He wondered, though, about the mutiny that had become a massacre. It felt to him like a story with no ending, and the questions would linger with him. Who had survived that terrible, bloody battle? Did Ghost still live, and if not, had he been killed by his own crew or by his lunatic brother?
Salt spray stung Jack’s eyes, but he blinked it away and looked at Sabine again, realizing that these questions would not have to haunt him. His beauty, his sea witch, could stop him from wondering. She would know the answers, if he truly desired them.
Right then, Jack decided he did not want to know.
“I love you,” he said quietly, expecting the words to be taken by the storm and swirled away.
But in that same moment, something changed around them. The sea grew calmer, the rain reduced to a sprinkle, and the wind became gentler, yet still firmly behind the skiff. It happened so suddenly that he had not even time to notice before the words were out of his mouth, and the breeze carried them to Sabine.
Yet her eyes were closed. As raindrops slid down her face, she breathed deeply and evenly. Jack studied her, nervous; she must have heard him.
A smile played at the edges of her lips.
“There,” she said softly. “That should be a bit easier on us. Keep on with the wind, and it will deliver us to the island.”
Jack stared. Island? Easier on them?
“Wait a second,” he said, looking around to see the storm still raging behind them. Even off to either side of the boat, the sea remained a churning froth. But directly ahead the ocean had calmed, the clouds parted to reveal blue, and the breeze breathed true.
Sabine arched an eyebrow, her smile turning flirtatious.
“Is this you?” he asked. “You’re doing this?”
She pushed wet strands of hair from her face and nodded.
Jack laughed in amazement. “But how?”
“I’m not really sure.” Sabine shrugged. “I told you that I had other powers … gifts that I feared Ghost would inherit if he were to kill me. This shaping of the weather is one of them.”
“The fog?” Jack asked.
“No, I didn’t create the fogbank. But I called the storm to blind Ghost and Death and make it more difficult for anyone who might pursue us. All the better to hide our escape.”
Jack guided the little boat, settling down into an easy rhythm as the Pacific seemed to welcome them now and to help guide them on their way.
“Are you really a witch, then?”
“I need to rest, Jack.” Sabine curled in the bow, and he could hear the weariness in her voice. Much as he wanted to quiz her, he knew what she had been through.
Soon, Sabine slept, and Jack steered them across the ocean.
She woke after several hours, stretching stiffness from her limbs. She smiled at Jack. And in those hours, his need to know many things had grown greater.
“Not far now,” she said after a moment’s contemplation.
“What are you, Sabine?” he asked.
She stared at him, and he could see that she accepted his need to know. Perhaps she had dreamed of them together, or maybe she had dreamed of things he could never understand. Either way, he left the question standing, and her answering began.
“I honestly don’t know. I’m not sure what a witch is. I only know that these gifts are mine, and that sometimes they frighten me, and if I could make a single wish, it would be to understand better what they are, and what I am.”
A profound sadness filled her as she spoke, and Jack wanted to reach out to comfort her, but he dared not move from his place for fear that the current would twist them around. Even if Sabine could influence the weather, she could not master every wave.
“I’ve been thinking on this while you slept, and I know what you are.”
Hope lit her eyes.
“You are a woman, no matter what magic lies in your hands. And you are lovely.”
She smiled, but her sadness remained. “I feared that if you knew the truth about what I can do, you would think me no less a monster than Ghost.”
Jack scoffed. “You are hardly a monster.”
Her gaze hardened as if she was challenging him. “I have more magic than I’ve told you, Jack. It isn’t just the weather, or sensing the location of a ship upon the water. I sought out Death Nilsson, you see? It isn’t only that I knew he was coming. I sought him and felt him, and guided him to us so that he would kill his brother. Or even better, they would kill each other.”
“And I’m grateful for it,” Jack assured her, listening to the slap of waves on the side of the skiff as they sailed beneath increasingly clear skies. The storm raged behind them, closing in once they’d passed, as if erasing their trail so that they could not be followed.
