A Crack in the Sea

by H. M. Bouwman

  Then the captain—or the people acting for him in his illness—put a scheme in motion, a strategy to save his employers’ investment even though the property were lost. A plot to collect the insurance money. A ghastly design.

  • • •

  VENUS WAS not the only captive woman who understood English, but two of the five others were dead, and the last three were too sick to comprehend anything when the captain and Mr. Stubbs came in and discussed throwing them overboard. She shifted her head to hear them and cracked her eyes open in the gloom.

  The captain’s clothes were drenched in sweat; yet as he swayed in the sweltering women’s deck, he shivered.

  Mr. Stubbs said, “We’ve overshot the land. We’re short on water. A lot more will die. Your bosses can’t collect on property that expires of disease or thirst. They can, however, collect on property that falls overboard.”

  The captain swore, frustration etched in the lines on his flushed face. “This mess’ll be the death of me. To be ruined by a single voyage gone wrong—they’ll never trust me to captain a ship again. I ain’t going to let that happen.” He pitched more than the ship’s rocking required. “It’s a bad business.”

  “But a lucrative one,” said Stubbs. “If you play your cards right. Why, when I last captained a slaver—this was over twenty years ago now . . .”

  They walked away. Venus crawled to the side of the room that overhung part of the men’s quarters below. She knocked her message into the floor with her bare knuckles and her heels, carefully. It was time. Eventually her uncle’s reply message echoed back to her, with added information. He was ready. Her brother still refused.

  Venus crawled back to the women. She did, in fact, feel a touch of real illness, a little wobbly. Too much darkness and bad smells and anxiety. The water would wash that away. She sat and thought of her brother, and she tried not to vomit. People had to make their own choices. She would choose to save herself and as many others as she could. She only hoped it would work; she’d never in her memory tried such a trick before.

  12

  SUDDENLY THE water rippled, and Kinchen startled. It was as if someone had dropped a large stone into the middle of the bay—but someone hadn’t; it was a still afternoon— and the waves echoed out from it, round and perfect.

  “Ah,” said Old Ren. “It’s time.” He waded out into the bay, the children following a few steps behind. When the water reached his knees, he stopped. The tide slapped gently; Kinchen’s feet went immediately numb from the cold. His back to them, Ren swayed, perfectly silent. Kinchen waded next to him and looked up into his pale, wrinkled face questioningly. But he didn’t seem to notice her, his features so focused on the bay that it was as though he were in a trance, communing with the water. She looked out again; now the sea had calmed completely and unnaturally, right in the center of the bay: a circle of quiet within the lightly dancing water.

  Something was out there, just under the water’s surface.

  Something big.

  Caesar materialized at her side, and without meaning to, Kinchen took her hand. They watched the water.

  “Odd Bay,” murmured Kinchen. “That’s what we call it.”

  Ren sighed deeply as if completing a long vigil, and he took Kinchen’s free hand. “Here he comes. He’s agreed to show himself.”

  “Himself?” said Kinchen. At that moment, Caesar squeezed her hand so hard, she gasped.

  And then Kinchen saw, and she gasped again.

  Out of the bay rose the domed head of the biggest—what was it, anyway? Squid didn’t describe it correctly. More rounded, and more—well, more solid. Octopus? But by a hundred times the biggest she’d ever seen or heard tell of. As big as an island, and as craggy. Brown and covered in algae. One eye, large as a house, rose out of the water and aimed at them. It blinked.

  “He says Good day,” said Ren.

  “Nice to meet you,” called Caesar, her voice high with awe. She raised her free hand to wave.

  Kinchen didn’t speak. Her mouth had gone dry. Surely this wasn’t real?

  “He’s going to get you started on your trip,” said Ren. “He’ll take you close to Raftworld—and Caesar will take you the rest of the way.” Then, to the creature: “Thank you for coming up for an introduction.”

  The beast blinked its eye again, a moon eclipsing and reappearing.

