The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons (9 page)

“Turn it over!” Annie commanded excitedly.

I flipped the card to the face side, revealing the queen of spades.

“Oh my!” Annie gasped.

What a queen she was. A black three-cornered hat sat on her head, long black curls tumbling beneath it. Thick golden hoops dangled from her ears. She wore a white ruffled blouse tied at her waist, the pointy collar unbuttoned to an indecent depth, revealing a hint of her abundant breasts. A short, tight-fitting scarlet vest hugged her torso. She smiled wickedly, chin resting on a fisted hand. A large blue ring graced her index finger and a column of jeweled bracelets circled her wrist. Her other arm, bent at the elbow, pointed up, a flintlock pistol in her grasp. Her green, narrowed eyes seemed to be watching us mockingly, as if she knew something we didn't.

Annie and I quickly removed the entire collection of cards, spreading them across the floor, fighting off Ida, who seemed to find them appetizing. We separated and studied the face cards—a collection of characters, the likes of which we had never seen. The kings and jacks—some were refined and genteel, others wild and whiskered. The same with the queens, although none as striking as the queen of spades. Each character had initials somewhere on the card, the queen of spades labeled
MML
. The king of diamonds stood out as well—a nobleman dressed in finery—a white ruffled shirt topped with a royal-blue vest and a golden waistcoat, the lapels and cuffs decorated with fancy trimmings. His expression, however, was anything but gentlemanly. He had the look of a sly fox, his smile a snarling curl of the lip. One fisted hand held at his heart overflowed with strands of pearls and jewels. Columns of gold and silver coins formed small towers before him. I gasped as I saw the letters beneath the portrait—
ES
. Father's initials. I shook my head. What foolishness! As though Father could have anything to do with the likes of this character. A coincidence was all.

As I laid the queen of spades and king of diamonds side by side, I felt a jolt of static electricity in my fingers, and yanked my hand back. The two cards began to quiver and shimmy. Annie and I exchanged a glance, her eyes round as saucers. Then the queen of spades flew into the air, as though flipped by an invisible hand, hovered for a moment before landing with a force that blew the king of diamonds, facedown, several inches away.

Annie looked up at me. “Magic cards,” she whispered. “Can I have them?” I raised an eyebrow. Clearly, they were not mere playthings. But the longing on her face tugged at me.

“We can keep them,” I said. “You and I together. These are no ordinary cards. I'm sure they hold some secrets. We'll hide them in our cabin, where we'll take extra-special care of them.” She nodded gravely.

“We can't lose a single one of them, or bend them, or get them wet.” I glanced at Ida. “Or let the goat eat them!”

“I won't, Lucy, I promise!”

“All right.” I reached for the queen of spades hesitantly, bracing for another electrical jolt, but there was none. “I'll gather these up and put them back in the box in two piles. I think it's important we keep the queen of spades and the king of diamonds in separate stacks.” As if in assent the queen of spades somersaulted into my hand, and the king of diamonds blew an inch or two in the opposite direction. I sorted the remaining cards into two piles and began tucking them into the wooden box. I placed the king of diamonds at the bottom right, the queen of spades top left, and closed the lid. Annie grabbed the box and hugged it to her chest.

“Remember what I said,” I warned, as she skipped from the room, Ida at her heels.

I looked at the variety of amusements the ditty box had yielded—something for each of us, I thought. Perhaps Georgie could try his hand at carving—I bet Javan could help him. For me, the pen-and-ink set. Walter might like the scrimshaw. I blushed as another thought crossed my mind. Maybe he would complete the sailor's valentine for someone special. Embarrassed by my own imagination, I picked up the octagonal frame and returned it to the box.

There was something else at the bottom of the chest that I'd missed. I pushed the valentine aside and pulled out a large book, its cardboard binding deteriorating, the edges of its yellowed pages flaking in my hands. The title read:
Chanteys and Songs of the Sea,
and the cover depicted a group of sailors aboard a ship, their mouths all open
O
s as though singing a rousing chorus together.

