The Ship Beyond Time

by Heidi Heilig

  His brows dove together. “What’s a subway?”

  “I’ll show you as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  I hesitated. “To face the future instead of looking to the past.”

  “Now is a convenient time to ask for a clean slate.”

  I threw my hands in the air. “Now is all I have, Blake. And if I recall correctly, you asked to come aboard.”

  That brought him up short. “I did, that’s true.” There was a long silence as he focused on the map in his hands. “Is New York to be home, then?”

  “The ship is home,” I said. “But we spend a lot of time docked here.”

  “I see.” His eyes roamed over the page; behind them was a familiar look—curiosity. “Where is the colossus we passed on the way into the harbor?”

  Blake was an explorer at heart, and once he started asking questions, he couldn’t help but be drawn in. As we studied the charts of the city, he twirled a pen around his fingers; it was only when he opened a blank Stillman sketchbook that I realized both the book and the pen were very modern, though neither of them were mine. “Where did you get those?”

  “Ah.” He looked down at the pen. “Mr. Firas gave them to me. It seems I misjudged him too.”

  Too? I caught the subtle implication—he had misjudged me, back in Hawaii—but I wasn’t about to start arguing again. Pressing my lips together, I sat back on my heels, suddenly exhausted. “It’s been a long day. I’ll let you rest.”

  “Good night, then, Miss Song.” But he watched me as I rummaged in my trunk for a change of clothes, and when I went to the door, he called me back. “Miss Song . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He hesitated then, his blue eyes soft as they searched mine. “I am sorry about your mother,” he said at last. “I would have saved my own father, if I’d had the power to do so.”

  I raised an eyebrow, glancing at the bloody linen rag of his old suit, crumpled on the floor. “Even though he shot you?”

  Blake sighed, running his hand through his hair. “I’d like to be more than what I inherited. Wouldn’t you?”

  I nodded and left him there, his sketchbook open to an unmarked page.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  KASHMIR

  I’ve always tried to resemble a brave man.

  It didn’t used to be so hard—and I’ve had so much practice pretending. After all, when you’re a thief, you’re always pretending not to be. The same is true when you’re poor. And sometimes also when you’re in love.

  I still don’t know just how it happened. Usually I’m better at guarding what little I have. But one day, I went looking for my heart and found it in Nix’s hands.

  I’ve never dared to tell her how I felt—at least, not in so many words. But then two weeks ago, we sat in the white sand as the sun melted into the sea, and . . . well.

  Poets write often of love, but there is no poetry to match a kiss.

  It was a promising start, but we hadn’t spoken of it since. First there was the petty matter of piracy to keep us occupied. And I was still trying to find the words for what I wanted. Petite amie, doost dokhtoram, girlfriend . . . that word fell flat in any language I knew, and “wife” was too weighty for this effervescent feeling—like Coca-Cola, like champagne. But when I’d fallen, she had jumped, and inshallah, I had a chance now to say the things I should have said long ago. All I had to do was be brave.

  Or at least, pretend I was, long enough to blurt something out.

  It was more difficult than it sounded.

  Part of the problem was time. She hadn’t taken me up on my offer to share my cabin—but that had been a long shot, I knew. Still, it was hard to find a moment to talk; after we bound the Temptation to the docks, the whole crew bent their backs to making repairs under the fevered eye of the August sun. There were boards to sand, ropes to splice, supplies to stock—and the bilge to bail, which was a murky, mucky chore. I volunteered for the task—I knew Nix hated it, and it was a chance to sweat shirtless for her. But when I came up for meals, gleaming with saltwater and oil from repairing the pumps, she never spared me more than a glance.

  At first I’d thought she was only brooding over the captain’s health, or the way his addiction dogged him. Despite knowing that Joss had seen his death, many years and miles from now, it hadn’t been pretty watching him sweat and shiver in his cabin, wracked with pain and fever. That first night, he’d even called me in to beg me to go on one of his “errands,” but when I finally agreed, he threw a mug at my head and cursed my name.

