by Ferenc Máté
Lil’bit sat upright at the shrouds. She looked south, where on the bright sea lay a flat black cloud. “There,” she said.
DARINA FELT THE PISTOL tremble against her thigh. She pushed herself away from the rock and started down the path toward the plateau. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” she whispered. “Maker of heaven and earth.” She clasped her hands behind her back, over the gun, as if to hide it from the world. “Almighty and most merciful Father,” she murmured, “we have offended thy holy laws. I offended thy holy laws. He was innocent. Let me atone for him. Do not let him commit the crime. My crime.” She desperately missed the feel of her rosary. “Let the innocents be,” she went on, running her fingers over the barrel of the gun. “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins . . . and life everlasting. Amen. Take me,” she whispered. “But save the child. And save what is left of his eternal soul.”
She reached the plateau. The sun, an enormous disk of fire, rose behind her brother.
Her brother was walking slowly up ahead, but he must have seen her movement out of the corner of his eye. He stopped, craned his neck. Then, still looking back, he kept walking toward the edge. Darina stopped. So did her brother. Then, with that barely visible movement they had used to approach butterflies on a bush, she moved toward him. She neared and circled a few paces away, trying to get herself between him and the cliff’s edge.
With the sun nearly behind him, his face was a blue halo, the glow of his tattoos. And the small white bundle lay motionless in his arms. She circled and he watched. When she was so close she could have touched him if she tried, she stopped. She blushed suddenly and with her free hand touched her hair. “You haven’t seen it this short,” she said. She bit into her lip and tried hard not to cry.
He was now exactly between her and the sun and he seemed to melt away in the circle of yellow fire. She looked down and stepped closer to the edge. The cliff lay at her feet and the wind whipped the sea mist past her, full of brine. The sunlight now lit half her brother’s face. The tattoos hid his features, but the sunlight caught his eye. It was as dark and as blue as the sea below. She saw a tear swell, trip onto his cheek, and trickle down, confused, lost in the swirl of the tattoos, as if unable to find its way out of the maze.
His eyes narrowed and looked down at the gun. She tried to let it fall, but her fingers held on tight. Slowly she lifted her empty hand and touched his face. She heard him say as softly as the breeze, “If only you . . .”
Darina watched the tear meander down his cheek, through the tattooed spirals, across swirls and sharks’ teeth, and then it dripped onto his chest over the drawing of a skiff, or maybe a curragh. Her eyes raced down his body, over pictures of tumbling bridges and cannons spewing fire, and stick figures lying dead, like cordwood. But among the images of destruction, wherever space allowed, were etched what looked like tiny birds and flowers. And on the left side of his chest, level with his heart, was etched in simple letters: Darina.
Her eyes welled up and the world shimmered into a blur. She felt her chest heave with uncontrollable sobs, and as tears poured down her face, all she could say was, “My dear.”
She wiped her eyes with the gun in her hand. “Things never change, do they?” She smiled. “You shed one tear and I cry a waterfall.” She kept her gaze down at his naked feet. They were the only part of him without tattoos. Burned by the sun, his toes were splayed out wide. She cringed at the distortion; the harshness of the change.
“Your toes,” she whispered through a strange taste in her mouth, and kept staring at them with a mix of fear and hopelessness. Then she looked up suddenly into her brother’s eyes. “The French sent a spy,” she blurted. She looked for a reaction, but his eyes hadn’t changed. “To kill you,” and with a deft thrust of her arm she held out the gun. “Take this.”
But instead of taking it, he pulled back in surprise. It was a short step backward, so his bare foot touched the edge and his body contorted as he teetered over the sea.
Startled by the lurch, the bundle stirred and out shot a tiny arm. It made a minute fist that rose toward the sky. A slight voice began a muffled, gasping cry. Darina froze. Some ancient instinct overwhelmed her mind. There was no thought. Only fear.
She lunged.
