A Crack in the Sea

by H. M. Bouwman

  I know it’s not much comfort right now, said Caesar. But you have your sister. And you have me. I’ll be your friend.

  And us, said Kinchen. Pip and I will always be your friends, too.

  Thanh’s face cracked. Even in the water Pip could see that he was crying.

  • • •

  THE KRAKEN soon declared she’d caught her breath and was ready to move again.

  If you can just get up the hill, said Pip, we’ll be at the level of the towrope, and Raftworld can help pull you. Their engines are ready. So they crawled up the sand toward the shallow water, with many rests along the way.

  When they saw the towrope dangling down, and looked up to see the big square shadow ahead of them, the Kraken rested again. Why don’t you climb up my back? You’ll be much closer to the surface.

  Climb up your back? Pip asked. He’d never climbed on the Kraken at home. It hadn’t occurred to him. Would that be polite?

  Of course it’s polite. She laughed at his accidentally asked question. (As did Kinchen and Caesar.) It’s what I was made for. I mean, eventually I become an island. Then who do you think walks on my back but you land creatures?

  So they climbed, still holding hands. The Kraken’s back (or, from the Kraken’s perspective, the top of her head) was almost flat—good island-making material—but her sides were steep. When Pip’s feet slipped, the monster stretched a tentacle and caught him, easing him up the slope. They hiked across her wide expanse and stood, ready to swim the rest of the way up. Kinchen and Thanh would pull Caesar to the surface—which wasn’t far. Pip would swim himself up. Before they pushed off, Pip bent and stroked her back. Thank you. And: I’ll be back soon.

  Stay.

  He did. The Kraken shook, a series of ripples like a minor earthquake. Then she rose, the four children standing and swaying on her back.

  2

  WHEN THEY rose out of the water—like Venus and Swimmer rising from the ocean—Pip could no longer hear his friends’ thoughts. But he understood the Kraken. She was happy to be going home. Still worried about how her husband would feel when they met again. But mostly happy.

  And he realized he was happy, too. He’d had an adventure—without Kinchen to protect him. And she hadn’t had to save him. He’d done that himself, and he’d helped others, too—dealing with the Raft King and now the Kraken. He would never recognize faces. And he was sometimes awkward. But he was good at getting along with sea creatures—and people.

  The Raft King and his people stood on the dock watching. The Kraken had stopped rising when her back touched the air, so it looked as if they were standing on the water.

  Pip raised his hand to the people, but mostly to Putnam, whose loss was so great.

  Before he could say anything, Caesar hopped forward. “I’m sorry you couldn’t find your mom back. That’s awful, and we’re all really sorry.”

  The Raft King nodded. “It’s a long time ago now.”

  “But still new to you,” said Pip. “And we’re sorry.”

  “Very sorry.” Kinchen stepped forward, too, her face firm. “But we still need to talk about how you stole my brother.”

  Pip almost told Kinchen to stop—that now wasn’t the time, and besides, he (Pip) had forgiven the king. But his sister’s tight face made him stay quiet. She’d worked so long and hard on the Islands to keep her brother safe, yet she hadn’t been able to stop the king from kidnapping him.

  “I had no right,” the Raft King said. His powerful body sagged as he folded onto a bench someone had placed behind him. Sitting, he was the same height as Kinchen. “I knew that, too. All along. But I thought my need was more important . . .”

  Kinchen waited.

  “I was thinking only of what I wanted for myself and for Raftworld. And I’m sorry.”

  At this, Kinchen nodded. “My brother is—he’s fine. You didn’t hurt him.”

  Pip shouldered Kinchen gently. “But thank you for coming for me anyway,” he said.

  The Raft King held out his wide, strong hands as if he were asking for something. Pip took one hand and held it in his. Slowly, Kinchen took the other.

  “Now,” said Caesar, “a trip to the Islands! That’ll be fun.”

