After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

  “Marjan, can we have the whiskey?” Abran called. Abran looked at me. “We have some painkillers, but they’re only for the crew,” he said apologetically.

  I nodded, surprised he’d even mention painkillers. Only the wealthy had hoarded drugs, and it was even rarer to mention it to strangers for fear of inciting theft.

  Marjan brought a clay bottle to the table and held Daniel’s head up so he could drink it.

  Abran loosened the tourniquet and pinched Daniel’s fingers, the blood slowly coloring them.

  “It got the ulnar artery, which is why you lost so much blood. It looks like it is already beginning to seal up again, though. The wound isn’t as deep as you’d think. Mostly got your skin and some muscle tore up. I’m always glad when things aren’t as bad as they seem. We’ll sew you up, get some alcohol on it,” Abran said.

  His chattiness put me on edge. “Are you a doctor?” I asked.

  “Was.”

  And he grew quiet. Asking about a person’s past always made them open or close, and I always wanted to know which it’d do.

  Abran dipped his needle in the bottle and strung it with a very fine thread. He handed me a rag and I mopped up the blood around Daniel’s arm.

  Abran bent forward, his face only a few inches from Daniel’s arm. He worked slowly, smoothing the torn skin down and stitching along the jagged edges. Daniel’s arm would be a jigsaw of scars by the time it healed.

  “Where were you headed?” Abran asked.

  “Andes. To trade,” I said.

  “Same with us. That’s where we’re planning to find a place to settle. You have plans to stay on the water?”

  His questions made me feel peevish, and I hoped Pearl wouldn’t pipe up and give anything away. The less they knew, the better. At least until I knew more about them.

  “Like I said before, we’ve heard about you. That you’re a good fisher. Dependable. You go up and down the coastal villages with plenty to trade. Small, independent operation. That’s rare now. And it’s getting harder to do with everyone else teaming up.” He glanced up from Daniel’s arm to look at me, his eyes inquiring.

  “How did you get such a big ship? I guess these are becoming more common, too,” I said.

  Abran’s eyes flickered over me before returning to Daniel’s arm. He understood my other question.

  “I ran into some bad luck, then some good luck, and had expensive resources to trade. It got me extra wood and some good builders. Then I got a good crew that keeps us going.” Abran straightened and wiped his needle with the rag. “We don’t deal in the raider’s market.”

  From the kitchen, the sound of clanging pots, pouring water, and stoking of coals filled the cabin. The smell of cooking meat wafted past the curtain. Abran looked over at Pearl, quiet in the corner. “And what do you think of our ship?” he asked Pearl with the easy friendliness of someone accustomed to strangers.

  “It’s nice,” she said softly.

  Something in Pearl’s bag moved.

  “What’s in the bag?” Abran asked, sharpness edging his voice.

  “Snakes,” she said.

  Abran looked at me.

  “Pearl!” I gasped. “You packed your snakes? We could have packed the flour!” I looked at Abran. “I’m sorry. She beheads the poisonous ones, so those aren’t venomous. We can give them to you to eat.”

  “No!” Pearl said.

  “Pearl!”

  Abran gave me an uncertain grin. “We’ll speak about the rules of the ship later. We do have a rule about sharing everything.”

  An uneasy feeling came over me. I had heard of people being held on ships as slaves to repay debts. These people had rescued us, sheltered and fed us, and we’d be in their debt. “We’d like to be on our way as soon as possible,” I said. “How can we repay you?”

  “We can discuss that later,” Abran said, dabbing extra blood from Daniel’s arm with a wet rag. “For now, he needs rest. Swelling is normal, oozing isn’t. Come to me if you see any signs of infection.”

  Abran saw the concern on my face and reached out and gave my arm a squeeze. “It will be fine.” He clapped his hands together and pushed a lock of hair from his face. “Now, how about I give you a tour of the ship. That way you know your way around.” He smiled at me warmly and spread his hands wide in a welcoming gesture.

  He had an animated energy about him, a charisma that made me feel uneasy, and then I realized why. He reminded me of Jacob.

