Blue Voyage

by Diana Renn

  And this time, I was in the news in Turkish! It was kind of funny to see my face on TV and in newspapers alongside headlines I couldn’t read. Mom didn’t let me do interviews, but I was glad that the story got out as a counterweight to the old stuff I’d done. In Cappadocia, and back in Istanbul a week later, people looked at me in the street, recognizing me from the news. With my unmistakable white blotches on my face and arms, I’m sure it wasn’t hard to pick me out of a crowd. I didn’t try to hide myself, either.

  We were all relieved that the Clarksons were out of the picture for good. Ron and Judy were being detained in a Turkish prison, pending numerous charges. As far as I know, they’re still there now, and their art gallery in Carmel and a shadowy online art business they ran were completely shut down. Their various homes were raided, too, and more suspicious objects from their international shopping sprees were discovered and returned to their countries of origin.

  As for the seahorse urn that had caused all this trouble? It was reunited with the other Karun Treasure objects, in a museum. There it would be seen and marveled at by visitors for years to come. Maybe not as many as would see it at the Met, but still, it would be seen, in broad daylight, and not in the shadowy world of black-market transactions. Already, journalists and scholars from all over the world were descending on Turkey to see it for themselves, and to learn about its spotted history.

  Everything looked brighter now, except for the fact that Sage and I wouldn’t see each other for a long time.

  “I wish I could hang out in Istanbul with you just for fun,” Sage said, as we sat out on the top of the cave hotel beneath the stars, on our last night there together.

  “You don’t have to stay there, you know. Back in Oregon, I mean,” I said. “You’re the real passionate nomad. You can go anywhere.”

  “I’m broke,” she reminded me. “I have to go live with my uncle again, like I did when I was finishing high school. I’ll probably have to get some job in a ‘shoppe.’”

  “So do that. It’s not so bad. Work, save money, and then travel again,” I said. “It’s what you’re good at. Oregon? That’s just a rest stop. You have places to go.”

  She gazed up at the stars. “You’re right,” she said. “Hey, maybe when you’re out of high school, I’ll have money saved up and we can go somewhere again, be traveling companions!”

  “I’d like that.” I smiled. “Let’s totally do that. Remember, the beckoning counts.”

  She smiled back. “Not the clicking latch behind you.”

  The evening Mom and I got back to the Mavi Konak Hotel, after a week of interrogation in Cappadocia, Aunt Jackie greeted us with huge hugs. Her bump—the home of my unborn cousin—was slightly more visible now, and the gray shadows under her eyes were gone. “You look better,” I said.

  “You do,” Mom agreed. “Radiant!”

  “I’m off bed rest,” she said. “For now. I still have to take it easy, but I can walk around more. My last blood tests came out great. My hormones are in balance. Things look good.” She paused for a moment, then said, “I started cleaning out Berk’s office today. Now that the detectives are gone and have taken what papers and files they want. And you know what? It felt good. I’ve only made a dent, but I think I can keep going. I don’t feel him in there anymore. He’s with me, but not in there. It’s just a room now. And it’ll make a great nursery when it’s painted and furnished. Thanks to Zan.” She grinned at me.

  “Thanks to all of us,” I corrected. “I’m glad the reward money will pay for the renovations and let you keep the hotel in business.” Reward money from Interpol had been paid to me for the information leading to Lazar’s arrest. I’d given most of it to Aunt Jackie. But I’d given some to Sage, too, since I couldn’t have done all this without her, and I knew she was worried about money. Finances were something I’d never had to worry about too much, and now I realized how lucky I was.

  Mom slung her arm around Aunt Jackie’s shoulders. “I’m proud of you,” she said. “It’s hard letting stuff go. I know. But it does get easier. I could help decorate. . . .”

  “Please do,” said Aunt Jackie. “I’d love your opinion on the paint samples. And you can remodel the Harem Suite, if you like. That will be set aside for you and Zan any time you come visit.”

