by Nadia Aguiar
“And what about when you sail into the sea?” Simon asked. “What happens then?”
“Well,” said their father. “They say that first you see a dark line in the water, a straight line, dark blue, going from east to west. The Blue Line. It’s almost exactly on the equator. And when you cross it your boat rocks a bit, as if you’d sailed into something solid.”
“But we’ve sailed over the equator,” said Simon. “ Lots of times. You know it doesn’t do that. And you don’t see a line either.”
“Well,” said their father. “Maybe in some places you do. Maybe just in the place where the magical sea is. It’s like the gateway. And once you sail through the gateway you’re in the sea.”
“And then what happens?” Simon asked.
“And then you see bubbles here and there on the surface of the water.”
“Why?”
“Because there are deep trenches in the earth beneath the sea, the deepest anywhere in the world, and they release steam that bubbles up, so the sea looks like a cauldron just starting to boil.”
“That’s cool,” said Simon.
“Very,” said their father. “And in the middle of the sea is the island, of course. But hardly anyone from the Outside knows that the island even exists. The few who know about it don’t know how to reach it. When they try, storms throw their ships and planes off course and when the storms are over, the people find that all their navigation equipment—anything magnetic or mechanical—has been ruined. The only people who have ever found the island are those who stumble upon it by accident.”
“What about the people who live there?” Simon asked. “Do they ever leave it?”
“Oh,” said their father. “Perhaps a few. Just a very few ever have. And only a few ever got in from the Outside. And once you cross over, in either direction, you can never go back.”
“Never?”
“Well, almost never,” said their father. “It would be very difficult. Very difficult. You would have quite a story to tell if you managed it, let’s put it that way.”
Maya must have fallen asleep listening to Simon and her father, because she woke up to find that someone had turned off the light over her bunk and folded the page in her book and tucked it under the edge of her pillow. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. She hadn’t even felt herself drifting off to sleep. And now it was too early to be waking up. Something was wrong. Then she realized that the Pamela Jane was heaving from side to side in the waves, and rain was hammering on the deck above.
Her father came into the children’s cabin and waited by the ladder up to the deck. He had on one of the safety harnesses that had to be worn when going up onto the deck during a storm. Maya’s mother appeared a moment later.
“We’ve sailed into some weather,” Maya’s father said to her when he saw that she was awake.
The Pamela Jane rolled uneasily on another wave, and her father put his hand on the wall to steady himself and waited for Maya’s mother to finish fastening the clasp of her harness. Maya was still half asleep and disoriented as she watched her mother reaching forward to tighten the strap on Maya’s father’s harness.
“Where are you going?” she asked, getting her voice back and feeling more awake now.
“The forestay is loose,” her mother said. “We’re going to secure it. We’ll be right back, seashell. Try to fall back asleep.”
As she went past Maya’s bunk she paused for a moment and reached up and squeezed Maya’s ankle. Then she followed Maya’s father to the companionway. The boat nearly broached in the next wave, but when she righted, Maya’s father cracked the hatch and he and Maya’s mother disappeared on deck. The hatch slammed shut behind them.
Maya was wide awake now. She lay in her bunk, alert and tense, and listened to the sound of their footsteps on the deck through the whistling wind and rain. Maya called Simon’s name but as usual he was sleeping like a log. Maya told herself not to be worried. Squalls at sea often came out of nowhere. They had been in hundreds of them before and there would usually be something on deck that needed to be retied or battened down and her parents would have to go up onto the deck. There was a game that Maya played when this happened. As she lay huddled on her bunk she would count their footsteps on the deck. She told herself that as long as she could keep counting, everything would be okay. She had done this for as long as she could remember. One, two, three, four, five . . . Usually by the time Maya got to about sixty-three they would be back in the cabin, water streaming from their foul weather gear, their hair wild and stiff with salt, their cheeks bright from the wind. The highest she had ever had to go was eighty-four.
