by Geoff Rodkey
We were all headed for bed when we started hearing gunfire from the direction of Port Scratch. Venus got panicky and ran out to the porch, where Dad had settled in with a bottle of rum.
“Is it Cartagers?! Are they coming to eat us after all?”
Dad cocked his head and listened. “Nah. No invasion, that—it’s a party.”
“A party? For true? Can we go?”
“Nah, girlie. Pirate party’s no fun for them’s not pirates.”
For a week afterward, several times a day Venus would stop whatever she was doing, let out a happy little sigh, and declare, “I’m sooooo glad the Short-Ears didn’t come and eat us.”
“Wouldn’t a’ minded feedin’ ’em Egbert,” Adonis would chime in. Then he’d cackle—no matter how many times he said it, it never stopped being funny to him—and take another swing at me.
BY THE TIME the war ended, we were half starved—and in my case, it wasn’t just for food. I’d worked up a taste for reading from Mr. Sutch’s primers, but they’d all disappeared with him, and Principles of Citrus Cultivation was starting to get pretty tiresome, especially considering that it didn’t have much of a story, and I’d read it so many times I could recite big chunks with my eyes closed.
“What ye always readin’ that book fer?” Dad asked me once.
“It’s the only one we’ve got,” I said.
He just scowled at that, but it must have stuck with him, because when the cargo ships started running again and he sent out a flyer for a new tutor, he wrote “MUST ONE BOOKS” in big block letters at the bottom of it. I secretly fretted over his spelling, but I didn’t dare correct it—and I guess it got the point across, because when Percy finally showed up, he brought almost a wagonload of books with him.
I can still remember the first time I saw Percy and his books lurching up toward the house on top of one of the fruit wagons, the horses all lathered from the effort and Percy’s massive belly jiggling at every bump. I practically fainted with joy—I’d never seen so many books, and I instantly knew the man who’d brought them to us was going to be the most important person in my life: a teacher, friend, and savior all rolled into one big, fat, sweaty package.
It turned out I was dead wrong about Percy, except for the fat and sweaty part. As horrible people go, he was miles ahead of Venus and could practically outdo Adonis.
When he first arrived, though, we all thought he was some kind of genius. Not just because he had so many books (which we assumed he must have read), but because he acted like a genius would—all scornful and disgusted with how ignorant we were, and capable of tossing around all manner of facts, seemingly off the top of his head.
Percy could tell you everything from where the wind came from (a giant hole in the sky, somewhere west of the New Lands), to why seawater was salty (fish poop), to whether you could multiply fractions together (you couldn’t, and if you tried, they’d break). And he spouted his knowledge constantly—that is, during the half hour a day when Dad was within earshot. The rest of the time, he napped. Unless he was eating, which he did so often that Quint took to hiding our pantry food in sacks out behind the woodpile. Sometimes, the rats got into them, but even when they did, they left more for us than Percy.
Percy sussed out pretty quickly how things stood in our house—that Dad wanted us educated but wasn’t too clear himself on what that meant—so he struck a deal with Venus and Adonis that they’d pretend to learn while he pretended to teach them, and whatever else they did with their time was fine by him, so long as they left him alone.
At first, he ignored me and could’ve cared less whether I read his books. So I dug into them, and it didn’t take long before I learned enough to realize Percy was a complete fraud, and none of his facts made a lick of sense.
After that, he did his best to keep me away from the books for a while—mostly with a stick, which he could swing pretty fast considering how lazy he was—but the situation was no good for either of us, because it meant I couldn’t read and he couldn’t nap. So eventually, we struck a deal of our own: he’d let me read the books as long as I kept my mouth shut about what was in them and didn’t let on to Dad that Percy was a fake.
It was fine by me, because even though I hated Percy’s guts, I figured if he left, he’d take his books with him. And I really loved his books. There were a hundred and thirty-seven of them, and eventually I read them all at least once, even the terrible ones.
The things I learned from them staggered me—and not just the immediately helpful stuff, like the eating habits of horses (no meat, especially human meat, even if it’s ground up) or the real reason seawater is salty (I forget, but it’s definitely not fish poop). For the first time in my life, I realized there were whole other worlds beyond mine. On the Continent alone, there were cities, and countries, and kings, and castles, all going back a thousand years or more.
And not only did Deadweather turn out to be just a ragged little flyspeck in the Blue Sea a couple hundred miles east of the vast wilderness of the New Lands, but even Sunrise Island—a place that had always seemed, during the twice-yearly trips we took there for holidays and shopping, like the rich and bustling center of the universe—only appeared in Geography of the World as an afterthought at the very bottom edge of the Fish Islands map, and wasn’t mentioned at all in A New History of the Rovian Kingdom and Territories.
Once I started to learn about the larger world, I’d lie awake at night in my little windowless room off the kitchen, and imagine what it would be like to be part of it somehow—to live a life that mattered, to be and to do things worth reading about in books.
But I never thought for a moment it was possible. I wasn’t highborn, or rich, or brave, or strong, or even smart—none of those things that made the characters in the novels and the people in the history books so special.
I knew the world was out there. I just didn’t see a place for myself in it. And even if there might be, I had no idea how to go about finding it.