  Mustafa came up and greeted us warmly, kissing us on both cheeks. “I am glad you are back safe and sound,” he said to me. “You gave us all a big fright.”

  All. I looked around. “Is Nazif working today?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Not today,” said Mustafa. “He is beginning an art class.” He shrugged, with a helpless gesture. “Cartooning.”

  “Really? That’s awesome!” I exclaimed, even though something inside me sank. I wanted to see him so badly. Not only see him, but touch him, kiss him. Was it possible? Wasn’t that about where we’d left off in our story, before I’d been poisoned and kidnapped?

  “It’s an animation workshop, Mustafa,” Aunt Jackie corrected. “Computer animation.”

  “Yes.” Mustafa smiled wryly. “Computer animation,” he repeated, almost dutifully.

  “Mustafa doesn’t like to admit it, but he had a change of heart after seeing Nazif’s show at the party,” Aunt Jackie said, winking at me. “The downside, of course, is we’re missing a bellboy two days a week. But this hotel has made it through a lot of changes. We’ll soldier on without him. By the way,” she added when the front-desk phone rang and Mustafa went to answer it, “he was asking about you.”

  “Mustafa?”

  “Nazif, silly. Every single day. Demanding updates and wondering how you were holding up.”

  I nodded, emotions swelling inside me. We’d emailed each other a few times while I was in Cappadocia, but with only one terminal in the cave hotel, and all the time I had to spend talking to police and lawyers, our exchanges had been brief.

  “I’ll let him know you’re back,” she said with a knowing smile.

  Orhan, whom Aunt Jackie had hired as a full-time cook, came out of the kitchen with heaping plates of food. After dinner with Mom, Aunt Jackie, and Orhan, I went to my room and unpacked. In my suitcase, my hand brushed the fancy journal my dad had given me.

  Suddenly, for some reason, it called out to me. I grabbed the other gift from Dad, the astronaut pen, and ran up to the rooftop.

  The roof was full of construction equipment and lumber. The temporary fence from the party was down, and the new, sturdier fence would be put up soon. But even though the roof was full of fence supplies, it still felt like an oasis of peace to me. I settled myself on the white couch, between the geranium pots, and watched the sun set over the Sea of Marmara, turning the water gold. Then I turned to face the Blue Mosque, whose minarets lit up the indigo sky. I switched on a string of paper lanterns hanging over the trellis, left over from the party, and opened the journal to page one. All those empty pages! I could easily fill them with the story of everything that had happened to me. I could record my adventures, like Freya Stark had. And like my dad had asked me to do. I could tell my side of the story, in my own way. When I was ready, that’s what I would do.

  But we had two weeks left in Istanbul. There was a lot more to explore here, and maybe there were some happier stories to fill up some of these pages.

  And after Istanbul? I had more mountains to climb: Hard conversations with my dad. Getting to know Victoria Windham. Finding new friends, maybe at Burlington Boulders, maybe at school. I could try to put the past behind me and start a new chapter. I’d been so mad at my ex-friends for being fakes, but maybe I’d been a little fake myself, always covering myself up and never revealing who I really was.

  The past few months I’d spent so much time building monuments to my own disappointment. But I didn’t have to do that anymore. My parents’ story was not my own. I could make different choices. I could get busy leading my own life instead of just reactin
g to theirs. Civilizations end, but new ones rise up in their place. Now I had a foundation to build upon. I trusted my own strength.

  I set the tip of my pen on the cream paper of the journal’s first page and started writing down my thoughts. Soon they became a manifesto. In the dwindling light, I pressed down hard on the pen, etching all my promises to myself, carving them into the paper. My own mottos, for my own new era. I filled four pages without once looking up, not even when my hand began to ache.

  Until a light winked on, over on Nazif’s rooftop.

  I set down my pen and turned my head.