  This is what lives in the sea? The sea that Pip walks into every day? “What—What is that thing?”

  Ren squeezed her hand gently. “Not polite to say thing.”

  Kinchen’s mouth opened in a giant O, but no more sound came out. She couldn’t think what to say. How could she let Pip go into a sea that held such monsters?

  The eye blinked again.

  “I heard stories,” said Caesar, her words round and clear in awe. “That’s a Kraken.”

  Kinchen’s voice returned. “A sea monster?”

  She nodded, her bright eyes fixed on the creature.

  Ren said, “A Kraken.”

  13

  WHAT OLD REN did not say, because he did not know this part of the story:

  What happened, as the abolitionist-backed court case of 1783 would make clear to all of England, is this: on the 29th of November, 1781, Captain Collingwood of the Zong slave ship—or passenger Mr. Stubbs, or First Mate James Kelsall, acting in place of the increasingly sick and sometimes delirious captain—ordered approximately fifty-four slaves who were exhibiting signs of illness to be thrown overboard, in the middle of the Atlantic. Two days later, the crew threw another group of approximately forty-two slaves, and shortly thereafter yet another group of slaves (including ten who jumped to join their brethren): about 133 souls in all. (Witnesses disagreed on the exact number.) The slaves’ deaths allowed the ship’s owners to collect from their English insurance company, because slave property, though not underwritten against natural demise, was worth some cash if it suffered expiration from falling—or jumping or being thrown—overboard.

  In other words: if the slaves were murdered, the insurance would pay.

  Why? Because if they were killed—if they were thrown overboard, for example—it would surely be to stop a rebellion, to save the ship and crew and the rest of the cargo. So, yes, insurance paid up for murdered slaves. The logic was illogical only if you insisted on thinking of slaves as people.

  Among the Zong captives flung overboard and drowned, though never mentioned by name in any of the court documents, was the girl who’d first come down with the illness—and presumably brought it on board with her. The used-to-be-pretty one with the too-old uncle and the intractable brother. The one called Venus. That one.

  PART TWO

  Pip

  Raftworld, Summer 1978.

  1

  PROPPED ON a bench between two silent rowers, en route to Raftworld, Pip woke to moonlit darkness. He could see the Raft King sitting ahead of him, along with more rowers. Groggy but not terrified, he felt as if he should be scared— coming to consciousness on a rowboat, kidnapped and far from his sister and her protection. And on the surface of his person, in his skin and even deeper, in the layers under his skin, he was scared. Very. But deep under those strata of fear a little nerve of excitement sparked in his spine and heart and lungs. Here he was on an adventure, a trip to see the world, exactly what every Islander who joined Raftworld wanted. And—a still deeper, quieter voice inside him said—the fact that Pip was adventuring alone, without his sister, would make the trip even more exciting. No one to watch out for him, yes, but no one to remind him of his shortcomings and his oddness, either.

  He felt immediately guilty for that thought. Of course Kinchen should remind him of the things he couldn’t do: recognize people, keep track of them in groups, remember who they were; and the things he shouldn’t do as a result: go to town, go to school. He felt himself rise back to the top layer of his being, the fearful layer.

&nb
sp; Even so, he found it hard to be completely scared on the water. The ocean comforted him, and now was no exception. He could hear it murmuring, not in words but in feelings, right in his heart: Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of you. Once when he was little, he had tried to explain ocean talk to Kinchen—how it didn’t travel through ears or mouth, but rather, it felt as if the water in your own body was talking to the water in the sea—but he could tell his explanation didn’t make sense to Kinchen and even troubled her, so he hadn’t mentioned ocean talk since then.

  That was one of the things that made him weird, he knew: that he could understand water and the things in it. He couldn’t eat fish, even though it was one of the main dishes in the Islands. (How can you eat a creature you can have a conversation with?) And he could feel the water’s moods—which Kinchen assured him was not normal. But people didn’t even need to know this water-gifted part of him to know he was odd. They knew it the moment they saw him standing in a crowd, confused, the moment he looked at everyone—even his own sister, before she’d bleached her stripe of hair for him—as if he had no idea who they were.