  But as time passed and the captain improved, Nix’s demeanor did not. If anything, she grew more troubled, chewing her nails to stubs, pulling so hard on the pendant I’d given her that the chain bit the back of her neck.

  So after I finished my chores early on the third day, I joined her in hers. Nix was on deck, sewing up the bullet holes in the mainsail. I watched her for a while, but she didn’t raise her eyes. “Your seams are crooked,” I said at last, coming to sit beside her. I reached for the bundle of canvas she held. “Give it here.”

  She met my gaze then, and something in her look froze my smile. But she pursed her lips and handed me the needle. Under her scrutiny, I made doubly sure each row was perfect. “Slate should have had you do his ribs,” she said at last, her mouth twisting in a wry smile.

  “Oh, he did.”

  “Ugh.”

  She gave a dramatic shudder, and I laughed, tying off the thread. “I might be cocky too, if I knew it couldn’t kill me.”

  I waited for her response—“Might be?” The joke was so easy to make. But instead of laughter, there was a small sound from her, like a word caught in her throat. I looked up to see her anguished face—and were those tears, standing in her eyes?

  “Amira?” I threw aside the canvas to take her hand, which was precisely the moment Bee decided to climb through the hatch.

  “My children!” Bee’s voice was a rasp over the ropy scar at her throat, covered now by a stranded necklace. She glanced at our fingers, entwined, and winked. “Working hard, I see.”

  Nix pulled back her hand to dash it across her eyes. “Nearly done with the sails.”

  “Mmm.” Bee took in Nix’s expression. Then she turned to me, and the scars dotting her brow emphasized her frown.

  I gave her an innocent look, and I wasn’t even pretending. Whatever was bothering Nix was nothing I had done—at least, so I hoped. “Where are you off to?” I asked Bee, to remind her that she was leaving. “All dressed up.”

  Her frown melted away. “I finished my own repairs, so I’m taking my wife out to celebrate. It’s a great day for us.”

  “Oh?”

  “With young Blake aboard, we now have three children.” Bee’s chest filled with pride. “Our marriage is finally tied.”

  “Congratulations, Bee.” Nix’s smile was real, and I was glad to see it, even if it wasn’t for me. “Are you taking her dancing?”

  “Too early for that. Ayen wants ice cream—yes, yes,” Bee added, but not to us. “A triple scoop with the rainbow sprinkles, I heard you. I told her she has no stomach, but she never listens to me.”

  “That’s how you’ve stayed married so long,” I said—another easy joke, but at least Nix laughed this time. Bee only swatted at me, still grinning even though she missed. Then she turned on her heel, walking down the gangplank by herself, but not alone.

  Bee and Ayen were the only married people I knew—or instead I should say, the only married couple: Ayen was a ghost, slain by a jealous man soon after their wedding. But they were happy together, still in love after so many years. Too bad Nix could not take their example closer than her father’s.

  “We should do something nice for them,” she said then.

  “For who?”

  “For Bee and Ayen. To celebrate.”

  “What’s better than a triple scoop with rainbow sprinkles?”

  Now Nix swatted at me, but instead of slipping away, I caught h
er fingers in mine. “She helped throw me a party for my theft day,” she said. “It’s important.”

  “I know, I know.” I considered the plan, despite the distraction of her hand. Had I ever held such wealth in my palm? But a celebration would be welcome, after the last few weeks—it might lift everyone’s mood, including Nix’s. “I’ll finish mending this last tear. You go below and tell Rotgut we’re having a feast. Get him to pick up a roast. Maybe something from that barbecue place in Williamsburg?”

  “Good idea.”

  “Of course it is. And you and I . . .” I trailed off, drawing my thumb over her knuckles. Courage, Kashmir! “You and I should . . . we should—”

  “Go to Chinatown.”

  “What?”

  “We should go to Chinatown,” she repeated firmly, though her eyes flicked left, then right. “There are good bakeries there. I can pick up some cakes and the like. For the party.”

  “Ah yes,” I said, nonplussed. Chinatown in summer was not the most romantic choice, the pavement slick with the melting ice of the open fish markets, and the smoggy haze of the bridge traffic hanging in the air, but I hadn’t been quick enough on the draw. Still, SoHo was nearby, with little boutiques and cafés. I could work with that. “Chinatown it is.”