  • • •

  THAT EVENING Kinchen told the Raft King her idea about where the people could settle: on the Kraken’s head. “She wants to become an island. She and her husband.”

  Pip, seeing where she was headed, said, “He told me once—the other Kraken did—that when they get old, they turn into enormous islands, much bigger even than they are now.”

  “They could be your new home,” said Kinchen. “And since she spent so much time in the first world, it would feel a little like something from there. It would feel right. I think.”

  Everyone sitting around them watched to see what the king would say—the guards, the advisors, the storytellers, the visitors.

  “I want to,” said Caesar. “I like her. Having her—both of them—for our home would be amazing.”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” said the Raft King. Then something on his face shifted. “For myself, I mean. If others want to settle there, that’ll be their own decision. I’m just not sure about myself yet.”

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT as they ate a snack in Jupiter’s cabin before bed, Pip said to Kinchen, “That was a good idea about the Kraken, and the island.” Pip and Kinchen sat at the table. Thanh and Sang, still tired, had tumbled into bed already, in pallets on the floor, and Caesar had simply tipped forward at the table and snoozed with her head on her forearm, her warm honey drink undrunk. Kinchen noted that this was a day of surprises.

  Jupiter spoke from the bench where he was reclining. “It was a great idea you had, Kinchen.” He peered toward her. “I have the feeling—correct me if I’m wrong—that you’ve been unhappy about something.”

  Kinchen flushed. Pip had never seen her flush before; she was always so sure of herself.

  “It’s just—” She turned the mug around and around in her hands. “I don’t have any special talents. Like everyone else does.” Her glance flicked up to Jupiter and back down. “There’s nothing I’m good at.”

  “But you’re good at everything,” said Pip in surprise.

  “I don’t have anything special,” she said.

  “Anything magical, you mean,” said Jupiter. “Or one special talent. A calling.”

  She nodded and looked up almost with relief on her face. “You understand.”

  “I do,” said Jupiter. “But you’re wrong.” He held his hand up to stop her replying. “What I mean to say is, most people don’t have magic like Pip or Mai or Caesar. Only a very few do. Most people don’t have a special calling to be a storyteller, like Thanh does, or like I did. Most people are like you—or like Putnam. Good at some things. Medium-good at other things. Maybe not so good at other things. But not an obvious remarkable ability at anything. And that’s okay.”

  “Like Putnam,” repeated Kinchen. She didn’t look thrilled at the comparison. But she didn’t object, either.

  Pip cleared his throat. “Besides, I think you might have a calling for something. You had a great idea for where Raftworlders could live. And you stood up to the governor and the Raft King when they were doing something wrong. And you always want to take care of people and make sure they are okay. Have you thought of going into government someday?”

  Jupiter laughed, a rich warm chuckle, the kind that you produce when suddenly everything is perfect. Kinchen joined in. Caesar woke with a snort and started laughing, too—without, it seemed, even knowing why—and the sound filled the cabin, waking Sang and Thanh just in time to share a bedtime snack with their new family.

  • • •

  THE VERY next day they began towing. The Kraken paddled, too, but she needed help to reach any speed. She was, she said, exhausted fr
om years of searching for the doorway—and days of holding it open. Raftworld’s engines stuttered along under too much weight; as Caesar explained, they were moving against the currents and the prevailing winds now—not something Raftworld would normally do—to get back. The journey took over a week.

  As Raftworld towed the Kraken back to the Islands, the adventurers spent time exploring and meeting people. Pip missed his own country, and Kinchen said she did, too, but they both loved Raftworld’s hanging gardens and the pots of dense, lush plants and the almost-tame songbirds that fluttered among them and the chickens that strutted in the little yards. They loved the music and storytelling that took place after supper every night. They attended the school—the first time either of them had tried it—and joined the other children in learning basic hydraulics and drumming and knitting.

