My Diary from the Edge of the World (26 page)

“It's the end of the world as most people know it. Beyond it, there's just about nothing.” The captain said this to me as he turned his face to the wind. “The Trading Post will be crowded this time of year. We won't linger. . . . We'll trade for a few supplies and keep going. Also, afterward I think it'll be better to depart in the dark. If they find out we're headed south, they may just
laugh
us to the edge of the earth.”

*  *  *

Since we left San Cristobal, the weather's gotten much colder and grayer, and the days blend into each other: fog in the morning, fog in the afternoon. We Lockwoods (and Oliver) have run out of things to do with ourselves. There's only so much war and spit a person can play, and Oliver's attempts to teach me and Millie bridge have come to nothing. Jersey Troy took pity on us and dug out his old Sega Game Player, but it ran out of batteries after only a few games, and there are no AAs left on the ship. One big drawback of all the downtime is that Mom's decided it's time to get back to our school work. She's been painstakingly creating lesson plans for us the last two nights, working patiently on them at the
galley table, her hair in a graceful bun and a cup of coffee in her hand. I wonder if she's partly doing it to avoid Dad, who—when he's not reading his instruments—has started following her around like a lost puppy. It's clear that he's getting more and more desperate to be forgiven as the weeks stretch on.

Millie's strange kindness has continued to grow. She's been saving me the crusts of all her sandwiches because she knows that's my favorite part. She's lent me two of her shirts, which I'm almost big enough to fit into. (She's managed to keep her things from Luck City pristine and perfect, while all my shirts and jeans and sweaters are already full of holes.)

Tonight we crossed paths on the poop deck. I was just walking along daydreaming, and she was running her hand along the rail, looking lost in her own thoughts too, when she stopped, studied me seriously, and said, “You need a makeover.” I thought she was just saying it to be rude, and was half relieved to have her back to her normal self, until she grabbed me by the wrist and led me into her room.

Once inside, she sat me on her bed and started combing my dishwater rat's nest into something like a style. I winced when she ran the hard bristles through the
tangles, but didn't complain; it felt too nice to be getting so much attention.

“I'm just about fed up with Captain Bill,” she said out of nowhere.

“I thought you liked him,” I said, shocked. “You said he was wildly romantic!”

Millie shook her head. “I don't like how he acts with Mom.”

She turned me to face her and studied my features, then pulled her makeup bag onto her lap and dug out a tube of mascara. She brushed my eyelashes, first one side, then the other, going very slowly, and leaning back to study me after every stroke. “And he's rude to Dad. He doesn't take him seriously.”

“None of us take Dad seriously,” I said.

Millie pulled out her eye shadow and began on my lids, applying three shades of brown so delicately it would have put me to sleep if I wasn't so interested in the conversation. “Yeah, but we're allowed to be that way,” she said. “
He's
not.”

We were silent for a while, and Millie tucked away her eye shadow compact and pulled out her blush. She made me suck in my cheeks and swept the brush gently along my cheekbones, and then finishing with that, she
unpacked a tiny tube of clear lip gloss and coated my lips. I was beginning to daydream, when her next words jarred me back to the moment. “Do you think Mom would ever leave Dad for someone like that?” she asked.

I couldn't say a word. The question didn't completely surprise me. I'd wondered it a few times myself, though I've never wanted to admit it on paper.

Someone like that,
I thought. Mentally I cataloged what kind of someone Captain Bill is. Attentive. Brave. Cultured. Loves poetry.
Wildly romantic.
Then I thought about my dad, and how I couldn't really say he's any of those things.

“Mom would never leave Dad,” I said, but it sounded unconvincing. I wanted to say just the right thing to Millie that would make me sound wise and worth confiding in. I also wanted my words to be true.

“They laugh together a lot,” Millie said despondently, zipping up her makeup bag. “Mom and Dad never talk anymore, much less laugh together. Dad's really hurt her. Those kinds of things matter.”

