A Crack in the Sea

by H. M. Bouwman

  “No,” Caesar said. “That’s part of why the Raft King was okay with getting rid of me. My gift wasn’t exactly what he wanted. I just walk. The fish don’t talk with me.”

  Kinchen nodded. Maybe Caesar could go out into storms (whatever that meant), but it hadn’t been enough. The Raft King had wanted Pip instead.

  She continued the tour. “Our house is ahead.” She gestured to a small cabin just visible above them, at the base of a steep hill—almost a mountain, really. “In the cliff behind our house are a bunch of caves. There’s a story that the founder of Raftworld came to Tathenn once and lived in one of those caves, with her puppy . . .” But she’d forgotten the rest of the story. She wasn’t very good with history.

  Though Caesar had been drooping, now her hungry face came to life. “You mean Venus lived here? That’s amazing!” She studied the mountain as if she could pick out the cave Raftworld’s founder had lived in. “You’ll have to show me her home. Tomorrow?”

  Kinchen laughed. “No one knows where the cave is. Anyway, it might not even be real. Just a story.”

  Just then, away up the hill, Old Ren stepped into the doorframe of the cabin. He straightened his back with one hand and waved to them with the other. Kinchen sighed with relief. Ren was up and moving around. He was feeling better.

  Caesar gasped. “Who’s THAT?”

  Kinchen waved and walked faster. “Old Ren. We live with him.”

  “He looks so creaky. He’s the ancientest person I’ve ever seen.”

  Kinchen squinted. Ren certainly was old, with his long white hair and hunched back. Sometimes she didn’t notice exactly how old; other times—like when he was sick—she studied his wrinkled face and his gnarled hands and how slow he moved, and she worried.

  “And he’s so pale. He looks like bones. Like all his color is drained out of him. What’s wrong with him?”

  “That’s just the way he is,” said Kinchen stiffly. “He said he’s always been white-skinned. He said he’s a throwback to the English who crashed here a couple hundred years ago.”

  Caesar wrinkled her nose in confusion. “You mean he’s two hundred years old?”

  Kinchen frowned at those dark brown eyes. How could Caesar possibly be twelve? She was such a baby. “That would be crazy, wouldn’t it? He looks like the English. That’s what I’m saying.” They passed through the raspberry brambles—Kinchen lifted a particularly long branch off the path so that they could pass through—and stepped into the yard in front of the house. “You’re out of bed,” she said to Old Ren. She meant more with those words than she could say.

  “And well.” He winked at her and lifted his pale face to the sunshine.

  Kinchen gestured to the girl beside her. “This is Caesar. From Raftworld. This is my adopted grandfather, Ren.”

  They nodded to each other, and then Kinchen said, “It’s about Pip.”

  He said, “I already know. Prissy came out late last night. She was stirred up about it all. Upset for you. But we’ll fix it.” Then to Caesar he said, “So you must be the trade in the big sack?”

  “Clockwork trade,” said Kinchen, before Caesar could answer. “That’s what I thought she was, anyway, until the sack moved.”

  “How’d you know about me?” Caesar asked.

  “Prissy read the note.” Ren grinned, looking almost like his healthy self. “Did you meet her? The cook? She’s terrifying if she isn’t on your side. The governor will not be eating well for a long time.”

  They weren’t talking about what was important. “How are we going to fix it?” asked Kinchen. “Pip.”

  “We’ll walk to town later today and row over to Raftworld.” He stretched his back, groaning a little. “You’ll row.”

  He didn’t know yet—not all of it. Kinchen said, “Raftworld left late last night. With Pip.”

  Ren’s grin dropped off his face. “Ah.” He leaned back against the doorframe as if he’d suddenly deflated. “I—was not aware of that.”

  “No one knew until this morning, when they weren’t there anymore.”

  He nodded his head slowly, thinking. “Well. Now I need to sit down. And we’ll discuss this. Make plans.”

