Water & Storm Country (21 page)

“A message from whom...” Although the
question is completed, it dies on my tongue, twitching at first,
and then still. Barney closes the door softly behind him.

She talked to him?

To Barney?

No, not a question. She talked to Barney.

And I’ll be climbing the sails tomorrow.

~~~

When the red dawn creeps over the horizon,
I’m high above the ship to watch it. I couldn’t sleep, so I came up
here, to the crow’s nest, to wait.

(For her.)

What does she want to talk to me about? Why
now? Maybe she feels bad and wants to admit everything she told me
was a lie.

More likely she wants to scream at me for
throwing that boy overboard.

The wind shrieks around me as I peer over the
wooden sides of the lookout platform. The men are hard at work,
turning the sails, catching the wind at just the right angle. The
ship cuts through the choppy waters with ease, trailing the
Merman’s Daughter by only the smallest of margins.

Are we really the second fastest ship in the
fleet? I wonder, marveling at how quickly things can change. Below
me, the ship is alive, built with wood and sweat and human
strength. And somewhere…Jade.

Later today we’ll lay anchor. If what Jade
told me is true, will I be able to look the admiral in the eyes,
pretend like I don’t know?

I shake off the thought when I spot her. If
she sees me, she doesn’t show it, her expression flat and neutral.
Jade crosses the deck, greeting the other bilge as she goes,
reaching the main mast in long strides. Unlike me, she ignores the
crow’s nest ladder, frog-hopping up the wooden cylinder with
ease.

My hands suddenly feel sweaty and I rub them
on my britches.

For the first time, she looks up, meeting my
gaze with thoughtful eyes that seem to say, “You came.”

Three quarters of the way up, she stops at
where there’s a gaping hole in one of the main sails. A major
repair. One that could take all day.

She’s not coming to me, so I’ve got to go to
her. I slip over the railing, stretching to take the ladder rungs
two at a time. When I reach her she’s already positioning a white
patch on the sail.

“Can I help?” I ask, and when she doesn’t
turn to look at me, doesn’t reply, I wonder whether Barney’s
message was really from her. Had I assumed too much?

But then she says, “I asked you to come
because I needed…”—her statement hovers in the air, seemingly
oblivious to the swirling wind, and I find myself holding my
breath—“…your help—you know, with mending the sail.”

I let out my breath in a burst. “That’s a
large tear,” I say. “I hadn’t noticed it before. Is it new?”

She shrugs, pokes a needle through the patch
and begins stitching it to the sail, just like I taught her, with
easy, practiced fingers. “New as of yesterday,” she says.

There’ve been no storms, no unusually high
winds, no projectiles in the air. Nothing that could have caused
such serious damage. And the fabric around the rip doesn’t appear
to be old or frayed. In fact, the gash itself appears to be almost
too clean, like someone took a knife and just…

I swing around the mast as I realize Jade
created a large repair so we’d have to work on it together. “Slow
down,” I say, amazed at how expert her fingers have become. “At
this pace we’ll be done before the lunch bell rings.” I touch her
shoulder and she stiffens, but her fingers slow.

I can feel the heat of her skin beneath the
thin fabric of her old shirt, and I don’t want to pull my hand
away, but I must, because someone will see, someone will tell
Hobbs.

What am I doing?
I think as I retract
my hand sharply, as if I’ve been burned.

“Huck,” she says, and my name’s never sounded
so good, so real. “Sear it, Huck!” When she turns to look at me
there’s fire in the brown embers of her eyes.

“What?” I say.

“This. All of this.” She waves her hands
around, meaning…the ship? Me? Repairing the sails? “It’s all
invented. Made up. None of it’s real. You and me? Nothing more than
a dream.”

Whose dream?
I wonder.

But all I say is, “I know.”

She sighs, heavier than an anchor. “Then
why?”

Why are you here? Why am I here? Why do we
get up every morning, play the same old game, do the same old
things, and then sleep to the same old rocking of the ship?
Although I imagine her simple question to be filled with all of
those questions, I know it’s not. Those questions are mine, but I
can’t seem to pinpoint where they came from or when they entered my
