I spoke with more conviction than I felt. I kissed the tips of my fingers and pressed them to her lips. A small smile crossed her lips.
Abran sprang into the cabin, slammed the door, and collapsed into a chair.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. He jiggled his knee and tapped his fingers on the table.
When he looked at me his eyes held a wild, off-kilter look of astonishment. “The water is cold,” he said.
I took Pearl’s hand and we scrambled out of the cabin, toward the hatch.
At the stern, Daniel locked the rudder, keeping the bow pointed into the waves. The sky was almost black, as if ink had been poured over us. The clouds lowered over us, pressing down on us. A tower of water built, rising and rising as it approached Sedna’s bow, black and looming, a wall we’d have to go through. I grabbed the mainmast to steady Pearl and myself, thinking of my mother looking up at the water before it crashed around her.
Pearl clasped my hand so hard, pain shot up through my arm. My love for her burned brighter, a dazzling clarity, a part of me that couldn’t be touched.
The cold hit first, like a pebble twitching in my bones. Then the deck got so slick that our feet slid as if we were on ice, my arm around the mast our only anchor as our bodies lurched sideways. A second wave hit and it tore us from the mast, sending us sprawling and sputtering across the deck.
The water foamed and rippled across the deck, and Sedna righted herself and swayed as though ready to fall. Daniel ran toward us. He grabbed me beneath my arm and hauled Pearl and me to the cabin with Pearl wrapped around my waist, her face buried in my neck.
The bow rose on a wave, sending us stumbling forward, and then dropped with a crash. The hull hit the water and a crack split the air, so loud that it cut through the roar of the wind and the thunder of the waves.
Daniel, Pearl, and I fell through the cabin door and stumbled to our knees.
Wayne shouted at Abran over the din, “There’s a hole in a joint down in the hull. Water pouring in and we’re getting battered. Thomas is down there now, trying to stem the flow—”
Abran didn’t look at any of us; his eyes drifted around the floor. “It’s too late,” he muttered.
Daniel pulled himself to his feet. “Just get belowdeck and help with the leak!” Daniel yelled at him.
Jessa was holding her stomach and vomited into the water at our feet. Wayne grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the door.
“We need to get the sea anchor dropped,” Daniel said to me, rummaging through the boxes on the shelves. “Why the hell are none of these marked?”
Marjan scurried over to us. She pulled the sea anchor from a wood crate. It was a bundle of torn sails stitched together at the end of a long rope, like a heavy, raggedy kite.
The ship tilted to the right and we all slid across the wet floor. I caught Pearl in my arms and she collided against me before we hit the wall. The tables and chairs drifted with us, wood on wood screeching above the roar outside.
Daniel pulled himself up first and staggered toward Marjan. He grabbed the sea anchor from her. “Get Pearl down in the hull!” he shouted at me.
I hacked up a mouthful of salt water and pounded Pearl’s back to get her to do the same.
We couldn’t just drop the sea anchor. We needed to drop the mainsail and heave to. And Daniel couldn’t do all that alone.
“Marjan, please take Pearl down,” I shouted to Marjan. I took Pearl’s shoulders and tried to turn her toward Marjan, but she whipped around and grabbed me around the waist.
“No!” she wailed. “No! Come with me!”
“I have to help Daniel,” I said, my chest going tight. “You won’t be alone. I’ll be right down, I promise.”
Her little body shook against mine and I pried her loose.
“Please, don’t leave me,” she murmured, a sob catching in her throat.
“Marjan, please,” I said.
Marjan lifted Pearl and carried her through the cabin door. I caught sight of Pearl’s face in a flash of lightning, a burst of light in her stricken eyes, her hair fuzzy from the salt water and wind, like she’d been rubbed until she began to fray.