  Pip took a deep breath. He could do this. No vacant looks. Memorize every detail possible for each person he met. Try harder to navigate in a world crowded with people who all looked the same. He could do this, just like anyone else.

  No, he couldn’t.

  But he would try.

  Though the rowers he was seated between surely knew he was awake, neither they nor the Raft King spoke to him on the boat, which meant he was able to listen uninterrupted to the ocean and to his thoughts. The moon glowed in the sky, the vessel sliced through the water, the rowers paddled swiftly, the spray leapt in arcs; and occasionally the caped Raft King, seated at the prow, grunted something to one of the lead rowers. Purple cape, thought Pip, squinting through the moonlight and remembering the color. Easy. I can do this. But then he studied the rowers seated next to and in front of him, and each of them looked to him like a clone of the next: male, dark-skinned, muscular, with short curly hair. And if he put a cape on any of them, they’d all look like the Raft King. He sighed. This would be impossible.

  They neared Raftworld as a glimmer of dawn began to glow at the horizon. The boat glided to a stop near what looked—in the half-light—like a small marina at the edge of the rafts, at which a rower leapt out and tied the boat to a post between two smaller vessels. The rowers stowed their oars, and one of them took Pip’s arm—gently, firmly—and guided him off the boat.

  Stepping onto the wooden dock, Pip saw immediately that Raftworld was the wrong name; it would be more accurate to say Rafts-world. The nation was composed of raft after raft—each one, including this square of dock, the right size to hold a small house and garden—stitched together with flexible cords, so well knit that he could not see the water through the seams, though he could see the way the rafts bent gently at their hinges to allow for the water’s swells and waves. From where they stood in the dock area (several rafts long), a path led away through houses and other small buildings, and everywhere Pip could see—and smell—thick gardens reaching for the sky. The air was rich with mint and lavender overlaid with something sharp and tangy he couldn’t identify. Birds trilled.

  On either side of them but far in the distance, engines started chugging.

  The Raft King spoke to Pip for the first time since he had woken on the boat. “Tonight we’ll have a party, welcome you in style. I can tell that you’ll be an enormous boon to our great campaign.” He turned to two of the rowers standing nearby. “This is Pippin.”

  “Pip.” He looked up into the rowers’ faces. They were both tall with strong shoulders for rowing. Their pleasant faces both exactly the same, though Pip imagined that Kinchen wouldn’t think so.

  The Raft King spoke to the two rowers. “Fancy dress tonight. Make sure he’s presentable.” Then he strode away, purple cape flapping in the breeze. The other rowers left, too, except the ones on Pip’s right and left who said they’d escort him to a house where he could wash and change.

  Pip watched the departing king. “Does he always wear that cape?”

  The rower on his left answered, his voice flatter and with longer vowels than Pip was used to hearing: “He likes to switch colors.”

  Pip groaned inwardly. Nothing easy to identify the king with.

  “He’ll probably wear the blue cape tonight,” said the rower on Pip’s right, watching the Raft King’s departing back. This rower spoke in a deep, scratchy voice, like he had a cold. “The sky-blue one. Fancy dress and all.” He looked down at Pip. “I’m sorry we had to take you from your island. But the king will return you when your job is complete . . .” His voice trailed off. “He’s been king for less than a year. He’ll be a good one; he just needs to settle into the job.”

  “Hmm,” said the left-hand rower.

  “He’s done great work with finding houses for everyone, and helping people expand their dwellings.”

  “That he has. But that doesn’t make him a good king. It makes him a good housing advisor.”

  The right-hand rower ignored his companion and spoke to Pip. “The king says he needs your help to save Raftworld. I don’t know what he means; we’re doing fine.”