She reached for her brother with her arms extended, forgetting the cliff, the danger, her life; she saw only his frightened face and the tiny arm. She grabbed her brother’s wrist and her fingers clutched the bundle. His tattooed fingers reached out and Darina fell against him. They hovered for a moment, contorted against the sky, then they fell toward the sun, the edge, and the far-below, heaving, crashing sea.
The old woman by the corpse gave a fearful cry.
Darina tried to stop her fall but found no solid ground. Crumbling rock and loose earth gave way under her feet. Blinded by the sun, she felt their arms entwine and smelled the acrid stench of the dying shark. With all her remaining strength, she tried to twist away, felt a tearing pain race along her spine, and her knees buckled. She twisted hard again, and with an ugly sound, like a pitcher cracking, her head hit a rock. She heard a gurgling cry, then saw the sun go dark, inward from the edges, until all that was left was a tiny ember at the unreachable bottom of an enormous darkness.
Chapter 55
The black smoke rose and grew dense on the horizon. Dugger sat down on the cabin. A crippling fatigue soaked him to the bone, a fatigue without redemption that only hopelessness can bring.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely to no one in particular. “Damn
sorry.”
“It’s all right Cappy,” Nello said beside him. “It can’t be worse than being eaten by a flying shark.”
They watched the smoke, but, even with binoculars, saw no sign of the frigate anywhere below it. Lil’bit leaned into the rigging and softly hummed.
“What now?” Dugger said, and exhaled in frustration. “What the hell do we do now?”
Nello went aft to the cockpit, confirmed their heading on the compass, and looked up to estimate the angle of the sun. He glanced over the side at the churning foam to verify their speed, unrolled the chart and studied it, then rolled it up again.
“Well?” Dugger queried.
“Well, what?”
“What do you think?”
“Think?” Nello said, as if it were the last thing on his mind. “Not a damned thing. Just keeping busy.”
He came and sat beside Dugger, pulled out his marlinspike, and began to clean his nails. “I figure we have three choices,” he said. “One: we show the French our stern, just sail the sticks right out of this poor ketch, and hope for the best. In that case they’ll probably catch us in four hours and blow us all to hell. Two: we can head west right into that,” and he nodded into the distance, where black squalls and great thunderheads darkened sea and sky. “We can go hide in the rain squalls. They should be so dense you can’t even see the bow, and if we guess right and don’t break anything, we might just lose them.”
“And your third choice?” Dugger said.
“We drop the sails, have a nap, wait till they get here, invite them for tea, and tell them just what happened. How the Kanakas hijacked the ketch, tied us up, blew up their wheel-house, then paddled to shore.”
“And then?”
They glared at each other while the smoke spread across the sky.
“Haven’t a clue what then.”
“Or,” Lil’bit interjected, “we can run for Rangiroa.”
They turned toward her, but she just gazed through the rigging at the southern sky.
“What is Rangiroa?” Nello asked.
“The biggest atoll in the Tuamotus. It has one hundred motus around its lagoon. Big lagoon. Fifty miles across. A lagoon full of motus. With all those motus, no one will ever find you.”
She looked at them out of the corner of her eye and a mischievous smile began blooming on her face. “Anyway, the French can’t go in because they don’t know the pass.”<
br />
“What pass?” Nello said. “With one hundred motus, there must be a hundred passes.”
“It’s true,” she said, and allowed the smile to spread. “But ninety-nine are so shallow you’d wreck even a canoe. Only one is deep. It is narrow and twisting and you can’t see the bottom because the current runs too hard. But, if you know the way, you can get in without breaking up on the reef.”
“Well, we don’t know the way,” Dugger snapped.
Lil’bit ignored him. “My uncle Nataro used to take the Aranui through it.” When no one said a word, she added, “He used to take me with him.”
Dugger and Nello looked at each other, their faces drawn with doubt.
Nello walked back to the cockpit and unrolled the chart. Over the myriad of islands was printed, Dangerous Archipelago. Unnamed atolls were scattered everywhere, rings of tiny islands enclosing lagoons, some oblong, some minuscule, some square, others round, and among them swirling arrows denoting giant eddies, and wavy lines denoting miles-wide currents, and everywhere the repeated phrase, Unchartable water movement.
