Queen Liliuokalani: Royal Prisoner

by Ann Hood

  Maisie and Skinny motioned for him to hurry.

  Using the same technique, Felix made his way across the room, the crown safe in his arms.

  Skinny led them up the next flight of stairs, pausing to keep his balance each time the ship tacked sharply left or right.

  On deck again, Maisie took big, deep breaths of the salty night air. Above them, the sky was heavy with stars. She thought if she reached hard enough, she might actually touch them. The full moon lit up the night like a streetlight, making their path clear and bright.

  At the edge of the ship, Skinny stopped.

  “You’ll have to do this next bit on your own, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically.

  Felix swallowed hard. This next bit seemed to involve something over the side of the ship, where Skinny was now leaning and tugging on something.

  “You just need to climb down—” he was saying.

  “Climb? Down?” Felix repeated, glancing overboard at the roiling waves below.

  “And get into this dinghy here that I’m freeing up for you.”

  “And…row? Across the ocean?” Felix asked in disbelief.

  “We’re not that far out to sea,” Skinny said. “Yet. That’s why you’ve got to get moving.”

  “I don’t know,” Felix said.

  Not only was it a long way down to that dinghy, but once they had set off, how were they supposed to know where to go?

  Skinny stopped long enough to say, “You don’t have much choice, do you?”

  The ropes slapped against the side of the ship, and the little dinghy bounced free.

  “Off with you two now,” Skinny said.

  They would have to climb over the railing and shinny down the side of the ship, holding on to the ropes until they reached the dinghy that bobbed in the water below, looking very much like a toy boat.

  Maisie took a deep breath.

  “It’s now or never,” she said, and swung her legs over the railing.

  Reluctantly, Felix followed.

  Skinny stood above them, watching to be sure they were safely off.

  “May I ask you something?” Maisie asked before she began to climb down a rope.

  Skinny nodded.

  “Why did you decide to help us?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t really say. I just…had to.”

  Maisie glanced at her brother. His face was wrinkled with fear and concentration, but she wondered if he, too, thought lame demon had saved them.

  Hanging from a swinging rope far above the ocean, Felix wished he had gone on that rock climbing field trip last winter. But it had been optional, and Maisie had refused to even consider it. An hour on a bus with Bitsy Beal and her posse just to climb a wall all day? No thank you. Felix had thought it would be fun—the bus ride and the day at the rock-climbing gym and stopping for fast food on the way home. But he couldn’t leave Maisie alone, could he? So he hadn’t gone, either, and now he was sorry.

  Every now and then the ship moved in such a way that he banged against the side, hard, then swung out far from the ship, dangling for an eternal few seconds over the water before gently swinging back into place.

  Slowly, slowly, he inched down the rope, squeezing his eyes shut most of the way.

  He heard when Maisie reached bottom and dropped into the dinghy with a little “Oh!” followed by the sound of the dinghy rocking in the waves, then settling again.

  “You’re almost there!” Maisie called to him.

  Felix peeked out from beneath his eyelids. It didn’t look almost there to him. He squeezed his eyes shut again, and continued his slow way downward.

  Finally, he reached the bottom. The water was right below him. Maisie waited in the dinghy, holding it steady and close with its final tether to the ship. All Felix had to do was let go of his rope and make the short jump into the dinghy.

  Felix took a breath.

  He let go of the rope.

  And he dropped, missing the dinghy and falling right into the ocean.

  CHAPTER 10

  At Sea

  Felix had read somewhere that just before people died, their lives passed before them, almost like a home movie. When he dropped into the ocean with a soft plunk and fell deeper and deeper, he thought first of the warm turquoise Caribbean, and then of his big bathtub at Elm Medona, and then of the Carmine Street Pool where he and Maisie used to swim, and finally of the old bathtub back at Bethune Street with its cracked white porcelain and the rust stain around the drain that nothing could remove. And as these thoughts rushed through his mind like he’d hit the REWIND button on a DVD player, Felix thought, Uh-oh.

  He opened his eyes. Unlike the Caribbean, this water was dark and cloudy. And so deep that it seemed like there was no bottom. Felix kicked. Hard. And pushed upward with all his might. Above him he saw the rocking shadow of the dinghy, and ripples from the paddles hitting the water.

  Slowly, he began to move toward the surface.

  Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to kick for even one more second, a circle of moonlight appeared. Felix aimed for it with a final burst of energy, and broke the surface, sputtering and gasping for air.

  Immediately, Maisie grabbed him and pulled him into the dinghy with her.

  Instead of letting him go, though, she held on, her head on his wet shoulder.

  “I thought you drowned,” she cried. “I thought, I thought…”

  Felix wanted to comfort her, but he was too busy catching his breath.

  The dinghy still sat in the shadow of the Rambler, and once Maisie got control of herself, she picked up the paddles and started to row. In the moonlight, her face looked pale and splotchy from crying.

  “I’m okay,” Felix finally managed to say.

  Maisie just shook her head.

  “What a dope I am, right?” he said, shaking his head.

  Maisie stopped rowing and looked at him, her face solemn.

  “I don’t know what I would do without you,” she said matter-of-factly.

