by David Walton
"And how would he know? He ain't been there, neither. Far as I can see, this damnable ocean goes on forever."
Marcheford spoke softly, apparently to himself. " 'As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.' "
Sinclair recognized it as a biblical quote, though he couldn't have said what book or chapter. "That's not as far as it used to be," he said.
Marcheford seemed to see Sinclair for the first time. "What?"
"The east from the west. It used to mean an infinite span, a distance only God could reach." He gestured toward the horizon. "Now man has the same power."
He expected Marcheford to be shocked, but he only said mildly, "That remains to be seen, I suppose."
His calm annoyed Sinclair. "Trust me, Bishop, we'll get there. There's no limit to what we can conquer. The ocean. The air. Death itself."
"Death is already conquered," Marcheford said.
"I'm not using a spiritual metaphor. I mean death, real physical death, defeated. No more fathers wasting away to nothing while their sons keep helpless vigil. No more young kings cut down before they come of age. Somewhere at the heart of the universe is the secret to eternal life, and sooner or later, with or without God's help, I will find it."
"So that's what you're after. The philosopher's stone."
Sinclair turned away, unable to bear his life's ambition spoken of in such dismissive terms. Marcheford was a churchman, which, as far as Sinclair was concerned, made him an enemy of knowledge and progress. He'd pitched his tent on the side of revealed truth.
It didn't matter. He didn't need Marcheford's approval. He strained his eyes toward the horizon, wishing for land, though he knew it was far too soon. When they arrived, then everyone would know he'd been right. He just had to get them there alive.
THE remaining fresh foods were quickly exhausted. The dry biscuits were so hard they had to be soaked in beer or water to make them edible. Weevils laid their eggs in the biscuits and the rats couldn't be kept out. Everyone was hungry, which meant everyone was bad- tempered and quick to fight.
Parris spent most of his time in the infirmary, caring for the sick. The passengers were especially susceptible. They were unaccustomed to the cramped and idle life aboard ship, each night a test of endurance in the hot lower decks with the rats and the stench.
Catherine, Blanca, and Matthew helped him bathe faces in cool water, distribute medicines, and apply compresses. The most common complaints were tooth pain, skin spots, and nosebleeds, which were early signs of scurvy. No one knew why travelers on long voyages were prone to the disease, and no one knew how to cure it. Bowel disorder and stomach cramps were frequent, too, some to the point of physical weakness.
John Gibbs succumbed more quickly than most, and Parris suspected intestinal worms. He treated him with an infusion of cloves, and then attached a leech to his arm. The leeches, at any rate, weren't starving. Andrew Kecilpenny hovered near his friend, thinking up new topics of conversation for them to argue about.
Gibbs seemed eager to respond, but his breath was labored, and his face looked pale. Parris used vinegar to detach the leech and shooed Kecilpenny out of the room. Throughout the conversation, Kecilpenny had seemed almost merry, enjoying the debate, but at the door he turned a pained face to Parris.
"He looks bad. Will he make it?"
Parris lowered his voice. "He's weak, but he's a big man, and he can still argue with you. He'll recover."
"He needs more food. Ever since the captain reduced rations again, there just hasn't been enough. Maybe if I gave him my portion . . . ?"
"No. Eat your own food. You have a wife and daughter, don't you?"
Kecilpenny smiled. "Mary. And Elizabeth is six. They're well, though. Hungry, but still healthy."
"Gibbs will pull through." Parris hoped it was true. Sinclair had reduced all their rations to a half share of hard biscuit and a quarter of a fish a day— provided enough fish were caught to go around. It wasn't enough. What little cheese, rice, and oatmeal remained were reserved for children and the sick. Not even Sinclair was eating better.
"Do you think we'll make it?" Kecilpenny said.
"What do you mean?"
"We can't just keep sailing west forever. If we don't find Horizon soon, we'll have to turn back, or we won't have enough to get home on."
"We're getting close," Parris said. "You've seen the sun." Kecilpenny's measurements had shown for weeks that the sun was changing size, but they could all see it now. When it rose behind them, it was tiny, its feeble light hardly penetrating the mists, and the mornings were dreary and chill. By each evening, however, it tripled in size, a fearsome inferno that painted the western sky in fiery hues. To avoid the heat, the passengers gathered above decks for fresh air, and the sailors, stripped down to their loincloths, sweated freely as they clambered through the rigging.
A knock on the door made them both jump. He opened the door and was surprised to see Collard, the first mate.
"Come back later, when he's awake again," Parris said to Kecilpenny. "Your visits help."
Collard shut the door the moment Kecilpenny left. "You have to talk to him. He has to see reason."
"Who?"
"Sinclair! We're lost, and he won't admit it."
