The Girl from Everywhere (8 page)

M
y thoughts scattered like chipped ice, and my vision blackened at the edges, as though I was staring through a spyglass. For a moment, I thought the Pacific Ocean would be the last thing I ever saw. Then warm hands gripped my arms, and I sagged against Kashmir’s chest, my breath burning in my lungs.

“Amira?”
He lifted my chin and I focused on his eyes, seeing fear there for the first time since the day he’d come aboard.

“I’m fine.” I locked my knees and pushed against him, trying to find my footing. Then I ran my hands over my arms, as if to reassure myself I was still here. “I’m fine.”

“Land to starboard!” Rotgut called from his perch. “Steamer aways aft.”

I dragged in a gulp of air and shaded my eyes. I could
barely make out a smudge of lead gray that would, within a few hours, resolve itself into a string of islands, as Rotgut had said, away off starboard: the one place and time in the world I didn’t want to visit.

It had been so easy. Almost as if we were welcome here.

“Make ready!” Bee reminded us as she hauled at the halyard, raising our sails. The
Temptation
creaked as she swung around and caught the following wind.

“Right,” I said aloud, as much to shake myself into action as to answer her. “Nineteenth century, nineteenth century, ah, running lights.” The thoughts were coming slow, but they were coming. By 1850, both the United States and the United Kingdom had mandated colored signal lamps aboard ship. We were along a major shipping route, after all; the steamship puffing away south and east of our position was not the only other ship we’d see today.

I lurched into motion, my legs like wood, fetching the lamps we’d removed for our trip to Calcutta—too modern for that era—the red and green glass for port and starboard sides, as well as the clear white lamps for the top of the mainmast and the tip of the bowsprit.

I handed three of the four off to Kash, who climbed the mast and ran the lanterns out to the ends of the yards. I took
the one for the prow, clipped it to the rope, and hoisted it out over the water, where it led the way to the island where I was born . . . or would be born, or would have been born, depending, of course, on the map.

As we approached, Oahu opened her arms as if to crush the vessels gathered before her into an embrace: schooners and trawlers, cargo ships wallowing in the water, American gunners sullen as threats, and canoes darting among them like swallows. Above the waterline, volcanic peaks caught the clouds in their black teeth, their sides riven by emerald valleys sewn with silver waterfalls. In the east, the crater of Diamond Head blazed scarlet in the sun.

What would we find? Was Lin waiting for Slate’s return, scarcely half a year gone by, while he had journeyed, longer than Ulysses had, to come back home? Was this the end of my father’s odyssey? And if it was, where did that leave me?

Cast adrift? Set free? Or dragged below the water?

But our arrival hadn’t erased me. It might be possible for two versions of the same person to coexist: one who knew the thrill of adventure, and another who knew only the comfort of home. Briefly, incongruously, my mind conjured up an idea I hadn’t envisioned in a long time: a mother. I imagined her arms around me, cool and soft, the opposite of my
father’s fierce embraces. She was his harbor; could she be mine as well? I shook my head. Of all the tales I believed, this was somehow the most implausible.

I would be a stranger to Lin. How would Slate even introduce me, at sixteen, to her, still pregnant and barely half again my age? And how would he explain the long years he’d lived without her, mapped so clearly on his face?

Although now, within sight of paradise, some of that time had fallen away. Glowing with anticipation, Slate handed off the wheel to Bee and bounded to the prow. His eager eyes roved the shore, as if for a glimpse of Lin herself, but then . . .

But then . . .

Within half a mile of the harbor, his hope crumbled, his face fell, and my own treacherous heart rose. He flung himself back from the rail, his hand over his face as though blinded, or weeping.

As we approached the island, the captain brought the birdcage out on deck. He removed the hood, and the caladrius blinked, her eyes black as polished pebbles. My protests rose and then died in my throat as the captain lifted the bird gently toward the sky. She cocked her head, taking in the water, the land before us, even my face, but she did
not look at the captain before she beat her white wings and leaped into the air. He watched until she was a bright speck against the emerald isle, before he turned away once more.

I reached for his arm, but he shook me off like I was a stranger in the street and went back to his cabin. The locks clicked into place behind him.

