The Girl from Everywhere (32 page)

Well, almost entirely. I couldn’t shake the sense there was something I’d missed in the tomb, a thought I’d almost had, a question I’d almost answered. I hated this feeling; my mind kept casting about and pulling up other thoughts in the process, and they swarmed around my head like flies.

I filled my lungs with air and rolled into a dead man’s float, my eyes closed, my ears below the waterline, trying to
clear the distractions. I hadn’t seen Joss in the tomb, but she’d told me she had seen us. In 1866, when Slate first came to Honolulu, she must have recognized the ship, perhaps even before Slate came to her shop to sell his cargo . . . and to meet my mother. In 1884, Joss would soon be burying the crate, stuffed with the money she’d gotten from Mr. D, so she could uncover it in her youth. That, and a map of 1841. And an elixir as well, for her “condition.” She said she’d been poisoned; was it weeks of exposure to the mercury? Or had she lost hope just before our arrival?

Poisoned.

I remembered then the wharf rat I’d embarrassed by asking the meaning of
hapai
. Bubbles streamed slowly through my lips and up along my cheek.

Lin had been in her mid-twenties when she met Slate. She’d have been born in 1841, or thereabouts.

I lifted my head, the breeze cold on my face. Salt dripped into my eyes as I treaded water for a long, still moment. Then I plunged below the surface, twisting in the cool clean water, holding my breath until it hurt, until my lungs clenched like fists, until I could not concentrate on anything else.

I burst into the night air and took a painful breath that cleansed like fire. Then I heard a short laugh from above. I
blinked away the saltwater; there was Kash at the rail. “You were under so long I thought you’d drowned!”

“No such luck!” I called back.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never inherit that hammock.”

I climbed up the ladder at the stern. The night breeze gave me gooseflesh after the warmth of the water. Kashmir met me on the quarterdeck with a thick towel. His own hair was still damp, and he’d changed into a fresh shirt. He started to wrap the towel around me, then he winced.

“Your shoulder.”

I glanced at the ugly purple bruise and made a face. “You know, you shouldn’t spy on a lady bathing.”

“Reconnoiter is a better word,” he replied easily. “Besides, it’s not a bath unless you use soap. You should try it.”

“I thought I smelled something strange.” I sniffed him; he smelled of bitter almond. Then I squeezed my hair into the towel. “Maybe someday,” I said, starting toward the hatch, but as I stepped away, Kashmir caught my arm.

“Amira—”

“Yes?”

“Are you really all right? You seem . . . distant.”

When the answer came to me, it was not a lie. “I’m fine.”

His eyes searched mine. “I . . . you did very well at the helm. I am—amazed.”

Pride, like a mouthful of sweet wine. “Thank you, Kash.”

“The captain was wrong,” he called after me. “You belong on a ship.” But it very nearly sounded like a question.

I went downstairs to find fresh clothes. As I pawed through the trunk, I caught sight of the map of Carthage, waiting for me. I pushed a jacket over it. Then I dressed and took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. My own eyes stared back.

It was only when I was leaving the room that I noticed Swag was not in his bucket.

I refilled the pail with fresh water and put out another dish of pearls, but he did not return that evening, and at dawn the next day, I emptied the bucket back into the sea.

At sunrise, we sailed into Hana’uma Bay, escorted by a pod of dolphins, and we dropped anchor in the still, protected waters while they played tag between the hulls. Honolulu Harbor wasn’t an option; if we were inspected, I could not think of a single way to explain the silent terra-cotta warriors or the ancient junk to the harbor master, or to anyone else.

Hana’uma Bay was thankfully deserted. Someday Elvis
Presley would stand there on the beach in the movie
Blue Hawaii,
but in 1884, the entire bay was still part of the estate of Princess Pauahi, and no one dared to swim or fish on the royal beach without permission. The water was pristine; peering over the rail, I could see the bright colors of the fish shimmering in the coral twenty feet down.

