by David Walton
"But it's not," Catherine said. "Some part of it remembers that it's really a mantis. Even when it's gold, it's not the same as the coin, because it can change back again."
Father was nodding. "Implying that it has a component besides its physical body," he said. He looked at Catherine and then at Sinclair. "This insect has a soul."
Sinclair dropped the mantis back in the box. "Don't jump ahead of yourself, Doctor." He shut the lid with a snap.
But Father couldn't be discouraged. "Until now, we've been chasing shadows. Mere traces of the power behind the universe." He gazed at the box with wonder in his eyes. "This tiny creature knows more of the world than the wisest of men."
"There must be more," Catherine said. "If these are just the animals that ended up on the boat, Horizon must be teeming with them."
The idea was thrilling, but something else pleased her even more. Her father was talking to her, listening to her, and smiling at her in a way she hadn't seen him do since Peter had died. With pride.
He kept looking at her, as if to satisfy himself that she was still there. She caught his eye and grinned at him, and he winked. She was happier than she had been in a long time, but she couldn't help thinking of Mother, left behind with no son, no daughter, no husband. What would she do? Her whole life had been wrapped up in Catherine and her future.
One other thing bothered her. Although she hadn't seen it, the tamarin was still loose on the ship. She'd had no more dreams, nor had Father but she'd been in the tamarin's mind too long to forget it was out there. Lonely and confused, far from anything it knew, it feared being captured again, but it was also determined to understand the humans. It would try again.
IT visited her that night.
When Catherine woke, disturbed by a movement, she found it there, perched silently on the foot of her bunk. She gave a little shriek, and Father startled awake, looking around with bleary eyes, until he saw the tamarin and froze.
Catherine understood that its attack had not been meant to harm. It had seen her as a potential friend, an ally who might help it. Even so, she dared not let it touch her again. Good intentions or not, it had nearly killed her.
In its mind, she had seen pictures of its life, both past and present: glimpses of Horizon, glimpses of London from its point of view. She wondered if the process worked both ways. Had it seen memories of her youth in Derbyshire, of London balls and parties, of Thomas Hungate's flirtations? If so, it had probably found her mind just as incomprehensible.
Slowly, Father eased himself out of his hammock. "What do you want?" he asked the tamarin.
The tamarin cocked its head, and Catherine's heart thudded violently. "I don't think it understands English," she said. The tamarin opened its lips and mirrored her expression. Was it imitating her? Slowly, she raised a hand and spread five fingers wide. It raised its own forelimb in response and reached forward. Its pincered hands opened, and something dropped onto the bed. She picked it up. It was a cluster of raisins.
"Thank you," she said, and bowed her head in a gesture she hoped it would interpret as thanks.
The tamarin bobbed its head several times in response, then per formed a complex series of movements with two of its tails and vanished. Catherine held her breath. After a few moments, she reached out under the blanket with a tentative foot, but she felt nothing. It was gone.
Catherine remembered the sensation of leaping from branch to branch through tall forests, looking through gaps in the foliage at the gigantic sun, or gazing down from a dizzying height over the very edge of the world, an endless cliff that descended into darkness and void.
Then also, quite suddenly, she remembered a name. Chichirico. The sound included a harsher teeth- snapping noise than she could reproduce, but she said it aloud anyway. "His name is Chichirico."
Father reached out, plucked a raisin from the cluster, and ate it. "Tastes fine," he said. "It seems Chichirico brought you a gift."
"Why?" Catherine said.
Father considered. Catherine knew he was remembering his time in the tamarin's mind. She understood that Chichirico's original mission had been a diplomatic one.
"I think he's trying to make friends," Father said. "I should probably tell Sinclair, but I don't think I'm going to just yet. He's not really the diplomatic type, and I don't want Chichirico experimented on anymore. When we get to this island, we may very well need his help. So"— he met Catherine's eyes—"our secret for now?"
"Our secret," Catherine said.
Chapter Fourteen
CATHERINE hadn't expected to find Matthew Marcheford on board, and she wasn't sure she was glad to see him. She'd run away from her former life to re- create herself as someone new, and she didn't need someone who already had fixed notions of what she was like. Matthew knew her too well. Their mothers had been friends for years, and Catherine and Matthew had played together as children, back when they were young enough to run and toss hoops and throw balls, before she was too old for outside games and Mother confined her to dresses and needlepoint.
She liked Matthew, but she always suspected he liked her a bit more. He was too polite to say anything, too old- fashioned to take any step without the formal interaction of fathers on both sides, but she could tell. Despite that, he'd been a safe friend, because she knew he wasn't rich enough for Mother to approve him as a potential match. Now things were different.
There was no avoiding him, though. Besides Blanca, he was the only other passenger on board her age. Some of the younger sailors were in the same range, but they worked and socialized in different spheres. She was stuck with him, and would be for a long time.
