The Girl from Everywhere

by Heidi Heilig

Slate blanched, but he answered evenly. “That’s why we’ve got a new map.”

  “A new map . . . a new version.” I traced the line of the Tropic of Cancer. “A new wife?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it. The map where you met is the map where she died. A different map means a different version of her.” And of me, but I did not bother saying it. I doubted it would matter to him.

  He stood, arms crossed, drumming the fingers of his right hand on his left arm. “It’s the exact same place.”

  “So?” I opened one of the cupboards—the fairy-tale maps—and unrolled one at random. “Greece with gods on Mount Olympus, Slate. And here.” I pulled out the map right beneath it. “Two hundred years later, the next cartographer replaced Zeus with Jupiter. And then we have—” I opened another cupboard, the less-fanciful histories, and pawed through them. “Mount Olympus during the Ottoman Empire, where you’ll find brigands and highway robbers and no gods at all.” I let the map roll itself up. “Going back to the same place doesn’t mean you’ll find the same thing.”

  “It does if it’s the same time!”

  I smiled grimly as he started to pace. A perverse part of me was enjoying myself. “Remember where we found Kashmir? That French map of Persia in 1740, in the Vaadi Al-Maas, but here, a historical map of Nader Shah’s empire, 1740, look,” I said, pointing. “Same place, same time, but there’s no such city. The shoreline’s different. Do you think Kashmir exists there, somewhere in the middle of the Persian Gulf?”

  “Those are two completely different mapmakers. You can’t compare some Frenchman’s fantasy of Arabia to—”

  “Mitchell and Sutfin are two different mapmakers.”

  “But they were mapping the same version of Hawaii.”

  “Which version? My history? Or your fairy tale?”

  “It is not a fairy tale!”

  The volume of his voice brought me up short. His eyes were wild; I could see the whites all the way around, and suddenly none of it was amusing. “And if you succeed?” I said softly. “Then what?”

  “What do you mean, then what?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. In Sanskrit mythos, they say breath is life, and I didn’t want to give life to my fears; I didn’t want to say it aloud. Then what will happen to me?

  After our shouting, the silence rang in my ears. He took a deep breath, then another. “Then we all live happily ever after,” he said finally, calm once more. “You’ve done a lot of studying, Nix, and you know the maps, but I know what I believe, and that’s all that really matters.”

  My breath hitched in my throat to hear it stated so plainly. “Good to know how insignificant my thoughts are to you,” I said bitterly.

  “That’s not what I meant.” He reached out an uncertain hand, as though I was a bird in the bush. But he let the hand fall back to his lap, and cupped it in the other, squeezing until his knuckles cracked. “If I tell you a secret, will you feel better?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not twelve, Captain—”

  “It’s about Navigation.”

  That brought me up short, and my anger dissipated like mist under the sun. I had asked so many times; why now? Was it gratitude? Or guilt? Certainly it was the only gift I wanted from him. But it didn’t matter—I wasn’t about to question it. I found my voice. “What? What is it?”

  He turned back to his bed and stared for a moment at the plate he’d left there. Then he broke a piece of bread off the sandwich and put it into the caladrius’s cage. She cocked her head shyly on her slender neck before dipping it down, delicate and precise, to eat from his hand. A winch in my gut wound tighter, but I was afraid if I asked again, he’d change his mind. “Navigation is not just about the maps,” he said finally, as though to the bird. “Part of it is belief.”

  “Belief?” My mind was racing. “What do you mean?”

  He brushed the crumbs from his palms and sat back down on his bed. “I’ve never been able to get to a place I didn’t believe existed. Doubt can stop a map from working.”

  The edge of the Sutfin had started to curl; I ran my finger down the side. “So . . . you believe this map will work. That’s no secret.”

  “If belief affects whether a map works, I’d think belief also affects what you find there.”

  “You think, or you know?”

  “Fine, I know.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “I know she’ll be there, and I know everything will work out.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “It’s fate.” He looked at me—no, through me, as though just behind me was his future. “It’s inevitable.”

