A Tear in the Ocean

by H. M. Bouwman

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s really only the southerners who dress in the old style anymore. And a few townspeople, I guess, but not many. It’s old-fashioned.”

  “The governor,” he said, remembering.

  She laughed, but not a nice laugh, and flicked her fingers to make a little splash. “Down south people say, the governor just wants to pretend she’s representing all of us. You know what’s probably in her luck pouch? Notes for her next meeting. She changes them out every night. And I think she keeps a comb in there, too, for fixing her hair. She’s just pretending to live by the old ways.” Artie flipped the shell on her chest and filled its tiny bowl with seawater. “But I guess she’s okay other than that.”

  “She said—she’s really worried about what’s happening with the water.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. At the last big session meeting I was at.” He could feel a wave of shame wash through his body as he thought of his own dad’s reaction. “She wanted to do something about it.”

  “Is that why you’re here? Because you were chosen by that council meeting to go and figure it out?”

  Putnam stared up at the sky. There was not a single cloud there, not one. As if everything were clear and pure. Then he turned his head back to talk to her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, they chose me to go.” It sounded true. And honorable. And much better than I ran away because I had a fight with my dad. Because my dad is a coward and bureaucrat.

  “Wow.” Artie’s voice was suddenly smaller than usual. “That’s impressive. They must really trust you.” She sounded almost sad.

  For a few minutes, they didn’t talk. Putnam thought about how the council didn’t trust him—not even enough to talk openly in front of him. As if he were only a child. And his father certainly didn’t trust him. (And now that he’d run away, Putnam certainly wouldn’t be trusted again for a long time.)

  What Artie was thinking about, he didn’t know, but she was silent, too. Eventually, the two floated into each other, bumping shoulders.

  Putnam was surprised—he’d almost forgotten for a moment where he was. Artie’s face, only inches away, closer than ever before, looked both tough and fragile. The bruises were almost faded away—now simply a greenish and yellowish cast under her skin. The swelling was all gone. Her face was alive with light and thought, the browns of her eyes so dark they were almost black. Close up, she was suddenly beautiful. Herself.

  She stared back at him, blinked, and the spell was broken. She kicked her feet and propelled herself away, splashing Putnam at the same time. “What?” She sounded almost angry.

  “Nothing.” He tried to remember what they had been talking about. “Just—well, yes, that’s why I’m traveling to the south. To find what made the sea turn salty.”

  Artie’s angry look dropped off her face, and the thoughtful one came back. “There’s an Island story,” she said, swishing her arms lightly to stay up. Her legs floated out behind her. “About why the water is becoming salt.”

  I never heard about this. “What is it?” And why hadn’t the governor shared it with the council?

  “It’s a story I heard down south. When I lived there.” Her tone did not invite questions about her life, and Putnam didn’t ask. “One night this spring, at a bonfire. It was a new story.”

  “Who told it to you?”

  “A fisherman.”

  Ah. Maybe someone who’d seen something. Island fisherfolk didn’t usually take their boats out far from the Island—at least, that was what Putnam had heard—but maybe this person had gone farther and found something out. Putnam was almost disappointed to think so. He wanted to be the hero.

  “Do you want to hear it or not?” she asked.

  “Yes. Of course.” Putnam pulled himself back to the present time and place. Everything would work out. She’d tell him something that would help him to understand what had happened. If only he’d thought to ask her sooner.

  “Well, I’m not a storyteller, so I can’t make it all pretty like they can. I’ll just tell you the main points.”

  “Go ahead.” He didn’t really need a story, anyway. He just needed an explanation of what had happened, and where to go to fix it.

  “So. Long ago the sky and the sea didn’t touch. They were separate. There was a space of blue nothingness between them that they couldn’t cross. But the sky and the sea liked each other, and they talked across the emptiness every day. The sky would send rain down to keep the sea’s fish happy—brand-new water for them to play in and swim in and drink and breathe. The fish would come up to the surface and make little Os with their mouths, blowing kisses to the sky. And the birds—who nap each day on the giant sled that holds up the clouds—”

  “The what?”

  “It’s a winter story, so a sled holds up the clouds.”

  “But—is the sled the blue sky? What is the sled?”

  Artie pursed her lips, then said, “The sled is invisible, okay? It just holds up the clouds. So they don’t fall to the ground.” Then before Putnam could say more, she said, “It’s a story. Which you said you wanted to hear.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  “So the birds heard the sky wishing to be closer to the sea. And since they could cross the nothingness, they swooped down to flutter the sea with their feet, telling the sea how much the sky loved her.

  “The sky and the sea were best friends.

  “But they wished for more. They wished not to be apart.

  “One day the birds and the fish came up with an idea. They built a chain out of seaweed, a long rope connecting the sky and the sea, and they pulled until the two drew together, right through the nothingness, and touched. Held together by a gorgeous, thick green chain that went all the way up to the heavens and down to the bottom of the ocean. And the sky and the sea were happy.

  “And then one day—”

  “Wait,” said Putnam. “Will this story tell me what exactly is wrong and how to fix it? I mean, is it a real story about real things?”

