A Tear in the Ocean

by H. M. Bouwman

  The girl swayed, fists clenched. “Do you not speak English? Get off my boat. Or else.”

  “I speak English,” Putnam said. “Better than you.” Her Islander accent was strong; probably Colay was her better language. “What are you doing here?”

  “You’re on my boat.” She grabbed an oar and jabbed it at him. “Get off. And don’t get any closer.”

  He put his hands in the air, partly to block the oar and partly to show her that he wasn’t going to grab a weapon as she had done. Scrawny kid. She was so small, he wondered if she was even younger than he’d thought at the bonfire. But her face looked older, so maybe she was his age after all. She definitely didn’t recognize him as the king’s son, or she wouldn’t talk like this.

  It was surprising that she hadn’t seen him standing next to his father at various meetings and dinners. But then, she probably hadn’t been at those fancy events.

  “How old are you, anyway?” he said. It wasn’t what he meant to ask.

  “Twelve. Now go.”

  “Are you lost?”

  She almost shrieked. “GET. OFF.” She jabbed again, stumbled, and caught herself. The oar was too heavy for her sticklike arms. She looked half starved.

  He backed up a couple of steps, out of range of the oar, and tried to speak gently. “We’re way out at sea. I can’t get off the boat. Let’s sit and talk. Just talk.”

  She glared, then nodded stiffly, the oar clattering to the boat’s floorboards. But she didn’t sit. “Why are you in my boat?”

  “Well, I didn’t know it was your boat. Does it—” There was no way to ask politely. “Does the boat belong to you?” No way did this ragged urchin own a boat. “Or maybe it’s your parents’ boat. Where are they?”

  “It’s mine,” she said sharply. “I stole it all by myself. You go steal someone else’s boat.”

  He laughed; he couldn’t help it. “You know if you stole it, you don’t own it, right? It’s not actually yours.”

  “I stole it fair and square. Besides, what are you doing but trying to re-steal it? That’s worse than stealing. I was only stealing from a rich man. You’re stealing from a poor little girl.”

  When she put it that way, it sounded bad, but Putnam reminded himself of the money he’d left behind on the sand—which at the time he’d thought of as his renting the boat. Surely renting a boat that someone else had already stolen wasn’t as bad as stealing in the first place? His brain felt twisted up.

  “So you should go get yourself a different boat,” she concluded.

  “But I can’t. We’re already at sea.”

  “I’m not stupid. I know that.” She stood, swaying and thinking. In the growing light, Putnam could see once again the classic Islander look, with lighter brown skin (under the bruises) and straighter hair than his, and an old-fashioned islander luck pouch hanging around her neck from a cord. She looked as if she’d run away wearing all her belongings; underneath, she was all bones and angles. Her face and hands, the only parts of her body not covered with clothing other than her feet, looked—well, the skin on her neck and hands looked strange. Wrinkled like cloth and faded pinkish-white in places. It looked a little like his father’s scars from the fire when Putnam was a baby. But her scars looked new and fresh. He realized he was staring and forced himself to look away.

  Reluctantly, he said, “I guess I could—take you back to your home . . .” He didn’t want to; he wanted to keep going south. But maybe he could sail her back to the southern part of the Island, away from any people, and drop her off at night . . . And then he’d have to convince her to go ashore without the boat she considered herself the owner of. Or he’d have to get another boat, this time without paying for it, since he’d just spent all his ready money. It would be tricky. But he’d be rid of this little kid.

  “No,” she said. Firmly, as if she were bracing herself for an argument. “Not going back. Where are you headed?”

  “Why? You want to come with me?” He imagined himself attacked with oars and glared at for an entire trip.

  “You can drop me off somewhere.”

  “But I’m not going to Raftworld, I’m going away from it. And if you want me to take you back to Tathenn—”

  “NO.”

  “But there isn’t anywhere else for you to go. Not with people.”

  She lifted her chin so that it jutted out, and her eyes sparked with determination, even scrawny as she was. “Then take me somewhere without people.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THEY WERE at a standstill—so to speak. The girl refused to go back, and Putnam refused to take her onward. This was his adventure, and he wasn’t a babysitter. And if he didn’t sail her to Tathenn or Raftworld—well, he couldn’t just drop her off somewhere uninhabited. (And where, anyway? There were no islands as far as the eye could see.)

  But while they argued and glowered, they were in fact moving southward, riding the current Putnam had found.

  The girl shouldn’t be taking a long ocean trip. While she had probably fished in the shallow waters around her island, Putnam had grown up on the ocean itself and he knew how the water worked: how to find food while traveling, how to read the sky, how to navigate. The girl might know how to sail a small boat, but she was an Islander, which meant that she’d never taken a long voyage—probably never been out of sight of the big Island itself.

  She kept glaring.

  Finally, Putnam said, “Fine.” Giving in was the only option he could see. She’d have to come along—for now. “But I won’t leave you somewhere without people, like you said. You can’t possibly live by yourself out in the middle of nowhere—”

  “Yes I can.”

