The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)

 

I tried a disdainful laugh, though it came out like a croak. “Fortune-tellers! I knew a few, back in Almaas. Vague predictions, just like that one. They were a waste of good entrails.”

 

“Kash—Joss was a Navigator. Whatever she knows, it’s already happened in her past.”

 

“Our lives are before us, not behind.”

 

“That depends on where you’re standing on the timeline.”

 

“What of free will?”

 

“Some people don’t believe free will exists.”

 

“Some people don’t believe in demon octopus, either. And did she mention when?”

 

Nix bit her lip. “No.”

 

“Then it could be years!” I said.

 

“Or hours,” she countered.

 

“Even if she’s right, you know the poem.” I looked into her face, hopeful. “‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”

 

“The only people who say that have never seen what loss looks like.”

 

The implication took my breath away. I stared at the water again, glittering in the sun like a broken mirror—bad luck, bad luck. “You forget, amira. Before I came to the Temptation, loss was all I knew.”

 

“How could you bear it?”

 

“Nothing lasts forever. Not even sorrow.”

 

She only shook her head, and her eyes were faraway—she was back at the ship, back with her father—and I kept picking locks, tossing them, one by one, into the river.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

The boys and I returned to the Temptation in the buzzy warmth of the afternoon. The black hull of the caravel shimmered in the heat off the asphalt, and the sun was like Hephaestus’s hammer, striking sparks on the anvil of the water. A headache had wormed its way behind my eyes; I was certainly dehydrated, but it was easier to focus on the pounding at my temples than the ache in my heart.

 

The conversation with Kashmir could not have gone more poorly. I cringed at the memory of my thoughtless words. He had known more loss than I could imagine—but my father was a daily reality too stark for me to ignore. Slate had loved and lost, and it had ruined him. How could I follow in his footsteps?

 

Then again, how could I ignore the pull of my own heart? This, too, was a loss . . . only a slow torture instead of a sudden shock, stretched on the rack of longing.

 

I dragged myself down to the galley to stash the pastries in the icebox. Then I leaned against the counter and drank deep drafts of musty, lukewarm water from the barrel in the corner. The walk had left me exhausted. Or was it the nightmares I’d been having? The last three nights, I’d woken, drenched, from a dream where I’d followed Kashmir over the side and my father had thrown me an anchor rather than a buoy.

 

I should lie down, but where? I had given over my cabin, and with the sails furled, my hammock wasn’t shaded. Rotgut hadn’t returned yet, and neither had Bee; I couldn’t just borrow one of their beds without asking first. Of course the captain wouldn’t mind if I sprawled out on his floor—and though I didn’t relish being in his cabin, it was my best option. I was halfway across the deck when I realized his door was ajar.

 

Had he left it that way to catch the breeze? I went inside to find his room empty.

 

And all the cupboards wide open.

 

Standing on the threshold, my eyes went to one of them as though pulled along on a current: HISTORICAL MAPS OF THE PACIFIC. The map of Tahiti was there, and a dozen other maps of Hawaii that the captain had collected over the years. There was only one missing—I knew it before I even started searching. I would have recognized it from across the room—the creases, the bloodstains. The map of Honolulu, 1868. The map we’d robbed a kingdom for. The one where my mother was still alive, and where my father was going to die.

 

Where had it gone?

 

Had Slate gone with it?

 

And I had thought he’d changed.

 

“What’s wrong, amira?” Kash watched me from the doorway, his brow creasing as he scanned the open cupboards. “Thieves?”

 

“I think Slate might have . . .” It was hard for me to say the words. My stomach was roiling. What if I’d driven my father to his fate? Hadn’t I told him I doubted Joss’s prediction? He might have gone back only to prove me wrong. I hadn’t even said good-bye. Tears threatened like a sudden storm—I wasn’t ready. But would I ever have been? “I think—” But before I could finish the sentence, we both jumped at a sudden ruckus from the wharf.

 

A car horn was blaring, and over it—laughter? From belowdecks, Billie answered with a howl. “Rooooo!”

 

I rushed to the door. An old Honda was rolling slowly up to the pier. The man behind the wheel—a big man, stuffed into the little car—roared with laughter as the passenger opened the door and staggered out onto the hot pavement.