by Zoë Ferraris
“They speak English here?” Herbie asked, looking amazed.
“I guess so.”
They walked a few more feet, and indeed they could understand what everyone was saying, but their voices, although clear, didn’t always match the movement of their mouths. Herbie stopped to puzzle about this.
“It’s like…their voices are being translated,” he said. “How is that possible?”
“Maybe something in the meteorites?” Emma suggested. “Look, I don’t see a harbormaster, but we should ask someone about docking permission.”
“Yeah,” Herbie said. “We don’t want to get a fine.”
She laughed. “Yeah, since we don’t have any money.”
“Oh!” His face fell. “We don’t even know what the currency is here. How are we going to get more meteorites?”
“Don’t worry,” she said nervously. “I’m sure we’ll find something.”
She knew that Herbie would start to argue that they should go back to Earth, so she strode quickly into the crowd and Herbie jogged to catch up, his backpack clinking at his shoulder. It had the Almagest inside, along with the boat keys and two more sandwiches just in case.
They approached a harbor gate, two great wooden doors bleached gray by the salty air. On either side, a narrow cobblestone street lined the wharf like a frill on the ocean’s bright-blue bonnet. The road was crowded with shops, taverns, and inns. Emma headed to the left, where the dock was busiest. They walked for a while, but there was no sign of a harbormaster.
“Do you think anyone’s going to notice we’re not from here?” Herbie asked.
Emma shook her head. “Everyone looks weird.”
They wandered down the street, glancing in shopwindows and staring at the surprising variety of people. Many of them looked very much like the humans on Earth, but when a pair of lanky creatures stepped out of a tavern right in front of them, Herbie grabbed Emma’s arm. She stopped in her tracks. The two creatures had wicked lizard faces, goatlike torsos, and long green fish tails that could cut brutal slashes in anything standing behind them. Sauntering confidently onto the sidewalk, one of them threw back his cloak, revealing a row of pistols and deadly knives dangling from his belt.
“What. Is. It?” Herbie whispered.
“Just keep walking,” she whispered back. They forced themselves past the creatures, who were eyeing them aggressively.
At the end of the block, Herbie let out his breath. “I have seen a lot of weird things today, but that was—that—the most—I can’t even believe—”
He only stuttered when he was really upset, but Emma couldn’t suppress her excitement.
“I think they were Capricorns,” she said. “You know, part goat, part fish. What if that map was right, and all the stars are connected? Forget traveling around the world—we could travel the galaxy. Think about it, Herbie. With the Markab, we could go anywhere!”
“But we’re going back to Earth, right? I mean, after we find your parents.”
She hesitated. “Yeah. Don’t worry. I’ll get you home—I promise.” He glared at her. “I’m just saying, we could go anywhere. If we wanted to.”
They kept walking. A man was coming down the sidewalk toward them. He was carrying a stack of papers, a hammer, and a bag of nails. He stopped at a lamppost ahead and posted a few notices there.
“You would think with all this jelly technology,” Herbie said, “they could do better than a hammer and nails.”
Emma and Herbie went closer.
“Oh wow…,” Herbie whispered. “Is that your…?”
Emma froze. At the top of each notice was a photograph of Mom! She looked much younger. And her clothing! Emma had never seen Mom in such attire. She wore a flowing white shirt held down by a dark-red corset. Her long black skirt was slit on both sides, revealing high leather boots and quite a lot of leg. Black gloves reached to her elbows, and a huge captain’s hat dwarfed her delicate face. From her belt hung two enormous pistols. She was standing in a pose—one hand on her hip, the other holding a sword over her shoulder—that suggested she was as comfortable wielding that sword as she was chopping carrots in the kitchen. There was a vicious, cunning look on her face.
“Whoa,” Herbie whispered. “Your mom’s totally a pirate.”
Then Emma got another shock. Standing behind Mom was a group of men, all wearing doublets and breeches. Dad was just behind her left shoulder, and the cold look on his face was equally foreign to her. She gulped.
