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

 

Still, I couldn’t look away. I could see, now, the parts of me that were hers—the curve of her lips was the same as mine when I smiled. The tilt of her eyes—looking into them was like looking into a mirror. She couldn’t have been more than a decade older than I; she’d been in her mid-twenties when I was born—when we’d thought she’d died, when I had saved her, or lost her, and all because I’d chosen to give Crowhurst a map.

 

An emptiness opened in my chest, like the tide pulling back the water before a tsunami, and my belly felt like a fish flopping on the wet sand. But my feet felt as though I’d grown roots. There were myths about that—girls turning into trees to escape some terrible fate. How long would I have to be still before I would never move again? But then my father reached for me, smiling. “Nixie. Nixie, come meet your mother.”

 

I tottered toward him on wooden legs; he took my hand and squeezed my fingers, and I was human again.

 

She had looked so small, next to Slate, but when I got close, I realized we were the same height. Her hand went first to my cheek—her palm was calloused. Then her fingers alighted on my shoulder, then my chin, like a butterfly, fickle. Her eyes bored into mine, with a deep curiosity that was terribly familiar. “Are you really mine?” she said then.

 

My spine stiffened and I took a breath to tell her that I wasn’t anybody’s, but when I opened my mouth, what came out was a sob.

 

Tears filled my eyes; I tried to wipe them away, but they flooded in, too fast to bail. My breath hitched in my throat, and I shuddered like the ship in a storm. A terrible weight crushed the air out of me, and sobs struggled up through my chest like bubbles from a rift in the floor of the sea. When she wrapped her arms around me, I clung to her as though she were a raft. The world spun inside my head, and fragmented thoughts popped up like flotsam from a wreck. She smelled like cream and incense. Her arms were cool. She was crying too.

 

Finally the tide of my own tears ebbed, and I blinked away the last of them. My face was hot and I felt strung together with loose twine; I lifted my chin and took deep, tremulous breaths. The others had followed them to the bailey, I realized—Blake and Kash, and Dahut too. Over my mother’s shoulder, I caught her yearning stare before she turned away. Distantly, I realized I had told her an untruth, though not on purpose—I had missed my mother after all.

 

The rest of the world faded into the background—my father thanking Crowhurst over and over, his modest replies. An offer to stay the night; the ship would be crowded, he said, and the walk to the dock was dark and cold. In response, Slate wrapped the man in a bear hug.

 

Crowhurst sent a servant to the ship to fetch Bee and Rotgut; they would be eager to see Lin. Another servant showed us to a suite of rooms surrounding a central parlor. There, my father swept my mother off her feet and carried her the rest of the way. She laid her head against his shoulder as he whispered into her hair, kicking the door shut behind them.

 

The rest of us stood in the parlor. It was well appointed, with soft chairs and a woven rug over the stone floor, but I had no eyes for luxury, not now. I floated across the room like a bubble, hollow, fragile, and lowered myself gently onto a velvet chaise. My whole body ached with the echo of my emotions—shock and guilt, but also a lightness, a relief, a tentative tendril of something strange. Joy?

 

Kash knelt beside me, close but not touching. I was the one to reach out, taking comfort from his steady presence as his hand folded around mine. It was so easy now—so natural. I stared down at his hand in wonder. What had I been waiting for?

 

“So?” Blake’s question interrupted my thoughts; he was full of energy as he paced before the fire. “Which do you think it is?”

 

There was a long silence. Lifting my head took an enormous effort, but when I did, Blake was staring at me with those blue eyes. I cleared my throat; it was raw and rough. “Which what?”

 

“Genius or madness, Miss Song. Or does it matter?”

 

Kashmir gripped my hand more tightly. “What’s that saying? Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

 

“It’s not madness if he gets the result he’s after,” Blake said.

 

“The man claimed to be a god, Mr. Hart!”

 

“Gods, witches, Navigators—different words for the same things.”

 

“Hustler is the word that comes to my mind,” Kash shot back. “We should leave the table while we’re up.”

 

“Leave? Miss Song.” Blake turned to me, an appeal in his eyes, and the color was high in his cheeks. “Certainly you understand. We have to know more.”

 

“Amira—”