Currently

by Sarah Mensinga

  They’re all of young men; most handsome, a few not; some with dark skin, others with light. Some of them wear seacotton suits, like the uppies do in Varasay, while others wear unfamiliar clothing, like cloth bundled around their heads, large hats, or garments of patterned pearlsilk.

  I pick up a picturegraph of a man who looks a lot like Sande, although his nose is thinner and his hair isn’t as curly.

  “Don’t touch that,” Melily snaps from where she stands beside her wardrobe, a black dress draped over her arm.

  Of course I continue to look at it.

  “Um, aren’t you listening?” she says, her voice wound tight. “I said put it down.”

  I turn to see understanding spread across her face. Surely she’s realizing that I truly am her balance, and her wavurl won’t work on me.

  Tossing the lacy dress aside, she marches over and yanks the picturegraph out of my hands. “You can’t just come in here and paw through my stuff. You’ll break something.”

  “Who is this?” I ask.

  “An admirer.” She stands on tiptoe and carefully sets the frame back on the shelf. “Actually he’s one of my many admirers. Father has us travel to so many places it’s hard to keep track of them all.”

  She steps back as if to survey her collection, but she’s really watching me out of the corner of her eye. “Which one do you think is the best looking?”

  I shrug and point at the picturegraph I was just holding, the one that reminds me of Sande.

  Melily moves closer to the shelves. “That’s Selaan Waels—obviously the son of Pinser Waels, owner of Waels Equatorial Shipping.”

  I suppose I don’t look impressed enough because Melily exhales heavily.

  “Have you even heard of Waels Equatorial Shipping?”

  I shake my head.

  She looks at me as if I don’t know how to shuck a clam. “I can’t believe Father is actually going to make me take you into Beth. This will be so humiliating.”

  She retreats to the other side of the cabin and scoops up her black dress.

  I’m wearing another of Shara’s gowns today—one with far too many ruffles. She sent over a new selection of clothing this morning, and again, less than half of the outfits fit me. I’m fairly slender, but not in every single place, and Shara doesn’t seem to have any curves at all.

  While Melily buttons her dress, I explore her room, almost hoping she’ll scold me again. With Douglen making me feel so powerless, it’s satisfying to defy someone.

  On the other side of her bed, I find a strange contraption that seems to be part polished wooden furniture, part machine, and part large brass horn. Beside it lies a stack of stiff cardpaper squares about the size of uppy dinner plates. The one resting on top has words and pictures printed on it.

  “So who was that boy you wanted saved?” Melily asks a little timidly.

  I look up from the wood and metal machine. “He’s my closest friend.”

  Melily is now dressed, although she’s still pulling on stockings. “Douglen said you were more than friends, and he said that sludge boy was really mad at you. What did you do?”

  I don’t want to discuss Sande with her, so I keep my answer short. “Something he didn’t want me to. Is there anything I can do to help you get ready?”

  “Don’t change the subject.” Melily climbs onto the bed, a white stocking hanging from her hand. “Was he your lover? He was your lover, wasn’t he? I can totally tell by the way you’re doing that thing with your face.”

  It’s still hard to remember that Melily and I are the same age. Even with her painted eyes and elegant dress, she looks and acts so young.

  I take a deep breath, sensing I should try harder to end the conversation. “I loved him—love him, yes… but we can never marry.”

  Her eyes widen. “Why?”

  “When I was a child, Sande’s family adopted me so that I could shelter in Varasay City while the tide passed. I was never truly part of his family, but because of that, because of what’s written in the record books… we can’t be together.”

  “So you’re saying you love your brother? That’s disgusting.” Stockings on, Melily slides off the bed and plucks up a pair of shiny black shoes. “I wouldn’t touch Douglen if someone paid me, and we’re adopted too.”

  I fall silent—guessing that trying to explain the details of my relationship with Sande will only make things worse. But talking about him again makes me wonder where he is and how he’s doing. I hope Lord Osperacy has kept Sande safe as he promised, and I can’t wait to speak to him on the relayphone in Beth just to be sure. I also hope Sande will have forgiven me by then. Just knowing that he might still be angry makes me feel a constant ache.

