Blue Voyage

by Diana Renn

  We all looked at Orhan to elaborate.

  “No specific threat,” Orhan said carefully. “This is general security precautions.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. I wanted to call his bluff, to ask what was really going on. How dare he tell me the truth this morning and then lie to all of us now? But I stopped myself. It suddenly hit me that this was his job. His income depended on people feeling safe on his boat. Maybe he’d tell me the real story later, as he had in the kitchen that morning.

  “All the villages and towns along the coast must cooperate in this effort,” Orhan continued, his face carefully neutral. “But please, ladies and gentlemen, do not let this affect the pleasure of your Blue Voyage! Your local guide, contracted by Lycian Tours, awaits you. You will then travel by —by bus—to the ruins. It will be quite a nice adventure!”

  Aunt Jackie said she would pass on the excursion, explaining that she wanted to rest.

  To my surprise, Sage didn’t want to go either. “I actually have a paper to write,” she said when I gave her an incredulous look.

  “A paper? It’s July!”

  “I know. But I have one assignment I didn’t finish because I got sick last month and missed some school. I promised the teacher I’d hand it in next week before I fly home.”

  I gestured toward the turquoise water, the beach, the sun. “How can you write a paper under these completely brutal conditions? Do you even have a laptop with you?”

  “I’ll write it by hand. The teachers don’t mind that. And then if I finish, I want to stop at a little market in town and see if I can find an urn to replace your aunt’s. But have fun. You’ll love the ruins.”

  Creeping around ancient ruins in the hot afternoon sun with Mom and the Geezers? I’d much rather hang on the boat with Sage and read while she worked on her paper. Or hang out with Orhan in the kitchen and see if he had more information about what was really going on with the search effort.

  But Mom wouldn’t let me back out of the excursion. “No way,” she said when I tried. “I know the moment I leave, you’ll be back trying to climb that cliff again.”

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry, Zan. But like I said, if you want my trust back, you’re really going to have to earn it. And I think today we took a giant step backward in that department.”

  Mom said all this in front of Sage, and I wanted to die. I boarded the tender with Mom and the Geezers and sat grumpily in the back. As we motored toward shore, I looked back at the Gulet Yasemin, and saw Sage unclipping two of her shirts from the clothesline near the prow, the breeze tossing her wild curls around and making her white sundress flutter. If a djinn came out of a lamp and let me have a wish, maybe I wouldn’t wish for the urn back. I’d wish to be nineteen, and free, like Sage.

  14

  Somehow I survived the tour of the ruins. A —a cross between a van and a mini bus—took us there from the dock at Fethiye. The village was searingly hot, no shade anywhere, and the remains looked like earthquake rubble. I tried to pay attention to our tour guide, but he talked so fast, condensing three centuries’ worth of history into thirty minutes.

  I looked longingly at a salamander scaling the wall of some former temple, wishing I could follow it on a climb.

  On the way back from the ruins, the driver routed us by a carpet shop at the edge of the town, where we had to spend an hour listening to the history of Turkish carpet-making and looking at carpet samples. The fibers swimming in the air made my eyes itch. These were no magical flying carpets, either. They were heavy, dusty, linty, and old, and the vendors kept dragging them out and throwing them down at our feet, piling them up one after another, until the air became so thick and close, I felt like I was being buried alive.

  My gaze drifted out the window, to a caramel-colored building across the quiet street. MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY announced the sign on the iron gate.

  I nudged Mom. “Let’s go over there,” I whispered. Even though the name of the museum didn’t exactly seem riveting, it had to be better than being imprisoned in a carpet shop. “Maybe there’s a gift store. We could get Aunt Jackie some kind of replacement urn. I mean, it wouldn’t be the same, but at least she wouldn’t be going home empty-handed.” I liked Sage’s idea of finding some kind of replacement urn to give Aunt Jackie, even if there was no chance of getting anything that looked like the replica. I was feeling worse and worse about the fact that something dear to her had been lost. I’d played a role in that. After all, I’d gotten Sage distracted, firing off all those job ideas at her. If I’d just kept quiet, she could have kept her focus on the path, and held the urn safely in her hands as she had been, all the way down.