Maya propped herself up on her elbow to check on Penny. She was still asleep, swaddled snugly in the hanging cot that, though it was cross-tied, swung back and forth slightly with each wave. Maya lay back down again and concentrated on hearing the muffled sounds of the footsteps on the deck. Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four . . . The torrential rain and the roar of the waves made it almost impossible to hear anything else. She counted any thump or thud as a step. Below her in the next bunk she heard Simon stirring.
“Maya?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s a storm. Mami and Papi went onto the deck to fix the forestay.”
“There weren’t any storms on the radar when we went to bed,” said Simon.
“Well, there’s one now,” said Maya. “Do you want me to come and sit in your bunk with you?”
“Okay,” said Simon.
Maya climbed quickly into Simon’s bunk. They sat at either end, bracing themselves against the bars so that when the boat heaved they wouldn’t fall out. Penny woke up and started to cry, but Maya thought she’d be safer in the hanging cot than if she tried to hold her, so she left her there.
“It’s all right, Penny,” she called as soothingly as she could. The storm was scaring Maya, too, but she tried not to let her voice quaver.
“What number are you on?” Simon asked. Maya couldn’t see him in the dark.
“Thirty-five,” she said. “But it’s so loud out there I think I missed some.”
“I think I heard a step,” he said. “Thirty-six.”
Thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine . . . They went all the way up to sixty-four before they lost the sound of the steps again.
Outside the cabin the wind howled through the black void and fierce waves pummeled the sides of the Pamela Jane, whose beams creaked and moaned and sounded as if they would snap. It was all Maya and Simon could do to hang on and not be flung from the bunk when the boat pitched in the waves. Maya was relieved that she hadn’t taken Penny out of her cot. Waves crashed over the deck, and the children watched as water seeped in through the hatch and rolled across the floor whenever the boat listed.
When the thunder and rain eased a little, Maya strained her ears to hear her parents. But the footsteps had vanished. All that was left was the wail of the wind and the drumming of rain, steady now, and an odd wave that washed over the deck.
“Simon,” she said in the darkness, “I’m going to see if they need the hatch opened—it may be stuck or something. Stay here.”
Holding tight to the railing of the bunk, Maya stood up to go to the companionway but when the boat lurched again she fell forward onto her knees. She had to crawl through the water on the floor the rest of the way. When she reached the steps she clung to them for a minute to get her balance before she climbed to the top. She forced the hatch open and salt water dumped down her neck. She stuck her head out and in a flash of lightning she looked both ways up and down the deck but it was empty.
Their parents were nowhere to be seen.
Great black walls of water stood over the boat, and the sea was still surging over the railing. Frantically Maya looked up and down the deck again but there was nothing but giant, inky mountains and valleys of ocean all around them. A monstrous swell was lifting the schooner to its crest as if they were nothing but a bit of foam. The icy rain lashed her furiously and she began
to shiver. She heard Simon calling her, then another wave struck the Pamela Jane, and the boat pitched suddenly, throwing her off the steps and back into the cabin. The hatch slammed shut with a bang and they were in darkness again.
Shaking uncontrollably, Maya was fumbling her way back to the bunk when a wave struck, sending her flying across the cabin. She screamed and closed her eyes. The wave had thrown Simon out of his bunk, too, and they collided on the floor in a jumble of limbs. A deafening boom of thunder filled the cabin and it seemed that it would split the Pamela Jane into pieces of driftwood. Pain shot through Maya’s head and limbs and she no longer knew which way was up. As Maya and Simon struggled to untangle themselves, the boat pitched to starboard, and the deck tilted at such a steep slant that they began rolling across it. Maya felt sure the Pamela Jane was capsizing. But almost immediately, another wave sent the boat rolling in the opposite direction. Maya and Simon tumbled across the deck, and Maya felt her head strike something hard. Numbness spread through her body and the world was snuffed out.