Slate had risen early in the morning with his disgusting coffee and a distracted air. “It’s going to be a long hike to Honolulu,” he said to me.

“Yeah.” I sighed, pushing away from the rail. I knew what was coming.

“I want you and Kashmir to make final preparations, so we can set a day to . . . to conclude the transaction.”

“Right.” I watched him blow the steam off his coffee. “Any preferences?”

“D and Kashmir can work the schedule out between them. Oh, and find a place to hide the treasure. Not on the beach like some cut-rate pirate story. The erosion will expose it too quickly.”

I licked my lips. Since my outburst in the tomb, I had been considering where we’d leave the gold. “I already know a place.”

“Really?”

“I promised to help, didn’t I?”

He nodded. “Okay. Good. The trip to Honolulu is twelve miles or so, and the terrain’s not easy. It may take you a whole day. Bring supplies, and enough money for lodging and so forth. You’ll need to stay in town until you hear from Mr. D.”

“Aye, Captain.” I started downstairs to make ready, but he called me back. “Yes?”

He was quiet for long enough I almost turned again to leave, but then he smiled at me. “You did good, Nixie.”

Something in my chest came loose like a knot slipping, and I smiled back, so wide it hurt. “Thanks, Dad.”

He leaned close, as though he were about to tell me a secret. “I always find—for me—knowing I have a . . . an escape . . . makes a situation less difficult. I am hoping, now you know you have an alternative, we might keep course together awhile longer.”

I regarded him for a moment, and the words formed and reformed themselves in my head, but I was too much of a coward to tell him what Joss had told me—that he would never reach 1868 with me aboard. “As long as we can, Captain,” I said finally.

He blinked at me. “Well. That’s more than I hoped for.”
Then he grinned and came at me low, wrapping me up in a hug as he had back outside of Christie’s, before we’d come to this place. I locked my own arms around his neck, and I didn’t let go until after he did.

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S
late himself rowed us to shore, beating the water vigorously with the oars, as though he were trying to best it. When we reached the beach and stepped out into the warm water and the soft, shell-studded sand, Slate saluted us before he pulled away.

“He’s in high spirits,” Kashmir said.

“He’s happy it’s nearly over.”

“Aren’t you happy,
amira
?” Kashmir said.

“Sure,” I said, and I tried to mean it. Slate was right; I had an alternative. I could set out on my own if I liked. This was what I’d always wanted . . . only now I understood the meaning behind the old curse, “May your every wish be granted.”

I pushed the thoughts from my mind as I rolled down the cuffs of my trousers. I’d eschewed a dress for our hike,
and packed simply: a change of clothes, a handful of coins, and a letter that I’d written in private, in haste, and shoved in the bottom of my bag.

Hana’uma had been formed by a volcanic cone, and it was a long, steep climb up a winding trail from the beach to the lip of the crater. We walked in silence, the path too steep to speak easily, but we listened to birds serenade from the scraggly trees that shaded the path. At the top of the dead volcano, we stopped to rest and drink. Below us, the water lay like a sapphire cabochon in a partial capture of the shore, marred only by the ships like flaws on the stone.

I sighed, and Kash quirked up an eyebrow. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, in answer to his unspoken question.

“This?” Kashmir shrugged. “It reminds me of Bengal.”

“It’s unique,” I insisted.

“Unique like everything else you’ve ever seen.”

I took another mouthful of water to consider my response. Then I reached out to grab Kashmir’s arm. “Look!” I pointed at a small black bird sitting on a branch above our heads.

Kash stared dubiously. “Does it heal things?”

“Wait till it flies away,” I said. “There are yellow feathers under each wing. The Hawaiian chieftains used them to
make their golden cloaks.”

The bird called out, and Kashmir cocked his head. “Pretty melody, at least.”

“Fifty years from now, the last one will sing his final song somewhere on Mauna Loa.”

“Ah.”

