After the Flood

by Kassandra Montag

  Chapter 25

  We passed over Panama and into the Caribbean. One morning at breakfast, when we were a week away from Wharton, Abran assigned duties to everyone to prepare for our trade.

  “We only have two major trades before we cross the Atlantic. Wharton and Broken Tree. It’s vital that we have a huge inventory at both these posts. Without the necessary supplies we can’t make the journey. This is our one chance,” Abran said.

  The spirit on the ship changed as we got closer to Wharton. Everyone talked about what they wanted from a trade. Marjan wanted yeast and Thomas wanted a hacksaw. Jessa wouldn’t stop talking about lavender soap she’d gotten before from a soap maker in Wharton, the kind with scented oils in it to make your skin soft and fragrant.

  “We’ll have to trade for lye to make soap ourselves this time,” Marjan told her gently. “We need to focus on food stores. Wharton has good beekeepers. The honey will be moisturizing and also help minor skin infections. And we already have coconut oil and aloe.”

  Marjan kept a close inventory on oils and aloe, giving a small jar to people when their skin started to crack. My skin had grown softer since being on Sedna because salt water didn’t flood the deck as often as it had on Bird, each wave sending it splashing over me.

  I remembered when Grandfather was still around and we could trade for carrot seed oil and raspberry oil to protect our skin from the sun. When I could no longer afford that, Pearl and I depended on long clothes and hats we made or got in trades to protect us.

  Marjan began cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Pearl stood in the doorway again, watching the seabirds. She stood like a cat ready to pounce.

  Abran talked about various duties, assigning Pearl, Behir, Jessa, and me to fishing. Daniel needed to redo calculations for navigation up through the Caribbean. Wayne would continue sealing the seams of planks with wooden plugs before he checked the ammunition stores. We’d be crossing raider territories in the Caribbean and needed to establish shifts for keeping watch at the bow.

  Pearl leapt out of the doorway, pouncing on a seabird, and scrambled back to her feet with the bird squirming in her fist. I stepped out of the cabin onto the deck, the sunlight blinding me.

  “Nice catch,” I said, shielding my eyes.

  “Her name is Holly,” Pearl said.

  Voices spilled out of the cabin. What did she catch? someone asked. A bird, someone answered.

  “We could get a bit of meat off her,” I said gently, squatting to look at the bird more closely. Its beak was short and curved and its feathers were a soft cream.

  “But I wanted to keep her,” Pearl said.

  “Honey, you can’t. She’ll fly away.”

  I stepped back inside and Pearl followed, the bird still in her fist.

  Marjan nudged my elbow. “Are you going to . . . ?” She nodded at the bird.

  “It’s hardly any meat,” I said.

  “The amount doesn’t matter,” Wayne said. “We all share everything.”

  I stiffened. “I don’t think this needs to become a problem.”

  “The child wastes resources. We have rules. We all have to follow them,” Jessa said.

  “She’s never wasted anything,” I said, my voice so cold I felt Pearl shift closer to my side.

  “It’s not just about this. You always have to get what you want. You just joined. You don’t have the same rights,” Jessa said.

  “That’s enough,” Abran said. “They absolutely have the same rights. Everyone does. It’s one of our laws.”

  “Another rule is about sharing all resources,” Wayne said, leaning against the wall, folding his massive arms over his chest.

  Abran sighed and shook his head. “They’re right,” he said, addressing me in a quiet voice. “We can’t make exceptions. Everything caught belongs to the whole crew. We can’t keep pets.”

  I didn’t even want Pearl to keep the bird as a pet. It was ridiculous. But somehow I felt primed for attack, to help Pearl keep her bird.

  Marjan opened her palm in front of Pearl. “I’ll do it so you don’t have to.”

  Pearl stepped back from Marjan, then ran toward the door and tossed the bird into the air. The bird became a small white spot in the blue sky, smaller and smaller.

  “Pearl,” I said and closed my eyes in frustration. “You can’t just do whatever you want.”

  “She’ll have to be disciplined,” Abran said quietly. “No supper tonight.”