With a musty
poof!
the cover flew open and the pages ruffled and fanned forward and back, faster and faster. A tingling energy emanated from the steady breeze of the aged pages, and then a glittering, colorful cloud wafted from the fragile volume. It swirled around me like a refreshing mist from the sea. A faint, hollow sound accompanied the mist, which crescendoed until the pages slowed their ruffling and settled. The sparkling vapor dissipated. I rubbed my eyes and blinked at the open book. Crude blotted notes danced across ribbons of handwritten staves that striped the page. If the song had a title, it was gone, the top of the leaf having disintegrated. The reedy sound increased in volume and was joined by another—the second part of the duet pouring from the flute in my pocket! I reached for it, but the slim instrument was already weaving its way from between the folds of cloth, and in an instant was bobbing in the air before me. The melodies of two flutes, one visible, the other invisible, crisscrossed and intertwined, until they met on a common pitch and became a single melodic line. Tone by tone, the corresponding notes on the page blinked in a rainbow of colors, as each sounded in turn. The resulting tune I knew as well as my own name. It was the song Father had taught me, the one in which the words had been all but forgotten, except for the chorus—
a la dee dah dah . . . a la dee dah dee! I
realized that, for the first time, I was seeing the notes I'd learned by rote, illuminated, one by one.

Suddenly the melody stopped. The ship changed direction, tacking unexpectedly to starboard. My flute dropped to the floor and rolled. On hands and knees I scrambled for it, now careening beneath the rocker. I reached, and then, without warning, we tacked to portside, throwing me off balance. Three times, in short succession, the
Lucy P. Simmons
was nearly put about, listing one way, then the other.

“All hands! All hands!”

The ship's bell clanged wildly. An army of frantic footsteps pounded the deck above me.

I scrambled to my feet, flew through the doorway, along the companionway, and up the steps. The air outside was as charged as the sky before a thunderstorm. A heavy mist swirled like a phantom over the water, its tendrils of cool vapor wafting across the deck and raising gooseflesh on my arms and up my spine.

The cap'n was at the helm, straining at the wheel, our ship tilting dramatically as it cut into the wind across her own wake. There was a schooner close aboard, windward on the larboard bow, under full sail, on a collision course with our ship! I squinted through the fog. Could it be the same ship I'd seen aloft? The sea began to roil, whitecaps crashing, sheets of water obscuring my view. There was no time for a second thought. I joined Walter, the Reds, Tonio, and Quaide, frantically working the sails. Pugsley circled about, yipping and growling. Grady hung by one arm in the crow's nest, leaning out over the sea, his spyglass extended. He shouted something down to Coleman, and Coleman and Irish ran to secure the lines. Again we abruptly tacked; the
Lucy P. Simmons
put about in the opposite direction. “Hold your course!” Quaide yelled, his fist in the air. “Pitch, pitch! To hell your soul! The more you pitch, the less you'll roll!” Georgie's voice mimicked Quaide's: “Pitch, pitch! To hell your soul! The more you pitch, the less you'll roll!”

But still, unbelievably, the schooner was once more approaching on opposite tacks, her bow rolling over the waves, her bowsprit cutting through the mist, aiming toward us like a harpoon bearing down on a whale. Staring at the approaching ship, I dashed toward the nearest ratline and began to climb.

Higher, higher, the view of the advancing vessel clearer, brighter, the voices and turmoil below dim and distant. The schooner shimmered against the sky. Flew above the waves. I blinked, then fixed my line of vision, toward the radiant ship—the very same ship Walter and I'd seen before. I was barely aware of scooting out across the spar to the end of the yardarm, or of the churning ocean beneath me. A high-pitched hum emanated from the schooner, and drew me farther and farther out. My ears rang, blotting out the cries of Marni and Addie, Walter, and the cap'n, the Reds and Irish too. The hum increased, this chorus of other voices, a babble of words. I strained to distinguish one from the other, hearing only enough to make me want more.

Then, a glimpse of motion on board the schooner, phantom shadows of figures on deck, graceful movements, dancing to the thrum of the ghostly chorus.

Our ship tipped again and I was suddenly airborne, sailing through clouds, soaring over water, a seabird on the wing.

A kaleidoscope of sails, sky, sea. A flash of deck and bow.

