Blackwood (2 page)

  The season was almost over, and then she'd endure senior year. Everyone was talking about college, preparing for the next act in their lives. She wasn't going anywhere. She wouldn't even have this. After she graduated, it'd be time to get a year-round job that paid more bills.

  "They've survived!"

  The bullish voice of the actor playing Governor John White snapped her attention back to the stage. The line signaled his return to the site of the colony after his trip to England.

  Surrounded by sailors, White gasped as he pointed at the oak on the far side of the stage, the simple cloak around his shoulders flying out with the gesture. Miranda couldn't see the word from where she stood, but the famous Croatoan was carved into the bark in desperate, crooked letters. White went on, overacting like crazy, "My granddaughter, I will see her beautiful face!"

  Miranda and Polly exchanged a look. Polly shook her head, her prematurely gray ponytail bobbing. Director Jack, aka His Royal Majesty, would give the actor a scathing note on that later.

  The governor froze, along with the sailors in the background, and the lights dimmed. This cued up the final reveal. Miranda could never help wondering where the colonists had gone. Disappearing was some trick to pull off, even hundreds of years ago when there were more wild places left. The standard theories involved bad endings and tragedy. Even on such a humid night, not knowing – knowing that no one would
ever
know the truth – was enough to give her a small shiver.

  A single low spotlight fixed on a solemn young blonde girl as she wandered ghost-slow through the frozen men. Her face was chalk pale.

  His Royal Majesty's biggest change to this year's show had been making Virginia Dare the show's deadpan narrator. The actress, Caroline, was a local kid, seven years-old and a mean-girl-in-training, and yet, the casting worked.

  Miranda leaned over to see how the scene was playing for the crowd. The show wasn't sold out, but the curving rows of the amphitheater were nearly full. Probably about twelve hundred people, riveted and silent as Caroline haunted the stage.

  The shadow appeared at the back of the audience. Miranda had no idea what it might be – it was definitely
not
part of the show – only that it was
there
. The large unformed shape was simply a growing darkness until it resolved into an immense, old-fashioned black ship. The kind of ship used long ago by colonists and pirates. Strange gray symbols bloomed on each of three billowing black sails, the shapes a mix of straight lines and arcs, a half-moon curving above a circle at the top. The sailcloth rippled in a wind that she didn't feel on her skin.

  Miranda blinked. The ship was still there.

  She put her hand up, and her hand was
in front of
an immense black ship with tall gray sails. And the ship was moving forward now, swallowing the audience row after curving row.

  In a few seconds half the audience was gone beneath it, and Miranda's breath caught in her throat. The ship glided steadily closer. When she turned to Polly, the stage manager smiled at her with the normal relief of reaching the end of the night. She gave off no hint of concern.

  But the ship was heading straight toward the actors, those odd symbols shifting on the sails in curving and slashing lines. The black monster gathered speed, moving faster and faster–

  When Caroline hit her mark at center stage, only a dozen feet separated her from the black ship. She gave no sign of seeing it either. She might be a brat, but she was also seven.

  "Look!" Miranda pointed and staggered forward onto the stage. Caroline opened her mouth to speak and Miranda threw herself at the girl, shielding her with her arms.

  There were a few shocked cries. Miranda closed her eyes and waited for the impact.

  And waited.

  There were more murmurs and questions from the crowd. But nothing else.

  Caroline squirmed in her grasp, struggling. Miranda opened her eyes and the massive curving prow loomed above her unmoving, throwing a heavy shadow over her and Caroline and then – between one blink and the next – it vanished.

  The spotlight blared into Miranda's face and she squinted, not used to the bright heat. She glanced over her shoulder, still holding the wriggling Caroline tight. Governor White stared murder at her, but none of the men broke character. They were supposed to remain frozen until the lights came down, and they were.

  Caroline said, "Let me go,
Blackwood
." Miranda didn't understand right away, didn't understand anything that had just happened. Caroline yanked a handful of her hair.

  "Ow." And Miranda realised: the spotlight was still on. That meant the show wasn't over.