  I stared at him. She was already thin, and I wasn’t going to let her go without food while there was food on this ship. He waited for my response, so I nodded, planning to tuck some food away for her to snack on in bed that night. No food was allowed in the crew quarters for fear of rats. So we’d be breaking two rules in one day. How could I expect Pearl to live in this society, when I flaunted their laws? I had underestimated how difficult it would be for Pearl and me to adjust to living among a community. We couldn’t go on living for just the two of us, I thought, never minding the wider world and the needs of others.

  As everyone left the table Pearl tugged on my shirt so I’d squat next to her.

  “Is Charlie a pet?” Pearl asked me, quietly so no one else could hear.

  “Is Charlie still alive?”

  “He’s my favorite,” Pearl said.

  “He’s not poisonous, is he?” I asked.

  Pearl’s eyes widened. “Of course not.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was lying to me. “He better not be. No more live ones. We have to abide by their laws. And keep him hidden. And I’m almost out of bait, so he doesn’t get any more ballyhoo.”

  She scowled at me. “Soon as we’re in Wharton I’m catching frogs for him,” she announced.

  I began fishing, and by afternoon I had only caught two bluefish and had to pull up the lines to preserve the rest of the bait. The water seemed empty of anything living, as if we were sailing through a sea of poison. I adjusted the rope on the downrigger, shortening it with a series of knots, so we could do midwater trawling and maybe catch some of those schools of fish the bluefish were feeding on. That was probably the problem—we were still close to the mountains and I probably didn’t have the depth right.

  Daniel walked up to me with a mug of steaming tea as I tossed the bluefish fillets in a bucket of salt. Clouds to the east were rolling west.

  “We’ll likely go through a small squall midafternoon. Better pull up the net after lunch,” Daniel said.

  “Okay.” I knotted the rope, yanking it tight. Daniel’s shirt was unbuttoned and I caught a glimpse of a long scar, the raised white line traveling from his clavicle and ending under his ribs.

  It felt nice to stand next to him, the salt wind on our skin, the day cool and clear. I thought back to how we’d been on Bird, before we’d joined Sedna. The long quiet nights on the deck under moonlight, talking. It felt like ever since we’d joined Sedna, I’d barely seen him, but that wasn’t true. I just had barely been alone with him.

  “This is a mess,” Daniel said. A mile away we could see a small island, not large enough to be inhabitable, but large enough to cut open the hull. “Navigating through this has been a nightmare. We should be farther east, but Abran wants to save time.”

  “He’s worried about resources.” And dissention from the crew if rations grew too tight. No need to make the crew doubt the change of destination.

  “Saw something the other day,” Daniel said. He looked at me pointedly. “I think you’ve seen it, too. Abran used to have a tattoo on his neck. Now he has burn scars. The other day he changed that handkerchief he always wears. Thought I wasn’t in there; I was in the kitchen, putting water on to boil for Marjan.”

  “So? Lots of people have tattoos,” I said. It was true; they were an easier form of jewelry. Some people had names of lost loved ones tattooed on them. I took a sip of the tea. Leaves drifted to the bottom of my cup, fragrant in some sweet way I couldn’t place, like mint but more bitter.

  “It was a raider tattoo. Why else woul
d he burn it off?”

  I pretended to ignore this and tried to imagine what the rabbit had looked like on Abran’s neck. There had been a faint outline under the scars. It had begun with blue ink, but whoever had done it must have run out, because midway down it was black.

  “You know,” Daniel said, as though he were reading my thoughts. He said it calmly, as though he pitied me. It made me want to smack him. “You know what crew he was with.”

  “So? So what are you saying?” I felt defensive, like Daniel was stirring up trouble. I’d finally gotten the vote to change our destination to the Valley. We weren’t unstable. The path ahead was clear. We were going to make it there in time.

  “Take the easy road once, he’ll take it again,” Daniel said.

  I rolled my eyes. “Must be nice, living in your world of perfect choices.”

  “I’m just worried about you. I think you should be more careful.”