  She began to row again right away, as if the matter was closed. But Felix reached over and patted her hand.

  “Me neither,” he said.

  He took one of the paddles from her, and silently the brother and sister rowed the small dinghy into the deep sea.

  At sea, it is hard to gauge how much time has passed. Felix’s arms ached and he could feel his face getting sunburned. Still, they had to keep rowing. What choice did they have? Even as the waves grew rougher and choppier, he paddled, trying to keep the dinghy on course. But the waves got bigger, and the little boat seemed to not move at all, no matter how hard Maisie and Felix paddled.

  Their hair grew wet and stiff from the salt spray. The dinghy rocked, tipping precariously closer and closer to the water.

  “Hold on!” Maisie shouted.

  She clutched the sides of the slippery boat. Felix did the same.

  He watched a wave approach from right in front of them. It was enormous, a moving wall of churning gray water.

  “Look out!” he screamed.

  The wave swept over them, knocking both Maisie and Felix out of the boat and turning the dinghy upside down.

  Maisie coughed, spewing salt water from her nose and mouth. Panicked, she swam to the dinghy and threw herself onto it, all the time scanning the surface of the water for her brother.

  “Felix!” she yelled.

  For a moment, nothing.

  Then Felix, too, emerged.

  “Over here!” she called to him.

  With great effort, Felix made his way to Maisie.

  “We have to turn the boat over,” she told him.

  As quickly as it had come, the squall ended. The ocean was as flat as a piece of glass now, not a wave in sight. Maisie and Felix didn’t calm as fast, though. Their hearts raced as they searched the horizon for another rogue wave. But none came.

  Felix rested on the dinghy, trying to catch his breath. Trying not to think about sharks.

  Slowly, his breath evened. He looke
d at Maisie and nodded.

  With their last bit of energy, Maisie and Felix managed to flip the boat over and crawl back into it.

  Felix didn’t want to say it aloud, but he felt pretty certain that their pickle was getting worse, not better.

  “Felix?” Maisie said softly.

  Too tired to answer, Felix just looked at her.

  Maisie swallowed hard.

  Then she said, “Where’s the crown?”

  Felix didn’t even have to check his inside pocket. The crown was heavy enough that when it was there he felt its weight, and it was big enough to be bulky.

  He glanced at the ocean, which seemed to be getting vaster by the second.

  “I am trying really hard not to cry right now,” Maisie said, her voice sounding strangled.

  After all they’d been through, now they’d lost the crown once more.

  “We’ll never find it again,” Maisie said hopelessly.

  Felix just kept staring at the ocean, as if the crown would magically appear. He watched a colorful fish caught in some seaweed in the distance.

  “Wait a minute,” Felix said. “That fish…”

  “I don’t care about a stupid fish,” Maisie said. “We’re never going to get back to Hawaii. We’re never going to get home, either.”

  She had never wanted to be in Newport so badly before, but now she longed for her pink bedroom and the sound of her mother’s heels clicking down the long hallway. She even missed Great-Uncle Thorne roaring at them.

  “That fish,” Felix said again, his voice growing excited.

  “What’s so special about that fish?” Maisie said crossly.

  “That fish has the crown!” Felix announced.

  He picked up the paddles and rowed toward it.

  Sure enough, the colorful fish caught in the seaweed held the lost crown.

  Maisie scooped it up and shook the water from it.

  “Good as new,” she said with monumental relief.

  Maisie and Felix curled up together to rest, the crown safely back in Felix’s pocket. The dinghy floated along on the current as they slept. When morning came, they woke and began to row again. Although they were both hungry, and thirsty, and scared, neither of them complained. There was no sign of land, just ocean as far as they could see in every direction. Felix wondered where they might land, if they made it to land. Hawaii, he’d learned from the royal children, was thousands of miles from any other land.

  It was possible, he realized as his paddle slapped the water, that they would starve to death or get capsized by a wave or suffer some other dreadful fate long before they reached land. Felix glanced at Maisie. Was she having the same catastrophic thoughts? Or was she somehow confident that they would find their way back to Honolulu? He couldn’t tell by her expression, which revealed nothing.

  The sun climbed in the sky. When it was directly overhead, Maisie said, “Lunchtime!”

  “I’ll make grilled cheese,” Felix said.

  “I’ll bake chocolate chip cookies,” Maisie added.

  They smiled sadly at each other.

  “Let’s take a break?” Felix suggested.

  Relieved, Maisie put down her paddle.

  “How deep do you think this water is?” she asked, peering over the edge of the dinghy.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Felix said.

  Maisie squinted. Blinked. Squinted again at something in the distance.

  “I think I see a ship,” she said carefully.

  Felix looked, too, but saw nothing. Was she hallucinating? Seeing a mirage?

  “It’s coming this way,” she continued. “But slowly.”

  “Maisie,” Felix said, picking up her paddle, “I’ll do the work for a while. You rest.”

  Maisie laughed. “You think I’m bonkers, don’t you?”

  “No!” he said quickly.

  She pointed toward the horizon.

  “Let’s just hope we haven’t paddled in a big circle and that it’s not the Rambler,” she said.