The notice read:
Emma and Herbie stood gaping at the picture.
“Yep,” she managed. “The same mom who grounded me for borrowing change from her purse.”
Herbie was shaking his head. “I was so wrong about your dad. Your mom is the badass.”
Emma’s jaw dropped. “What. The. Hell with my parents?”
“I think your dad knew this was going to happen,” Herbie said. “Remember how, when the kidnappers broke into your house, he reacted right away? He shoved us into that closet fast. I mean, the fact that he had a secret closet at all. He was prepared for it.”
Emma felt queasy about this, but he was right: her parents must have been waiting for the day when their past would catch up with them, and Dad had been surprisingly well prepared….
She peeled the notice free, revealing another one beneath it.
PIRATES DON’T DIE!! was scrawled over it.
“Your mom was executed?” Herbie said.
Emma was stunned. She felt a weird tingling, as if at any moment the sidewalks might turn into rivers, the lampposts into ships. And if she looked out at the harbor, she might not see water, but stars and planets and the blackness of space. It was not exciting anymore to feel that the whole world could change in an instant, because now the deepest and most fundamental part of it had changed.
Her parents, who had always just been her parents, were people she never knew.
It felt as if all the humor had been sucked out of the world. Emma and Herbie walked quietly down the sidewalk. Herbie watched her worriedly, uncertain of what to say, but Emma said nothing. She still held the notice, crumpled in her hand.
Suddenly, Herbie jerked to a halt.
Ahead of them, a group of men were climbing from rowboats onto a pier. They were dressed in blue breeches and white hats, just like the sailors they had seen at the marina on Earth. Behind them, docked in the harbor, was the great ship Arcturus Venture, its red hull glinting in the bright noon light.
The vendors noticed that the navy had arrived, and quietly they began closing up their stalls, hastily tucking away their wares and moving back from the pier.
Emma and Herbie slid silently into the crowd, hurrying to get away. They turned into a narrow alley that was crowded with fish vendors and pushed their way to a massive water plaza. It was filled with small dinghies and dolphins. They skirted the edges and turned down another alley, burrowing deeper into the city.
Yet every road seemed to lead them back to the harbor. Again and again they’d hurry down a street, only to find themselves facing the sea.
In frustration, they cut into a dark alley and walked to the end. They had arrived on a derelict-looking road. There were few people in sight. Halfway down the street, they heard laughter ahead, and a group of navy sailors came around the corner. Herbie grabbed Emma and pulled her into the nearest tavern. A faded sign above the door said JOB’S COFFIN.
The Coffin was dark and buzzing with voices. They stopped in the doorway. It took them a moment to realize that the tavern was shaped like the inside of a whale. The walls were sloped and painted dark red. A cavernous set of ribs dangled above the bar, and just above the door hung a frightful row of teeth. There were only two windows in the room, circular portholes that were covered in grime.
“Scary dive,” Herbie said. “And somebody should tell them that most whales don’t have teeth.”
There was only one free table at the very back of the room, so they made their way there. Many of the tavern guests were human, but a
mong them was a pair of black bears sitting at a table and drinking from steins. Just beyond the bears was a booth full of monkeys. They wore bandoliers and carried pistols, and their skinny legs were practically swimming in oversized black boots. Beneath another table was a pack of dogs, all sleek and gray, sitting at their master’s feet.
Herbie blinked. “I don’t think my brain was built to handle alcoholic animals.”
Emma and Herbie sat on two old casks beside a thick wooden table. Their waitress, a scrawny bald woman who was being called this way and that (“Oy, Berenice! What’s takin’ so long?”) came to their table, looking irritated.
“Show me yer money,” she said.
Herbie shot Emma a nervous look. He slung his backpack onto his lap and unzipped the outer compartment, where he kept his wallet. But before he could reach it, Berenice spotted the jar full of bullets, half sunken in their mysterious water. She seized it, her eyes widening with excitement.