  Chapter 14

  Pearl wanted to stay with Daniel, so I left them in the poop cabin while Abran gave me a tour of the ship. Before we left the cabin, we peeked in on Marjan cooking chicken stew over hot coals, the smoke filling the cabin and billowing up through a giant hole in the ceiling.

  He showed me around the deck and we passed the goat’s pen and three large cisterns, their metal gleaming in the sunlight. I hoped Pearl could have some of the goat’s milk before we left the ship, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t want our debt to grow even larger.

  We climbed down the deck hatch to get into the hull, where we walked through the quarters, small rooms sectioned off with thin walls. The bathroom had a chamber pot and pitcher and basin. Across from the bathroom was a room with fishing supplies, and next to it was Abran’s room, the captain’s chambers. It was the size of a large closet, with a small cot along one wall and a small dresser. The largest room was the crew’s quarters, crammed with bunk beds and shelving for clothing and personal items. A man lay in a bottom bunk, groaning, the skin on his leg inflamed with a red rash.

  “John is ill,” Abran said quietly, and we exited the room.

  Crates were stacked in the back corner of the hull, with odds and ends spilling out: spare pieces of rope, wood, broken blocks and tackle. We walked into a storage room next to this and a man rooting through a box of small metal pieces jumped.

  “Thomas,” Abran said, “this is Myra. Thomas is our boatswain.”

  Thomas limped a few steps forward, favoring his right leg. He followed my eyes and said, “Broken ankle never healed right.” His skin was a deep brown and his black hair was shorn close to his head. He shook my hand and smiled.

  “I can’t find a metal eye for the flagpole,” Thomas told Abran.

  “I think there is an extra one in that crate,” Abran said, pointing.

  Thomas rummaged through the crate, pulled a metal eye from it, and left the storage room.

  I couldn’t keep my eyes off the crates of canned cabbage, bags of flour, sugar, salt, beans, and corn, and boxes of salted pork and tea piled on shelves. Buckets of water anchored the bottoms of the shelves. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live on a ship with so much food in reserve, so much variety. Not just fish with some flatbread, every day and night until you reached a trading post. It felt so safe, so calm, to stand in a room like this on a ship, with food carefully packaged and labeled.

  “A lot of food,” I said softly, fingering a can of cabbage.

  “We ration carefully and trade with reputable traders who give us a fair trade. Everyone here has a job and they do it well,” Abran said.

  Abran gestured that we move on and led me to the armory. Guns, knives, bombs, bows, arrows, and a few clubs filled the shelves. I turned and looked at Abran, waiting for him to say something.

  He shrugged. “Every ship needs to protect itself” was all he said.

  “Yes, but where’d you get all this? This many weapons, these days . . .” I trailed off into silence. These weapons were worth more than Bird. I stared at them, metal glinting in the dull light from the kerosene lamp Abran was holding.

  “I stole them,” Abran said.

  I looked up at him, waiting for him to go on.

  “Found a stash of weapons buried by a raider ship. A reserve stash. It was marked with a raider flag on the boxes, so I took it.”

  I paused, still watching him, considering his story. It was common for raiders to stash resources, especially expensive resources like weapons or medicine, in hidd
en locations so they could return to them if their ship was robbed. But what was uncommon was to find these hidden locations.

  “How’d you find it?” I asked.

  The ship creaked as it turned to the right, the floor tilting, the weapons clattering against one another on the shelves.

  “Luck,” Abran said. “Saw some raiders up the mountainside close to where I was living. They were rummaging around for a bit. I knew there was nothing up there to get their attention for so long—no water, no good hunting. So after they left I checked it out.”

  Abran smiled and tilted his head, a lock of black hair falling in his eyes. “I’ve gotten lucky a few times. Hopefully that luck will last me a bit longer.” He looked at me closely with a slight smile playing on his lips.

  “Where all have you sailed?” I asked.

  “Up past what was Alaska, and throughout the Caribbean and around the Andes. Now we’re searching for a place to settle.”