  Nix crossed the deck and slid down the ladder to find Rotgut while I finished up the last few stitches on the sail. Then I went below to my own cabin, changing into a new white shirt and smoothing my hair under my best Panama hat. A quick check of my teeth in my shard of mirror, and a few cloves in my pocket for my breath, and I was out the door, where I found Mr. Hart standing at the bottom of the hatch.

  He glanced at me with hollow eyes, but he did not go up, nor did he stand aside; he only shifted in his borrowed shoes. “I overheard Miss Song saying she was on her way to Chinatown,” he said at last.

  “Ah.” I kept my face still. But Honolulu’s Chinatown was where the two of them had met. Did he hope New York’s modern version would be something like home? I sighed; perhaps the fates were telling me that discretion was the better part of valor this day. I doffed my hat to them, and set it back down on Mr. Hart’s head. He raised an eyebrow, surprised, but I clapped him on the shoulder. “A gentleman without a hat is like a thief without his lock picks. Viens, allez!”

  We found Nix above, and she glanced from me to Mr. Hart, her eyes lingering on my hat. On her lips, was that a smile? They say generosity is its own reward, but her approval was even sweeter.

  Together we walked down the sun-drenched sidewalks of Brooklyn. New Yorkers considered it rude to walk three abreast, so I let Nix lead, falling in stride with Mr. Hart. She was still distracted, so I kept an eye on him.

  Though I’d spent the last three years sailing from unlikely scenario to improbable adventure, one of the strangest circumstances yet was becoming Mr. Hart’s keeper. Still, I had to admire his composure in the busy streets. While he blushed at young people in deconstructed summer fashion—and in the hot fug underground, I could see the pulse under his jaw as the train roared into the station—by the time we reached Chinatown, awe had replaced the terror. Standing on the corner of Canal Street, he stared down the length of it, toward the water. “Is that the Brooklyn Bridge, there?”

  “The Manhattan Bridge,” Nix corrected. “The Brooklyn Bridge is maybe half a mile south.”

  “They say it’s a marvel of engineering, and the longest suspension bridge in the world.”

  “It was the longest when it opened, back in 1883,” Nix began. I elbowed her in the ribs before she named for him each successive bridge that had taken the title. It was bound to be an interesting side trip through history, but not, perhaps, for someone still reeling from a similar journey.

  “Maybe we can walk back to Brooklyn,” I suggested—not only for him. The walk over the bridge was reportedly a lovely one, very romantic. Less so, perhaps, with Mr. Hart along, but beggars couldn’t always choose. “There’s time.”

  Nix nodded, and Mr. Hart smiled. Then he took a deep breath through his nose, taking in the dock smell of fish and oil, and the warm scent of summer. “I could almost imagine being back in 1884, if I were to close my eyes.” A car honked; he startled. “And my ears.”

  “If you close your mouth, I could imagine you back there too,” I teased with a grin; his eyebrow went up, but so did the corners of his lips.

  We meandered through the crowd to a bakery on Mott, where Nix filled two boxes with little confections—custards and cheesecakes and miniature pies. But, leaving the bakery, she turned north again, away from the bridge. “Amira? Where are we going?”

  “One more errand,” she threw back over her shoulder as she wove between a DVD seller and a passel of pale tourists. “It won’t take long.”

  She moved quickly, as though she could escape the fact that she hadn’t really answered my question, stopping a few doors up at a shop selling trinkets and baby turtles. The windows were plastered over with hand-lettered signs on neon paper, written in both English and Chinese: PHONE CASE, BELTS, T-SHIRTS THREE FOR TEN. What errand did she have?

  “Wait here,” she said, slipping her cell phone from her back pocket and touching the screen. I tried to get a glimpse over her shoulder, but all I saw was a picture of the captain’s tattoos.

  Mr. Hart watched her go, as did I. “Wait here,” I told him after a moment.

  “The hell I will,” he replied, so we both walked into the shop.