  I ground my teeth, feeling tricked. “This isn’t about Navigation, it’s about delusion.” Disappointment was bitter on my tongue, but he didn’t flinch in the face of my scorn. Another breeze purled through the room, and I shivered. “I suppose if you’re going to see Lin again, we might as well throw all that overboard.” I flicked my hand toward the box under the bed. “You know she would hate to see it.”

  His eyes refocused, and he met my stare with a steady gaze, but the silence stretched between us like a rope about to snap. Was that doubt? I turned my face so he wouldn’t see my expression, but when my eyes fell on the Sutfin map, my smug smile wilted. I wanted the map to fail, but why take joy in tormenting him? At heart, all he wanted was an escape, and that I understood—only too well. “Tell me more about Navigating,” I said then, too eagerly, breathless at the thought of freedom.

  Slate laughed a little. “Why should I?”

  “Because . . . because I asked.” He laughed again, louder, and I stiffened. “Please?”

  He did not answer me. He was so quiet I couldn’t even hear him breathing. Finally I faced him; he was watching me and his expression was serious. “Why, Nixie?” he asked again, but it was clear he already knew.

  Still, I did not answer. If I told him the truth—that I would leave him behind and never look back, that I longed to go anywhere and everywhere he was not—he would argue; worse, if I confirmed it, he would never teach me. “Because I helped you,” I said at last.

  He made a face. “We don’t strike bargains, Nixie, not between you and me. We don’t haggle over things.”

  I clenched my jaw. “I’ll try to remember that the next time you ask for money to buy a map.”

  “This is a good map, Nixie,” he said, stabbing another dumpling. “There won’t be a next time.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  I went back outside, leaving Slate to his dinner. There was no sign now of the party; the deck was clear for tomorrow. I leaned on the rail, staring without seeing at the cars moving along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The warmth of the day had long faded, and the night air was quite cool; the condensation gave the headlights halos.

  I pressed my thumb between my brows. I already regretted arguing with the captain. What had been the point? He was certain—or at least, he said he was—and nothing I could say would turn him from his tack.

  At least I’d gotten something out of it. It was a small thing—one bright minnow in a school—but the captain had always been tight-lipped about Navigation. Now I knew why. Had he finally discovered the map I’d taken? No . . . he could have guessed I’d want to strike out on my own someday. Besides, he didn’t know his collection well enough to notice one map missing.

  I’d tucked it away in my cabin, at the bottom of my sea chest, along with my entire life savings: six hundred and forty-two dollars, after today. The map was small, fragile, the color of tea: Carthage during Roman rule, 165 A.D. There, white salt, so cheap in modern America, could be traded for gold, or jewels. Or a small, fast ship of my own.

  Slate had so many maps of his past; why shouldn’t I have a map of my future? I couldn’t spend my life stuck on my father’s ship, tossed by his tempestuous moods, w
aiting for the day when he managed to steer us directly onto the rocky shore where his siren sang. I wanted my freedom, even though it likely meant never seeing the rest of the crew again. Once I knew how to Navigate, nothing could keep me aboard the Temptation.

  Then I heard bare feet on the deck behind me, and the silver sound of tiny ankle bells. “I like it when you don’t try to sneak up on me.”

  “I know,” Kash said, coming to stand beside me. “You’re up late.”

  “It’s my watch.”

  “Ah, well, then you won’t mind if I borrow your hammock?” He held up the bundled canvas and raised an eyebrow.

  I had a room, of course, belowdecks; we all did. There was plenty of room on the Temptation that on any other ship would be taken up by a larger crew, or a motor, or any number of things in any number of eras. Still, I preferred to sleep on deck on nice nights. My room was too empty to lend itself to easy dreams. This was in sharp contrast to the rest of the crew, who filled their rooms to bursting with relics or reminders of their lives before they’d come aboard: locks of hair and curved bull horns, baskets, bells, begging bowls. I hadn’t really had a life to bring with me.