  “To settle? Why? When you have this kind of ship?”

  “Being on the water, it’s not permanent.” Abran hung the kerosene lamp from a hook in the ceiling. “We want a community. I want to build a community of people where certain values are upheld. Where everyone works, and everyone has a chance at a better life.”

  “And what place will that be?” I asked, trying to straighten a smirk from the corners of my mouth. I took a step back to lean against a shelf, the handle of a rifle digging into my shoulder blade.

  “I know I sound idealistic,” Abran said. “But you have to risk idealism to have hope.” He took a step closer to me and I felt a magnetic pull coming from him. He spread his hands in an open gesture, like he was trying to welcome me into some shared idea. “Besides, we aren’t meant to live on water.”

  “I don’t know if what we’re meant for really plays a role anymore.”

  Abran stopped and lifted the kerosene lamp from the hook. “We should go back to the deck. Check on Daniel.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mock. I’m just cynical, I suppose.”

  “You may think you have no beliefs or hopes, but you do. It’s better you be aware of them since you already have them,” Abran said, turning and leading the way out of the armory. We climbed up the ladder and onto the deck.

  “I understand your concerns,” Abran said. He walked to the gunwale and leaned against it, scanning the sea.

  “What concerns?”

  “Your . . . your hesitancy. Your reluctance to trust us. We aren’t looking to take anything from you. In fact, we are looking for a few more people to join our crew.”

  I was silent for a moment and then asked, “Why would you want us to join?”

  “Remember how I said everyone here has a job? Well, we have a need for someone who can fish. We had a fisher, but he, well, isn’t here anymore.” Abran seemed nervous and rushed on. “Like I said earlier, we’ve heard stories about you—about a mother and a daughter who always have good catches, even when other fishers come up dry. You have a reputation for being able to read the water.”

  That’s what Grandfather had called it. Reading the water. He told me that the water would tell me what it held, I only had to listen and respond. We’d look for a deep basin when ice-fishing for walleye in winter or drop lines near frogs when fishing for bass in summer. And when it was quiet, he’d tell me how to read the water on the ocean, too, remembering his days of fishing off the banks of Alaska. Nebraska, he’d always say, had been an ocean, and it was easy to believe with only wind and sky and waves of grass in all directions. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still homesick for the sea. When the water came to Nebraska, he’d stare out the window and murmur, “The seas fall away and they rise again.”

  I felt Abran’s eyes on me and lifted mine to meet his. A jolt of longing caught me by surprise. I wanted life on a ship like this. I wanted the bunks, the crates of food in the hull. But I thought of Row, alone in the Valley, and felt a second gravity on my bones, a resolute weight spreading through me.

  “So, you’ll think about it?” Abran asked, brushing his finger against my forearm to get my attention.

  Inwardly, I bristled. We knew nothing about who these people were. I knew Abran hadn’t told me the full truth of how he got all those weapons in the armory. But a part of me wondered if the risk of trusting them was worth it. I wondered if I could convince them to change course to the Valley. This kind of ship could handle northern seas. Already I was weeks behind schedule.

  “Yes,” I told him. “I’ll think on it.”

  Chapter 15

  Pearl shoveled the chicken stew into her mouth at supper. She raised her bowl, pouring the last bits into her mouth like water from a pitcher into a basin. The chicken stew had carrots and celery in it, and I hadn’t tasted either in at least two years. I tried to hide how famished I was by eating slowly, but I fooled no one. As soon as Pearl’s and my bowls were empty, Marjan held up the ladle and asked if we wanted more.

  “Yes,” Pearl said greedily, stew dripping off her chin.

  Marjan laughed and ladled more stew into her bowl. I wondered if they had food this good every night or only when they had guests to impress.

  We were sitting around the table in the poop cabin and I noticed a wood sign hanging above the door: a man’s character is his fate. I stifled a laugh.

  “Something funny?” Wayne asked.

  “You don’t think circumstance has anything to do with it?” I asked, pointing up at the sign.

  “Maybe we don’t always make our fate, but we decide how to meet our fate,” Abran said.