  Nazif’s white screen was strung up in the grape arbor again, light shining behind it. Suddenly the glorious bird shadow soared across the screen. Then it circled back and cocked its head, almost quizzically. It seemed to be looking at me.

  The boy shadow puppet came out to join it. It ran from side to side as if looking for something, while the bird tried to get the boy’s attention. The bird poked the boy with its beak, and gestured toward me with its unfurling wing, as if letting the boy know that I was there watching.

  The boy shadow jumped for joy. He spun around, beckoning with his arm. Come.

  I stood up, and the puppets vanished. My heart sank. I didn’t want the show to end. It didn’t feel like the end of the story.

  Then Nazif stepped out from behind the screen.

  I smiled and waved.

  He grinned and waved back. Then he put the puppets down and beckoned to me, with his own hand. “Zan! Come over!” he called out.

  I ran and took a flying leap across the short distance between our roofs.

  Author’s Note

  In Blue Voyage, Zan is obsessed with authenticity. Not only is she trying to figure out whether the people in her life are authentic, she’s also trying to determine whether the artifacts she encounters are the real deal.

  As a fiction writer interested in historical accuracy, I had to grapple with similar issues. I started with the facts. The following situations you read about in Blue Voyage are true.

  Fact: Antiquities trafficking in Turkey happens. Unscrupulous buyers and sellers seek opportunities to profit from the shards of past civilizations. In fact, Turkey is often called a “plunderer’s paradise” because of its layers of ancient civilizations.

  Fact: Forgeries can be created and sold to unsuspecting buyers on the black market; fake artifacts can be used to conceal real artifacts in transit; fake provenances (histories) can be written to accompany real antiquities in order to get them past customs officials.

  Fact: Turkey’s archaeological museums are bursting with artifacts confiscated from smugglers, and the number of confiscated artifacts grows every year. In 2011, 68,000 artifacts were seized from smuggling rings. According to the law, the nearest museum must take responsibility for items confiscated by police. These museums then face the burden of storing, cataloguing, or displaying the items. Security problems at museums mean these artifacts continue to be vulnerable to theft, and so the cycle of looting and loss continues.

  Fact: Many antiquities were looted long ago and smuggled to Western countries, where they were absorbed into museums or private collections. Turkey is currently involved in a massive effort to repatriate its looted antiquities and restore its cultural heritage.

  Fact: The Karun Treasure (also known as the Lydian Hoard) actually exists, and many do believe it is cursed. The three hundred and sixty-three artifacts that make up the bulk of the hoard were discovered in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. They are currently housed in the Uak Museum of Archaeology. A Turkish journalist named Özgen Acar tracked down the illegally purchased Karun Treasure items in the basement of the Met, and helped arrange for their return to Turkey in 1993. A couple of the returned items, however—including the golden seahorse brooch—were subsequently stolen from the Uak Museum and replaced with fakes. The museum director was arrested and found guilty of selling the golden brooch and other artifacts to pay off gambling debts. He blamed his actions on the curse of the Karun Treasure. At the time of this writing, the real items have been discovered in Germany, but their return to Turkey has yet to be arranged. (You can read more about this fascinating real-life detective story in a book called Loot by Sharon Waxman.)

  Because some of the artifacts I wanted to write about are still under investigation, involved in ongoing legal action, or being relocated soon, I decided to take some fictional liberty. I was intrigued by some accounts I read suggesting some Karun Treasure items had surfaced in other parts of the world and more might still be at large. So I invented an artifact for Zan to encounter. The seahorse-handled urn does not actually exist, but its design is closely based on the seahorse brooch—also known as “the gold hippocampus.” That 2,500-year-old solid-gold brooch features a mythical winged horse with the tail of a fish and dangling golden acorns. I also found inspiration in another real-life Karun Treasure item: a jug with an elaborately carved handle featuring a person and two rams. I found room for invention in the fact that we may never know how many of the original Karun Treasure items were stolen and smuggled out of the country, or where they ultimately ended up. Ancient artifacts in transit often appear and disappear on the black market, so I imagined a missing Karun Treasure urn could be one of them.