CHAPTER THREE
The Day After
When Maya awoke, her head was throbbing and Penny was crying. Sunlight streamed in the hatch, which was knocking brokenly against the deck, one of its hinges missing. Maya wriggled her fingers and toes. Everything was stiff and sore, but it worked. From on deck, she could hear the sound of the breeze through tattered sails. Simon was lying on the floor near her.
“Simon,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder until his eyes opened.
He sat up and looked groggily around him as the events of the previous night flooded back to him. Maya picked Penny up from the hanging crib and went down the hall to her parents’ cabin. Simon followed her. They looked in the doorway but no one was there. Objects had been tossed around during the storm and the floor was strewn with paper and clothes. They looked into each cabin but they were all empty. Her step quickening, Maya went back through the cabin and up the companionway to the deck. The sun was bright and she had to hold her hand over her eyes to protect them from the glare off the wet boards. The sea was calm and flat. Their parents were nowhere in sight.
Simon ran back down to check the cabin again but came right back up, an astonished look on his face. “They’re gone,” he said.
He walked to the railing and gazed out over the water in disbelief.
Maya walked forward a few steps, up to the closed chock where the line from the safety harnesses would have been fastened. There was only a stump of the line left—after that the fibers were shredded. The rope holding their parents to the deck had snapped. A sharp cold feeling came over her.
The sea looked sweet, docile, the light dazzling off points of tiny waves. Maya’s eyes hurt from searching it. The boat rocked slowly and a metal clip on one of the halyards clacked forlornly against the mast. The ocean had never looked so vast and empty. Her throat and chest began to tighten and she felt her limbs going numb and the world blackening around her. Her head still hurt from where she had struck it the night before. She had not been sick during the storm but now she felt dizzy and ill. Afraid she would fall with Penny in her arms, she sat down for a moment.
“We have to radio for help,” she said to Simon when the blackness receded. Her voice felt like it was coming from very far away.
They went back down into the main cabin, and Maya put Penny back in the hanging crib. Maya followed Simon into the captain’s quarters. The first thing that she noticed was that the GPS screen was black and lifeless. She pressed the reset button but nothing happened. And nothing happened when she pressed other buttons on it either. From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the old compass. A thousand spidery cracks blurred its glass face. Beneath the glass the needle had snapped in half. Maya looked over at Simon. He had his ear to the radio and was turning its knob. But there was no familiar crackle of static. It was silent.
“It’s dead,” he said. “Everything here is broken.”
In a daze they went back on deck. Maya felt the blackness seeping in around the corners of her vision again, but just then she noticed that the rowboat was missing. She turned to her brother.
“They’ve got the rowboat,” she said. “They’re okay.”
Her words were swallowed into the blue void of sky and sea.
“They’ve got the rowboat, they’re okay,” she repeated loudly as if to ward off any creeping thought that they were not. “They’re probably not even that far away from us.”
The two children could not have said how long they stood there. The sun reflecting off the sea scalded Maya’s eyes. There was only a faint touch of a breeze now and then. The ocean was deserted. For miles around them there was nothing, not the smudge of another boat on the horizon, not a school of flying fish being chased by a bigger fish, not the friendly squeak of a dolphin.
They were completely alone.
Simon sat down cross-legged and stared out bleakly.
Maya wanted to sit down, too, to sit down and not move and pretend that what was happening wasn’t happening, that there had never been a storm, that there were still five people instead of only three on the Pamela Jane.
Simon had begun to cry very softly.
“Wait,” Maya said finally. Her throat was dry and her voice felt rusty, almost as if it were someone else’s voice and not her own. She paused, sorting out her thoughts. Her brain seemed to be working more slowly than usual. “They were wearing life jackets—I saw them putting them on before they went on deck. And they have the rowboat. And we know they’re both strong swimmers. They’re probably in the row-boat right now, waiting for help.”
As she spoke, Maya began to feel more convinced that everything really might still be alright.
“Right?” she said. “We have every reason to think they’re okay. We just have to figure out what to do now.”