  I idly pick up one of the dinner-plate-sized cardpaper squares. There’s a simplified drawing of a young man with bright green eyes on it. His hair rises up from his head like dark flames and then breaks apart into tiny black fish.

  Melily rounds the bed. “Oh, do you like Cressit Scale?”

  I think she’s talking about the young man in the drawing, but I’m not sure.

  She rolls her eyes when I don’t answer. “Ugh, you don’t know who Cressit is either, do you? You are so below. Give it to me.”

  But I don’t. She didn’t ask nicely, and I’m still looking at it. There’s an opening on one edge of the cardpaper. The whole thing seems to be some sort of pocket, housing a flat, circular disc.

  “I said give it to me.” Melily tugs the square from my hands. “Good K’Gar, I hate having a balance. I have no idea how Douglen can stand having two.”

  She slides a disc out of the cardpaper and sets it on the contraption beside her bed. She then winds a winch on the side, fiddles with several mother-of-pearl knobs, and to my delight, music wafts out of the brass horn. It sounds far away, like I’m listening to tiny musicians through a long, hollow log, but those are definitely instruments and a real person is singing. I smile and gasp. As much as I want to hate all things uppy, I’m amazed that someone’s captured noises in such a clever way.

  The music is different than our village narrowstring and clatter-shell songs. There’s an irregular drumbeat and something that makes me think of an automotor horn, although the sound is much more controlled and pleasing. I move closer to hear better.

  “Yeah, Cressit is amazing.” Melily kneels beside the other cardboard squares and flips through them. “The Bay Sisters are fabulous too, and I really like the Craw Trio.” She tosses two squares on the bed. One has a picturegraph of women wearing frilly, white dresses printed on it, another is decorated with a strangely exaggerated drawing of three men using a washbasin for a boat.

  It’s then that I spot another picturegraph lying on the floor, almost beneath the bed. It has no frame, and the corners are bent.

  I pick it up. A boy smiles at me. He has dark skin, short hair, and large eyes. “Is this another admirer?”

  “No!” Melily leaps to her feet and looks as if she wants to snatch the picturegraph out of my fingers. “That’s just Elgin, my old balance.”

  So she did have a balance once. Maybe he was the real reason Lord Osperacy stopped searching for me.

  “He looks nice,” I say. There’s something about him that’s friendlier than the formal portraits on Melily’s shelves, something that makes me think he’s probably fun to be around. “Where is he?”

  Melily’s mouth shrinks. “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.” She takes the picturegraph from me and tucks it back under the bed—this time far under the bed.

  We share our midday meal in Melily’s cabin too, and she corrects me as I eat, making me feel as if I’m doing everything wrong.

  “Um, you’re supposed to cut that with a knife and fork,” she says impatiently as I bite into a stack of sliced bread, smoked fish, and creek lettuce.

  “But this is easier,” I say. “And the knife isn’t sharp.”

  “It doesn’t need to be sharp to cut bread.” Melily primly dismembers her own bread-fish-lett
uce stack. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to visit the deeplands. It must be like going back in time.”

  I try to cut the bread the way Melily does, but all the smoked fish and creek lettuce squishes out the side.

  Melily frowns. “So after lunch, I think we should go swimming.”

  That hardly seems practical or safe. “But how will we get back onto the ship? And won’t it be cold?”

  Melily snorts into her fizzy, pink drink. “Oh good Shale, we’re not going to swim in the tidewater, you dummy. The Trident has a pool.”

  I look up, fascinated. “You mean there’s a pool of water large enough to swim in—on the ship?”

  “Uh yeah.” Melily pops a snail-shaped biscuit into her mouth.

  I try to look unimpressed, but to be honest, I’d love to go swimming. However when Melily has Marthes bring me one of Shara’s swimming outfits, I like it less. “Do I have to swim in clothes?”

  Melily laughs harshly like she did with Jeck yesterday. “It’s not a bath. Have some shame. No wonder you love your brother.”

  I really regret telling her anything about Sande.