  We strung the hammock between the mast and the rail. Kashmir bowed graciously. “After you?” He waited till I’d settled in, cross-legged, before climbing in to sit facing me. The hammock barely swung; he was a natural acrobat. The Englishman in Calcutta had never stood a chance of catching him.

  He must have seen it in my face—the admiration—and he put his hands behind his head, feigning a stretch, giving me a smug look. I rolled my eyes. “You’re blocking the view.”

  “I am the view, amira,” he said, framing himself with his hands—his crisp linen shirt, his careless hair—then laughed. After a moment, though, his humor faded a bit, as did mine. “I’m sorry you’ll miss your talk about Armenia.”

  “Well, thanks to you, I did have a chance to learn something interesting.” I pulled a newspaper clipping out of my pocket, an article from the paper he’d stolen for me. “ISLAND UN-DISCOVERED. Sandy Island . . . a little dot we have on an 1850s whaling map of Australia. Up until the other day, you could see it on Google maps too, but it didn’t come up on satellite view. A bunch of scientists tried to visit and they couldn’t find it, so Google erased it.”

  He frowned. “What happened to it?”

  “It might have been an atoll, finally covered by the sea. Or maybe it was a myth in someone’s cosmology. Either way, it’s gone now.”

  “Ah, well. Nothing lasts forever.”

  I kicked him, making the hammock sway. “That’s very glib. We have shelves full of maps of places that only used to exist. Everything unique is vanishing.”

  “The age of exploration is long over, amira. Now it’s the age of globalization. And once everyone agrees something is one way, all the other ways it could have been disappear.”

  I folded the slip of paper back into a neat little square, the ink smudging my fingers. “I wish we didn’t all have to agree.”

  “We don’t. You yourself are very disagreeable,” he said, still grinning. “Don’t worry, I still love you. Which reminds me—” He reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a slender silver chain upon which dangled a black pearl set like a bud between two leaves of filigreed silver. He held it up before my eyes like a hypnotist’s pendulum.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. Did you think your only gift from me would be a secondhand newspaper?”

  “It’s not like you paid for either of them.”

  “How do you know? I had all that money from the captain.”

  “Because I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “Doesn’t that depend on the map?” I rolled my eyes, and he laughed. “Come, amira! Yesterday you were glad I was a thief.”

  I folded my arms. “I know, but still.”

  “A compelling retort. Then again, if I weren’t a thief, we’d never have met.”

  “Good point,” I said, finally smiling. “Although maybe more for my side than yours.”

  Kashmir had come running to the Temptation, a skinny stowaway from a fantastical city in the Vaadi Al-Maas where snakes the size of the mainmast slithered through a carpet of diamonds the size of plums. I’d been on watch the night he’d clambered aboard and pressed behind the bulwark; he’d only had enough time to meet my eyes and put his finger to his lips before a troop of guards came trotting down the street in stiff formation, their shamshir glinting in the light of the sickle-shaped moon. When the captain of the guard glanced my way, I pointed down the street.

  I should have guessed Kashmir would become a nuisance. And a bad influence. But most importantly, a friend.

  And all in the last two years, in times and places I’d never have visited had my history been different. Slate himself had warned me, a few days after he’d learned about our newest crew member: “He wasn’t always here, and he won’t be here forever.” I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry at the memory. My father only had two years with Lin. Would it be worse to lose Kashmir, or never to have known him? For a moment, I pitied Slate as much as I resented him.

  The necklace blurred in my vision and I blinked rapidly. Then I held out my hand, and Kashmir dropped the pearl into it, the chain pooling like mercury in my palm. Who had he stolen it from? Did she know it’d been taken, or did she think it was only lost? It would soon join the rest of my growing collection: a gold bracelet, ruby earrings, even a thick platinum band too big to fit any of my fingers. I never wore the stuff, but Kash took any excuse to give me stolen jewelry. He didn’t seem to care that I didn’t enjoy acquiring it half so well as he did, and it tickled him to take theft day literally. “Thanks, Kash.”

