Odds Are Good (14 page)

I thought of my grandfather, and wondered if the old man ever knew what Gramma had given up for him.

“I offered her many things,” said the queen. “But she had only one request. ‘Let me be buried in Elfland,' she said to me, just before we sent her home. ‘When it is all over, let me come back here to rest.'”

“So we have come to take her home,” said the king.

Two of the elves were carrying a length of cloth, the color of the sky at midnight. Working gently, deftly, they slid it under my grandmother's frail body. She shifted slightly as they did, but was silent. I thought I saw a faint smile play over her lips.

Now the elves lined up, three to each side of her bed. Each took hold of the edge of the cloth. Together they lifted her from the bed.

Suddenly the liquid silver of the wall began to shift. It grew transparent, and I caught a heart-stopping glimpse of the world on the other side.

The king shifted his eyes so that he was looking right at me. He was squinting and frowning. It felt bad to be looked at that way.

“Would you like to see the Lady Ivy as we see her?” he asked.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You think we find you ugly, do you not?”

When I lowered my head in shame, the king laughed. “We see different things, you and I. Your senses observe the outside. Ours perceive what lies inside. Let me show you.”

And so saying, he laid his hands upon my eyes. When he took them away I cried out in wonder. The elves were as beautiful as ever. But my grandmother—oh, my grandmother. What a blaze of glory she was.

Now I understood why the elves had averted their eyes.

Singing a song that broke my heart, they carried my grandmother through the silver portal, a small sun resting on the dark elven cloth.

“Your lives are short, Tommy,” said the Elven king. “But, oh, how the best of you shine.”

He reached for his queen's hand. Both of them nodded to me, then turned and followed my grandmother's funeral procession, through the shimmering silver portal, back to the land of the elves.

The wall closed behind them. I stared at it for a long time, then turned, and began to straighten my grandmother's bed.

His name was Jan. He was short for his thirteen years, and the sun had roasted his skin to a golden brown. His long, unruly hair was black as a moonless night, his heart hard as a sailor's knot. As for his eyes, they were mostly green but seemed to shift with his moods.

In this, they were much like the sea beside which he lived.

Jan loved the sea. But he also hated it, for it had taken his father when he'd set off to find the ship with the golden sail.

It was a story his father had always loved, the tale of a mysterious ship that fishermen and traders would see on the horizon, yet could never reach. Then one day word swept the coast that the ship had been seen again, and his father announced that he was going in search of it.

That was the last they had seen of him.

But Jan had not stopped waiting, not stopped hoping. Which is why he was squatting at the water's edge now, looking for a sign of his father's ship.

The gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking raucously. The waves rolled in to smash against the beach, splashing him with warm brine. The huge yellow eye of the merciless sun glared down at him. And the smooth line of sky and sea remained unbroken.

But still he watched, as he had always done when he was not busy on some task for his mother. Now that she was gone, too—a victim of the fever that had ravaged the coast the previous year—watching was what he did most of the time.

After an hour of squinting at the horizon without seeing any sign of a ship, the boy sighed heavily, stood, and stretched. He gave a final seaward glance, then began to wander down the beach. He moved slowly, enjoying the feel of the warm water as it foamed and bubbled over his toes.

A group of gulls that had gathered on the sand ahead began scolding for the sake of scolding. Jan tossed a pebble listlessly in their direction. They ignored him. He shrugged and continued down the beach, until he came to the hut of Samos, the blind net maker.

The old man paused in his work as the boy approached. After a moment he smiled and said, “Jan.” It was both a greeting and a statement of pleasure. Even so, it made Jan shiver. The way Samos could tell who was standing nearby without being able to see made him uncomfortable. It was, however, the only thing about the man that Jan found disturbing. In all other ways it felt good to be with him, for he would talk to Jan in ways that others would not, offering him advice, wisdom, lore of the sea, and most of all sympathy, which the other fisherfolk thought was a sign of softness, and would make him weak.