It never occurred to me that the world might come find me—and that without my lifting a finger to make it happen, one day my life would change, completely and forever.
But it did. And this is the story of it.
LEAVING
It started with the look on Dad’s face. I was in the backyard, reading a book in the little sliver of afternoon shade behind the woodpile. I’d just finished splitting logs for Quint’s cooking fire, and I wanted to steal a few minutes of quiet before taking the firewood back to the house.
Dad had gone up the hill to clean the cannon on Rotting Bluff, and I didn’t expect him back until evening. So when I looked up and saw him coming, I got a quick jolt of fear that he was going to crack me one for slacking off.
He did that a lot. But I didn’t hold it against him like I did Adonis, because unlike my brother, Dad didn’t seem to take much pleasure from whacking me—he just wanted to get the point across that there was work to do and I wasn’t doing it. And he never stopped working himself, except every once in a while just before sundown, when he’d sit for a few minutes alone on the back porch, staring at the threads of smoke curling up from the volcano and looking sad. It was an aching, heartbroken kind of sad, and it made me feel awful, because I knew without asking he was thinking about our mother.
Most of the time, though, he didn’t look sad—just grim and determined as he went about his work. And when he’d catch me doing something I shouldn’t—like sitting and reading in the middle of the day, beside a pile of wood that needed carrying—his eyes would flash with anger, and then the cracking would come.
But this time, there was no flash of anger. He wasn’t even looking at me—or at anything, really. His eyes held a puzzled, faraway look, like he’d forgotten something and was trying to remember where he’d put it.
I’d already stuffed the book halfway inside the back of my pants and was hurriedly gathering the wood in my arms when he stopped a few feet away and fixed his eyes on me for the first time.
“’Ey—got paper in there?” he asked, nodding at the book.
Coming from Dad, it was an odd question. Other than the accounting ledgers he muttered over sometimes at the long table in the den, he didn’t have much use for paper, let alone books.
“What, in the book?”
“Yeh. Loose-like. Fer writin’ on.” He raised one of his big, rough hands and jiggled it awkwardly in the air with his fingers and thumb pinched together, like he was pretending to write something.
“Only just the book pages,” I said. “I could tear some out.”
He shook his head. “Percy’s got paper, yeh? Fer lessons and such?”
“He’s got parchment. It’s in the den.”
He started for the house, disappearing inside so fast that I’d barely reached the porch with the wood when he popped back out again, a sheet of parchment in one hand and a charcoal pencil in the other. Without a word, he brushed past me and headed back up the mountain.
Back inside, Percy was emerging from the den, rubbing his sleep-swollen eyes. He glowered at me, like it was my fault Dad had interrupted his afternoon nap.
“What the blaze does your father want with a pencil?”
THE SUN HAD SET and we were all sitting at the dining table, eating Quint’s stew, when Dad finally came back. The pencil and parchment were gone, but the puzzled look was still there. He walked past us without a sound, went to the stove, and ladled out a bowl of stew. He ate a few spoonfuls of it, leaning against the counter and staring off into space as we all watched him curiously.
“Daddy?” Venus called to him in her whiniest voice, as she twirled a lock of her dark, stringy hair around her finger. “Are you thinking about the pony?”
A while back, I’d made the mistake of telling my sister that one of Percy’s novels (The Crisps of Upper Mattox, which was mostly lousy except for a couple of good fight scenes and a carriage race) had a girl in it who married a prince. Venus ran squealing for the book, and while she never actually read it herself, she somehow wheedled Quint into reading it out loud to her before bed. The only details that stuck with her were that the girl in question was rich and owned a pony. Venus decided the pony was key to the whole thing—if she could get her hands on one, she’d automatically be rich, and once she was rich, the whole prince-marrying business would take care of itself.
So for the past six months, she’d been asking Dad several times a day to buy her a pony. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he didn’t smack her one and put a stop to it.
“Egbert give ye trouble? Want me to set ’im straight?” Adonis held up a fist and cocked it in my direction. I shifted in my chair, ready to dodge the blow if necessary.
Dad ignored them both. He ate another spoonful of stew, then set the bowl down and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He scratched his chin a couple of times through his beard in a thoughtful sort of way, then announced, “Lay out yer finest. Headed to Sunrise at first light.”
I COULD BARELY SLEEP that night. Partly because I was so excited about the trip—visits to Sunrise Island were rare and wonderful, and we’d never gone there on a nonholiday before. And partly because the next day was my thirteenth birthday, and for the first time I could remember, I was going to spend a birthday doing something besides trudging up the far side of the volcano with my family to pay our respects at my mother’s grave.
But mostly I couldn’t sleep because Adonis kept busting into my room to hit me with a stick.
This wasn’t a coincidence—he was trying to make me so tired I’d oversleep, because he knew if I did, Dad would leave me behind. It had worked once before and almost worked two other times. Of course, to do it he had to stay up half the night himself, which left him so tired he was always groggy and surly the next day. You’d think that would spoil his own trip to Sunrise, but I guess for Adonis, it was worth it.
