Mr. Hart was glaring at Kashmir, and Milly’s legs were folded awkwardly, all angles, like a colt lying in a field. Mr. T was staring with an outraged expression at the musician’s bare breasts. “Forgive him,” Mr. D said with a conciliatory gesture. “We are well outside his usual social circles. It was an effort to get him to attend at all.”

Mr. T turned his face, but not his eyes, toward the captain, and whispered through his sneer. “It’s not your forgiveness that concerns me.”

“Come now, Mr. T, we are not in church,” Milly said. “We are here so we may speak plainly, without fear of being overheard.”

“Indeed, there is no fear of that, sir, for God himself would shun this place!” Then Mr. T drew back as a woman
in an embroidered red dress brought tea, kneeling down to place the tray on the rug and pour each cup. Her fingers were stained brown. Had my own mother held me with tar-stained hands?

The men were silent as she poured, and Slate in particular stared at his cup like she’d filled it with poison. Although the basement room was cool, his brow was covered with sweat.

Mr. D raised his own teacup. “A toast to the success of our venture?” The others lifted their cups, but when I reached for mine, Kash touched my arm. I started.