by Janice Clark
When the Able sailed closer to shore, in shallower water, we skimmed along reefs, stopping to gather what bounty we could carry. We came up streaming seaweed, our hands fat with mussels, scallops stuffed between our toes. The mate smiled to see us and added our offerings to the stewpot.
We sat in the crow’s nest after our swims, drying in the sun. The mate whistled, busy in the rigging around us. The captain chattered companionably below. Mordecai suffered me to brush out his hair and tie it back in a manly queue. I would hold up the chronometer I was polishing so he could see himself in its shining case. He would turn his head from side to side, admiring my work. He looked reconstituted, as though our plunges in the sea had swelled his veins, and his skin had acquired a faint golden sheen.
“I look a right jack-tar now, eh, me matey?” he asked, and the mate, passing by, rolled his eyes.
But soon the mate had less to roll his eyes about. Before our long days of swimming, I had relied on Zeke to climb behind Mordecai as he crawled cautiously up the ladder to the crow’s nest, to guide Mordecai’s feet so that he wouldn’t fall. Now Mordecai could skip up the ropes almost as quickly as me. One day as I was climbing aloft I saw Mordecai and the captain on deck, chatting together like old shipmates. I moved nearer and saw what they were leaning over: a chart unfamiliar to me, a complex pattern of swirling lines and dense notation. In the days that followed I would sometimes see Mordecai standing at the wheel, guiding the ship, his hair blowing back, a proud smile on his face. Captain Avery would hover behind him, making furtive course corrections when Mordecai was distracted by some fish.
At night our bodies glowed from the phosphorescent creatures we had swum through. I wondered what wan beacons we two made, lying on deck in the dark. When I stretched out on the sun-warmed wood my muscles felt pleasantly sore from so much swimming, and my bones ached. We slept in each other’s arms under a wherry, like Mordecai’s attic in compact form. Small chinks in the wherry’s planks were like the worn knots in the rafters, admitting, rather than shafts of sunlight, the beams of stars. Under its dome we slept soundly.
On one such night we lay on deck in the last dogwatch, watching the moon empty out, staring up at the stars’ slow wheel.
“The seas move like that, too,” said Mordecai, swirling his finger at the sky, “in great gyres. They are all one vast body of water, you know, they are all connected, though we give them separate names. The North Atlantic Ocean to the Arctic; the Arctic to the North Pacific; the North Pacific to the Indian Ocean; the Indian to the Southern Ocean …”
I sat in front of Mordecai so that he could comb out my hair and rebraid it. Where before I wouldn’t have let him near my hair, now he could deftly weave the hundred braids my aunts had first plaited, adding along their lengths new knots he had learned from the captain.
“Where would you sail to, if we could sail on forever?”
Mordecai looked up at the sky. “I would stop at each speck of land and gather two of each creature. I would be a new Noah.” He traced the shapes of those constellations formed like animals: the Greater and Lesser Dogs; the Sea Goat; the Winged Horse; the Two Fishes. He sat quietly for a moment. “I should sail with your papa through all of the seas and back again. I shall sail with him this time. And with me he will miss no sperm …”
Mordecai hesitated, then reached into his ditty bag—he kept it around his neck all the time now, with his precious migration map inside—and carefully withdrew another piece of paper. I recognized the chart he and Captain Avery had been poring over.
“The original is back in my attic, but I knew your papa would want to have this as soon as possible, to augment his pursuit of the sperm. It is my wind and current chart of the North Atlantic. With this, any sailor may harness the might of the ocean’s currents and winds to speed his passage—considerably, I might say, with all due modesty.” Along with his plotting of the whales’ migration, Mordecai had pored over his collection of old logs and assembled data on currents and winds in all weathers.
If the old gardener was right, my father was only a few leagues away. We might very soon achieve Mordecai’s dream of finding him, and in so doing destroy it. If Papa was so near, he was far from any sperm.
I wondered if he had come after me, not Mordecai, when he swam after us that day. Maybe he had wanted to try to explain. But I could think only of all of the times he had been at Rathbone House, times he could have seen me, been with me, and yet had not.
“And you, cousin? Where would you sail to?”