  She'd interrupted the performance because a giant ship had appeared. A giant ship no one else seemed to have seen. From the side of the stage, Polly said, "Miranda! Get. Over. Here."

  The knowledge that she'd disappointed Polly finally got her moving. She released her hold on Caroline, and hurried off stage. Polly grabbed her arm. "What was that?"

  Caroline looked like an angry ghost, her face pink instead of white. Polly brushed at the sleeve of Miranda's shirt where the girl's make-up had rubbed off.

  "I'm so sorry," Miranda said.

  Polly frowned, but stepped next to her to wait while rosycheeked Caroline managed her last lines.

  "The one hundred and fourteen men, women, and children of the Roanoke colony remain lost, their fate unknown. A mystery trapped in time."

  At last, the spotlight died.

Walking out from backstage at the end of the night, Polly was trying her best to pull an explanation out of Miranda without passing judgment. Miranda nodded along and kept silent, barely absorbing Polly's chatter about how she knew Miranda loved the theater and would never sabotage the show, but she just couldn't understand what had caused her to interrupt…

  At a hastily called post-show meeting, His Royal Majesty had informed cast and crew that he had never had anyone disrupt a performance while it was in progress before – let alone a member of the crew. And a lowly intern at that.

  The handful of locals in the cast and crew were already muttering that having a Blackwood around was asking for bad luck. That anyone could have predicted Miranda would screw something up eventually. That she'd done it in such spectacular, inexplicable fashion didn't surprise them.

  The director had finally ended with a caution that he'd be consulting with the stage manager about Miranda's future employment and praising the cast for not breaking character. Not finishing the show despite the interruption would have meant ticket exchanges. They couldn't have that.

  Polly defended her, saying there must have been
some
explanation and she'd talk to Miranda. The problem was Miranda couldn't tell her the reason.

  She had listened closely to everyone talking about what she'd done. No one else said anything about a big black ship with billowing sails. No one said anything even close. She was the only one who had seen it. But she
had
seen it. Hadn't she?

  "I hate for you to go straight home after that," Polly said. She stopped next to head of the trail that looped along the coast to the complex where the non-locals lived. "Come out to the Grove and I'll sneak you a margarita. We can talk more about it tomorrow, OK?"

  Miranda bit her lip. She had to ask, to make sure. "You didn't notice anything…"

  "Anything?" Polly prompted.

  "I don't know… Odd?"

  Polly frowned again. She'd never seen Polly frown this much. "You mean besides what you did?"

  
Yes.
"Was there anything else?"

  Polly's response was careful. "No. I didn't notice anything else odd. Did you?"

  So Miranda really was the only person who'd seen the ship. "Probably not. I better go on home."

  "Sure?" She waited, giving Miranda a chance to say more. Then, "OK. Be careful. We'll figure this out." Polly split off toward the trail with a wave, rushing to catch the people who'd left a few minutes earlier.

  One of the reasons Miranda liked the theater so much was that the out-of-towners who worked summer stock didn't know much of anything about her or her family. They had always treated her like they treated each other. Normal. That was over.

  She knew all too well how losing normal status felt. The kids at school hadn't truly decided to turn on her until she was thirteen. Her mother was dead, which was bad enough, but then the new police chief's kid – Phillips Rawling, radiating cool like all new kids did – had humiliated her in front of everyone. She didn't believe he'd done it on purpose, but that didn't matter. What mattered was he'd given the others the confirmation they needed that she'd never be like them.

  And her night just kept getting worse. The instant Miranda hit the pavement of the mostly-deserted parking lot, her incredibly sad nemesis Bone's pickup truck roared alongside her. There were a dozen Tarheels stickers pasted on the bumper and back window. Basketball was the closest thing North Carolina had to a state religion. He was a devoted member of the faithful.

  He rolled down the window and Miranda asked, "What?"

  That his rich kook of a dad had to
force
him to work at the theater didn't usually get to her. Life wasn't fair. That she already knew. The fact she hallucinated a phantom ship
and
that she knew he was about to remind her yet again of her family's reputation, well,
that
got to her.