  “That’s a lovely idea. Let’s go,” said Mom. “I have a plan.” She walked over to the driver, who was standing by the door, the tour guide from the ruins having left us long ago. I followed her. “Excuse me,” she said to him softly. “My daughter and I are just going to run over to that museum for a quick look. What time should we be back here? We don’t want to miss the back to the boat.”

  “Sorry, but this museum, it is closed,” said the driver. “They have had a crime.”

  “Crime?” I asked. I peered out the window, and sure enough, three police cars were parked outside, a little bit down from the gate. By now I’d seen so many police officers, police cars, and police boats, in just a couple of days, that I was actually starting to get used to it.

  “Were they hit by the robbers, too?” Mom asked. “Robbers,” she repeated when the driver looked blank. “Stolen objects? Over there?”

  “Yes, yes!” He nodded. “So, no reason to go. Is closed. But hear about traditional and historical rugs! You will not find weaving like this in all of Turkey.”

  One of the carpet sellers brought out a tray with tiny glass cups of tea, which smelled just like the apple tea the Clarksons had served Sage and me on their boat. Reluctantly, we all took the offered glasses. I wanted to ask the driver more about the robbery, but his English was limited. Mom asked one of the carpet sellers about it and got a little further.

  “It was, how do you say, the basement?” said the salesman. “No damage or forced entry. But a large storage facility had some art objects. Some were stolen from there. It is very typical.”

  The tea burned my lips. “Typical? Why?” I asked.

  “Small museums, they can easily be robbed. Most do not have alarm systems.”

  “I can’t believe that,” said Mom.

  “It is true. And robbers know they do not have enough space to display all their items, so many things of great value can be found in a storage facility. But tell me, do you prefer hand-knotted or flat-woven carpet?” He held up two samples.

  “No carpets,” Mom said, her face tight. “We are not buying a carpet on this trip.”

  “But everyone needs a carpet for a floor.”

  “We don’t have a floor.”

  I could tell Mom was starting to lose it. We were all losing it a little. I’d never seen such pushy salespeople. They didn’t let anyone leave until Alice and Fiona finally broke down and bought a large kilim rug just to get us all out of there.

  We returned, exhausted, to the boat, where we all helped the British ladies heft their awkward, unwanted, rolled-up rug up from the tender and into the boat. Then we pushed and dragged it, like a body, down to their cabin. “Bloody carpet sellers,” Milton grumbled once we’d finally gotten the thing in their room. He gave it a spiteful kick. “They think every tourist is made of money. I tell you, if I bought a carpet or a knickknack from every man who offered me one here, I’d be broke in a day.”

  “Oh, I quite liked the carpets,” said Maeve, licking her lips. “Wouldn’t mind having one at home.”

  “Yes, but that would require actually having a clear floor on which to display it,” Milton said with a scowl. He swatted at the lint drifting in the air, and sneezed.
Alice and Fiona looked miserably at their carpet roll, which now took up most of their cabin.

  After showering and changing for dinner, Mom and I went back up on deck to find that almost everyone else was seated already for our last dinner together. We took our seats, too, with apologies for being late. Mostly I apologized—I was always running late, because it took so long to put on my makeup. I wondered why I still felt a need to slather it on. Sage had already seen my real skin and not minded it. Others on the boat probably had some clue that I had a skin problem. Still, I applied my makeup with care.

  As the sun sank lower over the water, floodlights turned on in Fethiye, gently illuminating the Lycian tombs. My breath caught in my throat. The beauty of it overwhelmed me. For a moment I almost let myself forget that the urn could still be up there somewhere, and that by morning we would be sailing away and leaving it behind.

  Orhan, beaming, brought out steaming plates of meze—appetizers—and platters of rice and vegetables and freshly cooked fish. He served Mom first. “My specialty,” he said as he bent near her ear. “I made this dinner with you in mind.”