  And Pip made a decision he’d been thinking about for a while. He’d spent so much of his life feeling like he had a problem that he needed to hide. Now he thought: It’s just something different, something that makes me who I am. He told everyone he met that he had an eye problem, that he couldn’t recognize them and never would. It was like being blind without the blindness, he said. From then on, when people walked up to him, they generally told him who they were; if they forgot, he asked. Even Caesar took to announcing herself, though with her swagger she didn’t really need to: “Pip, it’s your buddy.”

  Kinchen kept her white hair stripe; she said she’d had it so long she didn’t want to get rid of it. And Pip didn’t want her to, to be honest. It was good to have someone you could know immediately, without ever being told. Especially if that someone was your big sister who’d gone partway across the world—farther than ever before—to find you and bring you home. Even if you didn’t need saving; even so, that kind of sister was a good sister to have and to see and to recognize.

  Pip and Kinchen did love Raftworld; but it was noisy and so crowded everywhere. Sometimes they needed to get away to somewhere more like their home with Old Ren, not so closely pressed with so many people.

  At these times, Kinchen would climb on a roof and sit as close to the sun as possible, above the crowds. Sometimes Pip and Thanh climbed up with her, and Kinchen and Pip would explain what it was like to live on the Islands, so that Thanh would know. Kinchen told about the day they drank tea at the governor’s house and the Raft King took Pip away. Pip told about the governor and her deep, strong voice. They both told about living in the woods near the caves with Old Ren. Thanh asked a lot of questions about Ren, like he was trying to put pieces of a puzzle together and something didn’t fit.

  Pip began to wonder about Ren, too.

  • • •

  WHEN PIP needed to escape from all the faces, he dove into the water and swam out to the Kraken and rode with her. She’d release one of her eight tentacles from the towrope and curl it out for him to sit on, and like a prince of the ocean he’d float just under the surface in her arm, safe in a world where he recognized everything he met.

  On one of these rides, he said, Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.

  She thought for a long time. My name.

  He realized then, in surprise, that he’d never asked her name. He hadn’t thought about it. The other Kraken, her husband, had never suggested she had a name. Or that he had one, for that matter. And this was something no one knew? No one knows your name? Not even your husband?

  She shook her head—which in her case amounted to agitating her whole body. The towline tightened and loosened rhythmically, and Pip considered that Raftworld was probably feeling a minor quake.

  The sea monster said, We were the only Krakens in the world, so there was no reason for names. We called each other Sweetheart. My particular name I gave to myself, much later. It’s a crazy one for a sea monster. She paused, suddenly shy. Her craggy skin shaded in what he thought might be a blush.

  What is it? he asked gently. If you don’t mind telling me.

  I named myself after a place—a place in the other world where I long lived. Shores full of fish and magnificent sands and the most brilliant people: souls composed of sinew and light. I lived off their shore long ago, and I watched them and loved them. A few of them could even walk underwater and talk with me. I loved those people, and I left only after they were stolen away from me, stolen on ships that stank of death. She shrugged several massive shoulders, causing Pip to bob up and down with her thoughts. My name. Africa.

  PART EIGHT

  The Rest of Venus’s Story.

  THIS WHOLE BOOK, this entire tale, is the rest of Venus’s story. You get that, right? This is all her story.

  PART NINE

  What Happened to Venus. The Details. Because You Might Insist on Knowing.

  1782 and Following.

  In All the Oceans of the Second World.

  THERE WERE long years of travel before Venus finally regained land. Her brother, Swimmer, led Raftworld on its search for Africa, zigzagging around the globe. He grew taller and bulkier and quieter, and eventually he became their first king; but he never found a doorway back to their homeland. At his deathbed the regret had etched itself into the lines on his face, and even his family ranging around his bed (his wife, his three half-grown children, and Venus, who had not married) were unable to ease his pain at passing away without having girdled the ocean and led his people home.

