His face paled. “Try . . . this map?”
“I wish we hadn’t scuttled the junk,” I said. “But if you leave me ashore, I can find my way. I’d like to stop in New York first, but if you can’t wait, I understand. And I’d like to take some of the other maps, if you won’t need them any longer. Although if Joss is right, you won’t need anything but this, really.” I nudged the box with my foot. “As usual.”
“Nixie, please—”
“Don’t deny it, Slate. This is what you want.”
“It’s not all I want!” Slate kept his voice low, but it was fierce, and Blake stirred on the bed. “If we part ways, we will never see each other again.”
“I can live with it if you can,” I said, jutting out my chin as though it was a dare; it was all I could do to pretend that his response would not matter.
“Don’t give me this choice, Nixie.”
“I don’t think I am, Captain.” At my words, he raised his eyes to mine, and I did smile then, because I saw the truth in them now. “Sometimes fate makes choices for us.”
I went out on deck into the light, shutting the door behind me and leaning on the warm wood. I took a deep breath. Then another. Kashmir was there on my hammock, Bee was at the helm, Rotgut was fishing. Topside, everything seemed just as it always was. “He’ll be wanting to cast off again soon,” I said at last.
Kashmir sat up straight and met my eyes. “Where are we going?”
I shrugged, feeling whimsical. “How about somewhere perfect?”
He slid out of the hammock and came to stand beside me. “But no one believes in such a place.”
“You’re a good liar, Kashmir.” I grinned. “Maybe you can convince me.”
“And . . . when do we leave?”
“Whenever the captain’s ready,” I said, but the door to the cabin had opened again.
“Well, I’m not ready,” Slate said. “Not yet.”
“No?” Then I noticed that he held his wooden box, filled with all his precious things.
“No.” He paced the deck slowly, tipping the box back and forth between his hands. “I haven’t got a good map,” he said, his brows drawing together as he peered over the rail. Then he rubbed a streak of green verdigris on the copper.
“I need you, Nixie,” he said firmly. “Go in the cabin and find me one, would you? Maybe something where we can make some honest cash this time? But you’ll figure something out, you always do.” He squared his shoulders. Then he hefted the box in his hands once, twice, leaned back, and flung it, spinning, tumbling, into the deep blue sea.
There was quiet on deck for a long time, and I was acutely aware of the sound of the waves brushing the hull, the wind trembling in the sails, my heart drumming against my ribs. Then Slate smiled at me, one of his brilliant smiles, as though nothing was wrong, or ever had been. “I’ve made my choice, Nixie.”
I sought out Kashmir. There was a question in his eyes, but he found the answer in mine, and he nodded a little. My home had always been the Temptation.
That evening, we left 1884 behind us for good. Blake came out on deck to watch the island grow smaller in our sight until it was a gray smudge on the horizon, and even after. Billie, standing beside him, howled once—“Roooooooooo!”—and then trotted toward the bow to face the open sea. The sun arced overhead; the sea turned from cobalt to sapphire as the light made the deep water glow. The sails snapped in the breeze as we clipped along, heading away from the island, but toward what?
When I checked the captain’s cabin, the wide drafting table was empty. I came back out on deck, and Slate was at the helm, his strong hands on the wheel, looking for all the world as though he intended to remain there. He called out to me.
“Well, Nixie? Where are we going next?
In a book like this, there is a fair bit of reality to help ground the fantasy. Certainly the Kingdom of Hawaii existed; almost certainly a time-travelling pirate ship does not. Between the two poles, what is fact and what is fiction?
THE HISTORY
On December 1, 1884, fifty pirates sacked Honolulu, looting the treasury and the homes of the wealthy, making off with $3 million in coin and plate without firing a single shot. This daring theft was only mentioned in a single newspaper article, in the Daily Alta California, which reported that over the course of nine hours, no attempt was made at resistance. Indeed, the locals were said to “thrown down their weapons without waiting for the opposing force to fire a single shot.” On the night in question, the Honolulu Rifles, a militia controlled by the Hawaiian League, was very fortuitously out of ammunition.