subconscious, burrowing in like mice, gnawing away at everything
I’ve held true since the day I was born.

But even that’s a lie, because I do know. I
do.

(Since the day I met Jade.)

And I can’t help but wonder why she’s
speaking to me after everything I’ve done. “I’m sorry about that
boy,” I say.

Her eyes narrow. “Are you?” she asks, but
there’s no accusation in her voice. It’s just a question.

“Yes. I’m surprised you’re speaking to me
after that.”

“You did what you had to do,” she says.

“Did I? By throwing a boy overboard? By
killing Webb?” I’m surprised by my own words. I’ve barely thought
about killing Webb, much less spoken of it out loud.

“You chose the lesser of the evils,” Jade
says. “If you’d gone against Lieutenant Hobbs you would have been
sent away and the boy would still have suffered and died. If you’d
spared Webb, I’d be dead and your father would know you protected
me. And trust me, Webb didn’t deserve life. He—the things he did to
the bilge rats…” She trails away.

She says it is so matter-of-factly that I
can’t think of a rebuttal. I change the subject. “Is what you told
me before true?” I ask, wishing I didn’t have to ask, because I
know it’ll only make her angry.

To my surprise, her eyebrows don’t furrow,
her lips don’t tighten. “Yes,” she says, turning back to her
work.

And in that single word is the truth and it’s
good enough for me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, apologizing for having to
ask the question and for my father.

Jade falls silent, her fingers pushing the
needle through the fabric and pulling it back out, securing a
corner of the patch to the sail.

I step onto the rope bridge, moving as close
to her as I dare. Pluck my own needle and thread from my pocket.
Start on another corner of the large patch. “What’s fire country
like?” I ask, and although she doesn’t stop working, her eyes
twitch in my direction.

For a few minutes the only sounds are from
below: men shouting, whistling, singing; women calling for clothes
to be cleaned, offering hot morning drinks; barrels being rolled,
sacks being tossed, planks being scrubbed. There’s no awkwardness
in the silence, and somehow I know she’s not ignoring my question,
just thinking on it, like it’s one of the wooden puzzles my mother
and I used to work on together, requiring a precise solution.

Finally, she says, “It’s home,” and although
it doesn’t tell me anything about what her country’s like, I can
feel what she feels for it in my bones, in my thoughts, in my
heart. Warmth and security and familiarity—like The Merman’s
Daughter has always felt to me.

It was all taken from her. No, not taken.
Ripped from her little hands. Stolen from her.

By my father.

At that moment, something is unlocked in the
memory of my mother’s death. She still falls; I still can’t save
her, can’t hold on. I still fail her. But she says something,
something I’ve never heard her say in any of my dreams, where all I
saw was her terror and my failure and my father’s
disappointment.

“Not your fault,” she says.

There’s a sharp pinch on my arm and I can see
again, not because I’ve opened my eyes—which were never closed—but
because the memory is gone, and I’m dangling in midair, not holding
the needle, not holding the ropes, not holding anything. Jade’s
hand is clamped on my arm, gripping me, bruising my flesh with the
strength of her fingers.

“Huck,” she says, “I can’t hold you up all
day. You’re heavier than tughide.”

Astonished, I curl my empty fingers around a
rope, pull myself to an upright position. “Was I…”

“Falling? Yeah. You just let go and would’ve
done a bird dive onto the decks if I didn’t grab you.” There’s no
pride in her voice, no praise-seeking. Just facts.

“You saved my life,” I say.

“And you lied to save mine,” she says.

(And killed. It’s in her eyes, but thankfully
she doesn’t say it.)

“Thank you,” I say, but she’s already back to
stitching. Though I can tell one of her eyes is still watching me,
just in case I let go again.

“Fire country is hot and barren and
dangerous,” she says, as if we’re just continuing our conversation
from before. “And beautiful and perfect,” she adds.

“Did you have any brothers or sisters?” I
ask.

“I
have
two sisters,” she says. “Both
older. Skye and Siena. They’re…amazing.” Her voice is full of grit
on the last word, like it almost didn’t make it out of her throat.