  • • •

  INSIDE, KINCHEN set the pot on the stove for tea and rummaged in the cupboard for food. There wasn’t much. There never was; they generally had enough, but no more than that. She found some raspberries in a bowl, and then Ren said, sitting heavily on a cushion on the floor, “Prissy brought us some stew. It’s on the back hotplate.” And sure enough, in a sealed pot on the back of the stove, cold vegetables sat in a thick brown sauce. Kinchen lit the burner.

  Caesar put her hands on her hips. “For your reference from now on: I don’t want to be known as the clockwork trade. Maybe we can come up with some new way to introduce me to all your friends. How about . . .” She trailed off, thinking. “The Astounding . . . The Amazing . . .”

  “We’ll come up with something.” Ren’s craggy face assembled into a half smile—but not the grin of earlier. He gripped Kinchen’s shoulder as she leaned past him to place bowls on the table. “We’ll come up with something.” And his words were a promise that made her feel just a little better.

  At supper, Caesar ate more than half of the stew. Maybe, Kinchen thought, she was so small because she was half starved. The way she was inhaling food, she’d take care of that problem quickly enough.

  “I need to find a job,” said Caesar finally, licking off her spoon. “Where can I look for work?”

  Ren sat back on his cushion. “What?”

  “I live on Tathenn now. And I don’t have any relatives to take care of me. So I need a job.” She clattered her spoon to the table, lifted her bowl and licked it clean. “The sooner the better, right? Might as well settle in. Is there any dessert?”

  Ren motioned to the cupboard, and Kinchen brought out the raspberries. Caesar took a handful and popped several berries into her mouth.

  It was like she wasn’t even concerned about Pip. Kinchen took the spoons and bowls to the sink, setting them down just a little harder than she meant to. “I need to find Pip. I was hoping you’d care enough to help.”

  “Kinchen,” said Ren. His voice had a warning in it.

  Caesar sat up straight. “Of course I care.”

  “Tell me how I can find Raftworld.”

  Caesar ate the rest of the berries in her hand, all in one bite, then answered with her mouth full. “You can’t.”

  Before Kinchen could protest, Caesar swallowed and amended her statement. “Not by yourself, anyway.” She tapped her chest and took another handful of berries.

  “You’ll help me find Raftworld? Can you find it?”

  She shrugged. “I can try. I’ll help you look, and you’re more likely to find it with me than without me. I do have an amazing gift with the sea, after all.”

  At least Pip didn’t brag about his magic all the time. “You use the word amazing an awful lot.”

  “Of course.”

  “I can help,” said Old Ren quietly. “I can help you find Raftworld.” They turned to him, Caesar bright-faced and Kinchen in surprise. Kinchen knew Ren had some magical gifts—though he always claimed his were shallow, weak things compared to Pip’s gift (and apparently Caesar’s). Kinchen didn’t see how her grandfather could locate Pip. She’d thought Ren’s main talent was being really, really old.

  “You can find Raftworld? How?”

  “I have a friend—I think he can take you there. Or at least partway there.” He narrowed his eyes at Caesar as if he were studying her. “If my friend can take you close and point you in the right direction, you can go the rest of the way, yes?”

  She nodded, grinning. “Sounds like you have good magic.”

  “And so do you,” Ren said. “My gifts are small, but I have several. One is that I can sometimes see gifts in
others.” He stood to make the tea.

  “That’s why he adopted us,” said Kinchen. “He could see that Pip had gifts, too.” She hadn’t meant to say it; the words just popped out.

  Ren frowned down at her. “How can you think that? I adopted you because you needed me, and it seemed to be my job to take you in. And because I loved you immediately.”

  She could feel herself flushing. Ren rarely talked about love. She muttered, quickly, “I love you, too.” Then she cleared her throat. “But you could see that Pip had gifts.”

  He nodded. “I could. But that’s not why I adopted you.” Then he said to Caesar, “If you have a gift for the sea, and the Raft King wants someone with a gift for the sea, why didn’t he keep you?”

  “My gift wasn’t exactly what he wanted. And I wouldn’t help. Anyway, I thought I might as well come here as stay there.” Her last sentence trailed off just a little, and Caesar finished the raspberries in silence. Ren strained the tea.