  Artie was quiet for a moment. “It’s a story about why things went wrong. It might not be real real. But it’s about real feelings.”

  “Okay. But I mean,” Putnam said, struggling to think of how to say it, “is it true information? Or is it just—you know, a story? Like: here’s a little-kid fairy tale about the sky and how it loved the fish. Or are you going to say something useful?”

  Artie was silent for a long time. Then she said, “Do you want to hear it or not?” She sounded mad, the kind of mad that gets thin tight lips, and even if he said yes, Putnam wasn’t sure she’d keep talking.

  “I’m sorry. I was rude. I’d love to hear your story.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “No more interrupting.”

  “No more.” He crossed his hands on his chest in a promise and tried to look completely innocent.

  A grin almost flashed across her face, Putnam was sure of it. Artie cleared her throat and continued. “Something went wrong. It wasn’t the birds, or the fish—it was something else, another creature, maybe even a human—no one knew exactly. But someone broke the chain that attached the sky and the sea, and the chain fell into the sea. And when the chain fell, it yanked part of the sky, and it pulled down the giant sled the clouds ride on—which is made of salt. The sled careened down the sky and landed in the sea, and it’s turning the sea to salt as it slowly disintegrates. That’s what the fisherman said. To fix it—I guess you’d have to pull the sled out of the sea.”

  He stared at her. Seriously? “You know clouds don’t ride on sleds made of salt, right?”

  “More like a toboggan.”

  “They don’t.”

  “I know that,” she said in a disgusted voice. “That isn’t the point.”

  What is the point, then?

  Artie was already climbing back into the boat. “It’s just a stupid story,”
she said over her shoulder.

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY DIDN’T talk the rest of that afternoon. Putnam was irritated—not angry, he reminded himself, simply irritated—that she’d told such a dumb story. That she’d told it as if it were true. Artie was, he thought, probably irritated—no, angry—that he hadn’t thought her tale was brilliant.

  That night he stayed up late to navigate and star-watch, and then curled up outside the door to the cabin. Inside, a flute played quietly as he huddled to keep out of the wind. He fell asleep to its soft tones. Artie woke early, took one look at him, and told him to go inside to warm up. He slept the rest of the morning in the cabin. The heater made a big difference now that the outside was so cold.

  At lunch, when both were properly awake and sitting in the cabin with their coats unbuttoned to the heat, Artie cleared her throat and said, “It’s stupid for you to freeze outside at night. You can sleep in here, too. You should.”

  He felt like he should say no, but it had been so cold last night, his shins were still hurting whenever he touched them. “Are you sure?”

  “I just said it, didn’t I?”

  “Okay. Thanks.” Then, because he couldn’t resist trying to lighten the mood: “I appreciate you letting me in the cabin after I stowed away and all.”

  “As long as you swab the deck every day.” She wasn’t smiling, but it was a joke. Not a good joke, but then again, he hadn’t given her a great deal to work with. They could improve.

  “Yes, Captain,” he said.

  They kept chatting, moving on to small things: Was cooked seaweed tastier than raw? What kind of bird would you want if you could have a pet bird? Things like that. And as they ate, Putnam marveled at how normal everything seemed. She talked to him like he was a friend, not someone she hated for stealing her boat, not someone she feared or admired because he was the king’s son. And he was talking to her like she was a friend, not someone who’d been beaten up and burned and starved, not someone who’d run away leaving who-knows-what behind. Just two kids having a normal conversation.

  After lunch they went out on deck to check if there was anything to see—any land, any anything. There wasn’t. Just water all around, colder and colder, more and more salty, less and less friendly-looking.

  Artie reached into her luck pouch and pulled out the shell, wrinkling her nose a little. She tossed it lightly in her hand and frowned.

  “It’s a pretty one,” he said. It was. Even dry, the shell glistened, cream-colored with rainbows hiding in it.

  She took one more look at it, then threw it in a high arc. It splashed into the water far from the boat and disappeared.

  “Why’d you toss it? I mean, if it’s okay to ask.”

  She chose her words slowly. “In your luck pouch, you’re supposed to put stuff that is important to you—really important—little objects you might carry around for years and years, and they remind you of the important things that happened to you or important things that you did. Good things.”

  “Like what? What’s in yours?”

  She shook her head.

  Putnam waited.

  “That’s not a polite question,” said Artie. “What’s in your luck pouch is private. Unless you choose to tell someone.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” And he was. He’d just ended the longest and pleasantest talk they’d had yet.

  “I’m getting cold.” Artie went back inside the cabin. The moment was over.

  Putnam stayed outside for a while longer. There was truly a bite in the air.

  10

  ARTIE. THE PRESENT.

  IT SEEMED like every time she decided maybe he wasn’t too bad, he did something nosy and pushy, like he was trying to get to know her. Know her know her. Not just “how are you?” kinds of questions but ones that would require her to tell things she didn’t want to tell. Say things she didn’t want to say out loud.

  She just wanted to be left alone. Was it so much to ask?

