I walked Blake to the gangplank, where he stopped. “Come, Mr. Hart,” I said.
He opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then his eyes fell on the red lei lying on the deck, and he sighed. “Do you know, it’s customary for people leaving the islands to toss leis from the boats, in the hopes that they, like the flowers, will return someday to Hawaii’s shores?” He put his hat back on his head. “Good-bye, Miss Song. It’s been quite an adventure.”
I didn’t want to watch him go, but it was difficult to turn away. Once he was out of sight, I picked up the lei and let it fall onto the waves, where it floated like blood in the water. Would I ever reconsider? One day, might I grow old seeking a map of this place and time?
The thought terrified me.
I had promised myself years ago I’d never make my father’s mistake. I was not meant to drop anchor or seek harbor.
I went below, out of the island sun and away from the sight of the town, to hide in the bosom of ship, but she was like a sleeping beast. I didn’t know whether I was safe under her protection or caught in her claws.
My room felt claustrophobic when it never had before, so I made a halfhearted attempt at clearing the floor, piling my clothes against the trunk, and stacking the books Blake had so nearly taken up. Half of them had been printed in the next century, although they covered the last few millennia. The Gods of Egypt, the Prose Edda, and here, Beowulf in the original Old English, the story of a hero who saved his people by killing a monster. Of course, if you consider Grendel’s mother, Beowulf was the monster who murdered her son. I closed the book and placed it atop a book of fairy tales: the old ones, the Grimm ones, the ones without happy endings. The ones that had been real.
Why did the stories I knew best never end well?
But why too did I feel at home among them?
I could never give up the myths, the maps, the ship that had shaped me. Blake’s home might be paradise, but my home was the Temptation.
The last book in the pile wasn’t a book at all, but the covers of the hymnal that protected the map Joss had sold me. I sucked in a breath. I knew then how to get my father what he needed. I took the map with me as I went above and, with a new sense of purpose, knocked on Slate’s door. “Captain?”
It was a moment before he responded. “Yes.”
He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his elbows on his knees, his palms open toward the sky, his jacket flung over the chair. By his mussed hair and flushed cheeks, he must have just lifted his head from his hands, but when he saw the look on my face, he scrambled to his feet. “You found something.”
I met his gaze. “You’ll teach me.”
“Yes.”
“Then this is the last map I help you with.”
“I promise,” he said quickly, but I shook my head.
“I’m not asking you,” I said. “I’m telling you. This is the last time.”
He caught his breath, then let it out, something softer than a sigh. “I always knew you’d abandon me once you knew how.”
“I’m not abandoning you,” I said. “I’m letting you go.”
“I don’t want you to leave.”
“But you want the map, and you need my help.” My claim sat in the air between us, and he did not contest it. “You said it yourself, Slate. Sometimes a person has to let go of something to make room for something more important. You have to choose.”
He was quiet for so long, I began to fear he’d made the offer without thinking I’d accept, but as I watched, his expression cycled from sorrow to resignation and then to something like relief. “You’re right, Nixie,” he said at last. “I’ll let you go too.”
I bit my lip to keep it from trembling; he’d let me go a long time ago. After all, you can only hold one person tight if you’re holding on with both hands.
As promised, a note came from Mr. D midweek, setting the time and the place for our next meeting: 10 p.m., at the business of our mutual friend.
We arrived late at Joss’s apothecary. The captain had lingered over dinner and dithered when he was dressing, and as we were leaving the ship, he stopped dead just off the gangplank and wouldn’t move for half a minute. Then he started walking again, but slowly, and he hesitated once more on the street outside the shuttered apothecary. Slate didn’t want to go in.
I shared his reluctance, although my reasons were different. But we were committed to the scheme, and it was unwise to loiter outside. Although curfew was only for native citizens, we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves just now. Kash pushed on the door to the Happy House; it swung open easily. A candle flame shivered in the gloom.