He held the chart out to her. “Where is Rangiroa?”
Lil’bit didn’t look at him or his chart. She stepped clear of the sails and, holding onto a shroud, studied the southwest sky. She looked at the low white clouds scattered all around, then she raised her arm and pointed at one, neither taller nor more billowing than the rest, and said in a hushed tone, “There.”
They followed her hand in disbelief through the sky.
“Native humor,” Dugger mumbled. Nello rolled up the chart.
“Should I make some breakfast?” Kate offered. No one replied.
Lil’bit’s face flushed with a swift anger. “It’s right there. Right there! Don’t you see?” she insisted. And when none of their faces showed the slightest credence, she said firmly, “Look at the bottoms of the clouds. Dark. Like the color of the sea.” When she looked around and saw they all agreed, she pointed adamantly.
“Now look at that one, with the three tall clouds beside it. Look at its bottom. Pale blue. That’s the pale blue of Rangiroa’s lagoon.”
The more they looked, the paler blue the cloud seemed to become, until it glowed distinct from all the others, an unmistakable road sign in the sky.
“I’ve read about this,” Dugger muttered.
Nello wanted to grab Lil’bit’s head in both his hands and kiss her, but with the others around, he just said, “You’re pretty damn smart.”
She shrugged her shoulders with the innocence of a child. “I can see,” she said.
Dugger looked at the cloud and then the smoke. “Can we get there before they do?”
Nello looked. “We can try.”
Dugger ran aft to the wheel and swung the bow, while Nello and Lil’bit hauled halyards and tightened sheets. The ketch settled on a beam reach as steady as a plow, furrowing through the long and everrising swells.
“And the pass?” Dugger cried out. “Can you remember the pass?”
Lil’bit closed her eyes. In her mind’s eye she could see herself in the long and curving pass, the bare spit of sand to starboard, a narrow palm-treed motu to port, and she could read the edge of the pass on either side of the eddies, as long as the sun was high, almost all the way into the lagoon. What she couldn’t remember was how the pass looked from the sea. You had to count motus from the first one you encountered coming from the east, eight or nine motus. She couldn’t remember which. Don’t worry, her uncle used to say, just wait until you’re there and then trust your eyes. They will find the way. She finished coiling the sheet, but instead of looking at Dugger, she looked timidly at Nello.
“Well?” Nello asked. “Can you remember?”
She took a deep breath. “I think so,” she said.
Chapter 56
The darkness slowly cleared from Darina’s eyes, as when daylight returns after an eclipse. Then sounds returned. She could hear the goat bray, and she could hear the wind scurry over the bluff, and from far away the rhythmic crashing of the waves and the faint grinding of stones as they rolled toward the sea. She lay crumpled facedown on the edge of the plateau, one leg tucked below her, the other over the cliff, and her arms clutching, protecting the tiny, squirming child below her breast.
The grass and the ground next to her face smelled like the bluffs of Inishturk. She smiled. She saw her brother’s shadow there beside her; how comforting it was to have him standing there, how much more like his old self that shadow seemed to be than that tattooed face and body she’d seen in the sun. She saw the shadow lean down close to her, then she felt her leg being lifted gently onto the bluff. She pushed herself up and sat. The baby cooed. She began to turn to look at her brother, but the sun blinded her, so she turned away. She cradled the baby in her arms and rocked it gently; it curled up its toes, scrunched its face, and for a moment opened its eyes.
“My God, Michael,” she said. “Did you see her eyes?” She felt a rush of warmth flow through her and she smiled. “She has your eyes.” Then she said very softly, “Our eyes.”
The shadow didn’t reply.
The little goat came and with its pink nose gently nudged her breast. Darina pulled it close and held it against her side. The baby scowled. “And she has your scowl too,” she said. “I bet you she’ll be chortling before the day is done.”
Terns and gulls shrieked below like some otherworldly choir.
She held the baby out and swung her gently, then sighed and pulled the baby to her breast.