  “Or the gods decide our fate,” Marjan said, a small smile playing on her lips.

  Thomas and Wayne chuckled. It seemed to be an inside joke.

  “I’d love to know what they were thinking,” Thomas said shaking his head.

  “When the floods came?” I asked.

  “When they made us,” Thomas said.

  The room grew quiet, only the sounds of wooden spoons in clay bowls. After a few minutes Jessa started talking about repairing a crack in the mainmast, and then the conversation moved to what they needed at the next trading post. The conversation moved lightly, and I relaxed, watching their familiarity and ease. I felt a sense of warmth at that table, surrounded by the crew. I tilted my head, watching their hands move, their shoulders relax, their quick laughs and the occasional eye roll.

  They’re like a family, I thought. It wasn’t something I saw much anymore, this communal comfort. I’d been alone so long, it made me uncomfortable, and it also filled me with longing. I remembered evenings gathered around the candlelit table back home, dusk still sending a haze of light across us. How my mother would bring us bowls of oatmeal or baked potatoes. Jacob, Row, Grandfather, Mother, and I would joke about the weather, reminisce about years before, talk about tomorrow. And the light around us would die down and space would shrink to just the five of us, our voices flickering like the flame, going on into the night.

  I wondered how each of them had gotten here and what they had done before. What their secrets were and how well they kept them. What would happen if we did join them? I noticed Daniel was watching me as I watched the crew, his face troubled as though he could read my thoughts.

  “I know you’re considering joining them,” he said, his voice low so no one else could hear.

  “And?”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  Daniel just shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his injured arm crossed over his chest.

  The crew’s conversation moved to Thomas talking about an old friend who now lived in Harjo.

  “He admitted to trading with raiders. Says he can’t make it otherwise.” Thomas’s voice was soft and regretful. Thomas kept a sensitivity that reminded me of the previous world, a gentleness in his body that looked like trust.

  Wayne slammed his hand on the table, rocking our bowls and silencing everyone.

  “That’s bullshit. Total bullshit! Can’t make it otherwis
e? Might as well be slitting throats himself. Might as well be raping children—” Wayne pointed at Pearl and she stared at him wide eyed.

  “That’s enough,” Abran said, standing up, his hands on the table, glaring at Wayne.

  “No, it’s not,” Wayne said, shoving his chair backward so forcefully it toppled over. “Not even close.”

  Wayne strode out of the room, his shoulders so broad he could barely fit through the doorway without turning sideways, his hair grazing the doorframe.

  “Wayne lost his wife,” Abran said quietly, sitting back down.

  “Not just lost,” Jessa said. “Killed in front of him.”

  I didn’t ask by who. But I knew that Abran wasn’t lying when he said they didn’t trade on the raider’s market. Or if they did, most of the crew didn’t know about it.

  While we were cleaning up supper, Marjan left with a plate of food. When she came back into the cabin a few minutes later, she said something quietly to Abran.

  Abran closed his eyes and nodded.

  “John,” Thomas said, leaning forward and gripping the back of a chair. The crew went still and quiet, like the air had gone out of the room.

  Abran nodded again. “John passed this evening. We’ll do the sea burial tonight.”

  Abran walked over to me and tilted his head so I could hear him speak softly. “We were expecting this, but it’s still a blow.” Abran looked around at the crew. They seemed to move languidly, against a new gravity. “He was with us almost a year. He was a good seaman.”

  “I’m so sorry. What—”

  “Sepsis. Started as a localized infection on his foot. Cut it stepping on something.” Abran shook his head. “He was always about deck without shoes.”

  We all moved out onto the deck. The sun hung low and the sky grew overcast. Sedna’s flag now flapped in the wind, square gray fabric with a red sun in the middle. Seagulls’ calls fell and rose around us as Marjan wrapped John’s body in sailcloth. His mouth was twisted in a grimace, and I wondered how long he’d been in pain, if his face had forgotten other expressions. I could imagine him shaking with fever, heat coming off his body, his breath short and labored.