We watched the bird fly. “Doesn’t that make you sad?” I asked, exasperated.

“Why? It’s here now,
amira
.”

We walked in silence almost directly west, over the black volcanic pumice of the crater’s edge, and down toward the water and the inlet of Maunalua Bay, where we passed a fish pond and a native village beside a stream where Hawaiians were shrimping with woven baskets. I stopped for a moment to watch, and a man offered us some shrimp. They were about the length of one of the joints in my finger, translucent pink, and still living as he crushed them between his white teeth. I took him up on his offer; they were salty-sweet and bitter, all at once.

We continued for a while along the shore, giving wide berth to basking sea turtles and startling a small gray monk seal. We crossed a flat of tide pools where tiny red crabs scrambled in and out of the pocked holes formed by ancient
bubbles in the superheated liquid stone, and I made Kashmir stop to watch as a woman and her daughter pried opihi off the mossy rocks with dull flat blades. We passed a thicket of Kona oranges and pulled fruit from the trees, filling my bag near to bursting. Kashmir offered to carry it, and I handed it over gratefully. Finally we turned inland to avoid hiking up Diamond Head—or Leahi, Blake’s map had labeled it—jumping over streamlets and tramping down tall grass.

The sun followed behind for a while and then overtook us, leading us along like a beacon as we approached Waikiki, where white peacocks walked at a stately pace under the tall trees. I led Kash onto the sand to walk along the water’s edge. I knew it was the longer route, but I felt an odd reluctance, a push and a pull, running away and running to. I shied away from the natural end to our journey, and I gave in to the draw of seeing all I could in the time I had left. My native time.

Kashmir must have noticed me dragging my feet. The last few miles he’d been quiet, his usual humor fading with the afternoon, but he hadn’t made any effort to hurry me. The sun dipped into the ocean as we caught sight, in the distance, of the black forest of masts in Honolulu Harbor, and it was just a slip of molten red above the horizon by the
time we reached the last stretch of beach before the blasted coral of the esplanade.

I stopped on the sand. Kashmir continued a few steps, then turned around.

“Maybe we can stay on the beach?” I said. “Tonight, I mean. It’s very late to try to find lodging at a hotel.”

Kashmir held my gaze for a long time before answering. “As you will.” Then he dropped the bag and flung himself down beside it.

I tried to smile. “What, Kashmir?” I gestured out across the ocean, taking in the fiery sunset, the soft sand, the nodding palms. “You don’t like the accommodations?”

He didn’t answer at first, but his green eyes shone in the dying light. Then he slipped his hand into his pocket and drew out a folded piece of paper, holding it up between his first two fingers. My heart sank and I snatched the letter from his hands, but his expression didn’t change. “Dearest Mr. Hart,” he recited, still watching my face. “I have little time to write, and even less to visit, so instead—”

“Kashmir—”

“So instead, I have left something for you in the place you promised one day you’d show me, the day we went on the hike. I cannot say more except to ask your forgiveness.
Nix.”

“You don’t understand.” I shoved the letter back into my pocket.

“I thought I did, the other day. When you kissed him.”

I blushed, deeply, but I didn’t drop my gaze, although Kash didn’t make it easy. Finally he broke, looking down to pull an orange out of my bag, and I was grateful for the small mercy.

“But then I wondered,” he went on. “What on earth could you be leaving for him?”

I folded my arms and watched the waves advancing, receding. “He wasn’t supposed to make a map that worked. I practically spelled it out for him.”

Kashmir laughed softly. “You expected him to let you go so easily?” He dropped the orange peel all in one piece beside him and sectioned the orange. “Not everyone has your skill for it. I will admit, I was relieved to read that you would not see him. Although I did notice you didn’t say good-bye.”

“It’s implied. Like I said in the letter, I didn’t have much time.”

“If the captain has his way, you could have your whole life.” He offered me a slice of orange, but I stared at it. He
shrugged and ate it himself. “I know you’ve considered it.”