The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
By: Heidi Heilig
Where was he? The ship had slowed in the storm. Still, it was sailing on faster than a man could swim. The fog swirled around me—I couldn’t see farther than my fingertips—but that was good, that was good. We were both still in the Margins.
Salt stung in my wounds like the tail of a jellyfish; there must be blood in the water, and not only mine. Was there another monster lurking in the dark, drawn by the flesh and the fray?
Through the mist, someone was screaming my name—my father’s voice. I swam in the opposite direction. Beside me, something large splashed on the surface. I shrieked, but it was only a buoy thrown from the ship. I slid my arm through the center and carried it with me as I swam. How long was the rope? Glancing back over my shoulder, there was nothing; the Temptation had vanished in the tattered fog . . . or out of it.
I had to find Kashmir before I followed.
“Kash!”
He had to be here. Or had the creature taken him under? I slammed my mind on the question, like the door to a tomb.
“Kashmir!”
Something brushed my leg and I bit back a cry. It was only the rope, wrapped around my ankle. All around me, the fog was clearing. I ducked under to loosen the loop from my leg, and when I resurfaced, I heard his voice.
“Amira!”
I whirled around, splashing. Kashmir’s voice was faint over the shush and roar of the waves, but I kicked toward it with a single-minded purpose. I had to reach him, now or never. Throwing my shoulder forward, I cut through the water, dragging the buoy along. I dreaded a tug on the rope. What would I do if Kash had drifted beyond my reach?
The answer came to mind immediately; I would let go of the buoy. If the Temptation left the Margins without me, I might never see her again—nor Bee and Rotgut, nor my father. But I kept swimming, and at the top of the next wave, I saw him in the watery valley.
“Kash!”
“Amira?” In his wide eyes, relief chased away the panic.
The wave dropped and he was closer; he kicked toward me on the next swell and I toward him. I pushed the buoy into his hands and just like that, he was in my arms. “I’ve got you!”
“I thought I—” he sputtered, gasping. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I’m here,” I said, pulling him close just as the rope on the buoy stretched taut. “I’ll always be here.”
He stopped trying to speak, but I could feel his hot breath in the crook of my neck and the thunder of his heart against my chest. The dark sea had calmed, but I held him fiercely. We floated up the next wave and down its back. We might have drifted forever, storm tossed but safe in each other’s arms. But the fog around us was melting into the night air, revealing the Temptation. My father was at the stern, hauling on the rope with all his might.
Bee threw down another rope for Kash; I looped it around his torso before sending him up the ladder. Water sluiced from his clothes, and there was a long strand of seaweed wrapped around one leg. His arms, usually so steady, shook as he climbed, so I stayed close behind him, murmuring encouragement.
Near the top, Bee and Slate lifted him the rest of the way. He tumbled over the bulwark and landed flat on the deck. Billie bounded toward him, trying to lick his face, but Bee pushed her off to check Kashmir’s breathing while Slate turned back and pulled me single-handedly over the rail. I started toward Kash, still needing him close, but the captain crushed me in an embrace so tight he squeezed water out of my clothes.
“I’m sorry, Nixie,” he whispered fiercely. “I’m so sorry. I thought today was the day,”
I hugged him back, trying to comfort him; he must have been scared, too. “What day, Dad?”
“The day you lose Kashmir.”
I stiffened, but he did not let go. “What are you talking about, Slate?”
“I told you from the start not to get too close to him.” The words came in a whisper; I could smell his sour breath. “That he won’t be around forever.”
A flash of rage, like lightning. “How dare you say that?” I pushed him, hard, and he released me. “You, of all people?”
But as he stumbled back, my anger ebbed. His shirt was bloody and torn, his face waxy and pale in the dark. And in his eyes, an infinite sadness. “You think I’m just being cruel?” My father shook his head. “It wasn’t only my fortune Joss told.”
Though the storm had passed and the water was calm, I felt the world seesaw. “She told you about me?” Joss—Navigator, fortune-teller. My grandmother too, though I hadn’t known it at first. I’d thought she was a charlatan, until the things she’d told me came true. But of course they had; everything she’d predicted, she’d already watched happen as she traveled back and forth across the years. “What did she say?”
Slate opened his mouth to reply, but then he bent double and vomited noisily over the rail.
I swore, rushing to his side as his shoulders shook. Away across the vast blackness of the waves, a glassy skyline glittered; he’d gotten us to his own timeline, twenty-first-century New York.