  The pool is square, lined with tiny white and blue tiles, and it smells like saltwater. Surrounding it are huge, throne-like seats made out of reeds, painted white.

  “Usually more people are swimming,” Melily says.

  “More people?” I echo, hoping she doesn’t mean Douglen or Jeck.

  “Yeah, other passengers.” She tosses her robe onto one of the big, reed chairs. Her swimming outfit is pale pink with a large fabric flower on her hip. She also has a matching flower on the cap covering her hair. “We usually have more people traveling with us—uplander people, of course. We were supposed to welcome a new family in Varasay, but for certain reasons we left in a hurry.” She looks at me as if I owe her an apology.

  Melily’s a surprisingly good swimmer. She moves easily through the water and dives with the grace of a fishing bird. I’m not sure why, but it upsets me. Maybe it’s because uppies already have so many skills and talents. Swimming should belong to deeplanders.

  Like Shara’s other clothing, her swimming outfit doesn’t fit me either. It’s too tight, and I can’t freely move my hips or shoulders. After a few attempts at gliding through the water, I climb out and glumly wrap myself in a towel.

  I want to swim, though. As unusual as this pool is, I long to float on my back, close my eyes, and pretend I’m in Coral Lake. So I do my best to remember where the pool is, counting the turns in the passages, noting which stairwells we climb. Hopefully later, when everyone’s sleeping, I can return.

  We eat dinner in the ship’s dining room again with Lord Osperacy, Douglen, Shara, and Jeck; and to my surprise, two young children in special toddling chairs; a boy and a girl.

  “Ugh, I hate eating with Timsy and Dorla,” Melily mutters. “Siren babies are such brats.”

  And sure enough, seconds after we sit down, the small boy cries for a spice dispenser. A weary-looking servewoman gives it to him. He then points and screams for one of the dull knives. The woman picks up a knife and begins to hand it to him too, but Lord Osperacy intercepts it.

  “No, Timsy.”

  “Want, want!” the boy shrieks, and although I know he’s misbehaving, and I know small children shouldn’t play with knives—even dull ones—I still find myself reaching for my knife.

  Thankfully before I hand anything to the child, Lord Osperacy takes my knife and pockets it. “Good evening, ladies. How was your day?”

  Melily looks at the ceiling. “Absolutely horrible! Although… I suppose not as horrible as it could have been.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” The older man fixes his round, slightly bulging eyes on me. “Nerene, after dinner Jeck will give you gunnerife lessons.”

  I look at Jeck, and the slippery way he meets my gaze makes me lose my appetite.

  The lesson on the drizzling deck later that evening doesn’t begin terribly, though. Maybe it’s because Shara joins us.

  “I’m just here to make sure you don’t shoot each other,” she tells me with a wink.

  Jeck starts by explaining how to fire a gunnerife, and then he has me shoot rubber bullets at empty tins he balances on the deck’s railing. At first everything about the city weapon is strange, the weight of it and the fact that I can simply pull a trigger rather than stretch resin back, like I would with a poison dart. But it’s not too different from aiming a snapper, and before long I’m hitting most of the tins. After an hour or so, I can shoot them so well, Jeck and Douglen start betting which ones I’ll send flying off into the darkness.

  “I had no idea she’d be so easy to train,” Jeck says to Douglen. “We should start a sludge army and pay them with bottle caps or something.”

  I hate the way they talk as if I can’t hear them.

  I’m left alone to practice reloading while Jeck shows the others a fist-sized mechanical ball he’s built. “It’s simple,” he tells Shara and Douglen. “You wind this crank here, and then you throw it as far as you can. The throwing part’s important.” He laughs.

  I see a flash of silver as his invention splashes into the dark, distant water, then—boom—a cloud-like burst of fire appears below the waves.

  I scramble away from the railing. What was that?

  “I thought Lord Osperacy told you not to make any more weapons,” Shara says as the water darkens again and an unnatural, unpleasant smell fills the air.

  Jeck shrugs. “Eh, Almen will love them once he figures out how to sell ’em.” He tosses another gleaming ball into the darkness, and as I hear another dull boom, I hope no fish or amphibs happen to be nearby.

