by H. N. Klett
“I see.” The two moved away from the mirrors and towards the front of the store.
Hailey opened the door of the closet just in time to see her grandmother lean closer to Anton.
“Maybe this will help with our place in line.” She held out a small bag, heavy with coins.
The small man smiled and nodded his head a bit. He put the bag of coins in his pocket without even looking at them. Anton then took her by her hands and looked up at her as he patted them.
“I think it will help nicely.”
Chapter 6
They came out of the dressmaker’s house and entered a plaza surrounded by food carts of every size. The plaza was littered with tables and chairs for people to stop and eat. Hailey knew just which cart they were going to. Her grandmother always held to the tradition of having a good, stiff cup of tea before she began the day’s shopping. Hailey wondered if she went there more for the gossip with the ladies around the cart rather than the tea itself; sometimes it seemed that Rose could stand there talking for hours.
They approached the teacart, which was already encircled with several other older ladies, many of whom her grandmother knew well. Several ladies called and waved to Rose as they approached. Rose stopped just short of the group, greeted them, and proudly introduced them all to her granddaughter. All of the ladies had met Hailey several times over the course of the years, but whether it was decorum, formality, or failing memories, the introductions were made all the same. Many of the ladies had known Hailey since she was little, but they still greeted her as if it were the first time.
Hailey vaguely remembered a rather dry section of her mother’s primer that talked about the formalities of greetings and encouraging such behavior. To Hailey it made the ladies seem dim and flighty at best and lazy at worst.
Then came the embarrassing questions, most of them about either courting young men or the fact that she was no longer a little girl anymore. They pointed out Hailey’s height and curves, despite her wearing baggy clothes to hide them. They remarked on her long legs and her beautiful mane of hair, which they thought it a shame for her to keep hidden in a braid most of the time. She felt as though she were one of the sides of beef in the market she’d just passed, with each lady shouting out her best and worst cuts.
Mercifully, the conversation changed to her grandmother’s party, and Rose loosened her grip on Hailey, allowing her to slip away from the group. She made her way to one of the more secluded tables in the square, out of sight of the ladies at the teacart. After that embarrassing exchange, she wanted to hide, or if anything, blend into the crowd for a bit.
She looked around to be sure no one had noticed her too much. People around her and across the way didn’t even bother to look in her direction. Most people were too busy with their own lives and in their own heads to stop and notice someone sitting alone at a table. In the great throng of humanity that rushed about her, she was all but invisible to them. Her grandmother and the ladies were still talking up a storm and would be at it for a while. Hailey immediately thought to look at the book again. She pulled it out from her waistband and placed it on the table, confident that no one would notice. The latches popped open and she opened the book, and once again she was greeted with blank pages.
She looked up, ready to slap shut the book if the living map that she had seen before appeared again. Looking around, she slowly opened it and there was no map. Hailey sighed with relief. She didn’t want anything weird happening in public, but her curiosity about the book was overwhelming.
The book was still blank and unchanged. She found herself wondering if she had imagined the whole thing when words began to bubble up on the page.
YOU DIDN’T IMAGINE IT. I AM TALKING TO YOU.
Reading the words, she thought she heard a little voice in her head saying them. A voice she had not heard before. Hailey tilted her head and looked quizzically at the book. She didn’t think she’d said anything out loud.
YOU DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING OUT LOUD.
Could this book hear her thoughts?
OF COURSE I CAN HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS. I TOLD YOU: YOU ARE THE NAVIGATOR.
Hailey now focused her thoughts at the book. She found herself squinting at it, feeling like she had to beam her thoughts to it, that there was some trick to will it to hear her.
NO NEED TO SQUINT OR STRAIN. I CAN HEAR YOU PERFECTLY WELL. RELAX YOUR FACE. YOU’LL DRAW ATTENTION. YOU DON’T WANT ANYONE TO NOTICE YOU, DO YOU?
Hailey stopped and looked around, letting the features on her face relax.
MUCH BETTER
Hailey thought to it, Who are you?
I AM THE NAVIGATOR’S BOOK, OF COURSE.
I HOLD THE RECORDS AND PERSONAL WRITINGS FOR THE GREAT RACHEL FERON.
Who is that?
OH. WELL MAYBE YOU KNOW HER AS RACHEL OF THE RED SASH.
The book must have registered that Hailey did not know the name.
NO? SIGH.
MAYBE YOU KNOW HER BY HER TITLE, THEN. SHE WAS KNOWN AS THE PIRATE QUEEEN.
Upon the reading the last three words, she felt her skin grow cold and pale. That’s why the pirates are coming for the book! she thought.
YES.
AND YOU, OF COURSE.
THEY ARE COMING FOR YOU AS WELL.
AS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN OPEN ME AND USE ME, OF COURSE THEY WOULD HAVE TO COME FOR YOU.
YOU ARE THE NAVIGATOR, AFTER ALL.
Why do you keep calling me the Navigator? My name is Hailey.
BECAUSE THAT IS WHO YOU ARE. ONLY A NAVIGATOR CAN OPEN AND OPERATE ME, HAILEY.
Why me?