  Mom blushed and choked out, “Oh! Well. Thanks. Um. Tea sugar and a dream.”

  The Geezer ladies giggled.

  My cheeks warmed. Mom almost seemed as if she were flirting with Orhan! Then I realized that maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Orhan could be a great distraction, and she’d finally take her eyes off me. I’d be free to hang with Sage, and maybe have another adventure tonight.

  Where was Sage, anyway? I hadn’t seen her emerge from the cabins yet, and her place at the table was still empty.

  “Hey, where’s Sage?” I asked.

  “Sage had to leave,” said Orhan, filling Mom’s wineglass.

  “Leave? What do you mean?” I asked.

  Everyone stopped eating and looked at Orhan.

  “She had a family emergency to attend to,” he explained. “She asked me to say good-bye to you all for her, and to thank you for the pleasant company on the Blue Voyage.”

  Gasps rose up from all around the table.

  “What kind of emergency?” I asked. “Did she say anything else?”

  “I am afraid I do not know many details,” said Orhan. “It was very soon after you went to your shore excursion, she packed and left,” he went on. “She received an urgent email from someone at home. She had to get to the Dalaman airport right away and take an international flight on standby.”

  “Oh, no,” said Aunt Jackie. “I wonder if it’s something to do with her mother. She mentioned that her mother was in the hospital. I wish I’d had a chance to say good-bye. I’m so sorry I missed her.”

  Alice made a clucking sound. “Poor dear,” she said.

  I felt numb. Sage was gone! And while I felt bad that her mom must have taken a turn for the worse, part of me felt resentful. She’d spent time with all of us, gone to our ceremony, joined us for lunch . . . couldn’t she have hung on another two hours and at least said good-bye?

  Dinner conversations resumed around us. I tried to choke down my food, but nothing tasted right. Then I felt worse for having such selfish thoughts. Sage’s mom was probably in some kind of medical crisis. She’d had to cut short a pricey cruise and go back to Oregon without even stopping in Istanbul to say good-bye to her host family.

  Still, I felt like I’d started reading an interesting book that I’d never get a chance to finish.

  I felt a little ripped off.

  After dinner, the adults hung out and sampled raki—except for Aunt Jackie, who stuck with tea. Bored with Nils and Ingrid’s bird checklist, Milton and Maeve’s quiet squabbling, and Alice and Fiona’s tales of illnesses and bathrooms they’d experienced in their annual travels together, I went downstairs to my room.

  The beckoning counts, and not the clicking latch behind you.

  I thought of that Freya Stark quote as I flopped onto my berth. What the hell did that mean, anyway? It sounded like one of those journal prompts that my English teacher would write on the board and cheerfully command us to “expound upon, at length.” I wondered what Sage’s essay was about, and felt sad that I’d never know.

  Or maybe I would. I felt something poking me and sat up and moved the pillow. Beneath it was a book, The Lycian Shore: A Turkish Odyssey by Freya Stark.

  A name was written inside the front cover: Amy Miller, printed in neat, rounded letters. So the book had belonged to someone else first. A friend had probably passed it on to her, or she’d bought it used.

  And the book was no loaner from Sage. It was a parting gift. I had no way to return it.

  I felt something twist in my gut, or maybe up closer to my heart. I wasn’t just sad that I’d lost someone close to my age to hang out with. Sage was unlike anyone I’d ever met. She challenged me, made me feel as if I might not have to hide my skin—or myself—all the time. She’d glimpsed the real me. Maybe it was crazy to miss someone I’d known for less than two days, but I did. And I’d had people vanish on me before; I should be used to it by now. But instead it felt worse every time.

  I opened the book and started reading. At least I could maybe get to know Sage through these pages, by understanding why she was so into this Freya Stark person.