I hit the water hard. It swallowed me whole. Sucked me down until all was still.

I
rose through the water, my hair streaming about me like seaweed. Floated upward toward the light—weightless, buoyant. An angel of the sea.

I had only a vague sense of being hauled from the ocean. I saw nothing, and heard only the muffled gurgling of trapped air and moving water. Curiously, I was not afraid. No thrashing or flailing about. No desperate thoughts of rescue or escape. Instead, I let myself be handled by unseen arms, if they were arms at all. Perhaps this was what it meant to be dead.

And then I was standing, but could not feel solid ground beneath my feet. Wet, but not dripping. Alive, but not breathing. Seeing through closed eyes. I was there, but not there, in a stateroom of a ship, a chamber with low ceilings and dim light. An invisible barrier kept me from the others gathered there, a field of energy like glass, me on one side, the rest on the other.

They sat around what appeared to be a long low chest, filmy figures that flickered and reflected light. In fact, luminous air seemed to move right through them, their shimmering silhouettes more pronounced than their individual features. The entire scene wavered before me like heat rising off a roadway in the dog days of summer. Some of the figures were strangely familiar in an unnameable way. They were engaged in a card game, seven of them in all. The flutter and snap of shuffling cards, the hum of voices, and the electricity of anticipation bounced against me. The more I concentrated, the more their features took shape, at least those closest to me, but only in a transparent, fleeting fashion. Likewise, I got a diffuse glimpse of their clothing, and their manner of movement. Through the sheer force of my resolve their faces came into focus, as I watched them in my mind's eye.

I gasped, my lungs straining, as recognition hit me like a bolt of lightning.

Father held the deck of cards, staring at me intently. He shuffled them, flipped the pile back in a rush, transferred the deck to one hand, and strummed the edges of the stack with the other. The sound was hypnotizing.
Pay attention, Lucy,
his silent voice commanded. Over and over he thumbed the edge of the deck.

Stop shuffling and deal!
This coming from the figure to Father's left—an impression of his thin face and black beady eyes flashed for an instant—Uncle Victor!
There's no rush, not now, except for Lucy to learn what she must.
It was my mother, seated to Father's right, her delicate hand reaching toward me. Affection curved the edges of her lips. Everything inside me became soft with longing. I moved, in slow motion, as through a sea of gel, but no matter how I tried to project myself forward, I remained a stone's throw from her.
It's all in the cards, dear one,
she whispered.

A man across from Father waved a hand toward me.
She's our last hope, this one—she and my Pru.
He patted my mother's hand.
But I have confidence in her.

My Pru
. . . he was my grandfather—Father's father! I knew this without ever having seen the man. And he saw my aunt and me together—his last hope! To his left was my aunt Margaret, a card grasped protectively in her pudgy hands, her eyes darting about nervously.

Two other figures, the faintest of all, sat opposite each other at the far end of the group. They leaned across the surface of the dark chest, staring at each other, eye to eye, with an intensity that drew them together and, at the same time, repelled them, a black energy between them sizzling like the sky before a thunderstorm.
You played your cards,
the woman hissed,
but you lost the game! Just look around!
She gestured among the players.

The man chuckled.
It isn't over till it's over!

Abruptly she stood, toppling her chair, and addressed her adversary again.
Is she your next wager? She's in the game now, like it or not. And YOU!
She whirled around and pointed at me, her glittering eyes narrowed. As though directed by her gaze, a frigid current of air engulfed me. I gasped, flailing my arms, a suffocating pressure bearing down on my chest.
You'd better learn the rules of the game! Not a word of this to any of your mates! That would be cheating. Do I make myself clear?

Yes! I silently screamed, teeth chattering. Yes! The cold receded, leaving me shuddering convulsively.

Glad we understand each other!
She turned back toward her opponent.
And cheaters never prosper, isn't that right?
She took hold of the edge of the chest and threw open what I now realized was a lid, sending the cards and coins sliding to the ground. The cover of the chest was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, its shape now unmistakable. It wasn't a chest, but a coffin—its miniature replica back on board our ship, holding the cards Annie and I had discovered!