“I can disorient a man or hex him with bad luck,” Sabine went on. “A talent I was sorely tempted to use on the Larsen, but which I kept to myself. Displaying my true talents … well, Ghost is a covetous man. I can touch the dreaming minds of those I have used my gifts to find, as I did with Ghost. Every time I helped guide Ghost to another ship, I tried to warn the ships’ captains by whispering in their dreams, but it never seemed to matter how prepared they were for an attack. The wolves were too ferocious. Too swift.”
“You tried,” Jack assured her, wanting more than ever to take her into his arms again.
Sabine composed herself and gazed at him. “There is one other thing. One last thing.”
“Go on.”
“Ghost could have murdered me, I am sure. But I do not think I will ever die as an ordinary woman would, of age.”
Jack stared. “You’re … immortal?”
“There’s no such thing as immortal. But I have lived a very long time, Jack. I’m afraid to tell you what I recall of my history, for fear it would frighten you to know what an old woman I truly am. Even I do not know exactly how old. I don’t remember being a small girl. Those recollections are lost to me. But I believe I am … ancient.”
Jack held his breath a moment, searching inside himself for some reaction, trying to understand what he felt. And then he realized that what he felt was not numbness; he simply did not care.
“You’re not the first woman I have met with gifts that some might have called witchcraft.”
Sabine leaned forward, eyes fixed on him.
“And not the first to show me magic,” he continued. “But the other—her name was Lesya, the daughter of a forest spirit, an elemental—she was cruel, a madwoman. You are kind and gentle and loving. You are far from a monster, Sabine. I said I loved you. I know that you heard me.”
She turned away.
“I love you still,” he said.
Her smile returned, tentative at first, but blossoming.
“How can you?”
“How could I not?”
Sabine shook her head, took a moment to consider his words; and then her eyes narrowed in contemplation. “Jack … if you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew … nothing. Nothing, Jack. So, this Lesya. You must tell me about her.”
Jack thought back to his time in the Yukon, the hardships and brutality of that journey and the beauty and madness of Lesya’s forest. He tried to figure out where best to start relating his story. Even as he did, he realized that though he had professed his love, Sabine had not spoken the words in return. And he wondered if a woman who might be immortal and had lived many lifetimes could love an ordinary man.
Jack turned away from her, staring out at the ocean, lost in thought. When he finally began to speak, he was unsure if the words that burst forth would be the tale of Lesya or an inquiry about the nature and disposition of her heart. But as he turned back to Sabine, words failed him.
In the distance, beneath a clear blue sky, the island beckoned.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DEEP CURRENTS
Sabine might have been able to influence and steer the weather, but the ocean was its own beast. As the wind drove them toward the island, Jack dropped sail a
nd let the waves carry them. He steered as well as he could, aiming for an inlet where the waves might not dash their boat to pieces at the foot of low cliffs or smash them against the rocks protruding from the sea. Sabine helped, using an oar to urge them aside when it looked as if they were heading for a violent clash of waves. They finally positioned themselves well and rode the waves in, and it was only when Jack allowed himself to relax and believe that they had made it that the splintering, rending sound came from below.
The boat drifted to shore and grounded on the sand.
“Is it bad?” Sabine asked. She sat at the bow, exhausted and soaked. Jack still saw her as a gorgeous woman, not the old thing she claimed to be. What that displayed about his state of mind he was not sure, but his feelings were true. Perhaps the mystery she presented made him love her even more.
“Let’s pull it onto the beach so we can take a look.”