“No sign of your father?” asked the old man. His fingers, thick and twisted with age, yet amazingly supple, resumed work on the net he was repairing.

“No.” The word was bitter in Jan's mouth. He felt like a fool, still waiting, still hoping, after all this time.

“Sometimes it is best to let go,” said Samos. He held up the net to display the gaping hole. “If Markand had let go, instead of holding on to this net, he might be alive today. As it was, he saved the net, but lost his life. Not the best of trades, I think.”

“My father is coming back,” said Jan, fighting to ignore the knot of anger in his stomach.

“Ten years is a long time to be gone,” replied the old man. Then he turned his attention back to the net. Jan stood in silence, gazing out at the sea once more. For a moment he thought he saw something. He blinked and shook his head, and it was gone.

No. There it was again.

The sun was halfway up the sky, and its fierce rays filled the water with flashes of gold and silver. Whatever Jan saw was blending with those flashes, barely distinguishable. He shaded his eyes, squinting for a better view.

A sail! He leaped to his feet, feeling a surge of hope and, at the same time, cursing himself for being fool enough to get excited by every sail that broke the horizon. It would be some time before he could see whether this one carried the family crest—a blue circle that held the image of a gull in flight, with a single star above it. Even if it didn't, the ship might carry his father. After all, the sea had its own ways of returning things. At least, that was what his mother had always said.

As the minutes wore on, Jan was troubled to see that the sail was the wrong color. It was not simply that it was not white, as his father's would have been. It was not any of the colors that were proper for a sail—not red, like the sails of the traders from the north, nor blue or green, like those from the south, nor even black, like those from the east.

At first Jan thought the sail was yellow. But it sparkled and shone in a way he had never seen before, and as it drew closer he took in a sharp breath.

The sail looked as if it was made of purest gold.

Could this be the ship his father had gone in search of? Could his father be on it, even now, sailing toward them?

Samos placed his hand on Jan's shoulder. “That is no ordinary ship,” he whispered.

Jan trembled. The old man was blind. How did he know there was a ship at all?

They stood, waiting. The ship continued toward them, its sail flashing in the sun. Jan's throat tightened. He could sense something powerful about the vessel, powerful and frightening. Something that was reaching out toward him.

“Samos, I'm frightened.”

The hand on his shoulder tightened, but the old man said nothing. Part of Jan—a small voice inside—was urging him to run. He fought his fear and stood without moving.

As the ship drew closer, Jan saw that it was long and sleek, and rode low in the water. He was admiring its lines when he realized that rather than slowing as it approached the shore, the ship was moving faster.

“Samos! She's going to run aground!”

But he was wrong. Biting back a cry of astonishment, he watched the ship begin to rise in the water, floating higher and higher on the waves, as if being lifted by some marvelous dolphin. The water parted in white curls before its prow as it surged toward the shore. The ship continued to rise, until it seemed to be riding the air instead of the sea. It came to a halt a few feet from land, floating on a boiling cushion of white foam, its keel cleaving only the air.

Silently, the ship swung around until the starboard side was feeing the shore. Silently, a gangplank appeared at the edge of the ship and extended itself onto the sand. The hair on Jan's neck stood up, but he was unable to resist the mystery. He stepped toward the ship. Samos reached for his arm—not to restrain him, but to join him.

Moving in silence, the old man and the boy ascended the plank.

The ship was silent. Silent, and empty.

Jan shivered. They should turn and run now, he thought, as fast and as far as they could, away from the sea and away from this witch ship. But whatever was calling to him was even stronger now, and the call was too powerful to ignore.

Samos started to speak, but a sound from behind interrupted him. They turned in unison, then Jan yelled and dived for the gangplank, which was sliding back into the ship.

He fell short in his jump. Lying on the deck, with the golden sun burning his back and the sound of the surf pounding in his ears, he felt the ship move away from the shore. His stomach clenched, and he yelled again, though yelling was obviously useless.