Simon sniffled and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.
“Since the radio is broken and we can’t call for help, we’re going to have to sail to land ourselves so that we can have rescue boats sent out for them,” Maya said. “Okay?”
But neither of them wanted to move. Maya’s head ached. From the cabin they heard Penny begin to cry. The sound of her baby sister brought Maya out of her fog.
“Simon,” she said firmly. “You start rigging the sails. I’m going to feed Penny and then I’ll be out to help you.” She stood up. Simon slowly began to get to his feet. Maya stopped before she went down the ladder into the cabin and looked back at him. “If it were us who’d gotten swept overboard, would they just sit here?” she asked. “No—they’d do something to find us!” she answered triumphantly. “So get going.”
Maya heated a bottle of formula on the stove and fed Penny. When she came back out, Simon was finishing rigging the mainsail. Even though their parents had fitted the Pamela Jane with winches and levers so that the children could do everything on it themselves, the sail was still heavy enough that it took both of them to hoist it. They each grabbed the main halyard and began to pull, sinking all their weight into it. The runner whined as it slid up the mast and slowly the sail began to lift. They didn’t think about anything else for the next few minutes as they worked. The sail sounded like thunder as it rose and then with one last haul it was up, brilliant white and standing seventy feet above them.
Beads of sweat had sprung up on Maya’s brow. She stood back, heart pounding, and wiped the sweat off with her shirt. The physical exertion had given her new energy.
“Maybe we won’t even make it to land before we find them,” she said. “We’ll be sailing and we’ll see them in the water. The storm couldn’t have blown us that far away from one another. And even if we don’t find them ourselves, it’s just a matter of getting to land so that search boats can go out to pick them up.”
Looking out at the endless fathoms of blue encircling them, Simon could have said that Maya was crazy. But instead he nodded.
“I’ll get the logbook,” said Simon. “So we can figure out where we are.”
They had been drifting, hardly moving at all, when out of the blue the wind shifted and a shiver passed over the water. Maya felt a surge of adrenaline—or perhaps it was hope—course through her arms and legs. She looked at Simon and she saw that he had felt it, too. For a moment in the distance they both thought they saw a dark blue line in the ocean, stretching from one horizon to another. They thought of the Blue Line in the story that their father had been telling them just a few short hours ago, and they felt their hearts squeeze for a moment. When they blinked the line was gone.
Back on the deck, Simon sat down and rested the logbook in front of him. He looked at it for a moment before he opened it. The pages inside were creamy white and their edges were gilt. The log entries began several months ago, and his father’s handwriting filled the book with notes about the weather and their position at sea. Simon turned the pages and then he stopped, frowning.
“Maya,” he said. “Take a look at this.”
“What?” asked Maya. She was at the bow, rigging the jib and keeping an eye on the horizon, but she left what she was doing and came and looked over Simon’s shoulder.
“It’s weird,” he said. “It isn’t an ordinary ship’s log. Papi’s written all kinds of things in here. And drawn pictures.”
Simon turned the pages slowly and slowly the starched, neatly recorded logbook entries gave way to a surreal catalog of sea creatures. Sketches of sea life had been drawn in colored pencils: pale lavender jellyfish with dark purple eggs sat on the tops of the pages, their tentacles flowing down and getting entangled in the writing. One-eyed fish with subtly shining scales peered out at Maya and Simon. Ornate sea fans and rubbery anemones hugged the seafloor at the bottoms of the pages. Sea horses drifted through records of weather conditions and sightings of other ships. Beside each creature were long lists of cryptic numbers and notes and equations and records of the coordinates at which each animal had been found. On one page the depths of the sea itself had been drawn, shading from a sunny turquoise surface into emerald and then through grades of blue, from sapphire to a deep midnight black above the ocean floor. There was a chart for recording luminescence. Names of elements and chemical compounds and mysterious, evocative words floated like bubbles through the pages.