Daniel and I slipped and floundered toward the stern, the cold, dark roar making my mind buzz. The dull roar in my ears seemed unchanging; it seemed to come more from within than without. Water everywhere, uncontainable, a rush and force that crushed and covered. Panic rose in me, flashes of those early days when the floods and storms buried everything I knew. The cars flipped over, crashing against houses. The old tree pulled up from its roots as if a great hand had yanked it up. The birds tossed against fences or houses by the wind.
Daniel held on to the downrigger and my arm, keeping us from being tossed into the sea. My fingers were numb and stiff as I tried to work the sea anchor’s rope around the twin bollards. A wave built before us; the crest began to take shape. I got the rope knotted and tossed the sea anchor over the gunwale. Daniel and I both ducked as the wave hit, water engulfing us.
The rope pulled taut, and we braced ourselves against the gunwale as the ship began to drag and turn, straightening so it faced the waves head-on. We could still go broadside and capsize, I thought, but I pushed the thought away and focused on Daniel already scrambling across the wet deck toward the mainmast.
Daniel and I worked at the block and tackle, but Wayne had reefed the sail so tight that we couldn’t loosen it. I couldn’t see the rope, the mast itself hazy as a dark shadow. My numb fingers slid over the rope again and again, not able to pull any slack and loosen the knot.
“Get belowdeck!” Daniel shouted at me, shoving me aside.
“We could lose the mast!” I shouted back, but my words were lost as another wave crashed. Daniel caught me around the waist with one arm, his other linked around the mast, and we both tossed to the right like rag dolls, our feet slipping on the deck, water swirling around our ankles.
When we regained our balance, I elbowed him out of the way, my fingers finding the rope again. The deck leveled, as if all the wind and waves had stilled momentarily, motion sucked from our small world. My heart sped and a hot rush unfurled in my veins. Before us, another wall built, taller than the others, a wall like the one that had folded around my mother.
Daniel lifted me and half carried, half dragged me toward the hatch, lifting it and pushing me down below. He jumped down after me and pulled the lock into place, the sound of the metal clink lost amid the howling wind and roaring waves.
Chapter 44
I held Pearl against me, cradling her head under my chin, her body curled up against mine. She was no longer shaking. She had gone still and listless. I tried speaking to her a few times, to murmur something of comfort to her, but she didn’t respond. I felt that she had backed away into some hidden room within herself and shut even me out. My small sailor, afraid of the sea.
We all were in the quarters, perched on beds. Thomas and Wayne had stuffed the hole in the curved wall with rags and hammered wood slabs over it. The pressure from the water opened new channels between cracks in the wood, which splintered and moaned. Water spread across the floor slowly, rocking back and forth as Sedna moved. Splinters of wood floated on the water like small ships being cast aimlessly about before being tossed into the hall, out of sight.
Sedna rammed against troughs again and again. It felt like an echo reverberating in my head. Crashes above, again and again. We didn’t have enough wood on board to build that many spars. I could smell the sweat on everyone, salty and sweet, laced with panic.
A small window at the top of the wall let in flashes of lightning. Everyone flared in front of me and disappeared, the illuminations making it feel like they weren’t actually in the room with me. The sensation was familiar, the aching fear that I’d be buried in a watery grave, always reaching for air and never finding it.
I returned to thoughts of my mother. The basket of apples as it fell from her arm. Was her body now a home for fish and plants? H
er rib cage a roof for sea anemone?
Terror shuddered through me. We’ll never make it through this, I thought. This is how the water takes us. I saw myself in my ocean grave, underwater light bluing my skin, my hair floating like seaweed, coral sprouting from my bones. A new thing in a new world.
Please, I bartered with any god, any creature who had power. Please don’t let us sink. I felt about for something to offer up in exchange. Our crossing flitted past my mind, my desire to reach Row.
No, I thought. Not that.
When I stopped searching for Row it was as if I’d accepted everything I’d come to half believe about myself. That Jacob was right to abandon me. That I couldn’t really make a life out here. Ask me for something else, I bartered. Don’t take my last child.