It almost worked this time, too. The moment I opened my eyes, I could tell from the heat and the heaviness of the air that dawn had already broken. Panicking, I sprang out of bed and ran smack into the wall because I’d forgotten that I’d turned my bed sideways in the middle of the night to barricade the door.
Once I got my bearings, I managed to get the bed out of the way so I could open the door and let in enough light to see. Then I found my best, most itchy shirt and put it on as I ran for the kitchen.
No one was there except Quint. He was standing on top of the counter—Quint didn’t have legs, just a couple of stumps where his upper thighs should have been, so he spent most of his time standing on top of things—and prying the last of his breakfast biscuits out of an iron tray. I could tell the biscuit had set up pretty hard from the way the thick muscles on his arm had to flex to rip it loose.
“Best ye hurry,” he said, tossing me the biscuit. “Yer dad already went up to get his boots on.”
I knew if I wasn’t sitting in the carriage all ready to go the moment Dad came out of the house, he’d smack me one for slowing us down, so I busted out the front door at full speed, trying to work my jaws over the biscuit without cracking a tooth as I went.
The carriage was parked out front, its door wide open. Percy was standing just behind it, tying up the back of Venus’s dress for her, and Stumpy—the field pirate who drives for us, and who in spite of his name actually has more of his legs left than Quint—was already up on the front seat holding the reins.
I waved to Stumpy as I jumped onto the side runner and launched myself through the open door into the backseat.
Then Adonis punched me in the mouth, launching me right back out again.
Even before I landed on my back in the dirt, I was cursing myself for not having seen that coming. The biscuit rolled away, bouncing a couple times before coming to a stop near Percy’s foot.
As Adonis hawed like a donkey inside the carriage, Percy bent himself over with a grunt, somehow managing to reach past his belly and pick up my biscuit without falling over. He dusted off the dirt and crunched it down as Venus wrinkled her nose at me.
“Egbert! You filthed up your best shirt! Daddy’s going to smack you for that.”
I opened my mouth to answer and tasted blood. As my sister stepped over me into the carriage, I put my hand to my lip and found a pretty good cut. It was either from Adonis’s fist or a shard of biscuit. I wasn’t sure which.
“Bleed down the front, he’ll smack you twice.” Percy stood over me as he said this, and little wet gobs of my stolen breakfast sprayed from his lips onto my forehead. Then he turned, blotting out the sky over my head with his big wide butt until he squeezed himself through the carriage door and into the seat next to Venus.
I had just enough time to wipe the blood with my handkerchief, dust off as best I could, and take the seat next to Adonis before Dad showed up on the porch.
He was in his best coat—the blue velvet one with the tails—and the bulges on either hip meant he’d strapped on his pistol belt, too.
That was another sign, not like we needed any, that this was an unusual trip. When we went to Sunrise Island for holidays, he always wore the coat. When he had business to do, either there or down in Port Scratch, he wore the pistols. I’d never seen him wear both at once.
As I chewed this over—why get all dressed up to shoot somebody?—Percy pulled the door shut, and the carriage shuddered as Dad swung himself up onto the front seat. Then Stumpy must have reined the horses, because we lurched forward, pulling away from the only home I’d ever had.
If I’d known then how long it’d be until I saw it again, I might have turned for another look—at the two upstairs windows, peering out from under the eaves like the eyes of some fat, sleepy giant, and the big wraparound porch with the shark’s jaws mounted over the door. It’s funny, but I wound up missing those jaws over the days to come. They made me feel safe, I think. You just knew no one was going to come after you in a house with teeth like that. No one from the outside, anyway.
The road from the house took us through the lower orchard. The ugly fruit t
rees were fogged in pretty heavy, and as we bounced down the hill, a few pirates drifted out of the haze to watch us pass. In the misty half-light, they looked like silhouettes of ripped-up paper dolls—half a leg missing here, most of an arm there, a hunk of one skull gone.
The one missing a hunk of skull was Mung. Seeing me in the carriage window as we passed, he gave me a little wink, and I managed a kind of two-fingered wave back without the others noticing and giving me trouble. Mung had worked for Dad forever, couldn’t talk (probably because of his missing slice of brain), and was nicer to me than anybody. When I was little, we played catch. We’d toss an ugly fruit back and forth, pretending it was a ball, until one day Dad caught us doing it and smacked us both for wasting time. That pretty much turned us both off sports, but I still liked Mung a lot.
Percy, jolted into action by a nasty bump in the road, announced, “Time for lessons, children.”
Adonis rolled his eyes, and Venus pushed out her bottom lip in a pout. “But, Percy! We’re traveling.”
“Nonsense. Learning never stops, not for travel, not for nothing.”
He said it with a straight face, even though we all knew the “learning” was just for Dad’s benefit, in case he was listening from up in front.
“Now tell me: what makes fog?”
No one answered.
“No? Nobody? Very well. I’ll tell you.” Percy raised a stubby finger, then paused dramatically. He always did that when he answered his own questions. To anyone who didn’t know him, the pause made it seem like he was emphasizing how important the lesson was. But the truth was he needed the pause to give himself time to make up an answer.
“Volcanic activity. The same forces that make the volcano smoke… seep up from the ground in the night, and—”