“I’ll take the scuppers,” she said, eyeing them warily as if they might protest. Both Emma and Herbie looked at her in surprise. Berenice glanced nervously over her shoulder and then hunched over the jar, swishing the water around and inspecting it carefully.
“Scuppers?” Herbie asked.
Berenice jiggled the jar. “Where did ye get them?” she whispered suspiciously.
“Er…someone was shooting at us,” Herbie said. “Out in space.”
“On a Strand?” Berenice asked. “Musta been the navy.”
“Wait, a Strand…?” Herbie said. “Is that the ocean thing in outer space?”
Berenice snorted. “You don’t know nothin’, do you? Yes, it’s called a Strand. And I’ll take your scuppers,” she said smugly. “Since they’re no use to you.”
“Um…no.” Emma snatched the jar. “You can have one, but only if we can eat and drink and…and you can give us ten of those black meteorite thingies that turn your skin into jelly.”
“You mean vostok?” Berenice smirked. “And you don’t know what that is either. Where exactly are ye from?”
“Yes, uh…vostok. We knew that. We need ten pieces. And you can have one scupper.”
She gave a sneer. “Two,” she said grudgingly.
Emma hesitated. “Fine. We’ll give you one now,” she said. “And one more when we’re done here—but only if we like the food.”
Berenice gave the jar one last look—as if she couldn’t quite believe her luck—and huffing, she hustled off.
“Why would she want a bunch of smashed bullets?” Herbie remarked.
“I think she was more interested in the water,” Emma said. “Did you see how she was swishing it around?”
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “First we ate vostok. Then someone shot at us with scuppers. Then we got on a Strand and came here.”
“I guess so,” Emma said.
Getting a better look at the creatures around them, they were beginning to realize that the animals here looked much worse than the ones they’d seen outside. The bears were too thin and missing large patches of fur. There was a Capricorn, but he was sickly and green. He had lost all his scales, and some sort of slime was oozing from his ears.
When Berenice came back, she was carrying a tray with an empty bottle, a bag full of vostok, and two small glasses of a greenish-brown substance. She set the glasses on the table. “Yer starters,” she said. “Food’s comin’ up.”
Herbie recoiled in disgust.
She shot him a frown. “It ain’t the best memory water, but it’s what we serve here. Ye don’t like it, ye leave.”
“More memory water here!” one of the monkeys called out, motioning to Emma’s and Herbie’s glasses. “Same size as those!”
Herbie’s eyes narrowed. “Memory water?”
Berenice made a fuss about getting her scupper and a teaspoon full of water to go with it. In her desperation, she spilled a drop on her arm and cursed at her carelessness. Emma quickly realized that the water in the jar was much cleaner and purer than the water in the glass on the table. She took the jar from Berenice and insisted on doling out the payment herself. She put only a few drops of the water into Berenice’s bottle.
“Stingy,” Berenice grumbled as she stuffed the small bottle into her skirts.
Herbie put the vostok in his backpack. “At least that’s taken care of. And now we know what it’s called.”
Emma reached for her glass of memory water out of curiosity, but Herbie stopped her.
“I’ve been watching the critters,” he said. “Nobody’s actually drinking this stuff. They’re just sticking their fingers in it.”
Indeed he was right. Across the room, the two bears each held a paw in their glass. They looked quite relaxed, sitting there with closed eyes and peaceful faces.
Emma stared at her glass. It was small, with just an inch of liquid. But whatever was in that glass seemed to have turned a bullet into a transmogrifying device. While the fluid looked revolting, it was obviously not poison, because everyone was touching it. Why? she wondered, looking around. Did it give the customers some magical qualities too?
Herbie looked uneasy. Emma stuck her finger in the glass.
“I guess we’re drinking the Kool-Aid,” he said. Using the very tip of his pinkie, he touched the water too.