Pity mingled with relief and made me feel seasick. I picked up the empty birdcage and crushed it into sticks, tossing it piece by piece into the waves as I scanned the shore.

What had he seen from so far away? Was it the steamships in the harbor? No, they’d been in Hawaii since the 1830s. The town by the beach? Or, there, the steeple of Kawa’iahao Church—but no, the church was finished in 1842.

“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
Kashmir asked. “What are you staring at?”

I half raised my hand as I studied the scene, trying to see through my father’s eyes. There were flags on Iolani Palace, flying at half-mast—was there anyone Slate might have known enough about to match their deaths to a date? Then I let my hand fall. It wasn’t the black flags flying over the palace that he’d noticed, but the palace itself.

“Iolani Palace didn’t exist in 1868,” I said. “We’re quite late.”

In spite of my relief, the idea was galling. How was it possible? A date was the most basic anchor on a map. All good maps had anchors, something setting the map in the right place and the right time. Iolani Palace, for example.

I remembered it now, labeled on the page, but I hadn’t really
seen
it, I had been too focused on the date. I could have saved myself the worry if I’d only checked more closely.

But who drew a map and misdated it?

Kashmir shook his head. “So is the map broken, or the captain?”

I blinked. “That’s a very good question.” I crossed my arms. Slate wouldn’t give me any answers, but A. Sutfin must live here. Perhaps he could shed some light on the dates, if I could track him down.

My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a cowbell. Bee let the bell fall back to her belt and gestured at the mainsail: the edge was luffing. Kash and I moved to trim the sheet.

“Could be worse,” Rotgut said as he came down from the crow’s nest. “I’d enjoy a nice tropical vacation. Has the mai tai been invented yet? Maybe I’ll invent it.”

“Depending on how long we’re here, you could open a tiki bar,” I said, taking hold of the halyard. “Although I
don’t know how you’d pay for it.”

“The captain should have some money at the bank,” he said. I dropped the slack rope in a tangle on the deck; Kashmir tripped and shot me a look.

“Money? In a
bank
? Like with an actual account and everything?”

Rotgut shrugged. “He opened it for Lin when he sailed. When he returned, he was . . . too distracted to bother closing it.”

“I see.”

“But let’s not forget the most important thing,” Rotgut said. “The fishing here is
incredible
.” He waggled his eyebrows. “And maybe Bee’s admirer is still around.”

“Ehhh.” Bee waved her hand dismissively.

“What’s this?” Kash asked.

“A local man sniffed around the ship for weeks. Handsome fellow. I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was already married.” Rotgut leaned close to fake a whisper and pointed at Bee behind his hand. “But she pushed him over the rail and into the bay.”

“That was Ayen, not me!”

I laughed along with them, but it was odd to consider how much history they had here, in this home I’d never known. Of course, I knew the
Temptation
had been docked
here for almost two years. But to hear their stories, told as casually as one might open an old book to a dog-eared page . . . it was unsettling. Kashmir and I were the only ones aboard who’d never lived in Hawaii.

We sailed between the coral reefs along a meandering route of deep indigo, past Quarantine Island, the little sandbar at the edge of the bay from which clouds of sulfur smoke spewed from giant fumigating ovens. The green furze beyond the gold band of the shore resolved itself into broad-leaved bananas alongside coconut palms as stately as standards, spreading breadfruit trees, and falling, tumbling masses of bougainvillea.

Rotgut called out to a pilot ship approaching, flying the snappy flag of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The harbor master hailed us as we approached, and came alongside. His broad brown face was bisected by a thick mustache, which was very much in style in the late nineteenth century, and he introduced himself as Colonel Iaukea, collector of the port.

He seemed suspicious at first when Bee hailed him from the captain’s place at the wheel. Was it her skin color he questioned, or her sex? Then again, it could have been the ship herself; it wouldn’t be the first time the
Temptation
had
raised eyebrows.