BECAUSE YOU ARE SPECIAL.
Hailey never thought of herself as special.
YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN A GOOD NAVIGATOR, RIGHT? A NATURAL. ALMOST LIKE IT WAS IN YOUR BLOOD.
Hailey found herself nodding and remembering all the times her father had doted on her skills with the map and compass.
TAKE A LOOK AT THIS…
Above the book, a smaller version of the living map appeared. Hailey looked around in a panic, afraid someone would see. She was just about to slam the book shut when she saw the page flashing and words displaying:
RELAX! ONLY YOU CAN SEE THE MAP, SILLY GIRL.
Hailey looked back to the image. Again she saw the map of the world floating in the air before her. It seemed alive and crawling with information. The map was dotted with ships out at sea, trade winds, water temperatures, and cloud patterns, which all swirled and danced before her.
If she focused her attention on one thing, the map zoomed in on the object. She focused on a ship out at sea, crossing from the capital city of Davos, heading to the northwest. The image zoomed in to an image of the boat, its odd conical sails were darker than she expected. The information beside it read “The Virtuous.” Under that, it showed that the boat was headed to the port of McKinnett in Aibronne. The calculated time for the journey was just over five weeks. Following the path of their course, Hailey could see that they were headed on a longer, inefficient route, tacking on additional and unnecessary time to its journey. She wondered if that was intentional or due to navigator error.
She looked away from the ship and the image snapped back to the view of the whole world. The sudden change almost gave her vertigo. She looked back to the book to see words awaiting her.
MORE THAN LIKELY YOU ARE RIGHT IN THINKING IT TO BE A NAVIGATIONAL ERROR, I’M AFRAID.
IT LOOKS LIKE THEIR MORNING READINGS WERE OFF A DEGREE OR TWO.
She smiled. That’s why she’d been up in the mast that morning, checking and rechecking her figures. It always kept them true to course. It seemed that the captain was either not an early riser or just careless.
I thought you said you were a journal. All I see is this map.
YOUR HAVEN’T ASKED ME FOR ANYTHING ELSE.
Well, what else is there?
YOU COULD READ RACHEL’S DIARY NOTES.
Why would I want to read that?
WELL, WHAT GOOD IS A MAP WHEN YOU HAVE NO
DESTINATION?
Hailey puzzled over this for a bit. What would be the destination? She mulled it over and the book gave no reaction. Her mind raced about the very few things that the book had told her about Rachel. She was a female sea captain, something Hailey had never heard of before except in her own fantasies. She was also a pirate. Not just any pirate, she was a queen. If she was anything like the Queen of Veils in Davos, she had tons of magical items and hordes of treasures. Did that mean there are directions to a treasure here?
She glanced at the page and got her answer.
YES. FAR LARGER AND MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE, MY DEAR.
Hailey’s eyes went wide. No wonder everyone was looking for this book! She wanted to ask more questions, but the pages cleared and displayed a simple and blunt warning.
HIDE ME! YOU ARE BEING WATCHED!
She snapped the book shut and quickly looked about her, then she felt the smiling eyes upon her. Across the pavilion, on the other side of the river of people, sat the dapper gentleman in the velvety blue-and-gold suit she had seen on the deck of the Vigilant, watching her and drinking his tea. Slowly. Deliberately. Hailey froze. The man blinked, smiled his shark-like smile at her, and tipped his hat to her once again and got up and left.
Hailey could feel her pulse in her ears. Who was that man? Had he followed her or was it a coincidence? She didn’t want to stick around to find out. She quickly stood and shoved the book under her shirt. She had just turned back in the direction of her grandmother when she froze in the gaze of another pair of eyes watching her.
In the doorway of a store stood a tall, muscular young man close to her age leaning against the frame and looking right at her, arms folded. His face betrayed no emotion, just observation. Hailey thought him to be beautiful, but that beauty seemed to have a flaw. There was something not right about him. She kept her gaze locked on him, trying to figure it out. After a couple of seconds, she noticed that the boy’s eyes were a light almond color. Too light. It looked unnatural, almost ghostly.
As he stood there, arms crossed, she could see a glint of metal that caught her eye on the ring finger of his left hand. It was a ring with the same silver and ruby skull design that was on the book’s cover. He stood there perfectly still, staring at her as if he wanted to see what she would do.
Hailey broke her gaze with him the second a hand clamped around her arm. She jumped and screamed, but the hand did not let go.
“Hailey! What’s gotten into you? That is not how we behave in public! I’ve been looking all over for you. Come on! We have a few more stores we need to get to before sundown.”
Grandmother Rose quickly turned and plunged back into the river of the crowd, pulling the shaken Hailey along with her. She only had the briefest of moments to look over her shoulder before being swallowed by the mass of people.
The boy was gone, his eyes still haunting her.
Chapter 7
The sun was low in the sky when Hailey and her grandmother finished at the market and began making their way up the winding road to their family home. As the last rays of light touched the leaves of their house, Hailey noticed that in her absence that her home had grown slightly.