  “—and anyway there aren’t even any islands out here as far as I can tell. So you can come with me, and when the trip is over, we head back to Tathenn.” A stony look passed over her face, but before she could argue, he said, “If you really don’t want to go back to Tathenn, we can figure it out then. You can come to Raftworld with me.”

  Though she didn’t say yes, she didn’t pick up the oar again, and Putnam decided that was a good enough response for now. “Where were you planning to sail to, anyway?” he said.

  She shrugged. “Where are you going? And how long of a trip will it be?”

  What a difficult question to answer! What could he say? I’m going south to figure out what’s making the water go bad—and to fix it if I can—and the trip will last as long as it takes to do that? There was no answer that sounded smart, so he decided to pull rank.

  “It’s a secret mission. I’m the Raft King’s son.”

  She narrowed her eyes but didn’t respond.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, Putnam angry . . . at himself. He should be better at talking with subjects. He usually was better. He was going to be the next Raft King. But now, with one small world to rule—a tiny boat—and one small subject—a sullen girl—he was failing.

  He straightened his shoulders. No. He was good at this. He’d get to know this girl, and within a day or two—probably by suppertime tonight—she’d be friendly and loyal. She’d tell him all about herself. She’d like him and want to help him with his mission. She would.

  He was, to be honest, a little hurt that she hadn’t recognized him. But maybe she wasn’t good with faces.

  Putnam glanced forward, but there was nothing on the southern horizon—only water all around them. “We should start by getting to know each other a little. If we’re going to be traveling together.” He settled back in the boat. “We’ve got time.”

  She crossed her arms.

  At that moment, Putnam decided that he would make this girl talk. Make her give up her secrets. Because it was obvious she was keeping something to herself, and that she’d run away with no intention of returning—so it had to be something serious that was driving her. And he want
ed to know.

  He’d start with easy questions, and pretty soon she’d be telling him everything. “So,” he said, stretching, “I’m Putnam. What’s your name?”

  “Putnam? The Raft King’s son?” She seemed shocked.

  So she’d heard of him. “Yes. But I’m just a normal person. On this boat we’re completely equal.”

  “Not equal. I stole it first.”

  “Right.” He felt like he was losing control of the conversation. “I’m twelve too. What’s your name?”

  She glared for a moment. Finally she said, “Artie.”

  “I don’t really know how names work on Tathenn. How did you get it?”

  “How did you get your name?”

  He almost sighed. Why couldn’t his stowaway be someone friendly? “It’s a good story, actually. My mom died when I was born, before she and my dad had agreed on a name for me. And my dad almost died, too. Right after my mom’s funeral there was a fire. My aunt had taken me for a walk, so I wasn’t on our section of the raft when it burned. My dad was there, napping, and he got burned pretty bad—but he’s fine now.”

  It wasn’t that hard for him to tell what happened, because he’d been too young to remember either his first mother or the fire; so both tragedies seemed interesting and awful—but like a story, not like something that had happened to him. Not like when his second mother—the one he remembered—left him. That he wasn’t going to talk about.

  His entire home—the whole square of raft—had burned down all from one unwatched candle, and Raftworld itself had narrowly missed a catastrophic fire. The nation had changed their system of cooking since then—no one had a personal cooking fire anymore but went to community kitchens to cook, kitchens with water siphons at each corner and axes to chop this one raft away from the larger raft if ever there were another fire. The blaze after his first mother’s death had changed their world. And his father, of course, still carried the scars on his arms and hands. Like this girl.

  “Go on,” said the girl, and he realized he hadn’t been talking, only thinking.

  “Oh. All the time that my dad was recovering from his burns, I still didn’t have a name. Everyone just called me Junior. But then my adopted mom showed up.”

  “Showed up?”

  “In a storm. She just—showed up on Raftworld. That happens sometimes, you know—even on the Islands.”

  Artie nodded. She must have heard stories about how sometimes people arrived from the first world. Rare as an arrival was, it was memorable when it happened. Putnam’s new mother had been such a person, blown over to their world in a storm.

  “And she became good friends with my dad, and when it was time for my naming ceremony, he asked her to name me something hopeful, and she named me Putnam. It’s—well, I don’t know what it means, exactly.” He’d never thought to ask her before she ran off and left them. He’d been too young. “It’s just a name from her world.”

  Artie shrugged. “It’s an okay name, even if you don’t know what it means. It’s probably something good.”

  “What does your name mean?”

  She narrowed her eyes, thinking for a moment, as if weighing what story to tell. “It’s from the first world, too. You know about the big group of immigrants who came to Tathenn a couple hundred years ago?”

  Putnam nodded, thinking of the tapestry in his father’s tent, the one with the boats of bewildered people from the first world arriving on Tathenn.

  “It’s a word from their code language. Thief code, actually. Artie is a nickname. Short for Artful Dodger.”

  He shook his head, confused. Why would she be called Artful Dodger?

  “I thought you spoke English.” For a quick second, her mouth quirked up at one corner, and Putnam thought that might mean she was teasing. “Artful Dodger is the code word for lodger. From the first world people. And after—since I’m an orphan, that’s what my stepdad started to call me, and then everyone did, as a joke, and it just stuck. Artful Dodger. Because I was camping out in someone else’s house. Because I didn’t have my own home.”

