“The bird is strong medicine, but she died from an infection. Penicillin would likely have worked just as well.”
Kashmir’s brow was furrowed, and behind his eyes, questions were forming. “Then why didn’t he bring her some?”
“Slate was at sea. He didn’t even know she was expecting.” I sighed. I’d had to ask Rotgut to tell me the whole story; Slate refused to talk about it. “He needed money so they could get married and live happily ever after in paradise. And he had a map of Hong Kong in 1850, and the next edition of the Honolulu map from 1869. So he went to China to smuggle back some opium to sell. He sailed out in early 1868, and by the time he came back in 1869, I was there and . . . my mother was not.”
“And so he’s looking for a map of 1868 to save her.” Kashmir had his hand on his chin, and his eyes were far away. “But can he actually change the past?”
“We do it every time we Navigate,” I said. “The watch you took. Or the tigers.”
“A pocket watch is not a person, amira.” He searched my face for answers. “If he succeeds, what happens to the years between then and now?”
“I don’t know, Kash, that’s the trouble! Some people think that reality would split into two versions, or that it already has split and I just don’t know it. But others think that if the past is changed, I might just . . .” I spread my hands, and we both considered the empty space between them.
“What people? Other Navigators?”
“Hah, no. Physicists. I’ve never met another Navigator aside from Slate, and he won’t tell me anything.”
Kashmir leaned against the wall next to me, and we watched the yellow cabs crawl by. Finally he shook his head. “No. He won’t do it. He may dream about seeing her again, but he would never actually risk it.”
“You think so well of him.” In spite of myself, I attempted a smile. “This isn’t the first map he’s tried.”
Kash stared at me. I’d never seen him so nonplussed. “When?”
“More often when I was younger.” I shrugged, trying to hide my fear, swallowing down the terror clawing up my throat. “Most of the maps he’d found were worthless. One was even run off a Xerox. But the last time was almost three years ago. Maybe six months before you came aboard. It was an Asher and Adams map he bought from a collector in Tahiti. He was so excited. I tried to ask him exactly what would happen to me if the map worked, but he only said to trust him. I tried to, but . . .” How to explain the doubts, the maddening uncertainty of those terrible hours? The memory was a jumble of dark, disconnected moments like flotsam in a vast sea of dread, and the words turned to sand in my mouth.
Thank God the map had failed. But despair had lifted off my shoulders and settled, like a vulture, onto Slate’s. We’d spent months in the doldrums of my father’s depression, drifting in the Pacific where the ocean was thick with whales and white sharks. I’d leave trays of food outside his door, which was where Slate left them as well. Eventually he had emerged from the room, thin and pale as a bone under his tattoos, dark blue bruises under his eyes and in the crooks of his arms. He had devoured a huge plate of food, vomited over the rail, and fallen asleep on a pile of rope rigging. When he woke up the next day, he took the wheel again and never said a word about any of it.
Which was fine by me. There is something terrifying about seeing someone strong standing on the edge of the abyss, like a ship on the lip of a whirlpool where the whole sea plunges into the maw of Charybdis. There is that moment when they reach out—like a drowning man will—and if you’re within reach, they will pull you down with them. I didn’t want to stand there beside him. I didn’t want to be dragged down.
In the three years since, I’d let myself hope we’d run out of maps from the era, that I was safe, that the captain had finally put the past behind him. But here we were again, and Slate wasn’t even trying to swim against the current. In fact . . .
“But what?”
I looked up at Kash, tasting copper; I’d been chewing my lip. “He doesn’t have any idea what will happen to me, and I don’t think it matters to him either way.”
“Amira . . .” His expression was mixed—sympathy and disgust—and I couldn’t bear it. I was almost relieved when the captain emerged from the auction house. He started toward us, but Kashmir gripped my arm, whispering fiercely in my ear. “Why do you help him?”
I watched my father swinging his briefcase and grinning ear to ear, his joy visible, so rare, and effervescent as fine champagne. “How can I say no, Kash?” I murmured. “She’s dead because of me.”
And then Slate was there, clapping his hands together, the color high in his cheeks, and for a moment I glimpsed what my mother must have when she fell in love. Slate was as picturesque as any ruin.