They jumped from the boat and landed on the coarse sand, where Jack had a fleeting thought: Our island. Escape had been his prime concern, and then reaching shore safely, but now he could consider the future beyond the hour or day ahead. This might well be their island, because they were as good as stranded here. In a small boat like theirs, an ocean journey of any length would be treacherous beyond belief, however much food and water they might be able to store on board. And if the damage the hull had just sustained by scraping over unseen rocks was as bad as he feared…
Jack and Sabine hauled the skiff onto the beach, each breaking wave aiding their efforts, until they were sure it would not be dragged back out to sea. Jack knelt and examined the hull, and the damage was even worse than he’d expected. There were three ragged holes, and several other boards were badly fractured. He could perform a repair job, he was sure, but it would not be quick. And without the correct tools, it would be ten times the challenge.
“It’s not good,” he said, but when he turned around, Sabine was facing away from him, looking across the beach and inland. She was so still that he thought she might have seen something dangerous or startling. But the scene was peaceful, and he took the moment to survey where they had landed.
Approaching the island, he’d been able to judge its width as perhaps half a mile. One end was mainly beach and low-lying land, the other rose steadily to a ridged hill perhaps two hundred feet high. It was crowned with a spine of sharp bare rock, but much of the rest of the island was green, cover broken here and there with protruding shoulders of stone. Birds called, insects buzzed, and somewhere to their left he heard the musical whisper of a stream finding the ocean.
There was no sign of habitation. The sandy beach was untrodden, and the jungle that grew to within twenty feet of the sea appeared untouched by human hands. The whole island exuded a wildness that was familiar to Jack, and that did little to unsettle him. At the same time it seemed to him that they were in the middle of a pause, as if the island was aware of their presence and was waiting to see what happened next. He had been subjected to such dispassionate scrutiny before. He wondered what the island saw.
“There are no people here,” Sabine said. “But there were once. Two men lived here for several years. Bad men, alone and lost. The shelter they built is beyond the spit of land to the north, close to the beach.”
“A shelter would be good,” Jack said. “So, you know all this?”
“I know it all. Each breath is history.”
“And you read it.”
“Well…” Sabine turned back to him, and he saw the remnants of a sad expression smiled away. “I live it, though only in brief flashes.” She looked pained, as if talking about her talents was revealing her darkest secrets.
“Come here,” Jack said, holding out his hand. “Help me with the food and water. We’ll walk and find this shelter. And if you feel like talking as we walk, I’d love to know more of your life. I want to know all of you.”
“Ghost,” she said. She looked past Jack and out to sea, and over the horizon storm clouds still hung like bruises on the sky. Lightning flashed there, so far away that the thunder never arrived.
“We beat him,” Jack said. “We won.”
He felt a rush of unalloyed joy at their escape, and he swept Sabine into his arms and hugged her tight. Dry land felt good beneath his feet, a mark of their survival, an acknowledgment of success. But when he released her and Sabine pulled slightly away so she could look into his eyes, her delight was less intense.
“But Ghost is not yet dead,” she said softly.
“That doesn’t matter. He might not be dead, but he’s many miles away.”
“And we are trapped on an island with a holed boat.”
Jack looked around again. There were fruit trees growing close to the stream running down the beach. Birds flitted from tree to tree. There would be fish, and farther inland perhaps small mammals inhabited some of the nooks and shadowy areas of the island’s topography. Even with violence still playing across the horizon, this place might well be paradise.
“Let’s find that shelter,” he said.
As they started walking, Sabine told him why she was a mystery to herself.
“I remember the Great Boston Fire of seventy-two. I watched downtown burn, and even though I brought rain, it was only a light autumn mist. It had little effect against such flames. I saw a man I cared about die that day—he was not the first, and will not be the last.”
They were walking along the gently curving beach, aiming for where a shoulder of land thrust out into the sea. Jack hoped they could climb this without needing to go too far inland, but he was not troubled. He enjoyed hearing Sabine’s voice, unconcerned at being overheard and unworried about whether Ghost would like what she was saying. Her voice sounded different, and perhaps the difference was that she was finally free.
As they started walking, Sabine told him why she was a mystery to herself.
“I was in Quebec during the Lower Canada Rebellion. I was looking for a man who might have had knowledge of my history, but I never found him, there or anywhere else. That was 1838. I remember watching the Colonials burning down three buildings where they thought rebels were hiding, only to find that they had fled the night before. They’d left their families behind, believing them to be safe. The screams that day … horrible.”