  Bone's elbow jutted out the window. He was gawky, skin and bone, the source of his nickname.

  "Sorry about your Blackwood luck," he said.

  
Grrrr
. "Sorry you're a jerk."

  "I'm going to hang out with some friends. Where are you going? To pick up your dad?"

  Miranda raised her hand and made a shooing motion. "Leave, begone, scram."

  He hesitated, stumped for a comeback. Finally he said, "I will," and roared away.

  Miranda reached her beloved car, Pineapple, and patted the pale yellow hood. "Thank you for not roaring."

  When she started working at the theater, she'd bought Pineapple for a few hundred bucks. The original make was impossible to determine, and she never had to figure it out. She'd never signed on the dotted lines of any insurance or registration papers. Her dad claimed that forms and laws were for other people. Respectable people.

  Miranda drove out of Fort Raleigh, the plastic hula girl stuck to Pineapple's dash wobbling seductively with each turn. Downtown Manteo, the island's main drag, was packed with tourists on this warm summer Wednesday. The town center resembled a perfect model of itself, preserved Victorian houses and Colonial-style storefronts with the Sound's peaceful waters as scenic backdrop. Gelato shops and fancy restaurants were tucked next to pricey B&Bs that offered tickets for fishing expeditions and dolphin spotting.

  Her street was off a more remote stretch of highway, a small pocket of cheap, mostly rental houses shoved where the tourists would never see. A different kind of lost colony.

  Miranda pulled into her usual spot at the curb and got out. Maybe she'd hallucinated the ship, like when Gaius Baltar hung out with his not-really-there Cylon girlfriend on
BSG
. Maybe. She gripped her keys so their teeth stuck out through her fist. Her dad had shown a rare flash of concern when she started at the theater, forcing her to promise this little action whenever she was outside at night alone.

  Walking quickly, she crossed the patchwork yard to the house. The white paint had been flaking for years. The porch light was off, and in the darkness she tested the front door. It was locked.

  A golden retriever loped across the yard to join her. Miranda reached down to scruff the fur under his neck. "Hey, Sidekick, hey pretty boy." Sidekick had shown up a couple of years ago out of nowhere. He got his name because sidekicks were always the characters she liked most. TV binge-a-thons were her other main escape.

  Miranda fished her keys from her messenger bag and fumbled at the lock. "The great provider must not be home, huh?"

  She managed to drop both her bag and the keys with a clunk. With a sigh, she bent to pick them up. The low, angry sound of Sidekick's bark made her jump. His yellow head whipped toward the street. His body stretched tight from nose to tail as his throat rumbled.

  He rarely barked. And never like this.

  Then the others started.

  Every dog in earshot bayed and howled in a riotous symphony devoid of any melody. Sidekick's neck craned to the sky, more wolf on a postcard than happy golden retriever.

  Miranda refused to look up, afraid she'd see the ship again. She jammed the key into the door's lock and twisted it hard. The knob spun and the door gave. She kicked her bag inside. Hesitating halfway in, she held open the door, and said, "Come on, boy, come on."

  Sidekick arched his head at her and whined. His eyes glinted in the dark.

  "
Sidekick
," she said. She fought to keep the panic out of her voice. "
Now
!"

  Sidekick came, galumphing through the door. His growling quieted once he hit the threshold. The howling outside continued without pause, without song.

  Miranda slammed the door and slid the deadbolt into place. She pulled aside the faded blue curtain and checked outside.

  No ship. Nothing but a cloud floating across the pale moon. The dogs' racket ended, just like that.

  She settled down on the too-soft cushions of the old beige couch, and dragged in a breath. What a night. At least the room that surrounded her was normal – the easy chair covered by the red slipcover she'd made from an old blanket, the ancient floor model TV, and, above that, the grinning photo of her mom playing tourist beside the mast of the
Elizabeth II
at Festival Park. Sidekick panted at her with his usual mellow-dog grin.

  "Honey?" A voice called from up the hall. "Is that you?"