  “Okay, but—but that’s not the name your mom gave you. Not your birth name.”

  “No.” She glanced down at her hands, with the little round burns dotted across them. “But it’s what I’ve been called for a good year now.”

  “What did your mom name you?”

  There was a long, long pause before she answered, so long that Putnam thought she wasn’t going to speak.

  Then she said, “Anna. It’s an old English name. But that name is gone.”

  She didn’t look him in the eyes, and she spoke in a hard tone, the words like sharp pebbles. This wasn’t a good time to contradict her. “Well,” he said slowly, “Artie kind of works as a nickname for Anna, too.” It really didn’t, but he was searching for something nice to say. “So if you ever change your mind and think that Anna fits you again, you won’t have to change your nickname. That’s smart.”

  “I’m done talking,” the girl said. “I’m going to rest. And if you come over here while I’m sleeping and—and do anything around me, I’ll knife you.”

  “You have a knife?”

  She didn’t bother answering, just scooted back into the cabin, into the pile of tarps she’d crawled out of, and tucked it around herself like a cocoon. Closed her eyes.

  He didn’t think she was actually sleeping—there was something too twitchy and watchful about her face. But he decided to pretend she was and have a little time to himself. He leaned carefully over the edge of the boat and scooped up a handful of water. Drank it in, then twisted up his face. Eww. Definitely saltier than it had been at the Islands. Still drinkable, but not tasty.

  Deep in thought, he refilled the water sack that he’d emptied earlier in the night and filled the water sacks he’d brought and a little barrel he’d found on the boat, too. Filled everything he could find that would hold water. If the water got much worse, it might not be drinkable.

  The sun was high in the sky, and he still hadn’t slept. He faced forward, propped his chin in his hands, and watched the southern waters dance ahead of him as the boat traveled. Slowly his eyes closed.

  * * *

  • • •

  LATER IN the day, after Putnam had dozed in the warm sun for several hours, Artie emerged from the cabin.

  Putnam asked, “Hungry?” and when she agreed to split the last of the bread with him, he said, in the most offhand-yet-caring voice he could manage, “Can you tell me why you ran away?”

  7

  ARTIE. THE PRESENT.

  THERE WAS seriously no way that Artie was answering that question. And his too-kind voice didn’t fool her. He was digging for information.

  He’d already dug too much. She’d even told him her name—her original name that her mother had given her—and simply because he acted friendly when he asked. She wasn’t going to fall for that again.

  She hunched over her bread, chewing. Good bread. She was so hungry; in the past couple of days, since she’d arrived in the capital, she’d been able to pilfer bits of food from different places, but there would never be enough food in the entire world to satisfy her. Even when her mom was alive, they’d often gone hungry because her mom was too sick to work in the fields. And then they’d met that nice-seeming, funny, loud fisherman from the village near where they’d been staying, and he’d taken an interest in helping them, and he’d eventually married Artie’s mom. They’d had enough food for a while. Mostly fish. Fish and, soon, the fisherman’s fists. But there was food.

  But since . . . since her mom had died, she’d felt constant hunger. Not just for her mother. She was hungry for lots of things—things she wasn’t going to tell this Putnam boy about. A kid who looked like everything in his life had been handed to him on a delicate fruit plate with a little jewel-encrusted spoon. A kid who probably had all kinds of family and friends
to love him and take care of him. Friends who wouldn’t return him to his awful stepdad if he tried to leave.

  Artie shrugged to herself. No need to get to know him just because he happened to have stolen the same boat she had. She was on her own—finally, miraculously—and she would stay that way.

  She ate the entire hunk of bread in silence. Putnam ate, too, slowly. He ate only about half his bread and put the rest back in the waterproof food sack. “We can catch fish for supper,” he said, “so don’t worry about finishing your bread.”

  The light was slanting almost sideways now, as the sun approached the western horizon. All the planes on Putnam’s face stood out sharply, and his curls glistened. His skin shone; his teeth almost glowed. He was too healthy.

  He leaned far over the lip of the boat and washed his hands and face, whooping a little at how cold the water was. “Wow, that’ll wake you up. I think if we decide to bathe or swim, we’ll shiver.” He dried off his face on his clean shirt. Then he sat and faced her. “I’ll start,” he said. “I’ll tell you why I’m out on the ocean.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  He looked startled for a brief second, then said, “But maybe you’ll find it interesting. And maybe you’ve heard something that can help me. You’re from Tathenn, right? You’re not from the south end by any chance, are you?”

  She glared. She was not going to let him weasel information out of her so that he could turn the boat around and return her to where she came from.

  He shrugged, as if he hadn’t really expected an answer. Then he said, “I’ve been sent to investigate the southern sea and find out what’s causing the water to go bad.” He paused. “You know the water is turning salty, right? It’s worst on the south shore of Tathenn.”

  She didn’t bother to hide her eye-roll. “That’s been obvious to everyone on the Islands for a while now. On the south shore we don’t even drink ocean water anymore unless we run out of rainwater.”