I compared Mordecai’s dreams of sailing with Papa to my own far less ambitious fancies: Papa reading with me in the library, one more populated with books; dining with Mama and my brother and me at a table laden with homely fare. Papa’s mere presence in the house while I slept was dream enough when I was a child.
I considered the kingfisher we had sighted earlier that day, bobbing along in her nest on the open water. She was said to have the power to charm the waves and winds into calmness—on the peaceful water the hen-halcyon then builds her nest and hatches her young. I watched the clear horizon that receded as we advanced, unchanging, a serene circle. I wished only that I might add my own charm to the kingfisher’s and linger here forever.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE SINKING ISLAND
{in which Mordecai too begins to founder}
ONE MILD EVENING a few weeks into our voyage, the Able stood in for land. We had until then kept well away from the coast, clear of reefs and breakers, sending the mate ashore from time to time in the bumboat to trade with merchants in the towns we passed.
I had secretly been tracking our route each night during the last watch, studying the ship’s charts under the binnacle light. I knew we were nearing the island that the gardener had spoken of as Arcady. Maybe there were several Arcadys. Among the many little islands within rowing distance of Naiwayonk, I knew of three Belle Isles (none of them, I thought, particularly belle) and at least four Gull Rocks, generally free of gulls. Nevertheless, I found myself scanning the sea for a high piney island, pink in hue. I took Captain Avery aside and asked if he knew of the island.
“Who told you of such a place?” the captain asked.
I explained about the old man pruning weeds in the Starks’ temple. I didn’t mention Mama’s story.
Captain Avery chuckled. “Why, that’s old Enoch. He’d say anything to keep a body talking, lonely old fellow. Loony as a blue booby. Probably told you how he used to sail, too?” He saw by my expression that he had guessed correctly, and nodded. “Blind since birth.”
I thought I was ready to be disappointed but was surprised by how my heart sank. It must have been merely coincidence that some of the details of the old man’s description had matched Mama’s, if they truly had. I began to doubt my own memory, wondering whether I had heard what I wanted to hear to make Arcady real.
The Able had been for some time approaching a rocky point. The captain cleared his throat and began to rub at his beard.
“Well, look at that. We’re nearly to Esker Point. Maybe I’ll pull in for a bit. Just a small delivery to make. Won’t be long. Would you mind taking the wheel for a minute or two, miss?”
As soon as I had my hand on the wheel, the captain hurried off below. The mate had disappeared earlier. Many minutes later they emerged, scrubbed and dressed in clothing that fairly shone compared with their usual dingy ducks and jackets. Captain Avery wore a fresh white shirt with a frill, tucked into laundered trousers. He took the wheel from me with an embarrassed air. The mate wore my great-great-aunts’ woolen jumper over clean breeches, and both had shaved their whiskers so that their jaws were raw and pink. They kept sliding their eyes toward shore as they made ready to anchor, avoiding catching my eye.
It was a soft night, the weather having held warm for the season, with light breezes. Plump, rosy clouds gathered around the setting sun, and the sky overhead was deepening to indigo. Along the darkening coast the scattered lights of a village winked, and as we saile
d closer I heard laughter over the water and saw a cluster of docked boats—dories and baiters, other small craft—silhouetted against the sky. The Able approached the dock faster than seemed prudent to me; the mate’s always carefully preserved paintwork scratched as we bumped alongside the dock, but he seemed not to notice. In a wink he had splashed the bower anchor home, leapt onto the dock, and was trotting toward town. The captain checked his reflection in the polished brass of the binnacle.
“Just keep an eye on those forecourses if the wind rises.” He dropped down the side after the mate, as brisk as a boy, and hurried away.
I leaned over the poop rail and watched the lights of the village, my eyes adjusting to the deepening dark. A particularly brightly lit house stood close to shore, a small seaman’s dwelling of weathered planks on which hung a multitude of lobster traps and glass buoys. I could make out a line of men, starting at the door and winding around the house. There was a sudden flash of light and a pair of men shot out the open door, ejected, and fell sprawling in the street, greeted by hoots of laughter. In the doorway, limned by the light, stood a woman, hands on hips. Her shape was like the plumpest figurehead in Mordecai’s attic but considerably less stiff. Breasts bared, hair streaming, she turned her head to and fro as she reviewed the line of men. She chose a new brace of sailors, hauled them in by their neckerchiefs, and slammed the door. I caught sight of Captain Avery and the mate near the end of the line. I couldn’t help but picture the inside of the little house and wonder how the woman accommodated the seamen, and where. I pictured Mama, stretched out on the floor of the walk.