“At least they were…I think. It’s hard to remember. It was six
years ago and I was so young.”

I finish threading my corner and begin
working my way toward her, giving her time to compose herself and
her thoughts, hoping she’ll continue.

Time passes like wispy clouds, silent and
thin and full of imagined images.

Our threading fingers get closer and closer
and still we’re silent. The air in my lungs refuses to satisfy me,
leaving me short of breath, like I’ve just run a long way. I stare
at my fingers, focusing on each pass of the needle, careful not to
prick myself.

Closer.

And closer.

And then her hand brushes mine and it’s like
lightning against my skin.

She looks at me, but I can only stare at my
fingers. She breaks the thread from her needle and hands me the
end, careful not to let us touch again. When she begins working on
another corner I breathe a relieved sigh and knot my thread with
hers.

When I start working on the fourth and final
corner, I can still feel the sensation of our hands touching, but I
try to keep my fingers steady.

“What happened when you almost fell?” Jade
asks, her question coming like a random yellow cloud in a perfectly
red sky.

Oh…
that
. “I was just daydreaming,” I
say, keeping my voice low, even though no one below could possibly
hear us.

“About your mother?” she says and my breath
catches. How could she know?

I’m still trying to figure out how to
respond, when she says, “I daydream about my family all the time. I
don’t know if they’re dead or alive or happy or sad, but I picture
them as alive and happy. My sisters miss me something awful, of
course, but they’re still happy.”

“Well, I know my mother’s dead,” I say.

“I remember,” she says, and for some reason
I’m surprised, although I shouldn’t be. “It’s all anyone talked
about when it happened. Some say your father pushed her over, some
say it was you, some say it was an accident.” I flinch and her eyes
jerk to meet mine. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t be
talking about any of this.”

I shake my head. “It’s okay. I didn’t push
her, but it was my fault,” I say, hearing my mother’s words—“Not
your fault”—in my new memory. Is it real or did I invent it?

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

“Thank you.”

We work our way from corner to corner, not
stopping until we meet in the middle again. This time I’m careful
not to let us touch as we approach. I tie it off and we work on the
last two edges, ignoring the lunch bell in our sudden haste to
finish the job.

When the patch is firmly in place, we dangle
side by side on the rope bridge, our legs hanging through it,
flexing our overworked fingers.

“I smuggled some extra bread from breakfast,”
Jade says, reaching inside her pocket and sliding out a smallish
loaf. She tears it in half and hands me the smaller piece. I offer
her some water from the container hanging from my belt. We eat and
drink until it’s gone.

The question that ended our conversation the
last time rolls around my mouth, hot and warming my cheeks from the
inside out. I won’t ask it again. I won’t. But what if she says
yes? What if mending the tear was enough to mend whatever was
broken when she slid down the mast and stopped speaking to me?

“Want to see the crow’s nest?” I blurt
out.

She frowns. I’ve done it again. Spoiled
things. Because she can’t see the crow’s nest. The bilge aren’t
allowed up there. But if a lieutenant orders her to go, then surely
the rules don’t apply, do they?

I rephrase. “Go to the crow’s nest.”

Her frown softens and she almost laughs. “You
can’t tell me what to do.”

I smile, too. “Of course I can. I’m a
lieutenant.”

“You’re a wooloo boy.”

It should sting, but it doesn’t, not when her
lips are curled like that. “So you’ll disobey a direct order from
this wooloo boy?” I ask.

“I could,” she says. “But I won’t. Not this
time anyway. But you’ll have to lead so it’s clear from below that
it’s your idea.”

I start to climb, raising my smile to the
sun.

F
ather is asleep
when I return home. His breathing is loud and rumbling, something
that would normally annoy me, but which only endears him to me
tonight.

I’ve made a grave mistake
.

For years I’ve treated him with frustration
and disrespect at best, contempt and white-hot anger at worst. And
he wasn’t to blame. Wasn’t a coward at all. Oh, no, no, no, he was
the exact opposite. His every action was that of a hero, albeit a
failed one.