  In their travels, the Raftworlders had stopped at tiny islands dense with trees and plants and birds, and from these beginnings the people built Raftworld into a beautiful place. Their many languages melded slowly into a tongue they called Homeland. They sailed all the warm parts of the world. They never, however, returned to the island where Uncle Caesar and the scarred woman were buried; that place was so insignificant that even had they spotted it in the distance, Swimmer wouldn’t have stopped there. He had always looked for something bigger.

  They had found their Kraken friend and the islands of Tathenland—ruled at that time by two women—early in their travels, and as it was the only peopled country they ever discovered, they returned to it periodically for visits, remembering and practicing their English with the islanders. Every time they sailed into the harbor at Baytown, the Tathenlanders—as alone in the big new world as the Raftworlders—concocted a party that lasted for days. The two peoples traded stories and goods and artistry and technology. Early on, Venus learned to spin and knit from some women on the Islands—though, lacking goats on Raftworld, she couldn’t complete much work until the next time Raftworld returned to Tathenland and she traded for more wool.

  The years went by, long travels over the ocean punctuated with brief visits to Tathenland. Slowly, Venus could feel old memories—of life before Uncle Caesar—wanting to come back again, but she tamped them down. Kept them quiet. Kept moving, as Swimmer wished.

  After her brother’s funeral, Venus sat and thought to herself—as she had more and more with the passing years—What if I stand still? What if I let myself remember everything? The next time Raftworld stopped at Tathenland, the shiny new Raft King eager to trade and move on, still searching for a mythical magical land, Venus thought, No. Just that: No. She stepped off the raft to shore; she met people and traded stories and acquired more knitting tricks; she relearned how to walk on land; she dug her fingers in the dirt; and when the time came to leave, she did not climb back on the raft. She decided to stay. And finally, to remember.

  The new Raft King was angry at Venus’s desertion, but only until someone young and strong from Tathenland volunteered to take her place, to travel with Raftworld around the globe. Then the Raft King agreed: a person should be allowed to trade herself away if she so desired. And likewise the two co-governors of Tathenland agreed: as long as all the lives were willingly given to the new place, the trade was good. Venus nodded and said the words that all volunteers from that point forward took as their own, as part of the ceremony of the exchange: I trade myself willingly
. I say good-bye to my beloved old home, which I will never forget, and open my heart to my new.

  • • •

  WHEN VENUS decided to remain on solid ground, the two middle-aged female governors of the Islands shook her hand and invited her to tea the next day. As they sat at the table and poured her a cup, they flickered like shadows of each other. One governor was dark-skinned, one light—the dark one just a few shades paler than Venus herself, and the other a blanched cousin to the captain and crew that had held Venus in the slave ship so many years ago. The one was the daughter of people who’d lived here nearly forever, according to their story; the other, descended from a shipload of English convicts who’d been blown through to the second world in a storm only a few years before Venus herself had stepped over. The two governors moved their hands above the tea set in jerky unison. They ruled together.

  That was the oddest thing about the world here: that it was ruled in tandem, by these women. Not that women couldn’t rule—of course they could, as she well knew from stories Uncle Caesar had told—but that these two, so dissimilar from each other, would want to work together. It occurred to Venus as she watched the two women that perhaps she could have done more for her people after she’d brought them through the deep. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stepped back from leading with Swimmer, even though their ideas were so different. She’d had thoughts about how they could have settled somewhere, on land, but she’d kept her thoughts to herself and lived her own quiet life. Maybe she should have spoken.

  While the governors brewed and poured Venus more cups of hot tea, they told her—their country’s first immigrant in decades—about the Islands. Tathenland boasted three pubs and a library (a collection of handwritten books by an Englishman, now deceased, who’d been a famous author back in his old country), along with a mill and shops and a church and even a small stable of horses. And a storyteller, and talented fisherfolk and goat-herders, and several skilled herbalists. There was music. There was dancing. There were scientific discoveries. There was art, including a statue of great historical significance.