The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
By: Heidi Heilig
Day Three was left blank—but that was tomorrow. Or technically, today. Automatically, I glanced at the nearest clock, but it read just after eight, which was certainly wrong. Still, it was long past midnight.
Considering, I rubbed the paper between my fingers. What did it all mean? It would have been easiest to dismiss the whole thing as mad ranting. But there was something there, something compelling. I turned back in time, past more poetry and mathematics and some notes of the wind speeds and weather, and then—
It is a blessing and a curse to know too much. When knowledge overflows the cup, there’s no room left for faith.
I can see my machinations. Without him, I could not have found Ker-Ys.
Without him . . . without who? His god or someone else? But the rest of the page was blank. I flipped back farther and found more poetry—if you could call it that. A horrible ode to the sea.
Then another sound came—her voice, soft as perfume on a breeze. “Kashmir?”
I sat back in the chair, considering whether or not to answer—half a moment, then another. But why was I pretending I had a choice? I longed to see her face. Even now, the tension in my chest was easing, just knowing she was near. I couldn’t fool anyone if I couldn’t fool myself. “I’ll be right there, amira.”
I stood, hesitating. Then I locked the drawers. I hung the coat back in the closet, watered the scotch, closed the cabinets. I was looking for the clove I’d spat when I heard her footsteps on the stair.
“What in the world?” She ducked through the doorway, peering around the cabin, her expression part fear and part excitement. She shivered as her eyes swept over the clocks on the shelves.
I picked the clove off the floor and slipped it into my pocket. “You knew he was mad.”
“It’s one thing to say it, and another to see it.” Her voice was distracted as she peered at one of the clocks. Then she cursed.
“Is this a bad time?” I said—a silly joke. But she shook her head.
“This one’s not a clock, it’s a barometer, see?” She pointed at the face of it. “The needle’s dropped since yesterday.”
“A storm coming?” I shook my head. “Poetic.”
She only sighed. “What were you doing down here, Kash?”
I considered my answer. “Drinking, amira.”
“Twice in one day?” Her jaw tightened. “Now who sounds like the captain?”
I barked a laugh. “Did you come all the way down here to fight with me?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. “No.”
“Good. Because I got you a present.” I pointed my chin at the desk, and she followed my eyes. The frustration in her face gave way to delight as she reached not for the logbook, but the maps.
“Cantre’r Gwaelod?” She shuffled through the pages. “And Atlantis! Sunken cities . . . did Dahut draw these?”
“It seems that way,” I said, nonplussed. “But look what else there is.”
She blinked at me, then turned back to the desk. After a moment, she picked up the stone paperweight, holding it to the light. “Boeotia.”
“What?”
“Ancient Greece,” she breathed, running her fingertips over the flat surface of the chunk of marble, which I now realized was another map. “Crowhurst said he met another Navigator there. Look . . . the cave of the oracle, and the twin mythic pools of Mnemosyne and Lethe. This is second century if it’s a day.”
“Very valuable, then.”
“Definitely!”
“Well. You’re welcome. But look what else there is.” I picked up the logbook and put it directly in her hands, lest she look next at the lamp.
“This is Crowhurst’s?”
“You told me he once filled a logbook with wild rambling and formulas for time travel. I found the rambling parts. Perhaps you can find the formulas.”
Nix scanned the pages, engrossed. “King James . . . like the Bible?”
“Possibly. The man is obsessed with playing god.”
She heard it—the bitterness in my voice—and her hands stilled. After a moment, she sighed and shut the logbook, tucking it under her arm. “You think I’m scared,” she said. “But you are too.”
I only shrugged. “I won’t bother lying, amira. Not to you.”
Her hand went to the pearl pendant at her throat; in the silence, the ticking of the clocks. “Can we go back to the Temptation?”
“Aye, Captain.”
I followed her off the Dark Horse and onto the pier, then up the gangplank to the deck of her ship. Nix dropped the logbook in the captain’s cabin and met me at the rail. To the east, dawn was breaking red—a sailor’s warning. Still, I was more at ease off the yacht. Together, we gazed into the mirror of the water, wreathed in the silvery mist of her breath. “What are you afraid of?” she said at last.
“Oblivion.” The ghost of the word hung in the air.
“Dying?”
“Doubly dying.” I grimaced. “Unwept, unhonored, and unsung. You know the poem.”
She shifted on her feet and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “You think I would forget you?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” I shook my head. “But it’s not about you. Not truly.”