  “More careful who I sleep with?”

  Daniel squinted at the horizon. “I think you know what I mean.”

  “I can take care of myself, thanks.”

  “I wasn’t just talking about you,” Daniel said, turning to leave.

  “I’m just saying the tattoo doesn’t change anything,” I said. I meant about the journey, but I realized he took it to mean my feelings for Abran.

  “That’s the last of the tea,” he said over his shoulder before disappearing into the cabin.

  Chapter 26

  Wharton was more beautiful than I expected, with stone ruins and small thatched huts climbing up the mountainside, cypress trees bright green and heavy, and multicolored birds I’d never seen before flitting through the sky. The color was overwhelming after the salt-stripped colors at sea, the soft blues, greens, and grays, and the faded brown of driftwood.

  Even the fish were brightly colored outside Wharton. I fished for snapper in the mangroves and grass beds as we neared the coast. Their yellow and orange fins flashed in the sunlight and Pearl kept saying, “Pretty, pretty,” when she cut them up.

  Daniel and I loaded the baskets, bins, and buckets of smoked and salted fish in silence. Each day that we drew closer to Wharton I felt him becoming tenser, his words terser, his movements abrupt and restless. On deck, he’d start to say something, only to walk away and shake his head.

  One day he said to himself, “Well, I guess I’ll find out.”

  “Find out what?” I asked.

  He looked at me blankly, surprised to see me next to him, though we’d been knotting lures together for the last half hour.

  The crew helped set the fish out on the dock for the port master, who jotted down the amount on a small piece of yellowed paper and handed it to us. The stench of smoked fish made me dizzy. I was sick of smelling it every day and couldn’t wait to get on land and ask for a cup of tea. Something fragrant. Already I could smell lavender and ginger, wafting down from a stand set up near the harbor.

  “No te llevas la plaga, verdad?” the port master asked, surveying us all with a grimace and looking over our shoulders at Sedna.

  “No, por qué preguntas?” Abran asked.

  “Tuve que desviar un barco esta semana. La mitad de la tripulación estaba negra y podrida,” the port master said.

  “What did he say?” I asked Abran.

  “He asked if we were carrying the plague. Said they had to turn a ship away—half the crew was black and rotted.”

  We carried the fish up to the trading post, a large stone building near the harbor. The stones fit together oddly, some still lying in heaps outside the building, as if they’d collected more stones than they needed and then abandoned them at the building site. I had the chilling sense the building would collapse on us when we were inside.

  Abran bartered at the counter with the shopkeeper, first trading a few fish for Wharton coins. I wished I knew Spanish so I could help with the trade—Marjan had told me that Abran never bartered hard enough. Most villages had their own currency, but coins couldn’t be traded between villages since there was no agreement over value. We gave two coins to each crew member.

  We asked for rope and fabric for sails, candles and wood, fabric for winter clothes. We weren’t sure how cold it would be in the Valley. Temperatures seemed moderate in most places, a temperate maritime climate, but we wanted to be prepared. We’d heard of storms people called chaacans up north; storms that were like a blizzard at sea, a winter hurricane. A cyclone of water spun while the sky flung snow in straight winds, the water and snow turning to ice in the wind, shattering against ships and rocks.

  We emptied our containers of fish at the post and refilled them with our trade. We carried everything back to the ship and then the crew disbanded to explore the village.

  Daniel turned to me and dropped his coins in my palm. “For Pearl. Get something that will keep her warm. Something for her feet. She may not be able to run around barefoot there,” he said.

  I tried to give the coins back. “I was going to use my coins to get her something. Don’t you want to go to the saloon?” I said, thinking of my longing for a fragrant cup of tea.

  “Get her two things, then,” he said curtly and walked away.

  Pearl wanted to go with Marjan to check out a stand of woven baskets, so I made my way back to the trading post alone. I stepped over large puddles, the humidity in the air heavy like a wool coat. Children played in the muddy lanes, old men pushed carts of potatoes or carrots, and women fanned themselves next to their stalls.