“Maybe, but . . .” I tried to protest, but found I didn't have one good argument in Dad's favor, and it gave me a sudden stomachache. Then I remembered one. “He tried to give his life for Sam's,” I said hopefully.

Millie took this in silently. She stared down at her hands. “But he lost,” she said.

“Were you trying to trade
your
life for Sam's, when you were talking to the Cloud the other night?” I asked.

She laid her makeup bag aside and brushed her hands together, looking at her fingers. “No. I promise you I wasn't. I was just . . . trying to negotiate.” She didn't meet my eyes. “It's useless, apparently.”

She picked at the bedspread for a moment, and then looked up and smiled at me. (I can't remember the last time Millie smiled at me like that! What is the world coming to?) “You're done,” she said, scrutinizing her work. She handed me the small mirror, and I looked at my reflection.

Someone stared back at me, but I barely recognized her. She was older than I was, and prettyish. Not as pretty as Millie, but not as uglyish as the usual Gracie either.

*  *  *

Millie made a big deal of presenting me at the dinner table about an hour later, making me wait outside the galley until she announced me, which was embarrassing.

As I stepped inside, Mouse's mouth dropped open in surprise. Mom's eyes widened. Captain Bill laughed with pleasure, and Oliver blushed and looked at his feet
under the table as if
he
were the one showing up to dinner in mascara. Even Dad was taken aback.

“Gracie Bee, you're growing up under our noses,” he finally said.

“You look like a girl,” Mouse said.

I could feel my face going red. Millie smiled encouragement at me again, like this was all good feedback.

We ate our dinner by lantern light. (Macaroni and cheese—yes! And mashed potatoes! My dream meal.) The sky outside the windows was getting blacker by the minute and squeezing the stars out—
pop pop pop
. Soon I forgot what I looked like and started making a mashed potato sculpture for Sam, and Millie tried to stand a hardboiled egg on its bottom, while Mom and Dad got engrossed in a discussion with the captain about what mermaids eat. “Mostly sea cucumbers and large fish, like tuna and swordfish,” the captain said. “Sometimes people, but they don't prefer it.” I watched his face for special wildly romantic attention to my mom, but I couldn't tell if there was any. Though I'm not much of a romance expert. I noticed that Dad, also, looked especially attentive: He was watching the captain and Mom interact, and I could tell he didn't like what he saw. Had he been noticing them all along? Or was I only just noticing him notice?

After dinner Millie piggybacked Sam away for a game of go fish, and Mom and Dad went on talking with the captain. Oliver and I found ourselves with nothing to do, so we left the galley and walked along the leeward deck, far away from everyone else.

“Do I look weird?” I asked suddenly. I wanted him to say something nice, because I did feel I deserved a compliment of some sort.

Oliver shook
his head. “You look very pretty, Gracie. You know that, I think.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I guess I just wanted to hear it.”

Above, to the west, two dragons were flying toward each other—one from shore and one from over the sea—leaving trails of smoke scarring the dark sky. They met each other in the air and circled, parted, came together and circled again, their claws almost touching—like a dance. Up above in the topmast, Virgil was following their movements with his hands—like he was doing a hand ballet. It was kind of sweet and weird at the same time.

“Oliver,” I said slowly, “I've been wondering . . . has it helped?” I asked. “We're far across the earth. Are your memories of your family fading?”

Oliver looked down at the ocean, frowned, and shook his head. “No. But . . .” His shoulders lifted and fell, like he was pushing at some weight and then accepting that it wouldn't leave. “I'm not so sure I want to forget them anymore.”

I nodded. “I don't think I'd want to forget either,” I said. I was thinking maybe the more Oliver tells me about the things he remembers about his mom and dad, the more I can help. I wonder, if a person cares about you enough, if they can help you carry all your difficult memories. I wanted to say that to Oliver, but the moment was so quiet and perfect that I decided to save it for another time. For now, it felt right to say nothing at all. I never really knew before this year that sometimes silence is best.