The tree they had shaped over time into their home was already large and wide, but now the branches looked to be a little taller overhead. This homestead was once planted and trained by the first colonists, so it was one of the larger homes in the area. All of the tree homes grew very quickly when tended to by professional shapers like her grandmother, but they wouldn’t grow indefinitely. In time the tree would stop growing and fossilize, turning into stone as the shapers designed it.
Thinking on this, Hailey couldn’t help but feel the irony that her grandmother was trying to do the same thing to her as she did to the tree homes. Shape them until they no longer changed.
Sitting in the shade of the tree home, muttering to himself and struggling with a tangle of knotted ropes, was Hailey’s father.
Hailey was thankful that her father hadn’t inherited his disposition from his mother. Had her father turned out like Grandmother Rose, Hailey would have run away from home a long time ago.
She had been avoiding her father long enough. She knew she would have to talk to him sometime. In fact, she wanted to talk to him, to tell him what the book said, yet still she hesitated. A little part in her was afraid that he would be mad at her. That he’d dismiss her and wouldn’t want to listen. Regardless, she had to talk to him, and she may as well do it when he was in a good mood.
Hailey broke away from her grandmother and joined her father on the bench. Grandmother Rose was too preoccupied with all the thoughts of things that needed doing before the party to even notice Hailey’s absence anyway. He continued to struggle with the ropes, all the time watching Grandmother Rose pass into the house.
Orin leaned over and murmured to Hailey, “She looks like she’s in one of her moods. I think it might be a good time for you and I to go for a walk on the beach.” He set down the ball of ropes and got up.
“But Grandmother Rose told me on the way home not to go anywhere,” Hailey said.
He looked up at her for a moment. “Is that so? Well, on the boat I told you we needed to talk. My order was first.” He winked at her.
They both knew that if they stuck around, Grandmother Rose would find something for them to do, so they quickly made their way around to the backyard, past the kitchen house and to the well-worn path that led down to the ocean.
Halfway down the path they could hear faint calls for them going unanswered.
They quietly walked side by side along the shore as the sun began to set, the only sounds between them the hushing sound of the waves crashing on the shore and the sand squeaking beneath their feet.
After the sun went down, he would occasionally stop and point out stars and constellations. Orin recounted stories about each of them and how they traced the path in the sky to where their ancestors once fell to this world. Hailey had heard these stories before, both from him and also at the church. She didn’t tell him or correct him when he missed a few things, just silently listened as though it was the first time.
The story of the original Ancestors was a tragic one that ended with a fall from great heights from which they could never reascend. All their descendants could do after was look up at the heavens they were once a part of. The hope was that the Ancestors would smile down on their achievements and raise them up into the heavens after they died as a new star in the night sky. Hailey wondered where her mother’s was and where her father’s star would be after he was gone. They both fell into silence.
There was one constellation in particular in his story her father would always neglect to mention, though it was fairly prominent and low in the sky. It was the one with two red stars that looked as though they were eyes looking down on them. It was the group that sailors used to navigate the northern waters. The constellation they called Ghost Pirate.
Hailey’s father broke the silence as they walked. “You know my dad used to take me for walks like this when I was younger. We would walk the shore for hours, without saying a word.”
Hailey looked over at her father as they walked. He just looked up at the sky, then continued, “I think it was because he was giving me room to talk. I always appreciated that. Growing up with your grandmother, always asking questions and demanding things, it was a nice change. It made me feel more grown up.”
He fell into silence once more. Hailey studied the sand as they walked. Her father patiently walked by her side. She knew that he wanted her to tell him about taking the book. She wanted to tell him, but she was still afraid. She wanted to pretend for just a little bit longer that it wasn’t real, but the book’s words flashed in her mind.
THIS IS REAL. THEY ARE COMING.
Orin looked down at her and, trying a different tack, started a different conversation.
“Did I ever tell you about how your mother and I met?”
He had, but Hailey always love
d to hear it, so she shook her head as he sighed and fell back into memory.
“It was around a book, actually.”
Hailey’s head whipped up and around to look at him. He had never told her that before, and the statement caught her off guard. He looked back at her and chuckled. “Don’t be so surprised. You remember how much of an avid reader your mother was. I figure you’re old enough to know about it now.”
Hailey felt a twinge of excitement as he began to tell the story.
He’d been in Jakar looking for a boat. His father had sent him there because the boat crafters were said to be legendary. It was to be his first ship and Grandfather Angus wanted to be sure that Orin had the best. He put him in touch with one of the oldest boat-building families there and sent him to do a deal.
Arriving at port, Orin found that there was only one room available at an inn way on the other side of the city because there was some boat race that the nobles were staging.
He didn’t know the town too well, and he only had just enough to get the boat and pay for his room at the inn, so he spent a lot of time in the tavern reading. It just so happened that a beautiful woman with raven black hair worked there. She saw him reading and told him about her love for books.
Orin stayed there for several months as his boat was being built, and he and the girl from the tavern grew closer. They had a lot in common. A love of reading, collecting banned books, humor—she was wonderful. Everything he had ever dreamed of in a woman.
It was only after the boat was finished that he found out that she was the builder’s daughter. It turned out that she knew and asked her dad to take his time building Orin’s ship so they could get to know one another better.