"What do you mean, 'lost'?"
"I mean we don't know where we are. We're off course and sailing blind. The farther west we go, the more bizarre the sea becomes. Unexpected winds, unpredictable currents."
"But we're still headed west."
"Yes, but at what latitude? What longitude? Where is this island he promised us? The North Star has all but disappeared. It's been fading for weeks, and drifting east. Without the stars, there's no way to know where we are."
Parris knew he was right. The Great Bear wasn't even recognizable anymore. Tilghman prowled the deck every night with his astrolabe and star chart, but how could he calculate the ship's position from an unrecognizable sky? To most of the passengers, stars were little more than decorations in the night sky, but to sailors, they told the way home.
For men who had spent their lives harnessing the air and the sea, these changes were like the betrayal of a lover, disturbing to their very sense of self. Parris had overheard one sailor, suffering in the heat of the gigantic evening sun, grumble to a companion they were sailing straight for the fires of hell.
"An angel—" Parris began, but Collard cut him off .
"Don't feed me that nonsense. You have to talk to him. Or else something will have to be done."
"Such as what? Are you talking mutiny?"
"Not yet. But if you can't get through to him—"
"Why me?"
"Don't play the fool. He listens to you. He's leading this ship to disaster, and everyone knows it."
"You're the ranking officer. I suggest you raise your concerns with Captain Sinclair yourself."
"Spare me. He's no captain."
"What ever you call it, he's the one with the right to give orders."
Collard spat. "I mean he didn't earn it. He's never commanded men at sea, never faced down an enemy's cannon without flinching. He doesn't know what a command means. And he doesn't know how to navigate on the open seas."
"Does it occur to you that perhaps Captain Sinclair has access to information that none of you knows about?"
The look on Collard's face made it clear he didn't find that likely.
"What experience do you have with magic islands?" Parris said. "Or with navigating at the edge of the world?"
"Nobody does. Everyone who's tried it is dead."
"Did you think it would be safe? A pleasant outing with sunshine and good fishing? Of course it's dangerous. Of course standard navigation won't get you there. If it were easy, it would have been done before."
"Enough." Collard opened the door again. "I can see you're Sinclair's man."
"No," Parris said. "No, I'm not. But he's gotten us this far, and I'm inclined to trust him for the rest."
&nb
sp; Collard strode away, leaving Parris with his own uneasy thoughts. Was the beetle really leading them in the right direction? It suddenly seemed ludicrous that they were all trusting their lives to an insect. Maybe it wasn't really pointing toward Horizon. Or maybe it had died, and Sinclair was too stubborn to admit he didn't know where he was going.
Morale was important. It made sense to conceal the existence of the beetle, but only to a point. The officers needed some assurance that Sinclair knew what he was doing.
Unless he didn't know what he was doing. Unless he really was sailing blind.
Chapter Fifteen
CATHERINE hated to be trapped belowdecks. Some passengers rarely left the stuffy hold, uncomfortable around sailors and apprehensive of the heaving seas, but Catherine couldn't stand the suffocating heat and the stench. She needed to be out under the sky.
"Come on," she begged Matthew.
"It's raining," he said.
"Not that much. And it's fresh."
They sat among the rolls of sails in the hold, sheltering from the wet. The other passengers crowded the narrow space, talking together in their own corners or trying to steal some sleep. There was little distraction here from the subject that dominated everyone's thoughts: food.
Catherine's stomach hurt, and her joints ached. She felt tired all the time, and it became increasingly difficult to think about anything but their next meal. The key was to find useful things to do— there was always sailcloth to be mended, and the youngest sailors were glad to trade stories of life at sea in exchange for help with swabbing or sweeping— but it was hard to work up the energy to volunteer.
The least they could do was to go up on deck instead of lying around feeling sorry for themselves. She knew Blanca would come along, if she could convince Matthew. She persisted, talking about the benefits of fresh air until finally he hauled himself to his feet.
"If I must," he said.
The three of them clambered up through the maze of decks and ladders until they could see the sky, which was a surly, overcast gray. The rain had stopped for the moment, but it had left the deck beaded with droplets of water. They trudged forward to the bow and looked down on the choppy sea, leaning against the barrels of sand and pebbles that Captain Sinclair had brought along from Chelsey's original expedition. Blanca produced a brush and started to run it through Catherine's golden hair.
"You're not my servant anymore. You don't have to do that," Catherine said.
"I know. I like to. It's so beautiful when it's neat."
"Let her. It's been looking like a haystack, most days," Matthew said.
Catherine put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at him.
"Do you think we'll actually make it?" Blanca said. "The ocean goes on and on forever, and we just get farther and farther away from home."