The whole world felt peaceful for the moment. The Cloud was nowhere in sight—maybe temporarily snagged on a piece of beach somewhere along the coast, or obscured by the fog. I wished I could freeze the moment, keep us all happy and together forever, never get to the Southern Edge, never find out whether we are wrong or right.

A few moments later the captain appeared at our side, followed by my parents. “You'll all want to get a look at this,” he said, summoning us to the opposite railing.

Soon Millie was beside us, then Mouse. We strained to see what there was to see.

To the southeast, a shadow loomed up from the Chilean shore, getting bigger as we got closer, looking impossibly tall but also, somehow, fragile. It dwarfed the shore itself—rose and spread its limbs like enormous arms sheltering the ground beneath it. It was a tree (the biggest tree in the world, I know now), thick and wide. It seemed to call us closer, though the ship listed leeward and held steady.

“The World Tree,” Captain Bill said. “Legend goes that as long as it lives and thrives, all is right with the world.” I tried to gauge how “thriving” it looked, but I couldn't really tell. The captain rubbed his beard, gazing at the shore. “This is where we turn seaward to try to get around the Horn. We'll be at the Trading Post when you all wake tomorrow morning.”

We watched the World Tree slip by us, lonely and defiant. We watched until it was small in the distance, until the shore of Chile began to shrink away in the darkness. We kept our eyes on the land as long as we could, each understanding the reason why, without saying it.

And then we turned to face the open sea.

I can barely keep my
hand from shaking as I write this. We aren't safe. Something is very, very wrong.

We've arrived at the Land's End Trading Post. The coordinates are right, the captain is sure of it, but the whole area is completely empty. No ships anywhere on the horizon, not even seagulls, or fish jumping, or mermaids playing in the wake of the ship. Not a sound.

The captain, for the first time since I've known him, looks frightened—his eyes scanning the horizon intently and his jaw tense. Virgil said a while ago that he was going off a little ways to see what's going on, and he hasn't come back yet. I'm pretty sure he's gotten spooked and flown away. Millie keeps saying she's worried about him (my guess is he's halfway up the coast of Chile right now) and
she's been asking me how I can sit here writing at a time like this. She's on the bench kneeling beside me right now (we're in the galley) with her face pressed against the window, watchful. I know she's right, that I should be looking out the window with her, or at least just sitting and chewing my nails like a normal person. But writing is the only way I can get myself to feel even a little bit calmer. I—

Wait, we think we see a ship. It's coming fast toward us across the water, and there's something odd about it, but I can't tell what from this far away. We're going above deck to check.

We're all (except the captain and the shipmates) now hiding in the galley together. I'm writing in case this is my last chance to write anything before we disappear. I'm taking deep breaths between sentences to make my hand steady.

Arriving above deck right after I last wrote and joining the others at the rail, I could see that the ship that was approaching appeared blacker than most—like a smudge on the horizon. As it got closer, it became clear that it was burned and blackened, that the mast listed to one side, and that its sails were torn to shreds.

The captain knew long before we did, of course, what was coming for us, and started shouting orders to the men. It was only then that I noticed the strange shimmer to the ship's form—the way I could see through the filmy hull right into its wooden interior.

“Phantom ship,” Dad said, his voice tight, putting an arm around Sam protectively.

Captain Bill nodded, his eyes glued to the dark vessel, unblinking, his face grim. “Most likely a trading ship dragged under by the Great Kraken. Now it's sailing again, only it's not what it was.”

As the ship grew closer, we could see its inhabitants moving quickly around the deck—ghostly figures in shipmates' clothing: slickers, cargo pants, some vests, one in an “I ♥ Hawaii” T-shirt, drifting hurriedly to lower the shredded sails while others hailed us from the bow.

“Just keep going past them,” Millie breathed, terrified. “Please don't stop.”

Captain Bill glanced at her. “It's too late for that. Now we just wait for them to board.”

Mom let out a small moan, and the captain looked over at her.

“It's all right. We just have to give them what they
want, and they'll most likely let us pass.” He looked down at Sam, who was clinging to my dad's leg, staring over the rails with huge eyes. “You might want to take the little one below.”