The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
By: Heidi Heilig
I tucked the map into the pocket of my cloak and tried to smile. I’d taken paradise from him—but if Crowhurst was telling the truth, if the past could really be changed . . . could I return it?
Blake threw a cloth over the lamp and lay back down. Time passed, and his breathing grew even and deep. I might have dozed, but not deeply enough that the rumble of the gates didn’t wake me as they slid shut. The ship rocked a little on the eddies. Moments later, my eyes sprang open at the sound of footsteps crossing the deck above.
My first thought was a thief. My second was Crowhurst—though perhaps it was fair to say they were one and the same. But whoever it was, was leaving. I sat up, the quilt slipping from my shoulders. Frost rimmed the small port window; I wiped it clear and peered outside. There was someone walking down the pier. I recognized his form easily, even in the sharp silver moonlight: my father, his shoulders hunched against the cold.
I struggled out of the tangle of blankets and pawed through them, searching for my boots in the dark. I’d laced them back on, with some difficulty, before I wondered why I was chasing after him. Why did I care where he was going or what he was doing? What did it matter if he wanted to go on a midnight stroll?
Pulling my cloak around my shoulders, I went abovedecks, the answer ringing in my head: it was what I had always done. He’d always been my responsibility. He wandered off, I sought him out.
And right now, the way he’d been acting, it was too risky not to.
I opened the hatch; the cold stole my breath. Torchlight threw shadows across the stone docks where the fishermen were unloading their catch. Smoke mingled with the white plumes of hot breath and muttered curses as the men worked. I searched, but my father wasn’t among them. Had he walked into the city? The Grand Rue curved up, away from the harbor, and I followed it.
Moonlight gave the town an ethereal grace, turning the stone to silver and the shadows to mysteries. Overhead, the buildings leaned in close as though telling secrets, and the sky shrank to a strip of stars. The windows at ground level were shuttered, and the ones above had curtains drawn; although the town was still and the hour was late, I couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched through the gaps.
The dark intensified my hearing, or perhaps it was the sound carrying farther in the cold; I heard the potch of my boots against the rounded cobbles, the squeak of a hanging sign rocked by the wind, even the rise and fall of the ocean against the seawalls, like the breath of a sleeping giant. A small tabby ran ahead of me for half a block and then slipped under a cart, peering out at me with shining eyes.
Eventually the road spilled into a wide square. In the center, a fountain splashed over a beautifully crafted bronze mermaid. Icicles ran like tears down her cheeks. I walked all the way around, but there was no sign of Slate.
The south end of the plaza was bordered by the crenellated walls and turrets of the chateau. From this angle, high in one of the towers, light glimmered in a single window. Hadn’t the harbormaster said it was abandoned? Was there a caretaker, waiting for the return of a long-lost king? Or a hermit wandering the otherwise empty halls?
I shivered; the drifting mist from the fountain was turning to frost in my hair. Aside from the hish of falling water, all was quiet. The west side of the square was lined with shuttered shops like closed jewel boxes; to the east stood a Gothic cathedral. The stained-glass arches glowed invitingly with colored light, but Slate had never been a religious man. Had I passed him somehow along the way? Or perhaps I had only missed him among the fishermen.
Another blast of wind scoured the square, scattering the arcing water in the fountain and blowing leaves across the cobbles—no, not leaves, but bits of paper. I frowned. This was not New York—paper wasn’t trash, not in this era. Where had it come from?
Wrapping my velvet cloak tight around me, I followed the pieces like bread crumbs marking the invisible path of the southerly wind. Torn scraps gamboled at my feet as I approached the castle. There, before the gatehouse, lay a tattered book; I had knelt to pick it up when a movement caught my eye. Startled, I gasped, my heart leaping into my throat.
A man stood there, not two yards away, in the deep shadow under the stone archway of the castle gatehouse. He gripped the bars of the portcullis. The holes weren’t big enough to fit a dog, but he pressed his head against the iron, as though he could pull himself into the keep by sheer force of will.
“Slate?” I spoke without thinking; as the man moved, I knew it was not the captain.
He turned slowly, unsteady on his feet, as though drunk or distracted, and tottered into the light of the unforgiving moon. Dirty blond hair lay in lank curls past his shoulders, and his robe and shoes were tattered, but he must have been a wealthy man, once. Under the grime was the dull shine of silk and velvet, and a gold chain gleamed on his neck.