  “Chapter One: The Voyage of Elfin.” Elfin was the name of the yacht Freya Stark had traveled on with a team of explorers. Despite the intriguing chapter title, the book was hard to get into. It was more like a journey of the mind. Freya talked about reading the ancient Greeks and the adventures of Alexander the Great and how she decided to trace one of his conquering routes from the fourth century BC. I flipped ahead, skimming chapters. Greeks, Troy, Romans, the heroic age, Cnidus, bleah. I knew it was all important history, but it made a dull buzz settle over my brain. If I were writing a travel memoir, I’d focus on what I was seeing in the moment: useful stuff like where people could grab a bite to eat. Or I’d tell little stories, like Sage did, to bring the people in history to life.

  The more I tried to read, the less I understood why Sage was such a fanatic about the book. My hope of finding her inside its pages was fading fast. The only thing the book revealed about her was how little we actually had in common.

  The next morning, we said good-bye to everyone at the dock, shaking hands with the crew and hugging all the Geezers in turn. Orhan held Mom’s hand a little longer than necessary, I noticed, and then he slipped her a piece of paper with his phone number on it. Mom turned bright red and actually giggled. I rolled my eyes.

  The Geezers chattered excitedly and shared their travel plans. It turned out that they were all following the same itinerary, arranged by Lycian Tours. They’d take a tour bus for three hours to Ephesus. They’d enjoy a guided tour from a university lecturer. Erdem Tabak showed up at the dock to make sure the bus transfer went smoothly. He assured everyone that this lecturer had been triple-confirmed and was eagerly awaiting them in Ephesus. They would spend one night on the Aegean coast, then fly to Istanbul for several more days of guided tours.

  Aunt Jackie, looking slightly more energized, passed around business cards and brochures like a seasoned businessperson, telling everyone she was sorry we couldn’t continue on the rest of the tour, but to look her up in Istanbul when they got there.

  Our good-byes behind us, Mom, Aunt Jackie, and I made our way on foot to a travel agency. The commotion of Marmaris hit me like a slap of cold water after spending three days on a quiet boat. Aunt Jackie acted as if the streets weren’t crowded, striding purposefully, her eyes straight ahead. I tried to follow her lead. When a man thrust a plastic bag of socks at me, demanding money, I lifted my chin and walked on by, looking right through him.

  The plan, Mom explained as we walked, was to change our airplane tickets and catch an earlier flight to Istanbul. We didn’t want to sightsee in Marmaris now that we knew Aunt Jackie was pregnant; Mom was concerned about the cramps she’d been having.r />
  Aunt Jackie and Mom walked a bit ahead of me, talking about pregnancy stuff. The whole time we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed. Yet when I turned to look at the teeming crowds behind us, I didn’t see anything suspicious.

  We were waiting to cross a busy street when I felt something pull at my backpack. I whirled around and saw two men, one of them holding the string on the outer pocket of my pack to prevent me from taking another step.

  I’d seen them before—it was Lazar and Vasil, the security dudes from the Clarksons’ boat. Vasil, the stocky guy who reminded me of a bouncer, was the one holding on to my bag. Lazar, the one with the goatee who reminded me of a rock star, glared at me down his long nose.

  Mom and Aunt Jackie didn’t seem to realize I was lagging behind. Like a scene straight out of a nightmare, I watched as they kept on walking and talking, oblivious, until they were out of my sight. I opened my mouth to call out to them, but Vasil yanked hard on my backpack straps, reeling me in closer. I was too startled to scream.

  I looked around. “Where are the Clarksons?” I demanded. “Because I’m pretty sure grabbing people in the street isn’t part of your job description.”

  “Clarksons not here,” grunted Vasil. “Job over. They flew to Istanbul on early flight.” Then he clapped both hands on my shoulders and shoved me roughly into an alley a few feet away.

  My heart pounded. I’d seen enough movies to know good things never happened in alleys.

  “Your friend Sage,” said Lazar, while Vasil, behind me, continued to clamp down on my shoulders, as if trying to push me into the earth. “She is where?”

  Lazar had a slight British accent, mixed with something else.

  “Answer me!” he demanded, as Vasil shook me a little.

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. “She went home. To the States. Family emergency.”