I hadn’t thought of Mama in many days. Now, standing there in the dark, it felt like our carefree hours were ending. The captain had told me earlier that day that Mordecai and I must give up our swimming, as we had entered waters frequented by sharks. I sighed. At least the captain and his mate were in good spirits. And Mordecai still had his dream of finding Papa. Perhaps I would find my missing brother yet. The old man may have made up Arcady, but he had no reason to lie about his brother having seen a boy with Papa.
I walked the length of the ship to the stern. The mate had strung a dinghy astern to tow behind the ship as we sailed so that Mordecai could view the riches of the sea at close hand. Though Mordecai was by now a useful hand on the Able—plotting charts with Captain Avery or splicing rope or reefing sails—he still loved to sit in the dinghy, looking down into the water, studying what fish passed by. I usually joined him in the early evening, after I had fulfilled my shipboard duties.
I dropped down the companion ladder, ran down the line stretched taut from stern to bow over the water, and stepped into the dinghy. Mordecai was fast asleep, his head tucked into the point of the prow. I meant to wake him so that we could have our dinner together, but he looked so peaceful, and I was fairly sure that it would be some time before the captain and mate returned to the ship. I curled up beneath the bench, under Mordecai’s knees, and called Crow down from the mast to join me. A light breeze sighed among the sails, bellying the fore and mainsails in soft swells, making them strain against the masts, creaking the stays. Soon I, too, slept.
The lively pitch and roll of the hull woke me, along with Mordecai’s voice.
“Mercy. Are you certain you secured the lead line?”
I sat up. A league or more of sea now lay between us and the little town. Its lights were far astern and blurred by rain. Ahead of us only blackness and stronger squalls of wind, the rain thicker. The lead rope that had tied us tautly to the Able lay slack in the bottom of the boat. I pulled it up to find its end frayed, though I had secured it myself earlier that day in a stout bow hitch. I turned to where Crow perched on the tip of the prow behind Mordecai’s head. His beak was deep in the fresh mackerel he clutched in one claw. I noticed that the torn flesh of the fish was strewn with little fragments of rope.
I jumped up, suddenly fully awake, and began to struggle with the sail, my braids snapping in the wind, stinging my face. I was grateful that the little vessel was equipped with a stub mast and sail, such as it was. With only oars, we would have soon foundered in such strong winds. Mordecai pointed to the tiller and took hold of the sail so that I could steer.
I tried to bring the boat nearer to the wind, but each time I tried she threatened to broach to and capsize. All my newfound seaman’s skills were not equal to the buffeting wind and the sail blew clear out of its ringbolt. Mordecai leapt up to snatch it, but it had already sailed high away. All I could do was keep my hand on the tiller and try to hold steady through sheets of rain, driven by the wind, hurtling through the dark.
I didn’t realize for some time that we had stopped. The wind continued unabated. There had been no grinding, no sudden lurch when the boat met land, but somehow we were still. I strained to see in the darkness, tuned my ear to the wind and heard it drop a tone, and another. Crow nipped at my neck. The moon slipped in and out of a dark scrim of clouds that showed me only the gleam of his eye, a faint gloss of feathers.
“Mordecai!” I called out.
“Cousin, I am here,” came a muffled voice close by.
I stepped from the boat, Crow on my shoulder, onto a thin, rippled strand of sand, scarcely wider than our craft, Mordecai beside me.
Crow had led us there, I knew. Though I couldn’t be sure how far we had scudded along in the storm, I could calculate fairly well. The wind had been roughly north-nor’east, and, factoring in time and speed, I knew that we must be at or near the coordinates on the map that the old gardener drew. At the coordinates, but clearly not Arcady, only a flat, empty strand. It would have been hard to conceive of a place more unlike the high pink island, verdant and teeming with life, of Mama’s bedtime story. It was the wrong island, but surely the right one was nearby. Maybe we would be able to see it from the other end of the strand.
