The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
By: Heidi Heilig
It had been a storage space once, cramped and uncomfortable—the worst place on the ship, especially in high seas when the waves slammed the prow and the Temptation dipped like a duck on the water. But when Kash had come aboard, I’d moved my things there to give him a proper room. How many times had I walked this hall? Today, it seemed impossibly long.
I hesitated again outside the makeshift cabin. What would I say to Blake? What questions did he have? The little fish in the nearest lamp swam to the glass, hoping to be fed, but the bee pollen was in the hold. Soft light shimmered along her scales, illuminating the grain of the wood, the scarring on the finish; it was an odd feeling, to knock on my own door.
“Come.”
Blake was sitting cross-legged on my tattered old quilt—the one my father had wrapped me in when he’d taken me from the islands. He had changed from his linen suit into an expensive pair of jeans and a vintage T-shirt with a mermaid on it; no matter how Kashmir teased, he hadn’t been stingy. And across the knees of those nice jeans lay one of my history books, open to a black-and-white photograph . . . 1941, the explosions at Pearl Harbor, as seen from beneath the overhanging leaf of a palm.
Inside, I groaned. Why hadn’t I taken my books before letting Blake into the room?
He looked up at me from under his thatch of blond hair. His cheeks, always pale, were now wan, and the skin under his blue eyes looked bruised. It startled me; for a moment, his face reminded me of my father’s. “I wish you’d told me it was all for nothing,” he said, his voice rusty.
“What was?”
“My hope that the kingdom of Hawaii could be saved.” He closed the book and ran his hand over the cover. “It’s in here, you know. The theft of the gold.”
“Is it?” I blinked; my memory was usually faultless. “I don’t remember that.”
“A little footnote about an unconfirmed report in a California newspaper.” He sighed. “It is a strange thing, reading the future written as the past. It feels like a fairy tale, where I’ve slept for a hundred years. You knew what would happen to the kingdom long before we met. But I can’t help feeling I could have prevented it, had I made a different choice.”
I toyed with the door handle. “What choice?”
“To stop you, rather than to save you.” His eyes held mine, and I did not drop my gaze. “You must have known your actions would pave the way for the downfall of the kingdom. So why did you help my father rob the treasury?”
“The downfall was never in doubt, Blake. There were too many people, with too much power, all working against the monarchy. And we needed your father’s map. The one of Honolulu in 1868.” I sighed. “The captain would have done . . . almost anything to save my mother’s life.”
“Oh?” Something like compassion blunted the edge in his voice. “And has he saved her?”
I did look down then, at my bare feet, awkward on the threshold. “No.”
“So it really was all for nothing.”
Irritation stabbed through my guilt. “Don’t you think I would have changed things if I could? For you, and for Slate. But it wasn’t up to me.”
“Who do you blame it on, then?” His smile was as twisted as a noose. “Your father? Mine?”
I gestured to the book. “History.”
“History?” He shut the book and tossed it aside. “What a pointless existence you must lead! How can you bear to see tragedy coming and not try to stop it?”
At his words, I went cold. “What would you have done instead?”
“Some Hawaiians fought for the monarchy. In 1893.”
“If you read about them, you know they failed. Seven dead, and for what?”
“Your book says eight.”
“Does it?” I half wanted to ask to see the book—but what did the difference matter? “Even worse.”
“Why? A hundred years later, and everyone I knew is dead. But some were right, and some were wrong.”
“So you prefer a pointless death to a pointless life?”
“Why shouldn’t I set my sights higher, Miss Song? With a little luck, I could have both.”
I bit my lip, trying to trim the sails on my anger; I’d wanted to help Blake, not bicker with him. I took a deep breath—then another. “May I come in?”
At his gesture, I stepped through the doorway. Blake’s eyes darkened, taking in my bloody shirt, my wild hair, the blue rings of the bruises coiling up my right leg. “There was a storm,” he said, leaving it up to me whether to answer the question implicit in the statement. But I only shook my head.
“It’s over now.”
The room, already small, felt crowded with the both of us in it. My trunk was open in the corner, and all my clothes and books were still scattered across the floor; I made a mental note to move everything into the hold in the morning. Folding my knees, I sat down by his side on the scrap of quilt. “Here. I brought you something.”
“What are these?”
“They’re all New York. This is from 1981,” I said, smoothing out a hand-drawn map, shaded in watercolors, of the city’s neighborhoods. “This one’s a hundred years earlier. From 1880, around your time. Look how the coastline changed. And here’s a subway map,” I added, unfolding the colorful cartoon version from the modern day.
His brows dove together. “What’s a subway?”