I shrugged. "Like anyone else, I have somewhere I want to reach."
"The Tower of Tales, I presume," He hissed, so only I heard again. Then he smirked, looking at me from top to bottom. I wished I could see more of his face. I could only see his eyes. The color of honey. He nodded to himself, as if he had recognized me. He dragged from his pipe again. It was made from a kind of wood that I had never seen before. Close up, it looked like a carved bone more than a pipe. I wondered if he turned people he killed into pipes.
"How did you know?" I managed to ask.
Captain Ahab said nothing. With the pipe between his lips, he nodded at the sack. I didn't want him to know that I didn't know what was inside the sack. But I was curious to know the connection now.
"It's my offering to Lady Shallot," I whispered, not wanting the sailors and misfits to hear me.
"Of course it is," he said. "You have in the sack what Lady Shallot most desires. What many others desire." He bent over slightly, smoke from his pipe swirling around me like a halo. "And what the sailors and misfits on the boat desire the most."
"I don't understand." I was talking about the last part in his sentence. Of course this was what Lady Shallot desired, but why did the sailors desire it?
"Believe it or not, young girl," he said into my ear, "you could have summoned the Moongirl."
I wasn't comfortable with his voice in my ears. It had been a scary voice from far away, let alone so close. My eyes fell closed for a moment, tolerating his proximity, and I asked, "So she exists?"
Captain Ahab pulled away, tucked the pipe in his mouth again, and laughed at the moon above. "Did you listen to her?" He was talking to the moon now. I was perplexed, too confused to comprehend or think about anything.
"The moon looks like a white plate, doesn't it?" He winked at me, and turned around to walk back to his cabin.
"Wait." I couldn't let him leave yet. "Are Lady Shallot and the Tower of Tales real?" I didn't care if the sailors heard me now. My intuition told me I wouldn't last long on this ship. I needed a clue as to where to go later.
"That's what they say," he said. "I've been years in the sea, though, and haven't seen a Tower of Tales—or no tales. I could use one myself to start a new life if I had seen it." He chuckled at his own misery.
"I see," I said. "Will you let me keep the sack?" It was all I cared about, and it didn't make sense for a moment. I was doing my best to keep a sack whose contents I didn't know, trying to offer it to a woman I didn't know in a tower that might be a myth. All of this in a quest to find a new life with the one I loved.
"I have no use of the sack," Captain Ahab said. "Nor do I have use of you on my ship."
"I understand." I bowed my head. He was going to exile me. I didn't need to know why. Whatever was going on seemed beyond my comprehension. But where would I go? Would he guide me, give me a boat? He didn't look like that kind of man. He didn't care. "What will happen of me now?"
"Are you alone on my ship?"
"I have someone with me," I said. "The man who lifts the barrels. He is asleep."
"Asleep?" I could tell he didn't believe me. "No man sleeps when the mermaids call, young lady." He stopped to consider. "I will overlook this, though. It's the least I can do for the woman who brought apples back to Europe."
My eyes widened. I raised my head. A few sailors behind me murmured, confused by Captain Ahab's prolonged conversation with me.
"However, I can't handle you on my boat," he said. "You're heavy, young lady."
"Heavy?"
"Your soul is too heavy for my ship," he said. I didn't ask what he meant. It was like everyone was telling me how special—and how much of a burden—I was lately. "I have no interest in your war. I am after a whale."
The hisses behind me increased.
"May I ask why?"
Captain Ahab smirked. It was a painful smirk, coming from a man in pain, disguised as an ungodly sailor in the sea. He confused me, as I couldn't understand whether he was good or evil. But what was purely good and evil? Everyone I came upon, including Angel, had both sides in them. They all coped with their lives and tried to make the best of it. I began to learn that evil was temporary, that what was evil to me could not be so to someone else, that what was evil now might not be evil tomorrow. Evil was just a point of a view, and each of us needed a spot to look from each day.
"There is a whale out there who has something I want," Captain Ahab said. "I presume it might be something you want too, but I see you're still young and inexperienced. The sea, however, will teach you—"