  In inventing an urn for this story, I suppose I created my own kind of fake. But the issues behind the urn are unfortunately all too real. Should ancient artifacts and art objects always be kept in their country of origin? Is it better for ancient objects to be seen by many people, even if that means they are not displayed where they were found? Who has the right to own history? And when pieces of that history get stolen, what price do all of us pay?

  Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to the following people who helped me at various stages of writing and publishing Blue Voyage:

  I would like to thank my agent, Kirby Kim, for always being so supportive of my work and for understanding the kinds of stories I love to tell.

  Enormous thanks to my editor at Viking, Leila Sales. We’ve now journeyed through three books together, and with each project I find myself more in awe of her attention to detail, her impeccable logic, her creative thinking, and her patience. Not to mention her good humor and unwavering confidence, even as I tore my hair out over thorny plot points. I couldn’t ask for a better companion to help me navigate these travel mysteries, especially Blue Voyage.

  I would like to thank Ken Wright, Tara Shanahan, and the whole crew at Viking Children’s/Penguin Young Readers Group. Thank you for your enthusiasm and support. I feel very grateful to have the world’s best production editor, Janet Pascal. Janet followed my research tracks through everything from Turkish expressions to musical instruments to antiquities trafficking, and I deeply appreciate the time she has spent in checking for accuracy, not to mention pointing out my blind spots. Thanks to Diana Joao for her meticulous attention to every sentence, word, and punctuation mark. And many thanks to Kate Renner for another exciting cover design, an invitation to adventure!

  I have deep gratitude for my longstanding writing group: Erin Cashman, Eileen Donovan Kranz, Patrick Gabridge, Vincent Gregory, Ted Rooney, Deborah Vlock, Rob Vlock, and Julie Wu. These people read huge chunks of this book, sometimes on short notice, and always gave me their honest appraisal. Thank you also to Kerri Majors and Elisa Ludwig, who helped me to get early versions of this book into some kind of recognizable shape. Thanks to Catey Miller, who read a later stage draft and offered her keen insights.

  An enormous thank-you goes to my dear friend and critique partner Erin Cashman. (Okay, Erin, this is the whole entire paragraph I promised you!) I have lost track of how many manuscript versions, chapters, and scenes Erin has read, often on short notice. While juggling parenthood demands, other work demands, and the writing of this book, I had days when I worried I could not go on in the story. Knowing that Erin was expecting pages, and gettin
g her words of encouragement and her laser-sharp critiques, often kept me going. I’m so grateful for the gift of her precious time and her sharp critiquing skills.

  A number of other people gave of their time and expertise to help me. Among them, I must thank Ilgin Korugan for reading the manuscript to check the accuracy of Turkish language and culture; any mistakes are entirely my own. I thank friends Can Erbil and Susannah Madan-Erbil for additional help with Turkish culture questions. My adventurous brother-in-law, Jay Underwood, assisted with my rock climbing scenes, helping me to understand the lexicon and the mindset of a climber. I also must credit Jay with introducing me to this fascinating sport, which in turn inspired much of Zan’s character. Thanks to Shannan at Airial Balloon Company in Snohomish, Washington, for fielding random questions about hot-air balloons (and for not reporting me to authorities when I asked how I might bring one down).

  They say that sometimes our characters lead us into unexpected places. For me, it was the dermatologist’s office. I am grateful to Dr. Fern Wirth for answering questions about vitiligo and teenagers—and for saving my life by catching an early-stage melanoma. I am grateful for the happy outcome, and would urge everyone to check their moles, or have them looked at professionally.

  Finally, thanks to my ever-supportive parents and my entire extended family. Heartfelt thanks to my husband, Jim, and my son, Gabriel, who have managed to be so patient with me when I journey into books. Thank you for your enduring love and support, and for being my peaceful harbor.

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