  The stalls were loaded with old-world and new-world objects sitting side by side. Rope, candles, and wood bowls made from materials found at the tops of mountains. Matches, knives, and plastic bottles saved from down below and brought up during the migration.

  I glanced longingly at a pile of pillows. I remembered how it felt to wake up in a real bed, with soft pillows, the regularity of an alarm clock, the sudden cold water from a faucet to wash my face. Most of all I remembered the stillness and stability, how every surface wasn’t always moving.

  Smoke curled out of the holes in thatched roofs. A woman strung her washing on a line. Through the window of one stone cottage I could see a woman churning butter.

  Close to the harbor, a collection of larger homes clustered around a communal courtyard, where pigs, goats, and chickens wandered in and out of small lean-tos.

  I stopped and starred. These homes were built before the floods. Some were made of bricks, some with siding. The roofs had shingles. One was a colonial with pillars in the front.

  I thought of Abran telling me about the gated community high up on a mountain that he’d grown up in. I wondered what it would be like to grow up that way during the Hundred Year Flood: no strangers on your doorstep, no guarding your house at night with a shotgun for fear someone would try to loot you. Did they have someone patrol that gated perimeter, keeping people at a distance, only letting people in to be treated? Guarding what they had so they could keep sharing their skills and hoarding medicine?

  I wondered who lived in the houses—people who became wealthy before or after the floods? Sometimes those people were one and the same, the wealthy who grew wealthier in disaster, able to turn catastrophe to their advantage. I thought of Abran and the wealth on Sedna. All those shelves of stored goods in the hull. I imagined Abran and me in a house like the one before me, in the Valley, building a new community. How quickly would we build gates, face inward toward a courtyard to protect what we had?

  An emaciated girl shoveled shit into a bucket in the courtyard, red welts visible on her upper back where her shirt didn’t cover. I shuddered and hurried on. In most ports the line between indentured servitude and slavery was unclear. People went to rich houses and agreed to work for food and shelter and were never able to leave, because where could they go?

  In the trading post I wandered between the shelves, pausing. I fingered a clear jar labeled “toothpaste” and smiled. I hadn’t thought of brushing my teeth in years.

  A blanket, made with dyed wool, s
at on one shelf and I rubbed the thick fibers between my fingers. Clothing was piled in barrels with a label on the front telling the customer what was inside: “Women, Sweaters” or “Men, Socks.” I sorted through the barrels of clothing, searching for sweaters and trousers that would fit Pearl. She had grown out of most of the clothing she wore now, her ankles visible beneath the hem of her pants. Some ports had weavers and seamstresses, making new clothes, but mostly we still wore clothes salvaged from before the floods.

  The shopkeeper left the counter and walked up to me. “Going north?” she asked in a thick accent.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “We’ve got more in the back, this way,” she said, waddling between the overstuffed shelves to the back of the room, where blankets, boots, and coats were piled.

  “Where up north?” the woman asked. The woman had black hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her head. Though she walked slower than a turtle, she wore a no-nonsense expression in her pinched lips and slightly raised brows.

  I paused. Normally I kept where I was going under wraps. I didn’t like sharing my routes. But trading posts were the best places to pick up information.

  “We’re going to the Valley, up in—”

  “Oh,” the shopkeeper interrupted. “You know about the epidemic, don’t you? Well, I guess it’s not an epidemic anymore.”

  I dropped the blanket I’d been holding back on the shelf. “Epidemic?”

  “Apparently there was some attack. Raiders. The village was so well defended—I guess the Valley makes an invasion tough. So they decided to subdue them a different way. Threw a body in their well. Somebody who’d died of the plague. It’s back.” The woman shut her eyes and shook her head. “Black death. Talk about evolution. We thought we’d overcome all that and here it is, wiping us out all over again.”

  I gripped the shelf. “When? When did that happen?”

  “Hm. Maybe two or three months ago? It’s been some time. After the raiders exposed the village and the epidemic killed half the population, they subdued the rest of the population and made it a colony.”