“We’ll be all right,” she said. “We’ll be perfectly all right. We’ll give you lots of goat milk and papayas. And your daddy will catch lots of fish, he was always a good fisherman, and when you get some teeth we’ll eat some roast goat and sweet potatoes. You’ll love sweet potatoes. Of course you’ll love potatoes, you have to, you’re bleeding Irish.” And she giggled and nuzzled the baby’s belly.
“Then we can sail to a small island and build a little house in a beautiful lagoon—your daddy can cut the poles and I can weave the walls, and we can pile up palm fronds for the roof. Then dangle our feet in the water all day.”
The baby kicked, then began to whimper. Darina whispered, “Shhh, my darling. Shhh.”
She felt her brother lean down near her and the sea breeze brought the scent of coconut oil. Darina felt her breathing stop. She looked hard at the shadow for the first time—the shape of the head, the narrow shoulders—and a gnawing doubt ran like ice water down her back. The roar of the surf from below grew louder and she whispered almost without breath, “Michael?” When no response came, her voice trembled. “Michael. Are you there?”
A gust of wind flattened the grass. Then a very soft voice said something she couldn’t understand. She twisted hard around. At the sudden movement the little goat took flight, crossing the plateau. Darina was on one knee now at the cliff’s edge, the wind rattling the tatters of her shirt, and there before her, holding out the tin cup filled with milk, with eyes smiling in the creased and wrinkled face, was the old woman. Beyond her, the plateau was empty. Except for the white-robed corpse in its center with the small goat by its side.
Darina went pale and teetered on the edge. She had no fear of heights, but she didn’t dare look down. She sat so she wouldn’t fall. The baby cried. She buried it in her bosom and clutched it with all her might.
The wind fell. The air was still. Far below the terns shrieked, circling above something that had fallen and now rolled like a dead shark in the waves that climbed and slid back from the stony shore.
Chapter 57
Dugger wrestled the wheel to keep the ketch on course. The southeast swells loomed ever higher, and down in their troughs the wind eased and the sails flagged and the bow wandered and the ketch lost her way. Not until she climbed the next swell, ran its crest, and began sliding down its dark blue back did she regain her speed and good steerage. Then the next trough came.
He steered, shifting and jittery, through the surging and slowing. From atop
the crests, he cast weary glances to port where the black smoke had changed course and neared. It was still distant, but each time the ketch slid into a trough, he convinced himself that the frigate had made miraculous speed and, when they climbed the crest, it would be right beside them.
Nello sat on the cabin top, binoculars in hand, forcing himself not to raise them to his eyes. He told himself the last look would be good enough for hours, little would change, but when he looked again he was sure the smoke was darker. He walked back to the wheel and handed the binoculars to Dugger.
“Let me steer awhile,” he said.
Dugger went to the mainmast shrouds and started up the rat-lines. Halfway to the spreaders, he wrapped an arm around the shrouds, and with the binoculars took a long look at the smoke with a small solid mass now visible below it. Then he looked west at the contorted black clouds and their rain squalls that grayed and blurred the sea. He came back and said quietly, so only Nello heard, “Ease her toward the squalls.” When Nello gave him a weary look, he added, “In case we need to hide.”
Ahead of the ketch, the cloud with the blue bottom seemed no nearer than when they began.
LIL’BIT SAT ON HER HAUNCHES on the foredeck, her gaze fixed on the blue-bottomed cloud until her eyes burned from the wind. Kate sat safely wedged in the companionway, leaning on the main hatch, her legs perched on the top rung of the ladder below. “These are the most beautiful clouds I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Dugger leaned down and kissed her head but kept his eyes on the squalls. He had the unshakable sensation of the ketch standing still and the squalls standing still and the only thing moving in the world being the frigate—always nearing.
“How far are they, would you guess?” he asked Nello.
“Ten miles,” Nello replied.
“And the squalls?”
“Maybe five.”
“I make the lagoon ten. You?”
“Sure. Ten seems right.”
“Then we might make it.”