  Now Felix squinted and blinked. Sure enough, a ship came into focus in the distance. And sure enough, it was moving slowly toward them.

  It seemed to take forever for the ship to come close enough for Maisie and Felix to see its name: Gloria Jenny.

  Maisie began to wave her arms wildly and to shout for help.

  Way up in the ship’s crow’s nest, a sailor stood lookout. But did he see the tiny boat with the two lost children in it?

  “Over here!” Felix yelled.

  It was impossible to tell if the man up there heard them or saw them. The ship continued its slow movement.

  “Help!” Maisie kept shouting. “Help!”

  For an instant it appeared the ship was going to sail right past them. Then, without warning, it cut sharply and headed directly for Maisie and Felix.

  They did not stop shouting and waving until the Gloria Jenny pulled up right alongside them and the sailors staring down at them dropped a rope to hoist them up.

  “What in the world are you two doing out here in a dinghy?” the captain asked as soon as Maisie and Felix were on deck.

  They looked at each other, and then at the captain.

  “Trying to get to Honolulu,” Maisie said.

  The captain grinned.

  “Then you’re in luck,” he said. “That’s where we’re headed, too.”

  The ship was a whaler from New Bedford.

  “The city that lights the world,” the captain said proudly.

  And it was full of whale blubber. Back in New Bedford, the blubber would be turned into oil for lamps. The captain gave Maisie and Felix a bit of it to chew on, like gum. To be polite, Felix tried, but the overwhelming fishiness of it was too gross for him, and when the captain looked away, Felix spit it out.

  These sailors, unlike the ones on the Rambler, were a jolly crew. They took turns sitting with Maisie and Felix and telling them stories of their adventures catching whales in the South Seas. They showed them the harpoons they used, and explained the best way to throw them.

  “You should have been there,” one sailor said, looking dreamily off in the distance. “We harpooned this huge whale, and he took us on a Nantucket sleigh ride like I’ve never been on in my life.”

  “A sleigh ride?” Maisie asked. “In the ocean?”

  The sailor laughed. “That’s what we call it when we harpoon a whale and she takes off, dragging the ship along with her.”

  Felix smiled at the idea. He would have to remember that one. A Nantucket sleigh ride.

  Another sailor brought over a small piece of whalebone and showed them how he carved a picture into it.

  “Scrimshaw,” he said. “That’s what it’s called. And I’ll give this to my wife when I get back home. She’ll turn it into a brooch.”

  The picture was of a ship on the ocean just like this one.

  “You two are from Newport, I heard,” he said.

  “That’s right,” Felix said.

  “Have you seen the widow’s walks on top of houses by the water there?” the sailor asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Felix said.

  “Oh,” Maisie said, “do you mean those little things on the roofs?”

  “Right,” the sailor said, nodding. “The wives go up there to watch the sea for our ship’s return.”

  “Why is it called a widow’s walk?” Maisie asked him.

  The man’s smile faded. “I’m afraid too often the ships don’t return.”

  “And then the wives—”

  “That’s right,” he said. “They become widows.”

  He went back to his careful carving. “She’ll like this, my wife will,” he said softly.

  Honolulu finally appeared before them.

  The crowded harbor was cast in the glow of the setting sun, everything washed in a lavender haze.

  Of course, Felix had known that the sun set in the west and rose in the east, but it wasn’t until he’d watched the sun set over the ocean here that he real
ly understood. The sky turned a dozen shades of purple and red, and the sun began to drop like a fiery red ball in the sky. In an instant, it disappeared beneath the horizon, and evening fell over Honolulu.

  The Gloria Jenny pulled into Honolulu just before that happened. The sky was all those shades of purple, and the sun was red and low above the horizon.

  “You two have somewhere to go?” the captain asked Maisie and Felix.

  They nodded.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Maisie told him.

  Felix and the captain shook hands.

  “Godspeed,” the captain said.

  Felix and Maisie walked off the ship and into the bustle of Honolulu, toward the palace, the crown heavy in Felix’s pocket.

  Liliu was moving across the lawn when Maisie and Felix reached the palace.

  She looked excited to see them.

  “Aloha!” she called to them.

  “Aloha,” they answered.

  “You’re just in time for the fireworks,” Liliu said, beaming.

  “What are you celebrating?” Maisie asked.

  “Bernice’s engagement,” Liliu said. She lowered her voice. “She’s marrying a haole, so Paki is furious. Still, he arranged the fireworks.”

  She motioned for them to follow her around the corner, where all of the ali‘i sat, staring up at the sky expectantly.

  “I’m sorry,” Felix blurted as soon as they sat down.

  Liliu looked at him, confused.

  From the distance came the sound of explosions.

  “For what’s happening here,” Felix continued. “In Hawaii.”

  The sky lit up then. Blue and green and red. Not like the pyrotechnics Maisie and Felix were used to, but the colors were still vivid as they splashed across the sky. The air smelled of smoke and sulfur.

  “The way the British and the Americans are taking over everything,” he added.

  “I am, too,” Liliu said softly.

  The three of them watched in silence as the fireworks lit up the sky.

  When the fireworks ended, the crowd of revelers applauded wildly.