  He waved my words away. “It’s nothing. Besides,” he added with a grimace and a nod toward the captain’s cabin. “I can see you’ve already got a seagull around your neck.”

  “The saying is ‘albatross.’” I sighed. “And this particular albatross is an inheritance from my mother. A family heirloom.”

  “Heavy burden to bear. Makes me glad I never had a family.”

  The breeze ran its fingers through my hair. I twisted my curls together and knotted them at the nape of my neck. “You didn’t leave anyone behind when you ran?”

  A secret smile in his eyes didn’t reach his lips. “No one who would miss me. Not like you, if you go.”

  I snorted. “You give the captain more credit than he deserves.”

  Now the smile appeared. “I wasn’t talking about him.” He winked outrageously; I laughed. Then Kash reached over to tuck an errant strand of hair behind my ear; the hammock swayed gently, or was it the ship? Behind us, the city sparkled with lights, reflected in the black water. “You’ve never been a little curious?” he said. “About where you’re from?”

  “I’m not from Hawaii. I was just born there. And even if I was curious, I wouldn’t want to be stuck there forever. There are so many other places to see.”

  “Well,” he said then, straightening. “Seeing as how you’re saving up to run away, shall I take that trinket to your room and throw it on the pile?” He held out his hand.

  His joke hit too close to home. “Who said anything about me running away?” But I thought again of my map of Rome and my little stack of bills, hidden at the bottom of my trunk—the first place anyone would look. I glared at him. “I wish you’d stay out of my room.”

  “That’s a funny joke, princess, when you’re talking to a thief.”

  I passed the necklace over. “Not a very good one, if you give away all your loot.”

  “I enjoy it too much to stop.”

  “Stealing jewelry from people in port?”

  “Bringing you treasures you care nothing for.” He spoke lightly, but his words were too flippant and behind his eyes was something I recognized: loneliness. The moment stretched.

  “I do,” I said finally. “I do care.” I looked at the necklace, glimmering in his palm, and saw it with new eyes: in all our scrambling for money
, I’d never once considered selling off the jewelry he’d stolen for me. “Here.” I bowed my head and lifted my hair out of the way. Kashmir hesitated before he leaned in, his nimble hands darting around my throat and attaching the clasp at the nape of my neck. His breath smelled of cloves, and his fingers were warm.

  I bit my lip, trying to remember the Farsi phrase I’d found in an Iranian guidebook and tucked away in my head for a moment like this. “Takashor.”

  He laughed, showing his white teeth. “Tashakor,” he repeated.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I pursed my lips. “All right. Let me try again. Thank you, my friend,” I reiterated, this time in my own language. I put my hand to the pearl. “It’s beautiful.”

  “As are you, amira,” he said, putting his hand over mine, and we both smiled like it didn’t mean anything.

  The next morning, we left the harbor and returned down the Hudson, our sails glowing like paper lanterns in the sun. We passed the buoys at the mouth of the river and skimmed the foamy waves of the green Atlantic as my fears approached and circled like sharks.

  Not a cloud marred the sky and the horizon was clear; soon the coast of Long Island was a distant rim on a bowl of mazarine blue. Bee had her hand lightly on the wheel, and Rotgut sat in the crow’s nest, his feet swinging like a child’s in a big chair. I leaned over the rail at the bow, tugging at the pearl of my necklace. The captain was still in his cabin, but Kashmir was trimming the sails.

  “A little help, amira?”

  Side by side, we cleared the deck, as we did before any Navigation . . . or attempted Navigation. As I worked, it was easy to forget, but after we finished securing the boom, we had nothing left to do but wait.

  I stood in the meager shade of the mast. The wind from the south toyed with my hair and made the sea shimmer. It was foolish to worry, I told myself. The map wouldn’t work. No matter what my father believed.

  Then the door to the captain’s cabin creaked open, and he emerged. I stood up straight as Bee stepped aside and Slate took the wheel, staring out over the bow. I stared too, watching for fog and seeing none. My hand returned to the pearl at my throat.