We’d caught them during a wintery week in a mythological version of Scandinavia—Scandia, it was called on the map—sailing under the shimmering lights of the flashing fish schooling in the sky. Slate and I had flown two kites in tandem, with a net strung between them. It had been the first and only time I’d ever flown a kite with my father, and his laughing eyes had been luminous under the northern lights.
It had also been the first map I’d ever pulled for the captain. He hadn’t known anything about Scandia—I don’t think he’d even known he had it in his collection—but I’d been studying the maps since before I could read and I knew the legends of that mythical country. I told him all about it and asked him to take us there, and he actually had listened to me. Moments like that, I’d felt like I could go anywhere I wanted.
And occasionally, we had. With the maps, my growing expertise, and the captain at the helm, we’d managed to fit out the ship with a handful of mythological conveniences. Not only the sky herring; we had some fire salamanders from 1800s French folklore in the cookstove. We also had a bottomless bag from seventeenth-century Wales, which came in very handy despite all the trouble we took to get it.
That map had been the oldest Slate had ever been able to use, and the Irish Sea had fought us like we were intruders, sending sharp gusts to rip at our sails and icy waves that clawed at the deck. I had been trying to shorten the mainsail against the ferocious wind when the mast split and the boom fell, and I was trapped facedown beneath it. I’d nearly drowned in an inch of water and ended up with a broken arm . . . but we’d found the bag.
I grinned at the memory; I’d worn my sling like a winner’s sash. I had really wanted that bag. Bailing the bilge had always been my least favorite chore.
The only convenience I hadn’t figured out was fresh water. Water was tricky, bulky to store, of course, but sometimes dangerous to pick up in port. There was a myth about a cauldron with an endless supply of stew, and of course there was the pitcher of wine that never ran dry, but nothing so simple for water.
Still, I’d tried my best. My first attempt was a Mayan Chaac ax, known to split the clouds when thrown, but that only worked the once; it might have been more useful if it had been a boomerang. There was Tiddalik, the aboriginal water frog who held a river’s worth of water in his belly and could be induced, with some prodding, to release it—all of it—which completely swamped the bilge with frog water. The bottomless bag was extremely helpful that day.
And I made the mistake of telling Kashmir about the Paparuda, a Roman rain dance, where a girl would traipse through the streets—or in this case, the ship—stopping at each cabin so the resident could pour water on her head. For three weeks he was begging me to try it, and keeping a pitcher of water ready for the day I came dancing by. There was just no replacing our rather prosaic distiller.
Still, everywhere on the ship, there were souvenirs of all the places I’d been. I even had something from Honolulu, though it wasn’t anything special; just the old tattered quilt my father had wrapped me in when he’d taken me from Joss’s opium den. It was on the floor in my cabin. I didn’t know why I still had it. I suppose I simply hadn’t gotten around to throwing it away.
I laughed at myself under my breath. Perhaps if I’d said that to a stranger, they might almost have believed me.
I dusted pollen over the fish in the last lantern, the one on the bowsprit, and wiped my fingers on my trousers. It was still early, the sun barely clearing the mountains, gilding their peaks and washing the island with soft golden light. No one would be looking for me, not for a few hours at least, and my other chores weren’t pressing.
By the time I admitted to myself I was going ashore, I was already heading below for a change of clothes.
My cabin was the first one at the forecastle, the narrow wedge of space behind the bow, where you’d be most likely to be bounced and jostled in bad weather. I used to have a bigger room—the one Kashmir lived in now—but I’d given it to him when he’d come aboard. I was happy with my hammock; all I owned were clothes and books, scattered haphazardly on the floor. I cleaned my father’s cabin more often than I cleaned mine.