  Kinchen sat and thought. It seemed like everyone had gifts except her. She knew that in truth, magical gifts were extremely rare and only a few people on the Islands had any gift at all. But it didn’t feel that way. She’d been living all her remembered life with two people who had magic—and now a third, and she the only one without.

  “Here’s what I want to know,” said Ren, returning to the table with the mugs and setting them down before Caesar. “What does the Raft King want with our Pip? And if we find him, can we bring him back home?”

  “I don’t know about the second question,” said Caesar. “But I know the first. He wants to find a doorway. And he thinks Pip can find it.”

  “Why Pip?” said Kinchen.

  “What kind of doorway?” said Ren. He began to pour the tea.

  “Pip can talk to fish, yes? Well, the Raft King thinks the fish know how to get to the doorway. He says there’s something—like a gate, or a portal—and the fish can find it.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why he thinks the fish know anything.”

  Ren nodded slowly like that idea made sense. He poured a second mug of tea and tilted the teapot over the third cup.

  Caesar continued. “And he wants to find the doorway because he wants to go through it. Into the first world.”

  Ren dropped the teapot.

  It fell only a few inches, onto the table, and it didn’t break. But hot liquid sloshed all over, and Kinchen jerked back to avoid getting spattered. “I’m sorry, child,” he said mildly, and he took a towel and wiped the table.

  The two girls watched.

  “Pip was stolen,” said Ren, as if he’d never dropped the teapot. “I can’t go across the globe after him—I’m still recovering from being ill. You girls should find Raftworld and Pip.” He turned to Caesar. “Maybe, also, you can return to your own country if you like, and not be forced to find a job here.” His mouth twisted in a half smile.

  Caesar smiled back, a real smile—not her flashing-like-water grin but an open and lingering happiness. She had a nice smile, thought Kinchen, full-lipped and crinkly at the edges. Her thin face and high cheekbones seemed to rearrange into something lean and warm rather than starved and pinched. Her eyes glowed in her dark clear skin like twin planets.

  “So. How do we do it?” Caesar rubbed her hands together. “And is there any more food?”

  • • •

  “WHAT FRIEND?” Kinchen asked Old Ren, when it seemed like Caesar was filling up—and slowing down. “What friend of yours can help us?” Kinchen didn’t know Ren had any friends. There were the schoolteacher and a few others who visited them once in a while. But not friends. Not people who could drop their lives to transport you somehow to Raftworld, or at least near enough to it for you to get the rest of the way yourself.

  Ren studied his now-empty mug, his face more lined than ever. Then he looked up and smiled at Kinchen. “Believe it or not, he’s older than I am.”

  She felt her eyes narrow. There was no one older than Ren. Surely.

  “Let’s go meet this man,” said Caesar. She’d finished the last crumbs of the goat cheese and crackers Kinchen had brought out after the raspberries, and she leaned back on her cushion and patted her stomach. “I could still eat,” she mused to herself.

  “Yes, let’s go,” said Kinchen. There was no fresh food left in the house.

  “We’ll not find my friend until dusk,” said Old Ren. “But it might be good to think until then.”

  “Think?” asked Caesar. “About what?”

  Kinchen rolled her eyes. “About how to save Pip. About a plan.”

  “About history,” said Ren. “It might be good to remember certain things—to help us understand why the Raft King wants Pip in the first place. And to help you to stop him from making . . . a rash mistake. And to remember how Raftworld came to be, and why our countries are friends.”

  “We’re friends because we have to be,” Kinchen said. “Because there aren’t any other people here.”

  “There’s pirates,” said Caesar. She was perking up again.

  “There aren’t any pirates,” said Kinchen. She turned toward Old Ren. “Why do we need to remember the history of Raftworld? And why rash mistake?”

  “I know the history,” Caesar said proudly. “Our storyteller on Raftworld tells us about it all the time.” She closed her eyes and recited. “We escaped from the first world because the English were trying to enslave us and send us to our deaths on plantations. Almost two hundred years ago. We stepped through to the second world when we escaped—by accident, in a storm—and we’ve been trying to find our way home ever since. For almost two hundred years. Looking for Africa, where we will settle and find our families back.” She shrugged. “That’s why we live on the rafts, because we haven’t found our home.”