Whatever Colonel Iaukea thought, it didn’t matter much; he was nothing like the New York Coast Guard. I introduced us as a survey ship commissioned by a company in San Francisco. Then Kashmir brushed by the man; he half turned, and I raised my voice to regain his attention. “Uh, interested in building a fish cannery along the eastern side of Oahu! Or, ah, possibly the western side,” I extemporized. Kashmir moved away, and I relaxed. “Depending, of course, on local conditions.”

The colonel took my claim at face value. In fact, after Kashmir palmed the silver he’d taken from the colonel’s coin purse and gave him a hearty handshake, the harbor master was quite diplomatic, claiming it was in the interest of beating the setting sun that he didn’t bother making even a cursory search.

We were greeted by a small crowd at the dock; Chinese porters with tonsured heads, graceful native women with baskets of tropical fruit and shining masses of black hair, a wrinkled man bent under a huge piece of coral. Almost everyone—young, old, local, or foreign—was bedecked with blossoms, strung in leis thrown around their necks or tucked behind one ear.

One particular young man—my age, with blond hair
and bright spots of pink on his pale cheeks—stood squinting at the ship and writing furiously in a booklet. But why? He was too young to be a reporter. Then his eyes, roving over the ship, met mine, and he grinned. I lifted the corners of my lips tentatively, and he tipped his straw cap in my direction. Suddenly shy, I went to help roll the sails. What was it like, on the other side? Watching the ships come and go, instead of watching the ports appear and recede?

When they saw our ship lacked interesting news or cargo—or more likely, lacked hordes of sailors willing to spend their pay on trinkets—the impromptu dockside market dispersed, the boy along with them, as the sun set and the gas lamps in the streets of Honolulu began to shine. Before they went, Kash bought a dozen ripe mangoes—his favorite—and a copy of the
Evening Bulletin
for me, which gave us the exact date: October 24, 1884, even later than I’d thought. In fact, this was the time and place I’d be living, had Slate never stolen me away.

The harbor had become a winter forest of bare masts, lit by smoky torches that made the water sparkle like a scattering of black diamonds. The sounds of drunken laughter and someone pounding a piano out of tune drifted from the sandy town road to the dock. Sailors
made their way toward the watering holes downtown; later that night, they’d stumble back, singing off-color shanties off-key.

The crew of the
Temptation
stayed aboard and made a simple meal out of Rotgut’s catch, a couple of snapper, and our bottomless pitcher of wine, taken from a mythical map of Greece. I’d brought my paper to the table. The headline—
MOURNING CONTINUES FOR PRINCESS PAUAHI!
—explained the half-mast flags, and the article described the start of the second week of lamentation for the princess. Victorians were so in love with the rituals of death. Apparently, she’d left “a large estate earmarked to support the declining population of native children. The untimely death of the princess is another blow to the royal lineage, which has not been spared the high mortality afflicting their race—”

“So. 1884,” Rotgut said. “At first I thought he’d done it.”

“So did he,” I said under my breath.

“Do you know what went wrong?” Bee asked

“Well, I do have some theories,” I said, putting my finger on the page to keep my place. “I could test them out if you’d let me take the helm.”

“Ask your father,” Bee said, flashing her teeth.

“Come on, Bee. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Bee laughed then, a sound like a rasp. “I have some theories. Let’s not test them.”

Her answer wasn’t unexpected; this wasn’t the first time we’d had this exchange. I went back to my paper. “Mortality afflicting their race . . .”
Ah, here. “The princess lies in state under black feather
kahilis
made from the glossy plumage of the o’o bird—”

“Nixiiiieeeee!”

The captain’s voice was harsh and braying. We all froze, Kashmir with a piece of fish halfway to his mouth.

“Nix!” The slurred voice was muffled behind the thick mahogany of the door.

I stood, but Bee raised her hand. “Let me.” She walked over to the closed door and knocked. “Captain?”

Only silence. Rotgut took another swig of wine. She knocked again, louder. “Captain, are you all right?”

“Where’s my daughter?” came the shout, but the door didn’t open. Another silence, Several ships away, someone was playing the harmonica with more bravery than skill.

“Nix?” His voice came again, soft, pleading. I strode over, my feet landing hard on the decking. Kash tried to grab my arm, but I shrugged him off.

“What do you want?” I shouted through the door.

There was a long pause. “I see her.”