Pearl stroked one of her snakes in her lap. I ran my finger along it, its skin strangely soft. It recoiled from me. Lightning struck; it opened its eyes and so did Pearl. Then it all went black again.
Early-evening light cast a dim glow in the quarters. Some of us had dozed, fallen asleep with our dread. The storm must not have lasted long if it wasn’t night yet. I almost wished it was night so we wouldn’t have to see the damage by daylight right away. I feared seeing it would knock the breath out of me.
The water was a foot high in the quarters. Only a trickle of water came in now, forcing its way past the boards hammered over the hole. Pearl was shaking from cold, and I wrapped her in a blanket.
We climbed out of the hull silently. We had survived, but there was no celebration or spirited gratitude, only a shaken core, the question that lingered unspoken: yes, we’d made it through the storm, but will we make it through the calm after the storm? Which I knew was worse. All those days after the floods were always more difficult than the floods themselves. The rebuilding was what shook you to your marrow.
Looking across Sedna’s deck, I thought of the small towns in Nebraska that’d been hit by tornadoes; the leveling, the sharp edges of broken things, the misplaced objects too large to lift: car leaning against a tree, house with no roof.
The deck was strewn with water and wreckage—cordage and bits of wood, nails and shredded sail. The door of the cabin was missing. So was the mainsail. But the mainmast itself was still standing, and I let out a relieved exhale. Ropes lay frayed in heaps about the deck. The top yard lay overboard, still tied to the mainmast. The foresail was torn and fluttering in the wind.
The downrigger lay toppled over, split at the base like a tree struck by lightning. I cursed myself for not thinking earlier of removing it. It would be the last thing to be repaired, if we even had any material leftover to repair it.
I resisted what I saw; wanted it not to be true. Couldn’t the storm have been a dream and everything still be in its place? Anguish clenched me in its fist and I struggled against it. There wasn’t time to mourn. How could we stop and mourn when there was so much to do?
The water around us was unbroken, as though nothing had happened. The sky was gray and the water looked softer somehow, as though the world had been scoured and cleaned, and now was letting out a fresh breath.
Thomas was the first to speak. “I’ll check the spars and spare wood,” he said.
“We don’t have time to rebuild tonight,” Abran said.
“We at least need to get some of the rigging cleaned up. Reinforce the hole in the hull. Do an inventory of the cordage that can be salvaged,” I said. I steeled myself inwardly; we needed to move forward.
“So we’ll just drift tonight?” Marjan asked, the first time I heard fear creep into her voice.
“We still have the sea anchor,” Daniel said. “It will slow us some so we don’t drift too far off course. And we have the foresail.” I could tell from his tone that he doubted how much he could navigate with it.
My chest tightened. “Wayne, can you check the rudder?” I asked.
He nodded and made his way through the wreckage toward the stern.
“Do we have enough material for a new mainsail?” Marjan asked.
“Not for one of the same size,” Thomas said.
This seemed to break something in Pearl. She dropped my hand and stepped away from me.
“You disagreed with Daniel,” she said, speaking to the floor.
“What, honey?” I asked, squatting down, trying to look into her eyes.
“You made us go through the storm. You didn’t care. You never care about me. You only care about her. Get to the Valley. Get to the Valley,” Pearl chanted, her tiny hands squeezed into fists at her sides. She raised her eyes to meet mine. “I HATE YOU!” she screamed in my face.
Stunned, I blinked and was silent. I remained frozen, squatting in front of Pearl. Everyone shifted, their feet stirring small ripples in the water. Shame coursed through me. I remembered the looks on their faces when they discovered I’d betrayed them to search for Row. Judgment and anger were like objects I’d received from them and tucked inside me.
“Pearl,” I said, reaching to touch her shoulder, but she jerked it away. “Pearl, if it were you—”
“It’s not.” Pearl jutted her chin out, her eyes dark. She crossed her arms in front of her. “You love her more.”
“I can’t,” I said softly, my heart breaking. I never could make the right choice, could I? What was I teaching her about herself?