He looked, at Samos. The old man's face wore a look of astonishment, and of fear. Yet lurking behind these was one thing more, thought Jan—a hint of burning, radiant joy.

“Back on the sea at last,” Samos whispered.

Jan pulled himself to his feet and stood at the rail, watching as the shore faded from view. Despite his fear, he, too, felt a strange sense of elation. To be on the sea, with a friend like Samos and a ship that was as swift as the wind—this was a wonderful thing. Terrible danger might be waiting. But for the moment, for this one golden moment, he felt wild and free, and close to the edge of a question that was worth answering.

Samos came to stand beside him. “Sea air,” said the old man. “There's nothing like it. Even living right on the shore you don't get this. I've missed it.”

“But what is this ship?” asked Jan.

“I don't know.”

“But you're always telling me stories about the sea. You must have heard something about a ship like this.”

“Oh, ghost ships, certainly,” said the net maker. “But being empty and being a ghost ship are different things. I was on a ghost ship once. You could feel the death in the air—sense the dead men hovering around you. This is no ghost ship we're riding, Jan.”

“Then what is it?”

Samos shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

They stood at the rail for a long time. Then, with Jan leading the way, they went to explore the ship. It was tight and trim, clean and polished. Below decks they found three good-size cabins. One had a trunk filled with weapons. Jan, delighted, chose both a dagger and a sword for himself. He had never owned a blade before and had always wanted one.

As he began to strap the sword to his waist, he saw something that made his fingers tremble. On the hilt of the sword was a blue enamel circle. Inside the circle was a gull in flight. Above the gull was a single star.

“What is it?” asked Samos, when he heard Jan's gasp.

“This sword bears the sign of my family. What does it mean?”

He could not bring himself to ask the question that was really tearing at his heart: “Does it mean my father is dead?”

When Jan had recovered from his shock, they continued their exploration. They found a small galley. It was bare of food, which worried Jan until that night, when they entered again, planning to search for any crumb, and found a hot meal waiting for them.

Where the wine and cheese, the cool fruit and savory meat had come from they had no idea, and its strange arrival was almost as worrisome as the absence of food had been earlier. But they ate it anyway, and found it good indeed.

Later they went on deck, and Jan described the sky to Samos, who nodded and smiled as the boy talked in wonder of a darkness deeper than he had ever seen, and stars that twinkled more brightly than he had imagined possible.

Despite the fact that he had no idea where they were going, when (or even
if
) they would arrive, Jan slept peacefully that night, rocked by the gentle waves.

 

It did not take long for them to fall into a comfortable routine. Jan would rise early and meet Samos in the galley, where a breakfast of fruit and bread would be waiting. After eating, they would go on deck to check the wind and weather. They would discuss the sun and which way they were heading. Then Jan would climb the rigging, looking for any sign of land, or even of another ship. Often he saw distant islands, which he would describe to Samos, who seemed to recognize them all.

“South,” the old man would mutter. “We're heading south.”

The ship never went within shouting distance of any of the islands.

In the afternoon, at Samos's insistence, they would polish the ship's brass fittings, though to Jan's eye they seemed to gleam all on their own.

They searched for a ship's log but found none.

“Ah, well,” said Samos. “It doesn't really matter, since neither of us can read. Even so, I would feel better if there were one.”

When the wind was high, the ship raced across the water as if it were flying. When the air was still, the ship continued to move anyway. Once Samos told Jan to drop a piece of wood overboard, to check the current. The boy was troubled to see that even with no wind the ship was moving against the current, not with it.

On the fifth day, Jan was standing on the starboard side of the ship, gazing into the water, when he saw a woman swimming alongside. Her long hair, gold streaked with green, trailed around her. When Jan called out to her she disappeared beneath the waves. It was only when her shining tail broke the surface that he realized her lower half was that of a fish.