That was decades ago, Jack thought, but he did not speak. She had already told him that she was old—ancient, she had said—and he wondered how much further back she might go. He glanced sidelong at her; beautiful hair, radiant skin. Somehow she remained young, and he had the feeling that despite her age and sad wisdom, her heart remained youthful as well.
They left the beach and headed into the jungle, seeking a safe route over the ridge of land. Giant fronds hung from palm trees, creepers trailed across the ground, and blazing orchids spotted trunks and grew from rocks tumbled from higher inland.
“In the mid-seventeen hundreds I spent a lot of time in Europe. I worked for some time with Jean-Étienne Guettard as he created the first geological map of France. Time and the ages fascinated me back then, when I thought perhaps they could answer some of my own questions about myself. But nothing like me can exist in layers of rock or the formation of gems. My history is a vaguer thing.
“I had returned to America during 1608, through the Jamestown settlement.”
“Returned?” Jack asked. He tried blinking away the shock, heart thumping as he weighed the significance of what she claimed. And yet be believed her without a shadow of doubt. She had no reason to lie, and he felt the pain that excavating these memories inspired in her.
Sabine paused, and sunlight passing between heavy, moving leaves dappled her skin. “I have much more to tell,” she said. “Earlier memories are not so clear, and it’s difficult for me to recall the years.” She leaned against a tree, closing her eyes, and Jack went to her, fearing her ill.
“Sabine?” He held her arms and she was cool, and when she opened her eyes again, she was in control, calm and unconcerned at her surroundings. She stared only at
Jack.
“How can you claim to love a creature such as me?” she asked, and Jack felt his stomach sink in despair and sympathy. Was she really so consumed by her own strangeness? Lesya had been aware of her abilities, but mad at the same time. Sabine was not mad … but did that mean the weight of her years must crush her down?
“I claim nothing,” Jack said. “My love for you is a fact. And if you truly believe yourself a creature, then I am a…” He scraped a shred of bark from the tree she leaned against, and an ant ran across his finger. “An ant. I am an ant.” He dug deeper, and a glistening grub was exposed. “Or a grub, born, living, and dying in the dark. Because you are a fine, proud creature compared to me.”
“No, Jack,” she said, smiling. “Proud once, perhaps. But I’m too old for that now.”
“You’re not old at all.” He thought of what he’d felt when he had first set eyes upon her, and all that he had seen of her since. “In my heart you’re Sabine, in her twenties. A weight of experience in her eyes, perhaps, but still my young Sabine.”
“Oh, Jack. It’s you who are so young.” With that, Sabine turned and started up the slope, heading for the low ridge from where they would stare down into the next small bay. And each step seemed to take her further back into the past.
“I met Leonardo da Vinci in 1502. An incredible man, he saw the enigma in me. I scared and fascinated him. He had such a beautiful mind, and for a short time I thought I had found someone similar to me.” Sabine brushed a heavy, hanging leaf aside, and water dropped down her back. She shivered.
“I watched the Mongols rampaging through China. Lived through a dozen outbreaks of what is now known as the Black Death. Witnessed the dreadful results of the Crusades.”
“Which Crusade?” Jack asked softly, because though it was impossible, he found it difficult not to believe Sabine. She was so convinced, and convincing.
“All of them.” She glanced over her shoulder, perspiration speckling her nose and forehead. She was beautiful. Jack looked away and squeezed his eyes closed, fisting his hands, making sure he was possessed of all his faculties. He had let Lesya enchant him for a time, and his obsession with her strange splendor had blinded him to the truth of her barely hidden madness. But that was not the case here, at all, and it never had been. Sabine was a delicate creature, and she and Jack had helped each other through the most dreadful of times.
The Secret Journeys of Jack London, Book Two: The Sea Wolves Page 20