  She was standing before a counter at the end of a narrow aisle, her back to us; I could tell she was tense by the set of her shoulders. Behind the counter, an old man sat on a folding stool wearing a mint-green shirt—a terrible color under the fluorescent lights. “Your fortune?” he said, loud enough to be heard over the blare of the portable TV on a shelf beside him. “I’ll tell you!”

  “No, no.” She stabbed the screen of her cell with one finger; she’d set it down on the counter. “I need you to read this fortune.”

  I chewed the clove on my tongue—a fortune? The pieces were starting to come together. But the old man had already taken a blue plastic basket from below the counter. When he tipped the contents onto the glass, I saw they were bones. “Hmm,” he said to Nix, not even bothering to look at the vertebrae as they came to rest. “Your heart is pulling you in two directions!”

  “No, it’s not.” She stiffened then—she must have followed his eyes—and when she turned and saw us, she scowled. “I told you to wait outside.”

  I cast about for an excuse, but it was Mr. Hart who responded. “But I wanted one of these.” He plucked something at random from the shelf—a plush doll of a white cat in a red dress—and his expression turned from credible to puzzled. “What the devil?”

  “Please, Blake. And that was clearly a sham reading,” she said, glaring at the man behind the counter, who didn’t even bother looking guilty.

  “Okay, fine.” He glanced down at the bones. “A stranger will ask for help. Say yes. Five dollars.”

  “I didn’t want you to tell my fortune!” she said, raising her voice. “I wanted you to translate—” Nix pulled herself up short, glancing back at me, but the man had already taken up her phone.

  “Ah, translation!” He squinted down at the screen for a moment, and his face fell. When he glanced up, he wasn’t looking at her, but at Blake and me, and his eyes were full of pity. “Which one is it?”

  Nix snatched back her phone. “Never mind,” she said, digging in her bag and tossing a crumpled bill among the bones. Then she swept past us toward the door.

  Mr. Hart shoved the doll back onto the shelf and we both scrambled after her. “What was that about?” I asked her; there was no point now in masking my curiosity.

  “Something for Slate,” she said, not meeting my eyes, and anger leaped like a flame in my chest.

  “Why do you hide things from me?” I said, finally blurting something out. So much for discretion.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Hart take a hasty step back. But I kept my f
ocus on Nix. Her cheeks were pink, but her gaze was clear. She sighed, resigned. “I’ll tell you on the way back. Brooklyn Bridge, right?”

  We trudged south in silence, making our way along the summer streets, and this time it was Mr. Hart who trailed behind Nix and me. Although she did not speak, this was not the silence of still waters, but that of the gathering storm. In the pit of my stomach, the fire of my anger had burned out, leaving behind a lump like coal: did I truly want to know what she was hiding?

  The bridge was crowded with joggers and bikers, tiny dogs fighting their leashes, and women with red wire carts selling mangoes carved in the shapes of roses. I bought one, to try to take the bitter taste of ash from my tongue. Nix finally stopped in the shade of the Manhattan tower, out of the way of the traffic. “You brought your sketchbook,” she said to Mr. Hart—not a question, but a suggestion. “Give us a moment?”

  “Certainly.” He pulled his pen from behind his ear and sat in the shade of the pillar as Nix came to stand beside me at the rail. I offered her a bite of the mango. She accepted.

  “God, that’s good.”

  Side by side, almost touching, we traded bites and watched the ships: the brunch yachts coming in, the sailboats going out. I could smell the sun in her hair. Together we finished the mango; the nectar clung like perfume. Still she did not speak, and I did not prompt her—it seemed we were both summoning our courage.

  My empty hands fluttered, useless; I longed to stroke her arm. Instead, I strummed my fingers along the row of locks fastened around a steel cable. They were brass and silver, old and new, pink and yellow and green—there must have been a dozen to a foot. They continued down the bridge, fastened to eyebolts and lampposts, rods and fences. Some had hearts drawn on them, others had names. I hefted one of them—an old iron thing, tarnished, antique—and slipped my picks from my pocket, for something to do. Nix snorted.

  “What?” I glanced at her sideways. “It’s not like someone can steal the bridge.”