  When Jeck declares me a good-enough shot (and Shara says I’m excellent) Douglen tells me to return to my cabin.

  “Wait—aren’t you gonna thank Jeck for the lesson?” he asks as I near the door leading back into the ship.

  I act like I don’t hear him. It wasn’t a wavurl command, just a question.

  “Stop, Nerene,” Douglen says.

  And this time he uses wavurl. My hand hovers over the door handle, but I can’t move further.

  “Turn around.”

  I don’t want to, but I have to.

  Jeck sniggers.

  “Now thank Jeck for the lesson,” Douglen commands.

  “Thank you for the lesson,” I say softly.

  “I think you can do better than that.”

  “Doug.” Shara puts her hand on his arm.

  Douglen shakes her off. “She needs to learn who’s balance she is, and who’s balance she isn’t. Now sludge, thank Jeck properly.”

  I’m not sure what properly means, but my body seems to. As everything in me fights against Douglen’s command, I drop to my knees on the wet deck, fold my hands, and say, “Thank you for taking the time to teach me how to fire a gunnerife. You’ve honored me with this lesson, you’ve honored your family, and you’ve honored Threegod.”

  Jeck chuckles, licks his teeth, and eyes Douglen. “Why don’t you make her open her top too?”

  “No.” Shara darts forward. “Absolutely not.” She pulls me back to my feet and glares at Jeck. “Don’t start anything.”

  “Start what?” Jeck shifts a box containing his round, metal inventions to his other arm and wipes rain off his face.

  “Lord Osperacy has been trying to find Melily a new balance for years.” Shara pulls me to the door. “He risked our relationship with the Chancellor of Varasay for Nerene. If something happens to her or… goes wrong, what do you think Lord Osperacy will do to you? Let me remind you, Douglen has two balances, but he only needs one.”

  Jeck glances at Douglen. “When it’s Shara’s monthly time, warn me, won’t you?”

  Douglen turns to Shara. “Why don’t you girls get out of the rain?”

  When the ship is dark enough and quiet enough, I creep back to the pool. Patches of shadow cover the large room, and the water shivers with ripples. Outside the big window, the rain has stopped. The dark tide
water spreads out black and vast, and there are no moons, only thousands of stars—just as many as I can see in Saltpool.

  I undress and slip into the warm water.

  I don’t swim like Melily did, diving and splashing. Instead I drift on my back, stretching out my arms and legs, and letting the water fill my ears and soften my hair. The only thing missing is the rustle of windswept kelp leaves and a breeze cooling my exposed skin.

  I float until I feel sleepy, and when I start slipping into a dream about gathering herbs with Gren, I climb out of the pool and take a towel from the basket near the windows. For a short while, I watch the star-spattered tidewater, and then I pull on my nightdress and head for the door.

  Yet as I leave, I glance at the chairs on the far side of the pool and my insides turn cold. Someone sits in the darkness, silent and still—someone with long arms and legs who looks a lot like Jeck.

  Flustered, I pretend not to notice, and I let the door close behind me with an overly loud click. Then I race to my cabin barefoot, and heart thumping, I lock myself in.

  It takes us seven days to reach Beth, and when the city finally appears, it does so spectacularly, glittering like a mound of jewels on the tidewater. I can’t sleep as the Trident sails nearer. So while the sun rises, I peer out my cabin window, and I watch the glowing mass split into two rounded peaks, both of them prickling with thousands of buildings. One of the peaks is taller than the other and both are ridges rather than points. It makes me wonder if the city rests on an old mountain range.

  I’ll speak to Sande on a relayphone so very soon, and it will be such a relief to know he’s all right.

  Docking the Trident is a complicated process with tugboats and heavy cables. And when the huge ship is finally secure between two concrete piers, I run to find Lord Osperacy.

  It doesn’t take me long. He’s sitting in the dining cabin, reading a folded stack of papers, and drinking salted coffee.

  “Can I speak to Sande now?” I ask.

  He glances up from his reading. “Probably not.”

  I take a step backward, not sure what he means.