  The left-hand rower shook his head. “We’re too crowded. New buildings won’t solve that. And we can’t add more rafts. Raftworld is already as large as it can get,” he explained to Pip in his almost-monotone voice. “The hydraulics can’t handle any more. So we either need to split ourselves into two rafts, or we need to find a place to settle.”

  “We’ve got time to decide,” said the right-hand rower.

  But the left-hand rower shook his head. “We don’t. And that’s what worries him—the king, I mean. And that’s why he had to get you to come on board to help us.”

  “Well,” said Pip, hesitating. This was all new to him, the idea that he would be someone who could help. He was fine at math and reading: but with an overcrowded nation? How could he possibly help? “I wish”—he said, thinking of the governor and especially of Kinchen—“I wish the Raft King would’ve explained the whole problem on Tathenn. The governor could have gotten together some of the really smart grown-ups to help the king figure out a solution. They probably could have fixed it. I don’t know what he thinks I can do. I’m just”—he almost said nobody important, but instead he finished—“a kid.”

  The two rowers shrugged. “He says you can help,” said the left-hand rower. His voice flattened even more. “With your magicky stuff.”

  Talking to fish? How could that fix an overcrowded world?

  “Let’s get you cleaned up for dinner,” said the right-hand one, and they led him off.

  As they walked, Pip first paid most attention to his two escorts; Kinchen always told him to try to memorize something unique about people when he first saw them. He glanced sideways at each of these men and mentally groaned again: they were exactly the same. They were dressed just like the other rowers in white shirts, blue pants, and soft rope belts, their dark hair cropped similarly short to their head. No scars, no missing teeth, nothing unusual about either of them as far as he could see. Both of them the same dark, clear skin. There was no way he’d ever know them again. His heart sank. Even the Raft King was a mystery: when he changed his clothes, Pip would lose him. Sky blue tonight, he told himself, and hoped it would be true.

  In the growing light of morning, Pip started looking around more, and he realized that his first impression of Raftworld’s dense greenery wasn’t quite accurate. It was a beautiful place, yes; but unmistakably it strained at its seams. As they left the dock and entered the interior of the raft, the path grew narrower and started zigzagging, jogging around homes that looked as if they’d been haphazardly added onto (or simply built from scratch) right into the roadway. While the houses near the dock had been neat
cottages centered one per raft and surrounded by lush vegetable and fruit gardens, the houses farther in squished two or three to each square of raft. Some of these homes were pitiably small; others loomed over Pip and the rowers with second or even third stories. Around all these houses, the plants were thin and scraggly, shaded by the taller dwellings and squeezed into the small open spaces left on the rafts.

  The left-hand rower seemed to know what Pip was thinking. “A lot of the gardens are on the roofs now.” And sure enough, leaves and vines draped down from the flat-roofed taller homes.

  Craning his neck to see, Pip stumbled; the ground had a funny way of moving under his feet. The men took his arms and kept him from falling. “Takes a while to get used to the rocking,” said the left rower. “Watch for the seams.” They stepped from one raft to another.

  People were awake now, and a few early risers worked in the gardens and walked the paths, talking to each other in a language Pip didn’t know, carrying baskets or nets or other things that suggested they were starting a busy day. People said hello in English, and most gave him funny looks—not unfriendly, but curious. Pip realized that his lighter coloring and straight hair gave him away immediately as an Islander, and though he saw a few other people who also looked like Islanders (probably, he realized, people who’d volunteered to trade themselves onto Raftworld the last time it came, or the time before that), he surely must stand out as a new person. The new person. The person the Raft King had gone to the Islands to find.

  A couple of people said as much. To the rowers, after saying hello to Pip, they said, “This is the envoy?” or “So young?” and the left-hand rower answered, “Yes,” in a way that did not invite further questions.

  To Pip this all seemed like a strange way to greet a visitor, especially when your nation received so few. But the rowers didn’t comment. The right rower pointed at the long pipe next to a house, as if he were giving a tour. “Irrigation,” he said in his growly voice. “We grow a wide variety of food—everything we need.”