  After he asked what was in her luck pouch, they didn’t talk for the rest of the day—not more than please and thank you. So civil. Putnam slept in the cabin that night, though, and it was good that he did, for even inside, the air was chilled, despite the heater they ran all night long. By morning its battery was nearly dead, only faint heat radiating from the machine.

  Artie finished whittling her flute, but she didn’t play it. The morning dawned gray and gloomy—the heater battery, attached to the roof of the cabin to recharge, sluggishly sucked up what little sunlight there was. They sat inside, each wrapped in blankets, shivering and hoping the heater would be usable again by night.

  After lunch Putnam started chatting about unimportant topics, as if he was trying to bring back yesterday’s friendly feel. But Artie had learned her lesson: don’t talk about surface stuff, and you won’t be asked about deep stuff. She got up without speaking, wrapped the blankets tight around herself like a shroud, and stepped out.

  On the deck, she sat against the cabin wall that seemed to be mostly out of the wind and pulled her knees to her chest, tucking the blankets around herself. She stared off into the distance. The ocean was so gray that it melted into the sky, and it was almost impossible to see the faint horizon where the two bodies met. They faded into each other like they were one. Not two separate beings at all.

  The answer to Putnam’s question was actually very simple. Her luck pouch had nothing in it.

  Nothing.

  Other people—everyone she knew—had lucky things that had come to them in different ways: a keepsake from a parent, a little reminder of why they had been given the name they had, some small trophy from an important day, tokens of special things and special people.

  Her luck pouch had once held something special: a little jeweled ring her mother had worn as a child and had given to Artie just before she died. But this past winter when they were low on food, Artie’s stepfather had told her to hand it over. She’d refused. Said she’d rather go hungry. Her stepfather had slapped her and reached right into the pouch as it hung on Artie’s neck and taken the ring.

  It didn’t even buy that much food.

  As for any other items in her luck pouch? She’d been waiting, ever since her mother’s death, for something to happen, some good sign, that she could keep a reminder of. There were so many bad things or sad things. Some people put things like that in their luck pouches: a lock of hair from someone who’d died, or a snip of a blanket from a long illness. But she wasn’t going to. Someday, she told herself, there would be good luck. That was what a luck pouch should be for. Remembering the good past. Not the bad.

  But there never was any good luck. There was only her, standing up for herself and getting beaten down. And standing up again.

  And then she ran away, and she felt like maybe her luck might change, and when she found the shell and saw its gleam inside, like a cleaned bone but shimmering, she felt like maybe her luck had changed—and the shell might be a sign of it. But in the light of the next day, she thought, No. Things could still go wrong. She wouldn’t collect anything until she was sure. Then there would be an item so right, so obvious, that it would of course go in her luck pouch.

  Until then, it would hang empty around her neck, a little container of nothing. Just like herself.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHE SAT FOR A LONG TIME, knees pulled to her chin, blanket wrapped around her to make a cocoon, head poking out, facing seaward.

  Then she startled.

  What was that?

  The invisible place where the gray sea met the gray sky . . . now had a dark line on its border. But only in one spot: a dash—sitting right where the horizon should be.

  She squinted, then stood and shadowed her eyes with her hand, even though the sun wasn’t out. It didn’t help. The short line on the horizon neither disappeared nor grew fatter. It rem
ained a black dash, fuzzy in the distance.

  Artie swung into motion. The way they were moving with the current, they would miss it—and it was the first possible island they’d seen since they left her homeland. She grabbed the rudder and steered them out of the current. The current was wider now than it had been—no longer the narrow stream that Putnam had stumbled on so many days ago—and it took her several long minutes to get into still water.

  She began to hoist the sails, setting them to catch the wind and zigzag the boat toward the thing on the horizon.

  Putnam popped open the cabin door and came out, rubbing his eyes like he’d just woken from a nap. “What’s going on?”

  She forgot to frown. “I think we found land.”

  11

  RAYEL. ABOUT 100 YEARS EARLIER.

  RAYEL AND Nunu stalled for a few weeks in the brisk water of the not-quite-south while Nunu’s health improved. Meanwhile the weather grew colder even though they weren’t moving south. Rayel guessed this meant winter was coming—something she’d never lived through before. The dolphin, healthy and fat and closer to full size after weeks of rest, began to grow agitated. When Rayel left the boat to swim with her—which she did for hours every day—Nunu tried to get her to swim north, and when she climbed back into the boat, the dolphin clicked in a distressed manner and circled the boat uneasily.

  One morning Nunu wasn’t there when Rayel awoke. The girl stood on the deck and called for the dolphin, and the dolphin didn’t come. She didn’t know what to do. What could have happened? Could Nunu simply have left her? She waited all morning, more and more worried—and a little angry. After all she’d done. After she’d put off going south.

  Around noon, the dolphin returned, swimming in from the west, leaping in the sunshine. She swam up to the boat and didn’t even listen to Rayel’s relieved scolding, interrupting her to call and click and bob her head in the direction she’d come from.

  Rayel was confused. What could be out there? But the dolphin clearly wanted her to follow.