My heart fluttered in my throat like a bird, but my feet were rooted to the floor. He focused on the map again, tracing a road from the harbor to the mountains with one calloused finger. “I wanted to buy her a house. That’s why I left. Somewhere up in Nu’uanu Valley. Something expensive, with a big garden and room for kids.” He didn’t look at me when he said it, but I felt the implication—for me. He left because of me.
He put the map aside and lay back, staring up at the ceiling in a fragile silence. It took all of my willpower not to take the map myself, to try to see what he had seen, but I didn’t move—I barely breathed—afraid he wouldn’t say anymore.
“I thought this was it, Nixie,” he said finally. “I really did. I hadn’t been this close to her in fifteen years.”
Neither have I. Still, I said nothing.
His head lolled to the side. “You would have loved your other life,” he said, and in that moment, I believed him. I could almost see it, the place he’d described, as clear as if he’d drawn me a map.
“You were right, you know,” he went on. “It was a fairy tale. A beautiful country, a faraway kingdom, true love.” He closed his eyes to better see the past. “A world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in . . . in . . . what’s that line?”
“A wild flower,” I said, my voice hoarse.
“Yes.” He sighed. “And I had infinity in the palm of my hand.” He was quiet again; soon, his breathing evened out. Still I lingered, hopeful, but he said nothing else, and so I shifted, slowly, carefully. The doorknob clicked as it turned, and he stirred. “I wish I could show you.” His breath made the corner of the map tremble. “I wish you could see what it was like.”
I stepped quickly across the threshold and took a deep draft of the cool night air, trying to relieve the sudden ache in my chest. Then I eased the door shut behind me, and as the latch clicked, I whispered so softly even I barely heard it: “Me too.”
There was something charming about waking to the sound of a rooster.
Even if that rooster was so ancient he creaked more than crowed. And even if it came before the dawn was more than a twinkle in the horizon’s eye.
The air was mild and I was comfortable, still half in a dream I couldn’t remember, but did not want to leave. I shut my eyes again and listened to the world awaken.
“Cock-a-daaaaaaaack! Cock-a-daaaaaaaaack!”
First the rooster, along with the quiet chime, rhythmic and close by, of metal against metal, maybe the wind moving a rope with a brass clip back and forth. Then pots clanging against pans: someone had started breakfast in the galley of the frigate beside ours. The far-off sound of a horse’s hooves, and the rattling of a cart coming down the road with early morning deliveries. And, sudden and loud over the water, a shouted curse from someone in the schooner on our other side.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and sat up, making my hammock sway. Farmers may rise to roosters, but sailors rise to swearing.
The sun was rising too, turning the clouds in the east the color of cream. The ship felt quiet. I didn’t think anyone else was awake yet. Last night Kash had snuck ashore, and he hadn’t come back by the time I’d fallen asleep, and I’d heard Bee and Rotgut murmuring over their worn game board into the early hours, playing Go and taking each other’s stones. And of course the captain wouldn’t be awake, not for some time—not after last night.
The rocking of my hammock stilled. I raised my eyes from the harbor, over the town to the valleys above: deep wrinkles in the thick green velvet of the mountains. Which one hid the house with the big garden and the many rooms?
I shook the thought of out my head. It was a good time to do chores; the day was still cool, and I needed busy work so I didn’t start imagining memories I’d never had.
“Cockadaaaaaack!”
I slid out of my hammock on bare feet and stopped in my tracks. It hadn’t been a rooster after all; there, perched on the rail, sat the caladrius, peering at me with its pebble-black eyes.
A quick check of my pockets yielded a linty piece of hardtack. I tossed the biscuit toward the bird. She cocked her head, skeptical at first, but my offering was accepted when I stood out of reach. I was pleased to see her eat; it was good to know she was safe.
But she wasn’t the only hungry creature aboard. Giving the bird wide berth, I went belowdecks and grabbed the jar of bee pollen I’d bought at Whole Foods. Starting at the hold, I visited each lantern on the ship to feed the sky herring swimming inside. The shining little fish were straight out of a Nordic myth explaining the aurora borealis, and their mouths opened and closed like winking eyes as I sprinkled pollen into the smoked-glass globes.