  “Is there actually an Africa?” asked Kinchen. “Maybe it’s just a story.”

  “Just because it’s a story doesn’t mean it isn’t real,” said Ren.

  “Of course it’s real. That’s where Venus came from,” said Caesar. “The one who lived in the caves nearby, with her puppy, like you told me.”

  Ren smiled as if he could picture the puppy. “Yes, her dog. She called him Tricky, because he could wiggle into any cozy spot no matter how small.”

  “I never heard that bit before,” said Caesar. “About the puppy’s name.” Kinchen shook her head; she hadn’t either.

  Ren shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s an important detail,” he said. “Except to the dog. But come, let’s sit outside in the breeze, and I’ll tell you a story.”

  Caesar clapped her hands and jumped up.

  Kinchen groaned. “A story? Shouldn’t we be—I don’t know—packing or something? So that we can take off as soon as we meet up with your friend?”

  “A story,” said Ren.

  9

  THIS IS THE STORY Old Ren told:

  It is two hundred years ago, almost exactly: summer 1775, and we are in the Bight of Benin, on the west coast of Africa. We are standing on the shore—or near enough, in the brush right before the sand begins. We will call this tale “What Old Man Caesar Found There.” Because to understand what came after, we have to start at the beginning, with what he found and how he found it.

  This was the day he found his children, his twins.

  He was gathering wood, Old Caesar was, on the shore. And he glanced up at the sea, as people do who live near water, just to check on it now and then. And when he glanced up, he saw them: two children, a boy and a girl, neck deep in the water, faces toward shore. As he watched, these two—just entering the lanky years between toddlerhood and puberty—walked up from the water. They were holding hands. They were naked. The waves did not jar them, nor did they shiver in the breeze. They moved upright as pillars and almost as slow. They were walking from the water, as if they’d been born there.

  Old Caesar, the man who would beco
me their uncle, watched them from the trees. He watched, slack-jawed, as they waded shallower and shallower. No Guinea boat in sight; no slave ship on the horizon. But he knew somehow, immediately, what they were. What they meant. Caesar hadn’t known there were any more people like him. He let fall his bundle of sticks and stared until the children reached the wet sand, where they both dropped, slow as leaves, to their knees. Their fingers still entwined, these two little pilgrims. Couldn’t be more than six or seven, and no family left in this world. None free, anyway. Of that you could be sure.

  Their faces thin and hungry. And they’d be half dead from their long walk.

  Old Caesar decided the way he always decided things: quick and sharp. He strode out of the trees to them, took their free hands, pulled them to standing, and brought them home. He fed them and clothed them. They became his adopted children, and he called the girl (who would become Venus) Water-Drinker, and the boy he called Swimmer—to allude to their gifts without giving them away. The gifts were kept secret, as most strong gifts probably should be.

  • • •

  “MORE,” SAID CAESAR, leaning forward. Kinchen listened grudgingly. Both girls had heard this story before.

  • • •

  THEY WERE LIKE NEWBORNS, these two. Swimmer and Water-Drinker, boy and girl, brother and sister. They didn’t talk, not for the whole first week. They didn’t do anything of their own volition. Old Caesar fed them by hand, cut the meat small for them and mashed the pumpkin like they were babies. The boy slept whenever he wasn’t eating. The girl stared. At the walls, at the floor, at her new uncle Caesar’s chin or hands or feet (but never his eyes), her face vacant and unfocused.

  Old Caesar thought maybe they were addled. Maybe they’d always been addled (though clearly with gifts), or maybe their dip in the ocean had unfixed some crucial gears in their heads. When he’d worked on the slavers—before he’d stolen himself back, before he’d taken his own long walk to freedom—he’d once seen a broken sextant scatter itself on the deck, and he imagined the children’s heads filled with little brass screws and fittings, and he not skilled enough to repair.