She leaned back against the rail at the stern of the ship, enjoying the play of the salty breeze through her hair and watching the helmsman pull on the wheel. Matthew leaned beside her in the unadorned black jerkin and hose of a good Protestant, with unruly sand- colored hair, an abundance of freckles, and hands and feet rather too large for the rest of him. On her other side, Blanca stood upright with her hands folded in front of her, quiet but with a smile on her face.
Catherine had told no one about the visits from Chichirico. He'd continued to come to her cabin at night, usually with some small gift of food he'd stolen from the stores. They traded signs and words in a poor attempt to communicate. He never stayed long before some sound or movement spooked him and he vanished. She longed to tell someone, but she wasn't sure what reaction she'd get. Blanca would just be scared, and Matthew would probably tell his father. Or hers, which would be worse.
Catherine turned around and leaned over the back rail— the stern rail, she corrected herself— looking down on the white water churning up from the rudder. The ship's wash trailed out behind them. The ocean behind them was empty. They weren't heading for the Continent, or even around it to Africa or the Indies, like any other ships would. They were striking out across a desert of water, with no guarantee they would ever find land at all.
"Did you sail on a ship like this when you came from Spain?" she asked Blanca.
"No," Blanca said. "I came over land to France. When I sailed to England, it was just across the channel, and the boat was much smaller."
Catherine laughed. "I've never been on a ship before."
"Never?"
"Well . . . just the wherries up and down the river. Never on a sailing ship like this."
"I sailed to France with my father when I was young," Matthew said. "I hardly remember it, though." He chuckled. "The only thing I remember is vomiting in his lap."
"You didn't." The image of the dignified Bishop Marcheford mopping up such a mess made her smile.
"I think that's why he didn't take me on any more voyages."
It was a chance comment, lightly delivered, but it made Catherine wonder how well Matthew got along with his father. He was like Bishop Marcheford in many ways, but that didn't mean they were close.
"What do you think will happen to us?" Blanca asked.
Matthew, as usual, took the question at fac
e value. "We'll join the Horizon colony," he said. "It will be hard work, but with God's grace, we'll survive. Eventually Queen Mary will be overthrown, the Princess Elizabeth will bring the true faith back to England, and it will be safe to return."
"You've got it all planned," Catherine said.
"What if we can't return?" Blanca said. "They say you can live forever on Horizon, but once there, you can never leave."
Matthew shook his head. "Just stories. I daresay we will find Horizon is a place in God's world, just like any other. A place where we will be free for a time to practice our faith and still be Englishmen, but nothing more."
"But Matthew," Catherine said, "I saw Master Sinclair turn a rod into a snake and back again."
"And I saw a street magician who could turn your silver shilling into an iron penny— though I noticed he never changed it back again."
"It's not a trick. If you saw it, you wouldn't think so."
"Then there's some explanation. It doesn't mean we'll find the Fountain of Youth."
"And I was bonded to the tamarin. I shared its mind. You can't tell me that's normal."
"But is it magic? Does it mean all the stories of turning lead to gold and living forever are true?"
Catherine stamped her foot. "You don't know everything, Matthew Marcheford."
"I never said I did!"
"Go back to your Greek and Latin."
Catherine crossed her arms and looked out across the ship. As she did, she noticed a portly man in vicar's clothes standing farther down the rail, tinkering with a strange contraption. Several leather bands encircled his head, supporting a wooden rod that stuck straight out from one of his eyes. A vertical crosspiece was attached halfway along the contraption, and at the very end, beyond his reach, hung a tiny circle of colored glass.
"What's he doing?" Catherine asked.
Matthew shrugged. "No idea."
Catherine started walking toward the man, ignoring Matthew's suggestions that maybe they should leave him alone.
"What is that?" she asked when she reached him.
The man lifted a black patch that had covered one of his eyes and peered at her. He had a fleshy face with a hint of jowls. "Oh, good morning, Miss Parris. I don't believe we've met. I'm Andrew Kecilpenny." He gave her a short bow, which she returned in a curtsy. "This is a cross staff ."
"It doesn't look like any cross staff I've ever seen," Matthew said, following behind with Blanca.
"That's because the only ones you've seen were for measuring the distance between the horizon and the North Star," Kecilpenny said.
"That's right. To calculate latitude."
Matthew was showing off again. Catherine was tempted to hit him. "What's yours for?" she asked Kecilpenny.
"To measure the size of the sun."
Catherine saw the surprise on Matthew's face, and knew it must be reflected in her own. The sun was, well, it was just the sun, wasn't it? It was the source of light and heat. It didn't have a size. Did it?
"How can you measure its size when you don't know how far away it is?" Matthew said.
"You caught me," Kecilpenny said. "I can't. But I can tell if it changes size."