"We have to trust Captain Sinclair," Catherine said. It felt like a constant refrain. It was always the other two who voiced doubts and fears, leaving her to lift their spirits.
"Captain Sinclair is obsessed with this journey," Matthew said. "He'll never turn around, even if everyone else starves to death. Somebody should stand up to him. Collard. Or your father, maybe."
"Don't drag my father into it."
"He's the only one Captain Sinclair listens to even a little bit. He might be the only one who has a chance."
Catherine felt her cheeks going red. "But my father doesn't need to convince him. He trusts him. As we all should."
"Based on what?" Matthew slapped the barrels in front of them. "Based on rocks and sand? He's just stubbornly following his life's passion to the grave, and he doesn't care who he drags down with him."
"No one forced you to come."
"Well, actually, my father did force me, but . . ."
"Don't argue," Blanca said. "It only makes things worse."
"I mean, where's the proof? My father says he won't even tell the officers how he chooses his headings. The only evidence we have that this island even exists is a snake that does clever parlor tricks."
"Don't forget the tamarin."
"Which no one ever sees. What help does the tamarin give us to actually get there? It's not like it shows up and talks to people and tells them the way to its island."
Catherine turned away and stilled her face. She tried to relax into the soothing motion of Blanca's brush in her hair.
"Catherine?" Matthew said, his voice suspicious.
"What?"
"What aren't you telling us?"
"What do you mean?"
"You look like you're hiding something."
"I'm just tired of arguing about it, that's all."
Matthew walked around her and met her gaze. "Have you seen the tamarin again lately? I mean, up close?"
Catherine sighed. She didn't want to tell him; it would only mean trouble. He would tell his father, who would interfere. But she didn't want to lie to him, either. "I talk to him almost every day," she said.
The shocked looks on their faces made her grin. "Catherine, that thing attacked you," Matthew said. "You were unconscious for days. You almost died!"
"My father talks to him, too. Besides, that was two months ago, and he was just trying to connect. He didn't know it would hurt me."
"He?"
"Yes; his name is Chichirico. He visits me at night, after most people are asleep. He never stays long— only a few minutes— and he never touches me."
"You should tell Sinclair. It's not safe."
"And what right do you have to dictate my safety, Matthew Marcheford? Nobody knows him as well as I do. I've been in his mind."
"What does he say to you?" Blanca asked.
Catherine winced as the brush hit a snag, but Blanca worked it out gently. "Not very much. I don't understand his language at all, and besides, it seems to be mixed up with motions. He's always moving his tails in complex ways when he makes sounds, as if it's part of how he communicates."
Matthew furrowed his brows, apparently wrestling with his thoughts. "You mean this creature has a language. It's not just an animal."
"Of course," "Catherine said. He's a person, no matter what he looks like. There are thousands of them on Horizon. Dozens of different tribes, spread all over the island. Their culture is complex and thousands of years old."
"And when we get there . . ."
"We'll have to be able to communicate with them."
He was quiet for a time, thinking. "I'm afraid for you," he said finally. "I don't want you to be hurt—"
"That's not your job."
"I know." He held up a hand. "I'm trying to say I think you're doing the right thing. We won't do well on the island if we can't communicate with the natives. They already know how to live there, and we don't. If we arrive, and this Chi . . ."
"Chichirico," Catherine said.
"If he tells them he's been mistreated, we could be in trouble. But if he's your friend . . ."
"Yes. That's what I think, too." She felt a rush of gratefulness to Matthew for understanding; she hadn't expected it. "But I can't tell Sinclair."
"No. I see that now. He'd just try to do experiments on him and scare him away."
"So you won't tell anyone?"
Matthew shook his head. "But be careful."
IF anyone else but Parris had stormed into his cabin without knocking, Sinclair would have thrown him into the stocks. He growled, "Shut the door," and went back to the log where he was recording the day's progress.
"You can't keep going on like this," Parris said.
Sinclair was in a bad mood. It wasn't his fault that half their stores had been stolen. The rations were for everyone's good, to keep them alive, and yet they treated him like a villain. He didn't offer Parris a seat. "Going on like what?"
"Like an alchemist. Hiding your methods. Keeping secrets. Most of the passengers are inclined to trust you, but the sailors know things aren't right. They don't recognize the stars. They can't tell where they're going, and they think you can't, either."
Sinclair nodded agreement, hoping Parris would just go away.
"We've seen no signs of land," Parris said.
"There's still time."
"You're a fool. You don't have time. You should hear the conversations around the deck— most people are talking about turning around. Collard and Tilghman are openly predicting you'll lead us all to our deaths. If you don't give them some indication that you know what you're doing, they're going to kill you and take us home."
Sinclair slammed the quill into the inkwell. "And you? Is that what you think, too?"