The firm sand in which we walked quickly deepened and softened. Soon my ankles ached from struggling through dunes shaped by the sea into high, billowing drifts. We had walked for perhaps half a mile when the terrain began to alter. The sun was by now nudging over the horizon and the air was keen, blown clear by the wind.
“Remarkable. I had no idea sand could be such a color.”
I had been so intent on what lay ahead that I hadn’t looked down. Mordecai was standing behind me, straining sand through his fingers. Pink sand.
“Coral exoskeletons, ground fine? Or perhaps iron deposits in the underlying stratum?”
It couldn’t be. I looked back the way we had come, and ahead. The shape, the footprint of the island was essentially right, long and thin, though far, far smaller than the island the gardener had described, and seemingly lifeless. But there were those coordinates. And the sand was pink.
We continued on. It felt as though we were walking uphill, though it was hard to judge, the high drifts having smoothed into long swells that rose and fell under our feet. Here and there, among the rounded ridges of sand, square edges began to appear. I soon realized that I walked through a cluster of dwellings, hewn of stone, sunk deep in the sand, and set in a rough circle. The square edges were the tops of roofless walls; whatever roofs had protected these rooms had blown away or lay buried elsewhere in the sand.
Between the sunken dwellings, what I at first took for pieces of driftwood proved to be the silvered limbs of trees that, though dead, still stood where rooted, their topmost branches stretching just beyond the sand. Next to one house, the upended bow of a fishing smack protruded from a drift, pointing skyward. I walked around the smack, running my hand over the planks; the hull was still sound, though sun and sand had worn away all but a few patches of its red paint. A stand of what looked like sedge grass sprouted through the sand. What I at first took for blades of grass were in fact slender poles of wood. I took hold of one pole and pulled; the wood, dried and hollow from its sleep in the sand, snapped in half. It was a fishing rod of finely whittled pine, a broken line trailing from its eyelets.
One dwelling, near the center of the circle, stood
higher than the others, its walls jutting up from the sand so that the tops of window and door openings could be seen. From this house I heard Mordecai calling to me. As I approached, the house seemed to gather girth and heft. I walked off the length of a wall and measured it as thirty feet end to end. Around the house stood a broken circle of fencing. Coming closer, I found the pickets to be made not of wood but from the broken-off spears of swordfish, jammed in the sand side by each, their sharp tips pointing up. Crow scrawked, launched off my shoulder, and skimmed through the empty window. I stepped through a wide, low doorway whose bottom half was submerged in sand, bending over to avoid bumping my head.
I stood inside a single large room. The dunes had drifted through the doorway and window openings in foot-thick walls of rough stone. A sea of sand filled the room. Here a skeletal perch seemed about to leap, there a swirl of kelp traced the pattern of a wave. I wasn’t sure whether the sand had risen—it looked too deep to have only drifted in—or whether the house was sinking.
Mordecai stooped in the far corner of the room, his head bent under a beam of worked stone. He leaned to extract abandoned belongings from the dry swells: a crumbling book, a tin coffeepot that poured a stream of sand. A few chairs jutted up at odd angles from the sand, as though bobbing in the sea. The top of a brick chimneypiece showed where the hearth had once been.
At the far end of the room four finials thrust through a drift of dried seaweed, the posts of a bedstead sunk beneath. I lay along the sand above the bed and stretched my arms high, my legs long. Two of me might easily have slept end to end.
Captain Avery had told us of the great cities where men melted not the flesh of whales but metal in vast cauldrons, and with it built new cities. Fishermen of some kind had lived here, judging by what remained. But maybe they had suffered like other local fishermen when the once boundless fish had dried up along with the whales on our coastline. Maybe they had chosen to leave the homes of their ancestors and go to the cities to work in dark iron and cold steel in a dry world, a world in which nothing shifted under their boots. My great-great-aunt had spoken of the families that tried to compete with the Rathbones in the early years of whaling. This island might have belonged to such a family.