He showed them how he could peer down the rod and slide the vertical crosspiece along it lengthwise until its height matched the height of the sun above the horizon. Then, using another rod, he tapped the tiny circle of glass, pushing it farther out until it exactly covered the sun, from his point of view. He then pulled the contraption off his head and marked the position of both crosspiece and glass.
"I don't understand," Blanca said. "The sun doesn't change size."
Matthew was quicker. "It will, though. The closer we get to the western edge of the world, the closer we'll be to where the sun sets, so it will seem bigger in the evening, and smaller in the morning."
Kecilpenny nodded. "The sky is a dome. As we move toward the edge of the dome, we'll be closer to the things on it— the sun and stars— when they pass through the west. So if I measure the relative position of these pieces at about the same time every day . . ."
"You'll know how close we're getting to the end of the world," said Catherine. She remembered her dreams of Horizon and how impossibly huge the sun and stars had looked in them. She had a feeling that by the time they arrived at the island, Master Kecilpenny wouldn't need a strange contraption to see that the sun was getting larger.
"What does it matter?" she said. "You don't know how big it gets. So you can't tell how close we are. Can you?"
A throaty laugh made them turn around. Behind them was a small, gaunt- looking man who nevertheless had such a jovial smile that Catherine liked him on the spot. "No purpose in it at all, really," the man said, winking at Catherine. "Kecilpenny just likes to measure things."
The new man introduced himself as Gibbs and made several jokes at Kecilpenny's expense, making them all laugh, even Kecilpenny. Catherine took a deep breath of salty air and leaned back against the rail, reveling in the height of the mast above her and the might of the canvas sails, bloated with wind. Men moved in the rigging, keeping watch or repairing lines, looking tiny next to the massive scale of their vessel.
Above the men, she spotted something even higher and tinier that was not a man at all. A feeling of vertigo took her breath away.
"Look! There it is!" Blanca called, seeing it, too. She pointed.
Matthew tried to follow her gaze. "What?"
"The tamarin. Can you see it?"
They all looked, and they all saw Chichirico, hanging from the tip of the highest topgallant.
"I wonder what it's been doing all this time," Matthew said.
SINCLAIR heard grumbling wherever he walked. He'd been forced to reduce rations to bare subsistence levels, only one meal a day, and no one was pleased. His officers grumbled more than any of them, since he'd insisted they should have the same portions as everyone else. A mistake, perhaps. Their discontent was spilling down to the working sailors, and his tales of immeasurable riches just over the next wave were starting to lose their effect.
He was no tyrant. He would rather motivate through charisma and manipulation than through brute force, but enthusiasm was fading. More and more people— sailors and passengers alike— talked about going back home, to Holland, perhaps, if not to England. To maintain discipline, he'd resorted to posting Tate and his soldiers to guard the storerooms and oversee the distribution of food.
He climbed up to the forecastle, skirting the empty meat pen, the cook house, and his alchemical distillery. Near the bowsprit, he gazed out over the western horizon with the wind in his hair, leaning against a cluster of large barrels stored between the ship's two bronze cannons. The barrels were from the original journey of the Western Star. Although they contained nothing but pebbles and fine sand, he had insisted on bringing them along, despite arguments by some that using the space for fresh water or food was more sensible. He liked to sit here and touch them to gain strength.
There was an alchemical reaction brewing on the ship, like two incompatible elements forced into the same retort. The officers resented his authority, and would resent Tate and his soldiers if they had to enforce it. The passengers, on the other hand, mostly educated men with no experience of life at sea, blamed the officers for the inevitable hardships of the voyage. Put both in the crucible of months on the open sea, and an explosion seemed inevitable.
To night, however, was cool and clear. Beyond the stacks of billowing canvas, he could see a thousand stars like glowing motes of dust, frozen in a windblown instant of time. The ropes creaked as the boat rose and fell. He listened to the sounds for several minutes before he realized he wasn't alone.
John Marcheford stood not far away, looking out over the black water, hands clasped behind his back. Most passengers spent at least some of their time on deck, standing at the rail, contemplating the rolling sea. Sinclair took note of where each one stood and which direction he looked, whether west, toward their destination, or east, toward home. He would ha
ve guessed John Marcheford for an east-looker, given the life of privilege and respect he had left behind in London, but the former bishop consistently stood at the very prow, shielding his eyes against the sun and peering toward the horizon.
As they stood in silence, each with his own thoughts, Sinclair could hear two sailors on watch in the rigging.
"I tell you the winds are all wrong," said one.
"Wrong? They're the devil's own," said the other, his voice deeper and gruffer than the first. "One moment from the east, the next from the south, then back around from the north. I never trimmed sails so often in my life."
"Captain says it's on account of the stars. He says we're getting closer."