Wayne yelled from the stern that the rudder was still there.
“We need to get the yard out of the water. It’s turning the boat,” Thomas said. Jessa went with him and Daniel muttered something to the others, asking them to see what was left in the cabin. A dead fish floated past us. I could tell they pitied me and wanted to give us space.
“I need to check our location,” Daniel told me, his voice barely audible. He said it like an apology.
Pearl dropped her arms to her sides and lifted her face, her chin quivering. Her eyelashes fluttered.
“I can’t love her more,” I said. “You two have already taken all I have. There is no more, there’s only everything. If it were you there, I’d make her go through this. But that’s not how it happened.” I brushed a tear from her cheek. “I’m sorry I let us go through the storm.”
“You never listen to me,” she said.
I heard Jacob’s voice in hers. How many times had he said those same words to me? I dropped my eyes to the watery deck. I was weary of all of it; weary of the choices, the responsibilities. For a moment, I wanted to disappear into the deep and float into oblivion.
Pearl stepped closer to me and laced her fingers in mine.
Her touch startled me. “I’m sorry,” I said and meant it. She swiped her tears away with the back of her hand.
“I need to go feed Charlie. He’s grouchy,” she said.
I nodded and let her go back to the hull. As I watched her drop through the hatch I thought of how wrong she was.
Resentment burned in me. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t that I loved Row more, but that I had other, darker things in me that turned my decisions. My rage and my fear. They got all mixed up with my love and I couldn’t separate them. They were like the sky when it melts into the sea, how you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.
She’d never be able to understand the weight of it all. The impossible choices. We were living this life together, but we might as well have been in separate worlds for all we knew of each other. I hid from her as my mother hid from me. And what was she hiding from me? What dark currents swirled in her, mixing with her love, eddying out of chasms that I could not see?
A fish swam past my feet. A small gray fish with a cut on its belly, leaving a red swirl of blood in its wake. I snatched it up and it fought my hand, scales shuddering in sunlight.
Chapter 45
That night we got the yard out of the water and organized the damaged materials into piles of what could and could not be salvaged. The following afternoon I settled on the deck and leaned against the gunwale to stitch the foresail back together. Marjan had given me a small crate of sc
rap fabric to sew into the holes and tears. I was considering how to best fish without the downrigger when Daniel came and sat next to me. I shifted my body away from him and kept stitching.
“Saw you got some cod this morning,” he said.
Two cod, after four hours of work. We needed more if we weren’t going to go on even tighter food rations.
“Thomas and Wayne almost have a new yard built,” he said. “Doesn’t look half bad, actually.” When I didn’t say anything he went on. “Jessa has been working on the mainsail. It will be smaller. Quite a bit smaller. But it should work.”
“How late will we be?” I asked.
“Late enough to worry about stronger currents when we anchor.”
I bit my lip and rethreaded the needle, then positioned the fabric over a tear and began stitching the edges.
“Are you worried they’re following us?” I asked.
The wind pushed the sail into a clump around my knees and I swore. Daniel leaned forward and helped me smooth it on the deck. He moved around me in a tentative way, as if he pitied me after Pearl’s outburst. Or maybe he sensed my shame at deciding to try and run through the storm. I felt that shame like a piece of plastic caught in my throat, like something I needed to cough up, but had no words for. I imagined it like some hard thing I swallowed that would sit in my stomach and outlast me. The way when you cut open a seagull you’ll sometimes find bits of plastic in its gut, small hard things that rattled around inside of it, never dissolving.
“A little,” Daniel said. He straightened a fold and pressed the sail flat. “When my mother was at the end, she always sang this song. ‘If I had wings, like Noah’s dove, I’d fly the river, to the one I love . . .’” Daniel sang, in a low, clear voice. “It was some old song her mother would sing. I thought for the longest time the song was about my father, her longing for him.”
Daniel went quiet, and I thought he was finished telling his story, but then he started up again.
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