Emma didn’t allow her finger to remain in the glass; she simply swiped the water and pulled her finger out. A powerful smell filled her nose—the strange scent of wood and old rope. She felt a strange shifting. Around her, the air became very quiet, as if someone had turned down the sound. Slowly she heard a song from inside the glass, the echo of an old sea chanty. She drew the glass closer. It was as if the song was lingering inside the rim. It seemed to flow into her ears and take root inside her skull, where it grew louder and clearer. She could make out the words and hear the creaking of wood, the strange shuffle of footsteps.
Staring into the glass, she saw a picture forming beneath the water, like figures in a snow globe. Six men were sitting on cargo boxes, two of them singing, the others harmonizing. She stared with fascination and amazement as the men sang.
Where do our precious waters go?
Down to the Queen Virgo, oh-ho!
The tyrant, boys, she breaks our backs,
But now we have her Halifax.
Oh-ho! The revolution, oh-ho!
Suddenly the vision frightened her, and she gave a jolt, sloshing the water onto the table. She set the glass down and saw that Berenice was eyeing her with a seductive grin.
Herbie was looking at Emma in confusion.
“Did you hear that?” she asked. “The song about my mom?”
He shook his head. “But I got a whole lot of whispering.”
Emma listened as the last notes of the song died away. Was that a memory? How could she possibly hear a memory that belonged to someone else? And why was it about her mom?
She had the dreadful feeling that her parents were slipping farther away. Not only might she never see them again, but she hadn’t known the most basic things about them in the first place, like how they came to space and where they were really from. The song seemed to suggest that her mom was from Virgo. Mom must have known about memory water. Did she drink it? Was that Mom’s memory in the water? How did memories end up in the water in the first place? Emma bet her parents would know the answer to that—and to a good many other things besides. Those vostok, for example, had been sitting so innocently on the Markab, right under her nose all those years. She and Herbie had argued over the origin of those stones for months, which practically begged Dad to tell them the truth. And yet he’d said nothing. Like one of the stones, he had sat there just as dumbly. He had gone out of his way to hide the truth. She figured he had to have a very good reason.
Voices began to trickle into her skull, much like memories from the glass, only these ones seemed to be coming from the tables around her. They came in whispers that penetrated the bar babble. She could suddenly hear the bears in the corner.
> “They say Halifax drank from the seas back then, just like the pirates did,” one bear said. “It gave her the powers she had.”
“She weren’t magic,” his friend replied. “She were beautiful, that’s all. And that’s why they followed her.”
“Then what about the gloves she wore? You don’t wear gloves like that until ye’re one of them.”
“Anyone can wear gloves, you idiot.”
“Not like those. And people said she had powers. It’s what you get from drinking the waters.”
“Ye been drinkin’ ’em yerself these many years,” he said with a laugh. “Ye got any magic powers yet?”
“This water’s corrupted—you know that.”
Then the conversation stopped. Emma glanced at the bears. They were still talking, their lips moving, but she couldn’t hear a word they were saying, only the chatter of the bar folk around her.
A minute later, another voice seemed to leap out of the crowd.
“Halifax was executed for a good reason, I say!”
She couldn’t tell who was talking, but individual voices continued to rise out of the clamor and head straight to her ears. Halifax. Treason. Pirates and Mad Jack. The Pyxis. It seemed like magic, the way the voices became clear just long enough for her to hear them before they disappeared again. It gave her the idea that something was controlling it—perhaps the memory water.
Another conversation came to her—this one from the monkeys huddled in the booth in the corner.
“And apparently Halifax is being transferred to a ship called the Eel,” one monkey said.
“The Newton Eel? That’s captained by Gent—the same woman who executed her twelve years ago!”
“Now that’s poetic justice.”
“What do you think they’ll do to her?”
“They’ll take her straight to Hydra. I don’t think the Queen will risk letting her survive another execution.”
“Think they’ll chop her head off?”
“Nah, they’ll throw her into the Whirl.”
“You’re sure it was Halifax?”
